by P J Parrish
“Souvenirs and photos from other crimes,” Louis said. “Jewelry and bloody clothing that your father took, not only from his own department, but from other police departments.”
“Why would—” Jennifer dropped her voice to a whisper. “Why would he have stolen evidence?”
“To sell.”
Jennifer looked confused then her eyes narrowed. “Like murder memorabilia?”
“Yes.”
She turned away and set down her cup. Louis realized she was looking at something on a shelf, a framed photograph of a white-haired man in a Keweenaw County Sheriff’s uniform. He had a feeling it was her grandfather.
“Did he sell any of my photos?” Jennifer asked without turning around.
“There were twelve in the envelope. Does that sound right?”
Jennifer gave a small nod but still didn’t face him.
“We’ll have to confiscate the footlocker,” Louis said. “The items need to be returned to their agencies. And I’m sorry, but the state will also be coming by to do a more thorough search to make sure there isn’t anything else.”
When Jennifer turned around, her face was like her photograph of the lighthouse in winter—desolate and lonely.
“This was my grand-parents’ home,” she said softly. “And I sort of grew up here. This is where my better memories are. So, this stuff you talked about, I don’t want it here. Take it. Take it all.”
Louis gave her a moment, his eyes still wandering. There were other pictures of the grandfather and two of women of different generations—maybe a younger Jennifer with her mother—but no father memorialized. And what little she did have left of him, she wanted gone.
Louis wanted to say something, but no words came. But he did understand. He knew about the holes that could be left by a lousy father. Or in his case, an absent father. The wounds never healed, no matter whether you threw the photo of the man in the trash or kept it in the bottom of a drawer you never opened.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He was back on US-41, driving through the thick pines to Copper Harbor to see Reverend Grascoeur. Snow flittered against the windshield and again he looked up to the sky. He hadn’t told Monica he wasn’t exactly sure what lake-effect snow was, though he knew it had something to do with the water churning up snow and the lake being warmer—or maybe it was colder—than the land. Downstate, they just had regular snow that came straight down and stayed there. This lake-effect stuff, how bad could it be?
Finally, he saw the sign for Copper Harbor and slowed down. Monica’s directions placed the church down by the ferry docks on Brockway Avenue. Louis passed a sign with arrows pointing north to Eagle Harbor, west to Hancock and east to Isle Royale Ferry. Some wag had added a second official looking sign below that read MIAMI FL 1990 MILES.
Copper Harbor was just a larger version of all the other little frontier-like towns up here: a log-cabin bar, mom-and-pop motels, and gray, weathered homes. The mud-caked cars were armed with giant, nubby tires and the trucks were built for survival—not pleasure. An old man coming out of the post office was carrying his mail and a rifle.
Louis spotted the ferry docks and slowed. There was no way to miss the Church of the Northern Lights.
It stood out like a rainbow in a gray sky. Each log of the cabin was painted a different candy color and a bright-yellow cross made of two-by-fours graced the peaked roof. There was a sign on the snowy lawn, one of those metal portable jobs with an arrow pointing toward the front door. The letters on it spelled out: KEEP USING MY NAME IN VAIN AND I’LL MAKE WINTER LONGER — GOD.
Louis got out of the Explorer, ducked his head against the stinging wind and walked to the door. As he reached for the handle, he saw a note tacked to the wood, dated that day.
WENT TO VISIT MY SISTER IN HARVEY.
MIGHT BE 2 DAYS MIGHT BE 6.
IF YOU NEED GUIDANCE, PRAY.
– REV GRASCOEUR
Dammit.
What now? There were no witnesses to hunt down and who knew when Nurmi’s guys could locate any new records on the disposition of the remains? Louis got back in the Explorer, staring out at Grascoeur’s note flapping in the wind.
Well, that left Harvey.
He pulled out the map Nurmi had given him, thinking that, with his luck so far on this case, Harvey was probably in Wisconsin. He scoured the little dots of the Keweenaw Peninsula and finally spotted HARVEY, a speck near Marquette.
He glanced up at the sky. The clouds were getting lower and closer, like a dust storm moving in across the plains. Only this dust was coming across the churning gunmetal lake and it was white.
The best thing to do would be to swing by Nurmi’s office and drop off Halko’s footlocker, pick up the candle box and the other evidence and take them to the Marquette lab himself. Then he’d head to Harvey to find Grascoeur, and if the guy told him anything useful, he’d stick around. If not, there was no sense in staying up here right now. Until the lab results came back or Nurmi’s men found the boys’ remains, he could get more done on the case sitting in front of a computer in Lansing.
He hit the accelerator. He’d have to kick it hard to Marquette if he was going to stay ahead of the snow.
It was near five by the time he pulled into the lot of the state forensics lab in Marquette. When he killed the engine, snow began to pile up on windshield. It had started about thirty miles out of Copper Harbor, forcing him to turn on the bubble and grill lights so the Explorer could be seen more clearly. The drive had been a nerve-cramping crawl.
Louis slowly took his hands off the steering wheel and flexed his aching fingers.
Man, he needed a drink.
But there was no time. He pushed from the truck and went around back to open the rear door. Nurmi had re-sealed the box and wrapped the candle box in plastic, sealing it with evidence tape to protect the chain of custody.
Inside the lab, the woman at the front desk directed him to a small room and left him a stack of forms and a roll of orange evidence labels. Louis filled out the form for the candle box and underwear. As he rose and started gathering everything up, he remembered the metal object he had found in the mine and retrieved the piece of Kleenex from his jacket, unfolding it.
Even here, under the glare of the fluorescent lights, he couldn’t tell if it was a foreign coin, a medal, jewelry or something else entirely. On the form, under EXAM REQUESTED, he wrote one sentence: Tell me what this is.
A young lab tech came in with a large plastic bin stenciled MICH STATE POLICE. He didn’t seem fazed at the sight of the tiny underwear but scrutinized the candle box.
“Man, this is an oldie,” he said, as he pressed the lid down tighter through its plastic wrap.
“Careful with that, please,” he said.
The tech gave Louis a tired smile. “I always am,” he said. He set the candle box carefully in the plastic bin and snapped the lid on.
“Where you from?” the tech asked.
“Lansing,” Louis said. “Got a long drive home.”
“Not tonight,” the tech said. “They just closed the bridge because of high winds.”
Louis let out a long sigh.
“There’s a Ramada down the block,” the tech said. “They’ve got a decent bar and grill.”
A new plan formed in Louis’s head. Grab a steak and beer at the Ramada tonight and check in with Grascoeur in the morning on his way back to Lansing. Louis thanked the tech and left.
By the time he checked into the hotel, the wind-whipped snow was coming down like razors. After a quick dinner, he went back to his room and called Camille to give her a progress report. He then called Joe, but she was out of her office and he got her machine at home. When he tried to reach Lily, her mother Kyla told him Lily was at sleepover at a friend’s house. Finally, Louis called information and got a phone number for an Evelyn Grascoeur in Harvey. When he called it, he got an answering machine, so he left a message identifying himself, saying he was trying to reach the Reverend Grascoeur about the boys found in the Gray Wolf
mine.
After he hung up, he crawled into bed with the TV remote. But after a half-hour watching Night Court, he clicked off the TV and rolled to his side. His body was exhausted, but his brain was on overdrive, moving puzzle pieces that didn’t seem to fit.
He closed his eyes. It felt like he had been asleep only minutes when he was jarred awake by the ringing phone. He groped for the receiver.
“Yeah, Kincaid.”
“It’s Camille.”
He struggled to sit up. In the window across the room, he could see a swathe of pink on the horizon. The snow had stopped. It was dawn.
“Captain Steele is calling everyone back,” she said. “You’re going to Grand Rapids ASAP.”
“Grand Rapids?” He looked at his watch. “It’ll take me—”
“One hour by jet,” she said. “You need to be at the Marquette airport in forty-five minutes. Gate 12. Leave the Explorer there.”
He pushed back the blanket and looked around for his pants. “What do we have in Grand Rapids? What kind of—”
“You’ll see the scene yourself when you arrive,” Camille said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
He couldn’t believe what he was looking at. A church . . . he was standing in front of another church. It wasn’t anything like the task force’s old stone home in Lansing. And it sure as hell looked nothing like Reverend Grascoeur’s hippie retreat up in Copper Harbor.
But it was definitely a church. A very big church.
It was sleek and modern, all white stone and sharp angles, a huge main building with tentacles radiating out to smaller buildings and chapels, set down over what looked to be about two acres of grounds bordered by woods. It could have the corporate headquarters of some high-tech firm.
Except for the steeple.
Louis’s eyes traveled upward, up to where the steeple, soaring at least fifty feet upward, pierced the gray sky like a giant white stiletto.
“Sir?”
He looked back at the Grand Rapid’s Sheriff Department cruiser. The officer leaned across the seat to look at him.
“Don’t forget your bags, sir.”
Louis reached back into the cruiser and retrieved his duffel and briefcase. Tossing a thanks to the officer, he headed toward the church’s entrance. The Grand Rapids deputy hadn’t been able to pull very far into the church’s long circular drive because it was blocked with cruisers, the medical examiner’s car, and a white Kent County Crime Scene Unit van. The prime spots up near the entrance were taken by four blue state police Explorers, just like the one Louis had left at the airport back in Marquette.
Two CSU techs, standing outside their van, eyed Louis as he passed. It had been three hours since he had gotten the call from Camille summoning him here. Why weren’t the techs inside processing the scene? But then again, Louis had no idea what was even in the church. Camille had told him nothing other than the other members of the team would meet him.
Louis zipped up his parka and cut across the icy lawn. He passed a large stone sign emblazoned with BEACON LIGHT CATHEDRAL and the announcement of worship at 9:30 and 11 a.m. on Sundays and 6:00 p.m. Wednesday evenings with Rev. Jonas Prince. Below that was a Bible verse: Let brotherly love continue – Proverbs
The Kent County sheriff’s deputy guarding the door stepped forward to stop Louis but drew back with a brisk nod when Louis flashed his badge. He held the door open and Louis caught a glimpse of the words carved in the stone header above the double doors: COME UNTO ME.
Inside, the first thing that hit him was a faint smell of wood polish. Then came the sensation of cold. After the chill wind outside, he had been expecting the comfort of heat. But it was as cold in here as it was outside.
Another Kent County deputy was standing guard in the wide circular foyer and stepped forward.
“Can I take that for you, sir?” he asked, nodding to Louis’s duffel.
“Yeah, thanks.” Louis said. He handed over the duffel but kept his briefcase. The foyer was white marble with two hallways leading off to the right and left. There were two benches covered in red leather, and some metal chairs stacked in a corner near two folded wheelchairs.
As he stepped between the white pillars that led to the sanctuary, Louis paused to take a look.
Three long, red-carpeted aisles led up to a wide, elevated white marble altar. The other team members were gathered up on the altar. He started in, but the deputy touched his arm.
“Sir, you’ll need these,” he said, holding out a pair of latex gloves and blue shoe covers.
Louis took them and slid the covers over his shoes. He started down the middle aisle, snapping on the gloves as he walked.
The sanctuary was cavernous, three stories tall, the white marble walls broken by soaring panels of stained glass that forced the eyes ever upward. Two levels of balconies rimmed the wood pews of the main floor and Louis estimated the place seated a couple thousand people. It looked like a huge modern theater.
Except, Louis noted as he approached the stage-like altar, this theater had a thirty-foot, carved-wood pulpit off to the one side and a fifteen-foot, gleaming silver crucifix in the middle of the altar. And behind the cross, thrusting upward like space-age metal stalagmites, were the pipes of a mammoth organ.
Emily Farentino’s red hair gleamed in the spotlights on the altar. She saw him coming and said something to the others. They turned in unison—Cam in his black leather jacket, Junia in a cape as red as the carpet. Steele was nowhere to be seen.
When they parted, Louis saw the body.
It was lying in front of the crucifix, and as Louis climbed the six steps, he could see it was a man—elderly, with wispy, white hair and a long, concave face, tinged blue. He was wearing a royal blue robe with a flat, gold scarf laid over his chest, the collar of a white dress shirt just visible beneath the robe.
“We’ve been freezing our asses off here,” Cam said, his voice low. “What took you so long to get here, man?”
“High winds up in Marquette,” Louis said. “We had a delay in taking off.”
Cam let out a sigh that emerged as vapor in the cold air.
“What are we doing here?” Louis asked.
“Not sure. Steele hasn’t told us yet,” Emily said. “Just that this guy was found dead here on the altar this morning.”
Louis decided not to ask the obvious. The task force was charged with cold cases. This guy looked like he hadn’t even turned stiff yet.
“What’s been done so far?” Louis asked Emily.
“Nothing,” she said. “No one’s been let in except the ME. Steele said he wanted us to get a feel for things first.”
That was why the heat was off, Louis realized. Steele had probably ordered it turned off to preserve the body and the scene until the team was in place. That also explained why the CSU guys were still outside cooling their heels.
“Get a feel,” Louis said. “Did he say for what?”
“You tell me. You’re supposed to be the psychic one,” Cam said.
Louis thought back to the first meeting of the task force, how Steele had hinted at Louis’s “special feel” for homicides. As a PI who handled a fair amount of cold cases, his impressionistic walk-throughs of crime scenes often came ten or more years after the body and blood—and those weird intangibles his friend Mel once called “restless energies”—were gone.
But this scene was fresh.
“Where’s Steele?” Louis asked Emily.
“Not sure. He disappeared about ten minutes ago.”
Louis realized someone else was missing. “Where’s Tooki?”
“In the church office, getting a phone line to connect his portable computer to his never-never land of databases,” Junia said.
Louis glanced around and finally spotted Steele off in a far corner, talking to a man in a green parka. The man had blueprints in his hands and Louis guessed that Steele was getting a layout of the place.
Louis turned back to the body. The hands were covered in brown paper ba
gs, the fingernails protected for evidence. It didn’t look as if the ME had disturbed any of the clothing, and Louis couldn’t help but wonder if—once the man had been declared dead—Steele had ordered the ME out for a while.
“Do we have an ID?” Louis asked.
“The Right Reverend Jonas Prince,” Cam said.
“It’s just The Reverend,” Junia said.
“What’s the difference?” Cam said.
“This is a Methodist Church,” Junia said. “American Methodists don’t use the term ‘right.’”
Cam let out a sigh and moved away.
Louis squatted next to the body. The eyes were open—pale gray with tiny, red dots in the whites. He heard sniffling and looked up into Junia’s face. She was holding a Kleenex to her red nose.
“Capillary rupture in the sclera,” she said. “Result of a struggle and asphyxiation.”
“Asphyxiation with this sash thing?” Louis asked.
“It’s called a stole,” Junia said, kneeling next to him. “And no, asphyxiation by hand. I’m guessing the killer put the stole on after death. Ease it down and look at the skin on the neck.”
Louis pulled gently at the stole until he could see the man’s neck. There were two thumb-sized bruises on both sides of the windpipe, which meant the man was strangled from the front. It was an unusual way to strangle someone because it allowed the victim to fight back. It was a helluva lot easier to come in from behind and use a garrote or chokehold.
“Make sure the stole is back where it was,” Junia said softly. “Captain’s got his own photographer coming and he wants it exactly as it was.”
As Louis tucked the stole back in place, he noticed a design embroidered on one flap. The design looked like a house with three circles hovering above it, but the threads were so worn, it was hard to tell.
“Any idea what this means, if anything?” he asked Junia.
She peered at the design then shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Catholic priests wear stoles, or cinctures, and I know they have different stoles for different occasions. It could just be personal.”