The Boys in the Church

by Chris Culver

  Over the next few days, the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit dove into Glenn Saunders’s life with a gusto I didn’t often see in law enforcement. They interviewed me half a dozen times and talked to all of his co-workers. He had no friends whom they could interview.

  While the conversations might have provided insight, the real gems were his journals. Saunders had kept them since he was a teenager. The FBI agents were like kids visiting Disneyland for the first time. Never in my life had I seen so many psychologists so excited. I had spent enough time in Glenn Saunders’s head for ten lifetimes, though. They could have him.

  Delgado gave me a week off to recover. He also ordered me to see Dr. Taylor again for an additional six visits. I didn’t know how much a therapist could help, but having someone to talk to wouldn’t hurt.

  On Friday, five days after the shooting in Sycamore Park, Agent Costa and Deputy Director Alexis Koch came to my house. Though it was only nine in the morning, it was already so hot outside I didn’t want to mow the lawn. I made a pot of coffee and sat across from them in the living room with my coffee table between us.

  “How are you feeling, Detective?” asked Koch, a smile on her face.

  “Good, all things considered,” I said. “I’ve been trying to keep busy. Are there still news vans on every corner in town?”

  Costa looked at his boss before speaking. “A few. They haven’t bothered you, have they?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Good. We’ve been trying to keep them away.”

  I nodded but said nothing. After an awkward silence, my coffee maker beeped, and I stood.

  “You guys like your coffee black or with cream?”

  “Black is fine,” said Koch. Costa nodded his agreement, so I left and poured three mugs of coffee, which I carried to the living room on a tray. For another moment, we were silent. Then Koch put her mug down and blinked.

  “We’ve been reading Saunders’s journals,” she said. “We can’t diagnose him posthumously, but our team thinks he was schizophrenic with full auditory and sensory hallucinations. He seemed to believe Helen was alive and lived in his spare bedroom. He was a sick man, but he hid it very well. None of his co-workers suspected he was ill.”

  I raised my eyebrows and drew in a breath. “Is that common among serial killers?”

  “I wouldn’t say it’s common,” said Koch, “but it happens. David Berkowitz—the Son of Sam killer—had schizophrenia. Richard Chase—he killed six people and drank their blood—was also a schizophrenic. If we had caught Saunders alive, he would have spent the rest of his life in a prison mental ward.”

  I looked down at the coffee table. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because he wrote about you in his last journal,” said Costa. “You never visited him at home, did you?”

  I furrowed my brow. “No.”

  Both FBI agents nodded.

  “He thought the two of you were in love,” said Costa. “In his notebooks, Saunders described you as Mary Joe Saunders. We found some women’s clothing in the house. We think it’s yours.”

  “You can keep it, if that’s why you’re here,” I said. “You can’t wash away whatever he did with them.”

  Both agents smiled a little.

  “We’re wrapping up our investigation,” said Koch. “Since you broke the case, we thought you would want to hear the firsthand story.”

  “Thank you, but I’m tired of death,” I said.

  “I understand,” said Koch. She looked to Agent Costa, and the two of them stood. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

  I nodded and allowed myself to sink into my couch as I thought through the rest of my day. I had some vodka left, but my fridge was mostly bare. I needed to shop. My department had let me borrow an unmarked SUV from our motor pool, but I wouldn’t have it forever. That meant I needed to start looking at cars. I didn’t know if I had it in me to rebuild an old truck again.

  I was so occupied by my thoughts I didn’t notice Agent Costa standing in my doorway until he cleared his throat.

  “There’s one more thing if you’re interested,” he said. He paused, and I nodded to let him know I was listening. “We found two letters in Saunders’s house you might be interested in reading. They explain a few things.”

  “Email them to me,” I said. “I’ll read them later.”

  He nodded and pulled the door shut behind him as he left. After they drove away, I figured I might as well start my day, as simple as it was. Dad made an omelet for me the last time he visited. It tasted good, so I showered, dressed, and picked up groceries to make another. I also bought a bottle of good tequila. As I drove home, my phone beeped. I didn’t bother looking at it until I parked in my driveway. Costa had sent me his promised email. I slipped the phone into my pocket without reading it before carrying my groceries inside.

  I hadn’t purchased a lot of food, so it only took five or six minutes to put everything away. Then, I focused on my phone. Costa had sent me photographs of two letters found tucked into a journal in Saunders’s attic.

  The first was a handwritten letter from Saunders’s father. In it, Edward Saunders told his son he had made arrangements for him to live with an aunt and uncle in St. Peters, Missouri, and that he was sorry for what he was about to do. I didn’t realize it at first, but it was a suicide note. I felt like a voyeur intruding on someone else’s pain. The last paragraph made me pause.

  I can’t do this anymore. I don’t deserve to be here. Helen’s blood is everywhere in this town. Make them hurt for what they’ve done. Make them scream so loudly your sister hears them from heaven. Let her know you’ve done what I never could. Make them all bleed. Please.

  Nothing would excuse what Glenn Saunders had done, but he hadn’t been born a monster. A heavy knot grew in my stomach. I wondered what I would have become if someone had hurt Audrey or Dylan. I wouldn’t have killed anyone, but it would have changed me—and not for the better.

  The second letter came from Susanne Pennington—my neighbor—and she had addressed it to Edward Saunders, Glenn’s father. In it, she said she could never apologize enough for what her husband had done and enclosed a check for fifty thousand dollars so Edward could open his own woodworking shop.

  I closed the photos and called Costa’s cell phone.

  “Hey, it’s Joe Court,” I said. “I read through the letters you sent me.”

  “What’d you think?”

  I paused. “I’m not sure yet. What’s your read on them?”

  “With Saunders dead, we’ve got to speculate a little. I read the notes you took when you interviewed Keith Fox, so I know about Antonio Mancini and Helen at the summer camp. We think Antonio killed Helen, but the county didn’t have enough evidence to prosecute him. Instead, Stanley Pennington—the town’s local big shot—and the sheriff beat Antonio half to death in a cell. With nothing to hold him on, they took him to the hospital and released him.”

  I knew that part of the story, so I nodded.

  “And you think that’s what the letters referenced?”

  “Yeah,” said Costa, his voice sounding a little surprised. “The locals had to let Antonio go after Stanley and the sheriff beat him up. To apologize, Mrs. Pennington wrote Edward Saunders a check. Edward felt guilty for accepting that check, so he killed himself and told his son to seek revenge.”

  Neither Costa nor I said anything.

  “You think otherwise?” he asked, after a pause.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, sinking into a seat at my breakfast table. “I need to check on something. Can I call you back later?”

  He said I could, so I hung up and searched my phone’s call history for the number of Dr. Sheridan, our coroner.

  “Hey, doc, this is Joe Court with the St. Augustine County Sheriff’s Department. Are you in the office?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “What do you need?”

  “A records search,” I said. “I know that’s a job for your clerk, but I think you’ll
find something problematic.”

  He paused. “Okay. What are you looking for?”

  “Male decedent named Stanley Pennington.”

  I listened as he typed.

  “We’ve got a record,” he said after a moment. “I’m reading through it now.”

  Neither of us said anything. Then he cleared his throat.

  “This is interesting. Mr. Pennington died in 1971, and the coroner conducted a partial autopsy. It lists the cause of death as heart failure, but it doesn’t explain his manner of death. The document is typed, but there’s a handwritten note on the top that says detectives should direct all questions to Councilman Darren Rogers.”

  I paused. “Did Darren Rogers ever work in the coroner’s office?”

  “I’ve never seen his name on reports before this,” said Sheridan. “This is unusual.”

  “Everything about this case has been unusual, but I think I’m getting somewhere now. Thank you for this. It’s helped a lot.”

  He wished me luck with whatever I was doing, and I hung up. A deep heavy pit had formed in my stomach, and my throat felt tight, but I had a job to do. I went to my closet and took my badge and a pistol from my gun safe before grabbing my keys and getting into my department-issued SUV.

  The drive to my neighbor’s house took less than a minute, but it felt longer. Susanne opened the door with a smile the moment I knocked. Then she saw the pistol on my hip, and her smile waned.

  “You know how I feel about those things,” she said, pointing to my gun. “Firearms are not allowed in my house.”

  “I’m not here as a friend. I’m here as a detective. We need to talk about your husband’s murder.”

  She hesitated and blinked before shaking her head.

  “No one murdered Stanley, honey. He had a heart attack.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I said, my voice sharper than I’d expected. “We can talk here, or I can drive you to my station. Either way, we need to talk.”

  She held my gaze for a moment, but then her shoulders slumped, and her eyes tilted down.

  “What did you find?”

  “The letter you wrote Edward Saunders,” I said.

  She nodded. “Then come in. I’ll tell you the context.”

  44

  As Susanne led me inside, my gut felt tight, the muscles of my legs trembled, and my throat threatened to close at any moment. I hated everything about this. We sat down in her living room. I took the loveseat, and she sat in a chair to my left. The clock on her mantel ticked with each passing second. For almost a minute, neither of us spoke. Then I sighed.

  “You once told me your husband was a bastard.”

  “He was,” she said, her lips flat.

  “I talked to a retired detective who knew him. He seemed to like him. Your husband gave scholarships to kids so they could go to summer camp to give them an incentive to stay out of trouble. That doesn’t sound like a bastard.”

  She raised her eyebrow and then crossed her legs.

  “That’s your opinion.”

  I leaned forward. “Is it wrong?”

  She said nothing, and I closed my eyes.

  “I need you to talk,” I said.

  “You came here, Joe. Ask a question.”

  I balled my hands into fists and drew in a deep breath.

  “You gave Edward Saunders fifty thousand dollars in 1971. That was a lot of money.”

  “To some people,” she said, blinking.

  “To almost everyone,” I said. “What would that be worth today? Two hundred grand? Three hundred grand?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask an economist. I was a schoolteacher.”

  “And Stanley, your husband, was a businessman,” I said. “Back then, he was the biggest employer in the county.”

  “We brought a lot of business to St. Augustine.”

  I nodded.

  “How’d he die?”

  “Heart attack.”

  I stood up and paced.

  “Did your husband know Darren Rogers?”

  She tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes at me.

  “Everybody knew Darren Rogers. He made sure of that. His daddy was the biggest landowner in St. Augustine County.”

  The hardwood floor creaked beneath my feet as I paced.

  “In 1971, he would have been twenty-four, twenty-five years old?”

  Susanne paused but then nodded. “Twenty-three, I think.”

  “Did he and your husband get along?”

  She closed her eyes as she sighed.

  “I suppose, but they didn’t talk often. Stanley dealt with Darren’s father. Back then, he was the important one.”

  Playing nice was getting me nowhere. I locked my eyes on her.

  “Why was your husband a bastard?”

  Susanne’s smile turned cold. “There are aspects of my life I don’t share, even with my friends.”

  I nodded. “But you already shared it with me. After you learned a man raped me when I was a teenager, you told me we were sisters. You told me everyone who has been through what we’ve been through becomes our sister.”

  She said nothing.

  “In 1971, the country had no laws against marital rape. Stanley could do whatever he wanted to you. Your only recourse was to divorce him.”

  She blinked as her eyes grew moist. My heart beat faster.

  “That’s why he was a bastard. He didn’t like hearing the word no, did he? Even if you went to the police, they’d only drive you home. Your husband was an important man in this county. I bet he had friends in the court system. I bet you couldn’t even file for divorce. You couldn’t escape.”

  A tear fell down her aged cheek.

  “He was a bastard,” she said, her voice low.

  “Who else did he hurt?”

  She sat there and fluttered her eyes but said nothing.

  “Who else?” I asked, my voice harder. I waited a moment. “Antonio Mancini didn’t rape Helen Saunders. He was gay. That was why Stanley blamed him. Antonio was an easy target. By the standards of the time, he was sexually deviant. If he slept with men, he wouldn’t hesitate to rape a little girl. Right?”

  She still said nothing.

  “Your husband raped you.”

  Her lower lip quivered.

  “Helen Saunders was a sweet little girl raised by a single father who was doing his best to provide a life for his family. Her father worked for Pennington Hotels. He even built some of your furniture. You knew him. When I asked you about him, you pretended you didn’t, but you lied.”

  Susanne looked down. I sat at the loveseat again.

  “Stanley knew Helen,” I said. “He saw her grow up. He saw that sweet little girl turn into a beautiful young woman. And she was sweet, wasn’t she? Innocent, too. Probably naïve. She baked brownies for the police and firemen’s charity bake sales and helped raise her brother. She was the closest thing her little brother had to a mom.”

  Susanne continued to look at the floor, but I watched a tear trickle down her cheek.

  “Helen was a child,” I said. “Everyone loved her. Your husband, in the dead of night, coaxed this sweet, innocent child from her cabin at summer camp and led her to a sandy beach. There, he ripped off her clothes and stuffed her underwear in her mouth so she couldn’t scream. After he raped her, he drowned her and left her on the beach as if she were garbage.”

  She looked at me with tear-stained cheeks. Something profound passed between us. A sense of loss welled inside me at the pain I was causing my friend. Susanne’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Finally, she nodded. I held her hands as she cried. I softened my voice.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “He deserved it,” she said, her eyes closed as she nodded.

  The pit in my stomach grew.

  “How did you find out?”

  When she looked at me, the corners of her mouth curled upward.

  “He told me over dinner one night. It was like he was proud
of himself for getting away with it. He laughed at her and said Helen was stupid for agreeing to meet him out there. I’ll never forget the way he laughed at that poor little girl.”

  I squeezed her hand.

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing right away,” she said. “But I waited. Two days later, he took a bath before bed—as he always did. I had this little yellow hairdryer back then. It matched the tiles in the bathroom. I cared about things like that. When I heard Stanley turn off the water, I walked in, plugged in my hairdryer, and dropped it in the bathtub, right on his chest. It didn’t kill him right away, but the electricity paralyzed him. I left him, called the Sheriff’s Department, and told the dispatcher I had just killed my husband.”

  I nodded. “What happened next?”

  “Deputies drove out, but by the time they got to the house, Stanley was dead. I told the sheriff everything. He took me to the station. Their typewriter wasn’t working, so I wrote what I had done on a piece of paper. I didn’t ask for leniency. I killed my husband, and I was ready for my punishment.”

  I reached into my purse for a notepad.

  “You didn’t go to jail,” I said. “What happened?”

  “Darren Rogers came in,” she said. “The station back then was small. I was sitting at a detective’s desk, and Darren came through the front door. His daddy had just appointed him to the County Council.”

  I nodded. “What’d he do?”

  “He and the sheriff talked. Then the sheriff drove me home and told me to stay. The next morning, Darren Rogers came by and told me he had a way to help me get out of trouble. I was thirty years old. He was in his twenties. I thought he wanted to sleep with me.”

  I scribbled down details.

  “What did he want?”

  “My husband’s money,” she said. “He didn’t say it outright. He asked whether I’d be willing to put St. Augustine County first, and I said yes. Then he told me some men would be by later that day requesting development grants. If I put St. Augustine first, the county would take care of me. My legal problems would go away.”

  Put St. Augustine first. I had heard Rogers use the same turn of phrase when he wanted me to make a quick arrest in a murder investigation.