The Psalmist

by James Lilliefors

  “What was Gilly’s full name?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Kirby’s?”

  He shook his head. “Never came up. They just started coming around the last few weeks. Two or three times, maybe.”

  “Together?”

  “Together, separate. Whatever they wanted.”

  “To do what?”

  “Nothing. Check up on her. Scare her.”

  Hunter waited. She could see something else was going on.

  Finally Jackson said, “He has a connection here, you know.”

  “Who does?”

  “Trumble.”

  Hunter waited. She wondered if this was just a way of changing the subject. “What do you mean—­in Tidewater County?”

  He nodded. “Take a close look at property records, you might find something. His company, anyway, had some property here. Probably still does.”

  “You’re saying Trumble’s a player here in Tidewater County?”

  “No, I’m saying he has a connection here.”

  “Okay.” She could see he wasn’t going to elaborate.

  “Who did this murder, Mr. Pynne?” she said. “What are your instincts telling you?”

  After a long time he said, “Between us?” Hunter nodded. “The security man.”

  “Gilly.”

  “Yeah.” His eyes looking up at her slowly. Hunter tried to remember who he reminded her of. Someone well known. An actor, maybe.

  “Why?”

  “Because he was Trumble’s enforcer. Trumble wasn’t violent, but he needed someone who could enforce the law. Trumble’s law. He obeys something he calls the ‘higher law.’ ­People who work for him, he tells them they have immunity from the laws of society—­but not the higher law. And part of his job, at the end, was to keep an eye on Kwan. Because he thought she was breaking some of that.” His eyes seemed to lose focus. “Sometimes, this security guy took things too far, roughed ­people up, raped a ­couple of the women. That’s what Kwan said.”

  “Did he rape her?”

  Jackson looked down, tilting his head at a funny angle. Answering by not answering.

  “When did he rape her?” Hunter said, feeling a charge of adrenaline. “When and where did it happen?”

  “He went to her home.” His eyes suddenly glistening. “Three or four days before she disappeared. Just showed up in the middle of the night.”

  “And what happened?”

  “It was a night she wasn’t working. She went to bed at two or three. Hadn’t been asleep more than an hour, I think, and he showed up, banging on the back door, trying to get in. Woke her. Told her that something had come due. That there was no way she was going to be able to prevent it from happening. She’d been talking too much, not being careful.”

  “Was that the real reason she wanted out?”

  “Mmm mmm.” He nodded, briefly closed his eyes.

  “Talking too much to who—­you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Was this done on Trumble’s orders?”

  “The rape? No. The rest of it, probably. I’m sure the rape was his own idea. But it was within the parameters of what was allowed.”

  “Allowed.”

  “In the organization, yeah.”

  Hunter felt a surge of anger—­but also a new sense of purpose. “What’s this man Trumble like?” she said. “What did Kwan say about him?”

  “Not much. Subject she didn’t want to talk about. Just—­that he’s invisible, basically.”

  “Invincible?”

  “Invisible.” He smiled at the misunderstanding. “He lives his life among ordinary ­people. That’s what she said. He’s the man who checks our groceries at the supermarket, who sells us tickets at the movie theater, who makes our lunch at the sandwich shop. He’s just there, invisible, watching everything.” He lifted his eyes to hers again. “But Gilly, he wasn’t like that. He took care of business. Worked after dark always, she said. Big guy. Ice in his eyes.”

  “Why was your DNA found outside the cabin in Oyster Creek, do you think?”

  He blinked and looked off, caught by surprise. “No idea. I wasn’t there. I loved Kwan,” he added. “She was a kind and classy person.”

  Hunter nodded, believing him. He was becoming restless, she could see, probably about to cut her off. “What else? Is there anything else you need to tell me? Anything we should know?”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed his hands together. Seemed to smile at something. “One thing.”

  “All right.”

  “If they let me out, I’m willing to work with you.”

  “I thought you didn’t want out.”

  “If they want me out. If you want me out, I’ll work with you.”

  “Okay. How so?”

  “As bait. I’ll stay in the county, as long as you want. Just set me up in a house somewhere, keep me under surveillance, twenty-­four/seven. I guarantee, they’ll come for me. Sooner rather than later.”

  “Why are you so certain?”

  “Because.” He looked off again, at stuff she couldn’t see. “That’s how it works, okay? Like I say, they think I know things. And in their world, too much knowledge is considered a capital offense.”

  “Okay.” They exchanged a long look. “We’ll consider that, sir,” she said, standing.

  “Jackson.”

  “Jackson. Thank you for talking with me.”

  AS SHE DROVE back into the open farm country, Hunter felt lit up. The most important details were on tape now—­where he’d been Monday and who he thought committed the murders. She had arranged with the state police to produce an electronic transcript of the interview from the digital recording and have copies available to her and Fischer by the time she returned to the Public Safety Complex. She called Fisch on the way, telling him how it had gone, asking him to begin checking the surveillance tapes.

  They had six and a half hours now to derail the state’s attorney’s case.

  Chapter 46

  WALKING TO HER office, lost in thought, Hunter nearly collided with Wendell Stamps, who came barreling out of the men’s room.

  “Oh, excuse me. Good morning, Hunter,” he said, sidestepping her. It was rare that he used the public restrooms; the state’s attorney had the largest and nicest office in the building, complete with a private toilet.

  “Good morning, sir.” He exaggerated a nod and tried to keep going. She said, “Oh, sir. I understand you found some additional DNA evidence? In Virginia? Tying the case to Jackson Pynne? Were you going to share that with me?”

  He frowned as if he didn’t know what she was talking about. “Oh,” he said, “didn’t Clint Fogg tell you?”

  “No.”

  “My gosh, I wonder why not? I’m sorry.” His face was, as usual, largely impenetrable, although his eyes seemed amused, as if saying, Your move.

  “That only makes me wonder again why you would want to prosecute this locally without looking more closely at the other three cases.”

  “Didn’t we have this conversation yesterday?”

  “A version of it.”

  “Look, what you’re talking about, Hunter, is very complicated,” he said. “A jury, frankly—­this isn’t their natural way of processing information. I know this county, Hunter. I know the circuit judges. Believe me, I’m looking at what will work.”

  “I see,” she said. “So, do it in a way that is fast and simple and will get it out of our backyard?”

  He smiled quickly. Rather than engage with her again, though, he looked at his watch. Making his point: she had six hours and twelve minutes.

  HUNTER PICKED UP her copy of the interview transcript from a desk sergeant in Records and read through it in her office as she ate the Swiss cheese sandwich she’d packed for lunch. Looking up several times to stud
y the mug shot of August Trumble tacked to her corkboard beside the driver’s license photo of Kwan Park. Wondering what he looked like now, today.

  Crowe finally called, just as she got to a particularly interesting part.

  “So,” he said, “what did he give you?”

  “Who?”

  “Stamps.”

  “Oh. Twenty-­four hours.” She glanced at the clock. “Now down to less than five and a half. I talked with Jackson Pynne this morning,” she added. “In jail. Found out a few things you probably ought to know. But you need to bring me in all the way.”

  “Ours is a separate case, Hunter. I told you that.”

  “I know. But why don’t we drop that now? I need to know the rest of what you’re not telling me. And we need to work together to solve this thing. Jackson talked on the record, by the way,” she added. “You’re welcome to look at the transcript, of course.”

  “Can you e-­mail me a copy?”

  “Sure.”

  She waited twenty-­five minutes after e-­mailing the transcript to Crowe and called him back. She was surprised when he answered.

  “What do you think?”

  “Interesting,” he said.

  Hunter waited. “As you probably noticed,” she said, “Jackson thinks Sheila Patterson talked to the FBI before she was murdered. She was the woman who was found in the wax museum, right?” Crowe said nothing. “So was she your source on Trumble? One of the two ­people you told me was on the ‘inside’? Is that what’s behind this?”

  Crowe was silent. Then he sighed. Not once, but twice.

  “Look,” he said, “I can’t talk about Sheila Patterson, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t get into it.”

  “But she was your source.”

  After an awkward silence Crowe said, “Let me tell you why this is sensitive.”

  “Please.”

  “We think Trumble’s finally starting to understand what’s going down here, okay? What he’s up against. He’s finally beginning to hear the footsteps, in other words. And he probably knows that if we do prosecute a racketeering case against him—­which we will—­it’s going to put him away for a long time. The rest of his life, probably. It won’t be eight months this time.”

  “So?”

  “So the theory is that he’s jettisoning his organization and maybe he wants to take a few ­people down in the process. ­People he doesn’t trust.” Exactly the theory she had suggested to him the other night and he’d rejected. “Okay? Inside ­people he thinks might be enticed to talk to us in exchange for immunity.”

  “Like Sheila Patterson.”

  Crowe ignored her. “But frankly I don’t think this is him doing these killings, okay? I think it’s someone else, trying to make it look like him.”

  “Who?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  “Why, though? Explain why someone else would be doing this.”

  “I will. But I want to give you a document first, okay? This is just between us, but it’ll provide you a little background. And then you can draw your own conclusions.”

  “All right,” Hunter said.

  “How about I drop by your office in an hour? I’ll be out that way anyway. To see the state’s attorney,” he said. “One hour?”

  “Okay.” Hunter had no idea he was back from Washington. “One hour,” she said.

  HUNTER WALKED NEXT door to check in with Sonny Fischer, who was seated, as usual, ramrod straight in front of his monitors. He’d already contacted the relevant agencies in Virginia and Maryland to obtain electronic security tapes that, with some good fortune, would soon prove that Pynne had been in D.C. alone on Monday, not with Kwan Park.

  “Nothing yet, I guess?”

  “Working on it”

  “Okay, good.”

  FISCHER’S LOOK SEEMED to linger, as if he were pleased to see her. Which was strange, because Fischer seldom seemed pleased to see anyone. He not only wasn’t a diplomat, as Ben Shipman could be, but he seemed unaware that diplomacy mattered. To him it didn’t.

  “Got something else, though,” he said as she was turning to leave.

  “Oh?”

  “Ship will tell you.”

  “How is Ship?” she said. “He called in sick yesterday and I got a message that he’d be in late today, but I haven’t seen him.”

  “He’s fine. He’ll be in in a few minutes. He’s been working on something.”

  He turned back to his monitors, closing down the conversation. Hunter understood. That was Sonny Fischer: cool, the coolest man she knew, although, of course, she didn’t know him. But she could see that in his own way he was excited about something.

  Back in her office, Hunter discovered that Theresa Kincaid, the AP reporter, had left three more messages. The first were like the earlier ones, which she’d ignored. The third sounded more urgent: I’m on deadline right now and need to run something by you. Could you please call before three.

  Wondering how much she knew, and where she might have heard it, Hunter decided to call as she waited for Crowe and Shipman.

  Kincaid came on the line sounding out of breath but happy to hear from her. Hunter heard her flipping pages in a notebook.

  “Okay, first off, the Praying Woman thing. Did the victim in the church killing actually appear to you to be praying? Would that be an accurate description?”

  “But you’ve already reported that in your earlier stories,” Hunter said. “You called her the Praying Woman.”

  “Right, and I’m just triple-­checking now. For verification. Would that be an accurate description?”

  “I suppose.” Hunter heard the clicks of computer keys. “Who told you that?”

  “A source.”

  “Law enforcement source?”

  Theresa Kincaid made a clucking sound with her tongue.

  “Information comes easier when it flows both ways,” Hunter said. “This is someone here in Tidewater County?”

  “Mmm.”

  “And what else did the sheriff tell you?”

  She could hear Kincaid covering the phone and saying something to herself, or maybe someone else. When she spoke again, her voice sounded deeper and more officious. “Can you verify that the Tidewater County case is being investigated in connection with three other homicides?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Okay.”

  “Yes.”

  Keyboard sounds. Good that she knows this, Hunter thought. But where had she heard it?

  “All right. And is it true that there were numbers left behind at the scene?”

  This, too, surprised—­and pleased—­Hunter. But where was it coming from? The sheriff certainly wouldn’t have told her that.

  “Can you say anything about what the numbers might mean?” the reporter asked. “And is the church killing being investigated as a serial murder?”

  Dave Crowe strolled into her office then, stopping when he saw her on the phone. But not leaving. She smiled at him and turned her back. He’d brought in a smell of bathroom hand soap.

  “No,” she said, lowering her voice, “I can’t comment.”

  “On which question?”

  “Can we continue this later?” Hunter said.

  “Okay. One last thing: is Jackson Pynne going to be charged with the Tidewater County murder? That’s what one of my sources is telling me.”

  The sheriff. Hunter looked at her clock. “Off the record?” she said, lowering her voice. “I would hope not.”

  “You would hope not. Meaning?”

  “That I would hope not. Okay? Maybe we’ll talk later.”

  Crowe was looking sideways at the phone as Hunter set it down.

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Probably.”

  Crowe grinned
. He took the seat beside her desk and stretched out his legs, crossing them one way at the ankle then the other. He was holding a white nine-­by-­twelve envelope.

  “ ’Kay,” he said. He tilted his head in a conciliatory manner as he handed it to her. “Partners, then? Here it is. This is what one of our sources on the Trumble operation gave us.”

  “Sheila Patterson,” she said.

  Crowe shook his head. “I’m not going there, Hunter, I told you, so don’t ask me again who it is. ’Kay? Just have a look.” Before she could open the envelope, he added, “There’s one other part of this equation that you don’t know about. But you’ll see it when you read the transcript. Trumble, over the last year or so, has supposedly been unraveling. Paranoia, erratic behavior, memory problems. Serious mental decline, from several reports. Or at least that’s the impression he’s giving. It’s possible it may be a performance, we don’t know. But we think someone may have seen that as an opportunity.” He stood and turned to leave. “Someone like Jackson Pynne and Kwan Park. ’Kay? Anyway, have a look. Tell me what you think.”

  HUNTER OPENED THE envelope as Dave Crowe walked away. Inside, she saw a twenty-­three-­page document, a partial transcript of three interviews with a source identified only as “Subject A.” Subject A had been August Trumble’s former “business manager,” she read. She, or he, had met with an FBI agent in a Northern Virginia hotel room on three separate occasions to talk about Trumble’s organization. Hunter skimmed through the transcript, then returned to the first page and read it carefully.

  The transcript painted the picture of a person who had been drawn into the belly of Trumble’s organization and then didn’t know how to get out. Who lived in a “multi-­million-­dollar home” but whose life had become “miserable.” Several passages particularly interested her, and she went back and reread them.

  It really just happened gradually, I guess . . . I had a little accounting business, in Pennsylvania. We’d been audited the year before, so I had some issues with the IRS . . . I was contacted by someone claiming to be an IRS investigator, but he wasn’t. He was someone from this group . . . I know now that’s how they recruit. They look for a certain kind of person, who I guess has a certain vulnerability, or whatever. Has issues with the government. . .