Chapter 73
It was two o’clock when Anna got to the church, and the day was ticking by, relentlessly carrying her toward her fate, but she concentrated on the present. The suspect at hand.
Pastor Keene had known both Bonnie and Lila.
Really known them. Lila had helped him in the soup kitchen for two years, only stopping when she got together with Jamie.
Could she have had a thing with Pastor Keene, gross as that was, given she’d have been so young when she was helping him out, and then he killed her in a jealous rage?
Or because she’d begun to ignore the church in favor of the sins of the flesh, as Grandma would call it?
Then Bonnie came after. Already knowing each other from church, they’d talked at the dentist’s while the pastor waited for the people he’d brought for their treatment.
She was a good listener; that’s what he’d said.
Had he sweet-talked her into his bed? Brought some daddy energy?
She’d helped him in the shelter in Omaha.
A weekend a month spent there. Shit. Why hadn’t she thought of this before?
Had he killed both girls out of necessity, maybe?
To protect himself. Was Lila going to tell Jamie?
Bonnie was hormonal and emotional and had just aborted his baby.
Was she threatening to tell too? Girls liked to talk.
She couldn’t see Pastor Keene inside, but a mother-and-toddler group were holding a story time up at the front, and when a few women looked curiously her way, she hurried to a pew and pretended to pray as she glanced around.
If she could find a writing sample like that in the cards she’d found in Bonnie’s room, that would be some relatively concrete evidence to take to Todd.
The police had people who could match writing, she’d heard enough about it on podcasts.
She’d hoped the pastor would be here and she’d have gotten him to write down some old movie recommendations for Grandma or some other such bullshit, but there was no sign of him.
There was a large gold candlestick in a waist-high alcove toward the front and another on the other side of the aisle, more Catholic than Baptist, and they looked heavy.
Lila and Bonnie had been hit hard on the back of the head, before being strangled.
One of those candlesticks could definitely do that job.
She shuffled out of the pew and went for a closer look.
Hoping for bloodstains was ridiculous, but she wondered if the police would still be able to find something on them under a UV light.
Her hand clenched into a fist, frustrated. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t anything.
She quietly made her way to the back by the doors where the indoor bulletin board was, scanning the various sheets of paper about room use, group timetables, choir practice, and prayer sessions.
Nothing was handwritten, everything these days typed and printed.
The poster for the charity raffle the Millers had won was still up, brightly colored and inviting.
Five days in Omaha staying at the City Center Garden Hilton.
Anna stared at it, wishing Mom had won. They’d all be out of town and safe. No basement murder could happen then.
Frustrated and with a sudden need to pee, she went to the restroom.
This church visit had been a waste of precious time, giving her nothing new.
It wasn’t until she was scrubbing at her hands with the soap that she saw it.
The name stamped onto the surface of the bar.
Sailor’s Choice. She stared hard, momentarily unable to breathe.
This was the soap the girls’ dead bodies had been washed in.
Right here, bold as brass, plain as day.
She let out a small laugh. Thank you, God. Pastor Keene. She’d saved herself.