“I think you can. What’s the next term you want me to tell you about?”
“Butcher knife.”
Pearl raised her eyebrow. “Not sure what you mean?”
“Exactly. That’s the one thing that worries me. Heather said that her mother came at her with a butcher knife. Heather then picked up a knife and stabbed her mom in the neck, then ran out of the house. Yet the butcher knife wasn’t recovered at the scene. Why?”
Pearl looked distant. “Somebody removed it from the scene? That’s the only thing that makes sense. Unless….”
“Unless what?”
“Unless the cops at the scene didn’t list it for some reason.”
“That would be tampering with a crime scene. It’s not unheard of, but why would they go through all this trouble on this particular case?”
I wrote this down on a piece of paper. Butcher knife missing from scene. Cops took it? Somebody else came in to clean up the scene before the cops got there? Or Heather is lying?
“We have to figure this out,” I said to Pearl. “If I can’t get straight on this one element, then the entire thing falls apart.”
I bit my lower lip. “Get Fred on this. He needs to find out more about the cops on the scene.” There were two cops on the scene to begin with, and then, when it was clear that there was a body in the kitchen, six more showed up. The first two cops were the ones that I was most interested in. They both would have to have been somehow compromised in order for them to tamper with the crime scene.
Pearl wrote down some notes. “K. What do you want to find out about these cops?”
I had a hunch. I didn’t know where it might lead, but it was something that I felt that I needed to know. “Find out if they’re religious. And if they are, find out what church they belong to.”
“Why does that matter?”
“The mother was a part of a church that I have a feeling is more like a cult. I need to do some of my own investigation on that place. So far, what I have found out makes the Westboro Baptist Church look like Unity.” Unity was a liberal church that I sometimes attended. It made no judgments whatsoever, and was focused on the goodness about Christ’s teachings. The Westboro Baptist Church, on the other hand, made their name by protesting funerals with hateful messages like God Hates Fags.
“That bad?”
“Yeah. Let’s just say that they advocate slavery and that they advise women to be completely subservient to their man and they are to stay with their man even if they are being beaten.”
Pearl shook her head. “I thought that bullshit went out in the Victorian age. I wonder if they also encourage women to give all their property to their man. That’s how they did it in the Victorian age – women weren’t allowed to even own property.”
“I would imagine that’s part of being subservient – the man owns all the property. Even if a woman comes into the marriage with property, it soon is signed completely over to him. That’s good thinking on your part. Maybe I’ll investigate that angle too. It can bolster our case of brainwashing, because only the brainwashed woman would do something like that.”
Pearl made some more notes. “Are you going to some of the services to see what’s going on there?”
“If they allow me to. We need to check if this church is tax-exempt, because if it is, they can’t ban me. If they’re not, then they can tell me to take a hike if I go in there. I might just send Fred to the service if they won’t let me come back. He can tell me what kind of nonsense is being preached there.”
Pearl nodded her head and made more notes. “Okay. What is the next term you want to cover with me?”
I made a temple with my fingers and swiveled in my chair. “LGBT.”
She shook her head. “Murdered.”
“Murdered?” I didn’t quite know what she was talking about.
“Yeah. There’s been five murders of gay youth in just the past few weeks. I’ve read about it in the paper.”
My eyes got wide. “There have been? I guess I’ve been out of touch, what with all the issues with the girls and Heather’s case. I haven’t had the time to read the paper or watch the news. Tell me about this.”
She shrugged. “They think that a serial killer is working in the area. The kids were all from good homes, all kinda rich. Not really rich, but they all had money. They weren’t the usual gangbangers from the East side.”
I wrote down this new piece of information. Gay kids being murdered. “Have Fred find out more about these kids. What were their families like.” I furrowed my brows. “I wonder if…”
“I know what you’re thinking, but I wouldn’t go there just yet. There’s a big difference between hating on gay people and actually telling people to murder them.”
“I understand that, but it wouldn’t be beyond the purview of a cult. It might be a doomsday cult. But you’re right. That’s a stretch. Maybe I can get a better handle on what’s going on if I go to a service.”
“Okay, then, go to a service and report back.”
“I will. I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I have a feeling that that church is rotten to the core.”
I was getting closer to the truth. I knew that, and I also knew that this church was going to play a huge role in Heather’s case. I didn’t know how I knew that.
I just did.
THAT NIGHT, after I put the two girls to bed, over their protests – they both wanted to stay up and watch some movie on HBO, but I told them that I would DVR it and show it tomorrow, which seemed to satisfy them – I decided to go back to Connie Morrison’s computer. I didn’t know if her email had the same password as her computer, but I hoped that it would. Heather didn’t know the answer to that, either, when I had asked her about it.
I went into my sunroom, which was where I had my home office. On sunny days, when I wasn’t suffering from depression, this room gave me a sense of peace and solace. It faced the backyard, and there was a bird-feeder back there, along with two bird houses. I learned how to attract birds to the house, so I usually had a resident in there building a nest. My backyard was carefully laid out to give a sense of tranquility. There was a Japanese garden, with a statue of a Japanese house and a Buddha fountain. There was a Koi pond that ran on rocks underneath a small wooden bridge. I could hear that fountain when I sat in my sun room, lightly gurgling. It was always a sound I found soothing.
Tonight, as it was summertime, I could hear nothing but crickets and the fountain. I closed my eyes, trying to soak in these sounds. I had a nervousness that was bubbling up inside of me, an anxiousness that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I didn’t know if the feeling was associated with Heather or all the other cases that I had on my plate. Or it might just be my brain chemicals going haywire, as they had all my life. Clinical depression and anxiety were terrible bears to wrestle, and the worst thing about these two illnesses was that I could never tell when they would pop up again and bite me square on my ass.
I shook my head, squared my shoulders, and got to work. That was the one thing that always helped me – getting busy on a project. And this was a very important project indeed. Heather’s very life depended on what I could find out about her mother, and I couldn’t screw this up.
I figured out that Connie Morrison had a Yahoo account, for she had a shortcut for that on her desktop. I got into that app, and I was heartened to see that her user name was already on there. The user name wasn’t creative – it was just her name, [email protected].
I cracked my knuckles and put in the word “langston” as her password. I immediately got the message that this wasn’t the right password. I sighed, and tried Langston with a capital “L”, and then tried it with different numbers after the word.
At some point, I got the message informing me that if I kept putting in the wrong password, I would be locked out for 24 hours. I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes. I had five more tries to get in, otherwise I would have to wait until tomorrow. I had no desire to wait until the next
day. I wanted to get in there now. I felt that every minute, every second, that I wasn’t working on this case was a second or a minute wasted.
I raised my eyebrow, wondering if perhaps there was something else that I could try. Just out of a hunch I had, I typed in the name “Louisa.” Nothing came up. Then “Louisa1.”
To my surprise, that was the right password. Connie’s e-mail came up, and I let out a breath. I nodded my head, and got up to get a glass of water and a snack. I came back to my desk and sipped my water and ate my little brownie. There was a part of me that felt guilty for being in there. Like it was an invasion of her privacy. I tried to quell that feeling, and, after a few minutes, I knew that I had to forge ahead.
As soon as I started looking at the subject lines of the e-mails, I knew that I might have found the treasure trove. There were hundreds of e-mails from the Church, but also seemingly hundreds of emails to and from Louisa herself.
I was about to click on one of the emails when I heard an enormous crash. It sounded like it was close by, so I got up and ran out the door.
“What the hell?” I looked at my car, and saw that the entire side of my car was bashed in. I looked down the street, and saw nobody. It was as if it were a ghost that came and destroyed my car. Whoever did this did it and ran – and my car was in the driveway, so it wasn’t just an accident. Somebody did this deliberately.
I sighed as I saw that there was a scrap of paper that was on my windshield. Next time you will be in the car.
I shook my head, feeling threatened and pissed off at the same time. The first thing that came into my mind was that John Robinson was behind this bullshit. He was still pissed at me because I didn’t take his second murder case. I couldn’t believe that he had the gall to ask me to take him on. I really couldn’t believe that he would get pissed at me when I refused it, but he did. He was presently in prison for Gina’s murder, but I knew that he had people on the outside who might threaten me.
Well, it would just be a matter of getting a handwriting sample from him and comparing it to the note on the car. I looked around, hoping that there was somebody, anybody who saw what just happened. I found that, in my neighborhood, there often was a person around somewhere on the street. People would walk their dogs, or sometimes just be out jogging, taking advantage of the cooler temperatures that the nighttime provided.
Unfortunately, at that moment, there was nobody around.
Well, I was going to have to look at my file so that I could get a sample of John’s handwriting. I had his signature on my intake sheet.
I might also have to get a gun. It was something that I had been meaning to do for years, and never did. I didn’t like having guns around. I didn’t know how to use one, and I was against them on principle. But, then again, I also had two young girls to protect now. It was no longer just about me. I had to worry about them.
I went back inside and shut down the computer. I was no longer in any mood to think about this case. My mind started to race 100 miles per hour, and I could feel a hint of rage bubbling up. I had dealt with a lot of asshats in my life, and I had defended quite a few of them as well. I once again started to question my chosen profession. Now I was possibly putting my life on the line, as well as the lives of my two girls.
If it weren’t for Heather, I probably would have turned my back on my practice for good.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I couldn’t get my car fixed until the garage opened on Monday. So, the upshot was that I was going to have to rent a car for the weekend. That really burned me, but it was something that I had to do, so I just bit the bullet and did it.
So, on Sunday, I made plans to take the girls to the Church that they went to. It was called Our Lady of Sorrows, and it was an enormous old-style church in Midtown. After that church service, I was going to have them stay with Sophia while I went to the Church of the Living Breath. Our Lady of Sorrows service was at 9, and the Living Breath’s Church service was at 11.
“We don’t have to go,” Rina said. “In fact, I don’t want to go.”
“Rina,” Abby said. “We have to go. We always go. Why don’t you want to go?”
“It’s boring.” She raised an eyebrow. “And Aunt Harper has enough on her plate right now. She needs to go to that weird church today and find out what’s going on over there. I’d rather do that with her.” She grinned wickedly. “I’d like to find out what kind of crazy stuff happens in a cult. What kind of stuff they talk about.”
I had no idea how it was that Rina knew so much about the church I was going to, and I really didn’t want her to be exposed to all that. I had no idea what that Reverend was going to be saying at the pulpit, and I was quite sure it was going to go against everything that the Catholic Church was trying to impress upon the girls. The services at Our Lady of Sorrows was mainly focused upon love, kindness and the need to do good works in life. The Living Breath Church’s message was going to be quite different from that.
“Rina,” I said. “I don’t think…” I trailed off. Her big brown eyes were looking at me, trying to plead with me.
“Aunt Harper,” she said. “Here’s the thing. I’d like to do what you do one day. Maybe not defending people, but I’d like to become a prosecutor. After what happened to my mom, I’d like to get the bad guys. I think that I need to know what I’m going to be facing one day.”
I had to smile a little when she said that. “Rina, you’re only 11. How are you so sure about what you’re going to do? You have your whole life in front of you. Believe me, criminal law of any kind isn’t for everyone.” I understood where she was coming from, though. Her mother was murdered. If that happened to me, I probably would have done the same – go into the field of prosecuting criminals.
“Okay. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll go to the service at the Our Lady of Sorrows and then I’ll take you to the Living Breath Church if you want to go. Abby, do you want to go too?”
Abby shook her head. “No offense, Aunt Harper, but I think that one religious service is enough. I’d like to hang out with my friends today. A bunch of girls are getting together at Tamara Hines’ house and watching movies today. I’d like to go there today. Can I?”
“Of course.” I turned to Rina. “Looks like it’s you and me today, kid.”
“Awesome,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “I can’t wait to see these freaks.”
“They might think differently,” I said, “but they’re going to seem normal. They’re going to look normal and probably talk normal. I don’t want to get your hopes up that maybe you’re going to see a bunch of people who look at act weird.”
“That’s okay,” Rina said. “If I get bored, I’ll tell ya, and I just won’t go back again. But I’d like to do this at least once.”
AFTER THE CATHOLIC CHURCH service I dropped off Abby, and Rina and I approached the grounds of the church. It was really more of a compound. There was a line of cars that were slowly approaching the gate, showing their IDs, and going on through.
“This is strange,” Rina said. “I’ve never seen cops checking people as they go into a church before.”
“That’s not a cop,” I said, pointing to the guard’s station. “That’s just a security guard.”
“Rent-a-cop,” she said.
“Not even that. That guy would love to be a rent-a-cop probably. He’s just a security guard. I doubt he has much police training.”
“That’s still weird.” She shook her head. “Why do people have to show their ID just to go to church?”
“Because it’s not an ordinary church. To say the very least.”
The cars slowly moved through the gate, and I came to the guard’s station.
The guard looked at me closely. “You were here the other day,” he said. “I’m very sorry, but you cannot go in there.”
I was prepared for this. “Mr. Mulvaney,” I said, looking at his name tag. “I will go through.”
“I have my orders. Ms. Garrison and Reverend Joh
n Scott have informed me that you are not welcome on the church’s grounds anymore.”
I raised my eyebrows. “This is a church?”
“Yes.”
“As such, it doesn’t pay taxes. Correct?”
His cheek started to quiver right under his left eye, just like before. It was a stress tic, one that I was getting familiar with. “I don’t know about that.”
“If this is a church,” I began with a measured voice. It was difficult to not go off on this guy, but I somehow managed. “Then it is tax exempt. If it’s tax exempt, you cannot turn anybody away. It is not private, so you cannot exclude people. Now, if you would like to exclude me, then I will sue you to take away your tax exempt status, because that would necessarily mean that you are acting like a private entity. That will undoubtedly cost your church millions. Now, are you going to exclude me?”
He blinked his eyes rapidly, and I thought that he was about to cry. “I have my orders,” he said in a much smaller voice.
I looked in my rear view mirror and saw the cars lining up behind me. I would imagine that they were probably losing patience. I know that I would be if I were in that queue. “Listen, I don’t have all day. Call your boss, tell them that I’m coming in, and if he tells you that I can’t, tell him to expect a lawsuit this week.”
His hand was shaking as he dialed the phone from his guard’s station. He was speaking rapidly behind the glass, and I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but I figured that it wasn’t good. Not good for him, anyhow.
He hung up the phone and looked at me. “Go on through,” he said, his voice quivering.
I nodded and drove on through the gate.
“What was that about?” Rina asked, her eyes getting wide. “Wow, Aunt Harper. This is weird.”
“Actually, it’s not. It’s weird for a church to be acting like this, but, I’m telling you, this church does not pass the smell test. I’m thinking that this is more of a cult than a church.”
Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 15
