There was a moment more of silence, where I could see a fire raging inside him. I fought the urge to back up, to back away, to run from his ungodly presence. I fought and won and held my ground, even as his body tensed, even as he brought the shovel back as if to land a great blow, even as that shovel rushed at me and past me and rang with a brutal clang on the steps of the altar behind me.

I turned around to glance at it lying there, at an oblique angle on the stairs, and when I turned back to Lawrence Cutlip, he was walking out the door.

And, all praises to God, I never saw him again.

43

“SO THAT is the story, gentlemen,” said the Reverend Henson, sitting behind his desk, his forefinger sliding back and forth across the bevel on the desktop’s edge. “That is all I know. No facts underlay my accusations, no secret confessions, just a series of my own surmises. I knew nothing for certain. Had I known anything for certain, I would have done all in my power to put him in jail where he truly belonged, but I guessed well enough and knew enough about bluffing to banish this evil from our lives.”

“That was pretty damn brave,” I said. “He might just as easily have killed you.”

“What else was I to do? And in the end, I supposed it all worked out well. Hailey did go to college, as you know, and to law school, too. She never confided in me in any way after that, treated me like a business acquaintance, which I suppose I had become. She simply took her money and went off into her new life, God bless her. Roylynn took a few courses at the community college, but that was all. There were three more attempts at suicide which halted her formal education, but she seems to be fighting the urge successfully, for now. The money from Pritchett has been used to finance a continuing series of rest homes, like the one she’s in now. I visit her when I can, I myself gave her the physics book she clutches so fiercely. I thought it would be a diversion, but it has become something to her like a Bible, and I don’t suppose that is so bad a thing. We all need something to believe in.”

“I met with Roylynn after I spoke to you,” I said.

“Yes, I heard. I had hoped you would honor my request, but she said nice things about you.”

“She told me that something called a primordial black hole killed Jesse Sterrett and her sister, something from the beginning of time with the power to obliterate anything that comes close.”

“Yes, I’ve heard her say that. It’s hard to understand, but I think I have an explanation. I believe that what she calls a black hole is simply her expression for the evil I saw in her uncle. He left that night and never returned, and I only knew of his whereabouts through the occasional references from Roylynn, who learned what she knew from her sister. It was she who told me of the nursing home in Henderson, a place I called as soon as I heard about Hailey. No, he had never left the property, I made sure of that before ever you came upon the scene, Mr. Carl.”

“If I need you to testify, Reverend, would you come up to Philadelphia?”

“I would, yes, but what could I say? What do I have for you, really, except my suspicions, and from what I can glean from the lawyer shows on TV, my suspicions are not much use in a legal case.”

“What exactly are your suspicions, Reverend Henson?” asked Breger. “Do you really think he killed the Sterrett boy?”

“Yes, I do. I saw it in his eyes as he held that shovel, but I own not an ounce of proof.”

“Why did he do it?”

“Jealousy.”

“Of Hailey?”

“Of course.”

“But why? What exactly do you suspect was going on between Cutlip and his nieces?”

“You ask for a surmise when I gave you all the facts at my disposal. I don’t think you have a right to anything more than that, and I won’t put my darkest fears about those girls into words. But she was a young girl in bad circumstances and terribly confused. Whatever it was that had infected her and that she was trying, in her way, to tell me about, it had nothing to do with love. It was something else, something monstrous and ungodly. And if it survived his leaving this town, it did so in the dark recesses of a dark heart that never allowed itself to catch a glimpse of light.”

OUTSIDE THE CHURCH, Breger I and took a slow walk in the graveyard. I weaved among the tombstones reading the now familiar names. Breger examined this stone, stared at this flower, this path, searched the cemetery as if it were a crime scene. While I stood among the graves, the harrowing lines of a dead poet rang in my ears.

“A white Camaro ran me down on a rocky road outside Henderson, Nevada,” I said finally to Breger.

“I read the police report when I was out there.”

“And it was a white Camaro with Las Vegas plates that was ticketed for speeding on the night before Hailey Prouix’s murder.”

“I thought you’d find the coincidence interesting.”

“Who is he, this Dwayne Joseph Bohannon?”

“Just a guy from Henderson.”

“Who works at the Desert Winds nursing home?”

“That’s right.”

“Let me guess. Long, scraggly blond hair, bad skin, worse teeth, scratching his arms like he’s got the mange. A lovely young man in every respect. Bright, too. Goes by the name of Bobo.”

“Cutlip’s toady.”

“That son of a bitch,” I said. “That vampire.”

“I met with Cutlip in Vegas. Bobo, too, standing behind the wheelchair. Followed some bank payments to the Desert Winds and found Cutlip. I asked the basic questions, showed him the picture of the corpse, had him identify his niece. He broke down when he saw it, and then his anger flared. A hard case for sure, but I didn’t find him evil.”

“Neither did I, actually, but my partner sensed something. What are you going to do?”

“I’ll make a call to my contact in Nevada. Have him ask Cutlip some tougher questions.”

“And what will that get you? You might shake him up a bit, but if he suspects he’s a suspect, you won’t get very far. He’s a tough old bird. He’ll clam up, shed crocodile tears over his niece, claim ill health, deny everything. I know, I’ve seen him do it. Better to leave him alone.”

“Then maybe I’ll ask my contact to give Bobo a roust.”

“Bobo killed her. It seems clear now, doesn’t it?”

Breger merely looked away.

“He killed her. And I’ll tell you something else: He’s the mystery man in black rushing out of the house. He was inside looking for something, and when the Forensic Unit technician showed up, he rushed out and beat her all to hell. With his hands scratched up like they were, you couldn’t see the bruises from the beating. But he’s the one.”

“It’s possible.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“I told you.”

“What about you convincing Jefferson to drop the case?”

He shook his head.

“You’ll at least tell him what you heard.”

“Jefferson wants evidence or nothing. What I heard is not evidence.”

“What more do you need?”

“Facts, maybe. Proof. If my guy grabs a confession out of Bobo, I’ll talk to Jefferson, but I can’t without that. You’ve raised a lot of questions, but there still aren’t many answers, including the big one. Cutlip may be a murderer, he may have killed Jesse Sterrett fifteen years ago out of jealousy or hate, but why would he send Bobo off to kill Hailey? Why would he want her dead?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Maybe when you find an answer we can do some business. But I’ll tell you flat-out, Carl, without a confession Jefferson is going to stay on after your boy to the end, that’s just the way he is. And the way the trial is going now, it looks like he’s going to get him.”

“I’ve been making some headway.”

“Some,” he said. “But not enough to overcome the fingerprints. Not enough to overcome the motive. Not enough to overcome the fact that only your client was in that house. And it doesn’t help you blaming some mystery lover for the crime if you think Cutlip did it.”