Devil in the Deadline (9 page)

10
.

  

Get me to the church

  

A
half-hour of arguing later, all I had to show for it was an aching throat and Bob's blessing to see what the Internet and Kyle could dig up on Golightly.

“Cows? You want me to let you go see if a TV preacher is mixed up in this woman's death based on cows?” Eyes wide, he sat back in his chair and shook his head. “That's tenuous if I'm being generous. Maybe cattle aren't a common sight downtown, but we have plenty of dairies in Virginia. Slaughterhouses, too. Cow's blood could have come from a hundred places.”

I fidgeted in my seat, my eyes on the carpet. He wasn't wrong. “But Bob—” I began, then paused. I hadn't told him about the journals. On purpose. He'd tell me to give them to Aaron, and I wasn't ready to. I'd promised to return them. I also didn't want to distract Landers until I was sure I had something worth distracting him with.

Bob raised one hand. “You think there's a story out there? I'm willing to trust your hunch enough to say there might be. Whether it has anything to do with your corpse, I couldn't begin to guess. Do your research. Talk to your friend at the ATF. But you can't charge around accusing people of murder because they run a school and raise their own beef. Nail it down. Then come talk to me.”

“Going out there would help.”

“A guy with that many lawyers will have no qualms about hauling the newspaper into court, Nichelle,” he said. “And I guarantee you, he has the money to tie us up in legal bullshit 'til we go bankrupt. Stay away from him.”

I stomped back to my desk at five-fifteen, grumbling about my editor, and found Mel waiting, computer bag slung over one shoulder and tired eyes in need of some fun.

“Me too, sister,” I said, turning to pack up my stuff.

Twenty minutes later, seated across from her in a cushy leather booth with a glass of Moscato in front of me and a burger on its way from the kitchen, I smiled. “What's up?” I asked in my best I-know-nothing voice.

Mel toyed with the straw in her amaretto sour and sighed. “Grant's being weird. And I'm not sure what to do about it. I don't want to pressure him, but it feels like he's drifting away.”

How did I get myself appointed relationship therapist? By playing matchmaker, I guessed, since I certainly didn't have the romance résumé for it.

“You guys seemed really happy for a long time,” I said, smiling at the waitress as she set a colossal burger and a pile of shoestring fries in front of me. “Maybe this is the normal cycle of a relationship?”

“I guess,” Mel sighed. “I just don't know how to put it back on the upswing, and I'm afraid he's going to get tired of it and bail before it goes that way. He has to feel the same thing.”

“Have you tried talking to him about it?”

“And give him a reason to dump me?”

I spent the next hour demolishing the burger and growing annoyed with Melanie's lack of confidence. Where was my intelligent, sassy friend? Maybe I hadn't done her a favor, setting her up with Parker. To hear her tell it, he was pity-dating her, and I wasn't sure which one of them I should be aggravated with about that. My last-ditch was to appeal to the logical side that made her so good at seeing through the city council's BS budget numbers.

“When did it start?” I drained the last of my water, contemplating ordering another Moscato if we were going to be a while.

She dropped her eyes to the table. “When TJ Okerson died.”

I feigned surprise. Lucky for my lousy acting skills, she wasn't looking. “Being there through the good and bad is part of being together, right?”

“But I wasn't there for him. You were. You went to the funeral with him, even.”

“He said you were busy.”

“I don't do funerals. The last one I went to was my dad's and I swore I'd never attend another.”

Ah-ha. Parker's words from earlier rolled around my head, and I glanced at the clock on my BlackBerry, the file I'd started on Reverend Golightly singing a siren song from inside my laptop. I dropped my balled-up napkin in the middle of my empty plate and put a twenty under the corner of it for the waitress before I stood and smiled at Mel. “I have a long, coffee-driven night of research coming, but here's my Earth-shattering idea: tell him that. He's been mushy over you for months. You two ought to talk. Nothing good comes from keeping secrets in a relationship.”

Hello there, Pot. I'm Kettle. But you can call me Black. Or just Nichelle.

I pushed thoughts of Kyle and Joey aside and patted Mel's shoulder. “Communication. Don't all the books say it's the cornerstone of a successful relationship? Talk to him. It'll work out.”

“Thanks.” She looked up and smiled. “We spent the whole time talking about my problem. Where's your mojo?”

“On a ranch out near the mountains, I think,” I said. “But I'm going after it. Don't worry.”

She furrowed her brow over her tortoiseshell glasses and I grinned. “Really. I'm good.”

“If you say so. Don't get caught in a stampede. Or whatever they do on ranches.”

“That's the least of my worries.”

I buckled my seatbelt and started the car, and my BlackBerry burst into
Second Star to the Right
.

I dug it out of my bag and smiled.

“Hey there, stranger,” I said.

“Sorry, I've been swamped today,” Kyle replied. “What can I do for you?”

“I have a theory.”

“Hooray.”

I laughed. “You have no idea how much I appreciate your vote of confidence.”

“It's less that I lack confidence in you, and more that your theories usually cause trouble for one or both of us,” he said.

“I suppose that's fair.”

“So what's up?”

“I'm wondering what the feds might know about a TV preacher named Simon Golightly. Runs his operation from a compound out in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Has a boatload of lawyers on his staff.”

“Hmm. I'd say there's a good chance we know something. Off the record?”

“Absolutely.”

“I'll poke around. Why?”

“The guy I talked to yesterday said the dead chick was afraid to go to the church shelter, and afraid someone might come after her. Aaron said the lab results showed some of the gross at the murder scene was cow's blood. These folks raise their own cattle and have the potential to be scary church people.”

“Lots of people raise cows.” Amusement dripped through the speaker and I scrunched my nose in reply. “Plus, not all religious people are fanatics.”

“I know that, Captain Devil's Advocate. It's not like I've never been to Sunday School. My mom used to teach it, for crying out loud. But TV religion is at least sometimes more about power and money than God.”

“True enough. Jim Bakker, anyone?”

“Exactly. So I want to know what goes on out there.”

“Here we go again. Please watch yourself,” Kyle said.

“Technically, you have no reason to worry. Bob told me to stay away from Golightly. He's afraid I'll get the paper sued.”

“I didn't think your editor cared about anything more than the story. And I did not miss your creative use of the word ‘technically.'”

“The paper. He cares about having a paper to put the story in. Golightly's kind of money and influence could put the
Telegraph
out of business if he got mad enough. So I have clearance to talk to you and peruse Google to my heart's content.”

“I'm not sure how much good that will do you, but your tone tells me you're not exactly planning to follow this edict to the letter.”

“I would never deliberately defy Bob.” I smiled as I turned into my driveway and shut off the engine. “But a Sunday morning drive to the country might be nice. We could even take in a church service, if you're up for it.”

“There's my Nichelle.”

“Bob said not to go near Golightly. The balcony in that sanctuary is at least a quarter mile from the pulpit. That's not near.”

Kyle laughed. “What time are you picking me up?”

  

Six days later I'd read every article I could find about Golightly and Way of Life, requested copies of the church's tax returns (Yay: non-profit returns are public information. Boo: it takes six to eight weeks to get them), watched two dozen sermon videos online, and compared the doodles in Jasmine's journal to the ministry logo under a microscope.

She'd been there. My gut rarely fails me. But why—and why she left—I needed those puzzle pieces before anyone would listen to me. My cops were still hunting a serial, and Aaron was frustrated enough that a week had passed since I borrowed Picasso's sketches, and still no one had come forward to identify the victim. He didn't need another theory from me until I had more to offer.

Hoping I would by lunchtime, I pulled up in front of Kyle's building Sunday morning. And b
linked twice when he stepped outside. His ice-blue shirt color matched his eyes and molded to his muscular shoulders in a way that made my stomach flip.

“Good morning.” He settled into the passenger seat of my little red SUV and smiled.

“Morning. Thanks for coming with me.”

“I've been covered up with a new case this week, but I snuck a peek at your preacher's file yesterday.” Kyle flipped the radio off as I turned the car onto I-95 North and laid on the gas. “He's not exactly the stand-up guy he'd have his followers think he is.”

I nodded. “I found a little bit of a trail online, but a lot of things have been deleted. And not well, either. It was like wading through the electronic version of a redacted court transcript. Weird. I did manage to find out his brother did time for an online credit card scam, but I even had to get that from the wayback.”

Journalism in the age of the Internet 102: not much can be permanently deleted online. There's a nifty website that stores caches of random pages on different days—and has a searchable database. Yet it had nothing on Golightly, which popped my shady-character radar higher.

I'd contemplated emailing the site's administrator to see if he'd paid them to remove anything, but figured if he had, they might tell him I asked. Maybe he was just lucky.

“Our files have not been redacted,” Kyle said.

“So, what is he into?”

“A little bit of everything.”

“Does the ATF have an active investigation on him?” Because that would be a dozen different kinds of fabulous.

“No. He's more like a person of interest in several other investigations right now.”

Damn. “Why is that?”

“Money. Politics. Who knows? I found some iffy stuff, but nothing I'm convinced would get me a warrant this morning. With folks like this, it can take years to build a case. But you asked me if the guy was above-board, and my answer is a resounding ‘no.'”

“But y'all don't have enough on him to do any good.” I pressed harder on the gas, the trees blurring into a color wheel of green in my peripheral vision. The peace of a clear summer day and a long stretch of nearly-empty highway, usually comforting, only frustrated me.

I had just enough to know something was up. There's nothing more irritating than a crook with enough money to stay out of jail. Add the brutal murder, and I was more than curious about the good reverend.

“If you're going after a guy with this much money and influence, you need a rock-solid case before you step foot on his land. The whole place might as well be layered in red tape, with all the different statutes they can hide behind. With the right kind of lawyers, people can get away with almost anything in the name of religious freedom.”

Except murder. I hoped.

“What about the IRS? Tax evasion? It worked on Capone.”

“I'm sure there's grounds for jail time there, but again: churches are tax exempt, right? And so are a large part of the earnings you make as an employee of one. I'd lay even odds this guy is not reporting all his income on the right lines. But do they want to fight his legal team in court over an audit? It depends on whether they think the tax penalty would outweigh the cost to the agency.”

“Everything is always about money.”

“It seems to make the world go 'round.”

“But what if they did kill someone?”

“‘They' is a vague term. They who? His followers? We haven't even set eyes on the place. I think you're jumping the gun.”

“Noted.” I put the blinker on and steered onto the ramp for Highway 117. “But let's say there was reason to think someone in this outfit had to do with a murder. Could you get a warrant then?”

“With compelling enough evidence, sure. But how to get the evidence without the warrant? It's a catch-twenty-two. They're in the middle of nowhere. There's no staking them out, because where do you hide? And if they know we're watching, they'll straighten up whatever they're doing real quick.”

I huffed out a short breath. “Undercover?”

“Costs money. I'd have to have way more to go on than your gut and a few head of cattle at a Bible academy.”

“Of course.”

I clicked the radio back on, trying to untangle part of this mess as the highway wound through small towns and large farms.

Kyle made it sound like it would be nearly impossible to get anywhere on this particular rabbit trail. But nearly impossible had never stopped me from trying.

Janis Joplin blared through the speakers as I took the left my GPS told me would take us to the compound. For the first time since we'd left Richmond, there was traffic. A lot of it. Sunday-suited men with neon orange vests stood at intervals, directing cars to the turn off.

“It's another fifteen miles from here,” I said, staring at the timer on my GPS screen. “This is a lot of people. Where do they all come from?”