“How does Elias fit in this?” Carla asked.
Titus spun around and stared at the wall. He had a bulletin board behind his desk. He stood up and grabbed a marker out of his desk and some sheets of paper. He wrote down Elias, Cole, Latrell, and Spearman’s names on individual sheets. He pulled down the flyer for the Shad Planking last fall and put the pieces of paper on the board.
“The phrase on the bodies came from Elias. A child he was raising killed his brother. A mixed-race child. So he’s person of interest number one. Latrell and Cole made deliveries together, now both of them are dead. Is there a connection between them and Elias? Is Elias the Last Wolf? He doesn’t appear strong enough to subdue Cole. Cole was saying he did some work for a guy, that was why he called the hotline. Then he turns up dead. And Dayane Carter is the last text message he got before he ended up dead,” Titus said.
“Maybe it’s not Elias. Maybe he is covering for someone. Maybe his boys?” Steve offered.
“What?” Titus said. He turned around. Steve repeated his question.
“That’s a good point, Steve, change of plan. Pick up Elias first thing in the morning. I want to know who that boy was and what he did with him. Carla, get Dayane Carter up here. I want to ask her why she was asking Cole to meet her on the night he got butchered like a buck deer. All right, we’re done here,” Titus said.
The deputies filed out of the office. Trey remained in his seat. Titus waited until everyone else was gone, and then he shut the door. He went to his office chair, sat down, and leaned back.
“You were awfully quiet just now, so I’m going to assume you have something you need to tell me about that project I gave you,” Titus said.
Trey nodded. “I went by the bank this morning. Talked with the manager and Nadia Manchester, head teller over there. We graduated together,” Trey said.
“And?” Titus said.
Trey reached inside his brown blazer and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Per the subpoena I was only given the records of the people on our list. But all of them were clean,” Trey said as he handed Titus the piece of paper. “But, to be on the safe side, I had Nadia pull up everyone’s records in the department. Including mine, for transparency. Because that wasn’t in the scope of the original order, I don’t know if it’s admissible or if the county attorney is gonna want to pursue it. I mean, it’s all circumstantial evidence, but it does match what Darnell told us.”
And what Marquis said, Titus thought as he read the figures on the report and the name that was attached to the account.
“How do you want to proceed?” Trey asked.
Titus raised his head. It felt heavy and unwieldy. “Keep this between you and me. Unless we can get Jasper to testify he gave them a bribe, even a shitty lawyer like Vaughn Callis could get this dismissed. We can’t prove the deposits came from Jasper even if the dates line up, but I sure as fuck can fire him,” Titus said. His voice quaked on the words “fire him.” It did that when his anger was close to its zenith.
“Okay. Well, this makes things trickier with the shoot,” Trey said. He got up and headed out.
“Hey, why’d you think to investigate everyone?” Titus asked.
Trey stopped. His hand was on the doorknob. He looked back at Titus. “It’s what you would have done if you were in my place,” Trey said.
Then he left.
* * *
The rest of the day unspooled like wax running down a candle. A tedious series of events that moved like sap down a pine tree in the winter. As the evening came on, Titus gathered his laptop and his notes and put them in a valise he kept under his desk, to take them home. He needed to look at everything in this case again from different angles. He needed to find that seam.
As he was grabbing his hat, his desk phone rang. He hesitated. He could just holler to Cam to tell him to take a message, but that was just wishful thinking. Dodging a call wasn’t an option as long as he had that star on his chest.
He put down his hat and picked up the handset.
“Somebody asking for the sheriff, line one,” Cam said.
“Got it,” Titus said. He pushed line one.
“Sheriff Crown. How can I help you?”
The voice that came through the handset was demonic. Later he would think how it sounded like Mercedes McCambridge’s voice in The Exorcist. He subconsciously noted that the caller was using a digital voice modulator. An app that could be downloaded for any phone.
“Revelation twenty-one: four,” the voice said.
The line hummed between them like a piano wire pulled taut. Titus switched the handset from his right to his left ear. He strained to hear something, anything in the background. Part of him wanted this to be a lonely kid playing a prank. But he knew, without a moment’s hesitation, that this was important. The solemnity in that one statement washed away any semblance of doubt in his mind. He didn’t know who was on the other end of the line, but the call itself was serious.
“‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, there will be no more death, no more pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ Is this some biblical trivia game? Is that what you want to tell me? Because we don’t have time to tie this line up with foolishness,” Titus said in his best cop voice. There was silence on the other end. He didn’t hear any other voices or any extraneous sounds like a leaf blower or a car horn. That meant the caller was inside, probably in a room in the center of a dwelling with the door closed and the phone pressed to their face. Titus could see it in his mind like a painting by Caravaggio.
“Tell me, Sheriff, why do you think Jesus didn’t extend his hand from the heavens and wipe away the tears of those boys and girls as I carved the words of the Good Book in their skin?”
Titus stretched the cord of the handset to the door of his office and snapped his fingers at Cam. He mouthed the words, Get this number, as he pointed at him.
The detail about the phrases being carved on the victims’ skin hadn’t been made public. Some of his deputies didn’t even know about it. He’d been trying to forget it.
This was the Last Wolf speaking.
“Is that what you wanted to happen? Were you testing him?” Titus said. He kept his voice calm as Cam worked the computer that filtered their calls. He had switched from cop to consigliere. This was another thing they taught you in the Academy. No matter how disturbed and perverse your subject, you had to attempt to establish a rapport. Even if it made you want to wash your mouth out with bleach later.
“Genesis nine: twenty through twenty-seven,” the voice said.
“The Curse of Ham? Is that your justification for what you and Spearman and Latrell did? Is that why you targeted boys and girls?” Titus said gently. Empathizing with this monster made him physically ill. He could see those poor children and, despite some of them maybe being in their late teens, that’s what they were, in his mind, at the mercy of Spearman and this freak while Latrell cried in the background. The images were as sharp as cut glass in his mind.
“Latrell … surprised me. I didn’t think he had it in him. I think you saved my life, Sheriff,” the voice said.
“Sorry, my mistake. That won’t happen again,” Titus said. There was only so much empathy he could muster.
The voice chuckled. “John ten through twelve.”
Titus frowned. There was more silence. Titus knew the verse, but its exact wording danced just outside the reach of his memory.
“Oh, Sheriff, did I finally get you? Let me give you a hint. Will you flee when you see me coming? Will you flee when the wolf comes to devour your flock?” the voice said.
The line went dead.
Titus ran into the lobby.
“Tell me you fucking got it,” Titus said.
Cam bit his bottom lip. “It came up restricted. I’m … I’m sorry, boss.”
Titus rubbed his face. Charon was a small county in Virginia, not a metropolis with a police force that had their own in-house surveillance department. They hadn’t ever really needed anything so elaborate, but right now he’d give his left arm for a halfway decent tech squad.
“It’s okay, Cam. We’re all doing the best we can,” Titus said.
Titus went back to his office and called the Bureau of Criminal Investigations, the official name for the state police’s special investigatory unit.
“BCI.”
“I need to speak with Trooper Geary. This is Sheriff Titus Crown from Charon County,” Titus said.
“Trooper Geary isn’t available right now; do you want to leave a message?”
“Yeah. Tell him I need to put a trace on my non-emergency number. The killer just called up here,” Titus said.
NINETEEN