The minister’s eyes swept the church, the garden, the parking lot, the creek, the trees. “When I think of what happened to Sister Frida, I want to pray. I need to pray, or I’ll be seized with the kind of anger that doesn’t help a soul. It will do me good to pray over her all night tonight, and maybe it will do her good, too. Maybe it will bring her peace. She surely deserves it.”
Faye agreed with that thought, as far as it went. Frida certainly deserved peace, but Faye thought that Frida deserved something more; Frida deserved justice.
She looked around her, puzzled. “It hadn’t occurred to me to ask where Frida would be buried. I don’t see a cemetery. Will you be taking her back into town?”
“We have our own graveyard. It’s just through those trees a bit. We think that the people who built this place wanted to give the dead some extra quiet, so they can rest peacefully in God’s own arms. Every prayer I say between now and then will be for sweet Kali to be standing there with us tomorrow to see her mother laid to rest.”
Faye looked in the direction where the minister was pointing, and she saw a narrow opening in the trees. She was already walking before he’d finished speaking.
Chapter Forty-three
He had the girl now. He had the flowers. Providence had provided a grave.
Providence had not provided a shovel, but he could make do. He could step away from his unsatisfying plan to drown her and use a weapon that was almost as good as a shovel.
Ted Bundy had used a stout log for his final rampage, but there were no stout logs at hand. The thin brittle sticks littering the ground in this woodland were no help at all.
In his trunk, though, was a lug wrench that was as sturdy a weapon as a shovel. It waited for him in the car he had parked at the other end of this shady lane.
He walked down the dirt path, suppressing the urge to whistle. Joy was rising, and his step was light because he was one step closer to restoring order. At rock bottom, this was always his motivation, when he was sane.
When he wasn’t sane, he became disorder personified. Then, when he came back to himself, he was compelled to return to his orderly life. It might not look like much to others, but it was his life, and he loved it.
It had been so easy to convince Kali to come with him to look at her mother’s resting place. Now she waited, gagged with her own belt and bound with his tie and her white satin hair ribbon. She waited in a dark, silent crypt, and outside it was an open grave surrounded by all the flowers he could possibly need.
Chapter Forty-four
Faye stood at the spot where two people had stepped from the open ground of the churchyard onto a stone-paved path that led into the trees and, according to Reverent Atkinson, toward a church graveyard. She reached down and almost touched the shallow depressions in the soil. Side by side, a man’s footprints paralleled a little girl’s.
Her finger hovered over one of the prints, shaped like a small foot wearing small shoes.
She knew where to find Kali now. He had taken her to the cemetery at the end of this path, where her mother would soon be buried.
Of course he had. This killer had shown his fascination with burial and its trappings, time and again. Here was a graveyard, close at hand. Where else would he go?
She reached for her phone and texted McDaniel.
He took her to the graveyard. Come quick.
Then she stepped onto the stone path. She would have liked to have waited for McDaniel, but this was a hunt where seconds counted.
She found herself counting her steps—one, two, three, four—and the meditative act of counting freed her brain of the fear long enough for a moment of insight. Every time he killed, the murderer transported a shovel and, perhaps, a body. This was not something a man could do on foot. Frida’s killer must own a car.
Her thoughts turned immediately to Jeremiah’s tank-like ride and to Walt Walker’s barge of a car. Their trunks were ample for any purpose. Armand seemed plenty prosperous enough to be a car owner. On the other hand, if Richard owned a car, it wasn’t in Memphis.
What about Linton and Mayfield? She remembered seeing Mayfield on foot as he passed Kali’s house. The parking lot at the convenience store had been empty both times she shopped there, so Linton and Mayfield had walked to work. Everything argued against either of them owning a car. When McDaniel caught up with her, and surely he’d be doing that any second, she would tell him to focus on Walt, Jeremiah, and Armand.
She wished for a weapon. On any ordinary day, she would have had one.
Faye always carried a pocketknife in the cargo pockets of her work pants and, oh, how she wished she were wearing them today. Conversely, she wished she were really and truly dressed up, with a wicked pair of stilettos to wield, but no. She was wearing a plain dress and flat shoes, and she didn’t even have on a belt or a pair of pantyhose that might serve as a garrote.
She did, however, have a purse. It was made to carry with a dress while going to church, so it wasn’t much more than a large leather drawstring pouch on a long shoulder strap, but it was heavy. Joe rarely picked up her purse without asking, “Did you pack your anvil?”
Today, she wished she actually had packed an anvil. Her overstuffed wallet, sunglasses case, and keyring were heavy, when it came to carrying them around all day on her bum shoulder. When used as a weapon against a very dangerous man? Not so much.
She squatted and searched the ground around her. There weren’t many rocks bigger than pebbles, but she grabbed them by the fistful and dumped them into her purse. Hefting it a time or two, she knew that a few pebbles weren’t enough to stop a killer for good. Her plan, such as it was, could only be to immobilize Walt…Linton…whoever, and to do it before they landed a hit. In hand-to-hand combat, she would lose. Not being suicidal, she hoped it didn’t get that far.
Her strangely loaded purse wasn’t much of a weapon, but she didn’t have any other ideas. Not unless praying for miracles counted.
When McDaniel got Faye’s text, he turned and ran. He left the sanctuary where he was crawling under every pew, looking for Linton, Kali, or even just a clue. He ran past Reverend Atkinson, who barely looked up from his prayers for Frida. He ran past Frida herself, lying waxen and beautiful, wearing a daffodil-yellow dress and resting under a blanket of pink carnations. He just ran.
Heads turned as he ran past. He tried to let their faces register as he sprinted past. Without turning his head to look, those faces were distorted in his peripheral vision. Maybe he recognized them. Maybe he didn’t.
Richard.
Ayesha.
Armand.
No Linton.
Jeremiah? Did he see Jeremiah? Mayfield? Walt? He was moving too fast to be sure.
The stone path to the graveyard was straight ahead of him but he didn’t take it. Somewhere to the left of the path he saw something moving in the woods, and it was wearing a white shirt.
Faye and Kali were both wearing black. He ran headlong after the white shirt.
Joe had found the church and he had found the problem. There was obviously a problem, because people were milling aimlessly around the church parking lot, and some of them were crying. As far as Joe was concerned, there was a second problem, because Faye’s car was in the parking lot, but she wasn’t.
He had tried the direct approach first, by accosting random strangers and asking if they’d seen Dr. Faye Longchamp-Mantooth. The first four strangers said they didn’t know her. The fifth one, though, said she worked for Faye, but didn’t know where she was at the moment. This was progress, he guessed.
“I know the little girl was missing,” he said. “Kali is her name, right? Did somebody find her?”
“Yes,” she said, and Joe was much relieved, until she said, “but then she went missing again. Nobody seems to know what’s happening.”
“What about the detective? I think his name is McDaniel.”
Th
e young woman’s eyes had darted around the parking lot for a long moment until she said, “Oh, there he is!” Then she had pointed at a medium-sized man, sandy-haired, running like he was being chased by wolves.
Behind the detective, a van labeled “K-9 Unit” was pulling into the parking lot, but Joe saw no benefit in talking to people who couldn’t possibly know where his wife was. McDaniel was the one who could help him find Faye.
When faced with the detective in charge of the case, moving like a man whose panic switch had been tripped, Joe knew what he had to do. He set out to chase McDaniel. And to catch him.
When Faye reached the graveyard, nobody was there. Worse than that, she saw no sign of Kali’s footprints. Once she reached the end of the stone path, she saw the prints of a big man wearing dress shoes everywhere she looked, but the smaller prints were gone.
Faye knew Kali. Presuming the child was alive and able, she was fighting. Faye heard nothing.
Was he carrying her? Faye studied the man’s prints. Joe would have known by the depth of his footprints, but she didn’t have Joe’s skill.
She walked through the nearest gate and paused to look around. Kali’s kidnapper had left tracks all through the area near her, weaving in and out of the headstones and crisscrossing his own trail time and again. Then he had walked out the only gate other than the one that Faye had just entered. His trail continued on, disappearing into the shadows of overhanging trees. She wasn’t sure whether to follow it, because she didn’t know if he was carrying Kali or if he’d hidden her somewhere.
Faye had been so sure that she would find Kali here. The killer’s obsessions pointed to this burial ground.
Under other circumstances, she would have enjoyed exploring the lovely old cemetery. It was bright and alive with rose-of-sharon bushes, and climbing roses clambered over the graves and the fence surrounding it.
She might have stood there for an hour, weighing her chances, if she hadn’t heard a faint sound, thin, hoarse, desperate.
She crept cautiously past row after row of small headstones. Only a few things in the graveyard were taller than she was, and they were the mausoleums that stood at its center. If the killer came back, he would see her before she had time to hide. As she crept forward, she prayed that McDaniel was on his way.
The sound came again, tenuous enough to be blown away by a breeze, but it was real. Clutching her only weapon, a purse loaded with a few ounces of pebbles, Faye stepped forward. As she did, she left the gate open behind her, in case she needed to get out fast.
There were simple headstones all around her now, more with each step, some so old that the lettering had worn off their faces. Chubby-cheeked stone cherubs marked the graves of infants. Archangels, hand-carved wings outstretched, decorated the mausoleums ahead of her.
She passed a small tent made of somber gray canvas, with a few folding chairs waiting beneath it, next to a big pile of soil. Beyond, a deep rectangular hole yawned. The darkness at its bottom terrified Faye, but she knew that she had to go there. What if he had put Kali in her own mother’s open grave?
Fighting memories of Frida in her first grave, mortally injured but alive, Faye walked to the edge of the open pit and looked down. No one was there, and she was profoundly relieved, but Kali was still missing.
Then she heard the faint sound again.
Faye held her breath and listened, really and truly listened. And there it was. Another sound, not a voice this time. Something firm was striking the ground, and it was coming from her right.
It could have been the sound of a killer letting the blade of a heavy shovel drop a few inches to the ground, but it wasn’t. Or she believed that it wasn’t. This sound was coming from the same direction as the quiet little whimper, and she thought it was the sound of a determined little girl throwing herself to the ground, again and again, trying to get herself free.
Faye looked at her feet, hoping to find footprints that told her which direction to go. They were there, but she wished by all that was holy that they led somewhere else, anywhere else.
The sound led her straight to the biggest crypt at the center of the graveyard. At its door, she saw the footprints of a large man wearing dress shoes, who had entered the crypt, then come out and walked away.
Chapter Forty-five
McDaniel moved through the trees as silently as he could manage. The man in the white shirt was alone, which he supposed was a good thing. He didn’t know where Kali was, or Faye either, but he knew that neither of them was being held by this man.
The dress code for a funeral was frustrating him. Every single man who might have grabbed Kali was wearing dark pants and a light shirt. To find out who this man-in-a-white-shirt was, he would need to move closer. So he did.
The man was running hard, like someone with a destination. He could see something McDaniel couldn’t see.
Kali? Faye? Both? McDaniel had no idea. But as his quarry moved his head back and forth, scanning as he ran, he gave himself away. A stray glint of light reflecting from his shaved head revealed him to be Linton, who was running with the efficiency and power of a man with military training.
Joe could see Detective McDaniel and, ahead of the detective, he could see the person the detective was chasing, a big man with a shaved head. Like everyone else but Joe, he was wearing dress clothes. He didn’t seem to know that McDaniel was after him, because he wasn’t so much running away from the detective as he was sprinting across McDaniel’s path from left to right.
The ground beneath Joe’s feet was slick with pine straw and leaves, but he maneuvered over similar terrain every day of his life. His surefooted lope gave him a distinct advantage over the two men in front of him, who were navigating through brushy undergrowth in stiff, slick-bottomed dress shoes.
Joe was gaining on them when he realized there was yet another person in front of the bald man. This man, also in black dress pants and a white shirt, didn’t seem to know that he was being pursued, because he was sauntering at a normal pace and swinging something heavy and metallic. The bald man was almost on him before he turned to defend himself, but he did a good job of it. The bald man went down.
His victory was short-lived, because Detective McDaniel was on the two of them in two steps. Without hesitation, the victor drew his arm back again, and Joe could see that it was holding a lug wrench, as deadly as it was ordinary.
Joe would never forget the power of his next blow. It made him realize that he had never seen anyone strike another human being with no holds barred. In every other fight he’d ever witnessed, both people wanted to win but, at their core, neither wanted the other person dead.
This man truly did not care whether McDaniel lived or died.
The lug wrench landed dead in the middle of the detective’s chest, then the man wielding it turned and ran like someone who knew for damn sure that his opponent wasn’t going to be bouncing back any time soon.
Joe was still several steps back, but he was fast. He could have caught the fugitive, if he’d been willing to coldly step over McDaniel’s prone body and be on his way. He couldn’t do it.
Joe knelt beside the detective. McDaniel was unresponsive.
Joe grabbed his wrist, looking for a pulse, but he didn’t find one. He shook the man hard.
“Detective McDaniel. Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
Joe knew that a heart, when stopped by a blow like the one McDaniel had just taken, could be a hard thing to restart. An external defibrillator was the tactic of choice, and even a defibrillator failed more than it succeeded. Not far away, less than a minute if he ran, was the K-9 unit he had seen coming into the church parking lot. Surely, they were equipped with lifesaving devices that could restart a heart.
Joe hefted the man off the ground, draped him awkwardly over one shoulder, and hauled ass for the church. Running while carrying a full-grown man was unspeakably hard
. Knowing that he was probably running away from Faye was worse, but he didn’t know for sure that she was in imminent danger, and the man on his back was three minutes from death. Getting help for McDaniel was the right thing to do.
The logic in his decision was unassailable, as was the mercy, but running full-tilt away from his wife when she could be in danger was sheer agony.
Faye followed the tiny sound to the biggest crypt in the graveyard. Its bronze door hung just a millimeter ajar.
Guarding the door was a marble statue, time-worn, of a seated woman draped in a shroud with lilies cascading out of her lap. As Faye reached for the door handle, she felt guilty for disturbing the statue’s rest.
The door was heavy, and Faye would have worried that it wouldn’t open if the drag marks beneath it didn’t prove that somebody had just opened it. The door ground over individual grains of sand as she dragged it open, so slowly, hoping that the hinges didn’t let out a rusty scream. Instead, she heard only a low metallic groan.
When Faye had the door open a foot, maybe, she slid into the crypt. The narrow opening only let in a little light, just enough for Faye to see that this crypt wasn’t just for looks. She braced herself for bones and the decayed scraps of shrouds. Buttons, perhaps, if the dead had worn clothes beneath those shrouds.
A pile of objects occupied a corner of the small chamber, and the light reflecting on them revealed the human bones she had dreaded—skulls, femurs, ribs and more. The bones were so old that the crypt didn’t smell of death. It smelled of dust and age and eternity. They put her in mind of the goddess Kali, who adorned herself with garlands of skulls. If there were ever to be a time for Kali-the-goddess to watch over her namesake, that time was now.
Faye saw only darkness, but there was something besides bones hidden in this place. Her eyes caught motion, and they saw dark hair, dark dress, dark skin, dark shoes. Kali.
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