INSIDE THE RECTORY, AS I ENGAGED THE LOCK, I hoped the coyotes didn’t have a key. I noted with relief, there was no pet door.
Tidy, cheerful, the kitchen contained nothing that identified it as that of a clergyman.
On the refrigerator were a collection of decorative magnets that featured uplifting though not spiritual messages. One declared EVERY DAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF YOUR LIFE, which seemed to me to be an excuse to remain infantile.
I did not know what to do next.
Nothing unusual about that.
Hoss Shackett might have been on his way to see Reverend Moran when he heard me break the sacristy window. He could show up here at any time.
Currently more deranged than usual, alarmed, desperate, the chief might even have decided that, after all, he had to kill the minister, who had witnessed my arrest.
Considering all that had happened since I had been taken into custody and how totally the chief’s plans had fallen apart, killing Reverend Moran no longer made any sense, if it ever had. But that was the way of a sociopath like the chief: He could pass for normal year after year-until suddenly he no longer could.
Intending to locate the minister and warn him, I left the kitchen-and heard people talking. I prowled swiftly room by room until I arrived at the half-open door of a study, off the entrance foyer, where I stopped when I recognized Charles Moran’s voice.
“The Lord is with us, Melanie.”
A woman laughed tenderly. She had the kind of musical voice that on certain words trembled toward bird song. “Charlie, dear, the Lord is at all times with us. Here.”
“I don’t know that I should.”
“Jesus himself imbibed, Charlie.”
They clinked glasses, and after a hesitation, I pushed open the door and entered the study.
Reverend Moran stood beside the desk, wearing chinos, a tan turtleneck, and a sports jacket. He looked up from his drink, his eyes widening. “Todd.”
“I’m not here to harm you,” I assured him.
The woman with him was attractive but with a hairstyle twenty years behind the times.
“Mrs. Moran?” I asked, and she nodded, and I said, “Don’t be afraid.”
To my surprise, Reverend Moran drew a pistol from under his jacket, and to my greater surprise, he shot his wife dead.
He turned the pistol on me. In answer to my astonishment, he said, “She poured the first drink. She’d have suggested I pour a second.”
I noticed the brand name on the bottle: Lord Calvert.
“And when my hands were busy fixing the drink, she would have pulled the pistol under
“But. She. You. Your wife.”
“Of eighteen years. That’s why I could read her so well.”
“Dead. Look. Dead. Why?”
“The way this blew up, there’s not going to be enough money for both of us.”
“But. You. Church. Jesus.”
“I’ll miss the church. My flock.”
“The bombs? You? Part of that?”
Chief Hoss Shackett announced himself and cured my incoherence by slamming the flat of his hand so hard against the back of my head that I stumbled forward and fell too close to the dead woman.
As I rolled onto my back and looked up, the chief loomed behind his mutant-pink- zucchini nose. “You knew he was part of it, shithead. That’s why you came here in the first place, nosing around.”
Earlier in the night, I had arrived at the church with the dog, out of that unusually dense fog that had been more than a fog, that had seemed to me like a premonition of absolute destruction.
On consideration, it made sense that if my blind wandering with the golden retriever had been a kind of waking premonition, then I might have found my way to a place that was associated with the truth behind that hideous vision.
Shackett pointed his gun at me. “Don’t get cute.”
Looking up at him, my ears ringing, I said, “I don’t feel cute.”
Reverend Moran said, “Kill him.”
“No flying furniture,” Shackett warned me.
“None. No, sir.”
“Starts moving, I blow your face off.”
“Face. Off. I hear you.”
“Kill him,” the minister repeated.
“You sucker-punched me before,” Shackett said.
“I felt bad about that, sir.”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You see my gun, shithead?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where is my gun?”
“In my face, sir.”
“Where it
“I understand.”
“How long to squeeze a trigger?”
“Fraction of a second, sir.”
“See that chair?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If that chair moves?”
“Face. Off.”
“See that desk set?”
“I see it, sir.”
“If that desk set moves?”
“Good-bye face.”
“Kill the bastard,” Reverend Moran urged.
The minister was still holding his pistol.
His hand was twitching.
He wanted to waste me himself.
“Get up,” Shackett ordered me. “You’re gonna talk.”
As I obeyed, Reverend Moran objected. “No talk.”
“Control yourself,” Shackett admonished the minister.
“Just kill him, and let’s go.”
“I want answers.”
“He won’t give you any.”
