"I don't want to sit down!" Noah grasped the chair by its arms, lifted it, and slammed it down.
Father Hailey sat back in his chair, eyes widening.
Noah took a deep breath, not knowing where his anger came from or why he had channeled it toward Father Hailey. "I'm sorry," he said. "I just want to be clear on the fact that what passed between Father Noah Gibson and those parishioners—now your parishioners—stays behind these doors."
"I... I gave the police no information r... regarding the previous murders," he stammered, acting as if he was afraid Noah would come across the desk at him. "No one has even said if his death is related to the others. I... I would imagine the police don't know yet."
"Right. Fine." Noah straightened. "You're absolutely right," he said, knowing in his heart of hearts that he was wrong. "I'm just telling you, I made a commitment when I offered this room as a refuge to those in this town who were troubled, and as a priest of the Episcopal Church, as a man of God, you are obligated to support that commitment."
Somewhere in the church, a door opened and closed.
Noah moved toward the door. There was no reason to stay—he'd said what he'd come to say. Besides, he preferred not to be seen here by anyone else if he could help it. Not like this, not feeling as vulnerable and shaken as he was now.
"Good day, Father. Thank you for seeing me, and again, I apologize." He glanced at his sneakers. "I think these murders have us all on edge."
Before Father Hailey, rising to his feet, could respond, Noah was out the door. Father Hailey heard him walk through the office and out the door, going in the direction of the choir room, rather than the stairs leading to the narthex and sanctuary, the route usually taken by parishioners. He heard the man take the short flight of steps two at a time to the door meant only as an emergency exit. The clang of the steel door echoed as it swung shut and was followed by footsteps coming from the opposite direction.
Father Hailey's appointment.
Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped the sweat from his brow and returned it to his pocket as he picked up the Bible to return it to the shelf. As he took the three short steps to the wall, the Bible, of its own accord, yawned open to reveal a page from which a verse had been neatly cut. The leather suddenly hot to his touch, he shoved the Bible onto the shelf, quickly pulling his hand away.
"Father Hailey," a voice greeted from behind him. "Thank you for seeing me on such short notice."
He turned forcing a smile. "It's my pleasure. It's what I'm here for. Please, have a seat." He took his own chair, leaning forward tenting his hands where they rested on the desk. The door clicked shut as the parishioner moved forward hesitantly to take the chair. "Tell me, now," Father Hailey said, "about what's been upsetting you."
Chapter 20
"Chief."
"Sergeant Swift." Snowden nodded but didn't make eye contact.
He was making himself a cup of coffee in the lounge, which really wasn't much of a lounge at all. Although the small station had outgrown itself years ago, city employees were forced to make do because there wasn't the estimated million dollars in the city budget for a new building. Subsequently, the only furniture in the lounge was a couple of office chairs pushed under a table and a microwave cart that held the microwave and the coffeepot. Other than the dormitory-size refrigerator, the rest of the ten by ten room was taken up by two copiers, two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with manuals, a couple of four-drawer file cabinets, and boxes stacked upon boxes, some containing old files, others rolls of paper towels, toilet tissue, and Kleenex.
McGee, one of the good old boys on the force who didn't care for his chief or Delilah, grunted a morning greeting and walked out, carrying a box of chocolate and marshmallow Pop-Tarts and a cup of coffee.
"Do you have a minute?" Delilah asked Snowden, thinking he looked like he needed more than just a cup of coffee to get his morning going. Although he played a good game and she doubted few others suspected, she could tell by the circles under his dark eyes that he wasn't getting enough sleep, or enough to eat, and that this case was starting to get to him. It was as if it had completely blindsided him. He had truly believed that the Leager and Rehak murders had been isolated cases and that the town and the people he had sworn to protect were safe. Now, he had to deal with the distinct possibility that he had a serial killer on his hands.
He checked his stainless steel watch with a flick of his wrist and went back to stirring his coffee with a red plastic stirrer. "I've got a budget meeting over at city hall in half an hour."
"I need five minutes. The ME's report was just faxed in."
"That was quick."
"It's just an initial report. I think the folks up there realize we haven't got time to waste."
He met her gaze and lifted his chin in the direction of his office. Delilah didn't take a cup of coffee; she'd had three before she left her place this morning and she was already wired. She followed him out of the lounge and down the hall, trying to assess him from behind.
In the four days since Skeeter Newton's murder, she'd spent hours with Snowden working on the case, but there had been no contact in any personal way. She still didn't know what to think about his gesture that day in Skeeter's apartment when he'd taken her hand. Was it just an older, wiser male officer offering support to a younger, less-experienced female officer at a gruesome crime scene, or was it something more? And if it was something more, how did she feel about it? She knew she was attracted to Snowden, had been since the first time they shook hands at her initial interview for a position on Stephen Kill's police force, but a romance was out of the question. He was the chief of police and her boss. And she didn't even want to approach the threshold of her being young and white and him being older and black. The fact that this was the United States in the year 2006 wouldn't mean a thing to her relatives back in East Jesus, Georgia, and despite the attempts to appear otherwise, Stephen Kill wasn't exactly the most broad-minded of towns. Inside Snowden's office, out of habit, Delilah closed the door. He walked around his desk, setting his large coffee cup with a U.S. Army emblem on it down on his desk. He remained standing, flipping open a file marked Budget in his neat, block print. She couldn't tell if he was trying to avoid eye contact with her or if he really was just overworked and overstressed.
She decided to jump right in. "The ME in Wilmington says the tox screen on Skeeter Newton came back positive on a whole host of goodies—cocaine, some prescription painkillers, and get this"—she read the report that was a little blurry because the station's fax machine needed toner or something—"methadone." She looked up. "And, of course, our friend the wacky weed."
He knitted his dark brows, gazing up at her. "Wacky weed, Sergeant?"
She couldn't tell if he was amused or annoyed with her. She decided she better play it straight. "Marijuana, Chief."
He grimaced, shaking his head as he glanced down again at the file on his desk. "Wacky weed? Sounds like something my mother would say."
She thought she detected a trace of a smile on his sensuous lips, and she silently heaved a little sigh of relief.
"Tell me about the methadone." He used his police chief voice again. "That's odd to find in a small town, in a small town punk."
"It is," she agreed. "But I did a little research into his sometimes girlfriend and found out she's in an outpatient drug rehab program in Baltimore. She had a heroin habit, and methadone is used in treating her withdrawal."
"So she was sharing, how kind."
On some men, sarcasm was unbecoming, but with Snowden, it worked. She liked a clever, slightly cynical man.
"I talked to the ME briefly," she continued. "Guess what she says is one of the possible side effects of methadone abuse, especially if taken with a cocktail of alcohol and other assorted drugs." She checked the report. "He had a .13 blood alcohol level, by the way."
Snowden closed the file, giving her his complete attention. "Hallucinations," he said.
She half fr
owned, half grinned. "How did you know?"
"For a brief time in college, I had this noble notion I'd like to be a drug rehab counselor, or something like that." He shrugged his broad shoulders. "I took some courses."
She studied him for a moment, trying to imagine him seated in a circle in the basement of a church talking with crack addicts. She just couldn't see him in the chair.
"What makes you think he was hallucinating?" Snowden asked.
"No sign of struggle. Who knows, but why else would a guy let someone cut off his hands and then sit there and bleed to death without calling out for help or at least getting up out of the darned chair? The EMT at the scene said that blood loss of that volume kills you pretty quickly, but it's not instantaneous. He was in some altered state, had to be, and not just drunk or high. Frankly, I've been both in my lifetime, I'm not proud to say, but no matter how drunk on whiskey I got, there was no way in heck anyone could cut off my hands and I'd just sit there and let it happen."
"There was evidence from his posture that his head had rested on the table prior to death. Maybe he was asleep."
"Snowden, I think that if he was asleep, that first hack would have woken him, don't you?" Sarcasm wasn't only for the tall males of the species.
"I'm just trying to get you to think out loud. Trying to get you to draw good conclusions." He crossed his arms over his chest. "What did the ME have to say about the wounds?"
"The killer was strong. One cut, each hand. Very clean. Weapon would have had a relatively thin blade, but it had to have some size to it to snap the bones like that. And very sharp."
"What kind of weapon does she say the wounds suggest?"
"You're going to laugh, but a sword," Delilah said.
"So we've got a ninja killer in our town?" He didn't smile.
"There're some other possibilities. I thought I'd go down to the hardware store and see what I can see. A sample of the flesh at the wrists was sent to a lab to see if there was any type of residue or foreign bodies that might give us a better idea what the weapon was, but it could take weeks to have results, and the ME didn't seem too hopeful we'd get anything concrete."
"OK. What about the note?"
She shrugged. "It is what it is. It's our guy all right, his signature. Doesn't take a Biblical scholar to see that Skeeter was being accused of being a thief. Of course, we already know from his record that he was never charged with any type of robbery. I can't even find his name in the computer bank showing he was questioned on any."
Snowden exhaled, pushing back his chair and sitting down, hands on his knees. "So, like Rehak and Leager, the killer believes him to be guilty of a crime no one seems to know about or at least be willing to admit actually took place."
"A sin," she said softly. "It's about sin, Snowden."
He glanced away. "Gives me the chills."
"Me too."
They were silent for a moment, both lost in their own thoughts, their own dreads. Snowden spoke first, turning back to her. "If we don't know about a robbery he committed, who would?"
"Well, he doesn't strike me as the type to confess to his priest, if that's what you mean." She thought for a moment. "I don't know. Friends, I guess. Maybe his girlfriend. Of course we have no idea how long ago this could have taken place. With Rehak and Leager, it could have been as long as seven or eight years ago. Skeeter had a record going back as far as twenty years."
Snowden checked his wristwatch again. "I need to go." He rose, taking the file with him, leaving the cup of coffee, untouched. "What's your plan for today?"
"Go to the hardware store and check out the sharp, heavy, thin-bladed weapons I can find. Start interviewing Skeeter's friends and acquaintances. I might go back to the apartment and look around. Be sure I didn't miss anything in all the hullabaloo Sunday."
He nodded coming around the desk. "You need help? Someone to ride along?"
She almost piped up with a "sure," thinking she'd like to have Snowden along today, but then she realized he meant another officer. He was headed to his meeting in city hall.
"Nah, I'll be fine." She waved him away with the faxed report.
He opened his office door. "Check in with me later."
"You bet." She watched him go, admiring his broad back, thinking to herself how hot that back would be, minus the uniform.
* * *
"Good morning," Dr. Carson greeted his patient, who sat nervously on the end of the paper-covered exam table, dressed in a cloth hospital gown. His linen service bill was ridiculously high. Again and again, his CPA suggested he could cut overhead in his practice by going to the cheaper paper gowns, but it wasn't a concession Edgar was willing to make. His father, a GP here in Stephen Kill for fifty years, had used cloth gowns until his dying day—on the 18th hole at the country club—and he would too.
"I hope you didn't have to wait too long." Edgar moved to the sink on the far wall and pumped the soap dispenser.
"It's quite all right," the patient said, hands folded, gaze fixed awkwardly straight ahead. "I didn't wait long."
"Been busy all week." Edgar washed his hands thoroughly under warm running water. "You'd think summer would be a slow time, no flu, no colds, but this time of year we've got your allergies, your bug bites, your sunburn." He grabbed a paper towel and turned to face his patient, smiling. "Honestly, I think we're busier."
He tossed the damp paper towel into the trash can and reached for the medical record his nurse Irma Jean had left on the counter beside the sink. Irma Jean was closer to retirement than sixty-three-year-old Edgar, but she still ran a tight ship, and there were certain procedures she'd instilled in him years ago. Medical records went on the counter beside the sink in each examining room. Not in a nice plastic holder on the door, not on the wall inside the room, not even on the perfectly nice foldout desks he'd had added to the rooms a few years ago. He picked up the new, black ballpoint pen Irma Jean always left for him with each record in each room. Irma Jean expected him to make accurate notations in the charts, and it was always in black ballpoint pen, never in blue, and God forbid, never with one of those fancy roller-ball pens he admired in the drugstore.
Edgar grabbed his rolling stool from under the desk, sat on it, pulling his white lab coat over his expanding middle, and rolled toward the end of the exam table. He liked to sit down during an exam, when he could, seating himself below the patients sitting nervously on the end of the table. It seemed to help put them at ease. He glanced at the sentence under "Complaint" that Irma Jean had noted when the patient called to make the appointment. It was a little vague.
"So, can you tell me a little bit about this trouble sleeping?" he asked with a warm smile. Edgar loved what he did. He loved the people of Stephen Kill, and he despised the thought that any one of them could be sick or hurting physically or mentally.
"I... I just can't sleep." Fingers intertwined on the patient's lap. "Bad dreams."
"I see." Edgar nodded. "Insomnia is a relatively common phenomenon these days. We're all under more stress than we once were. Are you under any stress?"
"Not really. Not any more than usual."
Edgar rested the medical record on his lap, giving the patient his complete attention. "Any other changes you've noticed? Appetite? Bowels? Any feelings of sadness?"
"No, well... it's as if time doesn't seem to be what it once was."
Edgar touched the frame of his glasses, pushing them back up on the bridge of his nose, thinking that was an odd statement. "What do you mean by that?"
More nervous finger movement. "I... almost feel as if I'm losing blocks of time. I know I am."
"Now, is this at night?"
"Yes." The voice was quiet. Almost ethereal.
Edgar felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck. Suddenly, he felt... uncomfortable. "You mean, you're falling asleep. Losing hours that way."
A shake of the head.
"I'm sorry." Edgar picked up the black ballpoint pen. "Could you explain a little further?"
"Sleepwalking. How interesting." Edgar made a notation. "Have you sleepwalked in the past?"
Head shake.
"Maybe even as a child?"
"Not that I know of. But... but this is more than sleepwalking. I... I think I'm doing things."
Edgar paused, trying to decide what question to ask next. How to best assess the patient's concern. "What about during the day? Have you noticed anything different during the day?"
"I lose time then too." The patient looked up apprehensively. "Only not as often."
Edgar studied the patient's troubled face for a moment and then pushed his stool over to the desk, walked his way back to the examining table, and reached into his lab coat pocket for his stethoscope. "Well, I'm sure we can get to the bottom of this in no time. Let's check you over and then we'll talk about our options, how does that sound?"
"I just want it to go away."
Standing, Edgar warmed the end of his stethoscope in the palm of his hand. "Want what to go away?"
"The voice."
Chapter 21
Noah sat on the front porch in his father's rocking chair, a glass of iced tea left untouched on the table beside him. He watched Mattie as the man slowly pulled a red wagon around the raised beds of the garden. Mallory sat inside the wagon, dressed in a bathing suit, a tutu, and a red felt cowboy hat, "steering" her horse and buggy with a jump rope she had looped through Mattie's belt.
Noah had worked only half a day today, but he was exhausted. Too much to think about. Not enough sleep. He was still carrying the fertility clinic's card in his back pocket. Five days and he hadn't found the right time to ask Rachel about it.
It hadn't occurred to him before he found the folder that Mallory might have been conceived any other way than the way most babies were conceived. The idea that she had come from a sperm donor appealed to him. If Mallory was the result of artificial insemination, he could still hold on to the unrealistic notion that Rachel had not been with another man these last five years. But the possibility also angered him. Why didn't she just tell him how Mallory was conceived if it had been a fertility clinic? Why let him walk around town looking into the face of every eligible man, wondering if he resembled Mallory? Wondering if he was Mallory's father.
Unspoken Fear Page 24