The Psalmist

by James Lilliefors

  “Anything unusual happen here the last ­couple of days?” he asked as the two men stood out front.

  “Not really. What did you have in mind?” Luke said.

  “Haven’t had any dealings with Robby Fallow or his boy lately, have you?”

  “Pardon?”

  He said it again, louder this time. Robby Fallow was a strange little man who owned the Ebb Tide Inn up on the highway—­an old 1950, 1960s era motel closed more often these days than it was open. Fallow’s grown son lived in one of the motel rooms. They’d both had minor run-­ins with the law, but that’d been years ago.

  “No,” Luke said. “Why?”

  The sheriff spat on the gravel, turned and looked out at the bare trees, shaking his head. Most investigators collected evidence and molded it into a theory, making sure they didn’t focus on one suspect at the expense of others; Calvert’s strategy often was to go at it the other way. It was the main reason commissioners had changed his status in county homicide cases.

  Barry Stilfork took Bowers’s statement in his patrol car, coughing incessantly as Luke talked, working phlegm from his throat.

  Driving away, back up Bayfront toward his home and his wife, Luke Bowers passed an unmarked white Camry going the opposite way, and suspected that it was Amy Hunter, of the Maryland State Police homicide unit. He felt a small sense of relief that it was Hunter who would be running this investigation, not Sheriff Calvert.

  Stilfork had asked most of the questions that Luke expected. But he’d left out a few as well. Luke thought about them as he drove home over a gentle roll of countryside, the rising sun glittering on patches of frozen snow out in the fields and in the white birch woods. One in particular. Something Beak had seen, and no doubt the sheriff had seen by now as well: what appeared to be a series of bloody numbers in the woman’s cupped right hand, cut into her flesh like carvings on a pumpkin.

  PART ONE

  A Certain Kind of Evil

  “I am gone, like a shadow at evening.”

  —­PSALM 109:23

  Chapter 1

  WHEN THE NEWS circulated Tuesday that something had happened overnight at Tidewater Methodist Church, curious citizens began making pilgrimages to see for themselves. All day, cars inched along the entrance drive and ­people stared at the strange old steepled building above the bay. Children rode their bicycles to the church after school, parking behind the crime tape, and imagined what might have happened inside.

  There was nothing to see, of course—­at least not after the body was wheeled away by the medical examiner shortly before 10:00 A.M.—­but that didn’t matter. Something sinister had infiltrated Tidewater County, and the ­people who lived here wanted to understand what it was.

  For Luke Bowers, the police tape was a reminder that evil, too, worked in mysterious ways. Pastor Luke was in the good and evil business. His job was to help ­people find greater meaning in the ordinary march of their days. But his work had also taken him to some of the darker corners of the human soul. This, he sensed, would be one of them.

  Because Luke had discovered the body, towns­people looked at him a little bit differently all of a sudden—­as if he knew things they didn’t, and could answer questions they couldn’t. The sheriff, in particular, regarded him with a more suspicious eye. Luke had been responsible for bringing new things into Tidewater County—­AA meetings and NA meetings, prison ministry; things not universally welcomed. A woman turning up dead in his church seemed, in the sheriff’s estimation, simply a further extension of that trajectory.

  On Tuesday the church offices had been meticulously combed for evidence and finally cleared early in the evening, although there was still black fingerprint powder on some of the surfaces. The sanctuary, parlor, and main entrance remained closed.

  As Wednesday dawned in Tidewater, the yellow crime scene tape was still there, stretched among the trees and wooden barricades and across the front doors to the church, its stark message flapping in the wind: POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.

  The tape seemed to divide the county into two places—­one familiar, the other unknown, but both occupying the same space. It would stay divided, Luke suspected, until this seemingly inexplicable crime had been explained.

  “PASTOR BOWERS?”

  “Yes, Ag.”

  “Amy Hunter is here to see you?” Agnes Collins—­Aggie—­stood in his doorway, slender, prim, wearing a charcoal gray business suit, frowning at her schedule book. Only the hesitant cast of her pale eyes hinted at how brittle she was. “I don’t see that she has an appointment. Would you like me to tell her you’re on a conference call?”

  Despite Pastor Bowers’s open-­door policy, Aggie felt it was her duty to be his buffer to the public, a holdover from her years as executive assistant to a D.C. attorney.

  “No, that’s all right.” Luke rose behind his desk, banging his knee. “Ow!”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  He smiled, recovering, as Amy Hunter walked in.

  “Good morning, sir,” she said. Aggie gently closed the door behind her. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “No. Please, have a seat.”

  Amy Hunter was young, though not quite as young as she looked. Her plain clothes—­rumpled work shirt and khakis under a bulky green army jacket—­were a contrast to those of Aggie Collins. Her dark, medium-­length hair was wildly mussed from the wind, her cheeks pink with the cold.

  Like many ­people in Tidewater County, Luke knew about Amy Hunter without actually knowing her. He’d heard the stories—­that she had trained at the FBI Academy and worked her way up to sergeant with the state police homicide unit while in her mid-­twenties; that she was able to look at a crime scene and see things other ­people didn’t see—­what was there, what was missing, what shouldn’t be there. Over the winter, she’d solved a four-­year-­old cold case, earning regional attention and the contempt of the local Sheriff’s Department.

  “So, how are we doing, sir?”

  “Other than the fact that our church has become a murder scene? Can’t complain.”

  She showed a hint of smile, opening a manila folder on his desk. She was attractive, in a wholesome way, with attentive light brown eyes that seemed to Luke slightly too large for her face.

  “I heard your sermon a few weeks ago. It was inspiring.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “I confess I don’t go to church all that often. I’m a devout secularist. But I had family visiting.”

  “Ah.” Amy Hunter made eye contact quickly. Luke sensed she wasn’t comfortable with small talk. “Which sermon was it?”

  “The crab chowder one?”

  “Oh, yes. Matthew 5:13. Salt of the earth. Well,” he said, “we’d love to have you again sometime.”

  Her eyes were back on the papers in her folder. “I have the transcript of your statement from yesterday,” she said, “with Deputy Stilfork? I just have a ­couple of follow-­ups.”

  “Sure.”

  “You said you checked the church doors and they were all locked at eight o’clock on Monday night. Is that correct? Five doors?”

  “That’s right. Two to the church, two to the offices, one to the parlor. Though they all use the same key.”

  “And how many ­people have keys? Other than yourself.” A question the deputy had missed.

  “Well, let’s see, at least five,” he said. And counted again. “Or six. The assistant pastor, financial secretary, office manager, director of music, youth director, and the sexton.”

  A single line creased her forehead.

  “Custodian. Martha Cummings. We call her the sexton.”

  He waited as she jotted their names, her head tilted intently. “I might add,” he said, “that this is an old building and I don’t think anyone has a clue the last time the locks were ch
anged. So there may be a few other keys floating around.”

  “They wouldn’t have been turned in?”

  “Not necessarily. We don’t keep any gold bars or ancient relics here. It’s a place of worship. It’s possible someone made copies that were never collected.”

  She glanced back at her notes. “How about windows?”

  Also something Stilfork hadn’t asked.

  “No. Martha said she checked them when she cleaned on Monday afternoon,” he said—­although, knowing Martha, he suspected she hadn’t actually done so.

  “She was here until what time?”

  “She would’ve been finished by five.”

  “But there was a meeting in the parlor after five, wasn’t there? An AA meeting?”

  “That’s correct. At six.”

  Hunter’s gaze held, as if she expected him to say more. “Not everyone likes the idea of AA meetings at the church, I understand. Which is something you initiated?”

  “Yes. NA meetings even less.”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  “Feel about it?” He saw that her steady eyes were waiting, alert like the cold morning. “I try not to. I was brought here to broaden the ministry, which we’re doing. But I’m also respectful of tradition. I think we’ve struck a pretty good balance.”

  Hunter shuffled a sheet of paper to the top of the pile. “Agnes Collins supplied a list of church members yesterday. Two hundred and twenty-­seven names. Is this a complete list?”

  “Probably not,” Luke said. “I mean, it’s everyone who wants to be on it, I suppose.”

  “Some don’t.”

  “No. Some ­people aren’t joiners.” He shrugged. “I guess they don’t want to be part of any club that would have someone like them for a member.”

  “Right.” Hunter showed her version of a smile again; two tiny brackets on either side of her mouth. “How about Robby Fallow?”

  “Ah, Robby Fallow.” Her eyebrows lifted curiously. “The sheriff asked me that, too,” Luke explained. “He wanted to know if I’d had any dealings with Robby lately.”

  “Have you?”

  “ ‘Dealings’? No, not that I know of.”

  “Any reason to think he might’ve had anything to do with what happened?”

  “No.”

  She nodded, wrote two words in the margin and underlined them. Luke squinted, trying to read what they were, but couldn’t. The sheriff didn’t like Fallow and was probably going to try to push the case in that direction.

  “Now, you came in the church yesterday through the office entrance back here, and walked down the connecting hallway to the front of the sanctuary, as I understand it—­entering through the choir door.”

  “Correct.”

  “And you found the woman at approximately seven forty-­five.” Luke nodded. “At first you thought she might be praying. You said she looked ‘tranquil.’ ”

  “No, I think the word I used was serene.”

  She frowned at her transcript. Beak evidently had written the wrong word. After the fact, probably, Luke suspected, as he was typing out the interview, unable to read his own writing. “Okay, similar idea,” she said. “First impressions can be deceptive, though.”

  “Yes. They can.” The image of the dead woman returned to him—­although he realized after a moment that he wasn’t recalling her face as he’d actually seen it, but her face from the dream that had awakened him that morning. “Close-­up, it was different,” he said. “I saw that her legs weren’t right. They both looked broken.”

  “They were,” Hunter said. “Left arm and several ribs, too.”

  “Really.”

  She nodded, her eyes steady—­and, it seemed, suddenly much older than the rest of her. “That’s not for public consumption yet,” she said. “Someone did a real number on her. Beat her repeatedly. Postmortem. A lot of anger there. Do you know anyone who might’ve done something like that?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Anyone ever broken into the church before?”

  “No. Other than some kids, a ­couple of summers ago.”

  “Ever had an issue with transients?”

  “Transients. No.” They shared a brief smile. On the ten o’clock news the night before, Sheriff Calvert had said the woman “might be a transient, we just don’t know.” Luke didn’t think so; not unless transients had begun wearing Louis Vuitton and Ferragamo.

  “Any idea what might’ve happened? Who might’ve been involved? Why she was brought here to the church?”

  “No,” he said, “on the last two.”

  “And on the first?”

  “Well.” Luke decided to tell her what he’d been thinking. “Whoever it was, he must’ve parked in front at the main entrance. Walked back around the offices and climbed in through the parlor window, which was probably left unlocked. Then he came back through the corridor to the entrance doors, unlocked them, and carried her into the sanctuary.”

  She nodded almost imperceptibly. “And why do you say that?”

  “It’s the only explanation that makes sense. I noticed there were shoe prints outside the parlor window. And what looked like three sets of the same, or similar, shoe prints in the hallway. But they were heavier going toward the sanctuary than going the other way, so he must’ve been carrying her.”

  “Yes. Very good,” she said, casting her eyes back to her questions; Luke wondered if she had already figured this out or if he was telling her something.

  “There aren’t any security cameras or alarms in the sanctuary, or the entrance lobby?”

  “No, just in the offices here.” He pointed to the single camera mounted in a corner of the ceiling; he smiled at it, and waved. “Where the safe is, and where we keep our financial records. We’ve talked about getting them for the sanctuary and the parlor, but somehow it always ends up becoming a political issue.”

  “There’s some disagreement within the congregation on the subject of growth, I understand,” she said.

  “Some, yes.” She was waiting for him to say more. “There are those who don’t want it. Some of the traditionalists are afraid that if we’re not careful, we’ll become a megachurch. And in a few years Joel Osteen will be hired as our pastor. It was a challenge just to get the video screens approved for the sanctuary.”

  “What happened yesterday wouldn’t be related to that.”

  “To?”

  “The disagreement over growth.”

  “No. I don’t see how it could be.”

  “Okay.” She looked back at her notes, about to wrap up, he could see. But then she surprised him. “The victim had several numbers cut into her right hand,” she said. “You noticed that, correct?”

  Luke blinked affirmatively.

  “And I see here that Deputy Stilfork contacted you again late yesterday afternoon, at the instigation of the sheriff, and asked you about those numbers.”

  “He asked me about numbers. He didn’t say anything about them being cut into her hand. He showed me three numbers written on note paper—­three numbers and one letter, actually—­and asked if I had any idea what they meant.”

  “And you said . . .”

  “I said no.”

  “Do you remember what they were?”

  “Sure. Five, one, i, and eight. I told him I had no idea.”

  She glanced back at the transcript. Luke liked the intensity in her eyes, the glints of what seemed like submerged wisdom. “But he asked you to speculate.”

  “Yeah, he asked me to tell him anything that came to mind. I told him maybe ‘fifty-­one I ate’?”

  “Fifty-­one I ate.”

  “Yeah. He asked me what that meant and I told him about the hot dog eating contest at Coney Island. Fifty-­one, I told him, I think that’s about how many hot dogs the winner used to eat ea
ch year.”

  “Okay.”

  “He asked me if I thought I was being funny. I said, no, evidently not.”

  “Actually, I think it’s possible the third digit wasn’t an i,” Hunter said. She surprised him again, pulling an eight-­by-­ten photo from her folder and sliding it across the desk. It was an image of the dead woman’s right hand, from the medical examiner’s office in Baltimore. Cleaned, blown up. The flesh cut, the wounds like rivulets in the earth carved by ancient rivers.

  “Want to give it some more thought?”

  “Okay, I will.” She pulled the photo back and closed her folder. Bowers scooted his chair, ready to stand, surprised that she had given him so many details; a trade-­off of some kind, maybe.

  “Oh, one other thing,” she said. “Several fingerprints were found on the body. Did you touch her at all?”

  “I felt for a pulse, yeah,” he said. “On her neck.”

  “Anywhere else?”

  “No. I mean, I may have touched her hand. I tried to read the numbers.”

  “But you couldn’t.”

  “No.”

  Hunter nodded and stood. “All right. Thank you, sir,” she said, and extended her hand. Her shake was what he expected: firm, though not aggressively so.

  They said their goodbyes standing by the front door to the church offices. Aggie kept her head down, pretending not to listen. Hunter pulled a business card from a pocket of her army jacket and handed it to him.

  “I know this is difficult and I appreciate your cooperation, Pastor Bowers. If you think of anything else, please call me.”

  “I will.”

  “We’re going to solve this.”

  Luke nodded. It was a strange remark, although he liked how it sounded; and, for some reason, he believed her. For just a second before she left, her eyes looked like those of a young girl, full of the untested promises of life. That she could seem so wise and look so young was both engaging and a little mystifying.