pretty certain they’ll match the blood footprint in Waldo’s apartment.”
“Was there blood evidence on the floor of Nick’s car?”
“No.”
“So Marty thinks they were planted,” Janlow said.
Harry nodded.
“And you’re keeping a lid on it?”
“I am for now. I need a few days to work this angle without the press climbing all over me.”
“What about the knife? From the wounds I examined my guess is that the same blade was used on both Darlene and the Waldo kid. From the marks made on the spines I’d say you’re looking for a fairly substantial hunting knife with a nick in the blade.”
“No sign of that either,” Harry said.
“It doesn’t make sense to get rid of the knife and leave blood-soaked shoes in your closet.” Janlow thought about what he had said for a moment, then added: “So who’s in the know about what you have and don’t have?”
“You, Marty, Vicky, and me.” Janlow’s eyebrows went up. “That’s it? Not even Rourke?”
“Not even Rourke,” Harry said.
Emily Moore was still working on Bobby Joe’s funeral arrangements when Harry and Vicky returned to the church.
“Reverend Waldo wants to see you. He told me to send you over to the sacristy if you came back.”
“I’ll see him before I leave,” Harry said. “First tell me if you came up with any copies of that church bulletin.”
“No, I didn’t, and I don’t understand it. They just disappeared. This has all been one ongoing tragedy. And it started with that evil woman abusing that poor boy.”
Vicky’s head snapped toward the woman. “Why did you use that word?”
“What word?”
“Evil,” Vicky said. “Why did you describe her as evil?”
Emily Moore looked confused. “Well, that’s what she was. And it wasn’t just Reverend Waldo who said so. Even that poor boy’s father said she was. He said she was the most evil woman he’d ever met. And he wanted her punished just like Reverend Waldo did. I heard him say so myself. He said his son had been badly hurt and he wanted that woman to be hurt just as bad. It was his wife who wanted it all to end without that Beckett woman getting what she deserved, not the father. I felt sorry for him. He’d been a volunteer youth minister here for about a year, and he always seemed like such a kind man.”
Harry was jolted by the information. He thought back to his interview with the boy’s father, Joe Hall. He pictured him in his mind, a big, burly construction supervisor with a surprisingly gentle voice and demeanor. The man had said he’d only come to the church because of his wife. Now he was being told the man had volunteered as a youth minister. He had also said he’d only been tempted to harm Darlene on one occasion-when she smiled at his family as she had left the courthouse. But according to the church secretary there had been at least one other time as well.
“I need you to give me the name of the printer,” Harry said. “I want to see if he still has a copy of that bulletin.”
The secretary opened her Rolodex and copied an address and phone number. “And please don’t forget that Reverend Waldo wants to see you.”
“I’ll see him before I leave,” Harry said.
Outside, Harry searched his notebook until he found his notes on his interview with Joe Hall, then told Vicky exactly what Hall had said. “I want you to interview him again. Brace him on what this church secretary said, and if he admits it, press him on why he told me he had only thought about hurting her that one time in court. Also ask him why he never told us he volunteered as a youth minister.”
“What if he denies it?” Vicky asked.
“He’s a suspect as far as we’re concerned. He’s not just the father of a sex crimes victim. Go after him like you would any other suspect.”
“That’s all I wanted to know,” Vicky replied. “And you’re headed for the printer, right?”
“As soon as I see what Reverend Waldo wants.”
The sacristy was empty, the only light coming through the large stained-glass window behind the stage. The two massive projection screens that hung above the stage displayed the image of a slender, young woman pushing a small boy on a swing. Reverend Waldo was seated alone in the first pew, but his head was bowed, his eyes staring at the floor. As Harry approached him he could see that the man’s cheeks were stained by recent tears. On the seat next to him was an electronic device.
“Reverend?”
The minister raised his head at the sound of Harry’s voice. He did not look well. His eyes seemed to have sunk into his heavy cheeks, and he had the look of a man greatly in need of sleep. “Thank you for coming.” Reverend Waldo’s voice was barely above a whisper, and it made Harry feel as though he was the first guest to arrive for his son’s funeral.
“Your secretary said you wanted to see me.”
Reverend Waldo raised his eyes to one of the screens above the stage and began to weep again. “Bobby Joe was four then,” he whispered. “That’s his mother pushing him. She joined our Lord in heaven seven years ago- cancer.”
He touched a button on the electronic device on the seat next to him and the little boy and the woman began to move. Harry watched the home movie along with the weeping man. The child and the woman were both laughing, the little boy calling out that he wanted to go higher.
“He was always a good child, precocious but good. It was only later, as a teenager, that he got mixed up with a group of kids who were doing things they shouldn’t-drugs and liquor, even stealing on occasion. And there were, of course, always the loose young women hanging around them. It was the time right after his mother died, a time when he needed guidance most, a time when I had thrown myself into my work. You see, all I could feel was my own pain over my wife’s death, and to free myself of it I became consumed with my work. I told myself I had to make this church bigger, more influential in the faith community, and I worked at it night and day; brought it to the point it’s at now. But what I really needed to do was take care of my son. He was suffering then, but I was too busy with my own suffering to see it.”
“A lot of kids get into trouble as teenagers, reverend. Most of them work their way out of it.”
John Waldo began to slowly shake his head. “No, my son went far astray, and I helped lead him there.” He turned and looked up at Harry. “Do you think Bobby Joe killed that woman?”
Harry took a moment to decide how much he wanted to say. “No, I don’t. But I think he knew the killer, and I think that person scared the hell out of him, scared him so much he was afraid the tell anyone what he did know. And I think that person killed him to make sure he never would.”
“How would he even know such a person? I know he had gone astray, but not that far, never that far.”
Harry wanted to tell the man what he believed-that the killer was someone connected to his church, that the killer was a sick son of a bitch, a walking religious time bomb who had only needed the right situation and the right person to set him off, and that Darlene Beckett with her flagrant immorality, and the Reverend John Waldo with his righteous, God-fearing indignation had provided him with everything he needed all wrapped up in one tight little package. Instead, he looked the minister in the eye and said: “I don’t know.”
The minister stared at the floor for several long moments before he began to speak again. “I talked to the sheriff about you. This was before my son died, when I thought you were persecuting him. He told me what a good detective you are, and what happened to you as a child. He also told me there are some people in the department who think the dead speak to you because they recognize you as one of them. Is that true? Do the dead speak to you?”
“It’s more an intuition about what they felt just before they died,” Harry said.
“I believe that’s a form of speaking.” Reverend Waldo paused, almost as if he were afraid to ask more. Finally he seemed to gather his courage. “Did my son speak to you after his death?”
Harry slowly nodded his head. “In the sense you and I are talking about, yes, he did.”
The minister’s lips began to tremble. “What did he say to you? Please tell me.”
