"Sounds to me like she's gone around the bend, too. She might be as unstable as Dale Gordon."
Tobias denied that with a firm shake of his head. "No doubt she's emotionally reactive, but her reasoning is sound. Another employee of the Waters Clinic was murdered yesterday afternoon. Within hours of speaking with Ms. Lloyd," he added after a significant pause for emphasis.
"I see you're shocked, Sheriff. Rightfully so. Ms. Lloyd knows she's on to something, and I don't think she'll stop until she gets some answers. She won't quit until she knows for certain why her twin was killed. Detective Lawson and I are reasonably sure that she'll turn up here."
"Sooner rather than later," the detective added.
Ritchey released a long breath. "I'll notify the Temple immediately, but if she or anyone had tried to barge into the compound, I would have heard about it. The security up there is tight."
"Why's that?" Lawson asked.
"Ask John Lennon. Ask that designer fellow in Florida. Brother Gabriel is an international celebrity. High-profile people make good targets for nobodies who want to get their names in the news."
Tobias frowned thoughtfully. "Are you sure that's the only reason the Temple security is so tight?"
"Why else?"
The FBI agent leaned forward in his chair. Ritchey noticed that the French cuffs of his shirt were monogrammed with his initials. "Sheriff Ritchey, have you ever been inside the compound?"
"Only twice. Last time was three days ago when I questioned Brother Gabriel about Dale Gordon."
"How did it strike you?"
"I'm not sure I catch your meaning." Tobias reacted with impatience to his reply, and Lawson looked ready to shake information out of him with his square, blunt hands. "What I mean is, in what way? My impressions of the place? The grounds are spotless. The buildings are—"
"The general mood. The people," Lawson said, cutting him off. "Did you see any evidence of people being held there against their will?"
Ritchey barked a dry laugh. "You're kidding, right?"
The two men stared back at him with all the levity of hooded executioners.
Nervously he recalled his smile and cleared his throat. "My understanding is that it's an honor for Brother Gabriel's followers to live and work there. People apply for the opportunity. There's a merit system. You do some special work for the ministry, you earn a place in the Temple. Something like that."
"What kind of special work?"
"Pardon?"
"You said if a follower did some special work for the ministry ..."
"Good deeds. Fund-raising. Proselytizing. Isn't that what most churches are about? Earning points?"
Tobias asked, "Have you ever known anyone who lived at the Temple but left?"
"No," he replied honestly. "That's not to say it doesn't happen. I just don't know about it." He looked at them quizzically. "And why would someone who'd worked hard to earn admittance want to leave? Wouldn't that be like checking out of heaven?"
They left the sheriff's office and climbed back into the agency car. Tobias got behind the wheel. Lawson was impressed by the authority the man wielded. He had arranged for them to be met at the Albuquerque airport, where the car had been designated for their use. They'd
driven from there to Lamesa, t
he county seat. With a single phone call, Tobias could make t
h
ings happen. Lawson couldn't get a Bic pen without filling out a requisition form.
"What do you think of Ritchey?" Lawson asked the agent as they pulled away.
"Hard to read, but I'd say he was being about half truthful."
"My impression, too. Everything he said was filtered."
"Maybe through pride. He resents outsiders snooping around his county, looking for a criminal element. It suggests that he's no
t doing an adequate job. Or…"
"Yeah?"
"Maybe the man was telling the unvarnished truth and we're just getting paranoid."
"Could be," Lawson agreed. "I'm looking for ulterior motives behind every fence post." After several moments had elapsed, he said, "On the other hand, Ritchey could be a devoted follower. Maybe he accounts to a higher jurisdiction than the county, state, or federal laws."
"You mean that Brother Gabriel may have Ritchey and other local law enforcement in his back pocket?"
"Who's to say where his influence stops? We know it extended as far as Big D."
"And South Dakota. That's where Hennings became involved."
"Do you think Hennings and his little sister got converted by the school nurse, and that when their parents raised a ruckus, they were eliminated?"
"Someone made them disappear."
"You suspect Brother Gabriel?"
"Or a zealous follower working on his behalf."
"With his sanction?"
"Frightening prospect, isn't it?"
"If he's got followers willing to kill for him..." Turning to look at Tobias, he spoke his thoughts out loud. "That means that when Dale Gordon killed Gillian Lloyd, he could've been acting on orders from the Temple."
"I've thought of that."
Lawson's face turned ugly. "I want to meet this bleached-blond preacher eyeball to eyeball. I want to know what he's all about, and I'll bet you a steak dinner against a bottle of scotch
that he's not as saintly as his pretty face and sweet smile suggest."
"You're on. But I don't eat red meat."
Lawson snorted.
Chuckling over Lawson's derision, Tobias answered his ringing cell phone. "Yeah, Lucy, what?" He listened, thanked her for the update, and then, as he clicked off, he turned to Lawson and smiled. "That eyeball-to-eyeball thing... you'll get your chance tomorrow morning. We have an audience with the main man."
"Why tomorrow morning? Why don't we just go up there now—
"
,
"No probable cause. No direct link to either Gillian Lloyd, or Dale Gordon—except the phone calls, and he's already explained those—or Jem Hennings. He's granting us an audience as a courtesy, and that's how we must conduct the interview.
"Until we get those sperm specimens from the Waters Clinic donors and run DNA tests to prove that Gordon was switching them, then all we've got is a pile of supposition. At his point, we don't even know with certainty that the sperm was being switched. And even if we do prove that the specimens were being switched, we've got nothing that links the tampering to Brother Gabriel except a dead disciple, who proved himself to be deranged. So, in summation, we've got no probable cause for which to question an eminent man of God."
"My ass." Vexed, Lawson ran a hand over his burr haircut. "I know you're right. From a legal standpoint, you're playing it by the book. But my gut tells me that Brother Gabriel is the source of all this." Lawson gnawed on it for a full minute. "What about Melina Lloyd? What do you think?"
"That she'll come here to confront him."
"I think so, too." After a moment, he said, "Damn! Timing is everything, isn't it?"
"How so, specifically?"
"I was just thinking. If I'd had this lead on the Waters Clinic early on, I would've had smears taken from Gillian Lloyd's body. She'd been artificially inseminated less than twenty-four hours prior to her death."
"If DNA testing had proved that the smears didn't belong to her designated donor—"
"Or to Christopher Hart."
"—then you would have had proof that there was tampering being done at the clinic."
"But we already had our killer," Lawson said morosely. "There was no sign of semen externally. The stab wounds were so conclusive as to how she died, there was no reason not to release the body to Melina for cremation."
Tobias told him he was in the process of getting a court order for the remains of the woman in Oakland, California, to be exhumed. "When it is, we'll DNA-test the embryo inside Kathleen Asher against her designated donor. Of course, all of this takes time. A smear from Gillian Lloyd would have been much more expeditious."
"Sorry," Lawson grumbled.
"Well, as you said, you didn't know then what you know now"
It was gracious of Tobias to let him off the hook. He was gracious in return. "I brought along the case file, if you want to review any of it."
"I might," Tobias said. "It's going to be a long night, and I've got nothing better to do."
CHAPTER 34
"
Melina?"
"Hmm?"
"It's almost three."
With a heavy sigh, she rolled onto her back and scowled up at Chief through eyes only half open. "Why are you always waking me up?"
"Because you're always oversleeping."
"I was dreaming."
"About what?"
"I don't remember."
"Good dream?"
"I think so." She stretched luxuriantly. "What time is it?" "I just told you."
"I wasn't listening," she admitted with a sleepy smile. "Tell me again."
But he didn't repeat the time. In fact, he didn't say any-lung, and it only took her a few seconds to appreciate, as he obviously already had, the intimacy of the moment. His fists were planted on either side of her head, buried in the pillow tip to his second knuckles. His arms were bearing much of his weight, so each muscle was well defined.
His face had lost all trace of a smile. The blue of his eyes seemed to have intensified, as the color of the sky deepens immediately after sunset, changing from violet to indigo, undiscernibly but definitely.
Acting on impulse, she reached up and touched his face. First she smoothed down his eyebrows in turn. Then she sighed sympathetically and with regret when she delicately touched the wound on his cheekbone. Her finger traced the length of his slender nose and finally outlined the shape of his lips. She lingered over each feature as though her fingertips were committing them to memory.
Gaining confidence, she lowered her hand and touched him just below his right breast. His skin radiated a warmth she longed to feel against her. Her eyes tracked her fingertips as they skimmed downward over several lean ribs, then moved back up to the sculpted undercurve of his breast. She whisked the nipple with her thumb.
Emboldened by his quick intake of breath, she did something she would never have dared to do otherwise. She raised her head high enough to flick her tongue over the distended tip.
Cursing softly, he threw back the covers, lowered himself over her, and pressed his face into her cleavage. He pushed her breasts up from her rib cage. Hungrily he kissed the slopes of them where they swelled above the cups of her bra. His stubble rasped her skin, but it was an erotic sensation, and, without any instruction from her, she felt her hips lifting off the bed to nudge the fly of his jeans.
He rubbed his lips against her nipples until they were thrusting hard against the lace that contained them, and just when she was on the brink of begging him, he peeled the lace away and covered her with his open mouth. Each sweet tug of his mouth was felt deep within. She clutched handfuls of his hair and moaned with pleasure.
In a low, gravelly voice he urged her to unbutton him. Blindly she fumbled with fabric and stubborn metal buttons. The top one was already undone, but when she tried to undo the rest, she met with resistance. The hardness beneath was unyielding. He grunted with discomfort, and they both laughed lightly. Finally she managed to unbutton them all and pushed the jeans down over his hips.
He guided her hand to his erection and folded her fingers around it. When she began a rhythmic massage, he closed his eyes and grimaced with pleasure enough to bare his teeth. "Slower." When she complied, he pressed his forehead against hers. "Oh, Jesus, that's good. You'd better tell me now if you're not okay with this."
"I'm okay with this."
"Arch your back."
She pressed her shoulders into the mattress and lifted herself so that he could slide his hands beneath her and unfasten her bra. When it was unclasped, he pulled it off and raised his head to gaze down at her, then squeezed her breasts together and kissed the nipples, laving them with his tongue and plucking at them with his lips.
"Chief," she gasped.
"I know. Me, too. But I don't want to rush it. You'd better stop that," he said, moving her hand aside.
He hooked his thumbs into the elastic waist of her bikinis and pulled them all the way down past the tips of her toes. Then, wrapping his hands around her ankles and kneeling between them, he slowly opened her legs. Her initial reaction was to resist, or to cover herself with her hand, or to bashfully turn her head aside.
But his ardent stare was sweet, tender. It made her feel elevated, not humiliated. Gradually his eyes traveled up her body until they magnetically connected to hers. They remained locked onto one another's gaze as his hands slid up her shins. They rotated to the undersides of her legs so that her calves were cupped in his palms. Gently he massaged them with his strong fingers.
Then back to the topside, his hands glided upward to lightly
squeeze the ticklish area just above her knees. They stayed on course up her thighs until his fingers were splayed over her lower abdomen and his thumbs met at her center.