Annalisa dashed out the front door in such a hurry that she failed to notice that Colin was right behind her until he climbed into her car. “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded as she started the engine.
“What the hell are you doing? Some guy who’s maybe a serial killer called you up and you take off by yourself after him? I don’t think so.”
“I never said I was going by myself.”
“Then you won’t mind me tagging along.” He buckled himself in and she held back a frustrated scream. There was no way to drag him physically from the vehicle. She could drive him to the nearest station and have him arrested for interference, but then she would have to explain where she was going and why. Don’t tell anyone but me what you find, Zimmer had said. And Nick’s warning: What if it’s a cop? Maybe Lora Fitz’s statement had simply been misfiled amid the reams of paper generated on this case, but until she knew for sure who was foe and who was friend, she wasn’t going to broadcast her actions over the open police radio.
“Fine,” she said to Colin through a clenched jaw as she jammed the stick into gear. “But you do exactly what I tell you.”
He held up his palms. “Yes, ma’am.”
She roared down the street and hit the button on the wheel to call the one cop she knew she could trust with this latest development. He sounded sleepy when he answered. “Yeah?”
“Nick, it’s Annalisa. I need you to meet me right away at St. Thecla’s Church in Norwood Park. I’m en route now.”
“Why? What’s going on?” She could hear him pulling on jeans.
She told him briefly about her latest mysterious phone conversation and the caller’s mention of the specific church. “All that talk about the importance of the unexpected gifts,” she said. “I’m thinking he may have left something there.”
“Maybe. Seems a little thin to me.”
“Carelli. It’s my church, the one I went to when I was a kid. My parents still attend.”
“I’m on my way,” he replied, plainly convinced. “Do not get out of the car until you see me pull up. Understand? For all we know, this is a trap to lure you out there alone.”
“Not really his style. Besides, I’m not alone.” She looked sideways at Colin, who was openly eavesdropping on the conversation. “See you when we get there.”
Colin sat with his fingers clenched around his legs. “When you said there were new developments in the case, you didn’t tell me this guy was calling you to chat.”
“We don’t know for sure it’s him. We can’t trace the calls to a specific person.” She hesitated a beat. “But he has made contact with detectives on the case in the past, so it wouldn’t be shocking if he decided to do it again.” Someone had walked right up to Don Harrigan’s desk in the middle of the day to plant the crime scene photo, someone who drew absolutely no attention to himself. Who better to blend in at a cop shop than one wearing a badge? It would be easy to know when to tweak the detectives if you had a front-row seat to the investigation.
Colin looked out at the passing scenery, his face blank. “The old neighborhoods look just the same. The houses, the trees. Jimmy’s Pizza is still back there on the corner with the same neon orange sign. I used to ride my bike down here. Hey, it’s the Superdawg. Remember that was our first date?”
Of course she remembered. How could she forget? She’d driven past the drive-in hot dog stand a thousand times since he’d gone away. “Colin.”
“Hmm?” He didn’t look at her. He remained fixated on the parks, the buildings, and the old storefronts, scrutinizing them as if they were an alien landscape.
“I thought you should know—I can see all the files now from your mom’s case, and they fill a whole room. They went after this guy with everything they had.” It had surprised her, how touching it was to see the boxes and binders and piles of paper, all of which translated to thousands of hours spent in Katie’s defense. Annalisa hadn’t realized how much her perceptions of the mishandling had been colored by Pops and his friends, grieving and angry at how they were sidelined from the investigation. Just because the cops in her life hadn’t been working the case didn’t mean that others hadn’t sweated every detail. Only now she did have to wonder if they’d missed the devil walking beside them the whole time.
“Yeah? That’s nice, I guess.” He finally looked at her again, shifting restlessly in his seat. “I used to fantasize that I could catch him. I’d make him beg for his life while I held a gun on him, and then just when he thought it was over, I’d shoot him twice. Once in the head for Dad and once in the heart for Mom. It got so I’d dream about it, and I’d wake up shaking from the fury.”
He turned his face to the window again.
“The thing is,” he continued eventually, “I never knew what he looked like. He was just some faceless guy dressed in black, and no matter how much I would scream at him to look at me, he would never come into focus. I had the gun in my hand but I still felt totally helpless. It didn’t matter how many times I killed him off because I never got what I wanted.”
She tightened her grip on the wheel. Maybe we’ll get him now, she wanted to say, but she knew how hollow the promise would sound after twenty years. “I know other details now that I’ve seen the files,” she said. “Stuff held back from the press.”
He didn’t have to guess. “She was pregnant when she died.”
“Did you know?”
He shook his head slowly. “No, my father told me after. They hadn’t been trying. In fact, they didn’t think they could have any other kids since it’d been years since they had me. He told me how happy they were, but I think it was just him. I don’t think she wanted the baby.”
“Why do you say that?”
“A couple of weeks before her death, I heard her crying in the bathroom. I should’ve knocked, I should’ve asked what was wrong, but I just felt all awkward and ran back out of the house like I was never there. I know she was thinking of going to design school. She got the bug when I started looking at colleges, and she started looking too. Dad wasn’t thrilled about paying for it, but he didn’t tell her no, either. A baby would’ve definitely messed with that plan. If you look at the pictures from the party that night, you can see it in her eyes, how sad she was about everything. I just … looked the other way, I guess.”
Annalisa gunned the car through a red light. Late Sunday night after a big storm, they had the wet roads mostly to themselves. She knew she should make sympathetic noises at Colin, but the defeat in his voice made her skin hot and itchy. No, she wanted to say, it wasn’t like that. Katie would never have stayed unhappy. A new baby was a blessing, and their tight-knit families would have found a way to make it work. It was the killer who came and tore everything apart.
The square tower of St. Thecla’s came into view, its spire stretching into the sky like an antenna. The church itself sat mostly dark and silent. Annalisa glided her car to a stop out front and peered at the shadowed grounds surrounding the old church. The trees, fresh from the storm, quivered their wet leaves in the remaining breeze, glinting from the harsh white light of the lone streetlamp. There was a faint glow through the giant stained glass windows that took up most of the front wall, suggesting perhaps someone was inside. She did not see any sign of Nick.
“Well?” Colin asked as she twisted first one way and then the other in her seat. “What are we looking for?”
“I’m not sure yet. Maybe nothing. Wait, hold on.” She detected movement close to the building. She leaned across his body for a better look and saw it again—a shadow that could be a man creeping along behind the hedge. “Stay here.”
“Anna, don’t—”
She clicked the car door shut on the rest of his protest and took out her gun, staying low as she hustled across the manicured lawn toward the trees and hedges on the side of the building. She heard him before she saw him when a twig snapped under his feet. Her heart pounded erratically as she raised her arms. She’d never had to pull a gun on anyone.
Stealthily, she crept in the direction of the sound, her visibility still hampered by the vegetation around the church. She stepped out around a tree trunk and saw him, huge and dressed in dark clothing. He was bent over in the bushes as if planting something, his face obscured. “Stop right there!” She held the gun steady and pointed at his torso. “Police. Raise your arms above your head.”
He jerked in surprise at the sound of her voice and drew himself up to his full height. In the dark, she still couldn’t make out his face. He twitched and her finger started to press on the trigger. “I said don’t move!” she commanded, and the man obeyed. She licked her lips, preparing to tell him to come out and lie down on the pavement where she could cuff and search him. But just then, behind her, a woman started to scream.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” The hysterical woman came running up behind her.
“Ma’am, step back!” Annalisa ordered, her gun and her eyes still trained on the suspect.
“But Detective Vega, that’s my boyfriend,” the woman said as she ran in front of the gun. “Please don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt Travis.”
The use of her name penetrated the adrenaline buzz humming in Annalisa’s ears. She recognized this woman, she realized. “Molly?”
“Yes, Molly Lipinski. Don’t shoot Travis. He wasn’t hurting anything, I swear.”
“Come out of there,” Annalisa instructed the man sharply. She lowered her weapon but didn’t put it away. He stepped forward into the light, and she saw that Molly was correct. The prowler was her boyfriend, Travis. “What are you doing trespassing on private property?”
“I got an email a few hours ago from someone calling himself Alexander Pichushkin. He said if the Grave Diggers wanted to know who killed Grace, we should come to this church tonight and God would reveal the answer.”
Travis nodded in agreement. “That’s what the email said. I read it when Molly showed me, but of course I wasn’t going to let her come out here by herself.”
“Barnes and Oliver and Chris all got the email too. We argued about whether to come.”
“You didn’t call the police?”
Molly put a hand on her hip. “The email said God was going to tell us who killed Grace. You think the police would take that seriously?”
“But you did.”
Molly and Travis traded a significant look, and Molly shoved her hands inside her windbreaker. “Alexander Pichushkin is the name of a Russian serial killer. We figured we had to at least check it out. If we found anything of value, then we would have called the police.”
“Well, did you find anything?” Annalisa couldn’t hold back her impatience.
“Nothing,” Travis said. “Just a bunch of wet flowers.”
Annalisa turned her head and saw Nick had appeared, and he wasn’t alone. He walked with a lean African American man, and Barnes rolled alongside in his wheelchair. Colin had joined the parade, bringing up the rear. “I found these two poking around on the west side of the building,” Nick said, indicating Barnes and the other man. “Meet Oliver Benton.”
He inclined his head. “Pleased to meet you, Detective.”
“I assume they told you the same story about the email,” Annalisa said to Nick.
“Barnes was kind enough to show me on his phone,” Nick replied as Barnes waved his Android. “It checks out.”
“Great,” Annalisa muttered. “The gang’s all here.”
“Everyone except Chris,” Nick answered.
“He thought it was a hoax,” Oliver explained.
Molly cleared her throat. “He thought it was Doug being a dick again.”
“Doug?” asked Annalisa.
“My ex. He was in the group for a while, but he got kicked out when we broke up.”
“No one was sorry to see him go,” Barnes told her. “The guy’s a pompous a-hole.” He looked up at Molly. “No offense.”
“Hey, I’ve called him worse,” she said, and Travis put an arm around her.
Annalisa gestured at Nick and stepped to the side with him. He nudged her and glanced back to where Colin stood around awkwardly with the Grave Diggers. “You brought a date with you?”
“He’s not my date. That’s Colin Duffy, Katie’s son. He just got into town a few hours ago and happened to be with me when my secret admirer phoned. I don’t know what this little stunt is all about, but I don’t like it.”
Nick kept his voice low and his back to their audience. “It’s got to be the same guy, right? The one who called you and the one who sent that email. Otherwise, how would we all end up in the same place?”
“The question is why. What’s the point of this?”
“If it was an ambush, we’d be dead by now.” He looked around at the shadowed grounds. A fine mist hung over everything, and the breeze stirred the trees. “Maybe he just wanted to get us all wet.”
“It would be great if it were that simple, but I think we should search the place just to be sure. I’ll check inside.”
He grabbed her arm when she started to move. “Not alone.”
“C’mon, Carelli. I’m hardly alone.” She waved an arm in the direction of their impromptu search party. “And someone needs to stay with them.”
“Whoever this guy is, he’s not phoning me up for a heart-to-heart.” He shook his head, resolute. “You’re not leaving my sight, Vega. For all we know, this is still a trap.”
“Fine.” She heaved a sigh. “Then let’s all go.” If by some remote chance the killer was lurking inside, he couldn’t possibly grab them all. “Listen up,” she said to the group. “We’re going to take a look around inside the church. You’ll come with us, but stay behind me and Detective Carelli and don’t enter the building until we say so. Are we clear?”
“I can help if you need it,” Travis said, and pulled back his jacket to reveal a semiautomatic handgun strapped to his belt.
“Whoa, what’s that?” Annalisa said.
“It’s legal, and I know how to use it. I was in the army for four years.”
“I don’t care if you’re Secret Service or God’s own body man. Give it here.” She held out a hand for the gun, but Travis bristled.
“I don’t have to give it to you.”
“If you want to see the inside of the church, you hand it over. Otherwise, you can wait out here with my partner while we check it out.”
“I’m going with Molly,” he insisted.
She waggled the fingers of her outstretched hand. “Then that makes your decision real easy, now, doesn’t it?” She wasn’t about to have him freaking out over a shadow and then shooting up a hundred-year-old stained glass window. Reluctantly, he took the gun out from his belt and handed it to her. She slipped it into her holster. “You can have it back when we’re done. Now, let’s go.”
The group went to the front of the building and up the concrete steps. Oliver pushed Barnes up the ramp at the side. Annalisa tried the heavy door and it opened with a loud creak. “I’ll go first,” she told them. Her weapon drawn, she slipped inside, keeping her back against the stone wall. When she saw no one immediately apparent in the giant sanctuary, she whispered back to Nick. “Clear.”
He entered with his weapon at the ready, and the rest of the group trailed in behind him. Annalisa regarded the rows of long wooden pews that ran the length of the room. How many Sundays had she sat here, itching in her frilly dress, being shushed and reminded not to kick the pew in front of her while the priest droned on and on? She felt the eyes of the saints on her, their faces watching from the rafters as she walked down the main aisle toward the altar. It was lit by recessed lamps, beamed as though from the heavens.
“This is creepy,” someone murmured behind her.
“Shh!” Annalisa halted and held up her arm. “Do you hear that?” Faint music played from somewhere, but the direction was difficult to place in the cavernous hall.
“It’s Brahms’s ‘Lullaby,’” Oliver offered after a few moments.
Annalisa took another step, paused to listen, then walked a bit more. The group shuffled behind her as she hunted the source of the music. She reached the marble steps leading up to the broad altar and mounted them slowly, one by one. “There,” she murmured, pointing. The group closed in around her, and they all inspected her find: an ornate silver music box with its lid propped open.
“Oh my God,” Molly said, covering her mouth with her hands. “That’s Grace’s. Her grandma left it to her.”
“Look,” whispered Barnes, pointing overhead, and Annalisa tilted her head back to see. In the shadows among the rafters, hanging down and swaying gently back and forth, was a noose.
“What’s that hanging from it?” Nick asked, shining his flashlight up to see. The beam caught one bulging white eye peering back down at them. “Is it…? Is that a frog?”
“It’s Filmore,” Annalisa replied as she stared at it in horror. “He’s my frog. This guy has been to my house.”