Cole drove to his office after leaving Michele at the Journal Sentinel building. He finished catching up on the reports coming in from their offices in Baton Rouge, Chicago, and DC when his cell phone came to life.
“Huebsch, here.”
“Mornin’ Agent Huebsch. This is Sheriff La Bauve from Red Stick.”
“Hey, Sheriff. Hope your day is off to a better start than yesterday.”
“Don’t see how it could be worse,” La Bauve said. “Neither of my deputies made it. I spent the night with two young wives who both have kids with no daddies now. I never seen so many tears in my whole life. Not ashamed to say I cried a few myself.”
Cole was quiet a moment and thought about how he’d feel if he lost Li, Lane, Ty…, anyone under his watch. He said, “It maybe won’t mean much to you, Sheriff. But I can’t tell you enough how sorry I am. The only other thing I can think to say is that you, your team, and their families are in my prayers.”
It was a few seconds before La Bauve could go on, but it seemed far longer. “It means something, Mr. Cole. It means something.”
Cole could tell the sheriff was composing himself. “I’m calling to tell you we didn’t find any medals or blood at the crime scenes. Most of it was a charred mess, but we picked through everything real good. We ran metal detectors all around the outside of the clinic and had lots of false alarms, but no medal. And not a trace of blood outside the security guard’s. I’m just closing the loop with you.”
“Thanks, sheriff. Please know that I meant it yesterday when I told you to call me if you ever need anything. It’s nice in our line of work to know that you’ve got a friend or two somewhere out there in another area of law enforcement. You never know when you might need them. I feel like maybe I’ve got one now in Baton…ah…Red Stick.”
“That you do,” La Bauve said. “Laissez les bon temps rouler.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘Let the good times roll. Now, go get you a killer.”
Cole had barely set down his cell when his desk phone began chirping. He picked up. “Huebsch, here.”
“Cole, it’s Father Wagner. I’ve been thinking about our conversation yesterday and I’m worried about what I may have started. I don’t know what I can do to stop the killer, but as soon as I get done with this call I plan to pay John Lawler a visit. I’m hoping to talk him into eating again.”
Cole thought of his conversation with the former mayor before answering. “I appreciate the effort, but I think Mr. Lawler has made up his mind. And from what little time I spoke with him, I must say I admire that mind of his. Seems like a good man.”
“A good man who I may have convinced to take his own life,” Wagner said quietly.
Cole knew he couldn’t erase the priest’s feelings of guilt, but maybe he could ease them. “John Lawler is a man of principle, and he’s of sound mind. If you talked him into his hunger strike, you didn’t talk him into something he didn’t already want to do. It doesn’t take much of an introduction for a person to see that Lawler is his own man.”
“Thank you, Cole. I’ll let you get back to your work then.”
“Wait, Father. There’s something I need to ask you. Before I ask it though, I want you to know that I appreciate the way you opened up to me yesterday. You’re a good man and a better priest than you give yourself credit for.”
“What is it, Cole? I don’t think anything will shake me more than I’ve been shaken this past month.”
“Could you tell me if the killer confessed to you?” Cole asked directly. “Would the rules of the Catholic Church allow that?”
“No. They would not. Inside the confessional or on a street corner, if a person confessed the most heinous murder, I could not divulge that to you or anyone else. Not even a serial killer. If I were to break the sacred seal of confession, I would be subject to excommunication from the Church.”
“I see,” Cole said, purposely letting that comment echo between them.
“But it’s a little more nuanced than that,” the priest continued. “If the killer confessed to me that he planned to kill again and mentioned the name of his next victim, then I would call you immediately and tell you who to protect. I couldn’t tell you the name of the killer, but you would know something that could help you. Also, if nothing has been confessed, I can tell you that. And so far, the killer hasn’t confessed to me or reached out to me in any way. You have my word on that.”
“Okay, Father. I appreciate that,” Cole said, meaning it. “And please tell the Lawler family that they’re in my prayers. I find myself saying that a lot more since we talked yesterday.”
“I’ll do that. And thank you for saying that.”
Cole went back to the reports and finished them without learning anything new, except that the techs found nothing useful at Michele’s condo. The row of arborvitae ran under a clogged rain gutter and a hard sheet of ice along the side of the building prevented useable boot prints. The building had exterior cameras on the exits, but the killer had avoided them. Cole scrolled through his emails, replying where he needed to. His door was ajar and a slender arm snuck through the opening, waving a wrapped submarine sandwich. Li’s most seductive voice floated to Cole from the other side of the door, “Care to exchange a few minutes of your time for a fifteen-inch Cousin’s sub?”
“Li, if that’s a veggie sub that door is going to get slammed in your face and you may lose your right arm in the process,” Cole said loudly.
“How does a steak and cheese sound?” she cooed, still hidden by the door.
“It sounds like ‘open sesame,” he laughed, and Li, Lane, and Ty all piled into his office. They took seats around the table and started in on their subs.
“Have we gotten anything new from the profilers?” Cole asked as he sat down and unwrapped his sandwich. “The killer’s latest email sure makes it seem like he’s fond of law enforcement, like he sees himself as one of the good guys.”
“Nothing new yet, but the day is still young,” Lane said between bites.
“Well, do me a favor and check in with the first suspect we ruled out, the guy from Centralia. I want to know if he ran into any law enforcement when he was in Wisconsin right after Christmas.”
“I’m on it,” Lane said, licking his lips.
No rays of sun were able to split the cloud-laden skies, so the blinds were fully open. Everyone ate hurriedly. Ty finished first and asked, “You feel pretty strongly the killer was in Prairie du Chien and heard that Christmas sermon?”
“I do,” Cole answered, wiping his mouth with a napkin. He rolled the napkin in the sub wrapper and crushed it into a ball before tossing it at the wastebasket near his door. It bounced off the rim of the basket and rolled into a corner.
Lane had the second half of his sandwich up in front of his face and he whispered, “Too bad the killer doesn’t have Cole’s aim. We’d be referring to him as the shooter instead of the killer.”
“I heard that,” Cole said, retrieving his miss and dropping it in the basket.
Li wrapped up the remains of her seven-inch sub and tossed the wadded wrapper at the basket without looking. It hit low on the door by the hinge and bounced in. “If the shooter had Cole’s aim we wouldn’t even be on this case. It might be a misdemeanor.”
“You guys should go into standup,” Cole said. “But, yes, Ty, I do think the answers lie in Prairie.” He reached behind him and grabbed two large sheets of paper from his desk. They were copies of the most recent grids he’d received from Chief Mara back in Prairie du Chien. He laid one out between himself and Ty and handed the other to Li. She laid it on the table between her and Lane.
“This is the layout of the inside of the church,” Cole said. He pointed to the small rectangle that symbolized the altar and ran his right index finger in a straight line to the front doors of the church. “This is the main aisle, and the diagram shows twenty-six pews on each side of the aisle. Mara said that one pew was ripped out a few years ago, long after this diagram was printed, to make room for wheelchairs. Those pews hold from eight to ten adults each, depending on the size of those adults. So that’s…”
“That’s anywhere from four hundred and eight suspects to five hundred and ten,” Lane finished for him.
“That’s right, Mr. Smarty Pants analyst,” Cole said, looking at Lane, raising his eyebrows. “But these two squares behind the walls on either side of the main aisle are both cry rooms.”
“Cry rooms?” Ty asked.
“Those are rooms where parents take their babies when they start acting up in church, so they don’t disturb other people,” Cole said.
“In the world of grownups they’re called ‘infant care rooms,’” Li said.
“Whatever. I grew up going to this church and at good old St. Gabe’s, we call these cry rooms. Each of them has an official occupancy limit of twenty people, which is forty additional suspects,” Cole said the last quickly. He looked at Lane and smiled. “Not quite as fast on the draw that time, huh Rainman?”
“You want credit for twenty plus twenty equals forty?”
Cole shrugged and winked at Lane before continuing. “There’s also a balcony or choir loft.”
He pointed to a smaller diagram in the corner of the layout. “The balcony has six smaller pews on each side of the choir pit. Mara said the twelve pews in the balcony each hold maybe six people.”
“Seventy-two,” Li broke in.
“We’re fighting over twelve times six now?” Lane complained.
“And the choir pit itself has twenty chairs and another spot for the director,” Cole said.
“Five hundred and forty-one to six hundred and forty-three suspects total.” Everyone stared at Ty, who blurted out the answer. “Sorry?”
“I’m impressed, Ty,” Cole said. “But the total number of bodies in the church is even higher, since a number of people came in later and couldn’t find a place to sit.”
He pointed to the back of the church and the two side aisles. “People were standing against the walls along the entire back of the church and maybe a quarter of the way down each of the two side aisles. Mara is estimating another fifty to sixty additional. Anyone?”
Lane was about to answer when Ty said quickly, “Five ninety one to seven hundred and four suspects in all.”
Cole looked at Lane with a pout on his face. He raised an eyebrow, put his right pinky to his lips, and did his best Dr. Evil impression. “No more, Rainman? No, Laney? Gonna cry?”
Everyone laughed out loud and Cole took a long sip of water. “Let’s say six to seven hundred total. Now we’re getting somewhere. Probably half are going to be women and maybe another quarter of the total will be kids under eighteen. Which takes us down to an even more manageable list of suspects. Another half or so of this group will be taller than five eight, which gets them off our suspect list. We’re down to seventy-five to ninety or less adult male suspects if I’m right, without even subtracting others based on weight, elderly, etc.”
“Back up the bus, Cole,” Li said. “From the boot prints, we figured this guy was probably somewhere between five even and five foot four. Why go to five-eight with our suspect list now? Just being careful?”
“Maybe. This morning I asked myself what would happen if the killer bought a pair of boots like those we matched his prints to, but he took out the thick liners and wore them over nothing more than a thin pair of socks.”
“What would have happened is he would have frozen his damn feet off,” Ty said. “It was freezing up in Oshkosh that night he shot Martin, below freezing in fact, if I remember right.”
“I’m pretty sure his feet wouldn’t have fallen off exactly, but they could have been damaged by frostbite,” Cole admitted.
“That would have sent us looking for a shorter, heavier killer, with what we all thought was hard evidence,” Li said, nodding. “That’s exactly the kind of thing our guy would do.”