I was sitting with prosecutor Miles Billingsly when my phone rang, Belafonte. “My partner,” I said. “Got to take this.”

I went to the hall. “When are you coming in?” she said. “I found something interesting.”

“I’ll be another hour with the attorneys. You find something major?”

A pause. “I guess not, not really. You’re gonna find it out anyway when Hayes Johnson calls. I just wanted to be the first to tell you, that’s all.”

“Who’s Johnson?” My mind was on Schockel.

“The CEO at Hallelujah Jubilee. I’ll only confirm what he tells you.”

“And that is …” I looked up, saw DA Miles Billingsly looking my way and tapping his watch. “Gotta go,” I said. “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up.”

Seventy minutes later I was back at HQ and heading to my corner office until Bobby Erickson called my name. Bobby was a retired Florida State Police Sergeant who worked the phones. He unfailingly wore his beloved dress blues, but had foot problems, so Roy let Bobby wear slippers, big suede pillows with fleece puffing around his ankles. Erickson was short and rotund and seemed perpetually concerned, lips pursed, eyes frowning over half-glasses.

“S’up, Bobby?”

He blinked at a pink call slip. “You had a call from a guy named Johnson. Wants you to call him back.” Bobby frowned at the note. “Haze Johnson? Who names a kid Haze?”

“H-A-Y-E-S, Bobby. But yes, the homophonic confusion does tend to confirm your point.”

He retreated on the fluffy pillows, shaking his head. “Confused homos? Some day I’ll understand what you’re saying, Carson. This ain’t the day.”

“Belafonte around?” I called to his back.

He pointed through the floor. “She went to the atrium to grab a yogurt.”

I hung my jacket on the peg behind the door and sat. The call slip had Johnson’s number and I tapped it out.

“Hello,” a deep and confident voice said. “This is Hayes.”

The CEO of an influential broadcasting network and attendant enterprises had given me his private number? No long-distance management here. The guy was hands-on.

“This is Detective Carson Ryder, Mr Johnson. Sorry I wasn’t here to take your call – a meeting.”

“No problem whatsoever, sir. I’m happy to be of service in any small way possible.”

“I take it you spoke to your people about the women in question, Teresa Mailey and Kylie Sandoval?”

“I had them check records going back ten years. I assure you, Detective, neither woman has been in the employ of Hallelujah Jubilee.”

“What I need to know. Thanks for your prompt response, Mr Johnson. I wish more folks were as attentive as you.”

Confirmed: I hadn’t figured on any connection, and now knew for sure.

Also confirmed: Outside of the religious aspect we were back to zero.

Belafonte was back in ten minutes, spooning yogurt. “I just heard from Johnson,” I said. “Neither Teresa nor Kylie ever worked at Hallelujah Jubilee.”

The spoon froze in mid bite. “What?”

“No connection to the park. Neither victim.”

She stared, as if my words were in Swahili. “I don’t quite … this is what he told you, the CEO of the network?”

“Si, Señorita Belafonte. I wish we’d found a connection, anything. But I like this Johnson guy, he got right on—”

“Meeting room,” Belafonte said, tossing the yogurt cup into the trash. “I think now would be appropriate.”

I was up and on her heels. She pushed aside the sprawl of files to accommodate her laptop. “You ever get so you can’t sleep?” she said rapidly, like she couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “The damnable pictures racing through your head, and they go faster at night? That was me last night and I needed to do something, but I’ve been through the cases a thousandtimeseachand—”

“Calm down, Belafonte. Talk slower.”

She took a deep breath, let it out, continued at normal speed. “I started thinking about what Johnson said yesterday, about the employees in biblical roles. How they get their pictures taken constantly?”

“Yes?”

“There are photo-sharing sites all over the internet: Shutterfly, Reddit, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket … tens of thousands of birthdays, vacations, weddings, bar mitzvahs, reunions … I entered the search words ‘Hallelujah Jubilee’. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of photographs. Johnson was correct about one aspect: people love being photographed beside actors in biblical garb.”

Belafonte ticked keys to call up a file and angled the laptop my way.

“Do you know who this is, Detective?”

I saw a half-dozen tourists beaming for the camera as they flanked a young woman in a rough gray robe, a cowl over her head, hands clasping a baby lamb. I knew the face, though I had seen it in death.

“Teresa Mailey,” I said, staring dumbfounded as Belafonte scrolled through a half-dozen saved shots. Teresa Mailey in varying costumes, with different people.

“Kylie?” I said. “Was she also …?”

Belafonte showed me five photos of Kylie Sandoval, ending with the girl in a brown coarse robe, a thick scarf over the amber tresses. She was posed before a bus, its side saying Possum Valley Baptist Church of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. A dozen hefty ladies flanked Kylie, all beaming like they’d just won the Betty Crocker Cookie Open. Kylie Sandoval was smiling as well, her mouth at least. The eyes looked sad.

“Remember the coarse cloth I found hidden in Kylie’s closet?” Belafonte said. “Look at the scarf she’s wearing.”

It was brown and rough-loomed and the same fabric Belafonte had shown me a few days ago. I heard Hayes Johnson’s voice in my head, deep and sincere and as smooth as warm butter …

“I assure you, Detective, neither woman has been in the employ of Hallelujah Jubilee.”

43

A sudden sizzle of energy had me pacing the room.

“Johnson had me hook, line and sinker,” I said, rounding the table a fourth time. “But he called, not a park employee. That was the only thing nagging me: People of Johnson’s stature don’t make calls about low-level employees.”

“Unless they want to make sure the denial carries weight.”

I nodded. “Damn, Johnson was good. I wanted to reach through the phone and shake his hand.”

“Should we confront him with the photos?”

I circled three more times, tumbling the situation through my head. “It’ll tip him off. For now we sit tight and think. You handed us a huge lever, Holly. Now we have to figure out how to use it.”

“Holly?”

“You prefer Belafonte?” I said, looking into the brown eyes that had spent hours scanning through photos in the dead of night. She’d listened to what Johnson had said, honed in on one sentence, turned it into gold. “I don’t care what you want to be called, I’m calling you a professional. Incredible work.”

She reddened and looked toward her lap. “Thank you. And Holly will be quite fine.”

I felt buoyed, suddenly alert, renewed. I didn’t know what we were looking at, but we saw something.

“Let’s put a microscope on Hallelujah Jubilee,” I said. “Can you do that quickly and quietly?”

“I’m on it. What will you be doing?”

I turned to the window and gazed high into a blue sky brightened by sudden promise. Ever since Ava had proposed stoning and the method of death, I’d been considering going to a well I’d used sparingly but effectively.

“I’m thinking I’ll consult an expert in the field,” I said.

“An expert in religion?”

“In madness.”

I jogged to my office. During my brother’s institutionalized decade he’d known several homicidal religious maniacs, including Preaching Bill Barton. Barton was an ordained minister in a small Ohio church who’d had visions of children in his congregation possessed by demons (“I saw them tiny little eyes light up with hellfire”) and had stealthily abducted and murdered three of them. Police were stymied by the disappearances until one Sunday morning when Barton’s sermon included pulling the eyes of the children from his pocket to demonstrate how they glowed in the dark.