by David Archer
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Copyright © 2019 by David Archer.
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ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
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ONE
Sitting at the conference table, Steve wasn’t really paying much attention to the playful conversation that was going on between the rest of the team members, too deeply enmeshed in his own thoughts to listen to Denny picking on Eric. He caught enough of the banter to know that Denny was once again teasing Eric about the amount of coffee he was drinking, and even noticed Sam getting into the conversation, but Steve didn't really feel like joining in.
He looked over at Walter, who was busily watching some sort of scientific video on his tablet. “Denny is picking on Eric again,” he said.
Walter nodded without taking his eyes off the screen. “Eric’s okay,” he said. “He likes it when Denny’s teasing him.”
Steve looked back over to where Denny was laughing while the young genius seemed to be glaring at him. “Are you sure about that? Sometimes, I get the feeling Eric gets really fed up with him.”
Walter shook his head. “He likes it. He says Denny is the only one who didn’t treat him different, other than me.”
Steve pursed his lips and thought about it for a moment. Eric was still three months shy of his eighteenth birthday, and had joined the Windlass team a couple of months earlier. He originally came to them on loan from a mental institution he had been committed to. He was committed at the ripe old age of eleven years old, because of an IQ that was so high that it was almost unmeasurable, and because he had gotten involved with a hacking group that seemed to be a threat to national security. Since then, he had demonstrated an incredible understanding of psychology and human behavior, and the institution had been renting out his talents, along with those of others under their care.
Not long after he had come to them, however, Sam and the team had become aware of just how badly the kids in that institution were being abused. That had resulted in an investigation that got the institution shut down, and young Eric had found himself placed under the guardianship of the Windlass investigators. He was already considered a full member of their team, and was undergoing counseling to help him adjust to being back out in the world.
They were waiting for Jenna Smalley, Sam’s secretary, to come in and brief them on the latest case they had been hired for, a cold case that had baffled everyone who had tried to solve it for years. A well-known church pastor had been murdered twenty-five years earlier, but the case had never been solved. As the quarter-century anniversary approached, local interest resurged in the case and the local business community had agreed to hire the Windlass team to try to finally close the case.
The door opened and Jenna stepped inside, walking directly to the monitor that was mounted on the wall. She opened the false cabinet that concealed it and turned to face them all as it powered on.
"So, what’s this all about, luv?" Denny asked, turning toward her and giving Eric a break. “All Sam will tell us is that we’re going to be dealing with a bloody nasty old murder.”
Jenna nodded. "I have to say he’s right. I’ve been going over the files we were sent all morning, and it’s a pretty rough case. The victim was the pastor of the local Baptist Church, and he was beaten so severely that his body was almost completely unrecognizable. This happened almost 25 years ago, and no one has ever been brought to justice for the murder."“Okay,” Darren said. “Give us the gist of it, then.”
Jenna pressed a button on the remote and a number of photos appeared on the screen. One of them showed the face of the murder victim, but the rest were crime scene photos. All of the team, despite having seen some pretty horrible things, gasped in shock.
“That’s pretty easy,” she said. “Twenty-five years ago, Pastor Martin Jensen, a fifty-two-year-old widower, didn’t show up at his church on a Sunday morning. Someone went to his house to check on him and this is what they found. He had been beaten to death, his head bashed in and almost every bone in his body broken. The coroner said it appeared that he had been beaten with a baseball bat, probably a metal one.”
“Bloody hell,” Denny said, and the rest of them echoed the sentiment.
She gave them a minute to digest what she had said, then continued, "Now, according to everything they have on this case, Pastor Jensen was last seen alive in front of his own home in a little suburban Boulder neighborhood on Saturday afternoon. A neighbor saw him unloading groceries and carrying them in, but after he took the last of them inside his home, he was never seen alive again. His body was found the next morning by a couple of ladies from the church who had come to see why he was late."
"The neighbor didn’t see anyone else going into the house?" Eric asked.
"No," Jenna said, turning to Eric. "The police asked that as well, because this was an older lady who was confined to a wheelchair and spent a lot of her time on her front porch, where she had a great view of his place."
Jade leaned back in her seat, linking her fingers together. "So he was killed in his home?" she asked.
"Yes," Jenna answered promptly. "He was beaten to death on the floor in his kitchen. No one in the area heard anything. The medical examiner said he died between six and seven p.m. that evening."
Eric shifted in his seat, clasping his hands on the table in front of him. "This kind of killing would indicate a significant amount of rage and animosity in the killer, but it’s also indicative of an anger that would be consistent with someone seeking revenge. Were there any kind of negative rumors about the victim at the time?"
“No. Pastor Jensen was one of the most loved and respected men in the community.”
“And yet, the killer displayed a level of anger that is consistent with that of a victim.” Eric narrowed his eyes. “He may have felt that the pastor had somehow wron
ged him. If so, I would suspect we’re looking for someone who was a member of the pastor’s congregation.”
"Okay, but you’re assuming it was a man?" Jade asked. "How do we know it wasn't a woman?"
"Women usually tend to go after revenge in other ways, and some kind of stalking would most likely be involved," Summer said. "There would be signs leading up to the attack, little indicators that something is going on: stealing things, vandalism, threats, that sort of thing."
"How do we know none of that happened?" Jade asked. "Maybe none of it was reported. The guy was a preacher, right? He may have decided that reporting such things would look bad."
Sam shook his head. "I wouldn’t think so,” he said. “Most clergymen are aware that people can have some pretty twisted motives for the things they do. If he was being threatened or stalked, I think he would’ve confided in someone. I’m sure the police interviewed everyone in the church. Did anybody have any ideas what might’ve happened?"
Jenna sat up in her swivel chair and tapped on her keyboard again. "Again, no. Pastor Jensen’s closest friend was one of the deacons, a man named Lonnie Willis. Mr. Willis, along with the rest of the congregation, said that they couldn’t imagine anyone having any sort of grudge against him. The murder was so brutal that it shocked the entire community, and more than five thousand people attended the funeral."
Summer sighed, shaking her head. "So it sounds like our killer probably believes he was getting vengeance against the pastor for something, and apparently something pretty horrific. He may have seen himself as some sort of hero, taking out someone he thought was somehow evil."
"Wait a half," Denny said, shaking his head. "If the killer thought this man was evil, surely he would try to tell someone. It’s hard to believe there weren’t some kind of tales going ’round about him."
"None have ever surfaced," Jenna said. "I ran a background check on Pastor Jensen and the only thing I found was a couple of warning tickets for speeding. He never even had to go to court, and no one ever publicly stated that they had any sort of problem with him."
They sat quietly as they looked at the files they’d been given, and Jenna fell silent. Only Steve, who hadn’t spoken throughout the briefing, didn’t bother to open the case file. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, deep in thought. He only came back to the moment when he heard someone slide into the empty chair beside him. He turned to see Eric sitting there, just watching him.
"You read through the whole thing already?" Steve asked, for lack of anything better to say. He nodded at the discarded files laying neatly closed in front of the chair Eric had been using.
"Yeah," Eric said shyly, ducking his head. "I couldn’t help but notice you've been pretty quiet since we got in here. Are you okay?"
Steve raised his eyebrows and leaned back, his face blank. "Why wouldn't I be?" he asked, trying to shut down any further questions. Eric shrugged and moved back to his own chair, and Steve went back to thinking.
Sam looked around at everyone. “Okay,” he said, “this is likely to be a tough one. The killer has gotten away with this for a quarter of a century, and we have basically nothing to go on at this point. I’m going to suggest we go on down to Boulder and start working the case as if it was brand new. Unfortunately, that means we’re going to have to go over the evidence that was recorded at the time, but I’m hoping our fresh eyes will find something they might have missed back then.”
“I remember this case,” Steve said suddenly. “I didn’t follow very closely because I was going through something of my own at the time, but it made headlines all over the state. A lot of people outside Boulder speculated that there may have been something about Jensen that never came to light. Something that might cause someone to hate him this badly.”
Sam looked at Steve for a second, then turned to his secretary again. "Jenna, call my wife and ask her to run some deep background checks on the pastor. I want to know everything we possibly can about him, up to the day he died. Something set the killer off and we need to try to figure out what that was." He glanced at his cell phone to check the time. “We need to get on the way to Boulder within the next hour. The detective in charge of the case is waiting for us.”
Jenna nodded her head. "No problem," she said, “I’ll call her right now.” She got up and left the room.
“Summer, Darren,” Sam said, “as soon as we get there, I want you to start contacting the surviving members of the congregation, see if any of them have anything to say that might shed light on the matter. It’s possible that, this many years after the event, they might tell you some things that were kept private at the time.”
“You got it,” Summer said.
Sam turned to Denny. “Denny, you and I will go to see Detective Franklin. He’s handling cold cases there, and his notes say that this one has always troubled him the most. Jade and Eric can go take a look at the pastor’s home. It was owned by the church and has been sitting empty ever since the murder, so it’s got a reputation for being a haunted house. It might give give us some sort of insight into who the man was, and that might help us figure out the motive for his killing.”
He turned to Steve and Walter. “After such a long time, the crime scene probably isn’t going to do us much good. Steve, any thoughts on what you guys could be doing?”
Steve looked at him for a second, then nodded. “We’ll tag along with Eric and Jade. You might be surprised what Walter could find, even after so many years.”
“All right,” Sam said. “We leave in thirty minutes.”
Each of them nodded in agreement and headed for their own cubicles, to begin preparing for the job they had been assigned. A half hour later, they climbed into four Windlass SUVs and headed toward Boulder. Sam and Denny were in the lead, followed by Steve and Walter, Summer and Darren, with Jade and Eric bringing up the rear.
TWO
The drive to Boulder took just under an hour, and they arrived at the Boulder police station at just after lunchtime.
Detective James Franklin was waiting for them when they arrived and they were ushered into his office. Franklin was a tall man, bald on top with a gray fringe around the sides, but he unfolded himself from his chair like a much younger man.
“Mr. Prichard?” he asked, extending a hand toward Sam. “It’s good to meet you, sir. I’ve heard a lot about you the last few years.”
“Well, I could wish we were meeting under different circumstances,” Sam said. “There’s nothing like an old murder case to put a damper on meeting someone.” Sam looked Franklin over. “I understand you’ve been with the department since this case actually happened?”
Franklin nodded. “Yes,” he said, then puffed on a vape pen as he led them to a conference room that was available. “That was my rookie year. I’d only been on the force for about four months, but I was first officer on the scene. The neighbor called it in, said she heard screaming, so I got the call to go and check it out.”
“Can you tell us what you found?” Sam asked. He and Franklin were the first to sit down at the big round table, but the rest followed suit quickly.
“Man, I remember it like it was yesterday,” Franklin said. “I pulled up in front of the house and everything looked perfectly normal, so I got out and walked up to the door. I rang the doorbell, but didn’t hear anything, so I knocked a couple of times, but nobody came to answer. I started to leave, but then, I don’t know, call it a hunch—I decided to take a look through some windows. The living room windows were covered with curtains, so I moved over to the kitchen windows and looked inside, and that’s when I saw Jensen laying on the floor. There was blood all around him, so I went back over and kicked in the front door, and hurried inside to see if there was any hope.” He shook his head. “He was already dead. I felt for a pulse and didn’t find one, and I could tell he wasn’t breathing. I didn’t have a walkie back then, so I ran out to the car and called it in.” He took another puff on the vape pen, making a grimace. “And then I puked all over my sh
oes. That was the first dead body I had ever seen outside of a casket.”
“What was the determination on how long he had been dead by the time you found him?”
“The ME said he’d been dead about an hour to an hour and a half by the time he got there, maybe twenty minutes after me. The old woman who called in said she wished she had done it sooner. I guess Pastor Jensen was a pretty good neighbor. She said she was going to have to find somebody to mow her lawn, because he always did it for her.” He took another puff.
Sam pointed at the vape pen. “You recently give up smoking?”
Franklin looked at the unit in his hand and gave a sheepish grin. “Yeah, after thirty years. Not an easy habit to break, I can tell you that. This thing helps, but I still miss clamping a cigar in my teeth.” He took another puff, then looked at Sam again. “Anyway, yeah, I was the one who found Jensen. I remember that old lady cried pretty hard when I told her he was dead.”
“Yes, I gather he was pretty well liked. Did you ever come across anything that might have been motive?”
Franklin shook his head again. “Nothing more than a few rumors,” he said. “There were a few people who claim Jensen had some dark secrets, and it’s possible he might’ve been having some dalliances with a few of the ladies from his church. We never found out for sure, but, like I said, there were rumors.”
“That’s something we wanted to ask about,” Sam said. “Are there any of the church members still around from when he was preaching?”
“Oh, goodness, yes. Probably two-thirds of the congregation was fairly young people back then. Jensen, he was one of those preachers that appealed to the young folks. You know the kind I mean, had a guitar that he played while they were singing and he encouraged people to get up and dance in the aisles. I understand the pastor that came in after him wasn’t too pleased about it, but he didn’t last long. They got another one that did things Jensen’s way.”
A tall, older officer in uniform came in and set a box on the table. “This is the files you wanted, Jim,” he said, addressing Franklin. “Need anything else now?”