The Boys in the Church

by Chris Culver

  “But you called Angela Pritchard because you hoped to get your face on TV. The Apostate knows we found it. He won’t come back now.”

  Delgado blinked and shook his head. “We don’t know this was the Apostate’s church.”

  I lowered my chin. “If this isn’t the Apostate’s church, then we’ve got another killer out there. He’s murdering people and dumping their bodies in a church. Either way, you told the world about his hideout before we could catch him. That wasn’t a good move.”

  The sheriff considered.

  “Go home, Detective,” he said, his voice soft. “And remember, this case is confidential. Don’t talk to anybody about this.”

  “Sure,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

  He grunted before walking toward the stairs that led to his second-floor office. His movements were slow, and he kept his head down. For a split second, I felt sorry for him, but then I thought of Jude Lewis and Paige Maxwell, of Olivia King and John Rogers, of Tayla Walker and Matthew Bridges. With the two new victims Agent Lawson was investigating, the Apostate had abducted fourteen children. If not for Delgado and Angela Pritchard, an FBI surveillance team could have waited and arrested him. Nobody else would have had to die.

  My sympathy for Delgado died right there. He didn’t deserve it. He had screwed up, and innocent people would pay the price.

  9

  I drove home at a little before five in the evening. My job didn’t have many perks, but it kept me busy for ten or twelve hours a day. I liked that. I liked even more that my work mattered and helped people. To top it off, it made my life easier. My caseload gave me little time to consider my life. Now, as I drove back to an empty house with the sun up and the birds chirping from my trees, a dull melancholy spread through me.

  I missed my old dog most on days like this. Roger always made my day brighter, but more than that, he had forced me to talk to people on his daily walk. I hadn’t realized how much I’d gotten out of Roger’s walks until I stopped doing them.

  Rather than dwell on things I couldn’t change, I parked in my driveway, grabbed two frozen dinners from my freezer, and walked to my neighbor’s house. I didn’t know how old Susanne was, but she had retired over twenty years ago from the St. Augustine County school system. She was kind and good. I couldn’t have asked for a better friend.

  I knocked on her door, and when she saw me, her face lit up. I held up the boxed rice bowls.

  “I can’t cook, but I brought dinner,” I said.

  She looked at my rice bowls and then to me with a bemused smile on her face.

  “I have half a potpie in the fridge,” she said. “It’s left over from my bridge club. How about I warm us up real food?”

  I looked at my rice bowls. “This is real food. It’s organic.”

  She patted me on the elbow and turned to walk toward her kitchen. “We’ll get you fattened up, sweetie. Don’t worry.”

  I stayed with Susanne about two hours. We talked about our days and about Roger. He used to come to her house every morning and spend the day with her while I was at work. We both missed him. I’d get a new dog in time, but for now, my memories kept me company.

  Susanne gave me a big hug after dinner, and I left her house feeling much better than I had when I arrived. It was nice to have a friend.

  When I got home, my house didn’t seem as lonely as it had, but it was still empty. Harry, Trisha, and I had cleaned up yesterday, but we had left piles of papers stacked on the floor. Whiteboards filled with notes about the Apostate blocked the windows.

  The church had held a lot of bodies. I wondered who they were. Was this a new dump site? An old one? Were there other bodies out there somewhere? Were his other victims still alive?

  I couldn’t answer those questions, but I would—hopefully before he killed anyone else.

  It was a little after seven in the evening, so I plopped down on my couch and called Harry’s cell phone to update him on the case.

  “Harry, it’s Joe. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

  “Just doing the dishes with Irene.”

  I nodded. “When you’re done, call me. I wanted to talk about the Apostate.”

  Harry hesitated. “Hold on just a second.”

  He asked his wife whether she minded finishing the dishes alone while we spoke. Irene agreed if he put things away once they dried. I had only met Irene a handful of times, but I liked her. She was intelligent, and she wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself. Police work was hard and time intensive. A lot of marriages buckled under the strain, but Harry and Irene listened to each other and sacrificed for each other’s needs. They seemed happy, and I was happy for them.

  Eventually, Harry got back on the phone.

  “I saw the news at six. You’re famous once more.”

  I grunted. “What did I do for my newfound fame?”

  “Angela Pritchard implied you were feeding her information about the case. She said you were close to finding the killer.”

  I rubbed my eyes and sighed. “Delgado’s the source, and we’re nowhere near finding the killer.”

  “I figured,” said Harry. “Trisha texted me to tell me we wouldn’t be getting anything new today. I expected George to piss off the feds, but I had hoped he’d last more than two days.”

  “It is what it is,” I said. “We’ll pick up bits and pieces where we can, but for now, we’ve still got a lot to work with. You’ve lived in the county for a while. Have you ever heard of that church?”

  Harry paused. “No, but I’ve never been much of a churchgoer.”

  “Then find someone who is,” I said. “The scene in the church was ugly. Someone burned these kids to death. The Apostate isn’t just killing them; he’s punishing them. Someone hurt this guy, and he’s getting revenge. Learn what you can about that church. Maybe something happened there.”

  Harry paused and then sighed.

  “If you’re right, and he’s punishing these boys and girls, he’s doing this for a reason,” he said. “We pull too many layers back on this, we might find something we don’t want to see.”

  “If our killer was abused as a child, I’ll arrest him and the people who hurt him,” I said. “That’s my job.”

  Harry drew in a breath. “All right. I’ll see what I can find out about the church.”

  Harry and I talked for another few minutes, but we didn’t figure anything out. After hanging up, I poured myself a drink from the bottle of vodka in my freezer and sat back down in the living room.

  For a few minutes, I watched an old episode of Game of Thrones on my DVR. Today, Cersei, a main character, gave a speech about all the things she’d do to protect her children. The conversation reminded me of Erin, my biological mother, and everything she’d failed at in my childhood. That took the fun out of my evening’s entertainment.

  I downed my first drink in a gulp and returned to the kitchen for a refill. There, I stopped and looked at my phone and the laptop beside it on the counter. I didn’t think about Erin often, mostly because I didn’t care about her. Knowing someone had murdered her didn’t change that, but I still wondered. Did she know her killer was coming? Did she deserve it? Did she think about me toward the end? Did she even care about the daughter she lost?

  My eyes were a little glassy, and a heavy feeling welled in my gut as I opened my laptop. I didn’t remember many of Erin’s friends, but one could probably answer my questions. Lacey Rayner. Like my mother, she had worked outcall as a prostitute. Unlike my mother, she was smart enough to use birth control, so she didn’t have kids. Growing up, I used to call her Aunt Lacey. Every time she came by, she brought me a piece of candy.

  When Erin’s clients asked her to stay overnight, I’d sleep at Aunt Lacey’s apartment. She’d braid my hair, and we’d watch movies together. She smelled nice. Erin smoked cheap menthol cigarettes, and the stink permeated my clothes, the car, and my bed. Until I entered a foster home, the smell was inescapable. At Aunt Lacey’s apartment, though, I took
bubble baths that left me smelling like perfume. She treated me like a princess, but more than that, she had made me feel wanted and loved.

  I lost touch with her when I entered the foster care system, but I had loved Aunt Lacey. She was always kind. I considered for a few minutes and then accessed the license bureau’s database from my laptop. It was an abuse of my position, but I looked her up.

  Aunt Lacey was the only Lacey Rayner in the system, and she lived in Creve Coeur, an upscale suburb in west St. Louis County. It was an area for doctors and lawyers, and she looked good in her license photo. Life had gone well for her. She deserved it.

  Before I could stop myself, I tapped her number into my cell phone. Aunt Lacey’s phone rang four times before going to voicemail. I considered leaving a message, but I didn’t know what to tell her. I hung up. That was for the best. After all these years, I doubted Lacey would remember the little girl whose hair she used to braid.

  After that, I closed my laptop and finished my show in the living room, but my mind didn’t stray far from Erin. At about ten, I locked the doors and then turned down the lights. As I closed my eyes to sleep, I found my mind drifting.

  My childhood hadn’t been all bad. Christmas was always nice. Most of Erin’s clients had families, so they didn’t want to spend the holidays screwing a hooker in a cheap motel. That meant I had Erin all to myself, and without regular dates, she didn’t have the money to buy booze or drugs. For a time, Erin was sober. She was like a real mom. One year, she even hung stockings on the windowsill. Santa brought me six pairs of colorful socks and a big box of Milk Duds. It was the best Christmas I ever had.

  Erin Court wasn’t evil or mean, but she had been a terrible mother. Still, I had loved her, and, in those quiet moments when I was honest with myself, I missed her. As my eyes closed, and my conscious mind shifted to dreams, I smelled the flowery notes of her perfume and the herbaceous mint of her menthol cigarettes, and I felt content.

  That was how it had always gone, though. Erin had never disappointed me in my dreams. The disappointment always came when I woke up.

  10

  Glenn’s heart pounded, sending blood rushing through his system with every compression. His thumb paused over the play button on the remote. His right foot bounced on the ground, while the heel of his left rested on his right thigh. A song kept playing repeatedly in his head, and he couldn’t help but hum along with it.

  “You like her, don’t you?” asked Helen.

  Glenn glanced over at his sister. They sat together in the living room of his home. The house wasn’t much, but it was his—purchased in cash, the way his father had taught him. The front porch sagged, and the roof leaked into the attic, but he had plans to fix those. Aside from its minor imperfections, the home had a lot to love. Its oak hardwood floors were original, as were the baseboards and crown molding. Everything in that house spoke to its history. At times, it felt almost alive.

  Helen sat on the other end of the sofa with a bemused smile on her face. The reflected light of the television danced off canvas curtains he had made himself from painters’ tarps purchased at a local hardware store. They looked surprisingly professional, and almost four hundred people had pinned pictures of them when he posted them to Pinterest.

  “I don’t even know her,” he said. Helen smiled. The two of them had already burned the blood-soaked clothes they had worn to the storm cellar, so now Helen wore thick flannel pajamas. A tie held her hair in a loose ponytail behind her. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt.

  “You can’t hide it, honey,” she said, leaning toward him and winking. “Mary Joe is a pretty girl. Millions and millions of years of evolution have programmed you to like girls like her. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  He flicked his eyes to his sister before shaking his head.

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Okay,” she said. “If you don’t want to talk about your feelings, let’s talk about your girlfriend.”

  Glenn followed his sister’s eyes to the television. While he had punished Mary and Peter in his dungeon, the police had found his church. He had expected them to find it eventually, but it still left him horrified. Glenn had stopped going to Mass after his father died, but he had never stopped believing. That church was sacred to him. He had made it into a symbol of justice and righteousness. Watching the police traipse all over it as if it were some kind of public toilet tore into him and made him sick.

  Angela Pritchard first announced the find on her Twitter feed, but then every news outlet in the region had picked it up. Pritchard would push her grandmother off a cliff to get a story. That drive combined with her highly placed sources in law enforcement made her worth following. She called him the Apostate. The nickname didn’t fit, but it looked as if it was catching on with the media. An apostate renounced his religion. Glenn renounced nothing. He lived his faith and exalted in righteousness. Pritchard didn’t understand him, but that didn’t matter.

  Even as ignorant as she was, Glenn had considered taking Pritchard at one point. Helen had convinced him she wasn’t worth the risk. She was beautiful, true, but she wasn’t for him. She didn’t matter the way his true targets did, so Glenn bided his time and did his work in secret and in solitude.

  Until now.

  His finger trembled as he hit the play button. Pritchard claimed the police were close to an arrest, that he was insane and deviant, that he molested his “victims” before killing them as part of some sick ritual. She was wrong, but Glenn didn’t blame her. The news had become entertainment, and Angela Pritchard was entertaining—especially when she wore something with a plunging neckline.

  He paused the video as Detective Mary Joe Court stepped into the frame. She was perfect. He had met her once about three years ago, but he hadn’t realized how special she was. Now he saw the calm intelligence in her eyes and the strength of her character. Her thick blonde hair bounced with every step of her graceful walk, and though she frowned on camera, Glenn knew her smile could light up an entire room. She was beautiful and ripe, verdant and untamed, like a field of meadow grass and wildflowers.

  “She certainly does have a presence about her,” said Helen. “I can see why you like her.”

  “I think she’s the one.”

  Helen considered the television for a moment and then shook her head.

  “I don’t think so, sweetheart,” she said, her voice a whisper. “Look at her. She’s talking to that reporter. She’s telling her lies about you.”

  But she wasn’t whispering lies. He had watched the video with Detective Court dozens of times already, and he had memorized every frame.

  “She’s protecting me,” said Glenn. “When she talks to Angela, her posture stiffens, her skin flushes, and she balls her hands into fists. She’s angry. Angela Pritchard is the interloper. Mary Joe is protecting my church. She knows its significance. She understands me.”

  Helen sighed and tried to touch his hand. Glenn scooted away.

  “Honey, I’m the only one who understands you. Come here. I can see you’re upset. Let me hold you.”

  Glenn looked at his sister. He had found comfort in those arms for more nights than he could count. Not tonight, though.

  “My shadow knows me, too,” he said.

  “No, she doesn’t,” said Helen, her voice full of contempt. “She’s a fool, and you’re a fool if you listen to her.”

  Helen’s wrong. I can bring you to life.

  His shadow whispered in the back of his mind. It was a lover’s caress, and it sent a shiver down his spine.

  “She’s talking to you now, isn’t she?” asked Helen. “Don’t listen to her.”

  I can give you Mary Joe. She’s destined to be with you.

  Glenn’s entire body shuddered.

  “Shut her out,” said Helen, her voice strong. “Remember what she made you do this afternoon. You can’t control her. I love you. I’m your family. Trust me.”

  Helen was right, but it took an e
ffort to ignore his shadow’s seductive voice. He looked at his sister and then down to his hands.

  “I’m tired of this,” he whispered. “I’m tired of fighting every day.”

  “You don’t have to fight her alone,” she said. “I’m here with you, and I’m not going anywhere.”

  For a few minutes, they stayed there on the couch, and Glenn drank from his sister’s calm stillness. His shadow’s voice, once more, went silent. His throat loosened, and the knot in his belly unraveled. Still, his mind refused to focus. Something clawed at his mind. It was a need and itch he needed to scratch.

  “I want her,” he whispered. Helen looked at him. Her eyes held kindness and sympathy. “Mary Joe. I need someone in my life. I need her.”

  “If Mary Joe is the one, then you’ll have her,” she whispered.

  He nodded and silently thanked her. Helen didn’t lie. With her assistance, Mary Joe would become his. It would take time and coaxing, but he’d have her eventually. For now, though, he needed another way to scratch his itch.

  “The cellar is empty,” he said.

  Helen considered for a moment and then drew in a slow, deep breath.

  “And you want to fill it. Are you sure you’re ready after what you did to Peter and Mary?”

  “I’ve learned from that mistake,” he said, nodding.

  Helen pursed her lips.

  “You have people in mind?”

  He nodded. “They’re local. They won’t be easy, but they’re here. We can get them tonight.”

  A smile cracked Helen’s lips.

  “If they’re local, Mary Joe will be the investigating officer. Is that your plan?”

  “Would that be such a bad thing? I can watch her work.”

  “Okay,” she said, drawing in a breath as she thought. “We’ll watch her together. She deserves a chance.”

  “Thank you,” he said, feeling a wave of peace and calm crash over him. Helen straightened.