“We’ll figure it out,” she says. She points to Mary’s pink phone. “Is that hers?”
“I certainly don’t own a pink phone with a bedazzled music note on the back.”
“Well, I guess I’ll have to get you a new Christmas present,” she teases, holding out her hand for the phone. I hand it to her and she scrolls through the texts.
“She must have been really close to her fans to be giving her number to them,” I say.
“It could also make her a prime target,” she says. “Some of these people attach themselves to her because they have nothing else going on in their life. They look up to her as if she is a god…or, in her case, a goddess. So, if something goes wrong in their life, in their twisted mind, they might believe she’s responsible for it, especially considering she didn’t answer most of these texts. That would upset some of these people because they don’t understand that she has a whole life without them.”
I gaze at her, honestly only hearing half of what she’s saying. Her hair sways as she’s bent over the phone and she’s biting her lip with the smallest bit of pressure. I wish I could take her face in my hands and kiss her right now, but I hate public displays of affection and I’m fairly certain she’s still annoyed with me about our religious arguments.
“What about this one?” she asks. “This seems like it’s in some kind of code.”
She hands me the cellphone.
313-373-4446: 1JN4:20
Me: Who is this
313-373-4446: JS1:26
313-373-4446: MW6:2
Me: Ur an asshole.
313-373-4446: How very saintly of you.
Me: PSLM119:160
313-373-4446: 1JN2:9
313-373-4446: MW6:5
313-373-4446: 1PR2:1
“I thought it was some kind of text-speak,” I tell her.
“I don’t think so,” she stares at the words for a few more seconds. “They’re referring to Biblical verses. That’s why there’s a colon in between the last two numbers. Let’s see…J.N. with a 1 in front of it…that could refer to the first Epistle of John.”
She takes out her own cell phone and pulls up a Bible app. She searches for the first verse.
“The First Epistle of John 2:9: ‘Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness,’…and in chapter four, verse twenty: ‘If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.’ I’m seeing a theme here….James 1:26: ‘If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.’ All of the verses seem to be about hypocrisy, so whoever was texting her thought she was a hypocrite. And that she hated other people.”
“And we both know somebody who thought she was hypocritical,” I note. “There’s one quick way to find out.”
I dial the number 313-373-4446 with the phone on my desk. It rings twice.
“I don’t want whatever you’re selling,” a male voice answers.
I hang up.
“Was it him?” Lauren asks.
“Yep,” I say. “So, let’s go visit Mr. Belamonte again and see if he’ll ignore our questions about why he has Mary Fitzgerald’s number.”
* * *
“Jesus H. Christ, are the police just going to harass me until I confess to something I didn’t do?” Jackson snarls as soon as he sees Lauren and me at his door. He gestures into his apartment with a water bottle in his hand. “Come right in. You should know where everything is right now. If you want to plant any evidence, I suggest the toilet tank. Or how about under my bed? What is the current police preference?”
“We’re not going to plant any evidence,” I tell him, walking into his living room.
He and Lauren follow me. The photos of Mary are still up. I would have thought he’d take it all down and burn it to avoid incriminating himself further, but maybe he’s too arrogant for his own good. There’s also a gun on the coffee table. The way it’s out in plain sight, I can only assume it’s another one of Jackson’s mind games where he wants to show he’s not afraid of authority figures.
I turn to him. “We’re just here to ask you face-to-face how you have Mary Fitzgerald’s number and why you were sending her Bible verses.”
There’s a flash of anxiety across his face before it’s replaced by his usual sardonic grin.
“She kept those texts, huh?” he asks, taking a sip of his water. “Because there’s no way you guys would have gotten them by now if she had deleted them.”
“I wouldn’t be that flattered,” I say. “She didn’t delete texts from any of her fans, either.”
He laughs. “So, she had all those texts and you can’t figure out how I got her private number? Are they only hiring idiots for cops now?”
I turn to Lauren. “I swear to God, I’m going to find this kid’s parents and arrest them for producing this prick.”
Lauren doesn’t answer, keeping her eyes on Jackson. “Somebody released her number.”
“Bingo!” he exclaims, pointing at her. “We have a winner. Apparently you guys don’t pay attention to entertainment news because they talked about it for two days straight.”
“Who released it?” she asks.
He tilts his head and I can tell he’s contemplating whether to tell us or not. Finally he shrugs as if it doesn’t matter to him one way or the other. “Do you guys know who Seven Servants of God are?”
“Are they some kind of cult?” I ask.
He nods. “Yeah—I mean, they’re more fanatics than a cult, but it’s the same idea. They’re this super-religious group that believes happiness is a sin or something equally crazy. As you may know, I’m not a fan of these fundamental types and I don’t care enough to differentiate them. But anyway, they disliked Mary more than I did—they considered her to be a false prophet, they called her a whore for the clothes that she wore, and they thought she was using Jesus’ name for profit, which, as you can imagine, did not make them happy. So, they paid off some people to get her number—hackers or someone in the phone company, I don’t know— and they posted it in the comments sections on all her fan sites. Now that she’s missing, I realize I was kind of attacking her at a low point in her life, but…it’s in the past. I can’t take it back now. Like I said before, I’m not stupid enough to publicly announce how much I don’t like her and then kidnap her.”
He takes a deep drink of his water, turning toward his wall of conspiracy theories, admiring it like it’s a piece of art.
“Are we done here?” he asks. “My followers are expecting another blog post in a couple hours and I’ve been trying to balance it between the blood they want and the consideration that a missing woman deserves.”
“No, we’re not done,” I say. “Why did you stop texting her?”
“She stopped responding. There’s no point in bothering somebody if they could be completely ignoring what you’re telling them,” he says.
“Are you okay, Jackson?” Lauren asks. “Are you sick?”
For the first time, I notice a sheen of sweat on his face. His skin seems paler than it was a few minutes ago.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says. “I just want you cops to stop stalking me. My alibi rules me out of the murder and the kidnapping.”
“You could have hired one of your followers.”
“I didn’t!” he insists. Then he gasps, and wraps his arms around his stomach, bending over at his waist as if he’s in pain.
“Are you okay?” Lauren repeats.
He shakes his head. “It must be the flu or something,” he mumbles. He stands straight again, wiping the sweat off his forehead.
I take a step back. If he’s going to hurl, I want to be far out of the line of fire. But Lauren reaches out toward him. He jerks out of the way and rushes out of the living room. A couple of seconds later, I hear retching. Lauren and I follow the sound to find Jackson in the bathroom, his head
hanging over the toilet bowl.
“The symptoms came on too quickly to be the flu,” Lauren whispers to me.
“Maybe he’s stressed because he murdered Mary,” I whisper back. “And the stress is making him sick.”
“I highly doubt the symptoms for stress would be so severe and so sudden.” She kneels down next to Jackson and touches the back of her hand to his forehead. “He’s burning up.”
She pulls her phone out of her pocket and dials 9-1-1.
“Lauren, maybe you should step away from him. We don’t know if what he has is contagious.”
She raises a finger to silence me. “Hello, I have a man who suddenly showed signs of illness. He’s vomiting, he has a temperature, and he’s sweating profusely—no, I’m telling you that an ambulance needs to be sent. I am a detective of the Detroit police force, not a paranoid citizen. Okay? Okay.”
Beside Jackson’s knee is his water bottle, which tipped over at some point and the water is spilling out onto the floor. Some of the water almost touches Lauren’s knee, but the grout lines between the tiles cause it to move away from her. It makes me think of Moses parting the Red Sea, but I know that seawater has to come crashing back down and nobody can survive that wrath.
Chapter Seven
Lauren
I have flashes of memories from the time right after my parents died in a car crash. I remember standing in the hallway of a hospital as doctors and nurses passed by without taking much notice of me. I wondered if this is how my world would be for the rest of my life—if everywhere I would walk, not a single person would care about me.
Of course, I was a melodramatic child. My grandma later picked me up and she loved me the best that she could, but at that time in the hospital—when in my heart, I knew neither of my parents would make it through the night—there was such a feeling of acceptance for what I can’t control, it brought peace over me. Now, though, that I’m back in the hospital, standing in the hallway, waiting for the doctor to tell us what’s wrong with Jackson, I feel that empty feeling return. Except this time, there isn’t the acceptance that comes with it. I feel trapped in this helplessness and it only feels a bit better when Tobias takes my hand and squeezes it.
“I’m sure he’ll be okay,” he says. “You called 9-1-1 as fast as you could. He got help immediately because of you.”
“I hope he’s okay.” I rub my arm. “It’s lucky that we were there.”
“Well, if he were luckier, he wouldn’t be sick—”
“Are you two the detectives?” a doctor asks, walking up to us.
“Yes,” I say, standing straighter.
“Well, Mr. Belamonte seems to have been poisoned. All the signs point to it. We can’t be absolutely certain until the tests come back, but his symptoms indicate poison…and it doesn’t look good for him. He’s awake now, but he should be resting. If you absolutely need to question him, do it now,” he says. “Otherwise, we’ll tell you more once we know more. I just wanted to give you what we knew now.”
“Thank you, doctor,” I say.
He nods and continues walking down the hall. Maybe the doctors ignored me as a child because they had to put walls up between themselves and their patients and their patients’ families. Maybe that’s how they handle all of the weight of grief—they walk around it.
Tobias turns to me. “Maybe he was trying to kill himself because he knew we were getting closer to figuring out he was the murderer.”
“No, that doesn’t make sense. Most men who want to kill themselves use a gun, and he had one right there. It’s easier, faster, less painful, and more likely to succeed. Poison would be a weird choice,” I say. “I think the murderer tried to poison him.”
Tobias crosses his arms over his chest. “I was thinking if someone did try to poison him, it could have been through the water bottle. Anyone could have gone into his apartment and put poison in there. It would be risky because anyone else could have drunk it, but looking at Jackson’s apartment, I don’t think he had any family or friends coming over frequently.”
“I was thinking it was the water bottle too,” I say. “It couldn’t have been in the air or else we would have been sick, so in all likelihood, it was something he ingested. He could have eaten something before we got there, but water is the only thing the killer could have been fairly certain that he would drink today.”
“So, why would the killer stage one of his murders and just let Jackson die without any extravagance?”
“I’m thinking that maybe Jackson knew something that could lead back to the killer,” I say. “So, the killer had to eliminate him.”
“I don’t know…Jackson just seems so guilty.”
“Or you just don’t like him,” I say. “Come on, Tobias. I have this gut feeling it’s not him. Take a leap of faith.”
“Really?” he asks. “You’re asking me to have faith?”
“Yes. In me.”
He smiles. “I don’t need to have faith in you because I’ve seen how good you are at solving crimes, so I know you’re probably right. Let’s just go ask Jackson who might want to kill him.”
I lead the way into Jackson’s room. Jackson looks more sallow than ever in the hospital bed and his hand is shaky as he takes a sip from a paper cup.
“Hey Jackson,” I say, sitting in the chair next to his bed.
“Hey,” he mumbles. “Thanks for calling the ambulance.”
“Of course.”
Even his movements are more humble now. I suppose being poisoned could make even the most arrogant people realize they are just as human as anyone else.
“I know you’re tired and you probably still don’t feel well, but can I ask you a couple of questions?”
“If it helps you figure out who tried to poison me, yeah,” he says. “I shouldn’t say try. Clearly, they succeeded. I should have seen that one coming. I’m going to assume it wasn’t you guys or else you could have left me there to die.”
“Uh, no, we didn’t poison you,” I say. “But do you know anyone who would? Someone you know with access to poison? Someone who has keys to your apartment? Someone who wants you dead?”
“I don’t know anyone with access to poison and no one has keys to my apartment, but they’re not hard locks to pick,” he says. “I get some annoyed Christians badgering me sometimes, but nothing they’ve said lately is out of the ordinary. My blogs are online…death threats aren’t anything new.”
“Well, we’ll still probably look into them,” I say. “What about any creepy strangers seeming to linger where you are or following you?”
“Detective, my followers are all strange and they all follow me to my protests,” he says. “I wouldn’t really notice if there was someone angry at me following me because my followers tend to be angry people. You don’t meet content people at protests.”
“Right. Right.” I stand up, grabbing his hand and squeezing it. “Thank you, Jackson. I hope you feel better soon.”
Before I can pull away, he grasps my hand.
“Please find Mary,” he says. “And if it’s one of my followers that took her…I’m sorry. That was never my intention.”
I nod. “I know. I understand.”
He lets go, his whole body seeming to sink into the bed. I grab Tobias’s arm and lead him out into the hallway.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
“We should check out his blog again to look at the comments because that blog is the only thing linking him and Mary,” I say. “Maybe someone left a comment that would connect the two more than all of those people who just hate Mary.”
“I was actually talking more about the fact that for a guy who spends so much time railing against Mary, he seems quite concerned about her.”
I shrug. “There’s a thin line between love and hate…and when you have a near-death experience, I’m sure it becomes easier to see how important life is.”
He rubs the right side of his chest where the PVP Killer had shot him and a scar has develop
ed. “I know the feeling.”
I loop my arm around his and kiss his cheek. “Let’s try to not take life for granted.”
“But that’s my favorite thing to do.”
I laugh and the empty feeling that hospitals fades to nothing.
Chapter Eight
Tobias
The spicy chili fries from Benny’s Factory taste like a gift from God with a zesty aftertaste that wouldn’t be allowed past Heaven’s gates. Lauren and I get the “Foreman’s Portion,” which is the largest order possible, and sit at one of the restaurant’s round metal tables. Lauren pulls out her phone and pulls up Jackson’s website.
“I have to get the guy some credit,” she says. “Every blog post he has, there’re at least sixty comments on it—and they’re pretty divided. Some of them are cheering him on and some of them are condemning him. They’re all pretty angry, though.”
I move my chair closer to her in order to see her screen—or if I’m being honest with myself, in order to have an excuse for our shoulders to touch.
“Anything in particular popping out for you?” I ask, shoving a fry in my mouth and letting the spices settle on my tongue.
“Yes. The death of the English language.” She scrolls through the comments. “How hard is it to type a-r-e instead of just r? It’s two more letters.”
“Well, I guess, if you skip enough letters in a paragraph, you’d skim about five seconds off,” I say. “Though I don’t know why they would care about saving time when they’re spending their lives on Jackson’s website.”
“Okay, listen to this post,” Lauren says. “‘Fuck you, you waste of oxygen. When judgement day comes, God will strike you down with all of the fury of the universe. You are a sad excuse of a human.’ That almost sounds like a death threat.”
“Yeah, but look at the time it was posted,” I say, pointing to the tiny print under the comment. “That’s right around the time that Mary disappeared, so that person couldn’t be the one who kidnapped her and that won’t provide us with enough information to get a warrant to figure out who…PraizHollyJesus is.”
Voice of the Spirit (A Trinity of Death Romantic Suspense Series Book 1) Page 4
