Kill Switch

by S W Vaughn

  Preston shuddered in sympathy for Mrs. Glasberg. She wondered if this was why no one had answered the door at the little white house with the red shutters when her twelve-year-old self had rung the bell, all those years ago — because the woman of the house wasn’t allowed to think for herself.

  “Fine. Can I send someone out this evening, when you’re home?” Before nine, of course, wouldn’t want to be rude, she resisted adding.

  Mr. Glasberg gave an exasperated huff. “If you really must speak to my wife, I’ll bring her to the station when I get off work,” he said. “But I guarantee, she won’t tell you anything different from me.”

  “I understand, Mr. Glasberg. All the same, we’d like to have her statement,” Preston said as calmly as she could. “Sometimes it helps to have a different perspective on the same event.”

  “Perspective?” he snorted, as if his wife wasn’t capable of having a perspective. “I don’t see why you people can’t just take my word for it. I’m doing you a favor here, turning in a killer — at considerable risk to my family, I might add. That preacher might come after us next, and what would we do then?”

  Preston’s jaw clenched. “All right. Why don’t we just give your wife a call, then?” she said as she took out her notepad and pen. “If you don’t mind writing down your home number, we can speak to her over the phone. That way it wouldn’t be an inconvenience.”

  “Fine.” He snatched the pad, scribbled his number down, and handed it back. “You’re wasting your time, though. She won’t tell you anything different.”

  “Yes, I heard that the first time,” Preston said shortly, unable to contain her irritation. “We appreciate you coming forward, Mr. Glasberg. Can we contact you if we have any more questions?”

  “Why not? You people know where I work, where I live. You know everything.” A sneer lifted his lips. “Except how to catch a murderer, apparently. Good day, Detective.”

  He walked off, and Preston bit back the scream building in her throat. She didn’t have time to give in to childish sniping from a man who’d crowned himself the master of his castle, and woe be unto anyone who challenged his throne.

  She had a reverend to question.

  She rushed back inside, ignoring the dirty look from Vonda as she headed through the counter and straight for North’s desk. “Hey,” she called to get his attention. “Did you get anyone at the church?”

  “Yeah, the secretary. He’s not there,” North said.

  “Fine. Grab your stuff. We’re going to his house.”

  North stood immediately and pulled his jacket on. “You have something else on him, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “Tell you on the way.”

  Part of her still refused to believe that Reverend Fehily, her sister’s kind and gentle pastor, could have shot someone in the head, no matter how nasty she was — let alone tortured and murdered two young women and stabbed another to death.

  But the evidence was starting to suggest that he had.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Marco

  Clarke filled me in about Neil Glasberg’s statement, unsettling in more ways than one, as she drove east through town on the way to Anton Fehily’s house.

  “I hate to say it, but he fits,” I said when she finished.

  She nodded. “I know. It’s just … hard to believe.”

  “Not really,” I told her, and smiled at her snort of disagreement. “Look, there was definitely childhood abuse. He’s intelligent, friendly, and easygoing — hell, it explains why there’s no forced entry. Who’s not going to open their door to a priest around here?”

  “Pastor,” she interrupted with a smirk. “Priests are Catholic.”

  “Whatever. So we’ve got all that, plus he knows the town. He knew the victims. All of them, personally. Plus … there’s the cross.”

  Detective Clarke shivered. “Yes,” she whispered. “There’s the cross.”

  I let her process all that while I ran through a mental list of the case myself. Check, check, check, all the way down — at least until I got to Diamond Schilz. She was killed a year before Eleanor had been arrested and the foster kids sent to different homes.

  Which would’ve made Fehily thirteen years old at the time. A thirteen-year-old killer.

  Unlikely. But not impossible.

  “Well, we definitely have enough to bring him in and question him, even without a warrant,” Clarke said after a few minutes. “We can hold him, for at least a day or two. But we still don’t have any hard evidence.”

  “We’ll find it,” I said. Maybe there was something at his house, or at the church.

  The murder weapon would be nice.

  It occurred to me then that Reverend Fehily could’ve been the one texting me those messages, the bastard who’d taken pictures of the victims while they were being tortured. In fact, I’d started getting those texts the same day I met the reverend for the first time — even though he thought we were meeting again.

  This made a lot more sense to explain his reaction than a shared, troubled past.

  It had to be him.

  “His house is down here,” Clarke said as she slowed and signaled for a left turn onto Liberty Street. The brown street signs still looked strange and out of place to me. “If he’s not home …”

  “Then we’ll try the church, and anywhere else we have to,” I said. “We’ll find him.”

  “Right,” she said tensely.

  She was just as convinced as me that we’d identified our guy.

  Detective Clarke pulled into the driveway of a single-story brown Cape Cod with a semi-detached garage. Explosions of bright flowers lined either side of the cobblestone walkway that meandered from the driveway to the front door, and more flowers grew in window boxes painted a soothing hunter green. The yard was pristine, the roof freshly tiled, gleaming and flawless.

  Straight out of Better Serial Killers and Gardens.

  She parked in front of the closed garage door and turned off the engine. “Here we are,” she said. “Do you think he’ll run?”

  “If he’s the killer?” I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. He could be arrogant enough to believe we won’t be able to charge him, so he might play innocent and come with us willingly. Having said that …” I looked around at the house and the general area, noting the back yards that bordered the yards on the next block, the relative lack of fences between most of them. “Do you know if this place has a back door?”

  She laughed a little, but her expression sobered fast. “Yes, I think it does,” she said. “I don’t believe this. Are we really going to arrest a minister? In Landstaff Junction?”

  “Yeah, I think we are.”

  “This is insane,” she whispered. But she squared her shoulders and reached for the door handle. “Okay, you take the back.”

  We exited the vehicle at the same time, and I split off to jog around the garage. The back yard was just as homey and pin-neat as the front, with more flowers planted in borders that edged the house and a small, open shed neatly stocked with a push mower and garden tools.

  The whole place felt like a defiant gesture, a big fuck-you to the rundown, chaotic squalor of the Schilz house.

  Fehily had escaped the mess, but maybe he hadn’t been able to outrun the violence.

  That shit stayed with you.

  I waited by the back door, listened as the chime of the doorbell filled the house when Clarke pressed it once, waited, and then pressed it again. After a few minutes, I heard knocking. A raised voice. The doorbell again, and more knocking.

  He wasn’t here. I knew it before Detective Clarke peered around the back corner of the garage and waved me over.

  “You hear anything in there?” she called as I approached her.

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  “Okay. We’ll try the church.”

  The drive across town was quiet and listless. We both knew he wasn’t going to be there, but we had to check anyway.

  It turned out tha
t Landstaff Junction had an appropriately named Church Street, where most of the town’s churches were located. And boy, did they have churches. Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Lutheran, non-specified ‘Christian,’ a Jewish temple — and, of course, First Baptist. The last church on the left. It was a tall, white brick building with arched front windows, a sharply sloped roof, a steeple with a visible bell and a cross mounted at the tip.

  And, of course, more flowers. The Reverend Fehily loved him some flowers.

  He wasn’t there. The church secretary who met us at the door had no idea where he might have gone, he had called yesterday and said he wouldn’t be in today, he wasn’t feeling well, she was so sorry, was there anything she could do for them and was the reverend all right.

  Clarke assured the semi-distraught woman that everything was fine and handed her a business card and asked to have the reverend please contact her at the station if he called or came in, that it was important but nothing to worry about.

  The church secretary did not seem convinced of that.

  On the way back to the station, Clarke drove with grim determination. “Okay, we’ll put out an APB for him,” she said. “I’ll pull his DMV records and make sure the patrol officers get a description of his car. He wouldn’t have … left town, right? No, he wouldn’t have,” she added immediately, as if she wanted to convince herself.

  I was glad she’d answered her own question, because I had no idea. But whether he’d left town or not, we had to find him.

  Before he killed someone else.

  Chapter Thirty

  Preston

  Not for the first time that night, Preston wondered why she’d gone out to a bar with her sister when Reverend Fehily was still out there and probably guilty of multiple murders. She should’ve called Bethy and cancelled. But there was nothing more she could do in the search for the suspect. Every officer in the department was on alert, and they’d set up roadblocks at the main access points into and out of town. She could only wait.

  So here she was. Drinking a Mudslide on the patio at Crazy Susan’s while pop music blared from the outside speakers and people milled around her, happy in their ignorance. She realized, with a heavy twinge of guilt, that part of the reason she’d come was to subtly pump her sister for information on Fehily — information that Bethy would’ve volunteered if she asked for it.

  Preston just didn’t want her sister to know that she suspected the reverend of being a serial killer. Not yet, anyway.

  Once he was arrested, everyone would know.

  She leaned against the railing that bordered the outer edge of the patio, watching the back doors until her sister emerged with a refilled Mojito and wove her way through the crowd to join her. “This is fun, right?” Bethy said, propping an elbow on the railing. “Better than sitting at home by yourself, anyway.”

  “Yeah,” Preston said without much enthusiasm, and then forced some life into her tone. “So, how is that project of yours at the church coming along?”

  “You mean the decorations for the funeral? It’s so sad,” Bethy breathed, shaking her head. “We’re going to make it beautiful for her family, though. They might not notice, but later they’ll appreciate it. When everything isn’t so …” She sighed. “Raw.”

  “It’s good of you guys to do this,” she said, and meant it. “You said that Reverend Fehily is giving the service?” A wince tried to escape with the words. Once they brought him in, even if by some miracle he wasn’t the killer, there was no way he’d be allowed to have anything to do with Chelsea Mathers’ funeral.

  Bethy nodded, and a frown marred her smooth brow. “He wasn’t there today, even though he was supposed to be,” she said thoughtfully. “Didn’t feel well, I think, at least that’s what Rachel said. But I’m sure he’ll be in tomorrow.”

  Preston wasn’t so sure about that. “Maybe he had to go somewhere?” she prodded gently.

  “Oh, no, he wouldn’t. Not with the funeral coming up,” Bethy said. “At least I don’t think … no, he just went to New York again last month, so he wouldn’t go back so soon.”

  New York?

  Again?

  Preston’s throat went dry. She took a sip of her Mudslide and spoke casually. “I didn’t know the reverend had been to the city.

  “You didn’t? I thought I told you,” her sister said. “He goes down there every three or four months, for church leadership conferences. To help strengthen the congregation.” A fond smile lifted her lips. “I don’t think I could ever be that into it, but he’s very dedicated to the calling. And that reminds me, I want to talk to him about arranging a church trip to the city. It’d be so much fun.”

  Preston barely heard her sister after the ‘every three or four months’ part. The same as the time frame between the New York victims.

  Reverend Fehily was the Kid Glove Killer.

  “Hey, Bethy, can you do me a favor?” Preston heard herself say. It was a real effort not to add stay the hell away from that monster. She was beyond grateful right now that dark-haired, brown-eyed Elizabeth Ann Goble was not his type. “If you see the reverend tomorrow, could you please tell him that I need to talk to him right away? It’s about my partner.”

  She wasn’t sure why she said that. Bethy didn’t know about the horrific foster home or the connection between North and Fehily, and she wanted to keep it that way. But it was the first thing that sprang to mind that wasn’t it’s about the women he’s killed.

  “Donovan?” her sister said. “What about him?”

  “Oh, so you’re calling him Donovan now?” Preston joked.

  “Well, yes. He asked me to, last night.” Bethy grinned. “I guess he’s a night owl, huh?”

  Something about that statement set off a warning bell in her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Sheesh, don’t get so defensive. I have Rylan, you know.” Bethy bumped her shoulder playfully. “I just mean he went out last night at, like, midnight, and he didn’t get back until four in the morning. Said he was going for a drive.” She shrugged. “I told him about the diner up the road, and he said that he might stop there. Why, is something wrong?”

  “No. It’s nothing,” she said quickly. “It’s just … I guess we’re all a little on edge.”

  “Tell me about it,” Bethy said in a somber tone. “Everybody’s so freaked out right now. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for you guys, being right in the middle of everything. By the way, I heard about that woman last night.” She almost sounded accusing, as if she’d expected Preston to tell her about yet another murder. “Wasn’t that the same house where you … you know, when you were a kid?”

  “Yes. It’s the same house,” she admitted.

  “And you don’t know what happened? To the woman, I mean.”

  “Not yet.” She closed her eyes, fighting to banish the image of Eleanor Schilz’s face. Leering as she proclaimed that Donovan hadn’t been beaten enough as a child. Suggesting that he … that she … “Bethy, can we talk about something else, please?” she finally said.

  “Damn. I’m sorry, Prez,” her sister said. “This is supposed to be a break from work.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, then.” Bethy drained the rest of her Mojito in one swallow, straightened and set the empty glass on the railing, and then stretched a hand out. “Let’s dance!” she cried.

  Preston allowed her little sister to drag her out to the center of the patio floor, where a small mob of young adults moved to the upbeat tempo of a Katy Perry song. For a few minutes, she’d let herself forget about the horrors of the world she lived in, the nightmares that had largely stayed out of the town of Landstaff Junction, Vermont — until now.

  Those nightmares would still be here in the morning.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Marco

  With nothing to do last night except wait around to see if anyone found Anton Fehily, I’d forced myself to read the rest of Donovan North’s book. It was a hard slog, and I’d had to stop sever
al times and put the television on, just to remind myself what normal people’s dialogue sounded like.

  I hoped that Donnie had been a better detective than a writer.

  Stab and Shoot did have one thing going for it, though. It was better than booze or sleeping pills at making me drowsy. I’d fallen asleep early, woken up early, and headed into work early. Detective Clarke was always there before nine, so I could try to do the same.

  Eight was my early limit, though. I’d been an up-all-night kind of guy for most of my life, and I didn’t really get along with mornings.

  She was there when I walked in, but then again, so was just about everyone else. At least they were all just arriving. I already had my usual Dunkin coffee, so I headed for my desk.

  When Clarke saw me coming, she started toward me, pointing.

  “What?” I said, looking back to see if there was an axe murderer behind me or something.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said without stopping. “Conference room.”

  “Okay.” I drew the word out, watched her stride past me, and followed her back.

  Once we were in the room, she closed the door. “Let’s sit down.”

  Damn, it was too early for mysterious meetings in empty rooms.

  I plodded over to the chairs and took a seat. For a minute the detective paced back and forth in front of me, sizzling with nervous energy. Wars waged in her eyes. Whatever she wanted to talk about, she wasn’t sure how to approach it.

  This probably wasn’t good news for me.

  “Okay.” She finally sat down in the chair next to me, nodding once, as if she’d made up her mind about something. “I have news, and I have questions,” she said. “I’m going to ask you the questions first, and I’m sorry that I have to ask. But I do have to. I hope you understand.”

  Yep. This was definitely bad news. “I get it,” I said. “Ask away.”

  She didn’t. Not at first. She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, folded her hands in her lap as she exhaled. Then she looked at me. “Where were you, the night before last?”