I sat in the first pew in the rear, a row back from my things, not wanting to claim them as tools of my trade. Berg—God he was a hunter—sat in the same row as me, across the aisle. Still dodging his eyes, though I could feel them on me, I contemplated my shoes as if I’d never seen them before.
“Teagan, we need to talk.”
Hell, I wasn’t going to drag it out. Be a woman and get it over with. “Don’t ask me any questions. Just tell me to leave. Or if you want me to stay until we’re finished here, I will. You don’t have to pay me.”
“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”
I looked up at him in disbelief.
Someone chose that moment to pound like a jackhammer on the front door.
“Unbelievable,” I said, checking my watch. Blessed, blessed interruption. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”
Berg’s ankles were still throbbing, so he stayed in the sanctuary’s doorway, shaking out his legs, while I strode through the narthex and yelled through the locked front doors. “Who is it?”
A shout came back. “It’s Detective Dempster. Got a minute?”
CHAPTER 27
By the time I’d unhooked the chain and let Dempster inside, Berg was halfway through the narthex, welcoming the detective inside.
“You said you’d be up,” Dempster said unapologetically. “Turns out, me too.”
Despite the hour, he wasn’t about to get a peeved look from me. I welcomed the cover his arrival gave me. Better the detective than Berg’s questions.
Dempster planted himself in the narthex, his gaze shifting from Berg to me. “You two look like death warmed over. My wife’s expression, not mine, but does it ever fit. Especially you, Miss Doyle. No offense.”
I pleaded exhaustion. “I don’t always look like this.”
“I hear ya,” he said. “So listen, I dragged a forensic examiner from his warm house to give those drywall sections a look, and lo and behold”—he pulled his phone from an inside coat pocket—“he found a skillfully patched-over slot in one of them.”
He showed Berg the photo. I leaned in. A thin notch about two inches long had been sliced into the two-by-three-foot piece of drywall.
“Perfect size for a folded note,” Berg said.
“That’s not all,” Dempster said. “The wall we found Lloyd in wasn’t to code. The studs were supposed to be sixteen or twenty-four inches apart, but they were thirty-four. That’s how they were able to stuff Lloyd inside without, you know, dismembering him.”
“Or folding him like an accordion,” I said.
Dempster chuckled. “The wall’s deeper than normal too, allowing Lloyd to fit. So here’s the deal. Each drywall panel in that interior wall was three feet by eight feet, but when we compared the panel that covered the body with parts of the surrounding panels we tore out, we found something interesting. They’re completely different. Different age, composition, manufacturer. Someone tore the old panel out, and you can’t do that without breaking it, so they had to nail in a new one. But see, when someone did the mud—that joint sealer—and then painted everything over, who’s to know it’s a different brand of panel? They painted over the slot they cut too.”
“So the note was a late addition,” Berg said.
“Later than Lloyd getting walled up, for sure,” Dempster said.
“So who put in that offbeat drywall panel a month ago?” I asked.
Dempster scratched his head. “No one we’ve talked to admits it. We know Moffat Brothers Construction did the other panels five and a half years ago. They didn’t do the studs, they said—’course, who would admit?—but they said they sealed the wall one hundred percent, no missing panels, and showed us the records to back that up. It was Moffat the Petersons called earlier this week to take out the panels and tear it all down. Moffat remembered the job.”
“Anyone can buy a drywall panel or two,” Berg said.
“And there’s no point in trying to track down a single panel or a bucket of mud that couldn’t have been bought in Wells anyway since our puny hardware store doesn’t sell replacement drywall or mud. Moffat said they didn’t sell a single panel to anyone in town. This replacement to cover Lloyd’s body? We’re probably talking about one or two people who bought the materials in Fort Collins, Denver, or Greeley and did the job themselves.”
“Who cut a slot in the panel after that?” I asked, knowing none of us had the answer. “It could’ve been the same people or different people.”
“Easy thing to cut a slot, patch it, and paint it,” Dempster said.
“There’s leftover paint in the basement,” I pointed out.
“Saw it,” Dempster said. “So Mr. Bergland, which one of the people you told me about wants to mess with your head that badly?”
Berg shrugged. “Any one of them, all of them.”
Dempster crossed his arms. “You know what the cop in me doesn’t get? That a murderer would want to show his hand. What I mean is, if one of the people messing with you killed Lloyd, why risk getting caught by putting that note inside or painting the name Jack in the sanctuary? Why leave clues? They must’ve known we’d talk to you. The only people who boast like that are serial killers. With them, murder’s a cat-and-mouse game, them being the cat.”
“That’s a cheery thought,” I said.
“Nah, we’re not dealing with that,” Dempster said. “Lloyd and Meyer were killed for a logical reason, not as part of a sick urge, game, or pattern.”
“Have you heard back from Marshal Toomey in Ridgway?” Berg asked.
“Yeah, but it’s not too helpful. Lloyd’s sister says he engineered his own disappearance because he needed a break from the priesthood. Since she didn’t break the law in putting him up, there’s nothing we can do, but it seems he was in Ridgway from a day after his disappearance here until the twenty-seventh of September, five days before the Petersons took possession of the church. That means the ME’s time line was about as good as you can get under the circumstances. Lloyd was killed one to five days after he returned, but we don’t know how soon after leaving Ridgway he came to Wells.”
“So he could have been killed a few days before the Petersons moved in,” Berg said. “While the church was vacant.”
“Plenty of time to wall him up and replace the drywall,” Dempster said. “But why did he come back to the church? Satan invited him to a party?” Dempster laughed.
When we didn’t join in the merriment, Dempster wiped the smile from his face and gave his head another scratch. “So, any weird cosmic stuff going on?”
“You could say that,” Berg answered. “But then, that’s why we’re here.”
“Can I ask where this cosmic stuff’s going on?”
“This time it was the basement.”
“Mind if I take a look? There might be a cop kind of explanation.”
“Old pipes rubbing together?” I said.
“Yeah, that kind of thing. The door’s right over here, if I remember.” Valiantly fighting back a smirk, Dempster marched to the basement door and swung it open. He was a rational man on a mission.
“I’ll wait here if you don’t mind,” Berg said, giving his cane a shake.
“Oh yeah, no problem,” Dempster said. “You wait here too, Miss Doyle.”
When the detective hit the bottom of the staircase and began what I considered a futile exploration, Berg whispered, “Teagan, I can’t make you stay, but I think you should. I wish you would. This world needs you.”
This time I didn’t avoid his eyes. I turned and stared at him.
Dempster shouted, “It’s pretty clean down here for an old basement. That was my first impression too. Not a whole lotta pipes to rub, either. Air ducts are leaky, though.”
“But don’t do this job because you need to punish yourself,” Berg went on. “‘There is therefore no condemnation for—’”
“Don’t,” I said, turning away.
“You were twenty-two, and for a moment in time you di
d something foolish.”
My back to him, I said, “Deeply selfish.”
“Most foolish choices are selfish. Unlike most young people, you paid a heavy price for that moment in time. Look at me.”
Reluctantly, I swung around.
“God will continue to make good come out of this.”
“Don’t even start with that. What good can come from death at the age of eight?”
“You think that child’s death was a surprise to God? He didn’t see it coming?”
Dempster yelled again. “What kind of cosmic noises are we talking about?”
“Scraping noises, like something moving across the floor,” Berg shouted down the steps. “And I don’t mean mice.”
“Like rats?”
“Bigger.” Berg looked at me and smiled. “Much bigger.”
If I argued, would he back down as always and agree with me?
Oh God, I didn’t want him to tell me I was right to loathe my life, but I had to test him. I had to make sure he believed there was hope. “She never got a chance to grow up. Do you understand? How do I live with that?”
“Like you’ve been living. Only better, I hope. Never-ending guilt is not right or godly.”
“A lifeguard reading a book.”
“At that age I would’ve done the same thing.”
“No, you wouldn’t have.”
“I’m telling you yes, I would have. I’ve done far worse.” His voice was gentle but stern. “I don’t know yet how God will use this in your life, but you had better use it, that I know. You had better honor God and Bethany by not wasting it and your life. If you cash in your chips because you think God can’t use a sinner, you don’t know your Bible. You’re not the exception, Teagan. It’s not ‘Everyone else is a sinner but not Teagan Doyle.’ And it’s not ‘Everyone else’s sin is gray but Teagan’s is black and unforgivable.’ Believe me, it’s black with everyone, and most of the time far blacker.”
“Blacker than a dead child?”
“I’m talking dark, deliberate sin. There’s not a place on this earth it doesn’t exist, not a person who hasn’t committed it and doesn’t still commit it. Most people get to hide their sin or pretend it’s not sin at all. You get to ask forgiveness for your serious lapse in judgment, believe God when he says he forgives, and then move on and do your job.”
My job. In that, maybe, I could atone for what I’d done. For petulantly sitting on my rear while a little girl lost her life. Hell, I’d known the children I’d watched could get hurt while my nose was stuffed in a book. I didn’t expect they’d drown, but I knew they could suffer injury. But still I’d read.
I knew what I was supposed to believe now, that forgiveness was there for the asking, but I hadn’t been able to cross that bridge yet. I needed to do something, to atone. What was the just penalty for my crime?
“Nope, don’t see anything,” Dempster boomed. “Don’t see a thing.”
Berg gave me a twisted smile. “Well, he wouldn’t, would he?”
I sniffed again and brushed a tear from my cheek. And I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry with Dempster here. It was time to mop things up and look all dependable and levelheaded. I sniffed, brushed away another tear.
“You’re not the only one with a burden,” Berg said. “I haven’t been as honest as I should have been.”
“Nothing here,” Dempster yelled. He was standing at the bottom of the staircase, one foot on a step. “I don’t see evidence of animals, either. Maybe the noise came from somewhere else in the church. Sounds can travel weird in an old place.”
“That must be it,” Berg said. “But thanks for checking.”
“Well, it’s good for me to have a second look too,” the detective said as he climbed the stairs. “And you can always call if you hear something else, cosmic or normal. I’m not sleeping any more than you two are, and I’d kinda like to see something cosmic for once. I’ve always wanted to.”
He shut the basement door, jammed his hands in his coat pockets, and flapped his elbows like a giant bird. “So are you gonna offer me coffee? It’s colder than a witch’s knees in this place.”
CHAPTER 28
Cups of coffee in our hands, the three of us moved from the kitchen to the sanctuary so Dempster could take a close gander, as he called it, at Michael slaying the dragon. On the way there I gave him the abbreviated history of the stained glass, including Margaret Fremont’s vision over Santo Thomas, the Japanese internment camp.
He smiled faintly as I talked about her, in a gently condescending way, but I could tell he was intrigued, perhaps even to the point of hoping the supernatural world was as real as the earthly one we walked in.
“I asked one of the department’s history buffs about Thaddeus Meyer,” he said, examining Michael’s shield. “Guy was a whackjob, and that’s a lot coming from me. Is this Latin?”
“Yes, it’s ‘Quis Ut Deus,’” Berg said, “the literal translation of Michael’s name—‘Who Like God?’ or ‘Who Is Like God?’ if you will. In most depictions of the archangel it’s written on his shield.”
“What’re these other marks?”
“Teagan?” Berg turned to me.
“Modern Hebrew. Again it’s his name. Micha’el.” I did my best to approximate the name’s lovely sound.
“You read Hebrew?”
“I’m studying it. All I know now is the alphabet and a few words, and my pronunciation isn’t to be trusted.”
“You learn something every day.” Dempster straightened and took a long drink of his coffee, still scrutinizing the stained glass. “Anyway, Thaddeus Meyer was into demon worship. I guess you’d call him a Satanist. Not that I believe in that stuff, but like you said earlier”—he shot Berg a look over his shoulder—“if some lunatic believes and acts on it, what does it matter what I believe? He thought his house was a kind of railway station for them. Place where they felt they could visit on their way to other places. Even stay for a while. Sounds nuts to me, but he had his followers.”
Dempster turned around, his back to the stained glass. “Which takes me to what you said about Weston Meyer being his great-grandson, and what you said, Miss Doyle, about this land being important to them. I’m also thinking how Lloyd’s body and murder scene didn’t yield one speck of evidence. So what have we got here? Satanists, professionals, people who don’t leave a trace but feel free to play clue games?”
Berg nodded thoughtfully. “That’s about the size of it, Detective. We found something else.” He gave me a sideways glance and then led Dempster toward the back of the sanctuary, where the sheets of paper with our suspects’ names on them were still spread over my pew.
“You two have been busy,” Dempster said. To my surprise, I didn’t hear any territorial irritation in his tone. He was happy for any information we could throw his way.
For the next few minutes I drank coffee and Berg laid out what we’d learned, admitting our case’s tenuous connections to Congresswoman Neal and Bishop Talbert. Dempster listened respectfully, whistling when Berg got to the part about Neal’s unusually rapid ascent to D.C. power.
“Politicians scratch each other’s backs and help each other to the gravy train,” he said when Berg had finished, “and people who shouldn’t govern so much as a pumpkin farm become politicians. Neal’s quick promotion, though? That’s not normal, even in politics. But I think you know I don’t have the authority to question her.”
“I realize that,” Berg said. “And we have no proof of our suspicions. But you should know this. The trouble at St. Michael’s and the murders might add up to something bigger than we thought.”
Dempster’s eyes lit up. “Well, hallelujah, ain’t that sweet.”
Berg let out a belly laugh.
“Satanists are spicy enough,” Dempster said, “but you throw in a bishop and a congresswoman and I’m in cop clover. I can’t question them, but I can dig. I can dig like a gopher on steroids.”
“When it comes to our particular case,
that would be much appreciated, Detective Dempster.”
“Call me Joe.”
“Joe.” Berg raised his coffee cup in a toast and took a drink.
We’d gained an ally. Berg liked him and so did I. What’s more, Berg trusted him, and his trickster radar was more finely tuned than mine.
“I’ll be talking to the Nickles tomorrow morning,” Dempster said. “Thought I’d surprise them at their home.”
“Teagan and I are having breakfast with the Petersons tomorrow at Boyle’s. Eight o’clock. We have a lot of ground to cover. But the Nickles have a way of showing up when we talk to the family.”
“Interesting.” Dempster pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Of course, if I knock on their door at, say, seven fifty, that could throw a monkey wrench in their schedule.”
“Might upset their plans.”
“Which wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
“You could even say it’s a good thing,” Berg said.
“Your chances of getting information would increase, and as luck would have it, so would mine.”
“Not to mention keeping the Nickles at bay would make the morning easier on Carissa Peterson.”
“Better for her digestion,” Dempster said.
I snorted. “You two are already as thick as thieves.”
Dempster smiled. “I don’t know what you mean, Miss Doyle.”
“Call me Teagan.”
“You got it.” He upended his cup and drained it. “Question for you both. I’m sure you’ve given it more thought. Why do you think Lloyd returned to Wells?”
“That depends on why he left,” I replied. “Was he scared? It seems so, or he wouldn’t have hid out in Ridgway.”
“Unless he stole money he shouldn’t have, or money the people who brought him to Wells in the first place thought was theirs,” Berg said. He motioned toward the first pew with his cup.
Berg and Dempster sat. I settled in the pew behind them.
Chasing Angels (Teagan Doyle Mysteries Book 1) Page 19