The Psalmist

by James Lilliefors

  “Not yet.”

  “I guess sometimes bodies are never ID’d.”

  “Thousands a year, unfortunately.”

  “Could I share one other thought?” Luke asked.

  “Please.”

  “I just have a funny feeling,” he said, “that if the carving in her hand was a message of some kind, it might not be the only one. There might be a larger context to this, in other words.” Hearing his own voice say it, though, he realized he was just trying to convince himself that Jackson Pynne couldn’t have done this.

  Watching her watching him, Luke again had the impression that there was someone much older inside the physical shell Amy Hunter inhabited.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s just a feeling.”

  “Okay.” Hunter nodded. He felt sure that she was about to say something else, but she just thanked him again.

  AMY HUNTER RAN Jackson Pynne’s name through the motor vehicle data bases. Two minutes later she had a registration ID on the truck. She spent the next thirty minutes running public records and motor vehicle searches on Pynne, finding a Delaware driver’s license, an address listed in Newark, and companies he owned, or co-­owned, in Delaware, Florida, and Maryland. There was another vehicle registered under his name, a 2009 white Audi, and three cars registered to his company, Bay Forest Development, which owned property in several states, including a town house in Tidewater County.

  She saw that Jackson Pynne had been charged with a DWI in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, seven years earlier, and with a domestic assault in Boca Raton in 2006. The assault charge was dropped in a plea deal.

  She skimmed through the transcripts of the house-­to-­house interviews conducted on Tuesday by sheriff’s deputies and found the two descriptions of a silver pickup. That has to be it. Hunter called in an alert on Pynne’s license tag. State police cruisers were equipped now with trunk-­mounted license plate scanners that automatically photographed the plates of passing cars. The plate-­readers were capable of scanning 1,800 license plates a minute and checking them against registration records, fugitive warrants, and criminal data bases.

  Jackson Pynne.

  Pynne with two n’s. What kind of name was that, anyway?

  Hunter went through the FBI data base and then ran Internet searches on Pynne. There was a sister in Anne Arundel County, or had been, but she couldn’t find a current phone number. And there were no active phone listings anywhere in the country for Jackson Pynne. It was as if he had gone out of his way to keep a low profile.

  Hunter glanced out at the parking lot, feeling a kick of adrenaline. Ever since she’d been called to the church on Tuesday morning—­after the sheriff was called—­she’d felt obsessed with this case. In the middle of the night she opened her eyes and her mind immediately went to work. For the two years that she’d been assigned to Tidewater County, her job was to sift through cold cases and assist on hot cases elsewhere in the state. This was the first homicide in her own backyard. She wasn’t going to let it get away from her.

  It might not be the only one.

  A larger context, in other words.

  Hunter had been thinking the same thing, ever since she’d witnessed the crime scene. This was a case with big problems. And maybe the biggest problem was that it wasn’t what they thought it was. Everyone was treating this like a local case. What if it wasn’t?

  Chapter 11

  THERE HAD BEEN seven Jane Doe/John Doe cases in a six-­state region over the past month. Printouts from all seven were in a folder on Hunter’s desk. Fisch had made contact with detectives in three of the jurisdictions but hadn’t yet turned up anything useful.

  Fischer was on board with the idea that the Tidewater killer might have also killed elsewhere. Shipman wasn’t, although he was too good-­natured to say so. Ship seemed to have bought into the sheriff’s theory that Jane Doe had been a paid escort, probably from the Baltimore or Washington area. Someone had hired her, maybe through Craigslist, transported her to Tidewater County, and dumped her body in the church. The only thing that seemed to give this theory any credibility, Hunter observed, was its repeated retelling.

  But Fisch had been unable to find any evidence of escorts who’d gone missing anywhere in the region, and no one who advertised on Craigslist matched her description; also, it seemed unlikely to Hunter that an escort would have ended up in Tidewater County, let alone in a pew at the Methodist church.

  Four of the John Doe/Jane Doe cases were fairly routine—­a man and a woman pulled from rivers; two women, one young, one old, sexually assaulted, their bodies dumped in remote wooded areas. But the other three contained odd details, not typical in these sorts of cases. Those were the ones Hunter wanted to look at more closely.

  In a small Delaware municipality an hour and a half to the north, an arson fire had destroyed a storefront wax museum four days before Tidewater’s Jane Doe was discovered. A woman believed to be in her forties died in the fire, among melted figures of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Elvis Presley.

  In West Virginia, a woman in her late thirties was discovered at the bottom of a 4,000-­foot waste pit four days before that, wrapped in a sheet and bound with duct tape.

  And in central Virginia, the body of a man was left in the woods beside a rural highway. He’d been shot once in the chest, but his body had also been mutilated. After he was killed, his lips were surgically sliced off and his tongue cut out.

  Hunter saw from Fischer’s task force log that Detective Michael Gale headed up the case in Delaware. Fischer had obtained a copy of the case file, then played telephone tag with Gale for two days, getting only his voice mail. Hunter decided she’d try again herself.

  FORTY-­SEVEN MILES FROM the Tidewater County line, Gil Rankin placed a call to Kirby Moss in Massachusetts. He would need Moss for the last part of this assignment, the details of which he was still working through in his head.

  “I need you to come back here,” he said.

  “What are you talking about, I thought we were done.”

  Rankin said nothing at first. Then, “I know you thought that. But we’re not. I need you back here.”

  “Jesus.”

  “You have a problem with that?”

  “No, of course not. You need me back there, I’ll be there.”

  “Right. Very good.”

  Moss had been with Gil Rankin Monday. He’d returned to New England thinking he wouldn’t hear from Rankin again for months. Maybe never. But Moss had a talent that Rankin needed. And he could help make this happen quickly.

  Rankin’s arrangement with Moss was similar to his own deal with the Client. When you were called, you made yourself available. You carried out your assignment. You received substantial compensation. You went your way and never talked about it again.

  The difference was, Rankin couldn’t cast a spell over ­people the way his client did. Nobody could. Sometimes, in idle moments, Rankin still wondered how that worked. How the Client pulled it off. But trying to figure it out was like going into a maze full of dead ends.

  Rankin knew that idle time could be the worst part of his job—­thinking too much, and sometimes thinking in the wrong ways. It made him miss his boys and his wife and the good things he had down in Florida. Things he had to leave behind every time the Client called.

  One hour after hanging up with Kirby Moss, Rankin was lifting weights at a storefront gym near Cambridge, Maryland. Bench-­pressing 250 pounds, a dozen reps. Going to the edge, using up all the reserves of strength he could summon. Lifting was Gil Rankin’s self-­medication when he was on an assignment. He thrived on the process of tearing down muscles and building them up again. The feeling of new strength growing inside him.

  He felt good walking out into the cold Maryland afternoon, the fresh air in his lungs, his muscles tingling again
. The sky was gray and cloudy over the cornfields, a taste of snow in the breeze. But as he drove away, he heard the Client’s voice in his head, as clearly as if he were sitting right there in the Jeep beside him.

  Fear has a smell, Gilbert. So does betrayal. A different smell. Two very distinctive smells. You understand that now, don’t you? We help these ­people because no one else will. They’re considered malcontents and we make them soldiers. But when they turn onto those crooked paths, they become something else. We smell that betrayal, we have no choice. I wish they hadn’t made us do this.

  Chapter 12

  “WHAT DO I think?” Charlotte asked, gazing at Luke over her wineglass. “I think we ought get away for a ­couple of days.”

  “It’s not a good time for that, is it?”

  “Why? Couldn’t Mel fill in if anything happens?”

  Actually it wasn’t such a bad time. He had no appointments, and Melissa Walker—­“Mel,” the assistant pastor—­was in town, so there would always be a pastor on call, as the church promised.

  “It’d be good for you, anyway,” she said. “We’ll escape for two nights, just the three of us.”

  Luke glanced at Sneakers, who was lying on his left side, his legs fully extended, sound asleep by the heat vent with his favorite toy, a slobber-­stained tiny reindeer. He offered no opinion.

  “I’ve checked on reservations,” Charlotte added. “We could be gone Thursday and Friday nights, be back in plenty of time Saturday for you to prepare.”

  “And where would we escape to?”

  “The mountains. Me-­ville,” she said.

  Meaning Charlottesville. Other ­people called Thomas Jefferson’s old haunt “C-­ville,” but Charlotte liked to call it “Me-­ville.” Being Charlotte and all. Fortunately, Luke was the only one who ever got to hear her say this. He suspected that if she tried it on anyone else, it might sound pretentious; to him, it was like hearing his favorite song from high school.

  “I could do some research at Monticello,” she said. “You could hike the mountains with Sneakers and polish your sermon. Or else drive down to the university and ogle the coeds.”

  “Hard to resist that.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Actually, I think I’ve forgotten how to ogle.”

  “Of course you have.”

  She went into the kitchen for more wine, comfortable in her Maine moose pj’s and slipper socks. Sneakers lifted his head, a vacant look on his face; he lowered it only when Charlotte had returned.

  “So you want to squire me away from all this for a ­couple days,” he said.

  “Squire?”

  “Take me away.”

  “I’d gladly squire, if you insist.”

  “Maybe later.”

  “It’ll be good for us,” she said. “Good for the soul.”

  “Yes.” It was a pet phrase of Charlotte’s, and one that Luke liked, although he had once made the mistake of asking where it came from and she’d told him it was a line from a Bob Seger song—­which spoiled it just a bit.

  “Anyway, if I didn’t try something, I’d be an enabler,” she said. “And then how would I live with myself?”

  “What would you be enabling?”

  “You’re a smart man, but you have a rare obsessive disorder, you know. And I can see that it’s starting to flare up.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Well—­those ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs in your eyes. That’s one clue.”

  “Ah.”

  “It’ll be good to get away. For all three of us.”

  He looked at Sneakers. She was right, of course. ­People were still eyeing him a little too long when they saw him at the grocery or the pharmacy. Something had gotten into Tidewater County, it seemed, a certain kind of evil, and with it a sense of suspicion and distrust that Luke hadn’t seen here before.

  He looked out toward the bay. A high moon glazed the marshlands.

  “Just let the investigators handle things for a while,” Charlotte said, in a gentle, chiding tone, pulling her legs up onto the sofa. “I’m sure Tidewater County will be okay for two days without you.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I do. Plus, getting away would give us a chance to talk about things,” she added, and her blue eyes seemed to soften, becoming a place and a promise; it was the same look that had inadvertently seduced him the first time he’d met her nine years earlier.

  “Ah yes,” he said. “Things.”

  She raised her wineglass and they toasted. Moments later Charlotte looked out the window, and he noticed that her eyes had moistened, as if her mood had been momentarily subverted into some troubled private harbor. She’d been doing that on occasion lately. But each time he asked if anything was wrong, her face brightened quickly and she changed the subject.

  It often struck Luke how easily Charlotte had been able to adapt to the role of a pastor’s wife—­at Sunday ser­vices and at congregation gatherings. But, in fact, Charlotte’s spiritual passions were rooted less in religion than in music and literature and out there, in nature; it was part of her reason for wanting to visit the mountains. Her family’s religious background had been weirdly eclectic: her dad was raised Unitarian, her mother Jewish, and the two somehow seemed to cancel each other out; when he met her, she’d been reading the texts of medieval mystics. But it was the silence and subtlety of changing seasons, of the landscape, the sky, the wind and water, that quietly lit her eyes and seemed to give her clarity, as if she had found her own way of measuring grace.

  “I’ll check with Mel tomorrow,” Luke said. “If she’s okay, let’s do it.”

  “Good.”

  She smiled warmly and they touched glasses again.

  “You’ve already booked us, haven’t you?”

  She shrugged, turning her eyes evasively to the television.

  THE LEAD STORY on the ten o’clock news was, again, the weather.

  “Snow Way!” Mindi Bunting, the energetic local anchor, proclaimed. “That’s right, get out your snow shovels one more time, ­people! More of the white stuff is headed to Tidewater County this weekend! All of which is leading county residents to wonder if winter will ever end!”

  A brief report about the “church killing” followed, beginning with video of Sheriff’s Deputy “Beak” Stilfork ducking under the crime tape, moving with a stiff, jerky motion as if he were in a silent movie, then turning and staring disapprovingly at the camera.

  “Police continue to follow leads, but still have not identified the ‘mystery woman’ who was found dead in the Tidewater Methodist Church early Tuesday morning.

  “The Sheriff’s Department today confirmed that the woman was the victim of foul play but released no new details on the case.”

  “ ’Mystery woman,” Charlotte said.

  “Yes, I know.”

  The scene shifted to State’s Attorney Wendell Stamps, walking out of the press conference at the Public Safety Complex, looking cool as can be.

  “State’s Attorney Wendell Stamps, seen here at the Public Safety Complex today, and Maryland State Police homicide investigator Amy Hunter, say they are following several leads, but declined to elaborate. One source told Eyewitness News at Ten that the woman died of a .22 caliber gunshot wound to the chest. However, we are unable to provide independent confirmation.”

  The camera zoomed in on Hunter, wearing her army jacket, carrying a thick binder under her right arm as she rushed from the conference room into the corridor, eyes downcast. Then they repeated the clip twice.

  “Is that her?” Charlotte asked. “The head investigator?”

  “That’s her.”

  “She looks like she’s seventeen.”

  “She’s fourteen,” Luke said. “But mature for her age.”

  “Ha ha.”

  The s
egment ended with the clip of Deputy Stilfork again, his odd-­featured face turning toward the camera and beginning to scowl.

  Charlotte muted the sound as the news went to commercial. “So what aren’t they saying?”

  “Pretty much everything. But that’s only because they still don’t know anything. Although Sergeant Hunter seemed very interested today when I told her about Jackson Pynne.”

  “Really.”

  “What?”

  “You call her Sergeant Hunter?”

  “Well. I don’t know that I do. I guess I just did.”

  Charlotte got up to wash out her wineglass, an action meant to change the subject. Sneakers lifted his head and groggily followed her, in case she needed any help, although his tail hung listlessly. Charlotte was funny about women becoming too friendly with him, sometimes displaying what seemed a preemptive jealousy.

  When Charlotte and Sneakers returned to the living room, Luke said, “Where was Frederick Douglass, by the way, on the day Thomas Jefferson died?”

  She tucked her legs up on the sofa, gazed out toward the still-­darkening bay. The book she was currently researching was on Douglass and Jefferson. Sneakers turned in two circles on the throw rug before settling. After a moment, Charlotte gave him her sweet smile.

  “Douglass was living in Baltimore when Jefferson died,” she said. “He was only six years old.”

  “I bet I can tell you where Douglass was on the day John Adams died.”

  She laughed. “Funny man.”

  Every once in a while Luke felt an urge to demonstrate that he had some sense of American history, too. That the second and third presidents of the United States had both died on July 4, 1826, within a few hours of one another, was a detail that he found endlessly interesting. Coincidences fascinated him.

  Charlotte clicked off the television. She was frowning at him strangely.

  “What is it?” A look of deep concern seemed to consume her face. “No, tell me. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “You’re not looking so well,” she said. “I think you may need an emergency therapy session.”