He held up three fingers.
Then two.
He reached into his jacket for his gun.
She stepped forward and jabbed a key into the lock, twisting it open and standing aside to let them in.
“Where is he?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, take a guess and make it a good one.”
“He’s probably at prayer, in the chapel.”
“You think so or you know so?”
Her hand went to her collar again. “He’s there.”
“Where is it?”
“In the basement, down the side stairs you went up earlier.”
“Is he alone?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone else in the building I should know about?”
“The church is closed.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No. There’s no one here but Fulton and myself.”
Franklin smiled. “Thank you, miss. You have been most helpful. Why don’t you wait here until we’re done.”
He pushed through the front door and into the warmth of the entrance hall with Jackson following close behind. The phone room was empty and so was the mailroom. They continued through to the narrow stairs and headed down, Franklin’s steps loud on the bare boards, announcing his approach to whoever might be listening in the basement. He reached the bottom and waited for Jackson to join him. “You set?”
A short nod.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
They moved together through the gloom toward a solid wooden door that swung open easily on well-oiled hinges to reveal a small chapel beyond lit by sunlight miraculously pouring through a large stained-glass window. Cooper was on his knees in front of it, head bowed, hands in front of him where they couldn’t be seen.
“Hello, Reverend,” Franklin said, moving to the center of the room. “Sorry to burst in on you like this but I was just dying to introduce you to a friend of mine. Detective Jackson of the Charleston PD, meet the man we’re here to arrest for conspiracy to murder.”
Cooper didn’t move. Franklin glanced over at Jackson. “You want to Mirandize him while he’s saying his good-byes to the Lord?”
Franklin sat down on one of the benches while Jackson read Cooper his rights. He felt suddenly tired from the long and event-filled day. Driving away from Marie and Sinead had taken more out of him than he thought. At least Cooper wasn’t kicking and screaming. He watched the reverend lower his hands and look up at the cross built into the design of the window. “Might I ask on what evidence you are arresting me?”
“You might.” Franklin produced his phone and played the intercepted phone message, Cooper’s voice sounding thin and tinny on the small speaker. He switched it off before it got to the end.
“You really have no idea what all of us are facing here, do you?” Cooper said.
Franklin smiled. “Feel free to enlighten me,” he said wearily, “though you would be advised to keep it short as everything you now say constitutes evidence that can be used against you in a court of law.”
“Whose law — the law of man? The law of governments? What fear I of such flawed and inadequate things?”
“Well now, let’s see, they still have the death penalty in this state, so that’s one thing. Then there’s the lengthy custodial sentence you’ll get either way, where you may well be stuck in a tiny jail cell with a huge, horny dude by the name of Bubba or somesuch, that would certainly put the fear of God into me.”
“There is only one law I answer to, and that is the law of Jesus Christ the Savior, and He is close at hand. He knows who serves Him and who does not. And He will gather the righteous to His side when the time comes.”
The suddenness and speed of Cooper’s movement took Franklin totally by surprise. One moment he was kneeling on the floor, the next he was across the floor and behind the solid wooden lectern. Franklin automatically dropped down, snatching his gun from his shoulder holster and using the bench as cover. Out of his peripheral vision he saw Jackson break right and do the same.
“We know about the rear exit, Cooper, and it’s covered,” Franklin shouted. “There’s no way out of this.”
“That, my friend, is where you are wrong.” Cooper rose from behind the lectern, a gun in his hand, pointing straight at Franklin.
Instincts honed over a lifetime of service flooded Franklin’s brain, producing the slow, hypersensory state that existed in the middle of a live gunfight.
He saw Cooper’s knuckle glow white as it tightened on the trigger.
Vest. He wasn’t wearing a vest.
He heard his own breathing, loud and slow as he took a breath and held it. Felt the recoil jolt his arm, saw the flash of his gun firing, then again, along with the slow, deep boom of both shots as they echoed in the chapel. He watched through the smoke as Cooper spun away and fell, his gun falling from his hand as he hit the stone floor. Franklin was already moving, driven forward by muscle memory, leading with his gun to make sure Cooper was properly down while part of his brain checked for any signs that he had been hit.
Had Cooper gotten off a shot? Hard to tell.
He’d seen agents sprint up flights of stairs with serious wounds they hadn’t even known about because of adrenaline and delayed shock. And he had promised Marie he would come back.
He reached Cooper’s body and assessed him from behind his gun. He was still breathing but only just, his eyes looking up at the window, a pool of blood spreading beneath him too fast to be minor. Both shots had caught him center mass. Major organ damage, possibly arterial too. He could hear the rattle in his breath as his lungs filled with blood. He would drown before he bled out and there was nothing he could do but watch.
Franklin bent down on one knee, placing his hand on Cooper’s shoulder so he knew he was there. “You’ve been hit pretty bad but you’ll be okay,” he lied. “There’s an ambulance on its way. Why don’t you tell me where Kinderman is?”
Cooper opened his mouth, still staring up at the cross. Franklin dropped down lower so he could hear him. Heard the whisper of a voice broken by shallow breaths. “He’s on his way… to hell.”
Footsteps echoed outside as Miss Boerman clattered down the stairs in response to the gunshots. Jackson headed over to intercept her. No point her seeing any of this. Through the noise Franklin became aware that Cooper was saying something else. He leaned down lower, his ear so close he could feel the snatched breaths.
“Thank you…,” Cooper whispered, “for… helping me… leave.” The last word came out as a long sigh that ended in a rattle he had heard too many times before. It was over. Cooper was dead.
Behind him he could hear voices now, Jackson low and calm, Miss Boerman angry and hysterical. He could hear more footsteps too as the other two uniforms also responded to the gunfire.
Too late. Nothing to see.
He moved across to where Cooper’s gun was lying on the stone floor, holstering his own and slipping a pair of nitrile gloves over his hands. He picked up the discarded weapon and instantly knew from the weight and balance of it that it was empty. He checked to make sure — no magazine in the clip, no bullet in the chamber — and realized what Cooper had meant with his dying words. He wouldn’t have been able to face his Lord if he had taken his own life. Suicide was a mortal sin. So he had gotten Franklin to do it for him.
Suicide by cop.
83
Shepherd was standing on the porch of Douglas’s observatory watching the FBI tech team trample all over the local cops when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
“Cooper is dead,” Franklin said the moment he answered.
“Jesus.”
“He pulled a gun, so I had to put him down. He was involved in the hit on Douglas, no question. I’ve got an intercepted phone call of him discussing it and I’m currently standing in his studio looking at some particularly nasty phone images of the professor taken postmortem. They were being edited into a video package that was no doubt going to be the cornerstone of the late reverend’s next sermon: God’s retribution on the blasphemers, behold his mighty wrath — you can imagine.