by Blake Pierce
McDaniel shrugged. “I got a call twenty minutes ago. I know about Wade. Then about five minutes ago, I got another call. From a news program, asking if I had anything to say.”
Man, they’re moving fast, Mackenzie thought.
“And do you know about the three other religious leaders that have been in the news over the last week and a half or so?” Mackenzie asked.
“I do. No one will come out and admit it, but there’s an undercurrent of absolute fear running through the religious community of this city right now. So yes…I know.”
“I suppose it goes without saying that we’d like to ask you a few questions,” Mackenzie said.
“I figured as much. Although I don’t know how I could help you. Unless you’re here to see if our little altercation in front of his house got me so angry that I decided to murder him. If that’s why you’re here, I can help you. I didn’t do it.”
“Tell us about that altercation in front of his house,” Mackenzie said.
“It was stupid on my part. But…I worked hard to get to where I was. I devoted my time and my heart to God. I was excited. I felt like I was finally achieving my life’s purpose—to work toward the wrong I had done in the past. And then Coyle and whoever else makes the decisions for St. Peter’s got scared and closed the door in my face. It’s more than rejection. It’s borderline demoralizing. So I went to his house to give him a piece of my mind. We ended up in the front yard because he wouldn’t invite me in. And it got heated.”
“What did you do in your past that was so bad that you decided to devote your life to the church?” Mackenzie asked.
“I was big into New Age teachings,” he said. “For a while, I even dabbled in Wicca. I was a lost young man, looking for answers in any place other than the Catholicism my parents shackled me to through my childhood.”
“And that bothered Coyle?”
“No. Not at first. I’ve been working on a book about it. About how the influx of New Age nonsense is more harmful to Christianity than we think. I’ve been shopping the pitch around and finally got an agent. That agent got me a book deal pretty quickly and I think that’s what freaked Wade out. To think that a man within his church would be associated with a book filled with some controversial topics, even if it was all to promote the glory of God. It scared him and they cut me loose.”
“Do you intend to seek a position as a deacon elsewhere?” Mackenzie asked. She felt a little foolish, not quite knowing how the process worked.
“I don’t know,” McDaniel said. “If I’ve got reporters already calling me about his death, I don’t see my name being held in a good light anymore. This has the potential to ruin me.”
He’s far too worried about the call from the reporters, she thought. He’s more worried about the reporters and media than the fact that the FBI showed up at his house.
She was pretty sure things would check out, but she asked anyway: “Mr. McDaniel, where were you last night?”
“Until about midnight, I was in the garage fixing this weed eater,” he said, hitching a thumb to the back of the truck. “After that, I went to bed. My son can vouch for that because he was being sneaky trying to play his Xbox after midnight. I yelled at him a little about it.”
“And is he inside?”
“No. He caught the bus for school about ten minutes before you got here.”
Not that it matters, Mackenzie thought. He’s not the guy.
“Thank you for your t—” she started, but was interrupted by the ringing of her cell phone.
She saw Harrison’s name and number pop up, so she excused herself by turning away and taking a step toward the car.
“Hey, Harrison, what is it?”
“Wherever you and Ellington are, turn around and come to the Third District police station.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Some in this case might say a miracle,” Harrison joked. “We’ve got our guy. We’ve got the killer.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
There were two police officers waiting for them when they arrived and Mackenzie could tell right away that they were just as confused as she was. They did, however, look slightly relieved when she and Ellington got out of the car.
“What the hell is going on?” Mackenzie asked the officer who was flanking them on the left.
“Some guy just came in this morning and confessed to it all.”
“Is there any evidence against him?”
“He knows more than he should about the crime scenes,” the officer said. “Honestly, I don’t know that much. There’s only a few officers and a detective on this. Two of your agents showed up about twenty minutes ago.”
The officers escorted them into the Third District headquarters and then moved quickly. They walked through a small bullpen-type area and then down a hall. At the end of the hall, several people were milling around. Two of them were in telltale bureau suits: Harrison and Yardley.
The two escort officers gave them both a little wave and then hurried back down the hallway toward the bullpen. They were apparently very anxious to get as far away from this scene as possible. Mackenzie and Ellington proceeded toward the small group of people at the end of the hallway. Beyond them, there was a left turn.
The interrogation rooms, Mackenzie assumed.
“What do we know about him?” Mackenzie asked Yardley as they joined the other two agents.
“I’m still catching up. We’re getting updates as quickly as the bureau can send them. The officers here are trying their best to help with public records. But as of right now, we know this: At seven forty-five this morning, Joseph Simmons came in through the front doors here and started screaming that he needed to be punished. He couldn’t take it anymore. Someone tried to come over and calm him—a woman who had just come on duty—and he punched her in the jaw. He’s been in custody for about an hour now and he seems to know an awful lot about these priest cases. And I hate to say it, but he just…I don’t know. He feels crazy.”
“Have you spoken with him yourself?” Mackenzie asked.
“For about three minutes. But then my phone started blowing up with information from the bureau about him so I stepped out. By the way, everything I received, I forwarded to your email.”
“Thanks,” Mackenzie said. She stepped slightly away from the gathered crowds and their murmurs of conversation. She pulled up her email and found the two emails that had come from Yardley in the last half an hour and read over them. Bit by bit, it seemed like things were starting to fall into place. The way they had gotten their killer might have been anticlimactic but at least they seemed to have him now…one way or the other.
She read through the PDFs the bureau had sent and quickly got a clear picture of Joseph Simmons. An admitted runaway at the age of fifteen, he had lived on the streets of Richmond, Virginia, until the age of twenty-one. Working a few manual labor jobs at farms and construction sites for a few years, he managed to make enough money to support himself, eventually landing a steady job at a Target in Richmond. By the age of twenty-eight, he moved to DC, where he became a systems safety trainee and then assistant manager at a packing warehouse. It was a great story of lifting yourself up by the bootstraps…if not for where Simmons seemed to go a bit off the rails three years ago.
He had been arrested three years ago outside of a bar for beating up a woman. He had then hit the boyfriend with a brick, nearly hospitalizing him. He did a brief stint in prison for the assault and when he was released, he was arrested for a string of assault-and-run cases in the DC area. He was eventually released when the actual suspect was found. But in the two years that had passed since then, Simmons had come forward to confess to two other crimes. One was for the theft of a car and the beating of a prostitute after her services had been rendered.
For that, he had been found guilty.
But when he came forward to confess to the murder of a juror during a high-profile courtroom drama last year, he was clearly innocent. He was released a
nd sent to a psychiatrist.
And now here he was again. It was weird and it made no sense. In other words, it seemed to fit perfectly with this case.
“What do you think?” Harrison asked.
“I think it’s at least worth a shot. His relentless habit of confessing to crimes is an attention-seeking behavior—especially for a very serious one he didn’t commit. And if he’s that desperate for attention, there’s no telling what he’s capable of.”
Aside from her, Ellington, Yardley, and Harrison, there were two cops and a plainclothes detective in the hallway, all discussing what had happened this morning. One of the cops was laughing softly, but the detective looked grave.
“Who’s in charge here?” she asked.
“You guys,” the cop who had not been laughing said. “And good riddance, as far as I’m concerned. Just let us know if you need anything.”
Mackenzie nodded and headed down the branched off hallway to the left. There were three rooms along this hall, the last of which was an interrogation room; the one beside it was the observation room, where she assumed the cops, the detective, and her fellow agents would be watching her.
She stepped into the interrogation room and found Joseph Simmons staring at her. His posture froze her for a moment. For a split second, she saw Gabriel Hambry, sitting there with a hole in his head and a business card pinned to his shirt.
She shook the thought away, taking in Simmons’s gaze. He did not look nervous or out of sorts. He looked almost expectant, like a child who was sitting down for his birthday cake, knowing that the moment to blow out the candles was quickly approaching.
He wants attention, she thought. And if he’s the killer, he’ll likely clam up and become difficult if he doesn’t get it. I need to act like I’m impressed—and maybe even defeated that he came to us rather than us catching him.
“So tell me,” she said, feigning embarrassment. “Why now? Why are you coming to us now?”
“Because my work is done,” Simmons said.
“Four victims,” she said, making sure to keep her voice at a defeated volume and tone. “Why four?”
“I don’t know. It’s what I was told.”
“Told by whom?”
Simmons tilted his head from one side to the other and bit at his bottom lip. Eventually, he shrugged and answered: “Because it’s what they said. The voices.”
“And what else do the voices tell you?” Mackenzie asked.
“Oh, I can’t tell you that. They’d get very upset. Besides, I had to turn myself in. Let’s face it…you were never going to catch me.”
“Oh, we would have eventually,” she said, doing her best to seem overly frustrated. She knew she wasn’t much of an actress, but she also knew that Simmons wouldn’t notice…so long as she fed his ego.
“Sure you would have,” he said. He then let out a raspy laugh that sounded almost as rehearsed as Mackenzie’s defeat.
“I have to know,” Mackenzie said, sitting down across the small table from him. “With Coyle, how did you get that cross up? It must have weighed a ton.”
“Well, the beams came from the church basement. They were props that were sometimes used for children’s ministry. One of them even had a bolt halfway up from where it was used for some temporary construction project or something. I slid the boards right out the basement entrance. I propped one up against the back wall while I nailed Coyle’s hands to the other one. Wrestling him up there was a feat, but I managed to get it done.”
“By yourself?”
“Yeah,” he said, as cocky as ever.
“What did you have against these men?” Mackenzie asked.
“The same thing everyone else in the world has against them. Their blind faith. Their ignorance and their willingness to lead others astray toward their invisible gods. Their hatred of homosexuals. Their greediness. Their sins that they try to cover up like a cat covering up shit in a litter box.”
“But four was enough?” Mackenzie asked. She was pretty sure that if she tried circling back around, Simmons would get frustrated and be easier to trip up. Also, if he was the killer, the scattered conversation rather than a focus on his work would irritate him. “Is there some special relevance to the number four?”
“No,” he said. “I just felt that my job was done. I told you. The voices said four. So I stopped at four.”
She nodded but thought she had exposed the first flaw in him. To the basic questions where he could gloat, he had gone into detail. But when she asked him why he had stopped, his answer had been vague. Basic, even. Voices—a lame and clichéd answer.
“Well, you’ve done the right thing today, Mr. Simmons,” she said. “Of course, I’m sure you know your rights, so do I really need to read them to you?”
A flicker of hesitation passed across his face. It was so quick that Mackenzie barely noticed it. “Yeah, I do.”
“I figured,” she said. “I mean, the thing with the stolen car and the prostitute several years back. And there was that other one, right? That other murder you confessed to…”
“That stupid bitch on the jury, you mean?”
“Yeah,” Mackenzie said. “But you managed to slither away from that, didn’t you?”
And then there it was again…a crack in his façade. She wasn’t quite sure what it meant just yet but she knew for certain that he was hiding something.
“No, I didn’t slither away,” he said. “The idiot cops charged someone else with it. They let me go. And look what it got them. Four dead priests.”
“So was this some sort of point you felt you needed to make? An incompetent system of law let you off so you had to show them how big of a mistake they made?”
“No. This was not a point. But maybe these four dead priests will—”
“Well, they weren’t all priests,” Mackenzie pointed out.
Simmons shifted uncomfortably as Mackenzie sat forward. Something was not right here. She could all but see it in the room. It was written all over his face and lingering in almost everything he said. Yes…something was not right here and she intended to turn the tables on him.
She gave him a moment to respond and when he didn’t, she went on with her trickery.
“Yes, Coyle was a priest. So was Father Costas. But Woodall and Tuttle were not. Woodall was a pastor and Tuttle was a reverend. Not priests. Big difference there. Did you know that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Simmons said. “They’re dead now. Their lying voices are permanently shut.”
“That’s true,” Mackenzie said. “Just one more question. You had set things out at the foot of Coyle’s cross, but not at the others’. Why?”
“Just to have some extra fun. It’s what they did with Jesus, you know? They even cast lots for his clothes.”
“Yes, I know. But why the strange things you left at the foot of Coyle’s cross? What was the significance? His wallet, his clothes, and the jelly beans.”
Again, the slightest flicker of doubt showed on his face. But he covered it with a smile.
She didn’t want to let the moment escape, so she pounced on it.
“Jelly beans,” she said, as if the words were disgusting. “It’s like you were making fun of him. Were they actually in his pockets?”
“Yeah,” Simmons said. “Hell, I even had a few after I set the fucker up.”
She then almost playfully ran her fingers along the surface of the table and got to her feet. “Someone will be in shortly to take your statement,” she said.
“What are you—”
But Mackenzie was already out the door and headed back to where Yardley, Harrison, and Ellington were waiting.
“That was quick,” Ellington said.
“He did it, didn’t he?” Harrison asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” she said. Although, honestly, she was leaning toward no, absolutely not. “Harrison, can you make a few calls? See if St. Peter’s has any record of Joseph Simmons being among their congregation.”
; She then stepped over to the detective in charge. He looked uncertain as she sized him up but managed to meet her with a smile.
“Could I get you and the police to check on something for me?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“I need a test done on his hands. He claims to have lugged those boards out of the basement of St. Peter’s. But his hands show no sign of recent labor. Those boards were huge. There would be some sign, right?”
“Possibly,” the detective said. “But if he was wearing gloves—”
“Then less than four hours have passed since he removed them. Wouldn’t there be some trace evidence that he had worn gloves?”
“Possibly. But for tests like that, it might take a day or so to get results.”
“That’s fine. Can you see to it that it gets done?”
“Absolutely,” the detective said, instantly reaching for his phone.
Ellington stepped away from everyone else and waved her over. She joined him and tried her best not to be sidetracked by the sly smile she gave him—a smile that, if they were alone, would have been rewarded with a lingering kiss.
“You don’t think it’s him, do you?”
“No. he couldn’t answer basic questions about motive and interior details. I even purposefully got him to stumble over the facts and structure of the scene. I don’t know exactly what details he knows about the crime scenes yet, though.”
“Want me to get some of those details out of him?”
“Yeah, that would be a huge help.”
“What are you going to do in the meantime?” he asked.
“I’m going to print out these files on his past confessions. He’s seeking attention by confessing to these terrible crimes. And in the case of the prostitute and grand theft auto, he may have actually committed the crime. But murder…that’s something different. I’m going to see if I can find a smoking gun.”
“A smoking gun…to prove his innocence?”
She grinned at him as she turned to find a vacant office. “I guess we’ll have to see.”
***