Elllll!, he rumbled, jumped down and trotted, tail up, to the kitchen.
Hunter did her morning chores, feeding Winston and changing his litter, emptying the trash and the dishwasher. Then she took a long hot shower and drove to work. There, she checked The Post website first. Nothing. Then she went to the Tidewater Times.
Associate Editor Karen Bunting had written an update.
CHURCH HOMICIDE VICTIM IDENTIFIED
Police yesterday identified the so-called “mystery woman” found in Tidewater Methodist Church last Tuesday morning.
The Sheriff’s Department identified the woman as 32-year-old Kwan Park, of Sharonville, Ohio.
Federal investigators have now reportedly joined the search for the woman’s killer. Sources say the woman may have worked for a Baltimore-area escort service, although police and sheriff’s spokespeople refused to comment.
What? Hunter thought.
That had to have come from the sheriff’s people. Still pushing their escort theory. And still thinking they could somehow tie Robby Fallow to this crime.
She scrolled through her e-mails hastily, going back to one from Anonymous777. The subject line grabbed her attention: Information re. Kwan Park.
Her heart quickened as she read the message, feeling a cocktail of adrenaline and caffeine.
These three people are somehow involved in the killings you are investigating: Mark Chandler, Sheila Patterson, Katrina Menken.
Nothing else. The e-mail had been sent to her anonymously. Hunter called an IT tech in to try to trace it. Then she began running data searches on the three names. Two possible connections turned up quickly: there was a Katrina Menken who worked for the Ohio Lottery Commission. And Mark Chandler was a Washington-area-based attorney representing several accounting firms in Virginia and Maryland.
“ ’Morning, interrupt for a second?”
Hunter nearly jumped.
Dave Crowe was standing behind her.
“Oh,” she said. “Good morning.”
“ ’Morning.” There were dark crescent moons under his eyes. “Interesting talk last night. Glad you made it back okay. Meeting’s canceled, by the way.”
“Why?”
“I’m going back to Washington. Changing tactics,” he said. “I’ll try to return this afternoon. Please say nothing to the media. I don’t want us being tied to this in any way at this point.”
“Kind of late for that.”
“Yes, I’m sorry about that sentence in the newspaper. I’ve called them and asked for a correction.” He added, “There are two other agents who will be here for the briefing this morning at eleven. In the meantime, please keep the Psalms thing under your hat.”
Hunter nodded. “So I’m part of this investigation.”
“Right. You are. We’ll talk about that later.”
Great, she thought. There was an edgy undertone in his voice, though, something he wasn’t telling her.
“Wait,” she said. “I thought you might want to look at this.”
Hunter scooted away to give him room and watched as Crowe read the message on her screen. She smelled his aftershave as he leaned down in front of her, his hand on the back of her chair. After a long moment his head jerked back as if he’d just read that China had invaded the U.S.
“Where in hell did this come from?”
She shrugged, mimicking his normally cool demeanor. “Anonymous e-mail,” she said. “Why? Another convergence?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Big-time.”
“You know who they are?”
He looked at her as if he hadn’t heard the question. Then he said, “I know who they are. Two of them. Where did this come from?”
“Don’t know. Which two?”
“Chandler and Patterson.” Then, lowering his voice, he said, “Both of them worked for August Trumble’s organization, okay? Why the hell didn’t you tell me about this last night?”
“I just got it.”
“When?”
“Just now. Five minutes ago.”
He closed the door to her office and sat in the chair beside her desk.
“Look,” he said. “Here’s the deal. There are a few things I didn’t tell you last night.”
“What a surprise.”
He shot her a look, and then sighed deeply, as if to make it clear that he really didn’t want to tell her what he was about to say. “You know how I mentioned that he’s made himself impossible to find? How he’s like a Howard Hughes figure?”
“Trumble.”
“Yeah. Well, for whatever reason, it was a characteristic of some of the people who worked for him, too. Or part of the requirement to work for him. Kwan Park, for instance, almost certainly isn’t the woman’s real name. Her fingerprints turn up nothing. There’s no family that anyone can trace. We think Trumble’s organization became her family, in a sense.”
“Sort of like a cult.”
He shook his head. “In a way, although we don’t use that word anymore.”
“Okay. Let me ask you something, then,” Hunter said. “Do you think Jackson Pynne, the developer, could be involved in this organization in any way?”
His eyes began their dance. “Jackson Pynne.”
“Yeah.”
“Why would you ask that?”
“He’s been seen in the county over the past week. I’m just curious.”
“Really.” Crowe gave her a hard, less-than-friendly look. “Anything else you’re not telling me?”
“No. That’s all I can think of.”
Hunter waited, but that was evidently all he had to say.
Moments after Crowe left, she called Pastor Bowers at the church. Aggie Collins put her on hold for more than three minutes before she heard his voice.
“It’s Amy Hunter,” she said. “Can I talk with you?”
“Of course. But check your messages,” he said. “I’ve been trying to reach you since last night.”
“I’M SORRY, NOTHING yet,” Kirby Moss said again. He was parked in the snow beside the road by Pynne’s town house, a plastic twenty-ounce bottle of Diet Coke between his legs. “I have a feeling he’s not coming back here. Not after the police went in.”
“So where is he?”
“I’ll find him.”
“I know you will, but where is he?”
“I’ll find him,” Moss said. “Just give me a little time.”
Okay, Gil Rankin thought, trying to hold his anger in check. Moss had found him last night and then lost him. Lost him in the snow, he’d said. Jesus Christ.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll find him.” Good-natured, ignoring the possibility that he might be upset.
“Right,” Rankin said. “Don’t call me again unless you have.”
“Until.”
Yeah, yeah. Rankin snorted. The morning light was making him irritable.
“What about the pastor?” Moss asked. “Do you want me to do anything there? See if he can tell me anything?”
Rankin didn’t even feel like answering. “Worry about Pynne. I’ll worry about the preacher.”
“Okay.”
Rankin hung up. He blew a long stream of air from his mouth, thinking about the preacher. There were several ways of dealing with him, if it came to that. He could scare hell out of him if he needed to, keep him so off balance he couldn’t walk a straight line. And he could have some fun doing it. But he had to be careful. Sometimes, he got sidetracked, going after the wrong people. Easy targets. Just because he could. It was one of his weaknesses. He knew that.
This wasn’t about the preacher, it was about Jackson Pynne. Rankin knew Pynne was a snake, that he was difficult to trap. The man had a knack for disappearing, then slithering back when you didn’t expect him. Pynne’s life, in a way, was
a fucking perpetual comeback story.
This time there wasn’t going to be any comeback. That was the one thing Gil Rankin knew for certain. Because it was time now for him to go home. He wanted his family back. That was all that mattered. To satisfy the Client and go home. Reclaim his life.
Chapter 36
LUKE WATCHED HUNTER’S Camry pulling in the drive to the church, tires crunching in the snow. She took the shortest route to his office, walking with her purposeful stride through the snow, wearing the oversized army jacket, jeans, and work boots that had become her uniform. Luke went out into Aggie’s office to meet her and usher her in.
Hunter took a seat, pulled a folded piece of paper from her jacket and opened it on his desk. “I received this overnight,” she said.
“Okay.” Luke looked at a printout of the e-mail he had sent her. Hunter was breathing heavily, her face pink from the cold.
“I’ve got techs working a trace. Looks like we might have an angel here trying to help us.”
“Hmm,” Luke said. He nodded and handed it back. “Pretty concise.”
“Yeah, it is.”
Luke could feel her watching him.
“And do you know who they are?”
“Two of them.” she said. “Two of them may be victims of our serial killer. We’re trying to verify that now.”
“Huh.” Luke nodded again. “I wouldn’t spend too much time trying to find out where the e-mail came from, by the way.”
“Oh?”
His eyes finally drifted back to hers.
“What are you talking about?” she said. “You sent it?”
“It was supposed to be anonymous. I tried to reach you first. A couple of times.”
Her face reddened. “I know, my cell was off. I apologize. I screwed up.”
“That’s okay.”
“Why?” she said. “What’s going on?”
“Jackson Pynne came to see me here last night,” he said. “He gave me those names. That’s why I was trying to reach you. I didn’t really want to give that information to anyone else.”
“I appreciate it. I’m sorry,” she said. “What else did he tell you?”
“He told me that he knew Kwan Park. He said he was trying to help her get away from the organization she worked for. He mentioned a name. Trumble, I think it was.”
“Yeah,” she said. “August Trumble.”
“You know who that is?”
“Now I do.”
“That’s who Kwan Park worked for.”
“Yes.” Her eyes seemed to brighten. “He’s the common denominator in all these killings. It’s about to become a federal case. I expect Dave Crowe of the FBI will be out to talk with you later. I wanted to give you a heads-up.”
“How later?” Luke said.
“I’m not sure, why?”
“Because—actually, I’m going out of town this afternoon. We are. Just over to Charlotte’s parents’ in D.C.”
“Charlotte?”
“My wife.”
“Right.”
AS PREDICTED, BY high noon much of the snow was melting across Tidewater County, running down the curbs and blacktops, dripping from drainpipes. An afternoon rain shower was expected to wash away the rest of it.
Luke turned off his laptop and packed his sermon notebook into a knapsack, where he also had a change of clothes and toiletries.
He clicked off his desk lamp, surprised to see Aggie standing in the doorway, wearing her stylish new two-button pinstripe pants suit.
“There’s a call from a Mr. Jackson Pynne?” she said. “Should I tell him you’re gone for the day?”
“Oh. No,” he said. “Thanks, Aggie. I’ll take it.”
He sat back at his desk, genuinely pleased to hear from Pynne.
“Hello,” he said. “Jackson?”
But the voice on the other end wasn’t Jackson Pynne’s. It was a heavy, deeper voice, with what sounded like a mid-Atlantic accent. “Sorry to disappoint you there, Preacher. This is not Jackson Pynne. Although I’m hoping you might help me find him.”
“Who’s calling?”
“This is a friend of Jackson Pynne. Like I say, I’m trying to reach him.”
Luke listened to the man breathe, a raspy sound. “Well,” he said, trying to remain good-natured, “I’m afraid I can’t help you there.”
“Actually, I think you can.” An edge now in his voice. “Because I know that Jackson visited you last night. There at the church. And I’m sure, if you give it some thought, you could probably give me an approximation of where he might be.”
“Who is this?” Luke said.
“This is not a business you want to get involved in, Preacher, you understand me? And you also don’t want to go to the police. You understand? It’s important that we keep this communication just between the two of us for now. You hear me? Because I know where you live. And where your wife lives.”
Luke was silent.
“You just think about that and I’ll call you back, on your cell next time.”
“How do you know my cell number?”
“I don’t. But you’re going to tell me.”
“I don’t think so.”
Luke listened to his breathing again. “That’s your choice. But I’m sure you don’t want to cause anyone to get hurt, do you? Now, go ahead and tell me your cell phone number and we’ll end this on a civil note.”
He did, and the line went dead.
Luke sat in his unlit office afterward, squinting at the bright sunlight out the window, the snow melting in the woods, wondering if this might just be a prank. Was the sheriff trying to warn him away from Jackson Pynne? Or were his and Charlotte’s lives really in danger? There was something darkly credible in the caller’s voice.
Luke closed the door all the way. He sat at his desk, lowered his head and prayed, at length, for guidance and for protection. As he was finishing, he realized that Aggie was tapping on the door. “Are you all right, Pastor?”
Chapter 37
AS CHARLOTTE DROVE them to Washington, Luke told her all he had learned from his Google searches about August Trumble. He didn’t mention the telephone call, but carried his cell phone in his right front pants pocket, ready for the promised follow-up, feeling a rush of emotion each time he thought about it.
Sneakers spent most of the drive sitting in back, panting steadily. Luke envied him a little.
“You know what—I think my father might’ve known August Trumble,” Charlotte said at one point.
“Oh,” Luke said. Charlotte did this sometimes—she came up with some astonishing tidbit of information that couldn’t be true—but in fact often was. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so.”
“Or met him.”
“I guess it’s possible. Unless you’re thinking of someone else.”
Charlotte went quiet, passing a fast-moving semi. “Didn’t August Trumble go to Yale?”
“Well, yes. He did, as a matter of fact.”
“Yeah, I think my father knew him,” she said. “You could ask.” She turned, offering up a nice, hopeful look. “That would give you fellas something to talk about, wouldn’t it?”
“Besides our future,” he said. “Yours and mine, that is.”
“Yes,” she said. “Besides that.”
THE CARRINGTONS LIVED in a rambling, 1906 Tudor-style home in the suburb of Chevy Chase, Maryland, less than a mile from the D.C. line. It was an old-moneyed neighborhood of oaks and elm trees and narrow winding streets, with lots of Lexuses and Mercedes parked by the curbs.
Both Judy and Lowell Carrington were retired, although Charlotte’s father “dabbled” in real estate, as he put it, which in fact had become a thriving second career. In his first career he had been an economics professor at Georgetown, and serve
d as a White House adviser during the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations. He was a tall, genteel man who seemed in no hurry to cede any ground to the new generations; his untamed white hair suggested the stereotype of a mad scientist or eccentric filmmaker, although he was in fact very grounded and very conservative.
As they arrived in her old neighborhood, Charlotte became perkier—and then a little giddy—as if the narrow, tree-crowded streets were the secret path back to her childhood, not just to her parents’ house.
There was a pattern to these get-togethers—beginning with cocktail hour in the ornate living room, during which Charlotte would become loose and animated in ways he never saw at home. Eventually she would volunteer to help her mother with something in the kitchen or else go off to look at her mother’s latest art purchases, strategically separating the sexes.
Sneakers, meanwhile, was exiled to the basement, because of Judy Carrington’s various allergies, where the dog slept, watched television, and occasionally made vocal pleas for attention.
Lowell Carrington was a man who could talk with ease about nearly anything, from golf to health care to French restaurants to the latest conflicts in the Middle East—although, inevitably, it seemed, conversation eventually swung to Luke and Charlotte’s “plans” for the future. Charlotte and her father seldom if ever had substantive talks anymore, their opinions too often at odds for civilized discourse. But with Luke, her father was less cautious, considering him a conduit to the rooms of his daughter’s inner world where he couldn’t go by himself.
This time it took only a few minutes before he asked, “So, have you and Sharley given any more thought to buying a place?” Her father was the only one who called Charlotte “Sharley.”
“A little,” Luke said.
“I know Sharley’s mentioned it a few times recently.”
“Hmm.” Luke was all but certain that Charlotte had not said anything to her father recently about buying a place. “We just don’t know that this is the right time for it,” he said, offering a variation of his standard answer.
Charlotte’s father got to his feet, his long body unfolding. “Of course, people say that their whole lives, don’t they?” He smiled deferentially. “And before long they find they’re stuck. Another glass of wine?”
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