by J. A. Kerley
“There,” I said. “You can just barely make it out.”
We studied the sand where the body had been removed. You had to squint, but it was there.
“A cross,” Belafonte said. “Before it got flattened by the body.”
“Made by a stick, a piece of driftwood. Or just dragging a toe through the sand.”
“Where was the cross with Teresa?” Belafonte asked.
“It went into the water with her and drifted away. We’ll never find it. But if there were two, there were three.”
I went to the window, put my hands in my pockets and looked out into the night sky to recall writing a widely ignored article proposing that religious zealotry was the most dangerous of the psychopathic aberrations.
The non-religious psychopath carries some constraints in the avoidance of capture and imprisonment. The constraints may be few, but they exist. There are no constraints on the religious psychopath. Cornered, they delightedly fight to the death, as it leads to Heaven and the rewards for battling in their god’s honor. Fly planes into buildings, give a thousand followers poisoned Kool-Aid, pull a lanyard that blows a crowded café into shreds and voilà, you awaken in Paradise with God.
It always seems an angry god, needy and tyrannical and demanding unyielding allegiance. And blood. Always the blood.
The ascendant traits of faith, in my mind, were humanizing aspects. Providing awareness of the frailties of oneself and others and viewing oneself as other than the center of the universe. Of giving purpose, or reason. It’s the opposite with religious psychopaths, their version of God sucking away everything alive, leaving only vindictive robots that wander a monochromatic landscape with swords in hand, hacking at all that offends them until the earthly landscape is as empty and desolate as the sword-wielders themselves.
I stared into the night until Belafonte cleared her throat behind me.
“Yes?” I said, not turning.
“The Killer needing to leave crosses,” she said quietly. “That’s not a good thing, is it?”
“Nope,” I said. “It’s quite a bad thing.”
31
“Can you be ready in twenty minutes, Mr Nautilus?” the voice on the phone said.
Harry Nautilus blinked his eyes at the bedside clock: 6.43 a.m.
“I’ll be outside your hotel, Pastor.”
Nautilus was beneath the hotel portico in nineteen minutes, Owsley out five minutes later in a coal-black suit with a white shirt unbuttoned to his chest and carrying three ties as he jumped into the back seat.
“I, uh, can never figure out what to wear with what,” Owsley said, holding up the silken trio. “Celeste usually does that. Do you mind, uh …”
Nautilus turned in the seat. “What effect are you trying for?”
“I’m not quite sure.”
Owsley looked lost. Nautilus said, “Give me two descriptive words, Pastor. What do you want?”
“Conservative and, uh, authoritative.”
Nautilus scrutinized the ties: dark mud, darker mud and darkest mud. He stripped off his own tie, the most conservative in his collection, burgundy, but at least it had color.
Owsley looked dubious. “Don’t you think it’s a bit bright?”
“Not for anyone still breathing.”
Owsley tied the neckpiece as Nautilus drove, shooting glances in the rear-view. This was not the prancing, up-tempo, thousand-watt Richard Owsley. This was an uncertain man. A confused man.
Maybe even a frightened man.
They drove southwest as Owsley pointed out the direction. “To the right, that tall building. We’re to wait for a delivery.”
“Like UPS?”
“A tractor-trailer rig.”
The road was pitted asphalt paralleling a drainage ditch. In the distance the tall cross blazed in the rising sun, below it the apex of the roller-coaster track. Most of the pilgrims were probably still asleep.
A tall cyclone fence appeared in snatches, sometimes beside the road, sometimes lost in the tangle of gnarled trees and scrub vegetation. The fence was new, the clods of dirt at the base of the posts not yet beaten down by rain.
They turned hard left and came to a wooden guardhouse peering from the fencing, its rear end passing through another tall fence topped with razor wire. They were at the structure that had reminded Nautilus of a mine tipple, five or six stories high, fifty feet on the sides and jutting from one end of a rectangular base. Nautilus figured the architect designed it by taping a vertical shoebox atop a horizontal one.
The facility looked hastily assembled, corrugated metal sheets attached to an internal framework, some sheets shiny new, others corroded and miscolored and salvaged from elsewhere, a motley skin over wood-beam bones. A utility building sat to one side, along with elephantine tanks labeled Water and Diesel Oil. Sections of crane boom were stacked behind the tanks and alongside a Caterpillar ’dozer. The hodge-podge construction site reminded Nautilus of a military installation from early Cold War days, a missile stash in a Third World country.
The sole anomaly was the shiny Kenworth semi-tractor rig idling beside the building, on the flatbed trailer a single large crate, twenty feet long and eight wide, loading hooks affixed to the top side.
“What is this place, Pastor?” he asked.
Owsley hesitated. “It’s, uh, where I’ll be working for the next two or three weeks.” His tone said no more would be forthcoming, and Nautilus parked outside the guardhouse as a guard appeared from the shack, a man needing a shave and wearing the nondescript tan of the park’s security staff, more forest ranger than state trooper. He approached Owsley with a smile and outstretched hand.
“Howdy, Pastor Owsley,” the guard said in a lazy drawl. “We was told you were coming.” He checked his clipboard and looked into the Hummer. Nautilus saw his eye light on the photo shot at Hallelujah Jubilee. The guard nodded and Nautilus nodded back.
“Is Mr Winkler here yet?” Owsley asked the guard.
The guard looked down the road and pointed. “I do believe that’s your other party now, Pastor Owsley.”
A long limousine pulled beside the Hummer, the glass as black as obsidian. Owsley took a deep breath and exited the vehicle.
“You can return to the park, Mr Nautilus. I’ll call if I can’t get a ride back.”
Basically dismissed, Nautilus retreated down the road, turning the corner. He was another eighth of a mile down the lane when curiosity pulled the Hummer to the side of the road. Nautilus jogged back to the first bend and peered around a ragged pine.
As he’d surmised, the second arrival was the cranky old fart who boyed him in Key West. The wheelchair was out, the two security bulls putting the old codger into the chair. He rolled toward Owsley, stopping four paces distant, the men nodding without handshakes. After a few seconds each seemed to disappear into himself and they turned to look down the road as if awaiting a sign. Nautilus saw the old man shoot sidelong and unhappy glances at the Pastor, as if finding himself in possession of a product he would soon return.
Nautilus heard the sound of a heavy engine as the driver in the long Kenworth rumbled forward to the closed door of the corrugated monstrosity, then exited to loosen the tie-downs holding the crate in place.
When the crate was unhitched, the driver turned and looked down at Owsley. Grumpy Gramps looked at Owsley. The security guy looked at Owsley. Nautilus looked at everyone, then at Owsley.
Everyone seemed to be waiting for the Mobilian pastor to do something, but no one seemed quite sure what, especially not Richard Owsley, nervously tugging the burgundy tie. After a halting step, he clumsily hoisted himself on to the bed of the trailer and took a bible from his jacket. He set the bible atop the crate, having to stand on tip-toe. He lowered himself back to the ground.
The old man didn’t look impressed.
A mobile crane emerged from the structure and hooks were attached to the top of the wooden crate. The crate was lifted from the trailer bed, shifting enough to send the bible into
a slide, falling from the crate to the dirt, landing with the sound of a wet rag hitting concrete.
No one moved. It was like the air had frozen and time had stopped. Seconds passed.
The man in the chair went apoplectic, pointing, screaming, his face red with anger. No one moved, especially Owsley, who appeared terrified into catatonia.
“Do something!” Nautilus heard the man scream at Owsley. “DO SOMETHING!” The man sounded on the verge of insanity.
Then, like an actor who realized he’d missed a cue, Richard Owsley jolted into motion. He strode toward the bible, not so slow as to diminish urgency, not so fast as to seem ruffled. He walked like a man on center stage, the spotlight snapping on, about to deliver the soliloquy of his life.
The man in the wheelchair stared as Owsley crouched and retrieved the bible from the dirt. He appeared ready to dust it off, but paused as if taken by a better thought. Instead of patting the book clean, he thrust it into the dirt, rubbing it furiously against the ground.
The old man’s mouth dropped with horror.
Owsley pulled the book from the dirt and fanned its pages open with one hand while the other threw dirt between the pages. As he packed the book with soil, Owsley’s eyes rolled back in his head and he began babbling nonsense.
“In the name of Walalalalballummmashabba, I beseech you Almighty God to allullalllahtendonanan …”
Glossolalia, Nautilus realized. Speaking in tongues.
Twitching like a spastic and ululating like a drunken auctioneer, Owsley stumbled in widening circles, shaking dirt from the pages into the air, into the building, across the bed of the trailer, over the swinging crate.
“Alileelalahilalahiateshanonana …”
Owsley spun to the half-mile-distant cross at the park entrance and dropped to his knees, tipping forward until his forehead thumped the ground.
“A-shallalalaballacallahadalla … balacabatedah … nomomo …”
Face in the dirt, bible clutched to his chest, Owsley seemed to wind down. Long seconds passed before he stood unsteadily and shook a trance-like expression from his dusty face. He walked to the suspended crate and pressed the bible against its side. The crane rumbled toward the building at a snail’s pace, Owsley walking beside and keeping the bible in firm contact with the crate.
Owsley consecrated the dirt, Nautilus realized. Patting the dirt from the bible would have been the expected move, removing defilement from holy scripture. But instead, Owsley had rewritten the script on the fly, removing the taint from the dirt, consecrating it, making the ground holy. Making the site holy.
And maybe making himself holier in the process … a man connected to God?
If so, it seemed a master stroke, at least in the eyes of old Crabby Appleton, suddenly looking at peace and rolling a respectful dozen feet behind Owsley as he followed the Pastor into the building.
Nautilus blew out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and headed back to Jacob’s Ladder.
32
Roland Uttleman stood in the sun-dappled backyard of the Schrum home, cell phone to his ear. He said, “I’ll tell him, Hayes. I’ll go up there now.”
Uttleman entered the house, quiet, the only occupant Andy Delmont, sitting at an upright piano and playing a one-finger melody.
“You been upstairs recently, Andy?” Uttleman asked.
“I sang him some hymns and we prayed. Then I ran to the pizza place down the street and got him some food.”
Uttleman rode the elevator up and tried the knob. Locked. They should have taken the damn lock off before Schrum arrived.
“Let me in, Amos.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“Hayes talked with his eyes at the site, Amos. The truck arrived with section one. Pastor Owsley and Eliot were there when it was transferred inside.”
The door opened, Schrum’s wary eyes peering out.
“How’d it go?”
Uttleman walked into a room reeking of dead flowers and Italian sausage, half a pizza on the floor beside the bed. Uttleman sat atop his desk and crossed his arms. “Pastor Owsley put a bible atop the crate as it was being lowered from the truck. But the crate wobbled and the Good Book fell into the dirt.”
Schrum looked sick. “In the dirt? Lord Jesus, Eliot’s demanding I return and take over, right? I know how he translates these things.”
Uttleman’s face brightened into a broad smile. “Good news, Amos. Pastor Owsley seized the moment and turned a shitstorm into roses. The man has the instinct. I don’t think you’ll be needed until the final event.”
“Praise God,” Schrum said, shoulders dropping in relief. “I think we need to celebrate.”
Schrum went to the closet and retrieved a bottle of single-malt Scotch. He poured two fingers in a pair of glasses and handed one to Uttleman. Uttleman sloshed the fluid in his glass and studied Schrum.
“How’d you know, Amos? How’d you figure it out in one meeting?”
“Figure out what?”
“That Owsley could pull this off?”
Schrum finished the liquor and held the glass out for a refill.
“I saw the hunger in his eyes, Roland. It looked familiar.”
“It’s the same thing, Detective,” Dr Ava Davanelle said, bending low to study a resected section of muscle. “Trauma, blows to the body hidden under char. Other blows were immediately evident, a heavy object striking the victim’s mouth, breaking off several teeth.”
We’d started in the morgue at seven. I’d slept in town last night, figuring that would be the pattern until these cases got solved. Ava had begun the autopsy while I sat in the utility office and had coffee and a bacon-egg biscuit grabbed from a corner market. Belafonte didn’t seem able to eat with a body being dissected twelve steps distant.
Ava nodded to an evidence bag holding teeth, broken and whole. “Maybe forensics can figure the composition of the object that struck them. At least we’ll know if it’s metal or wood, pipe or ball bat or whatever. It might help me figure out the source of the random trauma points.”
“Like a gauntlet, you said with Teresa Mailey. That might indicate several assailants.”
“The blows come from every angle. I’ve found them as low as an ankle, and as high as the suture between the occipital and parietal.”
“Behind the ear,” Belafonte said.
Ava nodded as Belafonte’s phone beeped. “Got to take this,” she said, stepping from the room.
“You getting anywhere on this, Carson?” Ava said.
“Belafonte figured out a possible religious angle, some symbolism with the olive oil, naphtha, and wool. They have Biblical connections.”
Ava’s eyes flickered to the corpse, the skin burned and charred, the face a hideous and misshapen mask.
“You mean like a sacrifice or something?”
“Maybe. But if it’s a religious psycho, the process could mean anything. Their brains are a slurry of twisted symbols.”
We turned to the sound of the door, Belafonte entering. “That was Human Resources at Disney World getting back to me.”
I nodded. “Kylie seemed to know the area, at least according to her mother. Anything?”
“Kylie worked at Disney World for six weeks. It was just over four years ago. She was a character in biblical settings until she showed up one day acting oddly. A mandated drug screen found cannabinoids in her system and she was terminated.”
“You checked—”
“Yep. Teresa Mailey never worked at Disney World.”
I stared down at the tormented body. “I wonder what we’ll find from Jane Doe here?”
“She won’t be Jane Doe long, Carson,” Ava said. “Not if she’s in the system. Like Sandoval, she clutched her hands tight and I sent an unscorched print to forensics a half-hour ago.”
“You didn’t think to tell me?”
“You were eating. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
33
Not a minute after Ava mentioned sending th
e prints to the lab, we were called over by Nancy Amante, a tech in Latent Prints. Latents was at a far corner of the main lab, a section devoted to fingerprints – known as friction ridges in the trade – and their esoterica. There was chemistry-set gear for raising and enhancing prints, and a computer terminal linked to IAFIS, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, the world’s largest biometric database and the friction-ridge repository of over a hundred million people.
I hadn’t seen Nancy in a couple months. “Been busy?” I asked.
“Last week alone we processed nearly three hundred latents.”
“Menendez,” I ventured.
“Every print found in her house, garage, vehicle and vacation house.”
“And found nothing,” I said. Even the smallest lead would have been leaked to the media.
Nancy simply blew out a breath. “Your case was easier, Detective. We isolated and enhanced a section of the right index and got an arch pattern with some distinctive bifurcations and ridges.”
“You got a hit?” My heart rate seemed to double.
“We got seven hundred and ten possibles.”
I muttered an expletive, wanting to pick up the nearest beaker and fling it against a wall.
“That’s nationwide though. Filter for gender, age and locale and we’re down to three possibles in the Miami area.”
I mentally set the beaker down. “And the winners are?”
Nancy tapped the keyboard. “One, Linda Quinell, Lauderdale, twenty-three, arrested two years ago for stealing an iPhone at her sorority house.”
The sorority-girl aspect was an outlier. “Number two?”
“Dashelle Wilson, passing bad checks. Claimed she did it to make the payment on her Beamer, about to be repossessed.”
I frowned. “The Beamer doesn’t fit, not that it means anything. Next?”
“Darlene Jean Hammond, age twenty-five. Busts include shoplifting, drugs and paraphernalia, public lewdness, failure to appear on warrants, a DUI, and five prostitution busts in the last four years.”
“Bingo,” I said. “Low-level crime, street-corner hustling. It fits with Kylie and Teresa.”
