The Psalmist

by James Lilliefors

  “Presumably, they’d need someone inside the lottery commissions, then, to make it work?”

  He nodded, finishing his drink. “Minimum of three ­people in each state. Someone who buys the tickets, someone who sells them, and, yeah, most importantly, someone on the inside, selling information.”

  The new drinks arrived. Hunter poked at the remainder of her salad.

  “So that’s what you’re working on,” she said. “That’s what this organization is doing.”

  “No,” he said. “That’s a part of it. Half of it. The smaller half.”

  “What’s the larger half?”

  He took a long sip of his new seven and seven. “Between us?” Hunter nodded. “What’s the federal government’s biggest vulnerability to theft right now? Have any idea?”

  Hunter frowned and pretended to be thinking hard.

  “Don’t know?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Income tax,” he said. “Fortunately, not a lot of ­people know that. But enough do. This one’s a little more embarrassing, of course. Each year, the government sends out billions of dollars—­on the order of three to four billion—­in fraudulent tax returns.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “They don’t advertise it.” His almond-­colored eyes seemed to harden. “But, just to give you an idea. The Inspector General’s Office last year identified one and a half million tax cases where the government issued refunds on fraudulently filed returns. And, of course, once the checks have been issued they can’t get them back. We’re always looking at it, putting in more safeguards. But for years it was open season.”

  “How do they do it?”

  “Lots of ways. They steal identities, generate phony W-­2 forms. There are actually tens of thousands of individuals trying this kind of scam each year. Still.”

  “But this group is doing it in an organized way, you’re saying.”

  “Right. And on a large scale.”

  “So this organization is stealing millions of dollars from the government, you’re saying. Through lotteries and through income tax fraud.”

  “Right. And the thing about it is—­in their minds, what they’re doing isn’t really a crime. Because there’s also an ideology behind it. They consider what they’re doing a kind of payback. Retribution for what the government, state and federal, does to its poorest citizens.”

  “Wow,” she said. “And so who’s benefiting from all this stolen money?”

  He smiled and straightened his knife and fork several times.

  “I can’t go into it. But I’ll just say this: Six days after the winning lottery ticket was cashed in Delaware? Anonymous donations totaling three million dollars were received by a dozen homeless charities in a seven-­state region, okay?”

  “Not a coincidence.”

  “No. Two of the checks came from an organization called the Sherwood Forest Foundation, which was also the name of the company that purchased the winning ticket.”

  Hunter nodded, getting it. “So instead of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, they steal from the government and give to the poor.”

  “Something like that.” He reached for the roll basket. “Do you want this last roll or can I?”

  “Please, take it.”

  He seemed to focus all of his concentration on buttering it.

  “And so what’s the name of the man running this organization?” she asked. “The man you said Kwan Park worked for.”

  His smile appeared very slowly, but his eyes stayed with the roll in his hand; she guessed he was starting to realize he might have told her too much.

  “Can you share that?”

  “Not really.”

  “But the newspaper knows.”

  “The newspaper knows. It’ll most likely be out in a few weeks.” He watched her carefully, then, while chewing, said, “Very brilliant character, this guy. He’s set up half a dozen or so charitable foundations that are really just fronts for this organization. Has even more corporate entities and holding companies. But he’s clever; it isn’t easy tying anything back to him, or even finding him. The man’s more elusive than Howard Hughes.”

  “And Kwan worked for him, you say.”

  “Mm hmm.”

  The waitress returned and took their plates. Hunter looked out at the snow. I’m going to have to spend the night here, she thought.

  “The thing is, we think he knows that we’re on to him now,” Crowe continued. “We think he’s probably in the process of disbanding most of the organization. Shutting things down. We think that’s why Kwan Park was leaving the country. And we think part of his end game may involve telling his story. On his own terms. Making himself come off like some kind of hero—­an outlaw hero anyway.” He allowed a quick smile. “And we want to make sure we stop him from doing that.” He winked.

  “So why was Kwan Park going to Korea?”

  “We think he paid her. To go away, be quiet. A severance, if you will. More than enough, probably, to live comfortably for the rest of her life.”

  Hunter sipped her wine, considering this new scenario. But where would Jackson Pynne figure in it? And who would have brought Kwan Park to Tidewater County, Maryland, of all places? It made less sense to her now than it had before Crowe started talking.

  “Anyway,” he said. “It’s your turn.”

  Chapter 34

  THE YELLOW LIGHTS of a snow plow spun through the thick-­falling snow along the entry road to the Old Shore Inn. Hunter sipped from her third glass of wine, feeling the currency of information now connecting the two of them—­or maybe it was just the drink. Crowe liked this, of course—­saying a little more than he should, using the drip of information as a form of control. She felt the same danger being with him now that she had felt years earlier, never knowing exactly how things would turn out.

  “Okay, so let me ask you a hypothetical,” she began. “What if the end game isn’t what you’ve just suggested. What if it was actually something very different?”

  “ ’Kay.”

  He stirred his new drink with the swizzle stick, avoiding any noticeable reaction.

  “What if this person is closing it down, but not paying them a severance. Not even letting them get away,” Hunter said, sharing a hunch that had just come to her.

  Crowe continued to stir. “What do you mean, like a leave-­no-­witnesses deal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not his M.O. This fellow harbors a vendetta against the government. Federal and state. Big-­time. But he’s not a killer.”

  “Okay.” Hunter waited a beat. “You’ve seen the M.E. report on Kwan Park, right? You requested a copy this afternoon.”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “You saw the numbers that were carved into Kwan Park’s right hand?”

  “I did. Weird. What’s that about?”

  Hunter drew a deep breath. He doesn’t know.

  “The pastor who found her actually figured this one out, not me. The numbers reference a line from the Book of Psalms.”

  Crowe pulled his head back, giving her a come off it look.

  “That’s the evidence I mentioned earlier.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s the evidence.”

  He grinned quickly, as if he didn’t believe her. “What, linking this to three other homicides?”

  “Yes, three other homicides where numbers were left behind. They all refer to the Book of Psalms.” Crowe’s face squinched; he looked like a boy whose toys had been snatched. “And that’s just between us, too, of course,” she added.

  “Show me.”

  “What?”

  He dropped his napkin onto the table. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.”

  Hunter took another small sip of wine, wondering for a crazy ins
tant if she would end up sleeping with Dave Crowe tonight. No, huge mistake, she thought—­although she could see how comfortable Crowe was; he hadn’t said a word about her driving back twenty miles in the snow, as if it wasn’t going to be an issue. The fire popped, startling her out of her thoughts. Then Crowe was back, walking with his efficient, clipped stride across the dining room, carrying a Bible.

  Hunter showed him the four references.

  The Tidewater case, Psalm 51:8. Make me hear joy and gladness, That the bones you have broken may rejoice.

  The Delaware arson/murder, Psalms 68:2 and 68:3:

  As smoke is driven away, do drive them away,

  As wax melts before the fire,

  So let the wicked perish at the presence of God

  But let the righ­teous be glad;

  Let them rejoice before God;

  Yes, let them rejoice exceedingly.

  The woman at the bottom of a West Virginia waste pit, Psalm 88:6: You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.

  And the stopped watch on the Virginia John Doe, Psalms 12: 2 and 12:3:

  They speak idly everyone with his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak

  May the Lord cut off all the flattering lips,

  And the tongue that speaks proud things.

  Four murders, four calling cards. Progressively apparent. Crowe looked at her for a long time, but didn’t say anything. Hunter liked him this way.

  “So?” she finally said. “What do you think?”

  “Frankly?”

  He looked at the Bible, then at her.

  “Frankly.”

  “This guy,” he began. “I’ve spent some time studying his background—­”

  “The guy running this organization, you mean.”

  “Yeah, right. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to know him, figure him out. Trying to get inside his head. To understand his obsessions, what drives him.”

  Hunter nodded. “And?”

  “And, it so happens—­that’s one of his obsessions.”

  “What is?”

  “That.” He raised his hand and pointed his index finger at the Bible as if it were a dead rat. “The Psalms. In a way, Trumble—­this fellow—­seems to fancy himself as some kind of modern-­day David. He used to talk about the David and Goliath story. How David slew Goliath because he found a chink in Goliath’s armor. Goliath’s forehead was unprotected and David went for it. That’s kind of how he saw himself.”

  “Goliath being the U.S. government?”

  He cocked his head affirmatively. “Right. This fellow—­he was prosecuted for tax fraud thirteen years ago. Went to prison for eight months. Getting back at the government has been a vendetta ever since.”

  “Wow.” Crowe nodded, watching her, his eyes dancing. “But you just said he’s not a violent man. That’s not his M.O.”

  “No. Not historically anyway. But he has a security team that can play rough.” He sighed, tilting his glass. “Or so we think.”

  “It sounded like you just said Trumble,” Hunter said. “Is that his name?”

  Crowe looked at her blankly. Clearly, he hadn’t meant to say it. He shrugged quickly, like it didn’t matter.

  “It sounds familiar,” she said. “Wasn’t there a story about Trumble once—­on 60 Minutes?” The rest of his name suddenly came to her. “August Trumble.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, his eyes surprised again. “Why, what do you know about him?”

  “Nothing. Just that he was a very brilliant and clever man, as you said. Wasn’t he the guy who developed a system to beat the casinos?”

  “Yeah, right.” He took a long sip, looking off. “Once upon a time, the man was a statistics professor, at Prince­ton. In the early 1990s he figured ways to fish millions out of the casinos in Atlantic City and Vegas. When the casinos banned him, he trained other ­people to go in, do it for him.”

  “Was this card counting?”

  “Card counting, that was part of it. He worked other games, too. But it was more than just casinos. He also became a high-­stakes confidence man. He began to set up deals, working cons against the government, looking for weak spots. He had sort of a cult following after the 60 Minutes thing. Which was done without his permission. And which we wish had never happened. I’ve talked to a few ­people who saw him before the tax fraud thing and after. When he got out, he was a very different man. The whole idea of government-­controlled gambling became a kind of an obsession for him.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “No one knows. For a brief time we had a source—­two sources—­inside his organization. But even when they were giving us information, they couldn’t tell us where he was.”

  “What happened to the sources?”

  He shook his head tightly, indicating the subject was off limits. “He’s a very elusive character, as I say. His organization is small, but loyal. He seems to have a certain power over the ­people who work for him. You know the saying ‘Everyone has a price’?’

  Hunter nodded.

  “We think that’s what he does. He finds what a person’s price is, and he pays it.” He pushed open the napkin on the bread basket, as if there might be another roll. “He’s a master manipulator, in other words. Has an eye for ­people’s vulnerabilities. But we don’t know much about him that’s of value anymore. He’s pretty good at altering his appearance, from everything we’ve heard. So we don’t even really know, for sure, what he looks like these days. There isn’t a known photo that’s less than ten years old.

  “Anyway,” he said, folding the napkin back into the bread basket. “You’re looking good.” He kept his eyes on her, showing a hint of smile; a strange smile. “You’ve grown. You’ve gotten bigger.”

  “Not really.”

  Her terse reply amused him. “No, no,” he said. “I don’t mean physically. I mean—­you’ve grown in your work. You take up more space now than you used to. I’m impressed.”

  “Oh, I see. Well. Thanks, I guess.” She liked what he was trying to say, even if she didn’t particularly care for how he was saying it. She showed him a quick, exaggerated smile.

  JACKSON PYNNE PULLED his Audi into the garage of the condo on Tompkin’s Neck. He was a half mile over the county line, certain that he had eluded his tail—­for now, anyway. Pynne had purchased this unit five years ago under a fictitious corporate name for occasions like this, when he didn’t want to be found—­although tonight was the first time he’d ever actually had to use it that way. His other property here—­a town house owned by his development company—­was off-­limits now, maybe forever. He’d gone there for the last time late Wednesday, to retrieve the Audi.

  Jackson had noticed he was being followed as soon as he’d pulled from the church lot, but he should have noticed much earlier. His advantage was that he knew these old county roads and the strange turns of the creeks and tributaries and back bays. He’d put on his signal at Bayfront and Route 21 as if he were going to join the highway, then cut his lights and went the other way—­down an unpaved access road, to what had once been a private boat ramp. It was a sheltered space where he used to go to think. Where he’d taken his wife many years ago to look at the lights of the harbor across the water and talk about his plans, the projects he was going to build here one day. And where he had expected to take Kwan Park.

  Tonight he’d waited there watching the snow slant above the waves. He’d lowered the window a ­couple of inches, breathing the ice-­cold air, thinking about Kwan, recalling the pleasure and purpose she had given him. He’d watched the lights of a freighter way out on the bay, and the chimney smoke rising from the houses down the coast. Knowing in a few weeks, it would be warm again, it would all be starting over, and he wouldn’t be there.

  HE SAT NOW in the darkness of his condo on Tompkin’s Neck with a
glass of bourbon and ice, looking out at the light of the high round moon across the marshlands. He felt nostalgic for this place, for the simple life he thought he’d find here again. Chesapeake Nights. If he were a songwriter, he’d’ve written a song called that. He thought about August, the ripest month, how when things got real quiet at night, you could hear the voices of everyone in the county, it seemed, the families eating suppers in their kitchens, the ­couples laughing by the water, the kids running barefoot on the streets; all the windows open to breezes and cross drafts.

  But that was summer. Jackson figured if he stayed inside, he might get by for another day or two, not much more. He felt something dissolving in his thoughts, his certainty maybe. Someday he’d find what he was meant to find, but it wouldn’t be here. Tidewater wasn’t a place he could live anymore. He was beyond that now, beyond everything he used to think and expect. Beyond the law. Everything felt sad tonight, and very temporary.

  Chapter 35

  MONDAY, MARCH 20

  AMY HUNTER RAN hard down the center of the marina road, where the plows had cleared a single lane, the snow banked on either side, Radiohead blasting in her ear buds, the wind burning her face. The fields, bright already with melting snow, hurt her eyes; the sky was a rich, nearly cloudless blue. As she warmed to the morning, the air became a fuel, lifting her spirits, her life seeming to slide into sync with the natural world again. She felt guilty that she’d almost stayed with Crowe last night, but pleased with herself that she hadn’t—­although driving twenty miles in the snow after three glasses of wine wasn’t smart. Nor was accidentally turning off her cell phone and missing a call from Pastor Luke.

  She sprinted the last straightaway, past the boatyards and the commercial harbor, returning to her apartment damp and invigorated, tethered again by work. She was excited about all she’d learned the night before and the new paths this case would take.

  “We’re going to solve this,” she said to Winston, who sat on her desk awaiting his morning tuna as she peeled off her sweats. “Do you hear me? We’re going to solve it.”