Before He Sins Page 2

  When McGrath looked up at Mackenzie, she couldn’t help but notice what looked like slight relief in his eyes. It was a nice way to be introduced back into work after having her vacation cut short.

  “White, Ellington,” McGrath said. “You know Agent Yardley?”

  “Yes,” Mackenzie said, giving the agent a nod of acknowledgment.

  “She’s just come back from a crime scene that is linked to another we had five days ago. I originally had her on the case but when I thought we might have a serial on our hands, I asked her to provide everything she had so I could hand it off to you two. We’ve got a murder…the second of its kind in five days. White, I called you specifically because I want you on it based on your history—the Scarecrow Killer specifically.”

  “What’s the case?” Mackenzie asked.

  Yardley turned her laptop toward them. Mackenzie went to the chair closest to it and took a seat. She looked at the image on the screen with a deadened sort of quiet that she had come to know well—the ability to study a picture of something grotesque as part of her job but with a resigned sympathy most humans would feel at such a tragic death.

  She saw an older man, his hair and beard mostly gray, hanging from the door of a church. His arms were extended and his head was bowed down in a show of mock crucifixion. There were slash marks on his chest and a large gash on his forehead. He had been stripped down to his underwear, which had caught a great deal of the blood that had drained down from his brow and chest. From what she could see in the pictures, she was pretty sure his hands had literally been nailed to the door. The feet, though, were simply tied together.

  “This is the second victim,” Yardley said. “Reverend Ned Tuttle, fifty-five years of age. He was discovered by an old woman who had stopped by the church early to put flowers on her husband’s grave. Forensics is on the scene as we speak. It seems the body was put there less than four hours ago. We’ve already had agents speak with the family to notify them.”

  A woman who likes to take charge and get things done, Mackenzie thought. Perhaps she and I would get along well together.

  “What do we have on the first victim?” Mackenzie asked.

  McGrath slid her a folder. As she opened it up and looked over the contents, McGrath filled her in. “Father Costas, of the Blessed Heart Catholic Church. He was found in the same state, nailed to the doors of his church five days ago. I’m honestly quite surprised you didn’t see anything about it on the news.”

  “I made a point not to watch the news on my vacation,” she said, cutting McGrath a look that was meant to be comical but, she felt, went totally unacknowledged.

  “I remember hearing about it around the water cooler,” Ellington said. “The woman who discovered the body was in a state of shock for a while, right?”

  “Right,” McGrath said.

  “And based on what forensics came up with,” Yardley added, “Father Costas had certainly not been nailed there for any longer than two hours.”

  Mackenzie looked through the files. The images inside showed Father Costas in the exact same position as Reverend Tuttle. Everything looked pretty much identical, right down to the elongated gash across the brow.

  She closed the file and slid it back over to McGrath.

  “Where is this church?” Mackenzie asked, pointing back to the laptop screen.

  “Just outside of town. A decent-sized Presbyterian church.”

  “Text me the directions,” Mackenzie said, already getting to her feet. “I’d like to go see it for myself.”

  Apparently, she had missed working over the last eight days more than she had realized.

  ***

  It was still dark when Mackenzie and Ellington arrived at the church. The forensics team was just finishing up their work. The body of Reverend Tuttle had been removed from the door but that was fine with Mackenzie. Based on the two images she had seen of Father Costas and Reverend Tuttle, she’d seen all she needed to see.

  Two crucifixion-style murders, both on the front doors of churches. The men killed were the presumed leaders of those churches. It’s pretty clear someone has a pretty big grudge against the church. And whoever they are, it’s not specific to one particular denomination.

  She and Ellington approached the front of the church as the forensics team wrapped things up. Off to the left, near the small plaque board with the church’s name on it, was a small group of people. A few of them were in prayer while they embraced. Others were openly weeping.

  Members of the church, Mackenzie assumed with a resounding sadness.

  They neared the church and the scene only got worse. There were smears of blood and two large holes where the nails had been driven in. She looked the area over for any further religious iconography but saw nothing. There was just blood and bits of dirt and sweat.

  Such a bold move, she thought. There’s got to be some sort of symbolism to it. Why a church? Why the doors of a church? Once would be a coincidence. But two in a row, both nailed to the doors—that’s purposeful.

  She found it almost offensive that someone would do such a thing in front of a church. And maybe that was the point of it. There was no way to know for sure. While Mackenzie was not a strong believer in religion or God or the effects of faith, she also fully respected the rights of people who did live by faith. Sometimes she wished she was that kind of person. Maybe that was why she found this act so deplorable; mocking the death of Christ at the very entryway to a place where people gathered to seek solace and refuge in his name was detestable.

  “Even if this was the first murder,” Ellington said, “a sight like this would instantly make me think there were more coming. This is…revolting.”

  “It is,” Mackenzie said. “But I can’t be quite sure why it makes me feel that way.”

  “Because churches are safe places. You don’t expect to see large nail holes and wet blood on their doors. That’s some Old Testament shit right there.”

  Mackenzie wasn’t anything close to a Biblical scholar but she did recall Bible stories from her childhood—something about the Angel of Death passing through a city and collecting the firstborns of every family if there was not a certain marking over their doors.

  A chill crept through her. She repressed it by turning to the forensics team. With a slight wave, she got the attention of a member of their team. He came over, clearly a little distraught over what he and the rest of the team had seen. “Agent White,” he said. “This your case now?”

  “Seems like it. I was wondering if you guys still had the nails that were used to put him up there.”

  “Sure do,” he said. He waved over another of his team members and then looked back to the door. “And the guy who did this…he was either strong as hell or had all the time in the world to do this.”

  “That’s doubtful,” Mackenzie said. She nodded back out toward the church parking lot and the street beyond. “Even if the killer did this around two or three in the morning, the chances of a vehicle not traveling down Browning Street and seeing him are slim to none.”

  “Unless the killer canvassed the area beforehand and knew the dead-times for traffic after midnight,” Ellington offered.

  “Any chance of video footage?” she asked.

  “None. We checked. Agent Yardley even called some people—owners of the buildings closest by. But only one has security cameras and they are facing away from the church. So there’s no dice there.”

  The other forensics member came over. He was carrying a medium-sized plastic bag that contained two large iron spikes and what looked like a thread of bailing wire. The spikes were coated in blood, which had also smeared itself along the clear interior of the bag.

  “Are those railroad spikes?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Probably,” the forensics guy said. “But if they are, they’re miniaturized ones. Maybe the kind people use to put up chicken coops or pasture fences.”

  “How long before you’ll have any sort of results from these?” she asked.
<
br />   The man shrugged. “Half a day, maybe? Let me know what you’re looking for specifically and I’ll try to get the results to you sooner.”

  “See if you can find out what the killer used to drive the spikes in. Can you tell that sort of thing by the recent wear on the spike heads?”

  “Yeah, we should be able to do that. Everything has pretty much been handled on our end. The body is still with us; it won’t get to the coroner until we say so. The doors and stoop have been dusted for prints. We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

  “Thanks,” Mackenzie said.

  “Sorry to have already moved the body. But the sun was coming up and we really didn’t want this in today’s papers. Or tomorrow’s for that matter.”

  “No, that’s fine. I totally understand.”

  With that, Mackenzie turned back to the double doors, nonverbally dismissing the forensics team. She tried to picture someone lugging a body across the small lawn and up the stairs in the dead of night. The positioning of security lights on the street would make the front of the church dark. There were no lights of any kind along the front of the church, so it would have been cast in almost absolute darkness.

  Maybe it would have been more possible than I originally thought for the killer to take all the time he needed to get this done, she thought.

  “That seemed like a weird request,” Ellington said. “What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I do know that it would take a hell of a lot of strength and determination to work by yourself in order to haul someone off of the ground just to nail their hands to these doors. If a sledgehammer was used to knock the nails in, it might denote more than one killer—one to hold the victim off the ground and extend the arm, and another to drive the nails in.”

  “Paints a hell of a picture, doesn’t it?” Ellington said.

  Mackenzie nodded as she started snapping pictures of the scene with her cell phone. As she did, the idea of crucifixion again crept up on her. It made her think of the first case she’d ever worked where themes of crucifixion had been utilized—a case back in Nebraska that had eventually led her to rub elbows with the bureau.

  The Scarecrow Killer, she thought. God, am I ever going to be able to leave that in the dust of my memory?

  Behind her, the sun started to rise, casting the first rays of light on the day. As her shadow was slowly cast upon the church steps, she tried to ignore the fact that it looked almost like a cross.

  Again, memories of the Scarecrow Killer fogged her mind.

  Maybe this will be it, she thought hopefully. Maybe when I close this case, memories of those people crucified in the cornfields will stop haunting my memory.

  But as she looked back at those bloodstained doors of Cornerstone Presbyterian, she was afraid this was nothing more than wishful thinking.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mackenzie learned a great deal about Reverend Ned Tuttle in the next half an hour. For starters, he had left behind two sons and a sister. His wife had walked out on him eight years ago, moving to Austin, Texas, with a man she had been having an affair with for over a year before it had come to light. Both sons lived in the Georgetown area, leading Mackenzie and Ellington to their first stop of the day. It was just after 6:30 when Mackenzie parked her car along the curb outside of Brian Tuttle’s apartment. According to the agent who had broken the news, both brothers were there, waiting to do what they could to answer questions about their father’s death.

  When Mackenzie stepped into Brian Tuttle’s apartment, she was a little surprised. She had expected to see two sons deep in grief, torn apart by the loss of their devout father. Instead, she saw them sitting at a small dining room table in the kitchen. They were both drinking coffee. Brian Tuttle, twenty-two years of age, was eating a bowl of cereal while Eddie Tuttle, nineteen, was absently dabbing an Eggo waffle into a pool of syrup.

  “I don’t exactly know what you’re thinking we can offer you,” Brian said. “We weren’t exactly on the best terms with Dad.”

  “Can I ask why?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Because we stopped associating with him when he went full-tilt into the church.”

  “Are you not believers?” Ellington asked.

  “I don’t know,” Brian said. “I guess I’m an agnostic.”

  “I’m a believer,” Eddie said. “But Dad…he took it to a whole different level. Like, when he found out Mom was cheating on him, he didn’t do anything. After about two days of dealing with it, he forgave her and the guy she was cheating on him with. He said he forgave them because it was the Christian thing to do. And he refused to even talk about a divorce.”

  “Yeah,” Brian said. “And Mom saw that as Dad not giving a shit about her—not caring that she had cheated. So she left. And he didn’t do much of anything to stop her.”

  “Did your Dad ever try to reach out to the two of you since your mom left?”

  “Oh yeah,” Brian said. “Just about every Saturday evening, begging us to come to church.”

  “And besides that,” Eddie added, “he was too busy during the week even if we did want to see him. He was always at the church or out on charity drives or sick visits at hospitals.”

  “When was the last time either of you spoke to him at length?” Mackenzie asked.

  The brothers looked at each other for a moment, calculating. “Not sure,” Brian said. “Maybe a month. And it wasn’t much of anything. He was asking the same questions: how was work going, if I was dating anyone yet, stuff like that.”

  “So it’s safe to say you both have an estranged relationship with your father?”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said.

  He looked down to the table for a moment as regret started to sink in. Mackenzie had seen this sort of reaction before; if she’d been forced to bet, she was pretty sure at least one of these boys would be a sobbing mess within an hour, realizing all that had been lost in terms of the father they’d never gotten to know.

  “Do you know who would have known him well?” Mackenzie asked. “Did he have any close friends?”

  “Just that priest or pastor or whatever at the church,” Eddie said. “The one that runs the place.”

  “Your father wasn’t the lead reverend?” Mackenzie asked.

  “No. He was like an associate pastor or something,” Brian said. “There was another guy over him. Jerry Levins, I think.”

  Mackenzie noticed the way the young men were getting their terminology mixed up. Pastor, reverend, priest...it was all confusing. Mackenzie didn’t even know the difference actually, assuming it had something to do with differences in beliefs between denominations.

  “And your father spent a lot of time with him?”

  “Oh yeah,” Brian said, a bit angry. “All of his damn time, I think. If you need to know anything about Dad, he’d be the one to ask.”

  Mackenzie nodded, well aware that she would not be getting any useful information out of these two young men. Still, she wished she had more time to speak with them. There was clearly unresolved tension and loss between them. Maybe if they broke through whatever emotional walls were keeping them so tranquil, they’d have more to offer.

  In the end, she turned away and gave them her thanks. She and Ellington left the apartment quietly. As they took the stairs down side by side, he took her hand.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, confused. “Why?”

  “Two kids…their father just died and aren’t sure how to handle it. With all of the speculation about your dad’s old case as of late…just wondering.”

  She smiled at him, reveling in the uplifting way he made her heart feel in those moments. God, he can be so sweet…

  As they walked out into the morning together, she also realized that he was right: the reason she had wanted to stay and keep talking was to help the Tuttle brothers resolve the issues they’d had with their father.

  Apparently, the ghost of her father’s recently reopened case was haunting her
more than she realized.

  ***

  Seeing Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in the light of morning was surreal. Mackenzie drove by it on the way to visit with Reverend Jerry Levins. Levins resided in a house that sat just half a block away from the church, something Mackenzie had seen a lot of during her time out in Nebraska where the heads of smaller churches tended to live in very close proximity to their houses of worship.

  When they arrived at Levins’s house, there were numerous cars parked along the side of the street and in his driveway. She assumed these were likely members of Cornerstone, coming by to seek solace from or offer comfort to Reverend Levins.

  When Mackenzie knocked on the front door of the modest little brick house, it was answered right away. The woman at the door had clearly been crying. She eyed Mackenzie and Ellington suspiciously until Mackenzie raised her badge.

  “We’re Agents White and Ellington, with the FBI,” she said. “We’d like to speak with Reverend Levins, if he’s in.”

  The woman opened the door for them and they stepped into a house that was filled with sniffling and sobbing. Somewhere else within the house, Mackenzie could hear the sound of murmured prayers.

  “I’ll get him for you,” the woman said. “Please wait here.”

  Mackenzie watched the woman go back through the house, turning into a small living room where a few people stood by the entryway. After some whispering noises, a tall bald man came walking toward them. Like the woman who had answered the door, he had also been weeping.

  “Agents,” Levins said. “Can I help you?”

  “Well, I know it’s a very tense and sad time for you,” Mackenzie said, “but we’re hoping to get any information we can on Reverend Tuttle. The sooner we can get any leads, the quicker we can catch who did this.”