The Psalmist (17 page)

 

Chapter 29

B
Y THE TIME
the Homicide Task Force gathered around the conference room table at four-­fifteen, the skies were swollen with snow clouds. The forecast now was four to six inches, beginning early in the evening as flurries and continuing through the night, with much of it expected to melt away the next afternoon.

There were eight ­people in the conference room this time, besides Hunter. State's Attorney Wendell Stamps sat at the head of the table. Also present were state police homicide detectives Ben Shipman and Sonny Fischer; Sheriff's Deputy Barry Stilfork; the sheriff's public information officer, Kirsten Sparks; Tidewater Police Chief Arthur Law, an honorary member of the task force; and state's attorney investigator Clinton Fogg. Hunter's boss, Henry Moore, was also in the room—­still solidly but quietly supportive.

“Okay,” Hunter said. “We have an ID now on Jane Doe. Her name is Kwan Park. K-­W-­A-­N. P-­A-­R-­K. She lived in Sharonville, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, for the past five months.”

Hunter went on, careful about what she said and how she answered questions. She wanted this to be about the victim, she'd decided, not a serial killer. Not yet. Not in this company. Saying anything in front of Barry Stilfork was the same as saying it in front of the sheriff. That information wasn't for this group, it was for the FBI. But in her own thoughts, Hunter was working through puzzles. Over the past several hours she'd begun looking at the case differently.
Who were these four ­people who'd been killed, and what, if anything, connected them?
Would knowing the identity of one now cast light on the identities of the others?

“Ms. Park worked as night manager at the Sharonville Quik Gas store since early October,” she said. “We're still gathering information on her background prior to that.

“She was not reported as a missing person, evidently, because no one considered her missing. She had told a coworker, a neighbor, and her supervisor a week before she was found that she was going to visit family in Korea for two months. She was supposedly driving to Cincinnati, with plans to fly to JFK. And from there, to Seoul, South Korea. Her coworkers assumed she had already left the country. So far we have no record of airline reservations in that name.

“Kwan Park was evidently a very private individual. She rented a three-­bedroom house in a nice part of town. Drove a leased Mercedes C350. At this point the car's unaccounted for. Her house, we're told, was immaculate. Designer-­furnished. Almost like she didn't live there.

“We haven't yet been able to locate family or any contacts in Korea. But we will,” Hunter said. “The contact names she gave her employer—­so far, at least—­do not check out. Again, there aren't a lot of known details at this point about the woman's personal life.

“And, we don't know what she was doing in Maryland, either at Oyster Creek or at the church.”

Except, perhaps, for Jackson Pynne
. Hunter wasn't going to stress that, but she'd decided she would mention it. Otherwise it might look—­later—­like she was concealing something. She glanced at State's Attorney Wendell Stamps before going on.

“There is one connection we know of with this county,” she said. “One of the former co-­owners of the Quik Gas corporation has a summer rental property here. His name is Jackson Pynne. Some of you know the name, I'm sure.”

Several of those in the room exchanged looks.

“Is he a suspect?” asked Kirsten Sparks. Momentarily, she stopped chewing gum.

“No. Not at this time,” Hunter said. “We're attempting to reach him. That is on the QT at this point, okay? His name should not be mentioned to the media or to anyone else until after we've located him.”

“So, is he considered a suspect?” Sparks asked again.

“It's too early to label anyone a suspect,” Hunter said. “It's really not a relevant question at this time. We're still gathering information.”

She began to chew again. “What's the nature of his involvement, then? Do we know?”

“Just as I said. He was a partner in the corporation, but sold out his interest last year. And, again, that's
not
to be released.” She looked at Fisch and Ship. “He's someone we need to find and talk with.”

“And she was manager of this store?” Sparks said.

“Night manager.”

Sparks kept watching Hunter as if they were the only two in the room. “How was she able to live so well if she was working in a convenience store? I don't get that.”

“Or why was she working in a convenience store if she was able to live so well?” Hunter said. “We don't know yet. It's one of the things we'll be looking at.”

“How much of this
are
we going to release, then?” Sparks asked.

She was looking at the state's attorney now, not Amy Hunter.

“We announce that she's been identified,” Hunter said. “Name, age, address. Place of employment. Make and license tag of the car. That's all. Nothing else at this point.”

“Okay, but why
was
she in Tidewater?” Sparks said, again eyeing Hunter. “I mean,
that
's what the media's going to ask.”

“Yes. And as I just mentioned, we don't have the answer yet. We have no comment on that.” Hunter was reminded then of the pastor's sermon about questions and answers.
What we want we often don't get: simple answers to complicated questions.

“Except we believe she was probably en route to somewhere else. Right?” Sparks said.

“No,” Hunter said. “There's nothing to indicate that. The car is missing. We issue the make and license tag of the car but that's all. And that's all we have for the media at this point.”

A
FTER
THE PRESS
conference, Hunter retrieved the voice-­mail messages from her office. She'd missed a call from the FBI in Washington just minutes earlier. But it wasn't John Marcino, the profiler she had called. It was Special Investigator Dave Crowe, a man she'd worked with, and known, years earlier. Hunter felt a strange mix of apprehension and excitement as she prepared to call him back.

 

Chapter 30

S
HE WAS
WALKING
through the late afternoon shadows, her collar up against the wind, when Agent Crowe came on the line.

He greeted her familiarly—­“Hi, Hunter”—­although it'd been probably seven years since they had spoken. “We just got the news,” he said, “on your Jane Doe ID. We'll have a team coming out.”

“Really? Why?” He couldn't know about the numbers, could he? The release had said nothing about Kwan Park being connected to other homicides. Did the FBI already know this? No, it was more likely that John Marcino had passed her message on to him. Although it was odd that Marcino hadn't called first.

“I'll fill you in when we get there,” Crowe said.

Hunter started her car, shifting to reverse. She'd known Dave Crowe during training at the FBI Academy in Quantico. Four years her senior, Crowe had been something of a mentor to her. They'd gone out a few times, to dinner and twice to the movies, although it was over a long period of time and she'd never considered it dating. They'd both been seeing other ­people at the time, which Crowe didn't consider a problem. Hunter did. Ironically, it was
her
relationship that had broken off, not his. He'd gotten married to the woman he was dating then; as far as she knew, they were still together.

“You're coming
here
with a team?”

“Right, I will be. I'll call you once I get on the road.”

T
HE SNOW BEGAN
just before dusk, flurries mixed with light rain at first, quickly becoming a veil of thick wet flakes. Hunter had printed out the four Psalms verses in fourteen-­point type and tacked them to the corkboard above the desk in her study. Beside them was a map of the mid-­Atlantic states, with notes pinned to the four locations where the killer had left calling cards.

Saturday, March 2, Central Virginia, John Doe

Tuesday, March 6, Bridge County, West Virginia, Jane Doe

Friday, March 10, Delaware, Jane Doe

Tuesday, March 14, Tidewater County, Jane Doe, now ID'd as Kwan Park

Would there be more? The pattern revealed an interval of four days between killings, although there hadn't been one on March 18, at least not that they were aware of. It also told her that the killer appeared to be nocturnal. All of the killings had occurred in the middle of the night. Two or three o'clock in the morning, probably.

Hunter didn't recognize the caller ID number when her phone rang shortly after seven, so she let the voice mail pick up. It was Crowe: “I'm on my way out now, Hunter. I thought maybe we should meet.”

“Hey,” she said, picking up.

“Hi, Hunter.”

She wasn't sure how to address him:
Dave
?
Agent Crowe
? Or just
Crowe
? She'd never really gotten the knack of using last names.

“Look,” he said, “I don't know if you're in for the evening or what. But it might not be a bad idea if we met and talked about it tonight. This is all moving very quickly.”

“What's moving quickly?”

“As I said earlier, I can't get into it over the phone. Tomorrow's probably going to be a zoo, though.”

This felt familiar—­and familiarly disorienting: Crowe alluding to some pressing offstage drama, probably exaggerating its importance. Hunter tried to decide if she could trust him—­and also wondered a little if she could trust herself.

He'd be staying at the Old Shore Inn, about twenty miles from her place at the marina. If she wanted to stop by, they could discuss it tonight.

“Why a zoo in the morning?”

“The press, for one thing. They're probably a day behind us, two days at the most. And that gap will certainly tighten by the a.m. There are a lot of moving parts to this thing and I'm afraid it may blow up quickly.”

“Why are you interested in what happened here?”

“We're interested in Kwan Park. But I'm not going to get into it now,” he said. “I spoke with your sheriff briefly, by the way. Earlier. Sounds like quite an interesting place there.” She could hear the wink in his voice. “We meet for a drink, I can lay the groundwork for you. Otherwise, we do it tomorrow morning with everyone else present. Your call.”

Hunter turned to the window, surprised to see the snow coming so thick, slanting against the marina lights. No, she thought, it wouldn't be particularly smart to get on the road now, at the start of what was predicted to be a substantial overnight snowfall.

“I
THINK
I
'LL
go check the doors at the church,” Luke Bowers said.

“And windows.”

“Those, too.” He looked out at the snow, moonlit through the birch and pine woods. “I just need to go over the books for a few minutes. Fix all the things that Aggie straightened out for me.”

Charlotte gave him a faux scold. “Be nice. We need to invite her over sometime.”

“You're right. Let's do that soon.”

Luke looked at his wife and felt a ripple of affection as he turned to go. She was one of the most naturally kind ­people he'd ever known, despite her inherent inwardness; it was never something she had to work at the way he did. Once, Charlotte had told him,
If you can't be happy, be kind. Happy will follow.
He had slipped those words into a sermon a few days later, even though he worried some in the congregation would find them corny. But the church members seemed to unanimously love it; some still repeated it as if it were a famous biblical passage.

The drive along the bay road was lovely, the snow dense to his left, already sticking in the farm fields and sparse woods, swirling to his right out over the Chesapeake.

He parked in the gravel lot under the overhang and ran into the offices, entering through Aggie's work space. He flicked the lights on and walked down the long corridor linking the offices and sanctuary, breathing the warmer, musty air. Entering the church through the choir door, he left the lights off, then sat in the front row and watched the stream of snow patterns on the walls and across the floor and the rows of pews. He loved the effects of snow through the rear windows and stained glass of this old building. It always stirred dormant feelings, reminded him of how it felt to walk into falling snow as a child, to soak in the quiet dignity of all that nature. In a sense, that was what his work was all about, he'd told Charlotte—­trying to recapture the sense of joy and wonder that we surrender to adulthood.

Luke was aware of another presence in the sanctuary this evening, though. The thing that had invaded Tidewater County almost a week ago was still here. A certain kind of evil. He turned his head toward the place where he had discovered Kwan Park's body, hunched over the pew back, facing the altar. He watched the cascade of snow through the second-­story rear windows as the old building moaned and its shutters thunked faintly. And he saw a long arc of light flash across the south wall like a shooting star.

What was
that
?

Luke stood up and listened, hearing the rafters strain in the wind.

A minute later he heard something else, louder and more deliberate.

Knocking.

Someone was banging on the front doors of the church building.

He stepped back through the choir entrance in the dark, and the knocking came again, harder. An insistent, muffled
bap-­bap-­bap.

Luke stopped several feet from the doors, wondering if he'd remembered to lock them. He saw the handle jiggle back and forth.

The knocks came again. A question being asked. He reached toward the door and opened it.