The Boys in the Church

by Chris Culver

  “Don’t stop in the road. Turn around in somebody’s driveway. We need to go by your dad’s old shop.”

  “Why?” he asked, furrowing his brow.

  “Because we need a new car, and you’ve got four there you took from people you punished,” she said. “We can take John Rodgers’s Kia and swap the plates with Nicole Moore’s car. The police won’t be looking for a Kia with plates from Illinois.”

  “But if they look up the plates, they’ll know I switched them.”

  Mary Joe paused. “If they run the plates, they’ll find the discrepancy and pull you over, but it will be a traffic stop. It’ll be one officer. She’ll walk toward your car to find out what’s going on. You’ll roll down your window, and she’ll lean down to talk to you. As soon as she does, point a pistol at her forehead and squeeze the trigger. We’ll be fine.”

  Glenn nodded as a shudder passed through him. His stomach was tight, but there was something else, too. His senses had become hyper-aware of the world around him. It was like God had reached down and turned up the dials. Even though she sat in the passenger seat, he caught the subtle sweetness of Mary Joe’s breath, the musk of her sweat, and the herbaceous notes of her perfume. He never wanted to leave her side.

  Glenn nodded and drove.

  “My long guns are all at the house,” he said. “I’ve only got a pistol in the car.”

  Mary Joe glanced at him. “How many rounds do you have?”

  “Eight in the magazine and one in the chamber,” he said, already knowing it wasn’t enough. “We’ll drive to St. Louis. There are gun shops there that won’t ask questions. We can still hit the pool before it closes.”

  Mary Joe shook her head.

  “We’d need at least a thousand dollars, and you don’t have that kind of cash. If the police are at your house, they’re probably monitoring your credit cards,” she said. “As soon as you pay, they’ll get you. We need to go to the school.”

  Glenn raised an eyebrow. “The school doesn’t have guns.”

  “No, but Finley Berry does.”

  Glenn shook his head.

  “Finley doesn’t like me. There’s no way he’ll let me borrow a gun.”

  “That’s why you’ll kill him and steal the keys to his gun safe at home.”

  Glenn considered the plan and then nodded. He didn’t look forward to shooting up the pool, but he understood its necessity. Shooting Finley would be personal, though. This, he would enjoy.

  “Let’s go to work, then.”

  39

  My old truck came bouncing over the landscape about fifteen minutes after Trisha left. A caravan of SUVs, minivans, and police cruisers followed. I flagged them down and directed them to park in a field so they wouldn’t disturb the scene. Agent Costa and a woman in dark gray slacks, a matching gray blazer, and a white button-down shirt stepped out of the lead SUV. Half a dozen agents and Trisha followed from the other vehicles.

  “Agent Costa,” I said, nodding to the special agent as he walked toward me. He returned the nod and looked to the woman beside him.

  “This is Deputy Director Alexis Koch,” he said. “Director Koch, this is Detective Joe Court with the St. Augustine County Sheriff’s Department. She worked the case with Bruce.”

  Director Koch’s green eyes bore into mine as I shook her hand. A tight smile came to her lips, allowing wrinkles to form around her eyes and mouth. She was in her early fifties, if I had to guess, and she looked fit. As best I could tell, she didn’t carry a weapon.

  “Ma’am,” I said.

  “Detective,” she answered before shooting her eyes around the scene. “Bruce Lawson was a friend of mine, and he spoke highly of you. Tell me what you’ve got.”

  I walked her through everything Trisha and I had done that morning. Koch nodded and asked questions but kept her reactions neutral throughout the conversation. When I finished speaking, she brought a hand to her face and considered me.

  “Do you have any physical evidence tying Glenn Saunders to these killings?”

  “Not yet, but we have a strong circumstantial case. From the start, we wondered how the Apostate was meeting his victims. Saunders knew four of them. He could have met the others at a college fair. He also knew how to talk to teenagers and make them trust him. Saunders ticks off boxes we didn’t even know to look for.”

  Koch drew in a breath and screwed up her face.

  “And you guys never suspected him until now,” she said.

  “We didn’t have a reason to,” I said. “He gave me the creeps when I interviewed him, but I didn’t think he was a murderer.”

  Koch’s eyes went distant as she watched two special agents approach the cellar.

  “Does he have family or friends around the area?”

  “His mother, father, and sister are dead,” I said. “He may have distant family around, but I don’t know.”

  She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.

  “Bruce said you were smart,” she said. “How do you plan to find him?”

  I hadn’t expected her to ask that, so I thought for a moment.

  “Position officers on every interstate on-ramp and have them stop everybody who looks like Saunders. You should also put out an APB on his car and try to track him via his cell phone. You should monitor his credit cards, too.”

  “That’s a good start,” she said, turning. “What else would you do? How would you track down his friends?”

  “Start at work. I interviewed him there not too long ago. He seemed chummy with the principal.”

  “Good. Go there,” said Koch. She looked to Agent Costa. “And you go with her.”

  Costa hesitated but then nodded and looked to me. “Where’s your car, Detective?”

  I turned and pointed.

  “I’ve got my truck. Let’s go.”

  Trisha tossed me my keys, and Costa and I hurried to my truck. Once I reached the highway, I floored the accelerator. In one of my department’s marked cruisers, the acceleration would have pushed me against my seat and rocketed the car forward. My old truck got loud, but it didn’t move much faster.

  Once I got up to a reasonable speed, I let my foot off the gas. The noise decreased to a tolerable level. Costa cleared his throat.

  “I’m glad your friend Harry isn’t our killer.”

  “Me, too,” I said, shooting him a glance. “What made you guys look at him, anyway?”

  Costa tilted his head to the side and shrugged as he watched the passing countryside out the window.

  “We looked at everybody. Harry fit our profile better than most.”

  I nodded and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel.

  “Did you guys look at me?” I asked.

  He glanced at me. “Female serial murderers are rare. We didn’t discount you offhand, but you didn’t make the final list.”

  I drove for another minute in silence before I looked to Costa again.

  “Did Delgado?” I asked.

  Costa humored me with a smile. “Does it matter?”

  I shrugged. “Well, not really, I guess. It’s just that St. Augustine County elects its sheriff. I thought it’d be amusing if, during his election campaign, the local paper learned the FBI had once suspected Delgado was a serial murderer.”

  Costa looked out his window again.

  “It’s the policy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to stay out of politics wherever possible.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “So, is that a yes?”

  “That’s a no comment, Detective.”

  We said nothing until we reached the high school. The parking lot was nearly empty, just as it had been on my previous visit. I parked in the fire lane in front of the building and stepped out of my truck.

  “Was it this empty when you were here before?” asked Costa, who had stepped out of the passenger seat.

  “Yeah,” I said, walking toward the building. “The students and teachers don’t come back until August.”

  Costa followed
me toward the building and stopped the same moment I did. The school had eight commercial glass and steel front doors. The doors wouldn’t have come cheap, but the thick tempered glass provided a good compromise between visibility and security. Someone had broken the glass on the far left door. A hammer lay on the ground.

  I reached to my waist and took my firearm from my holster. Costa did likewise.

  “You want to call this in?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but after we find out what we’ve got. I’d rather not pull officers away from the summer camp just because some kid broke into his high school.”

  I nodded and walked forward. Glass crunched under the soles of my shoes. A warm breeze blew from the field across from the school, carrying with it the sweet scent of cut grass. Before opening the door, I pressed the button on the intercom and waited and watched through the glass. Nothing and no one moved inside.

  I reached for the door handle but stopped as the faint sounds of a siren carried toward me. Within seconds, a pair of marked police cruisers appeared on the road. Both Costa and I holstered our firearms. I held up my badge as the cruisers parked behind my truck in the fire lane. Officers Shane Fox and Destiny Rogers hurried out of their vehicles. Both gave me quizzical looks.

  “Detective Court?” asked Destiny. “You get the call, too?”

  “No,” I said, looking to Costa. “This is Special Agent Bryan Costa with the FBI. We’re here to talk to the principal and anyone else inside. Why are you here?”

  “Somebody tripped the alarm twelve minutes ago,” said Shane. “Jason called the office, but nobody answered. We’re here to check it out. Is there a problem?”

  “There could be,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “Keep your eyes open, and get your firearms out. Watch each other’s backs.”

  Shane lowered his chin.

  “What are we walking into here?”

  “Probably nothing, but be ready anyway,” I said. “Costa and I will follow you in.”

  The uniformed officers checked their firearms and then pulled the front door open. Gray and white terrazzo marble floors flowed from the front doors, through the cavernous entryway, and then to classrooms to the left and right. The sound of our footsteps echoed off the floor and metal lockers, but nothing moved. The heavy silence felt eerie.

  “Costa and I will go right,” I said. “You two go left.”

  Both Fox and Rogers nodded and did as I asked. Costa and I passed half a dozen dark classrooms before coming to the administration’s suite of offices. The fluorescent lights buzzed as they lit the rooms. The door was open, but we found no one inside the reception area.

  “You hear anything?” I whispered. He shook his head but nodded toward a hallway inside the office suite.

  “There were two cars outside. There should be two people here.”

  “Yeah,” I said, adjusting the grip on my firearm. Costa nodded, and we crept toward the office suite’s interior hallway, being careful to avoid stepping on any blood on the ground. The hallway was wide enough for us to walk beside one another. The vice principal’s door was locked, but Principal Finley Berry’s door was open. My stomach dropped as I stepped into the doorway.

  Principal Berry lay facedown on the floor in front of his desk in a puddle of blood. The back of his skull had been blown clean off. Judging from the blood around his torso, he had been shot in the chest several times. This was overkill. This was personal.

  “Shooter’s gone,” said Costa. “Back up so we don’t disturb the scene. We’ll clear the rest of the building and call in a forensics team.”

  I nodded my agreement and walked out. Costa and I checked every room on our side of the building and found no one—dead or alive. Officers Rogers and Fox, though, found a middle-aged woman who had locked herself in a storage closet. She was hyperventilating, but she kept saying over and over that it was Glenn Saunders. We had figured as much.

  With the building secured, I walked to the front doors and called Sheriff Delgado to tell him what we had found. He said he was on his way. With the calls made, I bent to look at the hammer our killer had used to break the door.

  Return to G. Saunders if borrowed.

  It was written on a notecard and taped to the handle. If I had neighbors who borrowed tools, I would have done the same thing. I pointed it out to Agent Costa, who covered his mouth and stepped back.

  “There was no ritual here,” he said. “Saunders had a process for the young people he killed. He was controlled and meticulous. This is all rage.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. The game’s changed. This guy won’t stop on his own. We need to find him.”

  Costa glanced up at me. “How?”

  “No clue.”

  40

  Delgado beat even our uniformed officers to the crime scene. I briefed him, and then he walked inside to check out Finley Berry’s body firsthand. Agent Costa paced on the sidewalk and made phone calls, while Officers Shane Fox and Destiny Rogers sat with the woman they had found—Janice Crawford—in Shane’s cruiser.

  About ten minutes after Delgado arrived, almost a dozen FBI agents—including Deputy Director Koch—pulled to a stop beside my truck. Costa hung up, and then the two senior FBI agents conferred before Koch walked to me. Agent Costa and the other FBI agents walked inside.

  “You were right, and I was wrong,” she said. “Saunders is our killer. Your friend Harry Grainger is innocent. I already requested that we release him from custody.”

  I blinked, unaccustomed to honesty at work.

  “Thank you. I appreciate it,” I said. I gave myself a moment to think. “Has anyone briefed you?”

  “Agent Costa called and filled me in. Where’s Sheriff Delgado, and where’s this woman you found?”

  As if on cue, the sheriff emerged from the school and walked toward us.

  “Director Koch,” he said, nodding to the FBI agent before looking to me. “The witness is with one of my sergeants. Did you ID the body, Joe?”

  “He’s Finley Berry,” I said. “He’s the principal.”

  Delgado nodded and looked at Director Koch.

  “I’ve got a forensics team inbound,” he said. “The school has cameras in the hallways, cafeteria, gym, and entranceways, but I’m not sure whether they were on. If Saunders came from town, he passed two gas stations with cameras pointed toward their pumps. Either one might have caught video of his car. The hammer outside is compelling evidence. We’ve got enough to make an arrest.”

  Koch nodded. “I’ll make agents available in an advisory capacity, but it sounds as if you’ve got this under control.”

  “We do,” said Delgado, looking to me. “I need you to start a logbook, Detective Court. We need a detailed account of everyone who goes into the building.”

  Director Koch stepped away. I cleared my throat and forced a smile to my face.

  “Are you trying to insult me by telling me to sit on the corner and fill out paperwork?” I asked.

  He stepped closer.

  “We need to document and secure the scene, Detective. This is part of the job. We don’t always get the glamorous assignments. Now start a logbook. I won’t ask again.”

  For my entire career, I had tried to be a good officer. Four years ago, when Delgado and his partner had asked me to search through the dumpster behind the Pizza Palace for a suspect’s bloody clothes, I did it. It was disgusting, but that was my job. I had been the youngest person in my department, which put me on the lowest rung of our department’s ladder. That was how things worked. Three years ago, I routinely hosed out the drunk tank on Sunday mornings. It was an awful job, but it was my responsibility as the lowest-ranking member of our department.

  Now, I carried a detective’s badge. On a normal day, I wouldn’t have minded sitting outside to fill out paperwork. But today wasn’t a normal day.

  Today, we had an armed serial murderer running through town. We didn’t know where he was or what he planned, but unless we stopped him, he’d hurt people. My research had led to G
lenn Saunders’s identification. My identification had led me to his kill room, and my conversations with Agent Costa had led me to the high school. Without my work, neither Delgado nor the FBI had a thing.

  I lowered my voice.

  “No.”

  Delgado furrowed his brow. “Excuse me?”

  “Fill out your own logbook, George. This is my case. I’ve met our killer. You haven’t. I won’t sit on the sidelines now.”

  Delgado crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows.

  “Are you refusing an order, Detective?”

  “A stupid one, yes,” I said, stepping forward. Delgado walked backwards, maintaining the distance between us. “It’s not your first stupid order, either. You told Mark Bozwell to deny me access to any files in the evidence vault without a direct connection to my caseload. Do you remember that?”

  Delgado said nothing for five or six seconds. Then he sighed.

  “We’re not here to talk about Mark Bozwell.”

  I spoke slowly so he’d understand me.

  “Because you barred me from the evidence vault when I needed to search it, you prevented me from identifying Glenn Saunders as a suspect. If you had let me do my job, I could have stopped some of this. Mr. Berry is dead because of you, and that’s a problem. You’re not just incompetent, you’re stupid. You can try to fire me for insubordination, but I’ll make sure everyone in the state knows what a royal screw up you are. If you push me, I swear to God, I will push back twice as hard.”

  Delgado’s face grew red, but he said nothing before turning and walking away. I looked to Director Koch. She considered me for a moment before speaking.

  “That was quite a speech.”

  “I’ve been holding it in for a while,” I said. I paused and tilted my head to the side. “You think that will make it into my employee evaluation at the end of the year?”

  “You think you’ll make it to the end of the year after saying that to your boss?”

  “Fair point,” I said, raising my eyebrows and nodding. “So what’s your next move?”