“Then they answer to God. Not to me.” Phillips ran his hand through his thinning brown hair. “Listen, I have never condoned violence.”
“I don’t think that’s entirely true, Reverend,” Tessa said. “According to one of your sermons on your own website here, you’ve likened God’s destruction of Canaan for its wickedness to the need to fight against homosexuality today.”
“I’ve warned that we can’t allow our own society to descend into wickedness or we could face the same fate. I didn’t suggest we ourselves should destroy it or the people in it. That will be God’s work as he sees fit.”
“Still, you can see how this kind of rhetoric might get people stirred up, can’t you?” Danny asked.
“I don’t consider it rhetoric. I consider it preaching the word of God.”
“Fair enough,” Danny said. “But we’d like to have a look at your church members and employees. See if anyone has anything in their past that might indicate they could decide to take your warnings into their own hands.”
“You’re welcome to look at whatever you like. We don’t have any employees though. Linda is a volunteer and she is all the help I have. We’re so new we don’t have a membership directory put together yet. And people aren’t required to join the church to come to our services. We welcome anyone who wants to come in.”
“How about donors? Any big donations that have helped you get off the ground?” Danny asked.
“Not really anything that stands out. But Linda can show you a list of our donors and receipts for the donations we’ve received.”
“That would be great,” Tessa said as she stood up from her chair. “I do appreciate your time and your honesty in talking with us.”
Phillips followed her lead and stood up himself. “As I said I’m glad to help. I don’t have anything to hide here.”
The last to leave his chair, Danny followed Tessa and the reverend out of his office and into the main lobby of the church. He tended to believe Phillips and, as he’d told Tessa, didn’t really think he or his church had anything to do with these crimes. He thought this whole exercise was a waste of time and his instincts told him that it wasn’t bringing him any closer to catching their fire-starting murderer. He thought of the letter that had been sent to the police and to the media and his stomach clenched. He only hoped they’d find something substantial before the killer answered his own question and let them all know who was next.
****
Chapter 20
Danny and Tessa walked back out into the blazing afternoon sun and immediately started to sweat.
“Lord have mercy,” Tessa said. “I feel like I’m burning in hell.”
Danny chuckled. “Didn’t you chastise me for being overly dramatic about the heat not too long ago?”
“Oh shut up.”
Tessa opened the door to Danny’s car, anxious to get back in the air conditioning. “I may start living in my car if this heat doesn’t let up. I don’t even know if I’ve ever used the AC before. Now I don’t want to get out of it.”
Squinting in the sun, Danny glanced across the street at a woman standing next to a Channel 10 news van.
“Isn’t that Jennifer?” he asked, shielding his eyes with his hand.
Tessa turned in the direction of his gaze. “It is. What is she doing? Following us?”
Danny left the car and strode across the street. He repeated Tessa’s question.
“Are you following us, Jennifer?”
“Fancy meeting you here, Danny. Are you considering joining the church?”
“Spare me the cute. What are you doing here?”
“I’m following up on a lead,” Jennifer said.
“What lead?” Tessa asked.
“I’m not interested in telling you my sources. But I will say it doesn’t take ferreting out a source to follow your nose and find someone in this town who might have been interested in targeting gay men and burning them alive.”
“Aren’t you being a little dramatic?” Danny asked.
“You’re here too, aren’t you? I could ask you the same.”
“Jennifer, leave this alone. We’re working our case, period. This isn’t a news story,” Danny said.
“I think that’s for my producer and me to decide.”
Danny felt a flash of anger. “Dammit…”
“Danny, let it go,” Tessa said, putting her hand on his arm. “Jennifer’s right. If she thinks there’s a story here that’s her business. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Reluctantly, Danny followed Tessa back across the street and got into his car. Jennifer waited for them to back out of their spot and drive away before turning to her cameraman and preparing to record an introduction to her story.
****
Chapter 21
Jamie tightened his hood closer around his face and pulled on gloves as he walked towards the New Church of God in search of the Reverend Richard Phillips. The heat of the evening made him uncomfortable in this attire, but he knew there were plenty of surveillance cameras on the street and making sure he couldn’t be recognized was much more important than his comfort, or lack thereof.
He got to the church and was both pleased and unsurprised to find the door open in spite of the fact that it was nearly 11:00 at night. The fact that churches had a habit of wanting to be welcoming to those in need regardless of the time made his life a great deal easier. Or more accurately, it made his life easier for the next hour or so. Excitement over this unplanned phase of his project had his body coursing with adrenalin and he didn't have the patience to deal with trying to force his way into the building. He kept his face down and out of the view of cameras and closed the door of the church quietly behind him.
While the sun was still high in the sky and lighting up the street outside, the church was dim and poorly lit thanks to heavy curtains on the windows. Jamie knew very well that his whole plan may have to be aborted if Reverend Phillips was not at the church or if he was not here alone. But Jamie had already decided it would be easy enough to get out of that without arousing suspicion. He’d act like a depressed junkie who was finally ready to accept the Lord and the church people would eat it up. Jamie hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but he was ready if it did.
He could see a light on in a room at the end of the hallway and figured it was a good bet that he could find Phillips there. He walked to the room and knocked on the open doorway. He could barely keep himself from smiling when he saw Phillips alone in the room. The reverend looked up from his stack of papers at the sound of Jamie’s knock.
“Reverend Phillips?” Jamie asked.
“Yes,” the man said, his face trying to hide his obvious alarm as he took in the young man wearing a hoodie and gloves in spite of the ongoing heat wave. “Can I help you with something? The church is closed right now.”
“But your door was open.”
Phillips cursed Linda under his breath. He knew he couldn’t expect too much from a volunteer, but was it too much to ask for her to remember to lock the door?
“If you need help we're available to help you,” he said, forcing his voice to stay calm. “Are you in trouble?”
“No, I'm not. But I’m afraid you are.”
Phillips put down the papers he was holding. He tried to reach in his drawer for the revolver he always kept there without drawing the attention of the strange young man standing in front of him.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked. “Are you here to rob me? If so you're welcome to anything we have in the safe.”
“I don't want your money. And I want you to understand that this isn't personal. I don't have any problem with you or your work.”
“What isn't personal?”
Phillips' hand reached the drawer and he said more silent curses when he found it locked. He couldn’t be too angry at Linda for forgetting to lock the front door. He had forgotten to unlock his own drawer when he'd arrived that morning.
“What I'm about to do. Honestly, you're ju
st a victim of bad luck. I had no intention of coming after you until I saw the story on the news. Do you know Jennifer Higgins?”
“The woman on the news?”
“Right. She did a story on you tonight. She reported on the fact that the cops are treating you as a suspect in the fire murders.”
“But I'm not a suspect. I talked to the police earlier today. I had nothing to do with those murders.”
“Oh, I know you didn't. And honestly, I think the cops are idiots for running with the connection they did. It was just a coincidence that both of those men were gay.”
Phillips stood up in his chair and put his hands firmly on his desk to keep them from trembling.
“How do you know it was just a coincidence?” he asked.
“You could say I’m an expert on their deaths. I’m the expert if you get right down to it.”
Phillips gripped the desk more tightly and tried to mask his fear by speaking in the sternest voice he could muster.
“I'm going to need you to leave, young man. As I told you, the church is closed.”
“Right but as I told you, your door was open. And you're just what I need to send a message to those idiots you spoke with today.”
“A message? What are you talking about?”
Jamie fixed his eyes on Phillips with a cold and bloodless gaze.
“Like I said Reverend, this isn't personal.”
“Why do you keep saying that? What isn't personal?”
Jamie ignored the questions. “YA zaklykayu BEELZEBUTH~, LUCIFER~,” he said, his eyes boring into Phillips. “MADILON…”
“What are you saying?” Phillips asked.
“SOLYMO~, SAROY ~, Vizyt!”
“What are you saying?!” Phillips yelled. He felt heat coming from his hands and looked down to see tendrils of smoke rising from them. “What's happening?”
Jamie’s eyes rolled back into his head. “Pozhezha!” he yelled. “Spalyuvaty!”
Phillips fell back in his chair as flames erupted from his hands. “Stop,” he screamed, trying to put out the flames as they began to travel up his arms. “Stop!”
Jamie ignored the man's shrill cries for help. “Pozhezha!”
The flames spread to Phillips' chest and quickly engulfed his torso as they moved down towards his legs. “Help me!” he screamed. “Someone help me!”
Jamie's voice thundered over his screams. “Spalyuvaty!” he yelled.
Jamie opened his eyes and stared at Phillips' burning body, now barely visible through the flames. He smiled and continued his chant.
“Spalyuvaty,” he said in a whisper. “Burn.”
The flames extinguished any sound or sign of life from Phillips and moved on to engulf his chair. Jamie followed the fire with his eyes as it devoured the leather. He didn't want to fire to spread any further. This was perfect as it was.
“Stiy,” he said. “Stop.”
As the flames died around Phillips' body, Jamie breathed in the smell of the burning flesh that permeated the room. Satisfied, he walked back down the hallway he had come down just a few minutes earlier. He left the church and walked out into the still blazing midnight sun.
Chapter 22
Danny immediately covered his mouth and nose with his hand as he entered Reverend Phillips’ office. He’d been to more homicide scenes than he could count and thought he had become immune to the smell but the stench in this room was like nothing he’d ever encountered.
“What the hell happened here?” he asked.
A uniformed officer with a dab of Vicks vapor rub under his nose turned towards Danny and stepped aside so Danny could get an unobstructed view of what remained of Phillips.
“The church secretary found him like this when she came in to open up the church.”
“God almighty,” Danny said.
“Oh my Lord,” Tessa said as she walked into the room behind him.
Jack Meyer was the last to enter the room. “Goddammit, son of a bitch.”
The three stared silently at the grisly scene in front of them as if mesmerized by the carnage. The uniformed officer broke the silence and held out a container.
“You guys want some Vicks? The smell is unbelievable.”
Danny grabbed the container and smeared the rub under his nose before passing it to his colleagues. “Thanks,” he said. “Are the ME’s on their way?” he asked.
The officer nodded his head yes. “We talked with the secretary but she couldn’t tell us much. She’s hysterical, as you’d expect. My partner’s trying to help her get calmed down now.”
“What’d she tell you?” Tessa asked.
“Just that she went home last night around 7:00 and the reverend said he planned to stay at the church and work late. He was working on paperwork here at his desk when she said goodnight to him. She didn’t notice anything strange before she left. She said the only thing unusual that went on yesterday was you guys coming to talk to Phillips.”
Danny frowned. “So I guess this was the answer to who was next.”
“No, I don’t think this was a planned target for him. He’s playing with us,” Tessa said. “He wants to send the message that the first two victims were gay had nothing to do with why he chose them.”
Jack glanced around the room and up at the ceiling, letting out an audible sigh of relief when he saw a security camera pointed at the desk. “Looks like the preacher had a camera installed. Please somebody tell me it was working.”
“The secretary said he always had it running since he kept the church safe in here,” the uniformed officer said. “The monitor is out by her desk.”
The ME’s and an increasingly beleaguered Anthony Rizzo entered the room and immediately took over the scene to begin their investigations. Danny, Tessa and Jack took the opportunity to go back to the front of the church and review the security camera footage.
Danny sat down at Linda’s desk while Jack and Tessa pulled up chairs next to him. He grabbed the mouse and brought up the video stream on the computer.
“The secretary said she left around seven last night. Let’s start there and skim through it,” Jack said.
Danny chose the time to start the stream and set it to play at three times the normal speed. Jack and Tessa pulled their chairs closer to the monitor as the three watched the footage of Phillips’ office before it had become an inferno.
“It makes me feel so strange to see those chairs we were sitting in just yesterday,” Tessa said. “I feel like we got this man killed. We both knew this was a shoddy lead. We never should have questioned the reverend.”
Danny frowned. “I wish we hadn’t but how could we have predicted this for Christ’s sake? And I don’t think Jennifer Higgins is blameless either. She never should have reported on our suspicions.”
“Both of you shut up,” Jack said. “No one is responsible for this except the son of a bitch who keeps setting these fires. Now let’s just hope to God he shows up on this camera and we can haul his sorry ass in.”
The three watched in frustration as they watched Reverend Phillips writing notes and pushing papers around his desk. At one point, he appeared to consult a ledger and at another time he opened his Bible and read through several pages. Danny felt his fingers growing itchy to increase the fast-forward, but knew he had to be patient.
After what felt like an eternity, their patience was finally rewarded. A slender male figure wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt entered the screen and faced Phillips’ desk.
Danny froze the screen. “There he is,” he said. “The son of a bitch has his hood up so tightly around his head we can’t see anything.”
“And he’s wearing gloves,” Tessa said. “He made sure we wouldn’t even be able to see what color his skin is.”
“Keep it going,” Jack said. “He might turn around and look right at us.”
The three watched as Phillips and the man appeared to be having a conversation. It was obvious to anyone watching that Phillips was ill at ease.
; “Dammit, why can’t these things have sound?” Jack asked.
Phillips stood up and grabbed his desk as he stared at the man in the hoodie. Within seconds, the three cops’ eyes widened in horror as flames began to shoot out of the man’s hands.
“This is where it starts,” Danny said. “How’d he do it?”
No one answered as they continued to watch in horror.
“Oh that poor man,” Tessa whispered as the flames engulfed Phillips’ body and he collapsed back in his chair. The man in the hoodie remained still as he stared at the burning man in front of him.
The fire began to lick the leather of the chair and appeared ready to take over the desk and move on to the rest of the room when it suddenly started to die out as quickly as it had started. The flames became smaller and began to fold into themselves. Within seconds, there was nothing but smoke emanating from the dead man and his burned chair.
After the fire was extinguished, the man in the hoodie calmly turned and walked out of the room, never once looking up at the camera. He kept his face to the floor and completely out of view.
“How did he do that?” Danny asked again. “How could he have started that fire?”
“And how did he stop it?” Jack asked. “Why didn’t the flames take over the whole room?”
No one had an answer to any of the questions.
“We don’t know that he started it,” Tessa said. “He was just standing there.”
“Well how the hell else do you think it started?” Danny asked.
“I have no idea. And neither do you. So don’t get smart with me, Danny.”
Danny scowled and rewound the footage to watch the scene again. Watching Phillips stand up and grab his desk made his stomach turn now that he knew exactly what was coming next. He could feel the bile rising in his throat.
“I don’t know if I can watch this again,” Tessa said.
She didn’t move as all three watched the horror unfold once again on the screen in front of them.
“He doesn’t even move his hands to throw something that could have started the fire,” Jack said. “He’s just standing there. It’s like he’s telekinetic for Christ’s sake and he just did it with his mind.”
Polar (Book 2): Polar Day Page 8