Mortal Sin (33 page)

“That doesn’t mean Brianne had anything to do with her parents’ accident.”

“You said to think outside of the box, and when I learned about the insurance policy, I did some research. The insurance agent was particularly chatty. He thought the whole thing stunk, but the police report and accident investigation was conclusive.”

“Then what was his problem?”

“The Graves’ had a one million dollar policy on each of them. So if one of them dies, the million is given to the surviving spouse. If both die, the money is given to their child. But there was an accidental death policy where if they died together and their child was under eighteen, the child received five million.” He paused.

“And Brianne was under eighteen at the time of the accident,” Skye said.

Definitely suspicious.

Bruce continued. “I spoke with the neighbors. One, an elderly neighbor who knew the family their entire life—thought that Brianne celebrated her parents’ deaths. Her two girlfriends moved into the house, Kimberly and Laura, and she got rid of all her parents’ belongings, then completely remodeled the house.”

“Selfish teenagers. They’re a dime a dozen.” But Skye couldn’t imagine getting rid of her dad’s things the day or the week or the month after he died. The house was still pretty much how he’d left it with a fresh coat of paint.

“Also, I talked to Hank right before the situation at the bar. He didn’t give me specifics, but said that the D.A. wasn’t at home when he went to talk to him. He’s going to try again today.”

Maybe that was a bad idea. Skye rubbed her head. “Thanks for the heads up.”

“Sheriff—um, Skye—now that your friends are gone, how are we going to stop this?” Bruce looked sheepish, as if saying anything out loud might make something fantastical totally real.

“Rafe went to bring Moira back. They’ll be here as soon as they can.”

Her cell phone rang. She grabbed it from her pocket, expecting an update from Rod on Anthony. Instead, it was Hank.

“Skye, you need to get down to the station ASAP.”

“What? Why?”

“Juan Martinez has been arrested, as well as a Doctor Charles Wicker who claims you remanded Juan into his custody. Juan’s in jail and Truxel is about to interview Wicker.”

#

Hank Santos stared at the remains of St. Francis de Salle. He was off-duty, but lately, he never felt like he truly had time off.

The external stone structure of the old church was still intact, but the beautiful, antique stained glass windows were all gone. The scene before him looked like the cover of a gothic novel, more eriee by the fog that hadn’t burned off even though it was after noon.

Detective David Collins drove up and rolled down his window. “I’ve been looking for you.” He paused, assessed Hank. “What’s up? Something wrong?”

“Just melancholy.” He turned his back on the church. Santa Louisa High School, across the street and set far back from the road, was quiet. It was Sunday, and even the sports teams had taken a day off. “What do you need?”

“Get in. I have something to show you.”

Hank walked around to the passenger side. “Juan’s been arrested.”

David nodded. “Skye’s on her way to the station. She called me en route to look for any evidence as to who set this fire.”

“Is it connected to Juan?”

“Everything’s connected,” David said. “I didn’t believe for the longest time that anything was… strange in this town. But after what happened at Rittenhouse, and then Ethel Dodson… Did you hear about what she did to Frank?”

“Yeah,” Hank concurred without having to add anything.

“She’s friends with my grandmother for godsakes. They knit baby blankets together. Anyway, I might have found something.”

David drove around the block to the main school entrance. A lone car was parked in the staff lot. David parked next to it. “I wanted a second set of eyes—eyes I can trust,” David said. “When Margo Simmons called this morning—well, I would have called Skye, but with the situation with Juan, I thought I’d check it out first.”

They got out of the car and Margo met them at the door to the school. She was in her early forties and like David and Skye, had grown up in Santa Louisa. She’d been principal of the high school for the last four years.

“Thank you for coming so fast,” Margo said. “I don’t like being here alone, and Aaron is out of town until Tuesday.”

David said to Hank, “Margo’s husband is a pilot.” He squeezed Margo’s arm. “I’m glad you called.”

“It just doesn’t make sense. But after the church burned down, I just couldn’t keep this to myself.”

She locked the main school doors behind them and they walked past the administrative wing to the security offices in the back of the long, narrow building. The school was shaped like a “T.” Originally, there was simply one long, narrow two-story building with both classrooms and offices off a wide, main hall. Renovations a decade ago added the shorter portion of the “T” and all offices moved to that section to make room for additional classrooms and a new science wing.

“I came to campus after hearing about the fire—first to make sure that the fire was contained across the street, then after you told me that it was arson, to make sure the school was secure. I did a perimeter check with our security guard, then went to the security office to check the tapes, to see if there was anything the Sheriff’s Office could use to help find out who did this. We have several angles that record the outside of the building, but I reviewed them, and nothing shows the church or beyond our property.”

David said, “I’d like a copy from the north side of the building, in case a suspect cut across the school. We’ll also run license plates in the area.”

“I made you a disk,” she said. “But when I did the perimeter check, I thought I smelled something… odd. Like incense from an old church, or stale potpourri. I couldn’t find anything, but it was coming from the chemistry room. I went in, and everything appeared to be in place. Still, it was strange, and we’ve had a problem with students coming in after hours to do their own experiments, without approval.

“So I scanned the security feed from the chemistry room and… Well, I’ll just show you, because I don’t know what I’m seeing.”

She pressed some buttons and the chemistry room came up on the main security screen.

“Do you have security cameras in all the classrooms?” Hank asked.

She shook her head. “Only the chemistry room because of the chemicals and supplies we store in there. We have the external cameras of course, cameras at the gym because of the after-hours use, in the cafeteria, and the hallways.” She paused, then said, “No one knows about the cameras in the science wing except the security officer, myself, my assistant, and the teacher.”

She looked at the screen and the time stamp, then fast forwarded to 7:30.

Three girls came into the classroom, each carrying a bag. Two blondes and a brunette.

“I know them,” Hank said.

“They graduated last year,” Margo said. “Brianne, Kimberly, and Laura. They were inseparable then, and I hear they’re living together.”

The recording was high quality and black and white. On the screen, the girls unpacked their bags. They did it expeditiously, but carefully. Candles. Small bags tied with ribbon. A dark, unmarked bottle. Laura had the largest bag. She pulled out what looked like a dollhouse. Hank leaned forward. “That’s a replica of St. Francis.”

“You’re right,” David whispered.

Laura put the small building, which appeared to be made to scale, in the middle of one of the fireproof chemistry tables. Brianne set up five black candles around the church and lit them. Kimberly took the small bags and began opening them, one by one, talking while pouring the contents on top of the model. In fact, they were all talking, but there was no sound recorded so they couldn’t hear what the girls were saying.

When Kimberly was done with the bags, the girls framed the table, held hands for several minutes, heads down as if in prayer. The flames on the candles grew until they were as high as the model church. Then, Brianne took the bottle, opened it, and poured the fluid until she’d made a complete circle around the building. All three of them took long, tapered candles, lit them from the same black candle, held them in front of themselves for a minute, then put the flames into the liquid.

The model church started to burn.

The time stamp was 7:51.

Skye had called in the fire at 7:56.

The girls watched the fire burn for several minutes. Margo fast-forwarded the disk until near the end, where it showed the girls cleaning up their mess.

“It’s… unexplainable,” Margo said.

“Did you tell anyone else about this?” Hank asked.

She shook her head. “I called David as soon as I viewed this.” She took out the disk. “This is a copy.”

“We’ll need the original,” David said.

“I locked it in my office. I’ll get that for you.”

They walked outside while Margo fetched the disk. “What do you think?” David asked Hank.

“I think we need to show the sheriff, then get CSI over here to process that room. There could be trace chemicals.”

“Is it true they’ve all left? Everyone from the mission?”

Hank nodded. “Except Anthony. He’s… not well.”

“I wouldn’t have bought you into any of this, but after that ghost that nearly killed me…” David shook his head as if to clear out cobwebs. “Could those girls have really set the fire from here?”

“No one else will believe it. But we’ve placed them near the church, and they had foreknowledge of the fire. We could possibly argue that they set the fire first, then came to the school to re-enact it. Those are the same three girls who were around when my son was nearly hit by a truck.” Not that anyone would believe they’d caused the truck to fail.

Margo came out of the building, locked the door, and handed them an envelope. “This is the original. I also kept a copy. Just in case.”

“We’re going to send over a crime scene team to collect trace evidence. We’ll need to do it before classes start, either tonight or early tomorrow morning.”

“Call me anytime. I’ll let them in or have security do it. Thank you for not thinking I was crazy.” She tried to smile, but looked more worried than anything.

“I’ve seen a lot crazier,” David said.

“So have I,” Hank concurred.

Skye should have gone directly to the sheriff’s station, but she made a stop at the morgue to talk to Rod Fielding. She needed
something
to help her with Truxel.

Rod was agitated and busy with all the dead bodies stacking up in his morgue, but he kept it together. He’d enlisted the help of Zach Padilla, the young CSI who Skye had hired. The kid seemed overwhelmed, but did everything Rod ordered without question.

“Kid,” Rod said to Padilla, “run to the lab with these blood samples and stay for the results. If the tech won’t do them now, you do them, and if he gives you shit, tell him to see me.”

“Yes, sir,” Padilla said and ran off with a tray.

When he was gone, Rod asked Skye, “How’s Anthony?”

She didn’t want to think about Anthony. Her stomach was already tied in knots. How would he be? They’d cuffed him, drugged him, and put him on an IV at her house. He was unconscious and if they didn’t keep him that way, he’d kill or die.

“Same as you left him. Jared’s with him.”

“Have you talked to Rafe? When is he coming back with Moira?”

“He only left a few hours ago. Look, I’m here because I need
something
solid, something like evidence, to get Juan out of this interrogation and back into Doctor Wicker’s custody.”

“Stay away. Word is that Truxel wants you removed.”

“He can’t.”

“The Board of Supervisors can suspend you on a three-quarters vote.”

“Which is, practically, four out of the five members. And with so many of our guys injured and Tom in the hospital—I don’t see Truxel playing that card.” Yet.

“Don’t be so sure. Tread carefully around him.”

“So you have nothing?” She was practically whining. But she was desperate. While she didn’t agree with Anthony and Rafe’s decision to hide Juan at the mission, she understood why they’d done it—Juan was frail and sick. She didn’t see how he could have beaten the taller, healthier Bertrand to death. She didn’t even think that Juan could lift his arms over his head, let alone carrying anything hefty.

“Actually, I have one thing you’ll be very interested in, though it won’t help you with Juan. We recovered the priest’s body. It wasn’t burned—thanks to the quick work of our fire department, they put out the fire before it spread inside the church. The roof partially collapsed, but surprisingly only in the vestibule, not the rest of the church.”

“That’s good?” she questioned. “Why, did the killer leave a confession taped to Father Isaac’s body that I missed?”

“Not that good. But I can state definitively that the knife that killed Joe Smith at the storage unit also killed Father Isaac.”

“That’s…” She had no idea what that meant. “It can’t be a coincidence that the box that held the knife originally belonged to the Hangstrom family, who in turn donated all their possessions to St. Francis. What if Father Isaac knew something about who wanted the knife? Or why the knife is so important to the killer?”

“Talk it out.”

“It’s just… I need that whiz kid of yours. The one you just sent to the lab.”

“Why?”

“That box had been in that storage unit for up to two years, when the Hangstrom’s first rented it. Why was it stolen less than two weeks ago? That suggests whoever stole it—and likely killed both Joe and Father Isaac—learned it was in there two weeks ago. How? Why now and not last year?”

Rod considered. “Maybe the suspect has been looking for it for a long time and tracked it down to the Hangstroms, then learned they had the storage locker once they found out the couple had died.”

“Their own son didn’t even know about the locker, but they rented it under their own names. That tells me the information had to have come from the bankrupt owner of the storage unit, or from the bank, and likely within a few days of the break-in.”