Then he moved into the heart of his message: that in God’s hand a tragedy was a tool used to make a shape for love. The sculptor’s chisel. The painter’s brush.
“And we are the raw material,” he said. “The rock and the canvas.”
He had never heard a more inspired rendition of “Amazing Grace,” not an easy song for a congregation to sing.
“Let us bow our heads in prayer.”
When the prayer was over David heard the chorus of car horns from outside. The car worshipers were for the most part a younger and occasionally rowdy crowd. Sometimes the honking would last ten or fifteen seconds.
One minute later the last horn stopped.
David stood outside the chapel and shook hands with the worshipers.
“You healed my heart,” said a white-haired man.
“God healed your heart.”
“They hit us with mustard gas outside Calais and I saw half our men get cut to ribbons by machine guns. Now I know why they died and I didn’t. I’ve been going to church and praying for sixty years. You healed my heart, Reverend Becker. You did.”
He took David’s right hand in both of his, held tight and shook.
The woman next in line shook his hand and wiped a tear from her eye. “Mine, too.”
Then hustled away.
THE SERVICE drained him. They all did, but this one was almost exhausting. Took the spirit right out of him.
He was lying on the couch in his new office, rearranging his thoughts for the eleven o’clock worship, when Barbara knocked and cracked the door.
“Nick’s here, honey.”
“Terrific,” he said softly. Sat up. Nick didn’t look terrific at all. He looked tired and hungry. “Come in, Nick. Where’s Katy and the kids?”
“Outside at the playground.”
David stood and offered a tired smile to his wife as she softly pulled the door closed behind her.
“Sorry, David. But just one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Your sermon made my scalp crawl. It was that good.”
David smiled again, more energy this time. “Hard to do, get a cop’s scalp to crawl. How are you holding up, brother?”
“Fine. Katy’s fine. Everything’s fine. So, you know Jesse Black.”
“Janelle introduced us.”
“Yeah, he told me. I talked to him yesterday. Nice touch, using his lyric as a title.”
“I didn’t think he’d mind.”
“Think he’s got any violence in him?”
David plunked back down to the couch. “None whatsoever.”
“When do you mail the worship programs?”
David turned to face his brother. “Wednesday mornings. Why?”
“Janelle had today’s program in her house on Thursday morning. But even if the U.S. mail got it there in twenty-four hours, she wasn’t alive Wednesday to bring it in from the mailbox. So she got hers on Tuesday.”
David’s heart shuddered but he lay back down on the sofa. “Then she got an early copy. They print them up late on Tuesday afternoons.”
“Who picks them up?”
“Well, this last Tuesday it was Deacon Shaffner.”
“I have to talk to him.”
“I understand. You’re trying to catch the bad guys. I’m trying to help the rest of us. Ask Barbara for his number. Better yet, here…”
David labored to his desk, consulted a book, and scribbled down a name and number.
“Rest up for round two, David. You were great.”
“Nick? You won’t find a killer in my church.”
“How do you know?”
David studied his younger brother. Even in his own exhaustion David was alert enough to see the change in Nick. Janelle? The pressure to find who killed her? This was Nick’s first case as lead. Scary.
“Are you okay?” David asked.
“Yeah, I’m perfect.”
David had the thought that Nick and Katy weren’t right. With married men, it presented as dull anger. Married men became resentful in looking for something that had vanished. Looking for something they used to love but couldn’t find anymore. Being married with children was hard. David knew that, all right. Sometimes it seemed like everything in the world conspired to make you lose the love for what you once loved most.
“You and Katy all right?”
“Same old.”
“I’ll pray for you.”
“Thanks, brother.”
Nick walked out and David prayed. A short one for Nick and Katy. Let them enjoy each other and find each other again in this busy…but fell asleep halfway through it. Lurched awake six minutes later to rewrite the sermon just a little for the eleven o’clock.
14
NICK SAT IN Assistant Sheriff Gorman Harloff’s office arranging his notes before he spoke. Monday morning. Clear and warm. Five days since the packinghouse.
Harloff was dark-lipped, silver-haired, and humorless. Sometimes referred to as Boris Karloff but never to his face. He had Crimes Against Persons and narcotics under him. CAP included homicide. He had a pen in hand and a legal pad on the desk.
Lobdell sat beside Nick staring down at his small, shiny shoes.
“Shoot,” said Harloff.
“Yes, sir,” said Nick. “Janelle Vonn died of strangulation last Tuesday the first, sometime between noon and midnight. It looks like she was killed somewhere else but decapitated in the packinghouse. This, from the amount of blood we found. Our witness, Terry Neemal, says he saw a man go into the packinghouse late the night of the first. Neemal said the man was regular-sized and had something bulky over his shoulders.”
“Like a body?”
“That’s possible, sir.”
“Strong guy. She weighed what?”
“One hundred and twelve pounds.”
“Pretty strong,” said Lobdell, lighting a cigarette. “If he’s wearing her like a mink stole.”
“But not a big man,” said Harloff.
Nick waited while Harloff wrote. “Even with the tearing and trauma to her neck, Gershon found constriction marks. They’re consistent with the shape of fingers and thumbs. None of the postmortem mutilation would account for them.”
“The sawing,” said Harloff.
“Correct. She was raped by a type A secretor. Gershon found semen inside her, genital bruising and abrasions. But here’s a twist, sir-there was semen on her underwear also-type A non-secretor.”
“Two guys might have killed her?” asked Harloff.
“Maybe.”
“This Neemal, then?” asked Harloff. “What’s his ABO?”
“He’s type A also,” said Lobdell.
Harloff made a note. “Between the O and the A, that would include what, about eighty-five percent of the population?”
“Correct,” said Nick. “We’d have better odds if neither was a secretor at all.”
“But don’t forget,” said Lobdell, “that Neemal is certifiably insane.”
“What does that mean?” asked Harloff. “That he’s more likely or less likely to have raped a woman and chopped her head off?”
“More, I’d say,” answered Lobdell. He blew one good ring, then a plume of Tareyton smoke toward the ceiling. “Look, he’s creeping around that night, says he saw this, says he saw that. Oh yeah? I think we should sweat him. See what comes out.”
Harloff looked at Nick. “Any of Neemal’s fingerprints at the scene?”
“None,” said Nick. “He says he walked into the packinghouse, saw her, turned around, and walked back out. This was the next morning.”
Harloff wrote again. “The building wasn’t locked?”
“Neemal said he saw the guy slide open the main door. We found a padlock in the grove. Partial print on the lock. Not Neemal’s.”
“Who does security?”
“Talon,” said Nick. “They only patrol the SunBlesst site Thursday through Sunday. So their last check would have been two days earlier.”
Harloff wrote.
“Something’s interesting, though,” said Lobdell. “One of the Talon guards told us the older padlocks get hard to open. Rain and sun and they corrode. Won’t take the key. Said you can line up the Schlage to look locked when it really isn’t. You just get the links up inside the shackle and it looks locked. Then, you’re making the rounds you just pull down and twist it open, pull it off, and you’re done. Don’t have to wrestle with a difficult lock and key. He wasn’t the SunBlesst guard. Maybe just a blowhard, but that could have been what happened.”