The City PI and the Country Cop (14 page)

“But he’d leave the second you walk out the
door so why force it,” Teague said with a small grin.

“Exactly. Nurse Johnson, please get Mr.
Hoyt’s clothes and possessions while I fill out the paperwork and
set it up for a night-nurse for him.”

“I don’t need some babysitter,” Hoyt
growled.

“You do until you learn how to take care of
things like dressing, cooking, and the other necessities by
yourself without re-injuring your shoulder.”

The nurse went a long way toward proving the
doctor’s words after handing Hoyt what remained of his clothes: a
pair of jeans with a few bloodstains, shoes, and socks. With the
nurse’s help, Hoyt got them on before looking at Teague. “Can I
borrow your jacket? Please?”

Teague nodded, giving it to the nurse while
wondering how Hoyt could wear it over the shoulder support. Hoyt’s
free arm went into one sleeve, then the nurse pulled the jacket
around, telling Hoyt, “You can’t put the rest of it on, obviously.
I suggest for the near future you wear zip-up sweatshirts. They’ll
accommodate the brace and I’ll give you a separate sling to keep
your arm at the correct angle. Put it on over your immobilized arm
first.” She laughed when Hoyt said, “Well, duh.”

By the time Hoyt was ready to leave, the
doctor returned with the paperwork. Then it was just a case of
using a wheelchair to get Hoyt out of the hospital to Teague’s
Crosstrek.

“Now to figure out how to make the seatbelt
work,” Teague said once Hoyt was settled in the front seat.

Hoyt solved that problem by saying, “I won’t
use it. We’re going ten blocks. If you can’t make it there without
having an accident, you need your license revoked.”

With a shake of his head, Teague started the
car and five minutes later he parked it in the lot behind the
police department.

* * * *

“Good afternoon, Teague,” Chief Davis said
before apparently realizing Teague wasn’t alone. “What are you
doing here?” he asked Hoyt, worry shading his words and his
expression.

“I work here?” Hoyt replied with a brief
smile. He walked slowly to the nearest chair and sat with obvious
relief.

“Why aren’t you at the hospital, or home in
bed, or…something?”

“Because Teague told me Detective Slater was
here and had information about Pastor Irwin.” Hoyt looked at the
fourth man in the office. “That would be you, I presume. I’m
Detective Hoyt Newman.”

“I figured as much,” Slater replied with
chuckle. “It’s nice to meet you face-to-face. Although from the
look of you, I agree with the chief. You should be home in bed.” He
smiled at Teague, saying, “Good to see you again.”

“You as well,” Teague replied, taking the
last remaining chair. “And before you yell at me, Chief, my letting
Hoyt know was inadvertent. However, he has been involved with this
since Bradley Irwin made his first kill, so he has a right to hear
what Slater is going to tell us.”

“Of course he does,” the chief said, “but one
of us could have relayed the information to him later.” The chief
shook his head in resignation. “I guess what’s done is done. Please
begin, Detective Slater.”

Slater nodded. “I’ll preface this by saying
that Pastor Irwin was a good man with a dark secret not of his own
making. One he kept close to his heart until the day he died. It
would be another year before it was revealed to anyone other than
his wife. Even then only to two people would know what it was.”

“How did you find this out?” Teague
asked.

“When I began investigating Pastor Irwin,
after Teague’s call, one of the people I contacted was his lawyer.”
Slater took some folded papers from his pocket. “According to the
lawyer, the pastor gave him two letters, one for Bradley Irwin, the
other for the pastor’s superior. They were to be delivered on the
first anniversary of his death—or his wife’s should she outlive
him.”

“Can we presume that’s a copy of the letter?”
Teague asked.

“Yes. As soon as I found out, I went to talk
to Pastor Irwin’s superior. As he lives in Collingswood, that
wasn’t difficult.” Slater smiled dryly. “Convincing him to let me
see the letter, and then make a copy of it was. He was afraid the
information it contained would bring disgrace to the church and to
Bradley. That’s the reason he hadn’t turned it over to the
police.”

“Must be a hell of a bombshell in it,” Hoyt
said, his gaze—like Teague and Chief Davis’s—locked on the papers
Slater was holding.

Instead of replying, Slater handed the letter
to Chief Davis. The chief unfolded it, scanned it, then began
reading it aloud.

“As I grow older, the burden of my sin grows
heavier. I killed a man. I believe it was justified but it is still
a sin to take another man’s life.

“I should start at the beginning. My dear
wife, Linda, had an older brother, Carl Ham. A charming but
unprincipled man with strong sexual appetites who believed he had
the right to do whatever he wanted and damn the consequences. I was
glad when the church moved me from Bent Township to Glenley, as it
meant we could leave him behind. Linda stayed in touch with him,
but that was the extent of it for the next two years.

“Then, one afternoon, Carl showed up
unannounced at our house. He said he was tired of his life in Bent
Township and that he missed Linda and our family. At the time I
believed him when he said he was turning over a new leaf and for a
while it seemed as if he meant it. He found an apartment, got a
job, and seemed to be settling down.

“It was nine months later when he came to see
me at the church. He was obviously upset and said he had something
to confess, begging me not to tell his sister. Reluctantly, I
agreed. He prefaced his remarks with, ‘I’m not gay. I have never
condoned their evil ways. But I made a mistake, Corwin.’ He buried
his head in his hands. ‘I got drunk one evening. Very drunk.’ He
looked up at me then. ‘You’re aware that when I drink I lose
control of my libido. God only knows you lectured me enough about
that. I…I staggered out of the bar and…there’s a park in town where
I knew I could find some street girl to deal with my problem.’

“I knew the park he meant. It was notorious
for that. Girls and boys who would sell themselves to stay alive.
Carl told me he went there that night and was, in his words,
seduced by a charming young man. I doubt that was the case. When
Carl got too drunk, he didn’t care who he had sex with, as long as
he got relief. While he talked, Carl got angrier and angrier. ‘That
bastard infected me,’ he spat out. ‘He gave me that gay curse’.
That’s what he called it. The gay curse. I wasn’t certain at first
what he meant. Even though it was the late 80’s, I’ll admit I was
unaware about what was happening to gay men. So I asked and he told
me he had AIDS. Or at least he thought he did. He began to rant
about ‘the scum who infested the streets, preying on men, passing
on their curse to them’. I finally got him calmed down. We prayed
together and then I told him he had to see a doctor. He promised he
would.

“I don’t know to this day if he really did
have AIDS, or if it was something else. When I asked, a week later,
he refused to talk about it other than to say he was taking care of
the problem. I thought he meant he had done as I suggested, gone to
a doctor, and was being treated.”

Teague sighed, saying, “How could the pastor
have been so naïve?”

“Carl was the pastor’s brother-in-law,”
Slater replied. “He wanted to believe that he’d done what was
necessary. Besides, why would he think Carl meant something
else?”

“True. Sorry for interrupting.”

Chief Davis nodded and continued reading.

“Soon after my talk with Carl,” the pastor
wrote, “There was a story in the local paper about the murder of a
homeless boy in a town not too far from Glenley. I thought nothing
of it other than to wonder what sort of person could inflict such
torture on anyone, regardless of what they were. If I presumed
anything at all, it was that someone’s hatred of gays had
manifested itself in a truly evil way.

“Not too much later there was another story,
about a second murder, in a town to the east of Glenley. That did
give me pause, but only because, despite the teaching of my church
that being gay was a sin, I was appalled that someone was
apparently killing gay teens.”

“He should have been appalled. Him and anyone
else with any semblance of a brain and some compassion,” Hoyt said
harshly.

“Agreed,” Chief Davis said before taking up
where he’d left off.

“Then came the third killing, in
Collingswood, and a visit from Carl. He had been strangely absent
in our lives for the previous few weeks. The night after the last
murder, he walked into my office at the church. It was late but I
was there putting the finishing touches on my Sunday sermon. He sat
down in the chair across from me at my desk, looking at me. There
was something in his eyes. A sense of cold-blooded pride if I was
going to put words to it now. ‘I’ve found a way to deal with my
problem,’ he told me. ‘A way to end…’ He stopped then as if he knew
he was about to say more than he should.

“I had the newspaper article about the latest
murder sitting beside me on the desk as my sermon was about the
Lord’s words ‘Vengeance is mine’. I intended to use the basis of
that story to point out that it is not our duty to repay those who
have harmed us, which I thought the killer was doing. Carl’s gaze
lit on the paper and he smiled savagely. ‘Those boys deserve what
was done to them,’ he spat out. ‘No one deserves to be murdered,’ I
replied with some asperity. ‘When they use their bodies without a
thought to the consequences, they earn whatever comes to them,’
Carl replied coldly. ‘Especially when they are breaking God’s
laws’.

“My immediate thought was that he had done
exactly that when he had sex with the boy who had infected him. One
look at him however and I knew he wouldn’t see it that way. After
all, he wasn’t gay. He’d just given into his urges, as always. He
stood then, coming up behind me to look at what I had written.
‘Vengeance
is
mine,’ he barely whispered. ‘I will repay them
in due time.’ I thought he was reading aloud the opening words of
my sermon. I turned to look up at him and the dreadful realization
came to me. ‘You haven’t…?’ He merely smiled and without another
word he left my office.

“I sat for the next hour, lost in horrified
thought. I knew I should tell the police about my suspicions. But
it would destroy Linda. She loved her brother. He was the only
family she had outside of me and Bradley. And there was also
Bradley to consider. He adored his uncle. But I couldn’t let Carl
continue with his evil ways. In the end I knew what I had to do. It
would damn me, but it would save the lives of more boys. Boys Carl
hated and was bent on exterminating because of his own folly.

“It took me two days to come up with a means
to the end. When I had, I called Carl, asking him to meet me at a
small, disreputable bar outside of town. He laughed, asking when I
had taken up drinking. I told him I rarely did, but things were
going badly at the moment between me and Linda and I needed a stiff
drink or two and his shoulder to cry on—or words to that effect. He
believed me and agreed to meet me there. I chose that bar because I
knew that the only parking was in the unlit lot behind it. To bring
things to a close, when he stepped out of his car I called to him
from where I’d parked at the edge of the lot. As he came over I
walked into the trees behind the lot. He followed, asking what was
going on. I attacked and killed him, and then I dragged his body
deeper into the trees, to a hole I had already dug. I buried him
there, with the hammer I’d used to murder him.

“I don’t regret
what
I did. Not when
the killings ceased. It was easy enough to explain to Linda that
her brother had undoubtedly moved on again. Looking for that
elusive something he had yet to find to make his life better. She
accepted that, although she often wondered why he never contacted
her, as close as they had been. Bradley was understandably upset at
first, but he was young and soon enough school and his friends took
precedence.

“My only regret is that I know my soul is
damned. But in the end, what is one soul compared to the lives that
were saved?”

“And that’s it,” Chief Davis said, refolding
the paper before handing it back to Slater.

“I’m not sure I could have lived with that on
my conscience, no matter the reason,” Teague said quietly.

“He was a good man, faced with an
insurmountable problem and he handled it in the only way he knew
how,” Hoyt replied. “If only Bradley had realized that. But it’s
obvious he didn’t. His letter from his father must have told the
same story.”

Slater nodded. “But rather than taking it to
heart, he set out on his own road of revenge for what happened to
his uncle.”

“We won’t know that until I can question
him,” Chief Davis said.

“At least now, if we’re right, we know why it
took almost thirty years for the killings to start up again. And I
have closure, finally, as do you,” Teague said, looking at
Slater.

Slater nodded. “A strange story, but one that
makes sense. I wonder why Pastor Irwin’s wife killed him and then
herself, although I can make a good guess. Somehow she came across
one of the letters before he gave them to his lawyer. It would have
been horrible enough to learn what her brother had done. It would
have been even worse to find out that her husband had murdered him.
She must have thought he was going to confess to the world what had
happened. She couldn’t have known that he would tell the lawyer not
to pass the letters on to Bradley and the pastor’s superior until
after both Pastor Irwin and she were dead.”

“So much tragedy because one man couldn’t
keep it in his pants,” Hoyt said dourly.