Chasing Angels (Teagan Doyle Mysteries Book 1)

by Karin Kaufman

  I looked away. “Stop.”

  He stuck out his hand to touch my shoulder, but not being able to reach that far, he let it drop. “This isn’t about that. It’s about me and Jack. He killed himself because of me.”

  I turned back to him.

  “That’s why Ray Nickle sent Nicole to give me that message. ‘You don’t have to pull the trigger with your own hand to shoot someone in the head.’ Remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “Proverbs says that the tongue has the power of life and death. It’s a weapon, and one we love to wield because it’s so easy. Human beings are harsh, and we love to be harsh. We give no thought to the effects of our words. I was cruel and demanding, especially with Jack. Here I was, an associate pastor, knowing I had the power of life and death in my tongue, and for my brother? I had only words of death.”

  I shook my head slowly. “I don’t understand. Everyone says cruel things, especially to family. We’re cruelest to those we love.”

  “As children. We say things like ‘You’re ugly’ or even ‘I hate you,’ not really meaning it. But I was thirty-one, and I knew where to strike where it would hurt most. Jack was . . .”

  His eyes were glistening, and his breathing had become jagged. A flood of love welled up inside of me, and I wanted to tell him to stop talking, it was all right. Whatever it was, it was all right.

  But I knew it would be wrong to stop him now. He had to speak.

  “Jack was sensitive. More than he should have been, but maybe that was how God created him, and I should have made allowances. He made allowances for me all the time. He started drinking and smoking marijuana to dull the sharp edges of life, and that made me even more contemptuous. He looked up to me, and I looked down on him. And he knew it. He tried to please me, and I would not be pleased. And then he drank more and smoked more. On the day he took his life, I told him I was ashamed he was my brother. He was dead five hours later.”

  In Berg’s face I saw raw pain of the sort I hadn’t seen since the day Bethany Scott died. Coward that I was, I wished I could look away. It hurt too much to see him frail and wounded. But I wouldn’t abandon him. If I turned my face from him now, neither of us would ever forget it. “I believe there’s more to this story than you being bad and Jack being sensitive,” I said at last.

  Berg wiped his eyes. “There’s no putting lipstick on this pig, Teagan.” His voice was wavering, but his expression was resolute. There was no excuse. He would not give himself a way out.

  “It’s never one-sided, Berg. You’ve taught me that.”

  Tears ran down his face. He wiped and he wiped. “God forgive me.”

  It was a sacred moment.

  And oh God, I was out of my depth.

  I prayed silently. There was nothing else I could do, and at the same time, nothing better.

  When his tears stopped, we sat quietly for some time. Then I stepped into the silence. “If you don’t believe in forgiveness, how can I?”

  “I believe in forgiveness.”

  “You just asked God to forgive you, probably for the one millionth time in the past forty-five years.”

  “Forgiveness doesn’t turn back time.”

  “I know that. And it doesn’t put words back in our mouths. The things I’ve said to Ian have been monstrous. Thank God we didn’t have kids. But I refuse to believe your brother was perfection and you alone caused him to take his life. He did that, and I know God had mercy on him.”

  Berg sniffed and cleared his throat. “You’re talking like a believer.”

  “You know I’m a believer. I’m just not as faithful as you.”

  “Oh, Teagan, you have no idea.”

  “Stop saying that. I’ve only known you a year and a half, but under intense circumstances, don’t you think? This job—it brings out the best and the worst. I know your character under fire. I’m looking at you from the unbiased outside, and my God, you’re being hard on yourself. It’s about making amends when you can’t, isn’t it? Is this why you’re so easy on everyone else?”

  He squinted. “I don’t follow.”

  I folded my arms, leaned back in the pew. “You cut people like Lebec and Matt too much slack. And Carissa.”

  “Our battle isn’t against flesh and blood.”

  “And you blow me off.”

  “Are you talking about Lebec? I didn’t want to get into—”

  “Whenever something’s really important—that’s when you don’t want to talk. And you never argue with me. Ever. You never argue with me, period. About anything. I could suggest we eat Vietnamese cuisine every afternoon and evening while on the job and you’d give in.”

  “You want me to argue with you?”

  “The least you could do is disagree with me when you actually do disagree. You tell me I’m strong and then you treat me like I’m made of bone china.”

  “I do that?”

  Giving him my best let’s-be-serious look, I said, “You know you do.”

  “So . . .” He sat straighter. “All right, then. When I’m in the car, keep your music to a decent volume. Seriously. I may be seventy-six, but I’m not deaf. You, on the other hand, are going to go deaf by the time you’re fifty if you keep cranking the volume like that. Lord knows how loud it must be when I’m not in the car.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Eat some vegetables on the job. You have sugar highs and sugar lows and nothing in between.”

  “Good.”

  “And try listening to music from this century.”

  “I might.”

  “Another thing.”

  I couldn’t hold back a grin.

  “You snore. Next job, get your own room.”

  “See? Don’t you feel better?”

  He was smiling again. Still a little shaky, but smiling. Mission accomplished, I thought, and time to leave him alone for a while.

  I couldn’t comfort people like he could, not without sounding like a gibbering fool, but I could make him laugh and I could act, in the face of his confession, as if nothing had changed or ever would change between us. Always he’d be my mentor, my colleague, my dearest friend. “Now I really am going to check out the Petersons’ bedroom,” I said.

  “Call if you need me.”

  “Will do. Can I have that sympathy card? I might find something handwritten in the room.”

  Berg gave me the card. “Matt’s handwriting?”

  “It’s possible.” It was more than possible, but knowing Berg, he was still hoping for Matt’s redemption, and there was no reason to prematurely burst that optimistic bubble.

  CHAPTER 36

  I tucked the card in my pocket, took a last gulp of Diet Coke, left the can in the pew, and made my way to the Petersons’ room, intending to dig deeper into the couple’s belongings—go through their dresser drawers, look under their mattress, whatever was needed. Matt had lied to Carissa in ways most husbands and wives would find outrageous, and in my book, he was not a reformed character.

  The second I hit the bedroom, I started to dig. I didn’t trust Matt to stay put at the hotel, so there was no time to waste. Having already thoroughly inspected the closet in search of Ouija and Tarot garbage, I first turned to the bedside tables. I flipped through a couple books on Matt’s side, looking for anything stuffed in the pages and for his ownership signature. Nothing.

  Next I went through the couple’s dresser drawers, going so far as to look between folded items of clothing and under the loose drawer liners. When that search yielded no results, I pulled out the drawers and checked the underside of each for anything taped to them. Again nothing.

  Determined to leave no stone unturned, I squatted and aimed my flashlight inside.

  Eureka. A letter-sized envelope was duct-taped to the dresser’s back wall.

  I tore it off, not caring a fig if my carelessness led to Matt discovering my intrusion.

  A loud bang at the church’s doors interrupted my search. Thinking it might be the Petersons, I slid the d
rawers back in place, stuffed the envelope in my jeans pocket, and darted into the hall, putting as much space between me and the Petersons’ bedroom door as I could while Berg shouted to someone through the locked doors.

  “Coming,” I called, striding into the narthex. I still had both the padlock key and the key to the new deadbolt in my possession.

  “It’s Dempster,” Berg said, stepping back.

  I unlocked and unchained, apologizing for the fiddling as Dempster breezed inside. “I’ve got news for you. Nicole Ellis just confessed to murdering Weston Meyer.” He threw his hands out in a gesture of astonishment. “All of a sudden. Boom! Go figure. I stopped at the station, she confessed, and they’re taking her to county. I’m on my way to drag the Nickles’ rear ends in for questioning in said murder, and I thought I’d stop by, give you the happy news.” He paused, made a face. “Is it my imagination or is it warmer in here?”

  “Could be.” I looked to Berg. “Come to think of it, I might take my coat off for the first time.”

  “Did Nicole implicate the Nickles?” Berg asked.

  “No, but she will if she wants to leave prison before she’s seventy. Any chance there’s coffee on the boil?”

  “I’m sure I can whip something up,” I said, starting for the kitchen. Thanks to Dempster, Berg was off his troubles and back on the case, and I wanted matters to stay that way.

  I set out cups and started a pot of coffee while Dempster filled in the details of Nicole’s unexpected confession. She’d refused to talk to anyone but Dempster and she’d confessed without shame. In fact, she was proud she’d fooled Meyer into kneeling, proud he’d trusted her as she stood behind him and kissed the back of his head with her cherry red lips—how that had kept him immobile with anticipation!—and so proud he’d been oblivious to the knife she’d taken from her coat pocket.

  “All she said about Meyer kneeling was, ‘That’s the way it had to be,’” Dempster said. “Whatever that means. Sounds ritualistic. She did the job for someone else, all right. Like a good little soldier. She didn’t even know why she had to do it. Heck, she didn’t really know who Meyer was.”

  “Why do you think she wouldn’t confess to anyone else?” Berg asked.

  “Yeah, that’s curious. Makes me leery. Seems there’s a purpose in me hearing her confession, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out what that is. On the other hand, I’m not gonna look a gift horse. She did it, I’m positive, and the DNA will prove that.”

  The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee filled the kitchen, I took spoons from a drawer and the stainless milk jug from the fridge and set them on the table.

  “When you asked her about the Nickles,” Berg said, “she had no reaction?”

  “Oh, she had a reaction,” Dempster replied. “She’s a kid and she can’t play poker, if you know what I mean. She hasn’t learned to hide her tells, and she was full of them when I brought up their names. I also told her about that dark sedan leaving the parking lot right after the murder—remember, Teagan?”

  I pivoted back. “What did she say?”

  “It wasn’t what she said, it was her reaction. Like, ‘Oh crap, they blew that.’ I told her we knew the Nickles ordered the murder, and she was scared—but just for a second. Then she pulled herself together. But she’s a kid—a nasty piece of work, but a kid—and she won’t be able to keep it together long. When I tell her the Nickles said she planned the murder on her own and tell them Nicole said they ordered the hit, someone’s going to crack like an egg.”

  As I watched the coffee maker sputter its last, I remembered the envelope in my jeans pocket and pulled it out.

  Inside was a sheet of typed paper, which I set on the counter, and a photograph of St. Michael’s altar—the old altar with the old cloth—arrayed with various small wooden statues, one of them a stylized pregnant woman with large breasts. I knew my pagan fertility figures.

  God in heaven, what’s this?

  “Teagan?” Berg asked.

  Behind the altar stood three people, and I recognized them all. “Oh, God.” We’d been played. Lord, had we been played. I flipped the photo over. On back, someone had written “Sophie’s September dedication. It begins!”

  “What are you looking at?” Berg asked.

  I looked up, caught his eyes, and froze for a moment, staring in disbelief. Then I laid the photo on the table between him and Dempster. “Carissa and her daughter Sophie. And there’s Dennis Reft. Standing behind the altar that used to be in this church.”

  Dempster bent closer. “What’s that stuff on it?”

  “Assorted pagan crap,” I said bluntly. I dropped to a chair. “Reft has his arm on Carissa’s shoulder. Look at them grinning.”

  Berg drew the photo closer. Sadness swept over his face. Not surprise, I noticed, but sadness. We’d been taken for one big ride by a former man of God and a supposedly terrified housewife. I was angry as hell.

  Dempster was dumbfounded. “But Reft was the priest here, and that doesn’t look like priest stuff.”

  “Someone wrote ‘Sophie’s September dedication’ on the back,” I added.

  Berg flipped the photo.

  “Hang on.” I took the sympathy card from my coat pocket and compared the writing. On first look, it was similar, and closer inspection confirmed my initial impression. Both samples had the same double-looped capital L’s, the same lowercase e’s with slits for loops, and a’s that looked more like printing than cursive writing. “It’s the same,” I declared. “Isn’t it?”

  Berg nodded.

  “God, that witch!” I thundered. “That lying witch! Pretending to be afraid and desperate for help. And Reft—what an evil, despicable toad. We sat in his living room and he lied to us over and over again.”

  “He told us exactly what we wanted to hear,” Berg said, rubbing his chin. “Exactly what he wanted us to hear.”

  “September,” Dempster said. “Does that mean this past September? How old is her daughter in that—”

  “Sophie is seven now,” I broke in, “and she looks about seven here, so this must have been taken this past September.”

  “But Reft wasn’t the priest then,” Dempster said, still trying to take it all in. “He’d retired. And besides, the Petersons didn’t close on the church until October second, yeah? They didn’t even live in Wells in September. They didn’t know anyone here, so how did they know Reft?”

  His eyes still riveted to the photo, Berg’s attention had shifted away from Reft. “Look at that poor girl.”

  “None too happy,” Dempster said. “Is this some kind of church ceremony? Are they making her an altar girl?”

  I stared. “When’s the last time you went to church, Detective?”

  “So it’s not?”

  “Not with fertility figures,” I said, tapping the photo. “Not any church that calls itself a church.” I held it up, examining it more closely, then took a shot of it with my phone. “There’s even a statue of a man with a ram’s head, for crying out loud.”

  Dempster pulled the photo closer. “That looks . . .”

  “Satanic?” I offered. Pulling up my phone’s photos, I clicked on the copy Matt had sent me of the folded note sealed with the body. “It’s not in cursive, but even so, it looks too different from the card and the back of the photo to be Carissa’s writing.”

  “The Petersons didn’t take possession until October second,” Berg said. “This photo was taken while the church was still in the diocese’s hands.”

  I heard the disgust in his voice.

  “Were they still holding services?” Dempster asked.

  “Matt told me the church was unoccupied for three days before they took possession,” I replied, “and I found out the last Sunday service was on September twenty-fourth, so maybe we can narrow the date of this photo to the twenty-ninth or thirtieth. Then again, who’s to say they didn’t hold this ritual earlier in the month? No one seemed to care what sort of crap went on here.”

  I grabbed the typed
sheet of paper from the counter and dropped back to my chair.

  Berg gestured with his chin. “What’s that?”

  “It came with the photo,” I said, unfolding the paper. I read it aloud. “Salutations, sister. Important: destroy this after reading. We’re aware of the sacrifices you have made and are therefore proud to accept Sophie Dane Peterson among us. It is crucial to begin slowly. She is very young and there is much time. Impress on her the importance of keeping all these matters from her brother and father, particularly when you visit Denver. Teach her all things, but slowly. You will teach Liam too, but we’ll discuss him later. It’s best to try to bring the husband in when dealing with a son, and that isn’t possible now. Again, destroy this letter. We have great plans! It begins!”

  “What the hell’s bells?” Dempster said. He looked like he might vomit.

  “It isn’t signed,” I said, handing the letter to Berg. “Carissa couldn’t resist keeping a souvenir of the event, despite warnings. No wonder she kept the altar cloth. Her and her trinkets.”

  He scanned the letter then handed it to Dempster. “Can you use this as evidence? In what, I don’t know—but in something against this woman? This is a travesty. Bringing a child into this sickness—and she’s standing there with a man who’s lied about Lloyd from the beginning. Isn’t that obstruction of justice?”

  “I’ll have to ask the legals,” Dempster said, stuffing the letter and photo back into the envelope. “I mean, you’re giving me the letter, and you had access to the Petersons’ home with their full permission, so even though there was no search warrant, maybe it’ll stand. But I don’t know what good it will do. We never officially interrogated her or Reft, so I can’t get them on making false statements during a criminal investigation. We barely talked to Mrs. Peterson. I thought she was too fragile. Ain’t that a kick in the head? That woman would’ve made a great actress.”

  “What’s the us in the letter?” Berg asked, tipping his head at the letter. “We’re proud to accept her among us.”