“I take it you are not kidding.”
“No.”
Ihan patted his right front pants pocket and said, “Walk with me, if you don’t mind. I need to smoke.” They went around to the other side of the fountain where he pulled a pack of cigarettes out and put one in his mouth. He bowed his head to light it and closed his eyes in delight as he inhaled. “The bishop says we are not supposed to smoke in front of the faithful. It diminishes their respect for our purity. Or something like that. I suppose.” He finished the cigarette halfway and stamped it out on the fountain and pinched the butt between his fingers. “It is a disgusting habit I picked up in the seminary. Growing up in Venezuela, I lived in austerity, thinking that was the way to become a priest. Then, I go to the seminary and all they do in the evening is drink and smoke and play cards. Now, I only do it when I am stressed.”
“From talking to me?”
“From them,” Ihan said, pointing at the Penningtons’ front door. “They wrote a few checks and now the bishop has me waiting on them hand and foot.”
“You’re their personal priest,” Rein said. “When I was on the street, sometimes people would latch on to you if you were too nice to them, and next thing you know they’d be calling you constantly for every little thing. You became their personal police officer.”
Ihan pulled out another cigarette and lit it. “Yes, I am their personal priest.” As he smoked, a red robin flew past and he turned to look at it. The priest pointed at it. “Do you know how the robin got his red breast?”
“Evolution.”
“I meant, the story. They say that it was burnt protecting the Christ child from a fire, and for its bravery, God marked it for all time.” He stubbed out the next cigarette. “This is the truth I have learned after all of these years. Some of it is parable. Some of it is true. All of it is meant to touch men’s hearts and inspire them to be better.”
“I think we’d be better off telling them the truth than filling their heads up with bedtime stories,” Rein said.
“Do you know something? I am like you,” Father Ihan said. “I have heard many confessions. I have peered deep into the darkness of men’s souls. We are alike.”
“I doubt that.”
“You have seen evil,” Father Ihan said. “You have stared it in the face?”
“Many times,” Rein said.
“As have I. I have looked deep into the soul of many men who struggle with the evil within themselves. Alcoholics. Drug addicts. Criminals. All of them have been healed by faith. It sparks a light inside of them that helps them ward off the darkness. It is my observation that those who most fiercely defend the light are the ones who feel the most consumed by darkness. Perhaps what they are fighting most is not what is without, but what is within. This is something you understand also, no?”
A large bird made a wide loop in the sky above them. It was a turkey vulture. A black winged scavenger that looked like its head had been skinned and left raw and bloody. Rein watched it circle, knowing it had been drawn there by the scent of decay. That it searched the ground with its carrion eyes, looking for something dead to feed on.
“If you knew what I understand about evil, you’d run from this house as fast as you can and never come back,” Rein said.
Father Ihan smirked and folded his arms across his chest. When he turned his head to reply, Rein had already walked away.
* * *
The foyer to the Penningtons’ home was shaped into a dome, with a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling that was wider than Carrie’s arms could stretch. The floor was marble, polished to a mirror finish so fine that she could see herself reflected in it. A spiral staircase wound up toward the second floor. A massive painting of the Pope adorned the wall next to the staircase. There were crucifixes hung over the center of the front doors and the entrances to every room and hallway.
“My wife and son are in the parlor,” Thad said.
They walked past a dining room with a round wooden table big enough for eight chairs and place settings. Each setting had actual silver and china, she saw. The centerpiece in the middle of the table was an arrangement of synthetic flowers. All of it was spotless and dust free from regular cleaning, and none of it showed any sign of use.
Carrie followed Thad into a large room on the right side of the foyer. There were two sectional sofas facing each other across a glass table. In the center of the table was a crystal bowl of fake fruit. Beyond the table was a fireplace large enough to fit a tree trunk, with no wood in it. Thad walked over to the fireplace and flicked a light switch set over the mantel. Tiny knick-knacks that read I HAVE A FRIEND IN JESUS, and I AM SAVED—ARE YOU? were placed along the mantel, and statues of different saints sat at either end.
Grace Pennington got up and flicked the fireplace switch on, making the gas jets running along its ceramic basin erupt into flames. “My son has been cold ever since he came home,” she said. “It’s all those years of that awful hospital food. We’ll put some meat on those bones with some good old-fashioned home-cooked meals in no time, won’t we, Tucker?”
Tucker Pennington sat on the couch near the fireplace, rocking back and forth. In his left hand he held an ornate crucifix and in his right hand, a length of bright red rosary beads. Tucker made the sign of the cross on the crucifix with the tip of his finger and said, ”I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.”
Grace sat next to her son and draped an arm around his back. She rocked with him. “He hasn’t finished his prayers yet.”
Tucker finished the Apostle’s Creed and selected the next large bead. “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” he said.
“How many does he do each day?” Carrie asked.
“He does them all day and throughout most of the night,” Grace said.
Thad sat down on the couch opposite the other two. “What can we do for you, Detective?”
“The judge just had some questions about Tucker’s supervision,” Carrie said. The heat from the fireplace was too much to stand close to but Tucker was shivering anyway. His hands worked the beads as he continued to pray and Carrie saw that his wrists were thinner than his mother’s.
“We are supervising him at all times. He won’t be out of our sight, ever,” Thad said.
“Except when Father Ihan is with him,” Grace added.
“What about last night?” Carrie asked.
“What do you mean?” Thad said.
“Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”
“When you came home from court last night, what did you do?” Carrie asked.
“We went out for dinner at the country club,” Thad said. “That was always Tucker’s favorite place to get Beef Wellington. They were so happy to see him. They knew he never did those awful things you people accused him of.”
“Thad,” Grace said.
Thad cleared his throat. “After that we came home.”
“What time did you go to bed?”
“We stayed up and watched a movie. Detective, where is this going?”
“I guess I’m just wondering, after you went to bed, what did Tucker do?”
The beads clacked in Tucker’s hand. “Pray for us, o holy mother of God. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”
“He fell asleep while we were watching a movie,” Thad said. “I woke him up when it was over and we all went upstairs to go to bed.”
“What time was that?” Carrie asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Around midnight,” Grace said.
Carrie pulled a notepad from her back pocket and made notes. “And after that?”
Thad looked at his wife in confusion. “After we went to sleep? We woke up the next morning.”
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“Where was Tucker when you woke up?”
“In his bedroom,” Grace said.
Tucker Pennington made the sign of the cross on the crucifix and started over. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.”
“Did you wake him up or was he already awake?”
“He was awake, lying in his bed,” Grace said. Her voice caught in her throat. “He was waiting to be given permission to come downstairs to eat, because, because that’s what he had to do.” She wiped her eyes. “That’s what he had to do while he was locked up in that place.”
Carrie made a few more notes. “Does Tucker have access to a car?”
“We have several cars,” Thad said. “But it didn’t come up. Detective, my son has only been home one day.”
“What’s your real question, Detective?” Grace asked.
Carrie lowered her notepad. It was the moment of truth.
Another bead. “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
“Tucker went out last night,” Carrie said. “He went to see Dr. Shelley. Didn’t you, Tucker?” She snapped her fingers at him. “Hey? Hey! Didn’t you?”
Thad Pennington waved his hand to stop her. “Detective, I can assure you, unequivocally, that my son was home the entire night last night.”
“Really? How?”
“We had security cameras installed outside of Tucker’s room, on his bedroom windows, on the driveway, our backyard, and every square inch of this house and property, minus the bathrooms and bedrooms,” Thad said.
Grace’s mouth twisted in disgust. “We assumed people would falsely accuse him anytime there was some kind of incident, but I never dreamed it would happen so soon. Luckily, we were prepared for you.”
“Tucker never left his bedroom last night,” Thad said. “He never left this house. Period. Do you want me to get you a copy of the video?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer before he got up off the couch to fetch it.
13
“Excuse the mess in here,” Carrie said. She went up the steps and unlocked the trailer’s front door. “Sal? You awake in there, buddy?” She leaned her head inside and called his name again. The trailer was empty. “I hope he wasn’t serious about quitting.”
Rein shut the door behind him. “They put you out here?”
“I guess I don’t rate high enough to be in the temporary office with everyone else. I figured you’d appreciate the peace and quiet of having our own workspace.”
“You know the dam is contaminated, right? It’s been that way for years. People used to pull three-eyed fish and mutated frogs out of there all the time.”
“They did? Well, I’m sure they cleaned that up by now, “ Carrie said.
“If you say so.”
Carrie pulled a thumb drive out of her pocket and plugged it into the side of the laptop. “Let’s see if we can get this to work.”
Rein stepped aside so she could sit. “In the old days, we had the only multiplex VHS player in the region. The screen was smaller than your cell phone’s. Back then only gas stations and larger stores had surveillance. If we couldn’t get it to play on our machine, we had to take it back to their store, play it on their machine, and take a photograph of the TV screen.”
“You’d literally hold your camera up to the monitor and take a picture?”
“That’s all we could do.”
Carrie shook her head as she installed the thumb drive’s operating software onto her laptop. “Was it scary when the pterodactyls swooped down on you, or were you too amazed by the invention of fire to pay any attention to them?”
The software installed and the system’s player appeared on the screen. She pressed PLAY and there was a loud clunking noise from the laptop speaker. Error, it said. “Damn it. I guess I need to update the drivers. This could take a while.”
Rein moved a stack of newspapers out of the way on the couch behind her and sat down. “Did you ever hear of Frederick Porter Wensley?”
Carrie clicked through various boxes on the computer screen as Rein spoke. “Can’t say that I have.”
“He spent forty years in Scotland Yard. Most decorated criminal investigator of his time. His first year on the job, he walked a foot beat in Whitechapel, looking for Jack the Ripper.”
“No shit?”
“They wore boots with wooden soles back then, so Wensley nailed small pieces of rubber from bicycle tires to them so he could walk silently on the cobblestone streets.”
“That’s smart.”
“One of the things I like best about Wensley is that he talks about how much technology had changed by the time he retired in the late 1920s. Think about it. The telephone. Cars. Typewriters. Machine guns. All these technological advancements that had seemed like science fiction back when he started in 1888. You know what he said never changed? The job itself. Victims were still victims. Criminals were still criminals. The same socio-economic factors that had caused crime in 1888 were the same ones that caused it in 1929, and you know what? He was right. He was right about then, and he’s right about now. It’s all the same. It’s just the bells and whistles look different now.”
The computer dinged and Carrie clicked play again. A timestamped video appeared, showing multiple camera feeds of the interior and exterior of the Penningtons’ house. One of the interior feeds covered the hallway outside of Tucker Pennington’s bedroom, facing his door. An exterior feed faced his bedroom with a clear view of his windows. There was an option to watch it at faster speeds. Carrie clicked it and the feeds sped up. The night sky changed in the exterior shots, getting lighter. Nothing about the house changed. No one went in or out.
“Could they have altered the video?” Rein asked.
“I guess anything’s possible. But that fast and with no prior warning?”
“Doesn’t seem likely.”
“All right,” Carrie said. “No big deal. Obviously, he’s got some sort of underground escape route. A tunnel or something, that comes out in the woods, far away from the video cameras.”
“An underground tunnel?”
“Exactly.”
“And why would his parents have built an underground tunnel on their property?”
“I have no idea,” Carrie said. “Maybe it used to belong to bootleggers. People who ran moonshine. Tucker discovered it, and now he’s using it to commit his evil deeds.”
Rein picked at a loose thread on the couch’s armrest. “We have now entered the realm of wild speculation.”
“No, it’s called a theory. What if it’s true?”
“Is that how murders are solved these days? We just imagine different possibilities and go running off to chase them down until we can prove they aren’t true? It’s been a while since I worked one. Maybe I forget.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Let’s make a list of all the theories we can think of. Aliens. Russian mafia. A secret pedophile ring in the back of a pizza shop.”
“I said, enough.”
“In my day, we just followed the natural progression of evidence until a suspect developed. But who knows, maybe if we’d considered the, what was it, old-time moonshine runners with secret underground tunnels theory, it could have saved everybody a lot of time.”
Carrie closed the laptop. “You done? You’ve made your point.” Behind Rein, a car skidded into the dirt parking lot next to Carrie’s car, filling the trailer’s window with dust. “Who the hell is that?” Carrie said. She got up from the chair and laid her right hand on her pistol’s grip, ready to yank it from its holster if needed. She opened the trailer’s front door a crack and peeked through. A thin figure emerged through the cloud of dust, and Carrie said, “Holy shit. It’s Bill.”
Bill Waylon squinted up at her in the afternoon sun. It was sitting on the horizon, bright a
nd full, just behind the trailer. “Hey, kiddo,” Waylon said. “Sorry about pulling up on you like that. None of these lots have addresses and I didn’t see it until I almost drove past.”
“It’s all right, Chief. What brings you out here?”
“I heard about the murder. Dr. Shelley was a good woman. Helped us out that time and I never forgot it.”
He was still sickly-looking and his beard was so pallid, it looked almost white in the sun, but he was up and he was moving, and it was all Carrie could do not to come running down the steps to hug him. Bill Waylon was back, she thought. She couldn’t help but smile. “Come on in,” Carrie said. “I’ve got Jacob in here. We’re getting ready to go nail this Master bastard.”
“Yeah, I figured he was here,” Waylon said. “Actually, I need to speak with him first. Can you send him out?”
“Sure,” Carrie said. She leaned her head back inside the trailer and grinned at Rein. “We’re getting the band back together.”
Rein moved the trailer’s window curtain aside to look at his old partner. “Is that right?”
“He wants to talk to you first.”
Rein got up from the couch. He went to move past Carrie and she said, “Be nice.”
“I’m always nice.”
“Maybe twice in the whole time I’ve known you.”
Rein went through the door onto the top step of the trailer and pulled the door shut behind him. Waylon looked worse than he’d imagined. Withered. Scarred. The injury to his neck had aged the man ten years or more. Something inside of Bill Waylon had retreated into a corner and lain down whimpering. “Bill,” Rein said.
“Jacob. Been a little while.”
“Every time I called, Jeri told me you were resting. When I finally went to your house, cars were in the driveway and I heard the TV on, but I guess no one heard me knocking or ringing the doorbell.”
Waylon ran his fingers around the scar on his neck and squeezed enough to help himself clear his throat. “Can you blame my wife for being angry?”
“No,” Rein said.
“The bastards fired me while I was still in the hospital. Can you believe it? All those years, all those killers and rapists we put in jail and then I get my throat slit and they fire me on my deathbed.”
Blood Angel Page 16