I stared through the glass into a night gone silver bright with the rain. The hospital’s red EMERGENCY light rippled like blood down the glass.
Bandoni said, “One more thing.”
An ambulance squealed into the lot, lights flashing. It jerked to a stop, and the driver leapt out and ran to open the back doors while two nurses in scrubs hurried out from the hospital.
Bandoni put his eyes on me. “They castrated the kid.”
I drew in a breath. Held the air in my lungs.
“And they cut off his right hand.” Bandoni took out his unlit cigarette, stared at it. The lights washed his face red.
I glanced back toward the hospital. Noah Asher stood at the door, staring at us through the rain.
“Fucking world,” Bandoni said.
CHAPTER 17
If trauma is the darkness that knocks us off our path, then life is about finding our way home.
But first we must learn to navigate the dark.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
Redeemed Life Church was a new, no-expense-spared construction set smack in the center of a middle-aged Denver neighborhood, a peacock lording over a gaggle of 1950s-era homes and decades-old businesses. A monolith of concrete and angled, rust-colored beams, the structure punctured the cloud-thick sky like a phallus. Stained-glass windows glowed orange-red in the rain.
Bandoni whistled. “It’s like Home Depot found God.”
I parked, and we stepped into the rain. The responding officers and Smith and Wesson had established two perimeters: an outside zone that encompassed the entire church and two outlying buildings along with all entrances and walkways. And an inside perimeter that blocked off the walkway leading up to the sanctuary and included the sanctuary itself.
“You take lead on this scene, Parnell,” Bandoni said.
“Come again?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll step all over you soon as you fuck up.”
“Right.” I drew a deep breath. “Okay.”
I went to the back of the Tahoe, where Clyde watched me, tail wagging. As much as I hated exposing my K9 partner to a corpse, it was now our job to get down and dirty with mortality. Dogs carried around the olfactory equivalent of a sixty-terabyte database of odors they could pull up and ping off as needed. Clyde might pick up a scent here that he recognized from the first crime scene.
Or add the killer’s scent to his database.
Another upside to exposing Clyde to this body was that Clyde’s trainer had assured me my partner’s death fear would ease with continuous exposure.
As long as I didn’t succumb to my own fears.
“It’s for our own good, buddy,” I told him as I opened the hatch. I snapped on Clyde’s lead, and Bandoni and I ducked under the tape while Clyde pranced forward, tail waving, ready to work. A crowd of onlookers had gathered along the outside perimeter, and a Channel Nine news van pulled up as Bandoni and I were signing in with the uniform standing guard.
“Is someone taking pictures of the crowd?” I asked the cop.
The uniform, a stocky, freckled man whose name badge read Murphy, indicated his cell phone. “Taking a snap every few minutes.”
“You’re the first responder?”
“Yeah. My partner and me. A woman who teaches Bible studies here called it in. Soon as we saw the body, we called dispatch and closed off the area.”
I pulled out my notebook. “And the caller’s name?”
“Marcy Pitlor. Detective Smythe’s talking to her now.”
We went under the interior-perimeter tape. Clyde immediately lost his enthusiasm. His tail drooped, and he leaned into me.
“We’re still good, buddy,” I whispered.
But Bandoni had caught it. “What’s up with the mutt?”
“Too many dead bodies.”
He gave me a sharp look. “You ever think maybe you picked the wrong career?”
“Every day for three weeks now.”
At the door to the chapel, Bandoni and I pulled on booties and gloves under the eyes of a second uniform, a woman named Vasquez. I knelt and snugged specially made booties around Clyde’s paws. I took his head in my hands and poured my soul out through my eyes, knowing he’d get my silent message.
We’re still good.
Clyde’s tail lifted a little.
Vasquez pushed open the door for us.
“Stairs on the right lead to a balcony on the second floor,” she said. “The two doors straight ahead go into the chapel. The body is on the other side of the altar rail.”
She opened another door. Light poured out from the chapel.
“Were the lights like this when you got here?” I asked.
She shook her head. “We turned them on for Smith and Wesson.” A flush. “Smythe and Weston.”
“I want to see the scene the way it was when you found it.”
“Of course. I’ll get the lights.”
She vanished, and moments later, the light softened to a dim glow.
I signaled Clyde to stay close, and we went through the doorway and into the gloom of the sanctuary. Bandoni wedged his bulk in beside us, and we stood silently, taking in the scene.
At the far end of the space, Detective Weston and a trio of crime scene detectives stood between us and the body. Flashes from a camera illuminated the semidarkness like bursts of lightning as the photographer worked. Pop, fade. Pop, fade. In between flashes, I made out Ron Gabel’s familiar form. He glanced over his shoulder. When he saw us, he gestured for the others to stand aside.
I took my time. I wanted the environment first. Then the body.
The space was somber and hushed. And vast. Over a hundred pews. Unlit chandeliers hung from the lofty ceiling. Small, high windows marched down each wall, and at the far end, above the altar, an immense stained glass window depicted a series of images—Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. The red and blue glass glittered like a king’s treasure.
“Not much like the inside of a boxcar filled with chickens,” Bandoni said.
“Not unless you consider that trains and churches are both a form of passage to somewhere else.”
“Getting
