“Shit, man, it might not be nothing. I don’t know. Heard that press conference. Got me thinking. Jesus Christ in a juniper tree, I feel bad. I been drinking all day.”
“Look, what you might think is nothing might end up being important. Even a tiny detail might help. Just tell me what was on your mind,” Titus said. He dropped his voice an octave.
“I don’t know, man. If it’s nothing, I don’t want to put y’all in this man’s business,” the voice said.
“If it’s nothing, he doesn’t have anything to worry about. If it is something, those children out in that field deserve their justice,” Titus said.
The caller took a deep breath. “I mean, I did some work for a boy. Helped him put in this building. We took some girls out there. Had some fun, ya know. It was…” The caller stopped talking.
“Who was it?” Titus said casually. He didn’t want to spook the caller, but a name this early in the investigation would be huge.
“It was weird, ya know? Bunch of angels on the walls. Creepy angels with weird faces,” the caller said. His voice was soft as crepe paper. Titus gripped the phone. No one knew about the angel paintings from the video.
“Who was it? Who’d you do the work for?” Titus asked. His gut, that old reliable resource, was telling him this was big. This was important. He was possibly on the verge of solving the case. He could feel it in some deep recess beyond his conscious mind.
“Fuck, man. I … shouldn’t have called. He’s a good dude. I’m sorry.”
The line went dead.
“Call that number back!” Titus said. Carla redialed the number, but no one answered.
“It’s probably a burner, boss. It didn’t come up attached to a name. What did they say?” Carla asked as Titus handed her back the headset.
“Said they had done some work for a guy. Sounded like they worked on an outbuilding. An outbuilding with pictures of angels on the walls,” Titus said.
“Did they say a name?”
“No. But there were angel pictures on the walls of that dungeon in the video. Now somebody calls and says they know someone with a building covered in religious iconography. Those two things don’t feel random,” Titus said.
“Could be a coincidence,” Carla said.
Titus thought of the autopsy photos. Of those twisted bodies and the corruption and violence visited upon them like some Old Testament smiting.
“Could be. I could also have monkeys fly out of my butt. Don’t mean I’m gonna start buying bananas for toilet paper,” Titus said. He put his left index finger to his lips.
“What’s on your mind?” Carla asked.
“I know that voice. They were trying to disguise it, but I’ve heard them before. Shit, it’s Charon, I’ve heard everyone’s voice before,” Titus said as he rubbed his eyes.
“Ain’t that the scary part? Whoever did … did this is someone you know. Someone I know. Someone we all know,” Carla said.
“No,” Titus said flatly. “It’s someone we thought we knew.”
TWELVE
Cam was mixing up a batch of his special coffee when Titus walked through the front door of the station. He wasn’t sure what Cam put in it, but one cup was strong enough to make you paint a house by yourself.
“They all here?” Titus asked.
“Yep. Well, everyone except Tom and Roger,” Cam said.
Titus nodded. He’d sent a group text out before falling into a fitful sleep last night. Dreams filled his head like spirits trying to possess him. Dreams of his mother, of the DeCrain family, of the not-so-anonymous voice on the phone, of him and Marquis as children. Memories of events that never took place and words that were never said that felt as real as the floor beneath his feet right now. Dreams at first, then nightmares, then he was up and getting ready to have a meeting with his whole squad.
A soft babble of conversation ceased as soon as he stepped through the doorway to his office. They parted silently to allow him to get to his desk. He sat down and took off his hat and laid it on the desk.
“Let’s get right to it. Our top priority is the Spearman/Macdonald case, but that doesn’t mean we are going to let the county go to hell in a handbasket. To that end, I’m going to make a mini–task force that is going to be helping me investigate these murders exclusively. Of course, if anyone not on the task force finds a piece of important evidence, you share it with the team, but I’m really going to need the rest of you to keep the peace while we work with the state police and their team. Now, my task force will be Carla, Steve, and me. When Trey is done with investigating the shoot, he will be on the task force too. The rest of you will carry on with your regular duties. Any questions before we continue?” Titus asked.
Davy’s hand shot up.
“Davy?”
“Uh … so, I heard, I mean, I saw it on Facebook, that a few people was already starting to call him, the third guy, the Weeping Willow Man. I mean, are we calling him that? I mean, it’s not a bad name,” Davy said.
Titus would bet his father’s house and every dollar in his savings account that Davy had come up with that name himself. Titus stood up and walked to the front of the desk and sat on the edge.
“No, we are not calling him that. We aren’t going to give him any kind of moniker except ‘suspect.’ If the media wants to call him something that will boost their engagement, that’s on them. It’s been my experience you give these killers names, you make them into myths. That’s what they want. They crave it. They get off on it. They aren’t myths. They ain’t Hannibal Lecter or Red John or the Mastermind. They are just killers. Nothing more, nothing less,” Titus said.
Davy lowered his head, but Titus could still see the red tide rising over his neck on the way to his cheeks.
“Now, we got a phone call last night from someone who thought they might have some information about the murders. Unfortunately, they hung up before we could get a name or track the call.”
“Who was the dumbass that let them hang up?” Douglas said. This was followed by a smattering of chuckles.
“I was the dumbass,” Titus said. The chuckles ceased immediately.
“But I think I recognized the voice and we do have the number. I’m going to send in a request to the phone company to get the logs attached to that number. Unless it’s from a burner phone we should be able to get some info by the end of the day. Okay, everyone on the task force, stay. The rest of you get to work. Those of you that were off, thanks for coming in, don’t forget to put your time in,” Titus said.
After the other deputies had shuffled out, Titus motioned for Steve to shut his office door. He pulled out copies of the autopsy photos and the report out of a folder on his desk and passed them out to the four of them. He’d called Cam and had him make the copies from his email.
“What you’re looking at are photos of the first two autopsies the ME has completed. The abuse you see there is in line with what was on the video clips. Does anything stand out to you?” Titus said.
“Besides this is sick as shit?” Steve said.
“Look closer. The body of a murder victim is our best evidence,” Titus said.
“This phrase ‘Our salvation is his suffering,’ I’ve seen that before,” Carla said.
“It’s been on six church signs in the county. We are going to split up and go talk to folks at all six churches,” Titus said.
“What are we looking for?” Steve asked.
“Ask them about anyone in the congregation that seems off or odd. Anyone who is secretive but also aggressively helpful. Anyone who is prone to mood swings but also someone who is hyper-religious. Someone who seems like a quiet person but also too good to be true. A lot of times sociopaths will overcompensate with extreme emotions. They don’t really understand how real empathy, real emotions work, so they parrot it but they sometimes go overboard,” Titus said. He paused.
“We all wear masks. We have a public face and a private face and our real face. A person like this, someone who could do to another human being what you see in those pictures, once you strip away all their masks there’s nothing there. They are just a shell. So they fill it with fantasy, with desires that would make a normal person vomit. But that’s how we’ll catch them. They’ve let that mask slip in front of someone. They’ve made a mistake. We just have to track it down,” Titus said.
“What if they haven’t made any mistakes?” Carla asked.
“They’ve already made one. They did something that made Latrell crack. There was some precipitating incident that made him kill Spearman. If we hadn’t confronted him, I think he would have killed the third member of their little murderous trio too. So they’ve made that first mistake. I’m willing to bet they’ve made more. Let’s go find out how many,” Titus said. He nodded toward the door.
* * *