The Psalmist

by James Lilliefors

  “Eights.”

  “That’s right. Eight. Eight. And a six,” he said, drawing out the sound of each number. “That mean anything?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “If this is somehow connected to another homicide case, why, naturally that would be of interest to us.”

  “Of course,” Hunter said. “One of your investigators told us that you already had a theory about this case?”

  “Well, no,” he said. “We have ideas. We have a person of interest. But, frankly, we don’t have the evidence at this time to make a case against him.”

  “Could you elaborate on that, sir?”

  “Well, we have reason to think that this is a drug-­related crime. Not far from where this woman was found, there’s a drug house, place that’s been raided a few times over the last—­I don’t know, six, seven years. Man’s been charged with possession of cocaine and paraphernalia, on three separate occasions.”

  At the far end of the parking spaces, parallel to the building, a Tidewater County sheriff’s patrol car whipped into a space. Its lights went out.

  “How might this other case be connected?” Barker asked.

  But Hunter’s thoughts were racing. “Listen,” she said. “I need to check on something. Can I call you back?”

  “Well. I suppose.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Drug-­related. She paged back through the Virginia file. The mutilation. Detectives there believed that the killing was drug-­related, too, although the circumstances were very different: in West Virginia, marijuana had been found in one of the woman’s pockets, but there were no drugs in her system. Could the drugs have been planted to make it seem drug-­related? To divert attention from what might’ve really happened?

  Hunter considered this new evidence: a three-­digit number, crudely tattooed on the woman’s back. Not a number left behind like a calling card, though. A number tattooed there: 886.

  This time, Hunter didn’t need to call the pastor.

  She opened her Bible. A Bible from Hunter’s childhood, her signature on the title page. Amy L. Hunter.

  88:6.

  This time she got it on the first try.

  886 was Psalm 88, verse 6.

  A simple message. Succinct description of the fate of this woman, who’d been discovered at the bottom on a waste pit on a hillside in West Virginia.

  Hunter read it, several times.

  You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.

  Chapter 23

  THE COLD AIR and silence felt insulating as Hunter walked across the parking lot. But as she reached her car, she heard an engine starting behind her. At the other end of the asphalt strip, a patrol car’s headlights lit the trees as it reversed from the space and accelerated toward her.

  The car stopped behind Hunter’s, blocking her way. The driver’s window was lowered. It was Barry Stilfork.

  “Sergeant.”

  “Evening.”

  “Working late?”

  “Just tying up some loose ends.”

  His eyes loitered on the folders she was carrying. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to take files from the building without logging them out. Was he going to make an issue about that? Stilfork’s heavy-­handed attitude seemed to her a distorted reflection of where he’d come from. Ship had described him as something of an outcast in school, a tall kid who never laughed, whom ­people made paths around if they noticed him at all. Hunter had heard Stilfork say that his parents, now deceased, had worked in the “food ser­vice industry.” But Ship told her they’d never worked anywhere but at McDonald’s up on the highway, which was where they’d met; his mother a food fryer, his father working his way to manager.

  “You live down by the marina, don’t you?” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “You live by the marina?”

  “Why?”

  “There was a report of vandalism there earlier tonight. Just thought you ought to know.”

  “What sort of vandalism?”

  “Broken window. Someone driving around with their lights off. Just wanted to give you a heads-­up.”

  His eyes stayed with her. There had been several late night vandalism reports over the past few days—­rocks through a window, four or five cars broken into, tombstones overturned at the cemetery. No clear suspects yet. It was as if the church killing had spread a dark fever of mischief through the county. Hunter wondered if Stilfork himself, the only officer on patrol through the night, had any role in it.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be fine, Lieutenant.”

  “Well, I’ll probably be patrolling the area some later. I’ll check on your building.”

  “No, there’s no need for that.”

  “Just be careful,” he said, his tone a threat as much as an expression of concern.

  It was nine-­seventeen as she started her car. Pastor Bowers would be home by now. Had been home, probably, for hours. Hunter sat in her car and called him. Stilfork’s patrol car idled at the entrance of the parking lot, as if he was waiting for her.

  Bowers’s wife answered. Hunter waited as she called him; it almost sounded as if she said, It’s Nancy Drew! Probably just, It’s for you! “Hello?”

  “You were right, god damn it,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  Hunter inhaled deeply. “Sorry. Let me start again. It’s Amy Hunter. You were right. There is a third case. Psalm 88, verse 6. I just found it. I’m going back further now.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you meet me first thing in the morning?”

  “Uh, sure I could.” Hunter wanted his opinion on the Virginia case now, too. “Of course, I do have a prior commitment tomorrow morning,” he added.

  “Oh.”

  “Could it be after the ser­vice?”

  “Yes. Sorry. I wasn’t even thinking.”

  AT FBI HEADQUARTERS in Washington, D.C., Supervising Special Agent Dave Crowe skimmed through the details of the peculiar John Doe case from Central Virginia: well-­dressed middle-­aged man, lips sliced off, tongue cut out.

  It wasn’t his case. Probably had nothing to do with what he was working on, except that he was checking all missing person cases in the region, on the off chance he’d find a piece that fit the jigsawed image in his head. This one didn’t. But the description was unsettling. It would stick with him; he would come back to it later—­after he’d learned that the pieces he was collecting belonged to a different puzzle than the one in his head.

  For now, though, Dave Crowe closed the file and moved on. He had something much more immediate to deal with.

  PART TWO

  Praying Woman

  “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—­in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.”

  —­1 CORINTHIANS 15:51

  “Sometimes the question is complicated and the answers simple.”

  —­DR. SEUSS

  Chapter 24

  SUNDAY, MARCH 19

  OVERNIGHT, A LIGHT snow dusted the roads, lawns, and fields of Tidewater County. As the sun rose over the farmland, fog hung like Spanish moss in the loblolly pines by the coast. A low thunder rumbled at intervals, making odd sonic reverberations through the bayside cliffs and coves.

  Luke Bowers had asked Aggie to call in two extra ushers and to print fifty additional church bulletins, anticipating a larger than normal crowd. But no one expected the attendance to more than double. By the time Betsy Anders began her organ prelude, the pews were filled end-­to-­end, with more than thirty ­people standing in the back of the church and in the doorways. Only the pew where the dead woman had been found, set off by tape marks on the floor, was empty.

  “I must say,” Luke began, “I have never seen so many ­peo
ple here on the third Sunday in March.” A nervous titter rippled through the room; the sanctuary air was scented with damp hair and clothing. “I suspect that a few of you may have come here this morning more out of curiosity than a desire to worship. And that’s fine. I’m happy we’re all here, together. Which is a roundabout way of bringing me to today’s message.

  “This week,” he said, glancing at his notes, “our church, and our community, was visited by tragedy. It came to us under cover of darkness early Tuesday and slipped away unseen, and without explanation. In the hours and days since then, many of you have asked the same questions—­of yourselves, of one another, and of me. Who was the young woman found here in our sanctuary Tuesday morning? What path brought her to us under such unfortunate circumstances? Why did this evil visit our gentle little community of Tidewater?

  “We ask these questions because it is our nature as human beings to want to explain the events in our lives, in particular the tragedies. And it is our nature to expect that such events always have explanations.

  “But what happens when there are no simple answers to our questions? Or when the explanations don’t appear as quickly or as clearly as we would like? That’s what I’d like to talk about this morning. Because, sometimes, what is human nature and what is God’s nature are two very different things.

  “We meet here this morning on the shores of hope—­not in despair or confusion, but through the grace of God. Often, we talk here in this room on Sunday mornings about faith. And living with questions is a necessary part of our faith. Did you know that Jesus was questioned more than eighty times in the Gospels? Our questions remind us that a questioning faith is a living faith. When our faith has run out of questions, it becomes not faith but dogma.

  “The scriptures implore us to seek, but they also invite us to ask questions. In the famous passage in Matthew, the apostle says, ‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you.’ But Scripture also tells us that we must learn to be discerning in what we ask—­and to be patient as we wait for answers. Faith is full of trials and tribulations, in other words, and it is often through these trials and tribulations that we grow in the spirit.”

  Several times during his sermon Luke noticed a round-­faced man with smoky blue eyes and a dark buzz-­cut sitting on the aisle end of a side pew, wearing a dark raincoat. The man appeared to be staring, opening his eyes wider, into small saucers, whenever Luke looked at him. There were no rules on eye contact during sermons, and Luke had drawn a few “starers” over the years—­nearly always women, including those Charlotte called his “groupies.” This one was beginning to make him uncomfortable, so he finally stopped looking that way.

  “Our questions sometimes become the central mystery of our faith,” he continued. “And the way those questions are answered—­or not answered—­sometimes shapes our beliefs. But we must remember that what we receive, when we embrace faith and patience, is often the gift of wisdom. So let us ask our questions. But let us be patient and listen—­and really listen—­as we wait for answers.”

  Luke paused for effect; in the silence, a long rumble of thunder shook the floorboards of the church building. He looked out across the congregation.

  “I think even those not wishing to listen heard that,” he said.

  As if in reply, the thunder rumbled again, louder and longer. A wave of laughter rippled through the sanctuary.

  “So. We continue to ask questions,” Luke said, in summary. “But as we wait for answers, let’s use this uncertain time as an opportunity to grow—­to deepen our capacity for patience, faith, and understanding. And to deepen our commitment to this community, to our families, and to one another. Let’s remember that evil can reach us anywhere, as it did this week. But when it does, we must meet evil with grace.

  “Now, please join me as we pray for the woman who was killed and left here in our sanctuary on Tuesday.” Looking quickly out at the congregation, he again noticed the intense-­looking man with the crew cut. The man’s eyes met his—­pale blue, unrelenting.

  Luke bowed his head in prayer.

  FILING FROM THE church, congregants and visitors waited in line to greet Pastor Luke. Charlotte stood by the adjacent doors, meeting guests with her easy cheer. There were many here Luke had never seen in church before: the impeccably dressed Congressman Morton Sand and his heavily made-­up wife Carlotta; Donald McFarland, the tall, cherubic-­faced mayor of Tidewater, and his tiny wife Petra, who reminded Luke of an elf; Buddy Read, the leathery skinned charter boat captain who always referred to him as “Pastor Bers”; State’s Attorney Wendell Stamps, his lovely wife Janine, and their two tall blond daughters; Anna Havram, seller of computer cartridges, whose small eyes seemed to light up with amusement whenever anyone spoke to her; the philanthropists Harold and Blanche Ganders, a charming British ­couple who owned the county’s largest home and whose hobby was drinking; the snowy-­haired painter Wendy Singh, whose portrait of Eleanor Mondale was owned by the National Portrait Gallery; several jean-­clad Buntings, from the newspaper, one of whom tried persistently, but unsuccessfully, to interview Luke; the pouty-­lipped Debbie Cosgrove, who managed the movie theater, and her current fiancé Bobby Bell, who uncharacteristically wore a suit jacket, but also sported a black eye this morning; and the severe-­looking ser­vice station owner John Patterson, who, as always, seemed to be waiting for things to end.

  Also present, but uninterested in chatting today, were former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his wife Joyce, who lived the next county over, and who came here occasionally because they liked the old church building and its perch above the bay.

  But the peculiar, crew-­cut man in the black raincoat was nowhere to be seen; Luke wondered how he’d managed to do that—­to vanish.

  Bringing up the rear of the line was Amy Hunter, her army jacket collar turned up unevenly, her hair sticking out on one side.

  “Pastor,” she said. “When you have a second, could I talk with you?”

  “Of course. Oh, Charlotte, have you met Amy Hunter?” he said, introducing them. “State police homicide investigator?”

  Charlotte offered a limp handshake. “Enchanted,” she said.

  Luke gave her a frown. Charlotte mouthed the word What?

  “Good sermon,” Hunter said, looking out at the parking lot with restless eyes.

  “Thanks.”

  “I imagine ­people do ask you a lot of questions,” she said, assessing Charlotte for a second. “And expect you to know the answers.”

  “Well, as long as they don’t ask me about probability and statistics, I do all right.”

  He saw that she kept glancing at the sheriff’s deputies, standing out in the entrance drive.

  “Could we meet somewhere away from the church?”

  “Sure, I don’t see why not.”

  “How about the Blue Crab Diner, in thirty minutes?” she said.

  “Okay.”

  When he looked back at Charlotte, she was glaring at him.

  GIL RANKIN WAITED in his car in a far corner of the parking lot under a sycamore tree, as Kirby Moss emerged from the side door of the church and needled his way through the vehicles, looking conspicuous in his dark raincoat and 1950s haircut. The man wasn’t as subtle as he thought.

  Rankin watched the ­people streaming into the parking lot. Young families, old ­couples. Clueless souls. Everywhere he went, he saw ­people like this, it seemed, wearing nearly the same clothes, the same expressions. Not paying attention. Corrupted and afraid. None of them has an inkling what’s going to happen. Thinking they’re so civilized when they treat their poorest citizens so shamefully.

  Shame has a smell, too.

  Rankin suddenly realized that these were not even his own thoughts he was thinking, they were the Client’s thoughts.

  Jesus Christ! What the hell was happening? Woul
d he eventually not be able to tell the difference?

  He looked up again at Moss. He could read the expression on his face well before he reached the car. No need to ask what had happened. Moss opening the passenger door, sliding in next to him. “Not there,” Moss said, as if he was telling him something.

  “Didn’t think so.”

  Moss reached for his seat belt but had trouble getting it to reach all the way across. He tried twice and then a third time before he got it.

  So we’ll wait, Gil Rankin thought. Okay. We’ll just wait a little while longer. And he drove away as if he were in the car alone.

  SHIP CALLED AS Hunter was headed for the diner on Main Street. “You were right,” he said. “Jackpot.”

  For a moment she didn’t know what he was talking about. Then she got it.

  “You visited the town house?”

  “Yep. Nothing inside. But I found muddy boots in the garage. The sole patterns seem to be a match, or close to it,” he said. “How’d you know?”

  “A hunch. What’d you do with them?”

  “Nothing. I’m standing outside right now. Do you want me to bag them and bring them in?”

  “No. Summon the evidence techs, if you would.”

  “Sure.”

  Hunter went silent for several seconds, figuring what had happened. Then she said, “Okay, yes, call the techs. Have them go over the garage and the town house thoroughly, inch by inch. Take their time. I’m more concerned about what else might’ve been left there than the boots.”

  “Ten-­four,” he said. Sounding uncertain.

  “And don’t broadcast it. If possible, don’t let the sheriff know.”

  Chapter 25

  LUKE PARKED TWO spaces from Hunter’s white Camry in front of the Blue Crab Diner. His eyes found her in a booth, facing away from the door, two file folders on the table. The smell of hamburgers and fried potatoes made him realize he was hungry.