walked across the room knocking chairs aside with his crutches as he approached. I noticed his ability to move about was better than it had been in our previous meetings and I suspected the crutches, while obviously necessary to a certain extent, were just as much stage props as they were an aid to his mobility. “What in God’s name is going on here?” he said, his voice coarse with anger. “Will you take your foot off of my wife’s back please? Why are the police here?”
Sandy was still brushing herself off and straightening her dress. I held her by her upper arm and she had her hand on my own for support. “Step back please, Reverend,” I said. “I’ll speak with you in a moment.”
But he either did not hear me, or simply refused to listen amid the chaos of the events as they unfolded around him. He stepped closer and put his crutch against my hip, forcing me to remove my foot from Amanda’s back or lose my balance. “Step away from my wife, Detective. I insist you tell me-”
I let go of Sandy and used my own momentum against him. I grabbed the still extended crutch and pinched it under my arm, swept his legs out from under him and had him on the ground before he knew what had happened. I yanked the crutch from his right arm and pinned his hands behind his back. His arms felt like tree limbs under his shirt, and I had the impression he could toss me aside if he wanted to. I also felt like he knew it as well. I looked over at Donatti who ran toward me and placed his handcuffs around Pate’s wrists. I leaned down and whispered into Pate’s ear. “You ever place your cane against my person again I’ll show you the other end of it. I’ve got the resume, sir, believe me.”
“Release my husband this instant,” Amanda shouted at me as she stood up. “For God’s sake, Jonesy, he’s disabled. You’ve got a crippled man on the ground in handcuffs on his own property. What’s the matter with you? I demand to know what’s going on here,” she said. Why are all these police officers here?” She stomped her foot, her hands balled into fists at her side as she spoke.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the search warrant and handed it to her. “We have a warrant to search the premises, Amanda.” Then to Donatti. “Have your men take the file cabinets and everything in the desk drawers. You brought trucks and dollies?”
“We’re good to go, boss,” Donatti said.
“Alright, get started then. Get the computers, too. They probably have a central server somewhere. A closet, or a small office. Don’t miss that.”
Pate mumbled something I couldn’t quite catch. “What was that,” I said.
“It’s in the basement,” he said. “The door at the end of the hall.”
I looked at him for a moment. He lay on his side on the floor to accommodate the handcuffs. Then he lifted his head and smiled at me. “I’ve nothing to hide, Detective. Nothing at all. You’ll see. Then you and I, well, we’ll talk again, I suspect.”
I ignored his comments and nodded to Donatti who motioned for the other officers. They wheeled the dollies in and moved toward the offices. I looked at Amanda. Tears were running down her cheeks. She held the warrant in her hand, down by her side. “Read the warrant, Amanda. It gives us permission to search and seize anything in this building. Your house as well.”
Her head snapped up, the whites of her eyes veined with red streaks at the corners. “What? My house? You’re going to search my house?’
“Not going to, Amanda. Are. We’ve got a team there right now as well.”
“You bastard,” she said. “If you think I’m going to let you get away with this you’re mistaken,” she said, her finger pointed at me like she was admonishing a child. “I’ll have your badge for this, Virgil Jones. You watch and see. You think we don’t have any influence in this town?”
Samuel Pate looked at his wife and said, “Amanda, go home. Please, you’re not helping.”
“But Samuel, can’t you see what they’re trying to do to us? We can’t just let-”
“Amanda, I said go home. Keep your wits about you and get to the house and make sure they conduct their search in a respectful manner, then call Everett. Tell him what’s happened and have him meet me downtown. Can you do that for me, Amanda? Detective, is she free to go?”
I nodded. Amanda looked at me, the veins on the sides of her neck still bulging with anger. “This isn’t over, Jonesy. Not even close.” But I did not hear the rest of what she said.
Sandy was shouting as she pulled the rest of the drapery off their support rods. “Hey, I need some help here. Someone get a fire extinguisher. Those burner cans are still going. The drapes are on fire. Jonesy? Jonesy, I need some help over here.”
The burner cans from under the chafing dishes had spilled to the floor when Sandy tackled Amanda, but in the commotion that followed no one had noticed the smoldering drapery. I helped Sandy yank the rest of the curtains down, then we grabbed carafes of ice water from the tables and dumped them on the hot spots. A few of the people who were present to preview the Sunday broadcast and the rest of the wait staff picked up the smoldering curtains and pulled them outside and tossed them into a pile on the sidewalk.
Sandy looked at me and puffed out her cheeks. Her hands were shaking. “You okay?” I said.
“Yeah. Sorry. Fire sort of freaks me out.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said. “But I guess you knew that already.”
Sandy smiled at me. “Well, all in all, I think that went just fine, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Textbook,” I said.
My phone rang and when I looked at the screen I saw it was Cora’s home number, and I thought, Jesus, what now?
“I know we talked about it a little,” Cora said. “But if I’m being honest with you, my head’s a little foggy this morning.”
“How was your evening, Cora?”
“It was, um, productive. That about sums it up, I think.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I know. Listen, did you see everything you needed to over at that dilapidated church in Broad Ripple?”
I took the phone away from my ear for a minute, picked up one of the chairs that had been knocked over and set it upright then sat down upon it before I spoke. “Yeah, pretty sure. Why?”
“Oh, no reason. I guess last night while you were sleeping and Elliott and I were…uh, well, while you were sleeping, it blew up and burned to the ground. I just got off the phone with the watch commander. Looks like there was some kind of explosion. He said it blew the steeple right off the top. It’s laying in the alley behind the church. He said it looks like the pictures of the cockpit of that Pan Am jet they blew out of the sky over Lockerbie. Remember that?”
“I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”
“Slow down, Slick. There’s more. The firemen found a body inside the church. Unidentified female, but the car in the lot belongs to Amy Frechette, so you can do the math. Crime scene is on the way to the Frechette residence as we speak. Didn’t you tell me that’s where Murton Wheeler lives?”
When we pulled up to Murton and Amy’s house, two crime scene tech’s were waiting for us. Sandy hopped out of my truck, and when she did both of the techs said something to her, first one, then the other. I didn’t hear what it was.
Sandy looked at them and shook her head. “Oh my God, how about we all just pull our dicks out and see whose is bigger?” She looked at each man individually for just a split second, then said, “I’d probably win. We may or may not need you boys. We’ll let you know. Why don’t you wait in your van? Go on now,” she said, as she gave them a little wave of her hand. Once they were gone, she looked at me and said, “you want the front or the back?”
“Front I guess.”
I had to pop one of the small glass panes in the front door to gain entry. Once we were inside I saw that Amy Frechette’s house was old, but in good shape. The walls were stucco instead of sheet-rocked, the ceiling was made of a biscuit colored stamped tin, and the walk-ways between rooms were all arched. The wall opposite the front door was covered from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, and each shelf was filled with row after row of both religious and psychology studies. For reasons I can not readily explain, I expected to find a good selection of fiction novels, the utilitarian surroundings suggestive of an individual who lived through someone else’s imagination, but clearly that was not the case. Instead, what I found was book after book whose titles were reflective of someone
