Croaker: Grave Sins (Fey Croaker Book 2)

by Paul Bishop

  Rather than pull away in surprise, Fey reached down and scooped the cat into her arms.

  Ash let out a yelp and moved forward in order to grab a hissing, clawing ball of spit away from Fey’s face. He was stopped short, however, by a strange noise.

  The cat was purring.

  “Whoa,” Ash said softly. The cat had hated Holly. Refused to even be in the same room with her.

  “What did you say?” asked Fey.

  “Nothing.”

  “What’s her name?” Fey asked. “And don’t tell me Lucky.” The cat was obviously a veteran of many wars.

  “You are holding the one and only Marvella,” Ash said. “And getting to hold her is the true honor. She’s the most anti-social animal I’ve ever come across.”

  “Oh, really? Then why do you keep her?” Fey was scratching the cat’s head. Marvella appeared to be satisfied with the attention.

  “I don’t keep her. She keeps me.”

  “Ah, I see,” Fey said. “I’m in the same situation with a lump of fur named Brentwood.”

  “Brentwood?”

  “It’s a long story,” Fey said. She took a few steps forward. “How about showing me around?”

  “Okay.”

  Ash moved away from the central portal, through the narthex, and into the nave.

  “Is it odd living in a church?” Fey asked.

  “In some ways perhaps. My father used to preach here.”

  “So you grew up in the church.”

  “No.”

  Fey shifted her eyes to Ash’s face when he didn’t say anything more. He’d never before told anyone the story behind the church. Certainly not Holly, who’d never even bothered to ask. He’d actually never felt the need to explain the story before, but for some reason he did now.

  Some facet of Fey’s personality was drawing the story out of him like a magnet attracting steel filings. Ash felt instinctively in tune with her, almost as if he’d known her all his life. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest and felt heat rising up from the base of his neck.

  “My mother left my father before I was born. Before he started all this,” he waved a hand in the air around him, “and filled it with fundamentalist, hellfire and brimstone preaching.” Once he’d started the story, it seemed to flow effortlessly out of the inner recesses where he’d always kept it hidden.

  “He loaded the pews with fervent, blind-faith followers willing to throw money at him day after day, week after week. The church services led to a radio show and, eventually, to a full blown television ministry. He filled first this small church, and later another, larger monstrosity, with cameras and sound stages, and went from bilking a local congregation to bilking a worldwide ministry.”

  “Bilking?”

  Ash nodded. “My father was a very crafty bastard. He channeled almost every dollar donated into private accounts in Switzerland and the Grand Caymans. Millions of dollars. And the most brilliant move of the entire scam is he knew exactly when to quit. He timed his exit perfectly. The day before the IRS was about to fall on him like a ton of bricks, he did a runner into the sunset.”

  “Never to be seen again?”

  “Not quite.” Ash paused.

  “Well?”

  “Well, he was able to outrun the IRS and the parishioners who were howling for his blood, by escaping to Brazil. The way I understand the story, within a week of landing there he’d bought himself a mansion, hired an army of security guards, and had become Rio’s latest overnight sensation.”

  “Sounds like nice work if you can find it.”

  “Ah, yes, but there was one small problem.”

  “There always is.”

  Ash nodded in agreement. “While still the toast of Rio society, my father became good friends with a powerful, local business man. The man’s business was drugs.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Oh, my, indeed. My father’s new friend may have been powerful within his own little world, but apparently he had even more powerful enemies – enemies that didn’t care that my father was with him when they used a car bomb to blow them both to hell.”

  “That’s a harsh judgment.”

  “No. That’s justice.”

  Ash held Fey’s eyes for a second. She literally felt his consciousness trying to probe her thoughts, trying to match them with whatever judgments of character he had already passed. Eventually, Fey broke the eye contact and returned to inspecting her surroundings.

  “How did you end up with the church?” she asked.

  “Simple. A bankruptcy sale. I was raised by my mother who worked hard to provide for our needs. Her only real talent was playing the guitar, and when she couldn’t get work in the local coffee houses or clubs, she would sing for tips on the ferry crossing circuit in Seattle where I grew up. It was one step up from begging, but she kept us together one way or the other.

  “I never knew my father personally, and by all accounts, he never made any effort to know me. He’d swept my mother off her feet before he began his Holy Roller routine. When he found out she was pregnant and wouldn’t abort me, he walked out and didn’t look back.

  “My mother told me who he was, and I’d listened to him on the radio and see him on television, but even at a young age I knew he was preaching a load of twaddle and I had no desire to be around him. When he died, however, I received a sealed letter from his firm of lawyers.”

  “A will?”

  “After a fashion. The bottom line was that I now had sole access to all of the filthy lucre he’d stashed away in various and numerous bank accounts.”

  “You’re kidding? We’re talking millions of dollars here?”

  I nodded. “Millions and millions. Years and years of taking the cream off the top of a nationwide, and finally worldwide, collection plate.”

  “Holy crap?”

  “You could call it that.”

  “Were you with the Bureau when all this happened?”

  “Yeah. It was just after I’d caught my first monster – Michael LeBeck.”

  “The Vermont Vampire?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You didn’t think about quitting?”

  Ash shook his head. “Not really. The money may have been in my control, but it wasn’t my money. It belonged to all the people who’d donated it over the years believing they were giving it to a good cause.”

  “Did they try to get it back from you?”

  “Not the individuals, no. The IRS had a crack at me for a while, but I was personally clean and there was no legal way for them to get to the money since it was all out of the country.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I put all the money into a trust administered from Switzerland and the Grand Caymans. The trust invests the money and then uses the profits to back programs in Third World countries, respond to the needs of various children’s hospitals, hospices, and the like, or any other disaster or philanthropic arena that the board deems worthy.”

  “Putting the money your father stole back to work in the areas it should have gone in the first place.”

  “Exactly. I like the irony.”

  “Perhaps he knew it is what you would do.”

  “No. He didn’t know me.”

  “But he left you all the money.”

  “Only because there was nobody else.”

  “And I take it you bought the church?”

  “My one indulgence. Even though I didn’t like him, he was still my father and I wanted a piece of him. This church seemed appropriate since it was where everything began for him. From here he ran one of the greatest frauds of all time. And it is from here that I now chase down villains that make what my father did seem insignificant.”

  “It’s a hell of a story.”

  “Aye, it is, but ...”

  “But,” she finished for me, “it’s not getting us any closer to the killer of three young boys.”

  Ash nodded. “Okay, so let’s make a start,” he said, leading the way into the heart of
the church and the working center of his life.

  Chapter 40

  The converted church was a simple two story rectangle. The middle of the ceiling was vaulted through the second story over the chapel, which took up the majority of the first floor. A series of stained glass windows added drama to the vaulted sides of the ceiling. There were large tapestries on the walls depicting medieval hunting scenes, and several well-upholstered couches surrounded a wide screen television and a mediocre stereo system. A Nautilus weight machine stood on a raised platform that had once held the altar.

  A small kitchen, a bathroom, and two other rooms that had once been used for more intimate meetings were located along one side. One of the meeting rooms had been turned into a library filled with floor to ceiling bookshelves. The books that lined the walls were an eclectic gathering of reference tomes, philosophy, true crime, and oddly, a collection of children’s books. The other room had been made over into a rarely used, but comfortable guest bedroom.

  The stained glass in the vaulted ceiling was a testament to subdued religious craftsmanship. It was beautiful without being overwhelming. It settled for muted splendor without reaching for magnificence. There were a number of other stained glass windows throughout the converted church. The depicted scenes in the windows were of innocuous landscapes, clouds & sun rays, doves with olive branches, and Celtic designs.

  One scene, dominating the large window behind where the Nautilus weight machine had replaced the altar, did not fit the motif of the others. It couldn’t help but catch Fey’s eye.

  It was a brutal scene of a winged, sword-wielding figure dressed in white robes and sandals. Sun rays parted the clouds of the heavens to fall like beacons of almighty power across the figure’s powerful shoulders. One of the figure’s sandal shod feet pinned a red-winged horned-and-tailed Satan firmly to the ground. Satan’s hands were raised in false supplication. The sword in the figure’s hand was pressed to Satan’s throat, pausing before the final stab that would rent the adversary asunder.

  “St. Michael,” Ash said, answering Fey’s unasked question. “The patron saint of police officers.”

  Fey studied the stained glass scene. It held incredible power. More than all the other windows combined. “It doesn’t appear to be something your father would have erected.”

  Ash allowed himself a small smile. “I put it in myself.”

  “Irony?”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “All that stuff about vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”

  Fey felt she understood. “And he can have it back as soon as you’re done with it,” she said.

  “As soon as we’re done with it,” Ash said.

  A stairway ran up from one end of the chapel to the second story. At the top of the stairs were two large rooms and a bathroom with a ball-clawed porcelain tub. The rooms ran directly above the other meeting rooms, kitchen, and bathroom below. A balcony walkway looked down into the chapel/living area below.

  Ash had converted one of the rooms, the one with a small outside balcony, into his own bedroom. Japanese prints hung on the wall, complementing the wicker furniture and futon bed on a high pedestal. Ash’s upright piano stood against the inside wall.

  “Do you play?” Fey asked, indicating the piano. She set the cat in her arms down on the floor where it began rubbing around her legs.

  Ash shrugged. “I play at the piano,” he said. With one hand he tinkled the exposed ivories in a short riff. “I can hold my own doing boogie or jazz, but as a classicist I’m a total loss.” What he didn’t say was that he was playing far less as the weakness in the muscles of his hands became greater. He felt the nausea rise up inside him as he again became aware of the sand quickly running out of his own personal hour glass.

  The room next door was Ash’s work space. It was filled with flat work surfaces and several file cabinets. Two computers sat on separate desks, both hooked to a laser printer. Bulletin boards covered the walls.

  There were two chairs in the room. Both were well-padded, swiveled and tilted, and were on rollers for easy movement across the expensive but low pile carpeting. Fey sat in the chair closest to the door and took in her surroundings.

  Ash had been busy. Separate cork bulletin boards were plastered with crime scene photos from each of the murder victim’s shallow burial sites. Another bulletin board was dedicated to photos from all three crime scenes that showed common denominators; arms sticking out of graves, the position of the bodies, the knots and design to the bonds, the condition of the victims.

  On another wall, across a large whiteboard, Ash had indexed the names of the three victims. A list under each name denoted individual characteristics. A fourth list denoted common characteristics between the three victims.

  Another whiteboard on the opposite side of the room was labeled ‘killer.’ Below the title was a list of characteristics.

  A third whiteboard was broken down into three categories; clues, leads, and strategies.

  “The profiler at work,” Fey said.

  Ash grunted.

  Fey swiveled around in her chair, looking at all of the bulletin board collections. Not studying them, simply trying to assess their scope. “I’ve heard about all this profiling and analysis stuff. We spoke about it before, but I’ve never had cause to use it.”

  “Chasing a one-off murderer is a lot different than pursuing a serial killer,” Ash said. “The mind-set, motivations, and psychological profile are completely different. In a regular homicide the motivations behind the killing quickly become clear. There is always a reason – many times a ridiculous reason, but still a reason exists. There is usually a clear suspect – usually someone the victim knows. Sometimes there are several suspects. The trick is to find enough evidence for an arrest and a conviction. In many cases the murderer will never murder again, especially in the cases of family disputes and domestic violence. This doesn’t make the murder any less important, but it does make the detection of the murderer different.”

  “And in a case like this one?” Fey asked, waving her hand in a motion that took in all the photos and bulletin boards in the room.

  Ash sat down in the second chair and swiveled it toward Fey. “We’re dealing with a serial killer, obviously. The reasoning behind the crimes is not something that a normal person can easily comprehend – madness and chaos are at work. There is still a reason, but that reason is usually so obscure that it only makes sense to the killer. The murderer’s connection to his victims is so tenuous that establishing a suspect is extremely difficult.”

  Fey stood and walked over to the bulletin board holding the common crime scene photos. She ran her finger over the glossy pictures of sordid violence. “It’s like art in a way, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” Ash wasn’t following her.

  Fey turned back toward him. “Well, to really understand an artist, you have to understand their paintings. And to really understand the psyche of a serial killer you have to understand what their crime scene is telling you. In a perverse way, the crime scene is the serial killers canvas – his art. And to be a serial killer is, by definition, to be a successful killer.”

  “Absolutely. The first thing that can be told from a crime scene is if the killer is of an organized or disorganized type. Though still difficult to catch, tracking a disorganized serial killer is the easier of the two types. A disorganized killer has an almost non-existent self-esteem and feels inferior to everyone around them. They are low IQ loners whose mental illness has manifested itself over long periods of time before exploding in the violence of a series of murders. A disorganized crime scene indicates spontaneity and a more frenzied assault. The scene itself is most likely the location of the victim-suspect encounter.” Ash reached out and picked up a pile of duplicate crime scene photos from one of the desks.

  “An organized serial killer,” he continued, “such as the one we’re dealing with here, feels superior to almost everyone – especially the police. They belittle police and psychiatrist
s as too stupid to catch them. Other than the monstrousness of their crimes, they may only be moderately bright, but they still consider themselves the smartest and cleverest individuals around.” Ash spread the photos in his hand out on the floor.

  “Some of them are,” Fey said.

  “Yes, but in the end it is their ego more than any other factor that leads to their downfall. The come to believe they are invincible and begin taking greater and greater risks. Sooner or later it catches up with them and the police get lucky.”

  “Okay, so we have an organized crime scene,” Fey said. “What does that tell us?”

  “An organized crime scene indicates planning and premeditation on the part of the offender. The killer often chooses the crime scene and lures the victim there. Or, as I think it is in this case, the victim is killed in one location and transported to another.”

  Fey examined the photos. “Our victims were still alive, though, when they were buried.”

  “Yes, but I think that they were assaulted at another location and trussed up before being brought to the burial scene.”

  “Makes sense,” Fey said thoughtfully. “There were no signs of a struggle at the crime scenes. That would indicate that the killer would have to be strong enough to carry the victim to the burial site.”

  “Sounds like JoJo again, doesn’t it?”

  “Don’t start trying to confuse me. Didn’t we agree that JoJo didn’t do these killings?”

  Ash nodded. “Yes. But we have to look at the reasons behind why we are eliminating JoJo as a suspect.”

  That gave Fey pause. “Gut instinct.”

  “Yes,” Ash said. “But what is sparking that gut instinct?”

  Fey mulled the question over in her mind. “First off, I would say JoJo’s reaction when he was confronted by Dick Morrison. He was scared – petrified in fact – not at all in control of his emotions or his responses. He was overwhelmed by the situation to the point where he tried to get Dick to kill him – virtually trying to commit suicide.”

  “I agree,” said Ash. “None of the organized serial killers I’ve studied or pursued, have ever reacted in that manner when confronted with exposure. They remain cock sure of their ability to fool the police and get away.”