Congregations of the Dead

by Moore, James A. ; Rutledge, Charles R. ;

  Traylor slumped in the straight-backed wooden chair. He and Fry were in a bare room in one of the buildings behind an old country church. Fry had brought Claire and him there after forcibly taking them from their home. Traylor’s face burned in humiliation at the memory of his brief fight with Fry. He had always thought he knew how to handle himself, but Fry had easily dealt with Traylor’s attempt to defend himself, smiling that infuriating smile the entire time.

  Traylor glared at the red-headed man. “Then untie me.”

  “Can’t do that, Hoss. You might assault me again and then where would we be? Just stay calm for a bit longer. Almost dusk. Once evening arrives I’ll show you why I brought you here.”

  “And after that you’ll let us go?”

  “I will indeed. Won’t be any reason to keep you here after that.”

  And I’ll go running to the nearest police officer. You are out of your fucking country-boy mind if you think I will let this slide. Traylor said, “Will you just let me talk to Claire, then?”

  “At dusk, Hoss. Don’t worry. She’s fine. Do I look like the sort of man who would hurt a woman? Hell, boy, I wouldn’t have slapped you around if you hadn’t come at me.”

  “You broke into my home!”

  “Yes, well, the reverend says I have a problem with um... impulse control. Then again, he told me to bring you here and I don’t think you’d have come along just on my say-so.”

  “If he wanted us here so badly why hasn’t he come to talk to us himself?”

  “Reverend Cotton is a busy man. I expect he’ll be by before too long though.”

  Maybe this is all a mistake. Maybe Reverend Cotton hired this backwoods lunatic without realizing how crazy the man was. With any luck, Traylor would be able to talk sense to the reverend.

  Fry sauntered over to the window and raised the old-fashioned shade. “Guess it’s getting about that time. You just wait here nice and quiet and I’ll go get your missus.”

  “Don’t hurt her. Please.”

  Fry’s face took on a pained expression. “I wouldn’t do that, Hoss. You’ve got me all wrong. Back in a sec.”

  Fry went out the door and Traylor began struggling with the ropes again. He had no better luck than on his previous attempts. The tough cords were bound tight. His feet were similarly bound to the legs of the chair, so he couldn’t even try to get to the door or window. How in the world had he ended up in this situation? What did Fry and his boss want? Fry kept saying they were going to do him a favor. What the hell was that all about?

  Traylor heard footfalls outside the door and he stopped struggling. The door swung inward and Traylor breathed a sigh of relief as Claire came in. Her hands were bound behind her but she didn’t seem to have been harmed.

  “Oh Paul,” Claire said. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine, dear. Just fine.”

  Fry stepped in behind Claire carrying a second straight-backed chair. He placed it on the floor beside Paul and told Claire to sit down. When Claire was seated, Fry said, “See? I told you I wouldn’t hurt her. You got me all wrong, Hoss. Right now I’m your best friend.”

  “What are you talking about?” Traylor said. “You attacked us. Kidnapped us.”

  Fry said, “All for a good reason. I’m about to reunite you with your little girl. How does that sound?”

  “Lynn is here?” Claire said. “You kidnapped our daughter, you son of a bitch!”

  “No ma’am, no. Wasn’t like that at all. Your little girl came to Reverend Cotton seeking guidance. He helped her find the Lord, ma’am, and she came here to escape the temptations of the world.”

  Traylor suddenly recalled the flier he had found. In all the excitement it had slipped his thoughts. And Griffin had asked if Lynn had said anything about religion. Was that it? Had she joined a cult of some kind?

  Traylor said, “You’re saying she’s here though?”

  “Yep, just down the hall.”

  “If you’re lying to me, or if you’ve hurt her, I’ll kill you.”

  “None of that now, Hoss. She’s just fine. I’m going to go now and tell her to come see you.”

  Fry stepped out and Traylor turned to his wife. “Do you think Lynn’s really here?”

  “God, I hope so. She can untie us and we’ll all get out of this terrible place.”

  Traylor wondered if things would be that easy. If Lynn was here she had apparently come of her own free will. Had she been brainwashed? He had heard of such things. And if so, would she be willing to help them escape?

  The door swung open slowly and there stood Lynn. She was wearing jeans and a crisp white shirt. Her hair was brushed back from her face and she looked perfectly fine. Maybe things would work out after all.

  “Lynn!” Claire said. “Oh, sweetheart. Thank God you’re all right.”

  Traylor said, “Come and untie us, honey. Hurry before that crazy man comes back.” Lynn stood looking at them but made no move to approach. Had they drugged her? “Did you hear me, Lynn? Come and untie us.”

  Lynn reached behind her and closed the door. Then she started toward her parents. Traylor smiled. Once he was out of the ropes he would find a way to get them away from this lunatic asylum.

  “That’s the way, hun,” he said.

  Lynn stopped directly in front of the two chairs and looked at her parents. Then she smiled a wide, wide smile, and Paul Traylor started screaming.

  * * *

  Carl woke extra early. Not because he had to, nor even because he felt the need to prepare himself for a day that would, as he’d later learn, be immensely difficult. No, he woke early because he wanted to. He wanted to savor a couple of cups of coffee, wanted to have a good breakfast and finally, he wanted to be as bright and alert as possible when he knocked on the front door of the Phillips household.

  He needed to be as alert as possible.

  Allan Chambers took a few of the best crime tech guys with him to the photography studio. They were ready and they hit hard. Carl knew they would, because Allan didn’t make mistakes. Not when it came to the big stuff. Everyone can screw up now and then, to be sure, but not Allan and not when it came to the sort of thing that meant prosecuting child pornographers. Why not? Because Allan had three beautiful little daughters. Even mentioning the situation to the man had him ready to draw a weapon and put several bullets through skulls. That was why he got to go to the studio before the place was open. There was less chance he’d be tempted to actually follow through with that particular desire. Allan preferred it that way, too.

  So it was Carl, along with Nora Evans and Thelma McPherson and four other deputies to cover the house and Allan with eight more to cover the office. Nora knew where the computers were. Thelma knew how to properly frisk and interrogate the lady of the house. There was a little overtime involved this time around. He’d make it work out. You had to work fast with this sort of situation and they wanted all of the evidence bagged, tagged and catalogued before anyone outside of the teams knew what was happening. Any connections between the Phillips family and any outside influences had to be isolated, clarified and followed up on as quickly as possible to avoid the destruction of possible paper trails.

  Corey Phillips and his wife were both still in bed when the warrant got served. Carl knocked once, waited exactly three seconds and then had Dave Osbourne hit the door with the battering ram. The door lost the argument. The Phillipses were still in bed and just starting to panic when Carl opened the bedroom door and served them the warrant.

  Corey Phillips looked all kinds of terrified from the second Carl entered the room. His wife on the other hand? She only started looking scared when he showed her the warrant. All the calm and cool she’d offered up when he’d asked questions about her daughter Amber vanished as soon as she knew she wasn’t going to get out of the bed and manage to reach any other part of the house.

 
The fear on her face, in her eyes, that was what had set off his alarms before. She hadn’t been the least bit worried about her daughter. No kind of concern on the woman’s pretty face at all until she saw a piece of paper.

  He was glad he brought Thelma along. Thelma would handle talking to the woman. Thelma was a damned tough woman – he’d seen her drop a few men bigger than him when she had to. But she was also a lot better at being calm than he was, even under the circumstances.

  Always know your weaknesses and prepare for them. It was best to have Thelma there, because she’d stop him from pulling the trigger the same way he’d already stopped Allan.

  Some people just need to get shot. It’s best to make sure there’s a reason before you start shooting. By the time most of the neighbors were out of bed and getting ready for work the worst of it was over. Most of the evidence had been collected and the loving parents of Amber Phillips were sitting in separate holding cells, waiting for a conversation with Allan Chambers and Chief Stack’s finest detectives. The GBI was likely going to bring someone in to have a little palaver with them as well.

  That was just fine with Carl.

  He and Wade had another warrant to serve. It was going to be one of those days.

  * * *

  A slow day at Baba Yaga’s. Charon didn’t mind the occasional off day. Her little business did surprisingly well, and her side business as a dealer in rare books, was booming. Besides, the lack of customers gave her time to do a little digging on Reverend Lazarus Cotton.

  Seated at her desk in her small office in the back of the store, she kept trying different Internet searches on Cotton. So far she hadn’t turned up much. Griffin had said the reverend had moved from Florida to Georgia fairly recently. Charon wondered why the move. Since he seemed to operate independently of any governing body, it wasn’t like some church elders had transferred him.

  The address of his former church was in Clearwater, Florida, on the Gulf Coast. Charon had taken a few vacations there with her folks when she had been a kid. She found a link to the Clearwater Herald and hoped the newspaper had a searchable archive. Bingo, it did. She typed in Cotton’s name and got half a dozen results. Most were articles about various revivals, but the last headline read ‘Church Fire Still Unsolved’.

  Charon clicked on the article and read the contents. Apparently Cotton’s last Mount Zion Church of Faith had burned to the ground. The authorities suspected arson, but they didn’t have any leads. There was one more interesting bit of information. When the burning church had collapsed, it had sunk unusually far into the ground, as if the foundation had been very deep.

  She bookmarked the article, then copied the link and emailed it to Griffin. Ah, Griffin. The man was fighting some inner battle, and he wasn’t telling her about it. She tried not to feel hurt about his lack of communication. One of the things that had drawn her to him was his brooding nature, but sometimes the strong, silent thing could be a bit much to bear. Still, he had become far more open in the time they had been together. She would just have to hope he would tell her what was bothering him.

  Charon had learned to walk a fine line with Griffin about what he did and didn’t tell her. Cliché as it sounded, there were things about his past she was probably better off not knowing. Hell, she had a few skeletons of her own. Of course Griffin’s skeletons were often literal.

  She knew that was part of what was bothering him. She could tell from things he said that he feared alienating Charon because of the things he had done. The things he still did.

  That was what had happened with Beth, the woman who had once shared the same house that Charon currently shared with Griffin. But she hadn’t just been trying to make him feel better when she had called him the best man she knew. He stood up for what he believed and he never let his friends down. Yeah, he was a little scary at times, but Charon always felt safe with him.

  She heard the shop doorbell jingle and got up and headed toward the front of the store. Enough introspection. Time to make like a grown up and earn a living.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Griffin sat in his living room, phone at his ear, listening to Carl tell him about his morning. Griffin had to fight the urge to seek out the people paying for the product the Phillipses were manufacturing and leave them all in pools of blood. He hated the term ‘child pornography’. It was a misnomer, giving the term a legitimacy it didn’t deserve. Pornography to some degree implied consent. Not in all cases obviously, but quite a few adults willingly created porn. There was no question of consent where a child was concerned. An image of a child involved in a sexual act was a picture of a crime. Period.

  When Carl wound down, Griffin said, “That conversation I mentioned with Pete Blankenship may be coming sooner than I thought. Odds are when you get the Phillipses singing, you’re going to find a connection to Blankenship.”

  “You’re probably right, Wade,” Carl said. “But don’t go off half-cocked. When it comes time to confront Blankenship, I want to be there. We’ll go together. Speaking of which, you feel like taking a ride up to the Mount Zion Church of Faith? I have a warrant all ready to go.”

  “I do indeed.” Griffin smiled, remembering how the man Fry had refused to let him search the grounds. We’ll see about that Mister Fry. We surely will.

  Carl said, “Think I should bring Thelma along? Just in case we do find the girl.”

  Griffin considered that for a moment. “No, better make it just you and me. We might have to do something slightly illegal.”

  “And wouldn’t that be a shame? Me being the Sheriff and all.”

  “Scandalous.”

  “I’ll pick you up in half an hour, Wade.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  * * *

  The sun cut blades of light through the caul of clouds that blanketed the sky, and pools of brightness lit parts of the road and the surrounding trees, a reminder that it was barely noon and not almost most time for the sun to set. The storm that had been threatening for the last few days looked like it was about ready to unleash a proper torrent, and the rumble of thunder not far away echoed a proper agreement.

  They talked as they rode up to the church and Carl let Wade know about Tammy being in town and what he had decided to do. For just a moment he half expected his friend to pat him on the head and tell him he was a ‘good boy’. Happily that did not happen. It would have been a shame to shoot Wade. It would also be a shame to defend himself from Wade if he missed.

  Simple fact of life: Wade Griffin was a scary motherfucker when it suited his needs. Happily they’d never been the sort to try killing each other. It went against the grain of their friendship.

  Instead of risking life and limb Wade pulled a normal Wade stunt. Nodded and said, “About time, Carl.”

  Carl returned the nod. That was pretty much exactly what he’d expected from his long-time friend.

  Griffin pointed to the church’s parking lot and Carl pulled in and eyed the place. It was a small, whitewashed church with a couple of satellite buildings attached. Wade was right; they looked to be dorms or apartments. They could check them out after they’d searched the church if needs be. One step at a time, and from what Wade had said and what Carl could see, it was the Mount Zion Church of Faith that had the thick padlock and the chain through the reinforced doors.

  “Not really standard equipment on most churches.” Carl looked toward the other buildings. The odds were good they were locked up tight as well. The difference was the bolt cutters in the back of his truck would handle the padlock with the greatest of ease. Proper deadbolt locks took a bit more effort. Push came to shove, there was still a battering ram back there, too.

  The locked compartment in the back of the Ford gave up the bolt cutters and Carl slung the long-handled device over one shoulder. The warrant was in his shirt pocket.

  There were no cars to be seen in the parking lot. Just Carl�
��s truck.

  “Cheery place, isn’t it?” Carl squinted as a beam of sunlight prodded him in the eye.

  “Oh yeah. Real homey.”

  “Might have to see about booking this place when you and Charon get married.”

  “We’re thinking about eloping. Saves all the fuss of decorating the church and renting a tux.”

  “Thank God, because I hate weddings.”

  “Well, then the good news for you is that we’re nowhere near that level yet.”

  “You’re sounding a little defensive there, Wade.” One Cheshire-Cat grin was provided at no extra charge.

  Griffin eyed him up and down, taking his measure. “Which knee was it you wrecked back when you played football?”

  “Left one, why?”

  “Just checking. Hate to hit the same one you already got fixed.”

  “You wouldn’t hit a man in uniform, would you?”

  “You wearing a uniform? Looks like jeans and a shirt to me.”

  “You know damned well I never wear the khakis unless I have to.”

  “I’m just saying, that doesn’t look like a uniform. Be a shame if someone mistook you for a civilian.”

  “I got the hat back in the truck.”

  “Too late now. We’re already to the door.”

  “Why’d I bring you along again?”

  “You didn’t bring me along. I allowed you to work as a consultant on my case.”

  “So you’re paying me, Wade?”

  “It’s like an honorary doctorate. It doesn’t really mean anything and it doesn’t give you any money.”

  “That line used to actually work for me back in college.”

  “Well, that was before you got the beer gut.” Wade flashed a shit-eating grin at him.

  “Not funny.”

  “It is from here.”