The Psalmist (12 page)

 

Chapter 19

S
NEAKERS SAT L
OOKOUT
in back, panting almost continuously as the slow movement of Saint-­Saëns's third violin concerto played and the mountains rose up in the distance. Travels with Charlotte tended to be unpredictable, but in a good way. Being on the road was an evolving adventure, never a means to an end; it wasn't unusual for her to see a sign for an antiques shop or a fruit stand twelve miles off the highway and decide to pay a visit. This time she took what became an eighteen-­mile detour to a country store near Fredericksburg that advertised homemade jams. Charlotte and the owner, a petite, animated gray-­haired woman, spoke at length about the process of making and canning preserves, while Luke walked Sneakers down an unpaved country lane. They drove away with a case of blueberry jam in the trunk.

Continuing south by southwest, Luke gazed blankly out at the gray-­green fields, scenery that rested his eyes and kept his thoughts far away. If the Tidewater County killing was connected to another case, it was likely connected to others as well, which was what he had suspected from the beginning. But if the Psalms were a message, who was the intended recipient? And how might the victims be connected? What did a middle-­aged woman in Delaware and a thirtyish-­year-­old found in his church have in common?

“You're obsessing, still,” Charlotte said, turning down the music.

“Am I? I guess I was so obsessed I didn't notice.”

“So let's talk about it.”

“We don't have to.”

“What if I want to?”

“That's different.”

But then neither of them could figure out what to say first.

“I think the case has taken a very strange turn,” Luke said at last.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “So, is it really about the Psalms? Is that what you're thinking?”

“Starting to.”

“Is she?”

“Hunter?”

“The sergeant.”

“Starting to.”

She switched lanes and passed a semi trailer. Then another, more aggressively, the speedometer needle climbing above eighty. For some reason, Charlotte always drove faster when they were talking, her hands steady at two and ten o'clock on the steering wheel. Sneakers lay down across the seat in back now and occasionally whimpered when he felt she was driving too fast. Luke felt the same way at times, but kept quiet.

“It's the sheriff who's been spreading those stories about Robby Fallow.”

“I think so,” Luke said. “The sheriff and his proxies. Maybe Barry Stilfork.”

“I don't get it. Why?”

“Because he senses opportunity, I guess. The sheriff's profoundly resentful about what happened to him last year. That's my theory anyway. He thinks this could change things back.”

“Tidewater County is a peculiar place.”

­“People keep telling me that.”

“What sort of opportunity, exactly?”

“A chance to make a case against Robby Fallow and have it stick.”

“But if this is about the Psalms, he can't do that.”

“That's right.”

“It would also mean they're dealing with a serial killer.”

“Yes,” he said. “That, too.”

She switched lanes to pass again. A town appeared ahead with a gas station, traffic signal, white wood-­frame houses, an old Baptist church. The case
had
taken a strange turn. If this was a serial killer, there was something wrong with the setup, Luke sensed. An idea kept playing in his thoughts, trying to take a shape.

Charlotte slowed as the road narrowed to two lanes and then became a residential street, snaking past houses and a public green, then an antiques store, hardware, minimart. Sunlight backlit the gray clouds above the mountains ahead.

“Why Psalms?” she said, wanting to draw Luke out. “I mean, is this someone trying to justify what he's doing? Meting out punishment, so to speak?”

“Meting?”

She turned the music off. “Tell me more about Psalms,” she said.

Luke glanced at her, seeing that she was fully engaged now. If she can't stop me from obsessing, she'll join me. Okay, he thought.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything?” He looked at her. “But condensed.”

“ 'Kay.” He formulated a topic sentence as she picked up speed again. “The Psalms, in a sense, encapsulate all of the scriptures, old and new. And cover the whole range of the human condition.”

“Old and new?”

“They predict what comes in the New Testament—­although, of course, they were written hundreds of years earlier. Psalm 22, for example, tells the story of the crucifixion, Psalm 16 the resurrection. Psalm 110 has the savior at the right hand of God. The Psalms were the first prayers used in Chris­tian liturgy. Thomas Aquinas said the Psalms contained the essence of Chris­tian doctrine in poetic form.”

“How are they different from the other books in the Old Testament?”

“They're different because they don't tell stories. The Psalms are divinely inspired songs, poems, and prayers written over a period of about a thousand years. Telling us how we should live our lives. Originally, they were meant to be sung.”

“And they were written by David.”

“Mostly, yeah. Many of them reflect events in David's life. God famously called David ‘a man after my own heart.' ”

“There's a lot of eye-­for-­an-­eye stuff in the Psalms, though, isn't there?” she said, flooring the accelerator as they returned to divided highway. Sneakers scrambled to a standing position to see what was going on.

“Yes. Lots of ‘smiting enemies.' ”

“Could this be someone in the clergy, then? Doing the smiting?”

“I wondered that,” Luke said. “Possible, but I don't think so. I think an FBI profiler would probably say that this is more likely a lone-­wolf sociopath. Someone who doesn't interact well with others. Who has time to create an intricate fantasy world, with twisted interpretations of Bible verse. Maybe transferring his own feelings of persecution. It also sounds like someone who doesn't understand the Psalms.”

“How so?”

“The Psalms were beautiful Hebrew poetry. They were a part of ordinary daily life for the Israelites. If this is really about the Psalms, they're being cherry-­picked for a very different purpose—­to justify violence and anger.”

“And how would Jackson Pynne be involved? Is this him?”

“I don't know.” An unsettling feeling rippled through him. ”All I know,” he said, “is that he has some connection with the woman in the church.”

“But no idea what.”

“Not yet.”

She passed a stream of cars and coasted back into the right lane.

“Strange name, Jackson Pynne. Always reminds me of Jackson Pollock.”

“Well, actually, his thinking process resembles a Pollock painting.”

“Ha ha. Could
he
be the killer?”

“No, I don't think so,” Luke said. “But I have a funny feeling he might be able to tell us who is.”

“Why hasn't he gone to the police, then?”

“Good question. He's scared of something. Or someone, maybe. I don't know, I don't get it yet.”

They drove in silence for a while, pondering that. Woods, clearings, fences, farmland. Luke wondering what Jackson Pynne had done with himself these past few years. What he'd thought about and dreamed about. How he'd strayed from his goal of creating luxury coastal developments. Had he been able to find simple pleasures in the ordinary, as he had often urged Jackson to do?

“You know what I think,” Charlotte said after a while. “When we return, they'll have ID'd the woman. Found Jackson Pynne. And solved this whole thing.”

Luke nodded.

“Yes, and maybe the Democrats and Republicans will have agreed to put aside their differences and settle on a new budget deal.”

C
HARLOTT
E HAD RENTED
a two-­bedroom condo with a fireplace and a sweeping back-­deck view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They'd made a pact: no television or Internet during the trip, and once they reached the mountains they would not talk about the church killing anymore. At least not until Saturday. Charlotte brought her cell phone, but it was only for incoming calls.

On Thursday night, walking with Sneakers on a wet, winding mountain road, Luke finally began to disconnect from the case. It felt exhilarating walking through the cold mist in this strange locale, smelling the pine and spruce trees, seeing the moonlit shapes of mountains in the distance. Hearing nothing but their footfalls and the dog panting.

“We did some good male bonding,” he reported to Charlotte as Sneakers trotted across the kitchen to his water bowl.

“Did he encourage you to stop obsessing?”

“More than encourage. He pulled me into the woods and refused to walk back unless I gave my word.”

“I trained him well.”

Luke could see that Charlotte felt at home here, her eyes finding something in the mountain scenery that seemed to satisfy the wilder parts of her soul. He liked that.

In the morning, they all went on a trail hike through the woods, discovering a narrow waterfall cascading down a cliffside. He and Charlotte sat beside it and ate egg sandwiches, feeling the spray in the cool breeze, while Sneakers ran from point to point, sniffing the ground. The mountain air was a tonic, and the peacefulness in this place that Charlotte had found gave Luke a feeling of interior peace as well. Only occasionally did he think about the woman in the church pew or the peculiar way ­people had looked at him in the days after he discovered her.

Both evenings, he and Charlotte role-­played—­as they often did while vacationing. On Thursday, Charlotte was a forest ranger, checking the area for a giant brown bear reportedly roaming nearby. On Friday, Don Kendall, the local sheriff, showed up looking for a female prisoner who had escaped that afternoon. Sneakers ignored them through it all, having better things to do, chief among them lying on the throw rug, his face catching the heat from an air vent.

Friday night, sitting wrapped in blankets on the screened deck, they finally talked about the “things” that Charlotte had mentioned. Luke hoped the conversation might somehow excise the private sadness that had seemed to creep into her thoughts—­and the vague restless feelings he'd had lately in the middle of the night. “Things” came down to logistics, mostly: Methodist pastors averaged five to seven years in one church, then they were moved, traded to another city like pro athletes to another sports team. Luke didn't want to do that forever, nor did Charlotte. Both of them wanted to purchase a home eventually and to live their life in one place.

“If we feel it's important,” he told her, “I could give up the ministry and move on to something else. I don't know what exactly it would be. But, I mean, there are plenty of other things I could enjoy doing.”

“Such as?”

“Teaching. Counseling. Writing. Pumping gas.”

“Are ­people still paid to pump gas?”

“In Oregon and New Jersey they are.”

Her lips formed a faint smile, as if she didn't believe him. It always surprised Luke when he knew something that Charlotte didn't, particularly when it was about America, her subject as historian.

“I mean, it
would
be sort of nice to live a more certain life,” she said. “In one place. Right?”

“Yes,” he said. “And we will—­whenever we feel it's the right thing.”

Luke reached for her hand; after a moment she rested her head in the crook of his shoulder, and he breathed the scent of her shampoo. The only problem with changing their life was the implication that there was anything wrong with it as it was, and neither of them believed that. Charlotte loved the freedom to write each day and to find homes for the animals at the Humane Society; and, as she'd said many times, where they lived didn't matter a lot to her. Luke enjoyed the duties of being pastor, meeting ­people, helping members of the church, and working to expand the congregation. Still, they were planning to visit Charlotte's parents next week, and it was always a good idea to address this issue beforehand, because it nearly always came up at the Carringtons'. Charlotte felt a gentle—­sometimes not so gentle—­push from her parents, her father in particular, to produce children. Maybe that was what lay behind her recent moments of sadness. Or maybe it was the ghost of her brother—­her “soul mate,” she had called him—­whose death seemed to still haunt her family.

They sat on the deck long into the evening, sipping wine, watching the clouds drift like cold smoke over the dark mountains, the conversation lapsing to a comfortable silence.

“So, we've had ‘the talk,' ” she finally said.

“Yes. And we're still married.”

“Hallelujah.”

C
HARLOTTE'S PHONE DID
not ring until early Saturday, when Betsy Anders, the church organist, woke them to ask Luke if he was okay with her revised prelude and postlude selections for the Sunday ser­vice. It was the first time she'd ever sought his approval; but it was also the first ser­vice since the “church killing.”

“She just wanted to make sure they were appropriate,” he explained to Charlotte, who was lying in the giant bed hugging Sneakers, probably wondering why someone would call at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning. “Considering everything.”

“It's good to consider everything.”

“Yeah. Although it takes a while.”

“True.”

Luke got back in bed, tugged the blankets and finally closed his eyes.

“Don't worry about Betsy,” Charlotte said. “She's a Methodist.”

“Oh.” Luke opened his eyes. “What's that supposed to mean?”

He turned in time to see her shoulders shrug as she pulled the covers back toward the side she occupied with her canine partner. Luke looked out: gray clouds hanging in the distance, rain or snow nesting above the mountains. “You know,” she said. “Just that Methodists tend to not like the minor keys—­as much as, say, Presbyterians or Catholics.”