“Elaborate on that,” Dempster said.
“Dennis Reft says thousands of dollars were stolen from donations,” Berg said. “But that’s chicken feed to a diocesan bishop and a U.S. congresswoman. It wouldn’t be worth the risk to them, and they were—still are, I think—after more. That said, they might have wanted a percentage and didn’t get it. But my guess is he wasn’t supposed to take the money, or take so much that it meant St. Michael’s closure. They wanted the church to stay open and they wanted Lloyd in charge. Their puppet.”
“Of course!” I said, flopping back in my seat. “They go to all that trouble to bring him in, including sending him to seminary, then drive him away a year after he becomes St. Michael’s priest? It never made sense.”
“Yeah, okay, okay,” Dempster said, waving a hand, “I still have trouble believing some politician sent Lloyd to seminary, but more importantly, who is this they you’re talking about?”
“Whoever’s pulling the Nickles’ strings,” I said.
“We’re back to the bishop and politician?” Dempster said.
I looked to Berg, waiting for him to speak. Good Lord, this—what was it? A demonic cabal of national proportions? The thought was as terrifying as that thing in the basement. And equally if not more powerful.
“Yes, I think we’re back to them,” Berg said quietly. “But I don’t believe they’re the only ones pulling strings. They didn’t kill Lloyd or Meyer, not firsthand, but they may have known about their murders.”
“Or ordered them,” I added.
Dempster kneaded the bridge of his nose. “Let me see if I got this straight. You think Lloyd ran off because he annoyed his masters by stealing too much?”
“He put their scheme in danger,” I said, nodding at Berg. “It fits. Reft was raising too many questions about the donations. Maybe the office manager was too. Patty Nordwall. Did Reft tell—”
“Yeah, he told me about her. She checks out,” Dempster said.
“He also questioned whether Lloyd should even be a priest,” I went on, “but that wouldn’t raise attention like missing money would.”
“It’s always the money,” Dempster agreed. “So Lloyd doesn’t tell anyone in the church where he’s going and runs all the way to southwestern Colorado.”
“An extreme reaction unless you believe your life’s in danger,” Berg said.
“Yeah, makes sense in a way,” Dempster said. “And Lloyd’s hiding place worked until a woman from St. Michael’s just happened to be down in the San Juans and saw him. Maybe he knew he’d been spotted.”
“I don’t think so,” Berg said, “and the parishioner herself wasn’t positive it was him because he was wearing a beard, so it’s unlikely others from the church saw him in the same isolated town and knew who he was, especially after almost two years.”
“Then something else brought him back to Wells,” Dempster concluded.
“And they didn’t want him to come back,” I said.
“We circle back to the puppet masters,” Dempster said.
“And there are more than two masters,” Berg said confidently. “I feel it.”
Dempster set down his cup, arched his back, stuck out his arms, and stretched and groaned. “How do you think Weston Meyer fits in? I can’t figure the sacrificial aspect of it—the kneeling. Was Meyer a threat too?”
“I think so,” Berg said. “Though how, I don’t know. He might have felt that this church, or the land it sits on, was his.”
“If he was anything like his whackjob ancestor, he did,” Dempster said. “Thaddeus used to hold orgies in his house, and he wasn’t shy about it. Did’ja know that? He also buried dead animals and little Satan and pagan kinds of statues all over his yard in case he lost the battle to keep his house. Our history buff said it was a big deal back then, with most of the town wanting to burn his place down. The whackjob wanted the construction people to run into some of the statues—and they did—and he wanted some to stay buried because that way”—here the detective gave a fair imitation of Bela Lugosi—“demons would always have their friends in the earth of this place.”
I laughed, and I felt the tension of the past hour, just a little of it, flow out of me.
“Don’t quote me on that,” he said. “And I don’t mean any disrespect. You two probably think statues in the ground are, you know . . .”
“Are what?” Berg asked, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Well, you know . . .”
“Enchanted? Magical?”
Dempster looked confused. “You don’t?”
“Plastic is nothing more than plastic and metal is nothing more than metal,” Berg replied.
“No magical power when they’re, you know, made into a certain kind of shape?”
Berg shook his head and smiled. Broadly. “Not that I’d allow any kind of pagan statue or symbol in a church—over my dead body, would I—but in and of themselves they have zero power over anything or anyone. They’re just plastic, just metal, just wood. Things like that aren’t about magic, they’re about your state of mind. About who you serve.”
“Like the puppet masters’ state of mind,” Dempster said. “Well, you learn something new every day. Teagan, you said these masters have a scheme. What is it?”
“We don’t know that yet,” I answered. “But we do know they’re into long-term planning. Thus Lloyd going to seminary. And we can surmise that they’re ruthless and ambitious. Whatever their plans are, they’re big.”
“Nice,” Dempster said. “So what about the cosmic happenings in this church? You must think they’re real or you two wouldn’t be here.”
“We know they’re real,” Berg said in that flat, no-nonsense tone of his.
“Huh.” Dempster glanced away for a moment, embarrassed, I thought, by the notion that the supernatural world was real and that logical, intelligent men like John Bergland could believe in that world. “I’m not sure I buy all that cosmic-hipster stuff, but I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not one to say, really. The Petersons think it’s real enough. Besides, first things first. My job’s to find out who killed Weston Meyer and Edward Lloyd, and I gotta get up early tomorrow so I can annoy the Nickles.” He stood, stretched again, and started down the sanctuary aisle.
I left my cup on the pew and fell in behind him. On the way, I grabbed the ledger sheet I’d found. “Do you remember that dark sedan I saw right before we found Meyer’s body?”
“You mentioned it to one of my officers on the scene.”
“I saw a similar car—it reminded me of it—and Hattie Nickle was driving it, following us around ten, eleven o’clock tonight. A newer BMW, it looked dark blue.”
Amused, Dempster shot me a look over his shoulder. “A BMW? So she’s not living off Social Security.”
When we reached the front doors, I paused, desperate to reinforce the idea that Hattie Nickle could well be a throat-cutting murderer. “Hattie is old and frail looking,” I said, “but don’t be fooled by her granny act. Something is very wrong with her, Detective. As in psychotically wrong. And if Meyer was kneeling and caught off guard, she easily could’ve killed him.”
“But you don’t know if the car you saw in the parking lot last night was hers or if she was behind the wheel.”
I admitted as much. Then I handed him the ledger sheet. “I found this hidden in the office. The dates correspond to Lloyd’s time here, and the figures may be the donations he stole and the dates he stole them.”
Dempster gave the sheet a once-over. “Thanks. This could be useful. Anyway, maybe Mrs. Nickle will agree to a DNA swab, but I’m betting she has gray hair.”
“She does.”
“Not our hair, then. Hair’s one piece of evidence we found. Unless two murderers worked together and your granny didn’t leave evidence behind.”
“So it was a woman?” I asked.
Dempster ignored my question. “But if your granny killed Meyer, she didn’t kill Lloyd. Lloyd’s killer didn’t leave a tra
ce.”
“You have a hair sample taken off Meyer?” Berg asked.
“And two types of transfer evidence. Don’t quote me on that.”
Thanking us for the best coffee he’d had all day, Dempster swung the door open and looked to the spot where Meyer’s body had been found. “Ruthless. You got that right, Teagan. What a mess.”
“And ambitious,” I said. “Ambitious for money and control.”
As he started to walk away, I called to him. “Detective.”
“Yup?” He stopped and pivoted back.
“Another piece of evidence you found. Was it red lipstick?”
He went slack-jawed. “How in hell’s bells did you know that?”
CHAPTER 29
Feeling ragged and worn to the nub, I sat in my pew and propped my arms on the back of the next pew up. I wanted to crawl into my sleeping bag, but I didn’t dare. The terror in the basement and my subsequent confession were still very much with me. I’d dream in spades.
“Your police academy training paid off,” Berg said, forcing a playfulness into his voice as he too sat wearily in his pew. He knew I couldn’t talk about my dreams. Not right now.
“Dempster got me started when he said ‘transfer evidence,’ and I’d been thinking about unusual visitors to this church—ones other than Lebec and the Nickles.”
“I noticed Nicole’s bright red lipstick, but I never would’ve thought of it as evidence in Meyer’s death.”
“She rubbed her lips a lot, especially when she was nervous. Traces were on her hands. Must have been. On her clothes, too, I’m sure. Meyer is probably covered with her lipstick and DNA. She’s an amateur.”
“Anything else make you think of her?”
“She was quitting her job, as though she’d finally found a way out. Maybe the Nickles or one of their masters promised her money or a new job in a new city. Anyway, she was dissatisfied and ambitious. Waitressing was far too menial.”
“Again ambition rears its head.”
I sat straight, leaned back in my seat. “Another thing. Why would she talk to Ray Nickle if she disliked him so much? She had no problem avoiding us earlier tonight. She could’ve walked away from him. Just handed him his takeout order and served someone else. But instead she stood there and listened to his haunted church tales?” I shook my head. “No way.”
“Waitresses have ways of dealing with customers that bother them.”
“Or scare them. You bet. And remember, she didn’t have a coat when she came here last night.”
“That’s right. She was freezing.”
“When you asked her where it was, she didn’t answer. I’m guessing it had blood on it. I wish I’d mentioned it to Dempster.”
“He strikes me as being on top of things.”
“Even killing Meyer from behind, some blood spray would’ve hit her coat. Her right sleeve, especially. I’ll bet she wore gloves too.”
“She would’ve thrown the coat and gloves out by now, but they’ll search her car for traces of blood.”
“They’ll be all over it, and all over her apartment or wherever she lives. You’re right, Dempster’s sharp. And another thing.” Delving further into the forensic aspects of the crime, my second wind began to kick in. “Why did Nicole come to see us last night? I know what she said, but I didn’t buy it then and I don’t buy it now. She waitresses on her feet all day, she finally goes home, and then two hours later she drives here to give us a piddling bit of info about Nickle saying the church was haunted? That’s not why she came.”
In my mind I replayed Nicole’s words, and I heard what I now recognized as the barely disguised glee in her voice. You don’t have to pull the trigger with your own hand to shoot someone in the head. “She was delivering a message to you, Berg. That’s why she came.”
Sitting directly under a can light, his white hair glowed. “We don’t wrestle against flesh and blood,” he said solemnly.
“You’re a huge threat to them.”
“They came here to destroy us both. They’re taking out the warriors, Teagan.”
“I’m not a—”
“Stop it now. I won’t tolerate, not one more second, you talking about yourself like that. Or about me.”
“You?”
“Why the hell do you think I asked you to work with me? Am I so feeble minded I couldn’t imagine you have a background as sinful as anyone else’s?” He thumped his chest. “As sinful as mine? Why are your nightmares getting worse? Ask yourself that. Why did Hattie Nickle—a woman who’s no messenger of God, need I say—tell you she knows about your nightmares? She described them to you, didn’t she?”
“I didn’t . . . How did you know?”
“She did, didn’t she? In the Quick Mart. I’m not the only threat to them, not by a long shot. And let me tell you, there are threats to them everywhere, and we’d all better bank on God’s word and join forces—or at the very least they’ll drive us to quit, sit on our comfortable couches, and watch TV all day, wallowing in our pasts. Are you ready or not?”
I stared at him a moment, unable to speak. Then I laughed. “Berg. You said ‘hell.’”
He worked his way up out of the pew. “The situation called for it.”
My confession, the great sin of my life, hadn’t made a dent in him. How could that be?
I looked away, up to Michael on the stained glass, down to the platform where the altar had once stood.
Berg’s generosity of spirit didn’t alter the horror of what I’d done, but I was desperate to find a way to live with it. Even sometimes to pretend it had never happened, if just for a day, and the sheer terror of hunting demons had that advantage. It helped me forget.
I had no choice but to stay on the Peterson case, stay with Berg, work with him for as long as he wanted me. I needed his compassion, and for my own past, I had none.
“Let’s try to find more lightning bolts,” he said, starting down the aisle.
My second wind in full flow, I shoved a couple of donut holes in my mouth in rapid succession, and stood. “The office first?” I muttered around the last donut.
“Agreed.”
“What books have you seen that lightning symbol in?”
“Two short ones on occultic symbolism,” he said as we turned the corner out of the sanctuary. “Two you haven’t read yet. You’ve got homework to do. Some common symbols are the pentagram and inverted pentagram—both too pedestrian for the likes of the Nickles—letters of the runic alphabet, a hexagram, the crude outline of a goat’s head, a coiled serpent, the cross of Baphomet, and a vertical lightning bolt, written as 777.”
“Have you seen these in your previous cases?”
We stopped outside the library door. “Seems about one out of ten cases I have, but none since you started,” he said. “I’ve also encountered demonic sigils, including Lucifer’s. But most of those are much too intricate to carve into limestone or to replicate from place to place, and I’m sure that’s their plan. Every conspiracy needs its own language and symbols. They had to choose something simple but meaningful.”
Suddenly I remembered. Smacking my palm to my forehead, I said, “Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. ‘I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.’”
“There you go.”
Berg moved for the desk. “Often these symbols are juvenile attempts at terrorizing homeowners or other victims, but that’s not the case here.”
“Not with two dead bodies and that thing in the basement.”
I examined the filing cabinet from top to bottom and then inside out, shining my flashlight into the empty drawers. Finding nothing, I dragged it out from the wall and checked the back. There, scratched in the gray metal, was a smaller version of the bolt I’d seen in the basement. “Found one.”
Berg came over. “These people like to mark their territory.”
“Like naughty dogs. Anything in or on the desk?”
“No. Let’s check the children’s bedrooms.”
The very
words “children’s bedrooms” sent a shiver of dread through me. When we’d first taken on the case, part of our goal was to reclaim the Petersons’ home, but now I wondered if the family was better off moving, even if Berg had successfully banished the demonic presence in the basement—and that was a major if.
With Lebec and the Nickles after the church, would the Petersons ever be safe here?
We went to Liam’s bedroom, Berg starting with the walls and me taking another look inside the boy’s closet.
“At the academy we had a brief lesson on symbols and objects found at ritualistic crime scenes,” I said, pushing clothes hangers out of the way, “but they didn’t go into much detail. I suppose they left that for detectives. Mostly we were taught what to watch for, especially in the outer perimeter. Things we might ordinarily overlook if we were first on the scene, like markings on trees, painted rocks.”
“Here’s a bolt,” Berg said.
I shut the closet doors and turned.
“The picture frame covered it,” he said. “It was scratched in, like the others.”
“The Petersons didn’t paint this room like they did with Sophie’s. These walls are an old, industrial beige.”
“Now for Carissa and Matt’s room.”
Berg laid the frame on Liam’s bed, no doubt wanting the Petersons to see the blasted lightning bolt on the wall. I didn’t blame them for not painting it over or questioning it. You saw all kinds of strange things in a new home, and stranger still in a building that never was a home. For Matt and Carissa, a picture frame was a quick fix.
In the couple’s room, I again started my half of the search with the closet. My first time around I hadn’t seen symbols on the closet walls, but then I hadn’t searched for any. Felt the walls, yes, but not studied them with a flashlight.
Finding nothing, I addressed the shelf above the hanger bar. “They installed these bars themselves,” I noted absentmindedly. “Good idea.” I removed the shelf’s contents—five boxes and two canvas bags—and set them on the bed. Aimed my flashlight above the shelf. Nothing.
“Nothing under their picture frames,” Berg announced.
Chasing Angels (Teagan Doyle Mysteries Book 1) Page 20