28

On the way back to headquarters, Mills receives a series of text messages from Jan Powell, each one of mounting importance, too many to respond to; instead he sends one group text to the squad indicating it’s time to reconvene. They’re waiting for him in the conference room when he gets off the elevator. He walks in and says, “Jan.” “Good afternoon, Detective.”

“Fill us in.”

“The lab has completed as conclusive an analysis of prints as we can get at this point,” she says. “From the residence, we have prints from the victim and the maid, who volunteered her prints when we asked. We also have two extra sets of prints that, right now, can’t be identified. Nothing shows up in the databases.”

“One could be Bennett’s,” Mills suggests. “But they could be anybody’s. A worker. A visitor. Who the fuck knows?”

“From the vault, we have one fresh set of prints. It does match one of the sets from the residence,” Powell says, her inflection cresting. “So, I’m guessing Bennett. We know he visited the vault the day of the break-in.”

Preston says, “Right. He was legally in the vault that day. But we have no evidence he was there later that night during the break-in. Unless his prints show up on the explosives.”

“I think we can safely assume there were gloves involved with the explosives,” Powell tells them. “Scottsdale tells me all they could recover was one print.”

“What about surveillance video?” Mills asks.

“One camera was down,” she replies.

“Down? Are you kidding me?” Mills groans.

“Yes. Down. Sabotaged. But there was another camera, and Scottsdale says that once they enhance the video, they’ll probably be able to make out a few plates in the alley behind the gallery.”

Mills nods. “Good,” he says.

“I also texted you about Aaliyah Jones,” she says, as if he needs a reminder, which he doesn’t.

“The floor’s still yours,” Mills tells her.

“The last ping from her phone was picked up around one-thirty Wednesday morning at 44th Street and Thomas. I got the registration for the car and asked the precinct over there to search the area. About an hour ago, they found a vehicle with the exact description and tag parked at an abandoned rental car lot on Thomas, just west of 44th.” “Where’s it now?” Mills asks.

“I asked them to get it on a flatbed over to impound.”

“Let the lab know,” he tells her. “I want it processed like we would any other crime scene.”

Preston says he’s checked all the area hospitals. “Nothing there.” “I’ll get with our friends in Missing and Unidentified,” Mills says. “We need her description and her photo out there, across as many agencies as possible. And I think we’re going to have to enlist the media . . .” “You sound ecstatic about that,” Powell says.

“I’m not, but we got to get this out there. I’ll hit up Grady and he can push something out tonight or tomorrow morning.”

“What about her own TV station?” Preston asks.

Mills cups the air. “What about them? There’s no saying how much, if any, they’re sharing with the other media in town,” he explains. “Might be a good idea for me to drop by her station tomorrow.”

Myers yawns operatically and says, “Excuse me. Sorry.”

And Mills says, “Are we keeping you up, Morty?”

Myers shakes his head.

“Good,” Mills tells him. “Because it’s time for columns.” He turns to the whiteboard and creates two columns, one with the header “Viveca,” the other with the header “Aaliyah.”

“What the hell does that name even mean?” Myers grumbles. He’s been grumbling a lot since he’s been on a low-carb diet. It’s not surprising given the reddish hue of his neck that he’d be grumbling about a name that sounds more exotic than, say, Ann.

“Google it, Morty,” Mills barks. “But for now, let’s list what we know about the two women.”

The lists look like this:

Viveca	Aaliyah
Dead	Missing
Mother of two	Family life unclear
Socialite/Philanthropist	Reporter, Channel 4
Art Collector	Investigating Church of Angels
Church of Angels Rising Member/	Rising
Board of Directors	Church of Angels Rising Member
Planning to leave Phoenix	Church of Angels Rising Member
with preacher’s wife	Vehicle recovered
Changing will
The Key

“For all we know,” Mills says, “Viveca was Aaliyah’s prime source about the church.”

Powell shakes her head. “Didn’t she tell you that Viveca declined to comment?”

Mills nods. “Yeah. That’s what she said. But reporters are rarely inclined to reveal their sources and even less inclined to divulge what sources tell them . . .”

“Even to solve a murder?” Powell asks.

“Even to solve a murder,” Preston affirms. “Trust me, they have their own set of rules.”

Powell harrumphs and folds her arms across her chest.

“Let’s say Viveca wasn’t the primary source for Aaliyah’s story,” Mills surmises. “But maybe she supplied her with a list of other sources. A way to get the truth out without being the one to tell it . . .”

He looks around the room. Nobody reacts. He sees ambivalence in Powell’s eyes. Introspection in Preston’s. Images of Twinkies in Myers’s. Then Preston mumbles something as he comes back to life. “OK,” he says, “if Viveca was at all involved with the reporter’s investigation, it’s possible the church had her killed to shut down the whole thing.”

“Only if we’re looking for direct cause and effect,” Mills reminds them. “But it’s possible we have two parallel cases. Maybe the motive to kill Viveca had something to do with the church but not necessarily something she told Aaliyah Jones.”

“Well that brings us back to square zero,” Myers growls.

“No, it doesn’t,” Mills says. “I want you to keep searching Viveca’s emails. I want to see every one that went back and forth between her and the reporter. And I want to see every email that passed between Viveca and Francesca Norwood.”

Mills describes his visit with the preacher’s wife at the Desert Charm. He shares what she disclosed about her pending separation from the preacher and her plans to relocate with Viveca Canning to French Polynesia. “I think the biggest news flash to come out of the meeting was this: Francesca told us that Viveca was leaving the church to reconnect with her daughter. That’s a big deal. But Ms. Norwood was cagey about everything else, and perhaps not fully forthcoming,” he tells the squad. “There has to be more we can find out in their digital footprint.”

“I’m on it,” Myers says. Anything digital and the man froths at the mouth. His geekiness about cyber forensics has probably kept him securely employed in Homicide. “We can tell Mrs. Canning thought she was deleting all her emails, but it’s been fairly easy to recover them.” Something doesn’t feel right. Mills sees shadows. He doesn’t understand shadows, how they form, how they drift, whom they hide. But he knows they’re no different than nagging doubts, only darker; they creep instead of nag. The creep rises like a migraine, closes in like a vise. His doubt resides in the Church of Angels Rising. Would Norwood’s organization be so brazen as to conspire to kill? The church would have to be desperate to do something so reckless. What’s confusing about the shadows is that sometimes they reveal just a glimpse of the obvious—yes, the church is in on it—while sowing insidious doubt at the same time. Like an abuser. This is the classic domestic call. And, as usual, it comes down to the wife and her bruises, the visible ones and the ones killing her from within.

As if he’s reading Mills’s mind, Preston says, “I don’t care what Francesca Norwood tells you about the agreed separation. She was fleeing her husband. Or the church. Probably both.”

“I’m guessing Norwood paid her a lot of money to shut her up,” Mills says. “I’m sure she signed a nondisclosure. She has dirt on the church.”

“Of course she has dirt on the church,” Powell says. “She is the church.”

Powell’s not wrong. Mills turns again to the board. He creates a third column. It looks like this:

Church of Angels Rising

Gleason Norwood

Francesca Norwood

Gabriel Norwood (excommunicated)

Viveca Canning (dead)

Husband (dead)

Bennett Canning

Jillian Canning (excommunicated)

Sources for Aaliyah Jones story

Mills draws the lines of certitude from one column to another. As these lines often do, they form a web.