Tom Beddington seemed to be thinking the same thing because he said, “This is going to be easy.”
McTighe glanced over. Somehow hearing Beddington say it only made the reality worse. He’d been a police officer for nearly twenty years, but he’d never fired his gun in the line of duty, much less killed people in cold blood. Right now his nerves were firing off like popcorn. “Oh yeah?”
Beddington swung his head on his thick neck and gave him a disgusted look. “Where’s your faith?”
“I got plenty.” McTighe could feel Beddington’s small eyes cutting holes in him, but he didn’t care.
“Mr. Biddle set this up. He’s got grace.”
“He’s a human being. People make mistakes.”
“You gotta believe.”
McTighe said nothing, but he started to worry maybe Beddington had a point. Maybe he did lack faith.
“It’s your attitude, man. You need to pray more.”
“Killing a cop’s got nothing to do with faith,” McTighe shot back, finally putting words to it.
“Man, it’s got everything to do with faith.”
McTighe hit the steering wheel with his hand.
“You got faith, you don’t worry, you just do it,” Beddington insisted. “You gonna do it, or not?”
McTighe gritted his teeth until his fillings hurt. “Yeah, I’m gonna do it, but I don’t like doing it. I hate doing it.”
Beddington shook his head and smiled. “It’s God’s will,” he said.
“And what if it goes down wrong?”
Beddington shrugged. “Then maybe we die and go to Heaven right now, tonight. That’s okay with me, man. God understands I’m laying my life on the line for Him.”
“Personally, I’d like to be around for a few more years,” McTighe said, feeling a combination of resentment and shame that he couldn’t muster Beddington’s apparent selflessness.
“You will be,” Beddington assured him. “I mean, look what God’s given us to help us do our job. Amazing stuff on this guy!” Beddington picked up the file that sat on the seat between them then reached up and flipped on the overhead light.
Right away McTighe reached up and turned it off. “No light!” he snapped, thinking that with Beddington he could never be sure where faith ended and stupidity began. “We already know what it says.”
The file held almost everything a person could want to know about Brent Lucas, including his schools; his test scores; the sports he’d played; names of his friends; pictures of him taken from different angles. It also had the name and address of Lucas’s old girlfriend and listed her occupation as cop. That one detail in particular, McTighe was thinking, was way more than he wanted to know.
That information, plus the bug in Lucas’s cell phone, had led them to him after the Arab screwed up. Lucas had only turned the phone on for a few minutes, but it had been enough to confirm his location. Tonight, with the cell phone turned off, they were having to tail him the old fashioned way.
After they’d followed him all the way down to the Reverend’s church, they’d parked the truck behind an old barn down the road. McTighe knew if they stayed in plain sight, some meathead friend might recognize the pickup and come over to shoot the breeze. What excuse do you use when you’re waiting around to kill a couple people?
What McTighe couldn’t understand was how fast Lucas had managed to track the Reverend. It had even freaked Beddington out, and he had wanted to pop the both of them right there, on the road between the church and town. It would be easy, he’d insisted, and they could dump the bodies down near Camden. No way, McTighe had said. He wasn’t killing anybody that close to his wife and kids.
It kept eating at him that the woman was a cop. He tried to think on what Reverend Turner said, how true Christians had a duty to the prophecy. It was a grave responsibility, the Reverend said, and if they didn’t do it, they could be pushing back Jesus’s return by five hundred or even a thousand years. Would that be right? Would God want that? It was tough to argue with the Reverend.
His thoughts were interrupted when the VW ahead of them put on its blinker. “Shit,” he mumbled. One of his front parking lights was broken, and he hadn’t gotten around to fixing it. If Lucas’s girlfriend had been checking for tails, that broken light would be easy to pick out. He took his foot off the gas and let the space between the Toyota and the truck widen to the point where he could barely see her taillights.
“Don’t lose her!” Beddington snapped.
“I don’t want her to spot us.”
“She ain’t going to,” Beddington said.
“I’m glad you’re so sure.”
Beddington nodded. “We’re invisible to the sinner. We are enclosed in the blinding cloak of God’s grace. No way they can see us.”
McTighe shot him a sideways glance, hating the smug expression Beddington always wore when he talked about God. McTighe knew that God helped those who helped themselves, so it seemed just plain foolish not to be careful.
After another mile, Route 202 merged into Route 287, and the traffic became heavier. McTighe sped up again but managed to get a delivery van between him and the Toyota. They were eating up the distance to Morristown.
“We gotta find our chance,” Beddington said.
McTighe winced and rubbed his hands on his trouser legs to dry the sweat. “Maybe we just ought to wait.”
As if in response, Beddington took out his automatic, slid a shell into the chamber, and clicked on the safety. “We already talked about this. What if they’re not goin’ back to her house? What if they’re goin’ to the cops to report the Reverend?” Beddington glanced at him.
McTighe felt none of Beddington’s confidence, only fear. He thought about their alibi. They’d sure as hell need God to make it hold up because the whole thing sounded like bullshit—especially the part about how they’d driven fifty miles to meet a friend at a bar for a couple Cokes. Maybe other people did stuff like that, but not him. Other than his jobs for Mr. Biddle, he generally hung out close to home.
He went over everything in his head again, looking for comfort in the details. He had to admit Reverend Turner had thought it out pretty good—even had a waitress at a Morristown restaurant who’d claim she’d waited on them if anybody asked. But nobody would. He and Beddington were cops. They’d be heroes for nailing a murderer.
“Hey!” Beddington said suddenly.
The Toyota’s turn signal was on. There was an exit just ahead, and McTighe tried to recall what the last sign had said. Basking Ridge, that was it. “Shit,” he muttered as he slowed down.
FORTY-THREE
BASKING RIDGE, NJ, JUNE 30
“TELL ME AGAIN WHY WE didn’t drag that sonofabitch out of his church and beat the truth out of him right on the spot?” Brent demanded.
“Other than to feel good,” Maggie said, “what would be the point?”
“To make him admit he’s working with Biddle!”
“What if he denies it? What do you do then?”
Brent threw his hands in the air. “I’ll break his arms!”
“That would be persuasive to a jury. An accused murderer and embezzler beats up a minister!” Maggie nodded. “Good thinking.”
“So we’re just going to leave him there?”
“He won’t run if he doesn’t think he’s a suspect,” she said, even as something in her rearview mirror caught her eye. She was once again seeing the set of headlights she’d been seeing intermittently for the past twenty miles. They’d gone under some bright arc lights a while back, and she’d seen they belonged to a pickup truck. The truck had a burned out parking light down on the bumper.