The Lord Is My Shepherd (29 page)

“You look like a woman ready to get out of here,” he said by way of greeting.

“I am. I'm desperate to get out of here.”

“Food terrible?”

“I've had worse. The situation here is intolerable.”

Before he could ask what was wrong a young nurse bustled in and asked cheerfully, “How are we doing, Mrs. Silverman?”

Cindy glared at him, and it was all he could do not to laugh out loud. “I'm ready to go home,” Cindy told the nurse.

“We'll have to see what the doctor says once he gets a chance to look you over,” the nurse replied.

She checked Cindy's chart, made a few notes, and then went on her way, leaving Cindy to glare at her retreating back.

“You see?” Cindy asked.

“I do.” Jeremiah struggled not to laugh. “Still, it could have been much worse.”

“How do you figure?”

“You could have been Mrs. Walters.”

“That's not funny,” Mark said as he walked in the room. “That would make me a polygamist.”

“Can you get me out of here?” Cindy asked.

“Only if the doctor clears it.”

“Any news?” Jeremiah asked.

Mark shook his head. “So far all's been quiet. Frankly, I don't like it.”

Neither did Jeremiah. After accelerating the pace of the murders sudden inaction by the killer was suspicious. It made him wonder if the next murder had already taken place, and they just hadn't found it yet.

Mark's phone rang, and he flipped it open, his voice anxious as he answered, “What?”

Jeremiah strained so he could hear the voice on the other end. It was Paul, and he sounded grim. “We got a possible hit on Karl and the missing tourists.”

“Which cemetery? Who do we have on-site?” Mark glanced at Cindy.

“None of them, and no one.”

“What do you mean?”

“It looks like he's reenacting the empty tomb, but he's way ahead of us.”

“Just tell me where he is,” Mark said, moving into the hall.

Jeremiah followed.

“I'm on my way,” Mark said.

“I'm coming with you,” Jeremiah informed him.

“No, you're not,” Mark snapped, breaking into a jog.

Jeremiah easily kept up with him. “I need to see this through, and it sounds like you need all the manpower you can get.”

“This is not a job for a rabbi.”

“Yeah, but if you need one, you'll call. Skip it, I'm coming. This guy has done too much damage to the community, and I intend to see that he gets taken down.”

“Short of handcuffing you I can't stop you from following me,” Mark said grudgingly.

“Great, we'll carpool. It will save gas.”

“For a rabbi you sure like to stick your nose into other people's business,” Mark said.

“Professional hazard.” Jeremiah picked up the pace.

Moments later they were flying down the road, cars scattering as they came up behind them with lights and sirens.

“Which cemetery?” Jeremiah asked.

“A private one. A few of the really old mansions in the area have them. I should have seen it coming. This one belongs to a First Shepherd member named Joseph.”

Clearly, that was meant to be significant, but Jeremiah was at a loss. “Okay, you'll have to explain that one for the rabbi in the car.”

“When they took Christ off the cross, one of his followers, a rich man named Joseph of Arimathea, gave them his tomb to lay the body in.”

“That is clever. It's like he finally picked the right community that had everything he needed,” Jeremiah said.

They turned off the street and onto an access road and pulled up behind four patrol cars. Another couple pulled in behind them. Together they wound up the narrow road to the top of a plateau.

It didn't feel right to Jeremiah. It felt too private. For the most part Karl had chosen bigger and flashier. This was wrong somehow.

They parked a short distance from the first gravestones and leaped out of the car. One man dressed like a Roman guard sat on the ground. Another man dressed in normal clothes stood beside him, looking in surprise at all the police cars.

Police officers fanned out as Mark and Jeremiah headed straight for the two men.

“Are you Joseph?” Mark asked.

“Yes.”

“Detective Mark Walters. Tell us what happened.”

“Well, I came outside this morning to walk a little bit, and I happened to glance over here and saw something moving on the ground. I came over, thinking it was somebody's dog who had gotten loose or something, and I found this guy. He was dressed just like that but his hands were tied behind
his back, and he was gagged. I called the police immediately and then I untied and ungagged him.”

Jeremiah saw the rope and the bandana on the ground that the killer had used.

“He must have interrupted him during his work,” Mark said. “Spread out people. Find Karl and those tourists!”

“I don't think so,” Jeremiah said quietly. He crouched down next to the man and spoke a few words of rusty Italian. The man responded with a torrent, and after Jeremiah asked him to slow down he did.

“He's been here for hours,” Jeremiah said. “I'm pretty sure he's a decoy. He said that he is the only one in his tour group who doesn't speak any English whatsoever.”

“Karl counted on us not being able to talk to him,” Mark said, gritting his teeth.

“I think he lured everyone away while he did his work in another cemetery,” Jeremiah said.

“What are you talking about?” Joseph asked.

“A serial killer is mimicking the events of Passion Week. We thought since you were Joseph of Arimathea that he was going to use your tomb,” Mark said.

Joseph stared at him for a moment. “If he was going to use my tomb, it wouldn't be here.”

“What do you mean?” Mark glanced around at the small graveyard.

“I've always found this place pretty creepy. That's why several years ago I bought my family a crypt in Fairhaven.”

“Thank you for stopping by and letting me borrow your laptop,” Cindy said.

“No problem,” Geanie told her with a shrug. “I don't need it back until Monday.”

“I'd better be out of here by then,” Cindy said.

“Surely, they'll let you go by then.”

“What did I miss at work yesterday?”

“Chaos. Fortunately, I think everything got straightened out. The Easter pageant is on for seven o'clock tonight as planned.”

“I really want to see it,” Cindy said.

“Well, you've still got about six hours. It could happen.”

Six hours. Cindy hadn't heard anything yet from Mark or Jeremiah. Had they caught Karl or would people at the pageant need to worry about when he would strike next? How gruesome.

“Anything else I should know about?”

“There's a prayer vigil afterward at the synagogue.”

“Whose idea was that?”

“Theirs. Pastor Roy called me this morning to fire up the prayer chain so everyone would know in advance. We'll also make an announcement at the pageant that anyone who wants to join can.”

“And the prayer vigil is for …”

“Everything that's happened, everyone who's been killed. I think it's mostly for the Schullers and the Jensens.”

“I'll be there if I can,” Cindy said. “I'm still waiting for a doctor to sign off on me.”

“You want me find one for you? I can be really annoying when I want.”

Cindy smiled. She had been on the receiving side of Geanie's annoyance. “Let's give them another couple of hours, and then I'll turn you loose.”

“You got it. I need to print off some things at church for the prayer vigil, but give me a call if you need a ride or if I can crack some heads.”

“I will,” Cindy said.

Geanie left, and Cindy fired up the laptop, keeping her fingers crossed that she'd find a wireless signal. She breathed a sigh of relief as she got online.

Armed with more information, it only took her five minutes to find articles relating to the death of Abby and the imprisonment of Karl. She read the original articles about the death. The first one called it a tragic accident.

So when did they start calling it murder?

She scrolled through the initial articles, then found others about the trial. If only Oliver had spoken up, so many lives could have been saved, including Karl's.

Still she searched for that moment—that news article—when it shifted from an accident to a murder in the public eye. If everyone had been willing to accept it as an accident, then it would have been incredibly tragic. Karl might have been scarred for life, but he wouldn't have gone to prison and things would have probably turned out differently. She took a deep breath and continued to search on.

Finally, she found an intriguing link: “Prayer Vigil Turns Ugly.” She clicked on the article and skimmed through it. As she read deeper into the piece she realized the true horror of what had happened. The night after the shooting, seminary students held a vigil for Abby. It was still considered an accident.

At the vigil Abby's roommate came forward and revealed Abby's pregnancy and that she was afraid it might have had something to do with her death.

Instead of setting the record straight, Oliver had come right out and accused Karl. The police arrested his former best friend, and the rest was history.

“Oliver, how could you?” she whispered. Photos showed a younger version of Oliver. His face looked innocent, but his eyes might as well have been dead.

You didn't just keep silent, you accused him.

Rage filled Cindy as she thought about what Oliver had done. She surfed the Web for a few more minutes but didn't find anything else of interest. She shut down the laptop, put it away in a drawer, and then swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

Her crutches leaned against the closet. If she could reach them, then she could make it to Oliver's room and give him a piece of her mind. Maybe she could brain him with one of her crutches.

“And just where do you think you're going?” a doctor asked in surprise as he walked into her room.

“Home?” she asked hopefully.

“Well, let's see about that.” He picked up her chart and flipped through it.

She briefly considered making a break for it while he was distracted but figured that in the long run it would be less than useless. She waited in frustrated silence as he took his own sweet time.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“I feel like going home.”

“What's your pain number?” he asked.

“Two,” she lied. The throbbing in her foot was more like a five, but she wanted to leave.

“Has someone taught you how to use the crutches yet?”

She wanted to lie about that, too, but she figured if she tried them and then face planted they would definitely keep her longer. “Not yet.”

“Okay, I'll send a therapist down to help you practice. I tell you what, if he checks you out then you can go home today. If not, you can go home tomorrow.”

“That's fair, send him in,” Cindy said.

He smiled. “You really are eager to get out of here, aren't you? Is the food that bad?”

She shrugged.
No, there's a killer stalking me, and I'm not safe here. Then again, I'm not sure I'll be safe anywhere.

Mark cursed himself as he drove through the gates of Fairhaven Cemetery at eighty miles an hour—lights only, no sound. He didn't want to alert Karl yet.

“We've spotted the bus on the northeast corner,” someone reported in on the radio.

“You stay here. I don't know what we're up against, and the last thing I need is to worry about you,” Mark told Jeremiah.

Not waiting for an answer, Mark exited the car and slipped silently through the grave stones, trying not to dwell on their symbols of death or the death that he was likely to discover.

Movement flashed in the corner of his eye, and he turned his head to see a police officer, weapon drawn, also advancing toward the northeast corner. Northeast. That was where Joseph had said his crypt was. Northeast was where they had found the bus.

A tall structure came into view, and something told him it was Joseph's crypt. He paused, not sure he wanted to see what waited there. He pushed himself on. Even a second's delay could cost someone their life.

He realized he was approaching the crypt from behind. He moved quickly, silently, and circled around.

The scene burst into view. A man dressed as an angel sat atop a small boulder in front of the crypt. Lying on the ground were “Roman soldiers.”