Now I knew why the governor and mayor had a wild hair up theirasses.
Father Joseph crossed himself and started working his rosarybeads, while the rabbi muttered Hebrew under his breath. Beyond that, none ofus moved or spoke for several minutes. I kept staring around, noting details.
Those wires led to a gray metal box on the floor, big dial andknob. I found out later that it was a variable transformer, a theater lightingrig, plugged into the wall socket behind it. They’d used it to keep the voltageand current down to the point of just giving the two lovebirds a little thrill.Someone had come along and jacked it up to lethal levels.
That someone being Kratz, of course. I could feel his memoryin the room, shielding himself from view, almost see him waiting and watchingfor the prime moment to reach down and turn that knob. There’d been three sick fucks in that room, but twoof them hadn’t known about the other one.
Cash gave us time to take it in and get our stomachs undercontrol. Then she waved us back out into the hall.
“I want each one of you to go back in there and test the spacefor magic use. One at a time. You all know crime scene protocol. Don’t touchanything you don’t have to, don’t move anything, watch your feet each time youtake a step. Don’t do any activemagic that would add your trace to the scene, either. Forensics hasn’t workedthe room yet. If this case ever goes to trial, we’re going to need a strongline of expert witnesses to prove that nobody tampered with the evidence. Ithink you all know why.”
She paused. “Father, Rabbi, if either of you would rather notbe involved, please say so. I know this context must disturb you.”
Both of them shook their heads, both stayed. The rabbi added, “Itis a mitzvah. I must seek truth. Ifthat truth shows evil to me, I must act against that evil.”
Mitzvah. Religiousobligation. I’d learned that one, hunting Kratz before. The Jews who had helpedme track him down had used the same term.
Apparently Father Joseph and the rabbi knew each other, hadworked together before. The Jesuit waved his counterpart into that filthy roomfirst. The rest of us waited our turns. We all stared in different directions,silent, thinking.
Cash held me for the last, for her own reasons. I can’t tellyou what ran through the other heads in that hallway while we waited, but Ithought about combinations and permutations. And as I thought, I got colder andcolder until my gut damn near seized up on me and sent me running for a toilet.I began to understand why the governor and mayor were spooked — it wasn’t just sex and politics and money andsmothering bad publicity.
That scene in there — the nature of the murder and the men whohad been murdered — it’d be easy to blow that into rumors that the wizard hadstaged the whole blasphemous scene rather than just the deaths in it. Youwouldn’t have to go too far down that road before it led you intopulpit-pounding hysteria, even into riots. Into outlawing magic again. Intoburning witches.
If Reverend Fred’s followers wanted to tell the world he diedof heart failure or accidental electrocution, well, it probably was true. Justnot the whole truth.
I turned to Cash. “Who’s the other corpse?”
“Head of Reverend Fred’s youth ministry.”
Oh, Jesus Christ. Literally. And then mental sparks leapedanother intuitive gap that made things even worse. “Kratz set up the firewall,didn’t he? Told you how and why to lock this up and throw away the key?”
Cash grimaced. “Emails hit a bunch of cop addresses he nevershould have known. Originated in frigging Botswana,as best as we can trace them. Also gave us some bank account numbers that hedoesn’t think the church treasury knows about, gave us a make on the dealer forthat coke, gave us the names of a couple of male prostitutes who can testify tothe Reverend’s kink. Bastard.”
She mimed twisting someone’s neck. I couldn’t tell if it wasKratz’s, or Reverend Fred’s. I just stood in the hallway and studied Victorianwoodwork, handsome stuff recently cleaned and stained mahogany red andvarnished as if the place had been built last year rather than over a hundredyears ago. Major money had left its fingerprints all over the renovation.Probably money his congregation intended for loaves and fishes for the hungry,roofs for the homeless.
Cash spoke again, a wistful tone, “You know, I wish we could figure out where Kratzgets his info. If he wasn’t bugfuck psycho, he’d have made a hell of adetective.”
I had to agree. My mind kept chewing away at the whole sequence,this string of murders that didn’t match Kratz’s profile. The kick was there,but where was the money? Why’d he hit three times, four men, in the space of afew weeks? What tied them together?
My brain served up a photocopy of a Russian Orthodox cross andstarted strobing it. “You ever get translations on those papers from theairport?”
I swear, I’d never seen black skin turn red with anger. Cashdid. Turned her face from black walnut to polished cherry, almost matching thewoodwork. She gritted her teeth and then forced out one word.
“Bycheck.”
I blinked. “Huh?”
She got her anger under control — looked like it took as mucheffort as running one of her marathons. “Bycheck took the papers. All of them.Not copies, didn’t even leave copies.National security, Federal pre-emption, and the forensics guys didn’t dare pullweapons on him.” She paused, then spat out the rest. “Him on crutches, I would have. Fucker.”
I knew what she meant about the crutches. If he’d had his gunhand free, I wouldn’t have pulled aweapon on him. Say what you want about the Bureau, their agents are damned goodwith guns. Forensics cops aren’t. Most of us, the weapon is pretty muchceremonial. Not Cash. I’d seen Cash shoot. Fast. Deadly.
Anyway, my so-called brain had finally connected up some dots.“Your John Doe courier was supposed to deliver something to Reverend Fred. JohnDoe might not have known what it was or what it did.
