Judas Burning (18 page)

He rifled through the paperwork on his desk and picked up the black-and-white photos of Trisha Webster. Cause of death had been an overdose of crystal meth. Her heart had stopped. Her body was so badly damaged and decomposed that the pathologist couldn’t determine if the meth had been administered with a needle or inhaled. The cut to the thigh and the disemboweling had been done post-mortem.

The telephone rang, but he ignored it; Waymon was at his desk. Besides, J.D. had nothing to say to anyone. His focus was on finding the sick motherfucker who’d killed and then burned a teenage girl. The phone rang again and he wearily snatched it up, anticipating a reporter. “Horton here.” The gruesome murder had begun to attract the national media. It was going to be a shit storm, but one he intended to turn to his advantage. If the pervert who took the girls was anywhere in the area, J.D. was going to get him.

“J.D., John said you called.”

J.D. loosened his grip on the telephone. He had called Beatrice Smart two hours earlier. He needed some professional advice and Bea, with her blend of religion and psychology, was a good source. “I hate to involve you, Bea, but this is beyond me.”

“It’s okay. I’ll help if I can.”

“I’ll tell you the crime scene, and maybe you can give me some insight into this guy and what he may do next.”

“I’m not a profiler; I’m just a psychologist.”

“I’d take your intuition any day.” He filled her in on everything he had, plus Medino’s theory and the description of the body. When he was finished, he waited as silence filled the phone line.

At last Bea spoke. “I’m confused. Trisha Webster dies of a drug overdose, but then her body is treated with a kind of ritual that implies a person to whom God and Satan are very real. The hanging and burning are ritualistic. Whether it’s Satan worship or a sacrifice to God, it is worship. Most people who believe in God also believe in Satan, or vice versa.” She hesitated. “But the drugs are off kilter somehow. It’s as if the killer had two personalities.”

“The man I’m looking for may have defaced church property, specifically images of the Virgin Mary. If it’s the same man, he’s been on a spree for better than six months.”

“That’s helpful,” Bea said. “But it still doesn’t jibe with the drugs.”

“Put the drugs aside. What do you get from the body?”

“Based just on that, I’d say the killer is someone so conflicted that he or she has moved beyond the ability to discern between archetypes and the reality of human form. I believe that Trisha and Angie represented temptation or sin or something that would be damning to a Christian. What confuses me is that, traditionally, the approach to sin is to forgive, to redeem the sinner. There is no redemption in death.”

J.D. wished for something stronger than coffee. “So you’re saying this religious fanatic wouldn’t have killed the girls?”

“Not with crystal meth. At least, that’s my take on it. J.D., I’m a minister who offers marriage and family counseling. My experience isn’t with serial killers.”

J.D. sighed. “This complicates things, Bea.”

“I’m only connecting the dots you’ve given me based on my understanding of theology. Certainly there would be no murder if Christians followed the teaching of the religion. We both know that isn’t the case. I’m just saying that it’s a big leap from decapitating a statue to murdering a teenager.”

It wasn’t what J.D. had expected to hear.

“Thanks, Bea.”

“I wasn’t much help.”

“Maybe more than you know.”

The last vestiges of morning fog were burning away in the shallow fields that lined the old blacktop county road. Cotton had made a return to the pine barrens, as well as soybeans and peanuts. Dixon had chosen a back-road route rather than four-laned Highway 98, the most convenient corridor to Mobile. Her mother’s phone call had stolen any chance of sleep, and she needed the drive to put physical distance between herself and Jexville. Between herself and the swamp where Trisha Webster had surely died a horrible death. And where Angie Salter might yet be suffering.

In avoiding the murder, though, she found herself trapped in the past. As she drove past a dairy farm, she remembered her father’s large hand holding her small one as they had toured a dairy. She’d been four or five, but Ray had taken time to expose her to the world. He wanted her to know where the milk she drank came from and to understand the balance of agriculture in a world where family farms were already verging on extinction. He had been shaping and molding her sensibilities in the guise of a field trip.

Not once since their father’s death had her brother, Raymond, spoken of what had happened. He’d attended the trial, sitting poker stiff in the row behind the prosecution. Each day, he’d fled the courtroom, refusing to talk to anyone, even her. Once the trial was over, Raymond would not acknowledge that his father had been murdered. If he mentioned Ray’s name at all, it was linked to a family memory. Now, with the execution looming, he refused to talk about Willard Jones. On the few occasions when Dixon brought the subject up, Raymond had simply hung up the phone. Not in anger, but with finality.

Dixon contemplated a fencerow sagging under the weight of kudzu, leaves silvered with morning mist. Since moving to Jexville, there had been times when she felt that if she stood still too long the vines would slip up and cover her.

She reached the outskirts of Mobile and headed to the shopping center where the red block of Circuit City appeared to plug into the empty parking lot. While she waited for the store to open, she examined the sales slip she’d picked up in the woods, feeling a twinge of guilt that she hadn’t shared her find with J.D. yet.

It wasn’t much of a lead and she was no detective, but the receipt’s crispness meant that someone had dropped it in the woods around the time the girls were on the sandbar. A witness. Or the killer.

She got out of her truck as a red-jacketed clerk unlocked the front door and was the first one inside. In a matter of fifteen minutes, she had the information she sought. She felt as if a weight pressed on her chest as she walked to the parking lot and got in her truck.

Tommy Hayes had purchased a boom box at 8:47 on the evening of September eighteenth. The girls had disappeared on the nineteenth. Dixon had found the sales slip, crisp and clean, in the woods on the morning of the twentieth.

By the time J.D. reached New Orleans, it was almost ten o’clock. He parked in the airport lot, went directly to the ticket counter for Southwest Airlines, and booked a flight for San Antonio. His law enforcement identification and lack of baggage eased his way through airport security, and he was on the plane and in the air in less than an hour. He paid for the spur-of-the-moment trip out of his own pocket and brought little with him except identification and the articles he’d printed off the Internet.

Alan Arguillo had created the sculpture of Mary that had been destroyed at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Jexville. Arguillo and Francisco Chavez were both from Zaragoza in the state of Coahuila. It was a long shot, but J.D. could not sit around waiting for Dr. Diaz to return or Angie Salter to be found.

In San Antonio, he rented an Explorer and drove to Eagle Pass. From there he crossed into Mexico and Piedras Negras, a border town filled with vendors, restaurants, and music. Once out of town, he bumped over the rutted dirt road to Zaragoza.

In the marines, he’d spent some R and R time in Mexico and knew there were places of lush beauty. Zaragoza was not one of them. The town consisted of seven thousand people on land not suited for agriculture and an unpaved main street that sloped gently down to a central business district where farmers and craftsmen sold their wares.

He found the police department two blocks off the main drag, parked, and went inside. He didn’t expect help, but he didn’t want to rile anyone either. If a strange law enforcement officer arrived in Jexville, he would expect a courtesy visit.

The police station was unair-conditioned and hot. Three officers in uniform sat behind desks and seemed glad of a diversion. Miguel Sanchez was the man in charge, and he waved J.D. into a chair with a smile as they exchanged introductions.

“What brings you to Zaragoza?” Sanchez asked.

J.D.’s relief at Sanchez’s fluent English must have shown on his face.

“I was educated in San Antonio. I came home to help my family,” Sanchez said

“I’m looking for an artist. Alan Arguillo.”

“Many people seek out this man. His work excites the imagination.”

Sanchez showed some finesse, J.D. thought. “Yes,” he said. “We have a sculpture in my town.”

“And you want to buy another?”

J.D. hesitated. It was one thing to come to a small town seeking an artist. It was another to look into the past of a man who might be a killer.

“No,” he said. “I’m actually looking for a man named Francisco Chavez. The artist may know something about him.”

“And you suspect the police don’t?”

“Do you?”

“The name Chavez is an old one in this village. One that brings many questions. Has Francisco done something wrong?”

J.D. noted Sanchez’s use of Chavez’s first name.

“I’m not certain.”

“You’re here, all the way from Mississippi. You must be fairly certain.”

J.D. could read nothing in Sanchez’s dark eyes. “We have a murdered teenage girl and one missing. Arguillo’s statue of the Virgin Mary was decapitated and splashed with cow’s blood before the two girls disappeared. Chavez was arrested in Eagle Pass for breaking windows in a Catholic church. The level of coincidence is a little too high for me to ignore.”

Sanchez leaned back in his chair. “Francisco left here about eight months ago, after vandals struck at three of our churches.”

J.D. felt his pulse increase. “Did Chavez commit the acts of vandalism?”

“We don’t know. We found prints, but his were never on record here. He was always a quiet kid, a few years younger than me. I knew him in school, and I would have sworn that he would never make trouble for anyone, especially not the church. He was there every afternoon. He followed Father around like his shadow.”

J.D. remembered his conversation with Beatrice Smart. The person who killed, hung, and burned Trisha Webster had a very real relationship with God and Satan. “Chavez was a religious child?”

“Excessively. In the first years of school, he told the teachers he would become a priest. I think he was trying to make up for his mother’s shame.”

“Shame?”

“After Francisco was born—he was illegitimate—Maria Chavez gave up all attempts to live a decent life.
La punta
. She serviced the soldiers. The boy saw all of it. He was taunted in school.”

“Is his mother still alive?”

Sanchez considered the question. “She wouldn’t talk to you. She speaks no English. It would be a waste of your time, and she is very sick now. She has the blood illness.”

“She has hepatitis?”

Sanchez shook his head. “It is AIDS.”

“Do you believe Francisco destroyed the church property?”

“The only windows broken were those depicting Mary. I had heard from the priest that Francisco had cursed the Blessed Virgin.” He shrugged. “If I could match the prints, I would know for sure, wouldn’t I?”

“Maybe I can arrange that when I get home,” J.D. said. How about a map of where Mr. Arguillo lives?”

“That I can help you with.” Sanchez drew a sheet of paper and a pen from his desk drawer and sketched a quick map. “You will enjoy your talk with Alan. He is an interesting man. Especially interesting since he regained his sight.”

“So that really happened?”

“Indeed. I know this for a fact. He was blind. He worked by feel on the statue. He was obsessed with the work. The moment he struck the last blow of the chisel, his sight returned.”

“Was he born blind?”

“No. He could see perfectly until about three years ago when he fell and struck his head on a stone. He was instantly blind.”

“No one ever considered that the nerves to his eyes might have regenerated?” J.D. was skeptical of miracles.

“At the exact moment he finished this statue of the Blessed Mother? The exact moment?” Sanchez smiled. “It is easier to believe in a miracle than such a coincidence. But let Alan tell you. He will make you understand.”

J.D. left the police station. Dust boiled out behind the wheels of his rented SUV. He drove with the windows down, the sun baking his left arm. Lethargy crept over him, and the thought of a roadside nap was tempting. But he didn’t have time. Angie Salter didn’t have time.

J.D. wondered at the killer’s murdering Trisha first. Had it been because she cried? Because she didn’t fight back? Because she wasn’t willing? Those questions gave him hope. Angie was tough. She was a manipulator, and she was a fighter. She would do whatever was necessary to stay alive.

He passed a cluster of trees he didn’t recognize, and the land rose. From the crest of the small hill, he saw the Arguillo ranch in the distance. The fields were irrigated. Nothing else could explain the green amidst the parched brown of the landscape. The house was adobe style, part of it so old it was packed and dried mud. Flowers bloomed all over the yard.

He knocked at the door and waited, wondering if the household was asleep in the midday heat. He heard footsteps and stepped back a little.

“Señor?”

The woman was striking. One single strand of gray ran from her right temple; the rest of her hair was luxurious black. Her dark
eyes
were bright with curiosity.

“Señor?”
she asked again.

“I’ve come to speak with Alan Arguillo,” J.D. said, holding out his badge and identification. “I’m from Jexville, Mississippi.”

“Ah, the statue,” she said in English laced with a Spanish accent. “It was a miracle, that statue.”

“There is a young girl missing in my town,” J.D. said. “Another girl is dead.”

She frowned. “Why do you come here? What can we do to help something so far away?”

“Talk to me.”

She shrugged. “My husband is not well. Do we need him?”