Devil in the Deadline (8 page)

“Yeah?” He nodded, more to himself than to me if I read his face right.

“When did it start?”

“Right around when TJ died,” Parker said.

I nodded. I'd noticed some tension in paradise when Parker's friend lost his teenage son in April. I smiled and channeled Emily. “Have you talked to her about it?”

“Not really.”

“Maybe you should try. If there's something weird between the two of you, letting it fester is only going to make it worse.”

He nodded. “We're supposed to have dinner tomorrow night. I'll ask her.”

“Holler if you need to talk.” I patted his arm. “It'll be okay. Maybe she doesn't handle dead people well. Not everyone sees them on such a regular basis.” I glanced at the big silver-and-glass clock on the wall between the elevators. “I have to run, but really. I'm around if you need me.”

“Thanks.”

I strode to my cube, grabbing the phone and punching in Aaron's cell.

“Happy Monday, sunshine,” he said.

“I bet mine's happier than yours, unless you've got something Earth-shattering for me.” I leaned one hip on my desk, reaching for a pen.

“I think I might. Landers asked me to find you. He's up to his ass in alligators this morning and didn't have time, but he said he promised.”

More work to keep my voice even. “Oh, yeah?” I clicked the pen out and flipped an old press release over. “What's up?”

“We sent forensics back out there to take more blood samples,” Aaron said. “Turns out, all that show was made with two different kinds of blood.”

“So Jasmine got a piece of the killer? Or there's another victim?” I scribbled as I fired questions at him.

“Or the killer knows someone who works on a ranch. It was cow's blood.”

I almost dropped my pen. “What?” I forced my lips around the word. All they wanted to do was gape open.

“Beats the shit out of me. Everything we've come up with here is screwier than the last thing.” Aaron sighed. “I don't suppose you want to offer one of your crazy hunches?”

“No one ever listens to them,” I said.

“Try me.”

“I did have a thought this morning, but I haven't had time to check it out.” I twisted the phone cord around one index finger. “It's kind of nuts, though.”

“Any goose chase is better than sitting here scratching our b—never mind,” Aaron said.

I laughed. “Frustrated, detective?”

“Oh, you can quote me on that, Miss Clarke.”

“But not the part about scratching things?”

“Please don't.”

I snorted. “So, I went back down to the Bottom yesterday afternoon and I found the guy who called this in the other night. He is a really, really talented sketch artist. Seriously good.”

I heard Aaron's computer keys clicking as he noted that. “That's where you got the sketches you ran this morning,” he said. “Do me a favor and email Charlie that info? She's convinced you got them from me. Thanks for putting them out there, though. We're circulating them through law enforcement.”

“If I get Charlie off your ass, do I get dibs on anything the sketches bring in?”

“Sounds fair to me. So, about your hunch?”

“I asked if any other girls were missing,” I said. “Because of what Landers said about the bloodstains. But artist guy told me he didn't know because they couldn't go to the church shelters anymore. He said Jasmine cried if they tried to. Then he told me she said people might come around asking about her, and he should be afraid of them.” I paused for a breath.

“A cult.” Aaron clicked his tongue. “Son of a bitch.”

“It took me twelve hours to get there, but that's where I landed, too,” I said. “Why do you sound like I just made your day worse?”

“You're from Texas, right? Cops and crazy religion don't mix well. Ever been to Waco?”

“Ah. I was in elementary school when that happened, but I remember my mom having the news on nonstop for all of that spring.” A flash of her sobbing into the telephone skated through my brain, and I flinched. My mom never cried, and the memory unsettled me.

“So many things went wrong down there that no one will ever even know about.” Aaron sighed. “The thing is, it's almost always the same. People resent intrusion and don't trust the government, and to them, my badge represents the government. Jesus. I'd rather deal with a serial. Good old fashioned psychopaths are logical. People who think God's telling them to murder young women, I can't figure.”

“Just a theory. And no one ever listens to my theories.”

“Your gut has a good track record.” Aaron chuckled and I grinned. “But this is going to get very complicated. If you're right, who knows where she was from, how many people there are, who owns the land, if it's in another state? My haystack just got a whole lot bigger. And wrapped in a big, fat spool of red tape. That could be federal territory.”

“Could still be a serial. Or a random nutjob. Or someone she knew. Even if she ran away from a religious sect, it doesn't mean they killed her. What if our psycho was trying to set his scene and didn't get enough blood out of her?” I paused. “Speaking of blood, you didn't happen to catch today's post by our Girl Friday, did you?”

“I haven't had time to catch if the sun came up,” he said. More computer clicking. “Cyber is on that. Why?”

I waited four beats and bit back a grin at the string of swear words in my ear when he found the video. “Because there's that,” I said.

“What the hell is the matter with people? Is this person—and I'm using the term loosely this morning—trying to incite a riot?”

“I'm betting she's trying to increase her readership,” I said. “But I thought you should know.”

“Thanks. I don't have time for an amateur Lois Lane right now, Nichelle.”

“I'm keeping an ear out,” I said. “Because neither do I.”

I twisted around and looked at the clock. “Crap, Aaron, I have a trial starting in three minutes.” I hung up, my mental puzzle shifting to include cults and cows.

But how to find a link?

Waco.

Maybe Kyle knew where to look.

9
.

  

Black Angus mojo

  

Downtown blurred past my windows in a mishmash of art-deco building fronts that usually topped my list of favorite Richmond features—but I didn't even notice them. Stopping at a light, I
punched Kyle's number up on my screen and typed a text to him. “Wondering if you can help with my new theory. Give me a call when you have a few?”

I dropped my BlackBerry in the cup holder and laid on the gas, the chatter from the police scanner in my passenger seat noticeably lighter than usual. The whole department seemed on edge.

I ticked off a mental to-do list that started with the trial and the day's police reports, and ended with a fat question mark over the next day's murder follow up. Even if I got somewhere with cult research, I wasn't tipping my hand to Charlie and the rest of the country without having the story nailed down, and that wouldn't happen in a day.

I rushed through security and into the courtroom, a drug lord who'd run half the Southside two years ago already seated at the defendant's table.

I focused on the opening arguments, keenly aware of the Ginsu swords Charlie stared at me for half the morning. Ducking out before she could corner me, I sped back to the office, checking my BlackBerry as I turned into the garage. Nothing from Kyle.

My police reports were lighter than usual, a fatal car accident in the pre-dawn hours the only one interesting enough to warrant space. I wrote a short piece from the report and left a message for the victim's husband. Thirty-four year-old woman, driving to work when she'd run across a pickup full of drunk teenagers speeding down a dark country road with no headlights on. “Such a stupid waste,” I murmured, shaking my head as I typed.

The kids all tested through the roof for blood alcohol at the St. Vincent's ER, more than an hour after the crash. The driver was in juvenile custody, but I knew the Commonwealth Attorney's stance on DUI. Jonathan Corry lost a girlfriend to a drunk driver once upon a time, so he'd push to try the driver as an adult. The kid was likely headed for actual prison, and vehicular manslaughter carries six to ten in Virginia.

I sent that story to Bob with a note that it might get a couple of inches longer if the husband called me back. Which wasn't likely, but I was okay with that particular “no comment.” Asking people to talk to me in the middle of tragedy is my least favorite thing about my job.

It took forty minutes to find attorneys from both sides of the drug dealer's trial and write up the day one, and I smiled as I attached it to an email. Two down. As snarled as my bigger story was, I'd take my gold stars wherever I could get them.

I checked the next day's court docket and pulled notes for two trials I'd need to pop into. After I'd read the first file four times and still couldn't have told a mad bomber what the defendant had (allegedly) done if it meant saving all of downtown Richmond, I dropped the folder and wandered to the break room in search of some caffeine.

I plunked quarters into the Coke machine and twisted the top off a bottle of diet, checking my BlackBerry for the hundred and seventieth time since I'd texted Kyle. Still nothing.

“You all right, sugar?” Eunice pulled a plate of club sandwiches on homemade bread out of the fridge and offered me one. I bit into it and contemplated as I chewed.

On one hand, I was free and healthy and had a job I loved and a nice place to live. On the other, I was insanely frustrated with something I'd always thought I wanted.

“In the grand scheme? I'm fabulous,” I said after I swallowed. “In the right-this-minute, I'm annoyed. How about you?”

“I remember those days.” She nodded. “Want to talk about it?”

“Eh. It won't do either of us any good. But thank you.” I smiled.

“Anytime.” She shuffled toward the door and I grabbed a paper towel for my sandwich and followed. “You do good work, Nichelle,” Eunice said, turning back toward me. “Don't worry about the whole big mess they have going on at the PD. Don't worry about this Internet crap. Just go get the story. Do your thing, and you'll figure it out.”

“You should charge for your advice.” I smiled. “Thanks.”

Her words followed me back to my desk. She was right: I was so focused on helping Aaron and beating Girl Friday, I felt like I was on deadline every second. The stress had eaten my mojo.

“Time to get my groove back,” I said, flipping my computer open.

“Can you find mine, too?” Melanie's voice came from the other side of the cube wall. “This has been a sucky summer so far.”

I bit my lip. I didn't want to tell her what Parker had said that morning, because he hadn't given me permission to.

Plus, there was my whole murder-investigation mission.

But I didn't want to be a bad friend, either.

“I'll keep an eye out for it,” I said. “Want to see if yours is drinking with mine? We could grab a cocktail after work and talk.”

“That sounds great. Five-thirty?”

“Provided I get through the day with no more dead people.”

BlackBerry check number one-seventy-one. Nada.

Men. I'd just have to find out for myself.

I opened my browser and searched “religious sects, Richmond VA.” My screen flooded with hits, most of them from conspiracy theory websites. I scrolled, but nothing jumped out.

“The church shelter.” Picasso's words pinged through my thoughts. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place.

A new search told me there were a lot of churches in Central Virginia. I narrowed it to addresses more than thirty miles from Richmond, figuring Jasmine wouldn't go just up the street if she fled something she was afraid of.

The list was still three miles long. Was there something about Virginia that made people seek Jesus so readily? My finger hovered over the mouse, an hour of reading giving me nothing but a headache.

Scrolling to the top of the page, I clicked to images. And found seven million thumbnails of church buildings. Scrolling, I hovered over a few to pop them up, too frustrated to even admire the beautiful architecture.

On page forty-six, I found something.

A tri-color, multi-angle image of a boxy T.

Except it wasn't a T—it was a cross. With rays of light shooting in every direction.

Rays of light that would look like stripes if doodled with a ballpoint.

I followed a link trail from the PDF to the United States Patent and Trademark Office website.

And almost fell off my chair.

Not just any church. The symbol my murder victim had doodled in her journal a hundred times was trademarked by an international Televangelist.

“Hot damn,” I breathed, clicking to the ministry's website.

The light-haloed cross was the logo centerpiece for Way of Life Ministries. Religion via satellite, complete with on-site studios and a residential education arm.

Kyle's theory about college whispered through my thoughts. I clicked to the page about the school. Smiling coeds in button-down oxfords dutifully studying The Good Book.

I kept clicking. Way of Life was headquartered northwest of Richmond near the foothills of the Blue Ridge.

“She loved the mountains. Said they felt like home,” Flyboy had said.

Leaping Louboutins.

I'd never watched TV church, but I'd read enough news stories to know the folks who ran them could be pretty far from garden-variety worshippers. They had privacy. Plenty of land.

And cows.

A postcard shot of a wide green field, spreading toward the mountains at the horizon, a red barn to one side and a herd of Black Angus cattle dotting the landscape filled my screen.

In Texas, ranches are so common you could drive past sixty longhorns on your way to the grocery store if you went the right way.

But I seldom saw cows around Richmond.

And Aaron said “cow's blood.”

“Organic on-site farming keeps the body healthy to serve the creator,” the caption read. So, cows they slaughtered?

Could this be what Jasmine fled?

My gut said it was at least as possible as Landers's fear of Jack the Ripper lurking in Shockoe Bottom.

A brief read of some of the staff bios told me it'd take months for Aaron or Kyle to get a search warrant for the compound. Way of Life employed more lawyers than the tobacco company up the road.

“Why all the legal savvy, pastor?” I stared at the perfect pompadour and toothpaste-ad smile of Simon Golightly, airwave savior to millions. I didn't trust the guy on sight, mostly because people who surround themselves with an army of attorneys usually have something to hide, be it from the cops or the IRS.

Opening a new window, I ran another search and copied the reverend's bio into a blank file. Saving it, I closed my laptop and headed for Bob's office. Eunice might have helped me find my mojo, but getting Bob to let me go snoop around Golightly's fortress would take some fancy footwork.