The Psalmist

by James Lilliefors

  “I’m also looking at some of them shoe-­print patterns,” he added, “and thinking they look mighty familiar.”

  “But with a difference,” Hunter said.

  “Oh? And what difference would that be?”

  “There are two distinct footprint patterns this time,” Hunter said. “There was only one at the church.”

  The sheriff looked her up and down, and then turned to see what Stilfork was doing.

  Hunter walked up the steps to Cabin 12. A rusty spring creaked as she pulled the screen door. It was a single-­room cabin, with an old musty smell. The bed was at an odd angle and an armchair overturned, as if there’d been a fight. Two evidence techs were dusting surfaces—­a small wooden chest of drawers and a nightstand. She stood just inside the door, looking at the massive bloodstain on the bed, which seemed to have spread from a single point.

  “Tell me about the shoe prints you found,” Hunter said to one of the techs, a tiny woman with dark hair and nervous eyes.

  “Several well-­defined prints so far,” she answered

  “Different prints?”

  “No. One.”

  “Matching the prints outside?”

  “Haven’t checked those yet.”

  “Please do,” she said. “Before the sheriff’s deputies tramp over them.”

  Surprisingly, the woman turned her head and gave Hunter a knowing smile.

  Hunter studied the room for several minutes, and eventually noticed something else. She walked to the wall on the other side of the bed, traced her fingers around the edge of a small hole in the wood panel.

  “You see this?”

  The woman looked up and froze. The other tech, a short heavyset man with hair like steel wool, walked over.

  “Bullet hole,” Hunter said. “No shell casings here, were there?”

  “Nope.”

  Hunter nodded. She walked back outside, calculating the trajectory of the gunshot. It took about seven minutes for her to find it, embedded in dried mud beneath a sprinkling of pine needles. A .22 caliber bullet. The probable cause of Jane Doe’s death.

  Two cabins away the sheriff was standing with evidence techs who were taking tire track impressions. It wouldn’t have surprised Hunter if they were taking impressions of their own vehicles.

  “WHAT DO YOU think?” she asked Ship as they drove back, threading the maze of creeks and coves and back bays.

  “Too many ­people involved. Evidence contamination.”

  “What did Deputy Stilfork tell you?”

  “He thinks the case is looking pretty solid. They’re banking on the Chesterfield cigarette now and the shoe prints. In both cases the same as at the church.”

  Jackson Pynne, in other words. The shift in the investigation was palpable, yes. Just as Shipman had mentioned at breakfast the day before: The sheriff’s primary suspect appeared to be Pynne now, not Robby Fallow. And Calvert seemed to be embracing this new scenario just as avidly as he had pushed the one about Fallow—­as if it was something he’d discovered. Maybe he believed he had.

  Was this another version of “necessary outcome”? Sheriff Calvert liked to reach conclusions quickly, Hunter knew. Mistakenly, he considered it a sign of competence.

  “Why, though?” she said. “Why would he have taken her to the church? Why would he have carved those numbers in her hand?”

  “You know what Beak thinks?”

  “Fortunately, no.”

  “He thinks that Robby Fallow and Jackson Pynne were in on this together.”

  Hunter gave him a look: come on. Shipman’s smile vanished.

  “I’m just saying.”

  “How imminent are charges now?”

  ­“Couple of days? Maybe middle of the week. What about this Psalms thing, though?” he asked. He looked at her. “Is there anything to that?”

  “I don’t know.” Hunter recalled the sheriff’s accusation that she’d been “withholding” evidence, and decided not to tell Ship any more about Psalms right now. The only ­people who knew about Psalm 51:8 were the pastor and Ben Shipman. As much as she loved him, and thought of him as a brother, she sometimes worried about Ship’s divided allegiances.

  They fell into silence for a while, as the road wound north toward farmland. Then Ship put on his Beatles CD, nodding his head to the music. “Lady Madonna, baby at your breast, wonder how you manage to feed the rest . . .”

  Hunter imagined the advice her father might have given her. Go with your instincts. Don’t let anyone throw you off your game. Pep talks. Her dad seeming to have all the answers, wanting her to play sports, become an athlete. He’d never have imagined she’d be investigating homicides now, playing poor man’s chess with the local sheriff. The world her father had tried to prep her for was out there somewhere, it just wasn’t the one she lived in. She thought again of the filmy eyes of Jane Doe, above clasped hands in a church pew. The faces never went away; Hunter knew she would still be seeing those eyes years from now.

  “What are you thinking about?” Shipman asked, turning down the music.

  Hunter glanced at his steady freckled face and her suspicions about him evaporated. There was something irresistibly companionable about Shipman. He became uncomfortable when ­people were upset or quiet for too long. “Sorry,” she said. “I guess I was thinking about my dad. Thinking what he might’ve said about all this.”

  “What would he have said?”

  “Stick with it. Go with your instincts, stuff like that.”

  Ship was silent for a few beats. “He died suddenly, didn’t he.”

  “Heart attack. Forty-­three. Yeah, no one saw it coming.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Weird, the impressions our parents leave on us, isn’t it? Even all these years later.”

  Then, after a pause, Shipman said, “Mine died young, too.”

  Hunter glanced at him, and felt bad that she had never asked about his father. She knew he’d been a waterman and that he was no longer alive, but little else; the narrative about Ship’s dad always seemed to begin and end there. It was something he seemed uncomfortable talking about.

  “Yeah, he was a deep sea crabber,” Ship said. “His boat started taking on water forty miles offshore. Off the coast of North Carolina. I was thirteen.”

  “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “Nah, it’s okay, I never talk about it.”

  Hunter watched the road unfolding in front of them, the cloud-­tinted light in the fields. When Shipman spoke again, his words were a complete surprise: “Tribulation leads to perseverance, perseverance to character, character to hope. And that’s how it goes.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Thing my daddy used to say a lot,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. “It’s from the Bible.”

  Hunter made a mental note to look it up. “Your dad grew up in Tidewater.”

  “Yep, born and raised. Tried to leave a ­couple times. Like me. Something about the air here, I guess, the water. Draws you back. Some ­people, they think they can leave their worries behind if they go somewhere else. Doesn’t work that way. My ex-­ thought that. She moved to North Carolina, thought she’d start over, her problems would disappear. My daughter Becca, she tells me Donna’s just the same as always, though only worse. She’s bipolar, we think. Everything’s fine for a while then it’s like, whoa, look out.”

  “Well, I’m glad you came back,” Hunter said.

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  It felt comfortable going into silence after that. Faintly, Hunter heard the Beatles, the chorus on “I Am the Walrus.” She began to think about the case again, about what she’d seen in the woods at Oyster Creek, the game the sheriff was playing.

  Finally she said, “Jackson Pynne’s company owns a town house here in Tidewater County, you know.”

  “Do
es it?”

  “A rental. I think it might be a good idea if you went over and had a look at it.”.”

  “Okay. Sure.” He turned the music off. “Why? Do you think he’s been staying there?”

  “No,” Hunter said. “But I think we might find something.”

  “Okay.” After a pause, he said, “What do you think we might find?”

  “I don’t know,” Hunter said. “For starters, maybe a pair of shoes.”

  Chapter 21

  JACKSON PYNNE HAD taken the narrow back roads out of Tidewater, south through the corn and bean fields to Virginia, determined again to disappear. He’d thought a few times about going to police, telling them what he knew. But it was too risky. Tidewater County was poison now and would be for a while. If he stayed, he might not get out. Better to put some distance between himself and what had happened. Try to figure things out on his own.

  He kept imagining her face—­the way she had looked at him that last time, with her dark, complicated eyes, portals to a world full of secrets, most of which he’d never learn now. He kept thinking there must be some way of changing it, reversing what had happened. Of bringing her back.

  Pynne made it as far as Selma, North Carolina. Exit 97 on the interstate. He stopped in a parking lot on the commercial strip, for a hamburger and a smoke, to think about what he was doing, where he was going.

  He lowered the windows and lit a Chesterfield. Watching the thick cumulous clouds over the chain motel roofs and the giant green interstate signs. Breathing the Carolina air. The slight irritation was there in his throat again as he smoked, and he wondered, as he often did, if he had throat cancer. Then he closed his eyes and tried to just savor that breeze. It made him feel good—­the fast food smells, the asphalt and diesel, the pinewoods, the rushing sound of traffic, the taste of the cigarette.

  His cell rang as he was driving back toward the entrance ramp. And when he answered, he heard her voice again. Just as if she were still alive. Just like that.

  But not talking to him.

  “No, please,” she said. “You’re not going to do this. Please don’t.”

  Jackson pulled to the shoulder and jammed the car into Park.

  “No, no no!” he heard her say, followed by a loud, percussive sound.

  Jackson Pynne came out of the car and vomited his lunch in the gully beside the road. Knowing now. Knowing that this plan to disappear would never work. They would find him. Wherever he went, they would be following. Until they find me. He was never going to get away from what had happened.

  Chapter 22

  ALAN BARKER WAS the chief of detectives in Bridge County, West Virginia, a rural mountain community near the borders of Maryland and Pennsylvania. A Jane Doe had been found there at the bottom of a wastewater containment pit, wrapped in a bedsheet, her hands, ankles, and neck bound with duct tape. Dead from a single .45 caliber gunshot wound just below her right ear. The woman was white, appeared to be in her late thirties, five feet seven, 160 pounds. Wearing jeans and a black T-­shirt. A small amount of marijuana in a Baggie was found in her front pocket.

  Sonny Fischer had left four messages with Barker, Hunter saw from the Tidewater case log, going back to Wednesday. Barker had called once, after the second try, leaving a message, but there was nothing after the third or fourth calls.

  Hunter brewed a pot of coffee and settled at her desk, the door closed, looking out at the parking lot, the trees shaking in the wind near the halogen lights. The offices were mostly empty tonight, just a ­couple of dispatchers, a desk sergeant, emergency call handlers in another wing of the building, someone moving around in the detective division. She liked the quiet, the lack of interruption. She was going to work on this as long as it took. Not stopping until I find something.

  First up, West Virginia. There was no home number listed for Alan Barker, but she found listings for several other county officials. It took her four tries to reach one. The assistant county attorney was a Patricia Pembrook, whose voice was so deep that Hunter thought at first she was talking with a man.

  “All I can tell you,” she said, “is if it’s Saturday night, there’s a good likelihood Barky’s having dinner over at the Red Lobster.”

  “Excuse me—­Barky?”

  “Al Barker. Isn’t that who you’re asking about?”

  “Right.”

  Hunter found the number for Red Lobster. The girl who answered sounded like she was ten years old.

  “I’m trying to reach a Mr. Alan Barker,” she said. “I believe he’s having dinner there right now.” She listened to the confused utterances on the other end, then added, “This is urgent. It’s actually an emergency.”

  Hunter looked at her watch. Six minutes passed before a man’s voice came on the line.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Barker.”

  “Who’s calling?”

  Hunter explained.

  “Well, geez Louise,” he said. “I’m having dinner with my family right now. Could you call my office on Monday? I don’t even know who this is I’m talking to.”

  “I just told you, sir,” she said. “And we did call your office. We left multiple messages. Four messages, according to my log. This is an urgent, high-­priority case.” She tried softening her tone slightly. “I just need a minute or so of your time, sir.”

  Barker sighed dramatically, twice. Then his voice became more measured. “What is it you need to know?”

  “I’m looking at the file from the Jane Doe case there. I’m looking at a possible connection with a Jane Doe here in our jurisdiction. I need to know something, sir. Were there any numbers left behind at the scene where the body was found—­or on the body?”

  “Numbers.”

  “Yes. On or near the body? Anything like that?”

  “Who told you that there were?”

  Hunter felt a surge of energy. “No one,” she said. “It’s speculation, sir. As I say, it’s possible it might tie our case with yours.”

  “Do you have a phone number where I can reach you?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and she gave him both of her numbers.

  “And your name again?” Hunter told him. “All right. I’m having dinner right now. I’ll have someone call you if we find anything. Thank you,” he said, and hung up.

  Then Hunter opened the case file from the Central Virginia John Doe murder and read through it, front to back. The victim was a white male, found beside a rural stretch of State Road 736. Shot in the chest at close range with a .22 caliber handgun. Fisch had talked with two detectives in the case, but they provided no useful information beyond what was in the files, except that they considered the killing drug-­related, most likely a “retribution killing,” the missing tongue meaning he’d been a snitch.

  Hunter heard something and looked up. A door closing. Out the window, stray flakes of snow glittered up above the halogen lights. She heard the beep of a car door lock. Listened to the mechanical sounds around her—­—­clock, coffeemaker, the heating. Then she got an idea.

  SHE FLIPPED BACK to the case file for Jane Doe in West Virginia. The medical examiner was named Carroll Sternwilder, and a C. Sternwilder was listed in the white pages on Slope Lane. A male voice answered when Hunter called.

  “Mr. Sternwilder.”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Amy Hunter, I’m calling from the homicide unit in the Tidewater County Special Investigations Office in Maryland. I’m looking at a homicide case here and referencing your open Jane Doe investigation. I’m interested in the numbers that may have been left behind with the victim.”

  “Hello?”

  Hunter heard a television in the background—­a buzzing sound that she finally began to recognize as engines in a Nascar race. She repeated most of what she’d just said.

  “I’m not authorized to make any statements to the
media,” he said in an even-­sounding, high-­toned voice.

  “Sir? I’m not the media. I’m the chief investigator for the state police homicide unit.”

  “I’m not authorized to talk about it.”

  Talk about it. Hunter took a breath.

  “But there were numbers.”

  “Nothing that’s relevant to the investigation.”

  “But there were numbers.”

  “Could you give me your name and phone number, please.”

  She did, and Carroll Sternwilder hung up.

  Several minutes before nine her cell rang. A West Virginia number came up on the screen.

  “Hunter.”

  “My, you’re a busy little beaver,” the voice said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I understand you just called our chief medical examiner at home?”

  It was “Barky,” back from Saturday night at the Red Lobster. “Sir, I think there may be a connection between our Jane Doe case and the Jane Doe case there. I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

  “And what do you think that connection might be?”

  “I won’t know until you tell me if there were any numbers left behind,” she said.

  Hunter heard a rattle of papers.

  “Were there numbers, sir?”

  “Well, I’ve just pulled those files, and the only thing I see is that there were some numbers tattooed onto the small of the woman’s back. If that means anything.”

  “Was this sent out to other law enforcement agencies?”

  “Statewide, yes.”

  Statewide. Meaning they assumed the woman was from West Virginia and that the crime had a local solution. Same as in the Delaware arson case: thinking, for obvious reasons, that the wax museum owner may have been the perpetrator. Local assumptions, local solutions.

  “Could you describe it, please? The numbers.”

  Hunter felt adrenaline pumping into her blood as she waited.

  “Well. It was sort of funny.” He drew a long breath. “The numbers on her back? It was sort of crudely done. We thought at first it might’ve been 666. You know, the mark of the beast, from the Bible? We thought maybe they’d tried 666 and just done a bad job. But we eventually decided—­it’s pretty clear, in fact, they’re eights. Two of ’em.”