A Dead Red Miracle

by R. P. Dahlke

  Before he dipped under the yellow tape, I hitched my arm through his. "You forgot to shave," I said.

  "What do you think you're doing?"

  "Waiting for you," I said, grimly determined not to be left behind. "Let's see what's happened, shall we?"

  Knowing he couldn't shake me off without making a scene, we walked into the church.

  Two young sheriff's deputies were inside; one was holding a tall, metal, paint spattered ladder while another deputy, balanced on the highest step, was sawing at the rope.

  Caleb rushed down the aisle, yelling at them to stop what they were doing. The young deputy with the saw turned to Caleb as the body slipped out of his grasp and fell the last few feet to the floor.

  Caleb cursed. "What the hell do you think you're doing? This is a crime scene. Get off that damn ladder, now!"

  I looked down at the pastor's normally cheerful dark face. His brown eyes were slightly open, the color faded in death to that of moonstones.

  The rope had been thrown over one of the exposed rafters in front of the pulpit. The knot was clumsily done, but not everyone who kills themselves knows to use a hangman's knot that either breaks the neck as the weight of the body is dropped, or crushes the larynx, causing asphyxiation and death. This one seemed to have done the job, but I knew cause of death would still have to be determined by the M.E.

  "Caleb," I said. "Ask them where the ladder was when they came into the church."

  He was so angry I didn't think he'd be able to talk to these young men without choking one of them. "Was this ladder here when you came in?"

  The deputy had been about to remove an altar cloth, but seeing chief's ice blue eyes go a shade colder, he gave it to the other deputy to cover the body. "I'm sorry, Chief Stone. We heard the call and got here as fast as we could. A crowd was gathering and I couldn't stand the thought of all those people seeing him like this."

  "He's our pastor," the other deputy said.

  "Just answer the question," Caleb said through clenched teeth.

  "It was on the floor," he said, gulping nervously.

  "How close to where he was hanging?" I asked.

  "Just―I don't know, lying on the floor. About there, I guess," the young officer said, pointing a few feet away from where Jesse had been found hanging from a rafter. That would work for a suicide if he kicked it over, but it didn't explain the gash on the back of the man's head.

  "Who called it in?" Caleb asked.

  The officer pointed to a weeping woman standing by the side door. "His missus."

  "Did you call the medical examiner? Yes? Well there's one thing you did right. One of you take the front door, the other watch the side door and don’t let anyone but the M.E. or Sheriff Tom inside, you understand?"

  "Yes, sir," they said, and trotted for their assigned positions.

  "Will you give me a few minutes to talk to Mrs. Jefferson?" I asked, unable to keep the sorrow out of my voice.

  He held up five fingers and left. He understood that I was likely to get more out of the pastor's wife than he would right now. But this was his jurisdiction and his investigation and anything I learned would go directly to him, verbatim if necessary.

  I nodded and left to hug Jesse's wife.

  "Mrs. Jefferson, I'm so sorry," I said. "Do you want me to call someone for you?"

  Her skin was grey, and in spite of the rising heat of summer, her hands were cold. She was going into shock.

  "Let's go outside," I said, turning her for the door and away from the sight of her husband's black dress shoes sticking out from under a purple cloth.

  I gently sat her down on a bench in the courtyard and rubbed her cold hands between mine. "Breathe, dear lady."

  She threw her head back, gulping in great draughts of air as tears coursed down her dark cheeks. "Will you look at that? The sky is still blue, the sun is still shining. That's what my Jesse would call a good day."

  "Do you have children or relatives we can call for you?"

  "We never had chil'ren, all our relatives is in Mississippi, but don't you worry, honey, someone called my church ladies. They'll be here soon."

  Seeing our time would soon be cut short, I asked, "Was there anything different, today or yesterday?"

  "He always has a lot on his mind," she said, accepting the tissue I handed her. "Far as I could see, it weren't no different than any other day."

  "Did you see him this morning?"

  "No, but he a'ways is an early riser. Me, I like my coffee and a bit of TV in the mornin'. Jesse goes to his office for some prayer time before he answers e-mails and calls from folks in need. I don't usually see him until he comes home for suppa."

  "How about problems with one of the congregation, or money problems?"

  Mrs. Jefferson choked out a laugh. "We don't worry about such things, honey. If Jesse had extra, it would go into helpin' someone who needed it more. No, we used to livin' simple. But now that you mention it, his prayin' lately had been on someone special. He'd only say that he was wrestlin' with a problem that needed prayer. And then I found this." She held out a crumbled scribbled note.

  Surprised, I read it and asked, "This is your husband's handwriting?"

  "Looks like he wrote in a hurry, but yes, it's his," she said, blowing her nose on a tissue, "I don't have no idea what it means."

  The words were scrawled in a quick motion, the pressure of the pen deep into the paper, as if he'd held the paper on his knee when he wrote it. It said, "I tried to save them. Geronimo…." Then nothing.

  "Where did you find this?"

  "In his pocket."

  "What made you think to look in his pocket?"

  "Oh, honey, I done washed that man's clothes for near on twenty years and I always turn out the pockets to collect the coins and such before they can get inta the spin cycle. He was forever writing on scraps of paper, scripture for this sermon or that and sometimes little snippets from the Song of Solomon," she stopped and tried to swallow, tears gathering in her eyes. "He knew I'd find them. Those little love notes always brightened my washday, that's for sure." She accepted the dry tissue. "Thanks, honey. Sweetest man ever born, my Jesse."

  "If you don’t mind," I said, standing, "I'll give this to Chief Stone."

  "You take it, honey," she said, patting my hand as if I were the one in need of comfort. "It doesn't have anything to do with me."

  Two women rushed to gather Mrs. Jefferson into their arms; the praying and crying following me as I hurried back into the cool, dark interior of the sanctuary.

  The medical examiner had arrived and Ian Tom and Caleb stood to one side quietly conversing.

  Caleb reached out and drew me into the circle. "The M.E. will need to determine exact cause of death, but I've already told Ian about the nasty gash on the back of Jesse's head."

  "Don't forget the ladder," I said, "which may or may not have been moved."

  Caleb scrubbed at his buzz cut and explained about the position of the ladder.

  "They know better than to touch a crime scene," Ian said. "They'll be reprimanded."

  "Ian, they're young and both are parishioners of Jesse's church," I said.

  Ian shook his head. "I know it must've been a shock seeing their pastor like that, but they're on duty and they know the rules. What else do we have?"

  "Mrs. Jefferson said he'd been praying for someone special, and she gave me a note from his pocket," I said, handing it to Caleb. I explained about the pastor's habit of leaving wash-day love notes to his wife.

  Ian looked down and pinched the bridge of his nose. "My wife used to leave things like that in my lunch box."

  Caleb read the note and asked, "Do you have any idea what this means?"

  "Not me," I said.

  I was still having odd dreams, ones where I was underwater and trying to converse with the old Apache who always managed to work in a repeat of the name, Geronimo. And here it was again. But Caleb was frankly suspicious of dreams so I went with a question that had been b
othering me.

  "Ian, why did you put Jesse Jefferson on the list? His wife said he didn't care all that much about money."

  Ian looked around as if someone might be listening. "Let's take this conversation outside."

  "Right," Caleb said, turning for the front door.

  We walked into the starkly bright sunlight and shouting from an angry mob.

  When a rock whizzed by his head, Ian ducked and swore. "What the hell?"

  A mike boom from one of Tucson's news channels angled out over our heads, catching me in the middle of saying, "What's gotten into these people?"

  Caleb moved me behind his back, stepped forward and held up his hand. When the discontented mob quieted, he pitched his voice to be heard by the last person in the back.

  "I don't know what you've heard, but I am confirming that our department is investigating the death of Pastor Jefferson. You will not hear anything more until we have something to report, so I am asking all of you to please go home and let us do our jobs!"

  No one moved. The crowd appeared to be holding their collective breaths―or they were thinking of who to throw the next rock at.

  Using the brief silence to get in a question, the reporter shouted, "Did Pastor Jefferson hang himself because he was responsible for the unsolved shooting at the Miracle Faith Church?"

  That started the shouting all over again.

  Stunned, Caleb and I exchanged glances. So this is why Jesse's church family was here. Someone had leaked the death as a suicide to the press. No wonder his parishioners were angry.

  Caleb turned to Ian. "See if you can talk some sense into this crowd. I'm going to get some smoke guns."

  Caleb touched my elbow and I followed him to his SUV. He used his remote to unlock the doors and rummaging around the back, pulled out his megaphone and the smoke guns. Handing the smoke guns to me, he said, "I don't want to raise the level of paranoia, so give these to the patrolmen furthest away from the crowd, then go after that newsman. I think he's from a Tucson channel. Find out…"

  "I'm on it," I said, and took off to find the Wishbone patrolmen. Reminding them of their chief's instructions, I headed for the brightly painted blue and white Channel 4 truck; complete with all the satellite equipment they would need for an instant upload to their TV station.

  I yanked open the slider on the truck and scrambled inside. A driver, cameraman and a reporter were huddled around a monitor and jerked around in surprise at my bold entrance. I almost laughed at their fright―as if I might have a gun. Then again, this was Arizona where it's legal to carry a sidearm without a permit, but I wasn't. Not today, anyway.

  "Shit," one of them said, reaching for the lock on the sliding door.

  "If you're with the police, we have nothing to say," the one in the suit and tie said.

  "I'm not with any law enforcement department," I said. "I'm a private investigator and I'm here to make a deal."

  The cameraman and driver made noises that I should be kicked out, but the newsman hushed them with a wave of his hand, his eyes now squarely on mine.

  "How'd you like to be first to get the whole story on the pastor's death?" I asked.

  The cameraman smirked. "We already got that from the caller."

  "Shut up, Dwayne," the newsman snarled.

  Dwayne just confirmed my suspicions; the killer had made that call, bringing the reporter and crew all the way down here for the salacious details on a suicide. I could see the news bite now: Popular pastor commits suicide as he's about to be exposed as a killer.

  That alone was enough for me to want to nip this in the bud. "I suppose your caller disguised his voice."

  The cameraman snickered. "So what? Wouldn't you?"

  The newsman threw up his hands. "Should we all just leave so you can tell the nice lady everything you know? Which won't be much because you're an idiot, Dwayne!"

  The cameraman muttered under his breath, opened the sliding door and just before slamming it shut, said, "You think you're so smart. Well, I'm done with you, asshole!"

  I listened to the A/C unit hum while the reporter thoughtfully rubbed his chin. Something told me he wasn't thinking about Dwayne.

  "Nice rig," I said looking around.

  "So it was murder, not suicide?" the newsman said, his eyes zeroing in on me.

  I said yes because I didn't want the suicide angle to be part of the six-o-clock news. "But you don't have the full story," I said. "Not all of it."

  "There's more?"

  "When did you get the call about the pastor?"

  The newsman was just young and hungry enough to see his advantage. "What do you think, Walt? Six a.m.? Yeah, about an hour before we got here."

  The driver nodded. "That's what I remember."

  "This is actually the second, and perhaps third, murder this week," I said. "And we believe they are all connected. We're this close," I said, holding up my thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, "to solving it."

  The newsman undid his tie. "For such a quiet little town, bodies are dropping like flies; Ron Barbour, a local P.I. in a house explosion and big shot car dealer, Wade Hamilton, now missing and presumed dead. Who's the third? The pastor, right?"

  I nodded. "What exactly did the caller say?"

  "I can do better than that," he said, switching on a recording.

  The voice was altered, but it was definitely male. "Pastor Jesse Jefferson hung himself this morning after investigators got a tip that he was responsible for a murder at the Miracle Faith Church shootout."

  "Your turn," he said, crossing his arms and leaning back against the machinery.

  "The police department got the call about the same time you did and before you ask, I know because I'm married to Wishbone's police chief. The pastor's hanging was meant to look like a suicide, but that was after someone bashed him in the back of the head."

  The newsman stared for a minute. "Just enough titillating news to get us here. You said you're a private investigator? What's your interest in all of this?"

  I chewed on my lip. Anything I said to him now would be used on the ten o'clock news, but wasn't that what I wanted? Turn up the heat on the killer. Smoke them out−or get myself killed trying.

  "I can't tell you anything more than that I'm investigating a cold case murder that links all three of these dead men.

  He rolled his eyes. "I can find the links by myself, but changing the subject, I'd be interested in your take on what I got in the mail last week."

  My brows went up in question.

  He waited, watching to see if I'd beg? I rolled my eyes at that idea and he said, "An unauthorized biography on Pastor Jefferson. Badly written, but the author claims that Jesse was slated to become Mother Beason's next bishop and that he never actually left the church. I figured it was simply hate mail, until today's phone call. Your turn."

  "Who was the author?"

  "Ronald T. Barbour."

  When I flinched, he laughed. It was enough to let him know he'd hit a nerve. "Published by Office Max," he said, cheerfully.

  "Was there a date on the publication?"

  "I thought you'd never ask. A week ago today. I haven't the time or the resources to scour all of Tucson looking for which Office Max he used, but you're the investigator, right?"

  Anyone can have a book printed these days. Had Ron written the one book in an attempt to blackmail the pastor? From everything I'd learned about Jesse, that idea was ridiculous. So what did Ron want? To ruin Jesse's career? The Ron I knew would've put aside any salacious information to be used later, like when Jesse was headed for bigger and better things.

  The newsman cleared his throat, bringing me back to the moment. "I said, can I get your name? In case I have more questions?"

  Now what was I going to tell him? That Pearlie and I were Ron Barbour's unsung business partners? I didn't have the time or the inclination. I smiled and said, "Susan Anthony."

  One eyebrow went up. "Does that happen to come with the middle initial B?"

&nb
sp; Busted, I opened the sliding door on the van to get out.

  "Not even a card?" he asked, feigning disappointment. "Have it your way. We have footage of you in conversation with Wishbone's police chief. I'm sure someone in the newsroom can identify you."

  I took his card, pocketed it, put my feet on the ground and said, "You'll get your story. All of it and soon, I promise."

  <><><><><>

  Pearlie showed up as I was walking back to Caleb.

  "Where've you been?" I asked.

  "Ian Tom and Caleb are still doing crowd control and I got caught on the wrong side of the barricades. Boy, howdy, his parishioners are royally pissed. What have you learned?"

  I told her about the anonymous call to the Tucson TV station and last, but not least, Jesse's unfinished note in his pocket.

  "You still got the note?"

  "No, I'm keeping my promise to be open and honest with my husband."

  "In other words you turned it over to Caleb. I’m gonna write that down to remember should I ever get married."

  "Oh yeah? When're you getting married?"

  "Nothing happening on that front. I just want to remind myself to cut out all that stuff from my wedding vows."

  "So which one of those bearded musician's did you go home with?"

  "I had too much to drink, okay? Someone offered me a couch for the night and I took them up on it."

  "Well then," I said. "You won't mind if we go see Harley Aldrich again today, will you?"

  She rolled her lips inward, holding onto to her words so they wouldn't escape. Ha! Pearlie never could keep a secret from me.

  I'd razz her about it, but right now we had work to do. "Let me tell Caleb we're leaving. Velma and Zelma are coming to the office at nine a.m."

  "On a Sunday?" she asked. "Boy howdy, them girls' work ethics are showing real promise. Drop me off at my place. I'll pick up my Jeep and meet you at the office."

  .

  Chapter Twenty-four:

  Ron's two ex-wives arrived as Pearlie and I were loading up more photos to show Harley. The women had ditched their black suits for colorful matching sundresses. Come to think of it, for sisters, they seemed remarkably similar in just about everything, including their need to get one up on the other. But then Pearlie and I had been scuffling with each other since we were kids. What was I saying? We were still hissing at each other, but I might as well ask.