Haunted (A Bishop/SCU Novel Book 15) (3 page)

“And they didn’t call the fire department?”

“It wasn’t that kind of light. I mean, they were sure the church wasn’t on fire.”

“And they were close enough to be sure?”

He sighed impatiently. “With binoculars, yeah, they were sure.”

“And didn’t see anything else suspicious? Through those binoculars?”

He flushed. “No. They didn’t see anyone hanging around the place, or an unfamiliar vehicle, or anything like that. It was days ago, and, yes, the church is still standing. I drove up there yesterday to make sure there was no damage—which is when I saw the
NO TRESPASSING
sign defaced.”

“Okay, okay.” She frowned at him. It was sometimes difficult to take Mayor Fish seriously because he was a fretful man by nature and tended to fret about minor things, but Trinity had learned to read him well enough, she thought, to know that he was seriously bothered.

And not telling her everything.

“Look, I’ll check it out,” she told him. “I’ll go up there and make sure all is well. Talk to the sisters and find out if anything odd has happened at the parsonage. Look for signs of trespassers past the age of twelve, and make sure the church is locked up tight. How’s that?”

“All I can hope for, I guess.” He clearly realized that hadn’t been either the most gracious or the most professional response, and he cleared his throat as he rose to his feet. “Thanks, Trinity, I appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

She gazed after him for a long moment, then looked down at the black dog who had been lying silent and motionless on his bed behind her desk. “Come on, boy,” she said, rising. “Let’s go see if we can figure out what has Dale so worried.”

—

“NO TROUBLE TO
speak of, Sheriff,” Edith Baylor said, her round face placid as always. “Haven’t seen anybody poking about the church or graveyard, and no sign the parsonage has been disturbed.”

“Are you and Lana in the parsonage much this time of year?” Trinity asked, referring to the other Baylor sister, now a widowed Lana Price; the two sisters did not live together, and Lana, according to her sister, was out at the mall near the highway, shopping.

“Oh, we go in with the cleaning crew every other week,” Edith replied comfortably. “Janet and her girls don’t really like being in the house without us. Same thing with the church, really. We don’t mind, Lana and me. Even though the church belongs to the town, it was Baylor land for generations, so we feel a duty to make sure everything is kept as it should be.”

“No more ghost-hunting crews asking to stay overnight?”

Edith smiled. “No, and only two groups came through back in the summer. I gathered from their disappointed faces that they didn’t find anything of interest.”

“Did you expect them to?” Trinity asked curiously.

“Not really,” Edith confessed. “They keep coming back year after year, trying to find ghosts or some evidence of the supernatural, but all their little gadgets never show anything unusual.”

Trinity had the odd notion that whatever the ghost hunter’s “gadgets” had failed to show, Edith Baylor knew very well that the old parsonage was haunted—and was not the least bit disturbed by it.

And Trinity wasn’t quite sure how
she
felt about that.

“Okay,” she said finally. “I had a report that someone saw lights coming from inside the church the other night. Know anything about that?”

“Afraid not, Sheriff. I can’t see either the church or the parsonage from here, obviously, and I seldom go out walking at night, especially this time of year.”

They were standing on the front porch of Edith’s small cottage-style house just a few streets back of Main, and Trinity knew without looking that neither the church nor the parsonage was visible from this point.

“Except for the steeple, of course,” Edith added. “You can see that from just about anywhere in town.”

That was true enough, and something that had always bothered Trinity just a bit. Her father had told her that they’d built the church up high, to watch over the town, but if they had expected any special protectiveness, that isn’t what they’d gotten.

“Sheriff, would you like a cup of coffee? Tea?”

“Oh, no, thank you, Miss Edith.” Trinity realized guiltily that she’d kept the older woman standing on her porch for some time now in the chilly January air and hastily apologized. “I’m sorry to keep you so long. Just wanted to check in and let you know I’m going to drive up to the church and parsonage and take a look around. Just to make sure everything’s okay up there.”

Edith Baylor nodded, still placid. “Probably just as well you’re checking. I haven’t been up there since the cleaning crew was, and that’ll be two weeks on Monday. You know where the key is; if you want to go inside, feel free. I’ll give Lana a call on her cell—if she remembered to take it with her—and tell her you’ll be up there.”

Trinity had been about to turn away. “You think she’ll object?”

“Oh, no, of course not, Sheriff. She mentioned back last summer that we should probably invest in some kind of security system in the parsonage. But it didn’t make any sense to me, not when we’ve never even had a window broken.”

Which, now that Trinity thought about it, was a bit odd in and of itself, considering how the kids in town viewed both the church and the parsonage.

“Here you go, Sheriff.” Miss Edith reached into the pocket of her apron—she wore one always except in church—and produced what looked like a bone-shaped cookie. “For Braden.”

Trinity knew her dog was visible sitting in the front seat of her Jeep only a few yards away, but she wondered just when the elderly lady had acquired the dog treat to give to him. When she had seen the Jeep pull into her driveway? Then again, perhaps her capacious apron pockets held all kinds of treats.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“My pleasure. You have a good weekend, Sheriff.”

“You, too.” Trinity took a couple of steps back, then turned and retreated to her Jeep.

As soon as she was inside, she offered the treat to her dog. “With Miss Edith’s compliments. You want it now or later?”

Braden sniffed and made a soft huffing sound Trinity recognized. “Later, then,” she said, dropping it into one of the cup holders in the Jeep’s console.

Very shortly, she had backed out of the cottage driveway and was driving along one of what the locals referred to as cross streets that ran parallel to Main Street, the lowermost street in Sociable. The rest of the town proper climbed a mountain, literally; there were half a dozen streets that climbed straight up from Main, most reaching or nearly reaching the topmost cross street in front of the church, and a good dozen cross streets connecting most of them.

Trinity turned her Jeep and started up the mountain, catching a glimpse of the white steeple rising high above Sociable; it was indeed visible from nearly any vantage point in the town, though the church itself had long ago become hidden by overgrown shrubbery planted rather inexplicably all the way across its front and the graveyard beside it as well.

Her radio crackled suddenly. “Sheriff?”

She reached for the handset, using the one in the Jeep both because it was more reliable and because she hadn’t bothered to wear any part of her normal uniform except for her gun.

“Yeah, Sadie?”

“You asked to be notified if any more information came out about those lost hikers?”

“There’s news?”

“Not good, I’m afraid.” Sadie wasn’t really accustomed to dealing with violent subjects in a town like Sociable, so her shock was both obvious and entirely natural, even though she was clearly doing her best to sound professional. “Report is, a few hours ago they found the bodies of the first two girls miles south of where they disappeared. I thought they said more than seventy-five miles, but could that be right?”

Trinity said, “It would be an unusually large search area, even after weeks of searching. Unless they got a tip where to look.”

“Maybe that was it. Anyway, they . . . thought at first a bear had gotten to them, but . . . They said it was a knife, and a sharp one. Cut them all up, those poor girls.”

Trinity kept her own tone detached with an effort. “Raped?”

“No, and while I say that’s at least one thing they didn’t have to endure, it seems the FBI people they have on scene are saying it’s significant there was no sexual assault.”

“They say why?”

“Not that I’ve heard. You want me to call and ask?”

“No. No, I’ll do that myself. Anything else, Sadie?”

“Just a general warning to law enforcement to be on the lookout—though for who or what they don’t really say. Anybody suspicious, I guess. Asking that we spread the warning that nobody needs to be hiking the southern Blue Ridge right now. And that whoever murdered those girls might be heading south.”

Toward Sociable.

Neither of them said it.

Neither of them had to.

Hollis Templeton accepted a hand up from her partner and tried not to show how winded she was. “Man, that’s a hike.”

Reese DeMarco, looking past her to the ravine they had just climbed out of, said, “If he was looking for an inaccessible place to leave them, he chose well.”

“Not too far off one of the trails, though,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but in January, it’s not likely to be very well traveled; we’re fairly lucky there’s no snow cover at this elevation. If we hadn’t had a chopper up, we never would have spotted them. And if we hadn’t, wildlife would have disposed of the remains in a matter of days no matter what the weather did.”

Miranda Bishop left the ranger she’d been speaking to and joined them at the edge of the ravine. “We won’t know until an ME gets a look,” she said, “but rangers are pretty experienced at estimating how long . . . carrion . . . would last out here.”

“I’m afraid to ask for details,” Hollis confessed.

Miranda nodded understanding. “I know what you mean. But it may turn out to be important that if he’s familiar with these mountains, and we have to assume he is, he would have been safe betting that a harsh winter has left a lot of hungry animals in the area. The rangers say wolves, coyotes, and even some big cats have come far enough down out of the mountains to trouble area ranchers.”

“Then,” DeMarco said, “these girls haven’t been here long.”

“Probably not even overnight. He doesn’t profile as the type to stick around and watch law enforcement trying to figure him out, but we may be closer to him right now than we’ve been so far.”

Hollis said, “Wait. If we’re saying that the same killer took not only Sara Knotts and Jill Crandall back just after Christmas, but then Angela Fox and Megan Dorchester just a couple of days ago . . .”

“Then he probably didn’t kill Sara and Jill until he had two more . . . replacements,” Miranda said.

Hollis kept her voice level with an effort. “I don’t see how he kept these two girls alive, not if he’s been working on them for nearly a month. I don’t have to be a doctor to know that the bruises on those girls vary from weeks old to only a day or two.
And
they both have broken bones, that’s clear enough. Even if most of the slashes look . . . fresh.”

DeMarco shook his head slightly. “I think that in addition to using them as punching bags he found some creative ways of mental and emotional torture to try out before he finished them with the knife or knives,” he said. “The girls have clearly been starved and bound, and I’m sure he scared the hell out of them in a dozen different ways. Keeping them in total darkness, maybe locking them in coffin-like boxes; one of the girls has wood splinters in her hands and feet. Maybe he separated them so they felt totally alone. Or did whatever it took to make one scream to further terrify the other.”

“Which,” Hollis said, “begs the question of where he kept them. I somehow doubt he was herding them along in front of him for weeks, even way out here. Especially way out here. And yet we’re at least—what?—eighty miles south of where these two disappeared?”

“About that,” Miranda agreed. “The rangers didn’t think he would have made it this far, but . . .” But they’d had inside information disguised as a hunch. And Miranda could be very persuasive.

Hollis was still thinking out loud. “And no signs of tire tracks anywhere in this area, except for the ATV tracks the rangers have already eliminated as their own vehicles. If he’s been on foot all this time, how did he transport the girls this far?”

“He’s had the time,” DeMarco pointed out. “But only if he had wheels or horses part of the way. No way he hiked this far in less than a month, not in this terrain, and definitely not with hostages.”

“Horses,” Hollis said. “I hadn’t thought of that. He could have transported the girls that way. Maybe drugged or gagged to keep them quiet, and slung across a pack horse.”

“Not exactly a common sight in these mountains,” Miranda said thoughtfully. “But if he knows the terrain, he could have kept well off the trails. With so many pine forests, he could have passed a hundred yards from a well-traveled road without being seen.”

DeMarco nodded. “But we’re still left with the question of where he did his torturing. Where, presumably, he’s currently holding Angela Fox and Megan Dorchester. And if he has horses, you’re talking additional supplies and/or pasture. This time of year, he’d have to be feeding grain and hay; there’s no grass to speak of.”

Hollis looked at him with interest. “I hadn’t thought of that, either. Sounds like a lot more trouble than just carrying extra gas for a rugged Jeep or something.”

He nodded immediately. “Agreed. I’d be surprised if he’s on horseback. Which means he must have some very rugged vehicle, and must be familiar enough with this part of the Blue Ridge that he was able to travel with fair speed and yet still avoid the main roads and trails, including the ones the rangers patrol.”

Hollis frowned. “Which doesn’t give us much more information. We know he’s come this far south because this is where he left Sara’s and Jill’s bodies. Assuming he has Angela and Megan, they were abducted from an overlook about twenty-five miles from here.
North
of here. But he must have brought them back this way because Sara’s and Jill’s bodies haven’t been here very long. Which means he almost
had
to have all four girls for at least a brief period of time.”

“Tough for one guy to control four hostages,” DeMarco noted. “Even if two of them have been beaten and starved into submission.”

“Are we sure this is one guy? I mean, we all know how rare it is for a serial to do doubles, taking two victims at the same time or on the same day; every serial I’ve ever read about built to something like that, when the challenge of taking just one victim wasn’t enough. But this guy grabs two right off the bat?”

“It’s one of the things that makes him unique,” Miranda noted.

“Okay, but how likely is it that one man managed to abduct two young women, travel with them over miles of rough terrain,
and
torture them so badly that by the time he abducted Angela and Megan, Sara and Jill were—and I
really
hate to use the phrase—deadweight?”

Miranda shook her head slightly. “I think we have to consider the possibility that he has help, maybe even a partner. Just for the logistics of travel and holding captives. But I can tell you that one person tortured and killed those girls; I knew it the moment I saw them. So
if
he has a partner, that person is a complete submissive, as much a prisoner of his will as the girls are.”

“New possibility,” Hollis said. “Still, all this, and all we really know or believe we know is that he’s moving south.”

“We know more than that,” Miranda said. But her gaze was on Hollis, and she didn’t continue.

Hollis sighed. “I get to be profiler?”

“Try,” Miranda said. “Experience is what teaches us.”

Hollis glanced down into the ravine, and then averted her gaze from two terribly mutilated bodies that had once been pretty, vital young women being put into black body bags.

That part, this part, never got any easier.

She drew a breath and let it out, then began musing aloud. “Wherever he held Sara and Jill has to be close enough that he was confident he could get Angela and Megan there and still have time to dump the first girls.” She frowned. “Unless he
does
have a partner, and that partner set up a second location for the second set of girls. Maybe as a safety precaution; if Sara and Jill were found, which was always possible even if unlikely, he wouldn’t want them found anywhere near where he’s holding Angela and Megan.”

“A possibility we have to consider,” Miranda acknowledged. “Now focus on what he did to his victims.”

Hollis kept her voice as matter-of-fact as she could manage. “No rape, not even object penetration. He used his knife, but not to stab, not deep wounds, so probably not an indication he’s impotent; he just wasn’t sexually interested in them. At all. He didn’t cut their faces, but he did hit them, that’s clear from the bruises and small cuts, so he didn’t place any value on their beauty. All the slicing was overkill—but not in rage. He was careful, methodical, controlled.

“Whether it was their terror, their blood, or their suffering, he got whatever he needed from them, and then he dumped them like garbage, trusting the animals to clean up behind him. Which is what likely would have happened if we hadn’t come this far south.”

“Not bad,” Miranda said.

“Yeah, but the only conclusion I can draw from that is that he’s a psychopath, and we already knew that. Partner or no partner, he’s the one killing. He’s too controlled to be on a spree, too deliberate. The victims seem more of opportunity than anything else, not stalked or watched beforehand, just grabbed because they were there and they were vulnerable. Not surrogates for somebody he needs to strike out at, at least if you consider that the only thing they have in common is race and rough age: two blondes, a brunette, and a redhead, all white and all in their early twenties. If that’s his type, it’s a broad one.”

“Which tells us?”

Hollis brooded a moment. “It’s not about a type. The victims don’t matter to him except in how they suffer. He must have some kind of goal. A plan. An ultimate destination. I just have absolutely no idea what any of those things are.”

“Hey, Agent Bishop?”

They all three looked around in surprise, all realizing in the moment that it was Miranda the ranger was addressing, and two of them at least thinking that there was, really, only one Agent Bishop—and he was on the other side of the country at the moment.

“Something?” Miranda asked the ranger.

“Beats the hell out of me.” He handed over a small plastic bag. “One of the crime scene people pulled it out of a girl’s mouth.”

“Which girl?” Hollis asked.

“Uh—the brunette. Jill Crandall.”

“Right question,” Miranda murmured, frowning. “And probably another piece of the puzzle.”

Something in the other woman’s voice made Hollis frown. “What is it?” she asked, never one to hesitate asking a question.

“It’s a silver cross. A pendant for a necklace.”

“Hers?” DeMarco asked.

Without having to refer to a file or her tablet, Miranda shook her head. “According to family and friends, Jill Crandall never wore jewelry except for gold studs in her earlobes. And she was an atheist, so unlikely to even have a cross in her possession.”

“Then,” Hollis said, “this is for us?”

“A message of some kind. I doubt she put it in her own mouth.”

“What message?” Hollis frowned again. “She was a good girl and I still did this to her?”

“Or she wasn’t a good girl,” DeMarco said slowly. “In his mind, at least. Especially if he knew she was an atheist.”

Hollis was still frowning. “I dunno. It doesn’t feel like . . . an insult or punishment to me. More like . . . consecration.”

“He did that to her to make her sacred?”

“He did that to her . . . and she became sacred.”

—

TRINITY HADN’T EXPECTED
to find anything either surprising or suspicious at the church.

She found both.

The first surprise was that the double doors of the church—Trinity Church—were standing wide open. And from inside, even in the afternoon light, a glow was evident.

Trinity got out of the Jeep slowly. She adjusted her jacket so that the gun on her hip was clear and unsnapped the holster for good measure. She was about to call Braden but found he had already left the Jeep and was at her side, his gaze on the church.

His calm gaze.

It reassured her somewhat; Braden, she had discovered, was very alert to trouble or danger, and very protective of her.

Still . . . those doors shouldn’t have been open, and there shouldn’t be any light coming from inside.

She walked steadily up one of the paths that led to the entrance to the church. Other than the stained wooden doors with their leaded glass inserts, the entrance was plain. The wide porch was shallow, only three steps leading up to it, with simple corbels rather than posts supporting the slight overhang of the roof.

It had been built in a simpler time, her father had told Trinity. White clapboard and a brick foundation, the only ornamentation the stained-glass windows along each side depicting, of course, scenes from the Bible.

Trinity, her dog at her side, went up the steps and into the church, moving slowly, her gaze roaming.

The simple wooden pews gleamed dully from years and years of being polished by church ladies. The plank floor had, at some point, been covered by a dull red carpet worn noticeably thin in spots.

There wasn’t really an altar. There was a podium where the preacher stood and delivered his sermon, and behind him was the section for the choir. Off to the right was a rather impressive organ. And behind the podium and the choir section, a glass window—covered by a red velvet curtain—concealed the baptistery. Above that on the wall hung a simple cross.

Large. But simple.

Trinity stopped only a few steps into the church, aware of the low growl rumbling from Braden’s throat. She had no way of knowing what his senses were telling him, but what hers were telling her was that something was very wrong here.