Before he Kills (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1) (13 page)

Mackenzie had not stepped foot into a
church since the wedding of her college roommate. After her father died, her
mother had tried dragging her and Steph to church on numerous occasions and it
was for that very reason that Mackenzie did everything she could to avoid it.

Still, as she entered the sanctuary of
New Life Methodist Church, she had to admit that there was a certain degree of
beauty here. It was more than the stained glass windows and the ornate
altar—there was something else entirely that, quite frankly, she could not put
her finger on.

As she neared the front of the
sanctuary, she saw an older man sitting in one of the pews to the front. He had
apparently not heard her enter because he had his head down, reading in a book.

“Pastor Simms?” she asked. Her voice
boomed like the Almighty in the cavernous sanctuary.

The man looked up from his book and turned
to face her. He was a man in his fifties, dressed in a button-down shirt and
khakis. He wore the sort of eyeglasses that instantly made him appear to be
infinitely kind.

“Detective White, I presume?” he asked,
getting to his feet.

“You presumed correctly,” she said.

He looked a bit shocked but met her at
the head of the sanctuary all the same.

“Forgive my surprise,” he said. “When
your Chief Nelson called to request some of my time for your research, I wasn’t
expecting a woman. Due to the heinous nature of the crimes, I find it rather
odd that a woman would be heading it up. No offense to you, of course.”

“None taken.”

“You know, Clark speaks favorably of
you.”

The name
Clark
threw her off and
it took her a moment to realize that he was talking about Nelson—Police Chief
Clark Nelson.

“I’ve heard that a lot lately,” she
said.

“Well then, that must be nice.”

“And unexpected,” she said.

Simms nodded, as if he understood
perfectly. “Nelson’s a bit of a blowhard at times. But he’s also extremely kind
when he needs to be. I imagine that’s a hard part of himself to show at work.”

“So he attends this church?” Mackenzie
asked.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Every Sunday. But I
digress. Please,” he added, gesturing to the pew he had been sitting on. “Have
a seat.”

Mackenzie did so and looked to the book
Pastor Simms had been reading from and was not at all surprised to find that it
was a Bible.

“So, Chief Nelson tells me that you have
questions about scripture that may be able to lead to the arrest of the man
that has been killing these poor women.”

She pulled out her cell phone and pulled
up the picture she had snapped of the old Bible from the abandoned house. She
handed it to him and he took it, adjusting his glasses as he looked at it.

“Numbers, chapter five, verses eleven to
twenty or so. Do you think you could tell me how you interpret the verse?” she
asked.

He glanced at the picture briefly and
then handed the phone back.

“Well, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Not
all Biblical passages need to be decoded. This one simply speaks of adulterous
women being forced to drink bitter waters. If they were pure, no harm would
come to them. But if they had engaged in sexual relations with anyone other
than their husbands, the waters would bring a curse upon them.”

She pondered that.

“The killer has carved N511 on each post
he has hung a victim from,” she said. “And based on the sort of women he has
been choosing, the allegory seems pretty fitting.”

“Yes, I’d agree,” Simms said.

“He’s also carving J202 into the posts.
There are too many books of the Bible that begin with
J
for me to make
an educated guess. I was hoping you’d have some insight?”

“Well, Numbers is an Old Testament book
and if this killer is killing based on what he thinks is Old Testament
law—however misguided his interpretations and actions may be—I think it’s safe
to say that this other reference would be Old Testament as well. If that’s the
case, I feel certain that it’s referring to the book of Joshua. In Chapter
Twenty of Joshua, God speaks of Cities of Refuge. These were cities where
people who had accidentally killed others could flee to without prosecution.”

Mackenzie chewed on this for a moment,
her heart racing, something starting to click inside. She picked up the Bible
and found Joshua and dug up the passage. When she found it, she read it out
loud, a bit creeped out by the sound of scripture coming out of her voice in
this empty church.

Then the Lord said to Joshua: Tell the
Israelites to designate the cities of refuge, as I instructed you through
Moses, so that anyone who kills a person accidentally and unintentionally
may flee there and find protection from the avenger of blood. When they
flee to one of these cities, they are to stand in the entrance of the city gate
and state their case before the elders of that city. Then the elders are to
admit the fugitive into their city and provide a place to live among them. If
the avenger of blood comes in pursuit…

She trailed off here, astounded, knowing
she had finally figured out the source of the numbers. It was both thrilling
and deflating. She had a window into his MO now—and yet it was still so vague.
None of this could bring her to his front door.

“There’s more, you know,” Simms said.

“Yes, I see that,” she said. “But I
think that’s enough. Tell me, Pastor, do you know how many of these Cities of
Refuge there were?”

“Six in all,” Simms said.

“Do you know where they were located?”

“Roughly,” he replied.

He picked up the Bible and turned to the
back, showing her a series of glossaries and maps. He came to a map that
represented Israel in biblical times and, adjusting his glasses again, pointed
out six locations.

“Of course,” he said, “these locations
may not be exact, but—”

Her heart started beating hard as she
made a connection that almost seemed too good to be true. She gripped the book
tightly.

“May I take a picture?” she asked.

“Of course,” he replied.

She photographed it with shaking hands.

“Detective, what is it?” he asked,
studying her. “Have I been of help in some way I don’t understand?”

“More than you know,” she said.

When Mackenzie entered the conference
room, the place was abuzz. Nancy sat at her usual spot at the end of the table,
divvying out the most updated reports on the Scarecrow Killer case. Policemen
were taking their seats at the table, murmuring solemnly as if they were
attending a funeral. As Mackenzie wedged her way to the front of the room where
she saw Nelson speaking to another officer, she noticed that she was getting a
lot of looks from the officers she passed. Some were still scowling at her as
they had three days before in this very same room. But (and maybe this was her
imagination) some were looking at her with genuine interest and, dare she say
it, respect.

Nelson saw her coming and ended his
conversation with the other officer right away. He put an arm around her and
turned her away from the crowd that still continued to gather in the room.
“This news,” he said. “Is it going to net us an arrest within the next few
hours?”

“I don’t know,” Mackenzie said. “But it
can certainly narrow our search. It’s going to bring us very close.”

“Then you run this show,” he said. “Can
you do that?”

“Yes,” she said, ignoring the pit of
worry that bubbled up in her stomach.

“Well then, here we go,” he said. With
that, he turned to face the room and slapped his meaty hands down on the table
several times. “Okay, everybody,” he shouted. “Take a seat and zip your
mouths,” he said. “Mackenzie has a break in the case and you’ll give her your
full attention. Save any questions until she’s done.”

To Mackenzie’s surprise, Nelson took one
of the remaining chairs against the wall, pushed away from the large conference
table. He looked to her and that was when she realized that it was all on her.
Maybe it was a test or maybe Nelson was just at the end of his rope. Either
way, this was her chance to grab this precinct by the balls and prove her
worth.

She looked out to the room and saw
Porter sitting among the faces. He gave her a quick smile, almost like he
wanted to ensure no one else saw it. It was probably the sweetest thing he’d
ever done for her and she found that Porter was starting to surprise her at
every turn.

“I revisited one of the crime scenes
this morning,” Mackenzie explained. “While the visit itself did not reveal the
break, it led me straight to it. As many of you know, each post the killer has
strapped the women to has had two code-like groupings of letters and numbers:
N511 and J202. After speaking with a pastor earlier today, I discovered that
these are references to Numbers 5:11 and Joshua 20:2.

“The Numbers passage talks about an Old
Testament approach to adultery. Any adulterous woman was brought to the priests
and given what were called bitter waters. The thought was that the blessed
water would curse adulterous women and would not affect a pure woman. In
essence, it was the church’s way of judging or accusing women thought to be
unclean.

“As for the reference to Joshua, that
passage refers to Cities of Refuge—cities that men could escape to if they had
accidentally committed murder or killed to protect themselves, their families,
or their people. In these Cities of Refuge, the murdered could not be
prosecuted. In fact, it is said in the passage that all men residing in a City
of Refuge would be spared from the avenger of blood.

“Now, according to the pastor I spoke
with, there were six of the cities. And that leads me to believe that there are
going to be at least three more murders.”

“Why is that?” Nelson asked,
disregarding his earlier rule of keeping all questions for the end.

“I believe the killer is killing these
women to use them as a representation of each City of Refuge. And, as he is
killing them, he believes he is taking on the role of the avenger of blood.
More than that, he is, in a sense, building a city.”

The room fell silent for a moment as
they waited for her to explain. She turned to the wall behind her where a
well-used whiteboard had recently been cleaned. She grabbed a marker and drew a
crude map from memory, sketching out the map Pastor Simms had showed her in the
church.

“These are the rough locations of the
six cities,” she said, placing large dots along her crude map. They made a
crude oval shape, each city almost the same distance from one another.

“Now, if you were to take a map of the
area containing the sites where we have found each of the bodies,” she said,
“it would resemble this almost exactly.”

Right away, Nancy started typing
something into her computer at the back of the table. Without looking up from
her screen, she said, “I’ll bring up a map,” she said. “Lights, please.”

The officer closest to the light switch
hit the lights while another flipped on the projector that sat in the middle of
the cluttered conference table. Mackenzie stepped to the side to allow the
light to shine directly on the dry erase board.

Nancy had brought up the same map that
was attached to the reports that she had handed out earlier. It showed each
highway, secondary road, and town within a one-hundred-fifty-mile radius. On
the map, three Xs had been placed where each of the victims had been found.

“While the locations don’t line up
perfectly,” Mackenzie said, “they are extremely close in proximity. What this
means is that if this isn’t simply a coincidence—and at this point, I think
it’s clear that it is
not
—then we can pinpoint the rough location of
where the next crime scene might be.”

“How do we know which order he’ll go
in?” one of the officers at the table asked. “If there are three remaining, is
there any guarantee he’s going on geographical order?”

“No, there’s no guarantee,” Mackenzie
admitted. “But so far, that’s been the case.”

“And are we still unsure about
how
he’s selecting the victims?” Porter asked.

“That’s being checked as we speak,” Mackenzie
said. “We have men checking in with the three strip clubs in that hundred-mile
radius. But I think we also need to assume that he wouldn’t look beyond
prostitutes as well.”

“What about these
bitter waters
?”
someone else asked. “What kind of water is that?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Mackenzie said.
“But we’ve already informed the coroner to check the stomach contents of the
victims to see if there is anything out of the ordinary: poisons, chemicals,
anything like that. I personally believe that it could just be holy water and
if that’s the case, it will be impossible to pinpoint it.”

“You mean blessed water doesn’t glow
magically?” another officer asked. There were a few chuckles around the table.

“Hey,” Nelson said, taking the front of
the room again. He went to the board and grabbed a red marker. He circled the
phantom area on the projected map that seemed to align the best with the fourth
city on the map Mackenzie had drawn.

“I’m putting White in charge of locking
down this area right here,” he said. “I want at least eight available men out
there within the next hour to take a survey of the place. Get a lay of the
land, learn the roads, and stay on patrol within the area until you hear
otherwise from me. Nancy, I need you to get on the phone with the State PD and
request the use of a helicopter to sweep the area.”

“Yes, sir,” Nancy said.

“Another thing,” Mackenzie said.
“Unmarked cars only. The last thing we want is to tip this guy off.”

Nelson considered this and she could
tell something about it irritated him. “Well, with only four unmarked cars,
that limits us. So I’m allowing patrol cars, but not to be parked or
stationary. Now, with everything we now know, there’s no excuse to not catch
this guy before a fourth woman has to die. Any questions?”

No one said anything as everyone within
the room got to their feet. There was a tingle of excitement in the air that Mackenzie
could almost feel like a physical presence. Officers started to file out
eagerly, sensing that the end of this wretched case was upon them. She knew the
mentality; at this point, anyone could potentially have the chance to arrest
the suspect. Although someone else (in this case, her) had made the connections
and presented them with an endgame solution, it was anybody’s ballgame now.

As Mackenzie headed for the door, Nelson
stopped her. “That’s some damn fine work, Mackenzie. And I’ll tell you
something else, too: Ellington was singing your praises when he got back to Quantico.
I got a call from his director and they were complimenting you.”

“Thanks.”

“Now if I could just keep you from
chasing down overweight online journalists and scaring the hell out of them, I
think you’d have a promising career ahead of you. That Pope creep has had two
different lawyers calling after you. I don’t think he’s going to leave this
alone.”

“Sorry, Chief,” she said, meaning it.

“Well, push that to the back burner,”
Nelson said. “For now, let’s concentrate on catching this killer. Journalists
are almost as bad but at least Ellis Pope isn’t stringing women up by poles and
beating them to death.”

She cringed internally at how lightheartedly
Nelson was referring to the victims. It reminded her that, even in the midst of
a sudden and unexpected stream of confidence and praise from the man, he was
the same creature of habit he had been when she had first started working under
him.

“And if it’s okay with you,” he said,
“I’m driving up with you. If I’ve put you in charge of this scene, I’d like to
be your wingman.”

“Sure,” she said, instantly hating the
idea.

As they walked out of the conference
room, she looked around for Porter. It was funny in an ironic sort of way how
much she’d prefer to share a car with Porter as this case drew to a close.
Maybe it was familiarity or just the fact that she still felt like Nelson was a
little too much of a chauvinist to take her seriously, despite praises from the
FBI.

But Porter had gotten lost in the
shuffle and excitement as everyone had filed out of the conference room. She
did not see him in the hallway as she stopped by her office to retrieve her
badge and gun and he was nowhere to be found in the parking lot.

Nelson met her at the car and it wasn’t
even a question of who would drive. He instantly got behind the wheel and
seemed very impatient as he waited for her to get into the passenger seat and
buckle her seat belt. She did her best to hide her irritation but thought it
really didn’t matter. Nelson was so caught up in the prospect of catching the
Scarecrow Killer that she was basically an afterthought—just the cog in the
mostly man-driven machine that had brought them this far.

Suddenly, Ellington’s suggestion of
trying to get into the FBI seemed more appealing than ever.

“Ready to catch this asshole?” Nelson
asked as they pulled out of the parking lot behind two patrol cars.

Mackenzie bit at her bottom lip to hide
the sarcastic smile that tried to spread there and said:

“More than you know.”