Josie and Noah waited, letting another long minute draw out. Their postures relaxed. Glancing back at the television, Josie saw Thatcher Toland’s face. It was a clip from the interview he’d done the other day, the one that had been playing when Josie ran into him at Komorrah’s. The chyron read: Thatcher Toland’s New Megachurch Grand Opening Tomorrow. The segment wrapped up and then Gabriel Watts’ driver’s license photo appeared above a chyron that now read: Local Man Wanted in Connection with Missing Woman. That segment played and then the graphics changed to a snowy Christmas vista. Heavy Snowfall Expected Over the Holiday read the next chyron. When Josie looked back at Hugo, he too was staring at the television. His voice was softer when he said, “Please leave now, Detectives.”
Josie and Noah slowly walked toward the door. He held it open for them. As they walked past him, first Noah and then Josie, she stopped in the doorway and said, “You know where to find us if you want to talk or if your son shows up to discuss your atonement.”
She stepped over the threshold. The door was nearly closed when Hugo called out, “Detectives.”
Josie and Noah looked back. Only a sliver of his face was visible through the door. He said, “If you’re trying to root out activities that are both morally repugnant and illegal, you’re looking at the wrong man. There are worse things that can happen—that did happen back then when my girls were young.”
Forty-Three
In the car, Josie cranked up the heater. Noah pulled out of the Eudora parking lot and headed for Thatcher Toland’s megachurch where Josie had no doubt they’d be stonewalled once more. Although Paul had told the patrol officer that the Tolands were in New York for press, neither she nor Noah believed that to be true. She had a feeling the only way they were going to get access to the preacher was at the Christmas Eve service.
“What the hell was that all about?” asked Noah.
“I’m not sure,” said Josie. Again, the shapes in the back of her mind shifted, hiding behind a veil, out of focus and out of reach. “He’s deflecting. The only thing we can be absolutely certain about when it comes to Hugo Watts is that he lies.”
“That’s true,” Noah said.
They drove to the Rectify Church in silence. Amber filled every corner of Josie’s mind. The confrontation with Hugo had only crystallized her fear. If their working theory about Gabriel was correct, and he was murdering his family as some twisted form of atonement for all the deceitful, immoral, and illegal things they’d done, why would Amber still be alive? What reason would Gabriel have for holding her? Josie thought of Dr. Feist’s autopsy findings, which were consistent with Eden having been held and repeatedly beaten for approximately two weeks before her death. Why had Gabriel held Eden for so long before killing her? Had he tried to force her to atone in some way that was ultimately not satisfactory to him? Just how unmoored from reality was Gabriel? Once again, Josie had the sense that they were all forcing mismatched puzzle pieces together.
“Oh look,” Noah said, interrupting her thoughts. “Our friend, Paul.”
Outside the entrance of Rectify Church, Paul stood with a clipboard. Next to him was a man wearing some kind of uniform and baseball cap. Together, they studied the clipboard. Occasionally, the man pointed to some item on it and spoke while Paul marked something down. They both paused and looked up as Josie and Noah parked and got out of their vehicle. Paul walked over, holding one of his hands up in a stop motion. “As I told the officer last night, they’re not here,” he told them. “Mr. and Mrs. Toland aren’t here. I can have them call you when I speak with them again.”
“Sure,” said Josie. “Like all the other times we were ‘promised’ they would call?”
Paul rolled his eyes. “I’m just doing my job here, miss.”
“Detective,” Noah corrected Paul. “Just mention to Mr. Toland if you speak with him that our questions won’t take very long. Then we can get out of his hair so he can focus on his congregation.”
This seemed to mollify Paul, whose posture relaxed slightly. “Sure,” he said. “Of course.”
They got back in the car and drove off. Noah said, “It physically hurt me to be nice to that guy, but seeing as we’ll need to come back here tomorrow, I don’t want to piss him off too badly.”
“I know,” said Josie.
Snow flurries bustled through the air as they pulled into the municipal parking lot behind the stationhouse. Josie knew from text messages that the Chief and Gretchen were still out overseeing the search for Gabriel Watts. In the great room, Mettner sat at his desk with the Thatcher Toland book open in his lap. In front of him was an array of food on holiday plates. The holiday party, Josie remembered. Sadness settled in her stomach like a weight as she thought about how Amber had been the one to organize the whole thing. As expected, thanks to her stellar organizational skills, the party had gone off without a hitch even in her absence.
Mettner shot up out of his seat when he saw them. “I got it,” he said. “I found it.”
Josie and Noah sat at their desks. “The passage?” Josie asked.
“Yes! The one Amber read to me when she was trying to make the point that Toland was a disgusting human being.”
“Read it,” Noah told him.
Mettner flipped to a page he had marked with a yellow Post-it note, licked his lips, and began to read aloud. “I preached every Sunday in this small church in a small town to a small congregation. Every week I stood in front of them and talked about the word and will of God. I loved it at first but as the years passed, I came to realize I was mistaking adulation for fulfillment. I wasn’t satisfying my soul by doing this work, I was merely enjoying the fruits of being someone others respected, looked up to, and listened to. I began to feel like a fraud. I was a fraud. I had come to the church for all the wrong reasons. I had a crisis of conscience, of faith. Is this really what I was meant to do? Is this what God wanted of me? I entered a dark period where I had to take a good, hard look at my soul and not turn away when I didn’t like what I saw. I had made many mistakes, committed many sins: pride, gluttony, envy, greed, and even lust. Perhaps worst of all were the lustful sins I actively and willingly engaged in which stained my soul so deeply I despaired that God would ever look on me with love again.
“It was at that moment that I woke up. I felt as though God himself was standing beside me saying, ‘Thatcher, you will never get the stain out but you can gain my grace if you truly, and with your whole heart, accept responsibility for what you’ve done and do everything in your power to atone for it.’ You see, as a younger pastor, I had entered into a relationship with someone who was not appropriate for me. I had become entangled with someone who was not in a position to make the kinds of decisions that I made easily every day. I took advantage of someone. At the time, I told myself I was in love. It was exciting, and I believed, wrongly, that this person loved me when in fact, I don’t think I ever truly saw this person. I merely took what I wanted from them, gratifying only myself and never once considering the moral obligations I had to them or to the world at large and most importantly, to God.”
Mettner looked up from the book, first glancing at Noah, then at Josie. “I looked it up, you know. There’s been a lot of speculation online about this since the book came out. The prevailing theory is that he had an affair with a married woman.”
“That’s not it,” said Noah.