The Boys in the Church

by Chris Culver

  “This is good,” said Mary Joe. “They’ll fall all over each other trying to escape. It’ll be easy.”

  Glenn nodded. “We can start at the snack bar. If we go at noon, we can shoot people as they wait in line for lunch. They’ll have nowhere to go. If I come from the locker rooms at the south end, the people at the diving board will run to the north once they hear the first shot. They’ll back themselves into a corner. When they climb the fence, I’ll pick them off. Then I can hit the sunbathers.”

  Mary Joe nodded and continued walking but said nothing.

  “You don’t like the plan?”

  She sighed. “It’s fine if it’s what you want to do.”

  Glenn stopped walking at the northeast corner of the complex. The nearest sunbather was at least twenty feet inside the pool deck, giving them some privacy.

  “What would you do?”

  Mary Joe turned toward the pool and gestured.

  “Go through the locker room, but instead of shooting up the snack bar, hit the kiddie pool first. Every parent in the complex will run over to save the kids. You’ll mow them all down.”

  Glenn brought a hand to his face. His legs trembled, so he leaned on the fence.

  “I don’t want to hurt children.”

  “I don’t care what you want,” said Mary Joe, her voice hard. “You asked for me to come. Have the strength to follow through. Our job is to make this town bleed. You won’t do that by holding back.”

  Glenn swallowed hard. “There has to be another way.”

  Mary Joe crossed her arms and looked across the pool deck.

  “The county built this pool in 1974. You remember? Your dad took you to the opening. He got drunk and cried in the backyard afterwards.”

  Glenn cocked his head to the side. “How do you know that?”

  “I know everything, sweetheart,” said Mary Joe, her voice now cold. “How do you think St. Augustine—a broke, podunk county—paid for this pool?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Yeah, you do. Your dad knew, too,” said Mary Joe. “Your sister paid for it. The town got a bargain because your dad was weak. You’re not. Give your sister’s death meaning. Show this town what she bought them.”

  “Where is Helen?” asked Glenn.

  “You know where she is,” said Mary Joe. “She’s with Olivia, Tayla, Jordan, Trinity, Mary, and Nicole. You couldn’t save those girls, but you punished the men who hurt them. Now punish the men and women who hurt Helen. Please. If you love her, show it. Kill the kids. All of them. Show this town and county what it means to bleed.”

  Tears fell down Glenn’s face as he nodded. Mary Joe was right about everything. This was his final mission. St. Augustine had a cancer inside it. Helen and Mary Joe had given him a knife to excise the disease. This was his moment. He’d fulfill his destiny.

  And he’d burn this town to ashes around him.

  37

  Detective Fox hunched his shoulders and leaned forward, looking every bit the elderly man his age said he was. Neither Trisha nor I said anything. Detective Fox’s hand trembled as he reached for his mug. After taking a drink, he drew in a breath and sighed.

  “Helen Saunders was a beautiful little girl,” he said. He looked up at me. “St. Augustine was smaller back then. We knew everybody. Her mom had died giving birth to her little brother, so it was just Glenn, Helen, and their daddy. Helen looked just like her mom. I told Edward that he needed to teach her how to shoot just to keep the boys away.”

  I smiled and reached into my jacket for a notepad in case he said something we could use.

  “She was sweet, too,” he said, looking toward the river again. “The police and fire departments used to have a bake sale before the holidays. Our wives made cakes and pies, and we sold them from our stations. We pretended it was a competition, but the money all went to the same place. Every year, Helen made us brownies. They weren’t from a box, either. She made them from scratch. She didn’t have to do that.”

  Detective Fox lapsed into silence after that. I cleared my throat.

  “What happened to her?” I asked.

  He drew in a pained breath and blinked.

  “This was the summer of ’71. It was real hot that year. I remember because the sheriff made us carry canteens everywhere we went in case people needed water.”

  Once more, he paused.

  “Tell me about Helen,” I said. He glanced at me and nodded.

  “Have you heard of Pennington Hotels?”

  “I’m familiar with it,” I said.

  “They were a big deal back then,” said Fox. “Stanley Pennington ran this county from his kitchen table. His company was the biggest employer in town, and you couldn’t get elected without his say-so.”

  I nodded.

  “What does Helen have to do with Stanley Pennington?”

  “I’ll get to that. Back then the town of St. Augustine had two districts. We had the poor part of town—it’s where my family lived—and we had the rich part of town with people like the Penningtons. Every summer, the rich kids went to Water’s Edge. It was a summer camp run by some church people. The cabins were named Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Thomas, Jude...you know, apostles. They thought it was clever. I bet they skipped Judas."

  He smiled, but I couldn't appreciate the joke, so he cleared his throat and continued.

  "The kids would go canoeing and hiking, they’d do crafts, sing songs, go to church—you know, church camp stuff. Poor kids stuck around town and got in trouble.”

  “Go on,” I said, nodding. Fox gave me a sour look, clearly annoyed at the interruption.

  “Like I said, Stanley ran this town back then,” he said, beginning once more. “He saw these poor kids doing stupid stuff, so he came up with an idea. If a kid could stay out of trouble all year and if they kept their grades up, he’d give them a scholarship so they could go to camp for free. Everybody won. It didn’t change the world, but it gave kids something to look forward to.”

  Trisha and I both nodded. The story was taking time, but I didn’t want to interrupt again and miss an important detail.

  “Did Helen win one of these scholarships?” I asked.

  He nodded. “She and her brother, Glenn, sure did.”

  “Helen’s death certificate says she drowned in suspicious circumstances,” I said. “You were the secondary detective on her death investigation. What happened?”

  He blinked a few times and refused to look at me.

  “It wasn’t just a drowning.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding. “What was it?”

  He rocked back and forth on his chair, but he still wouldn’t look at me.

  “Our dispatcher called Detective Carney and me to the camp real early one morning. The counselors had found a body.”

  He paused and drew in a breath.

  “When we got there, we found Helen. She was on the beach about a mile from camp. Her pants were beside her, and her shirt was bunched up around her neck. She was facedown in the water.”

  He swallowed. Trisha and I both held our breath.

  “The coroner got out there and turned her over and found that her attacker had stuffed her underwear and bra into her mouth. The doc thought it was to keep her from screaming. Her attacker hurt her real bad and then dumped her there like garbage.”

  Detective Fox blinked.

  “I spent a year in Vietnam, so I’ve seen a lot of things nobody should have to see. I never forgot the look on that little girl’s face, though. She was crying when he killed her. It’s been almost fifty years, and I still get sick when I think about what happened to her. What do you think it says about me?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “It says you’re human. Tell me about the investigation.”

  Detective Fox cleared his throat and then reached for his coffee. His hand didn’t tremble as much as it had earlier.

  “Yeah, we investigated. We talked to her friends and family. Helen was a kid. She never even had a
boyfriend. Men are men, though, and they notice girls like her. She kept a diary and talked about this handsome counselor who flirted with her. His name was Antonio Mancini, and he was a freshman at St. Louis University. He came to St. Augustine for the summer to be a camp counselor.

  “We picked him up and interviewed him. He told us he was with some other counselors drinking the night Helen died. We checked with them, and they told us they had asked him to come, but he declined because he had a date.”

  Detective Fox went silent. My gut twisted.

  “Was his date with Helen?” I asked.

  “Not according to Antonio. Once we debunked his first alibi, he said he was gay and that he was out with another counselor named David. So we talked to David. David denied being gay and said he had felt sick that night, so he went to bed early. Antonio said David was lying and that they were really out in a hotel in south St. Louis County having sex. Antonio didn’t know the hotel’s name, and none of the hotels we visited remembered either man.”

  Trisha furrowed her brow and shifted her weight forward so she could rest her elbows on her knees.

  “You remember a lot about this case.”

  “This one stuck with me,” said Fox.

  “Did you have physical evidence tying Antonio to Helen?” I asked.

  “No, but it didn’t matter. Like I said earlier, Stanley Pennington ran this town back then. He and the sheriff got drunk and paid Antonio a visit. They damn near beat him to death. By the time they finished, his face was pulp. He had broken ribs, broken fingers, a broken nose…you name it, they broke it. They said Antonio had attacked them, and that they had defended themselves, but everybody knew what happened. They beat the stuffing out of him because Helen’s daddy couldn’t.”

  It wouldn’t have been the first time a police officer had allowed someone to exact personal revenge on a murderer. It also explained why someone had removed most of the investigative file.

  “What happened to Antonio?” I asked.

  “He took his beating and ran,” said Fox. “Back then, we didn’t have DNA testing, and we didn’t have anything tying Antonio to the crime scene. We couldn’t prosecute him. Some days, I wished I had joined Stanley and Walt that night. I would have liked to get a few shots in.”

  I nodded. The story made sense on a superficial level, but it didn’t sit right with me.

  “Helen’s little brother was named Glenn?” I asked.

  “Yeah. We talked to him, but he was just a little boy,” said Fox. “Helen was five years older than him. Their real mom had died giving birth to Glenn, so Helen was the closest thing he had to a mom. Losing her broke his heart. I never knew what happened to him.”

  I looked up from my notepad. “He became a teacher at the local high school. Now he’s the guidance counselor.”

  Detective Fox nodded and used his chair’s arms to push himself to his feet. His legs seemed unsteady, but he didn’t fall.

  “I’m glad to hear Glenn turned out okay. Edward, Glenn’s daddy, killed himself. I don’t think he could take losing his daughter. I don’t blame him,” he said, his eyes just a little glassy. “If you ladies will excuse me, I have matters to attend to inside.”

  “Sure,” I said, looking to Trisha. We watched him go inside. Then Trisha turned.

  “What do you think?”

  “It was a church camp, and the cabins were named after Apostles. We need to find Glenn Saunders,” I said, taking out my phone and calling the front desk at my station. Jason Zuckerburg answered. “Jason, it’s Joe Court. I need you to put together a team and pick up Glenn Saunders. He’s the guidance counselor at the high school. He’s likely armed and very dangerous.”

  Jason paused and typed for a few moments before saying anything.

  “I can do that,” he said. “Looks like he lives in town. Who is he?”

  “I think he’s the Apostate.”

  Jason said nothing for a full minute.

  “How sure are you about that?”

  “Pretty damn sure,” I said. “We’ll know more as soon as you pick him up.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell the team to expect you.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “If Glenn Saunders is the Apostate, he’s got to have a kill room somewhere. Everything he’s done has been meaningful to him. His choice of kill room would be meaningful, too. I’m going to the Water’s Edge summer camp. It’s where this whole thing started. God willing, it’s where it’ll end.”

  38

  It took longer to find Camp Water’s Edge than I expected, mostly because the camp had ceased to exist almost fifty years ago. It was off Highway 62 in the middle of nowhere, and the turnoff was little more than a break in the tree line. I drove right past it twice before I saw it.

  “You think the Apostate’s doing this for his sister,” said Trisha.

  “Yeah,” I said, flicking on my turn signal as I pushed the brake pedal. My old truck shuddered under the hard deceleration. “He’s recreating her death and then punishing her rapist over and over. This guy’s been battered his whole life. His mom died in childbirth, someone raped and murdered his sister, and then his dad committed suicide. By recreating Helen’s death and punishing the wrongdoer, he gives himself a feeling of control over something uncontrollable.”

  “This is messed up,” said Trisha.

  “Yeah,” I said, turning onto a rutted dirt road. The surrounding woods were thick at first, but they opened into a clearing alive with native grasses and wildflowers. Someone had driven here recently and often to keep the ruts clear of vegetation. In the distance, the rusted metal remains of a soccer goal protruded from the earth like a monument to the summer camp this place had once been.

  I kept my eyes open, but nothing stood out. After a few moments, we passed a second tree line and found cabins lining the road on the other side. Many had collapsed porches and roofs, while time had ground others down to the foundation.

  “If anything moves, tell me,” I said, glancing at Trisha. She nodded.

  “Will do.”

  I continued to follow the trail until it ended after a long line of cabins. There, I parked in the tall grass. Before getting out of my car, I chambered a round in my firearm and looked to Trisha.

  “Are you armed?”

  She shook her head, so I used my truck’s keys to unlock the glove box and handed her the Glock 26 subcompact I kept inside.

  “It’s a nine-millimeter, and it’s got ten rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. Make your shots count.”

  She sighted down the barrel. Trisha may have sat behind a desk most of the day, but she was a sworn police officer. She’d do just fine.

  Outside, the air was hot and thick with humidity. Bees buzzed from wildflower to wildflower in the fields around us. A single line trampled through the grass straight ahead to a large wooden building. A heavy, thick tree trunk had crushed the roof, collapsing the walls.

  “You see anything?” I asked. Trisha never stopped looking around even as she shook her head.

  “No. I think we’re clear.”

  I nodded and followed the path through the grass. The weeds were waist high. A man could have lain hidden in the grass, but I’d see him the moment he popped up. I kept my pistol low and crept forward. Trees ringed the field. When the wind blew, I smelled something both familiar and vile.

  Trisha and I followed the path toward the broken building. The building was larger than the cabins we had passed, so it must have been an administrative building—or maybe the mess hall. Trisha and I walked around until we found a storm cellar on the eastern side. One door was open.

  I looked at Trisha before stepping toward it. Even from a few feet away, the fetid air made me wrinkle my nose.

  “Anybody in there?” I called. Nobody answered, so I called again. Again, nobody answered, so I looked at Trisha. “Watch my back, please.”

  She nodded, so I stepped into the black. Sunlight penetrated to the bottom of the steps but little further. The air was hea
vy with urine and feces. I wanted to cover my mouth, but I reached into my pocket for my cell phone instead and pulled it out to use as a torch. The room was approximately twenty feet by thirty feet. A chain-link fence bisected it at the center but allowed movement throughout the room with a gate. A padlock lay on the ground, and a chain hung in the center of the room. It had a broken light bulb in a socket. Beyond the fence, a bucket and cot rested against the far wall.

  My heart pounded, and beads of sweat slipped down my forehead and into my eyes. This was the place Paige and Jude had described. Trisha and I needed help, so I left the cellar and found her standing at the top of the steps.

  “What’d you find?”

  “A cage,” I said, looking at my cell phone. My connection had one bar, so I dialed the back line at my station. Jason Zuckerburg answered quickly.

  “Jason, it’s Joe. Tell me our team picked up Glenn Saunders.”

  Jason paused.

  “That’s a negative. Marcus Washington walked around, but the house was secure, and Saunders’s car wasn’t in the driveway. One of his neighbors said she saw him drive away this morning.”

  I swore under my breath.

  “He’s our guy,” I said. “Everything fits. The camp, Helen, the church. I need you to call the FBI and send them my way.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Camp Water’s Edge. It’s off Highway 62. It’s in the middle of nowhere. I’ll meet the team by the entrance in my truck.”

  “I’ll call Delgado and have him call the Bureau. We’ll see what they say.”

  “Tell them I found his kill room. And tell them to get off their asses and move. This guy’s already killed a lot of people. We need to get him before he kills anybody else.”

  “I’ll tell them.”

  “Good. We’ll be waiting.” As I hung up, I looked to Trisha and held out my car keys. “It’s out of our hands now. Let’s hope the brain trust knows what they’re doing. You take my truck and park by the entrance for the FBI. I’ll wait here.”

  Glenn slowed and then stopped as he turned onto his street. Two marked police cars had parked along the curb in front of his house. Mary Joe touched his shoulder.