Davis points a long arm out toward the front of the bullpen. “You have a visitor.”
Rowan makes her way through the officers, and although she’s buried within a peacock-green scarf and a long woolen coat, her eyes are determined. She holds my gaze once she reaches the foot of the desk. “I need to see you, Luce.”
At first I don’t move. She has never come to my work before. Irritation burns in my throat. How could she come to the station to see me when she knows how rough the case is going? I don’t need the interruption or the other detectives speculating about my relationship with her.
“Luce, it’s important.”
Davis offers us his office, and once inside, I close the door behind Rowan. Her eyes meet mine for a fleeting moment, tired and darkened underneath as if she hasn’t slept at all since we last saw each other. Rowan reaches for my hand.
“What are you doing here?”
Rowan digs into her bag and pulls out papers. “Take a look at this.”
She spreads an array of photocopied images on Davis’s desk. The desk lamp leaves most of the interior room in shadow, and I squint at its brightness. Marci’s crime-scene photographs spread across the desk like fortune-telling cards.
“How did you get these?” I demand. Rowan must have made copies of the originals when I shut down on her. “Do you understand how much trouble I could be in for this?”
“Listen to me, okay? Flip on that overhead light.” She has taken on a demanding tone I rarely hear from her. “Listen.”
I knock on the overhead lights with a smack to the light switch. I turn slowly back to her, my fists planted on hips. The faster Rowan says what she wants, the faster I can get the photocopies back and destroy them.
Rowan unwinds her scarf. “I recognized something about these photographs, but I just couldn’t place it.”
She points to the one crime-scene photograph I spent so long examining last night, the one with Marci’s arms outstretched and her knees bent together in a V. “What do you notice about the way her body is positioned here?”
I let out a dramatic sigh. “I don’t want to analyze the artistic merits of these crime-scene photos with you.”
“I know you recognized it. I saw it in your face.”
She’s right, of course. I did recognize something. The photograph is startling with the odd position of Marci’s body.
“What strikes you?”
“Her arms stretched wide over that rock behind her.”
“That’s what caught my attention, too. Look at this.” Rowan pulls out a print from her bag of an old painting: a portrait of Jesus nailed to the cross, his chin resting on his chest, his knees closed and bent, his feet bleeding with the wounds. “Picture Marci up on a cross, not sitting down.”
“My God,” I whisper as my mind places one image over the other.
“That’s not all.” She places a photograph on the table of an older man with a thick white beard and bushy gray eyebrows. “Meet Hans Klosenova. He died in 1967. His photography was never really recognized in the States except to those in the art business. He won all kinds of European awards for composition and shadow.”
Rowan hands me another print done mostly in black and white with just a hint of green across the edges of leaves. In the wooded scene, a woman rests with her back against a large rock, but her skirt’s open and pulled down to expose her crotch. The model’s legs are stretched out in front of her, bent at the knee in a V, while her arms are out to the sides draped along the rocks. Her head has fallen forward and to the side with long hair scattered across her brow and face.
Rowan holds up Marci’s crime-scene photograph. “Imagine a black and white.”
I cannot deny the striking resemblance. Marci rests against a rock in the same position, even her hair falling across the brow in the same way.
“Look at this.” Rowan points to the top left edge of the Klosenova photograph, almost like an afterthought, the model’s sandals lying with the toe of the left shoe crossed over the toe of the right. Marci’s flip-flops were found positioned in the exact same way at a similar distance from her body.
“My God.” I pull the photo closer to analyze it. “In the case files it says she must have slipped off her shoes when she got to Stonehenge. I thought they were too neat, not kicked off in her usual way. The killer positioned them.”
Rowan nods. “Klosenova’s work wasn’t mass marketed, Luce. You need to be looking for an artist, an art dealer, a collector. Someone who specializes in photography.”
She spreads out photocopies of the crime-scene photographs of Chandler Jones and places them beside another one of Klosenova’s photos. “It’s snowy in Chandler’s photo and not in Klosenova’s, but take a look at the body. Look at the positioning of the head.”
Klosenova’s features a young woman, again in a wooded scene. This photo shows the model sitting up, her back against a large tree trunk, her legs stretched out in front of her. Her head rests forward, chin to chest, long brown hair tumbling over to hide her face, her hands resting palm up away from her sides. The glint of a golden cross lay in the model’s lap. Chandler’s positioned in the exact same way, cross and all.
“God,” I whisper. Rowan’s found the pattern I’ve been searching for. “What about Hannerting?”
Rowan positions Hannerting’s crime-scene photograph with the young woman lying flat on her back—much like someone would in a casket with the cross inside the folds of her fingers across her breast. Klosenova’s photograph looks the same including the angle of the branches above the body.
“And that’s not all,” Rowan says, her face flushed with the excitement of the find. “Klosenova’s collection is called Crossed. It has seven photographs to it. Seven, the magic number that God works with so much in the Bible. Klosenova was a deeply religious man, almost to the point of fault with some of his work.”
“Crossed?”
“Don’t you see it?” Rowan traces with her fingertip the lines of each victim’s body, the spread of the models’ arms in each picture. “Each one is positioned like Jesus.” She points back to the painting of Jesus. “A cross.”
“You said there are seven photos in the collection?” Bile burns the back of my throat.
“Yeah, and here’s the thing. This is what initially threw me. Marci is the replica of the first photo in the collection, but it jumps. Vivian Hannerting and Chandler Jones are numbers three and four. Emma Parks is a replica of number five.”
My heart skips a few beats. “He didn’t stop, did he? Somewhere out there is victim number two. That’s why it’s been so long between Marci’s murder and the recent killings.”
“It looks that way,” Rowan says. “But why would he leave Willow’s Ridge only to come back?”
“One True Path.” I’ve never been so certain of a motive in my life. “Even if we find that missing number-two victim, it still leaves two photographs to replicate. He’s on a roll now and he must be planning numbers six and seven.” I look at all the pictures spread before me and everything becomes crystal clear. “We’ve caught Picasso in the middle of his religious masterpiece.”
Chapter Eighteen
Nothing more than a storefront church, the One True Path ministry sits in a strip mall outside of town near the highway exchange. The building is a new addition since I was last in Willow’s Ridge and features all the makings of Midwest America: Walmart, the Dollar Store, Great Clips, and a local pizza place called Jake’s. Only two cars sit in the lot outside Jake’s, including one that has driven up onto the sidewalk with its blinkers going and the delivery sign nearly falling off the roof.
Through the oval of ice I’ve scraped off the outer windshield, I maneuver into a spot outside the One True Path entrance and scan the area. This can’t be the correct address, I tell myself. The Pastor Jameson I know would never have wanted his ministry paired with the quick stops of America’s Midwest. Perhaps he didn’t have a choice in the matter. My Internet research found that the national org
anization fully backs Jameson’s group and provides substantial funding. They pay the rent and demand the ministry be in a high-traffic location within the community.
One True Path has a simple square sign in the window, one of those cheap black felt boards with the punch-out white letters to announce its business name and hours of operation. There is nothing that signals a ministry’s inside; rather, the space looks like the window front for some sort of travel agency. Two large posters hang from the front windows: You Could Be Here. A bright white light shines underneath these bold words surrounded by flowing waterfalls and the fresh bloom of flowers. One True Path’s version of heaven.
“I guess this is it,” I say louder than I need to, the mike taped firmly to the skin along my sports bra. I adjust my sweater for the hundredth time just to make sure the mike is in a good spot. I imagine Davis and Ainsley sitting with the other end of the transmitter hearing only the rustle of clothes as I untuck the T-shirt under my sweater from my jeans again. Despite the frigid temperature inside the car, my palms sweat against the frozen steering wheel and my heartbeat races, quick as a rabbit’s. I let a deep breath go that clouds in the cold and then speak into the mike. “I hope you guys are there,” I whisper. “I’m nervous as hell.”
Davis and Ainsley have parked the van full of listening and recording equipment a few streets over in a McDonald’s lot. It’s not that Davis expects anything dangerous to go down, but we are all hopeful for new leads. There is silent pressure from the team to find the key to the case, and fast, in the form of a boulder weight between my ribs.
“I’m going in.” Near breathless, I kick open the car door. Although it’s just shy of seven p.m., the darkness of the winter sky makes it feel like midnight.
Inside, a bell chimes as the glass door slowly closes behind me. The smack of warm air and fresh paint assault me. The business office walls have been painted stark white and appear sticky in places. The entire place is carpeted in gray and a white welcome desk stands in the entryway with a sign that reads: One True Path Bookstore. I browse the shelves, which hold Bibles and pamphlets with titles like “You Don’t Have to Sin Any Longer” and “Homosexuality Is the Devil’s Playground.” A large selection of self-help books are also on sale, so many more than when I’d been a part of the organization. Smiling young men with content women at their sides cover the jackets of books.
“One True Path is still selling a dream,” I whisper, brushing my fingertips along the slippery covers of the glossy hardbound books. When I came to the organization with my father, he bought into this dream and purchased a handful of books that would sit at the side of his bed for years. Books that promised change was possible for his only daughter, books that provided hope that God had not forsaken us. After he died and I moved out all of his belongings, I found the books just where they had always been, at the side of his bed. I could see the farce of those covers, the smiles practiced to mere perfection. I wondered if my dad ever noticed the strain of those cover models’ smiles. Regardless, the ancient bedroom carpet still held the imprint of that book pile, a hopeful memory not so easily erased.
My father drove me home after my first meeting with One True Path, the new books strewn across the backseat. “It’s all going to be okay,” my father said. His voice came out light and filled with relief. “Something tells me this is just what I’ve been praying for.” He smiled and his warm hand patted my knee in reassurance.
“God will not forsake us, Lucy-girl,” he said, shifting his eyes back to the road. “He’s been with us all along even though sometimes it hasn’t felt like it.”
My father got his confidence back, found his will to fight, now that there was Pastor Jameson to lead us to redemption. I wanted to tell my father that I wished I could be as confident in the pastor as he was, but I didn’t speak. Looking out the side window at the world rushing by, I thought about the new girl I’d just met, the one with deep-sea-blue eyes I wanted to know better, corn-silk hair I desperately wanted to touch, and soccer-strong legs I wanted wrapped around me. Marci was exactly what I’d been praying for God to bring me every night before I fell asleep shrouded in loneliness.
Standing in the lobby of the ministry, I recognize that the car ride with my father that night changed everything. Shame set in for me with the realization that my dad prayed for something so different than I did—the exact opposite. I had certainly felt shame before then over my feelings for girls, but in that sliver of time, the heaviness of it all settled deep within my bones. Secrets, I learned on that car ride home, would become my newfound way of life. Marci was my new secret. Even at the age of sixteen, I realized that in that moment I truly betrayed my father. He eventually forgave me, but something hard and painful still lodges deep within my chest, telling me I still haven’t forgiven myself.
The overhead light panels are dim, casting the desk and a larger room in an eerie glow. A circle of folding chairs is set up in the center of the room, and a table is set with coffee and what look like very stale cookies. The only sound within the building other than my quick, shallow breaths is the boom box that plays a recorded gospel show. The Evangelical minister hollers for the salvation of all his listeners. I call on the Lord for mercy for every single listener out there. Only He holds the power to forgive us our sins. One thing I know for sure is that He is a merciful Lord when the seeker is pure of heart.
I check my watch again, only a few minutes early. “Hello?” I call. “Pastor, are you here?”
It’s the smell of him that alerts me to his presence first, that sweet mixture of Old Spice and lemon drops that I came to know and rely on during my time in the One True Path ministry. Chaz Jameson is standing behind me. I can’t hold back from throwing my arms around the pastor’s son in a huge hug. Even though I haven’t let myself admit it, I have missed my old friend Chaz.
“Luce!” He hugs me back just as hard, his chest now so much fuller than it had been all those years ago. “It’s so good to see you. Pop told me you were in town.” He holds me out at arm’s length, his eyes moist with our reunion. He’s always been the emotional one. “I could hardly believe it when Mother told me.”
Chaz was the pretty one in our group, the one whose lashes were long and dark and thick, the one who made the guys working so hard to leave the gay behind drool with want. He played basketball in high school and went on to play for Ohio State with a full scholarship. He only lasted his first year of college, then dropped out. He’d always been such a dichotomy to me—both pretty and masculine—someone so caught between the life he was meant to live and the life his father dictated, strong elements of femininity coupled with an over-exaggeration of masculinity to appease Pastor Jameson. It only compounded the issue that the pastor was his father.
Chaz has put on some weight since I last saw him, making him solid rather than rail skinny. His dark hair is thin, a bit of gray along the ears, and he’s got new glasses, but he still is as handsome as ever. Maureen, the other girl in our group at the time, always said that if she had been straight, Chaz would be the man for her. Apparently, her wish became a reality.
“I’ve missed you so much,” I say. After Marci’s funeral, I never saw him again. His smell still has the same effect on me, though. I feel my breath become slower, fuller, and my hands relax into a steadiness. For me, Chaz equals calm. Besides Marci, he’s the only other person in the group who signified safety for me. “You’re a papa now, right?”
“The folks told you. They can’t keep quiet about their two grandbabies.” His smile nearly engulfs his face. “You know I married Maureen from our group. Cookouts on Saturdays and Girl Scouts on Wednesdays. Everything I’ve always wanted.”
“Congrats,” I say and try to hide my surprise at his happiness. Is this all smoke and mirrors, or could he really be happy? And what about Maureen’s happiness? “I hope I’ll be able to see her before I go. Where is everyone for the meeting?”
“Come,” Chaz says. He reaches out and takes my hand, his fingers, war
m and familiar, winding through my own. His touch catapults me into a memory I lost long ago.
The first time Chaz Jameson kissed me at Camp Jesus in the Hills, I didn’t know what to do. His lips brushed against mine behind the mess hall after vespers at my first retreat with One True Path. We went behind the building to be alone, to talk about why I cried throughout the evening prayers. His lips hesitated briefly before they touched mine again, testing my permission, his arms wrapped tight around my waist.
I’d been upset, my face hot with tears, though I couldn’t put into words—for Chaz or the group—what I felt. Emotions swirled inside me with this strange concoction of fear and anger and disappointment. I finally understood this minister really meant we would all go to hell unless we changed our same-sex desire, and fear filled me. Then there was the mind-numbing disappointment I felt as soon as I found out that Marci was not attending the retreat because of strep throat. The blanket of shame thickened when I realized she was the real reason I pushed my dad to let me go on the retreat. It had always been about Marci, not the pursuit of genuine change.
Our nightly ritual was set: Chaz and I met and made out behind the mess hall just after lights-out. Chaz and I didn’t speak—we only touched. Each night our touches became braver, the rush a bit stronger. We both knew without saying aloud why we began touching one another, the exploration of it all such a strong pull. Everyone in the group, even our parents, hinted we would make a great couple. On that retreat I’d been saddled with such shame, such flat-out fear of disappointing everyone who loved me, I was willing to do anything to make others happy. Chaz felt the same. I’d done the one thing my father didn’t want me to: fallen in love with Marci.
Both Chaz and I knew where all this touching would lead on the final night of our retreat, and almost as though it was an unspoken contract between us, I lay down on the picnic table and let him pull away my shirt and shorts. I never allowed Marci to leave my thoughts—it was her lips on my skin, always her fingerprints that lined my breasts. And I wasn’t the only one fantasizing. There was something about the way Chaz rubbed my belly, a pause, maybe even a disappointment before he continued, that told me Chaz had his own vision in mind, probably the boy on his basketball team that he’d confessed so many times in meetings to have desires for. Chaz’s shorts came off. There was surprising strength in his rail-thin body, and I imagined Marci’s touch through his. My heart ached for her, my body pulsed for want of her touch.
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