The Psalmist (27 page)

They've begun to shut down some of the offices, yeah. And there've been stories going around that he's out of it half the time, paranoid, blaming ­people for shit they never did . . . There are a lot of stories. I never saw him, though, the last year. But you hear things. . .

Noticing a shadow, Hunter looked up and saw Ben Shipman. He was standing inside her doorway holding a file folder.

 

Chapter 47

“H
EY.
H
AVE A
few minutes?”

“Sure.” She slipped the transcript back into the envelope. “How you feeling?”

“Feeling,” he repeated, as if he didn't know what she was talking about.

“Come on in. Please.”

Ship crossed the room with his endearing, somewhat clunky walk. He stood by her desk, feet spaced evenly, like a pupil about to recite a speech.

“I know you've been sort of avoiding me,” he began, watching her wide-­eyed. “And I can't really say as I blame you.”

Hunter frowned, not getting it. For the past two days Ship had been missing in action, out sick one day, working from home today. “No,” she said. “It's just been busy.”

“And I know what you're probably thinking.” His eyelids fluttered. “So I just wanted to say I'm sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” She glanced at the clock.

“
I
told the sheriff and state's attorney about the Psalms.” Shipman's face reddened, accentuating his freckles. “I'm sorry. I gave them background information about our investigation. And showed them the interview logs.”

Hunter was deeply surprised. “Why?”

“They asked me,” he said, bowing his head. “I should've told you about it, but I didn't. The sheriff sort of wanted me not to say anything. I kept wanting to, but it just never felt like the right time.”

She nodded.
Still loyal to the old guard
. It was okay. In fact, it was a little touching that it mattered so much to him. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“I guess because I feel bad.”

“Okay. Thanks,” she said.

His face seemed to recalibrate. “But there's something else, too,” he said, and Hunter could see that what he had come here to tell her was in the file folder. “I went back through the evidence these past ­couple of days. From the very beginning of the case? And I found a ­couple of things—­some pretty significant things, actually—­that we missed. Which makes me think the sheriff—­or someone—­may have messed with evidence.”

She nodded to the chair. Shipman remained standing.

“Remember how we talked before about planting evidence?” he said. “Whether the sheriff would do something like that?” Hunter nodded. She saw the hard resolve in his eyes.
“
I don't think it's about what they planted. I think it's about what they left out. Here . . .” He opened the folder and pulled out unevenly stapled sheaves of paper. He laid them side by side in front of her like solitaire piles, showing a sense of order that didn't come natural to Ben Shipman. “This is the trace, fiber, and biological report that you were given last Tuesday, okay? And these are the preliminary evidence logs from the police techs at the church. They're not quite a match.”

Hunter looked, wondering what he was getting at. It was true she hadn't seen the preliminary documents, only what had been processed into an evidence report. That was the procedure the state police and sheriff's office followed for county crime scene investigations, despite the change of law for homicide cases. “Three discrepancies,” Ship said. “There was a small amount of DNA on Kwan Park's body and a ­couple strands of hair on her clothing that didn't make it into the evidence report. And also, a fingerprint out at the Oyster Creek cabin.”

“Why was that evidence left out?” she asked.

Shipman shrugged. “Procedure. State CSI has always worked with the sheriff to prepare the evidence report. That's how they process it. In this case, it looks like they just neglected to log in certain pieces of evidence. When we submitted the first round of evidence for our meeting on Penn Street,” he said, meaning the medical examiner's office in Baltimore, “for whatever reason the DNA and hair strands were left out. The fingerprint wasn't logged in anywhere. I found out about it through one of the techs who was on the scene.”

“Why?” Hunter asked.

“What they'll say with the fingerprint is it's not relevant to the investigation. Hundreds of ­people had been in that cottage, right? Who aren't relevant to this crime.”

“Which is probably true.”

“Yeah. Except in this case, it
is
relevant,” Ship said. “We've run the prints and come back with a hit for one on the national databases. Still waiting on the DNA and hair.”

“Really.”

“Yes. The fingerprint at Oyster Creek belongs to a man named Kirby Moss.”

He began to pull loose papers from his file folder, placing them on top of one another before Hunter had a chance to see what they were. “Kirby Moss was arrested thirteen years ago in Connecticut for assault with a deadly weapon and attempted second-­degree murder. Both charges dropped for lack of evidence.

“Here's why it's interesting: They also found a fingerprint at Jackson Pynne's town house on Sunday, inside the boots, that appear to be a match.”

“With Kirby Moss?”

“That's right.”

“Holy crap,” Hunter said. “
That's
interesting.”

Kirby.
Kirby was one of the names Jackson Pynne had mentioned. One of the “security guys.”

Shipman's freckled face watched her expectantly.

“And the hairs and DNA were left out of the evidence log that was forwarded to the task force, you're saying?” Hunter asked.

“Yep.”

She played it forward in her thoughts, wondering if this could lead to obstruction charges against the sheriff, or if it would just be seen as incompetence.

“Here's more of what I found on Kirby Moss,” Ship added, handing her the last, stapled report.

Hunter motioned again for Ship to sit. This time he did. She leaned back and paged through the document for several minutes, realizing that Fischer must've had a hand in this, too, maybe more than a hand.

Kirby Moss had served in the U.S. Army in the mid-­1990s. For the past eleven years he'd worked as a private security consultant. In his mug shot, he wore a crew cut, had startled, saucerlike eyes. What caught Hunter's attention was something several pages in—­something that may have seemed incidental to Fischer and Shipman. Moss had been employed for about two years by a Florida firm called Private Excelsior Security Consultants. A corporate statement from nine years earlier showed that the company's CEO was an R. Gilbert Rankin.

Did that complete the circle? Could Gilbert Rankin be Gilly? Trumble's “enforcer”?

The Violent Man. Big guy. Icy eyes.

Possible.

“Does Stamps know anything about this yet?”

Shipman shook his head. “Uh-­uh. No one knows.”

Hunter felt the adrenaline pouring into her blood, knowing that this missed evidence could change the case. If Rankin was the head of security for Trumble, then they might be able to establish a link now between Trumble and the killings. And, in the process, exonerate Jackson Pynne.

Why would the sheriff have suppressed this evidence, though?
She paged back through the report.
Would he really have been so reckless?
It seemed unlikely. Except—­if he'd always gotten away with controlling the evidence-­processing, he may have become conditioned to believe he could do whatever he wanted; it was a common enough human failing. And at the time, he'd already decided that Robby Fallow was the perpetrator.

“Great,” Hunter said, closing the report. “But we need to shift gears now. I'd like you and Fisch to drop everything else. I'm less interested in Kirby Moss than I am in Gilbert Rankin. I think that's Moss's employer. I think that's where we need to focus next.” She glanced at the clock. “We've got four hours.”

“Oh,” he said, still staring at her. “Really?”

“Yes. I'm not sure yet, but I have a feeling the DNA's going to come back as a match with his. I think Gil Rankin might be our man.”

Shipman blinked at her several times. “Which man?”

Hunter just looked at him.

“Oh,” he said. “Ten-­four.”

 

Chapter 48

W
ENDELL
S
T
AMPS'S BROAD,
pale face held its sober neutrality as Hunter walked into his carpeted office. This time the Wait had been eleven minutes.

“Have you got something?” he said, unruffled as always.

“I think I do.” Hunter sat, and opened her folder on his immaculate desk. Data reports, bios, information the three of them had put together over the past four hours. “New evidence,” she said. “Evidence missed earlier.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I don't fault anyone but myself for this,” she said. “When several agencies are involved in collecting and logging evidence, sometimes there's confusion and mistakes are made. It shouldn't happen, but occasionally it does. I'd like to think that we'll learn from this and in the future streamline the evidence-­collection process to avoid this sort of thing. But I take full responsibility for it.”

“Is it relevant?”

“Relevant? Yes.”

“Okay.” He leaned forward, a way of indicating interest. Hunter showed him the report on the fingerprints at the murder scene and at Jackson Pynne's garage, identified now as belonging to Kirby Moss, and the still unidentified DNA found on Kwan Park's body and the hairs on her clothing. And then she told him about the connection between Moss and Gilbert Rankin.

When she finished, Stamps leaned back in his executive chair, still expressionless. “And you're saying a procedural mistake is going to jeopardize the outcome of this case?”

“No, sir, I'm not. I'm saying evidence was suppressed. Evidence that, in my opinion, points to a different perpetrator.”

“Suppressed how?”

“I don't know. It was apparently removed or left out of the evidence log on Tuesday before the reports were submitted to the task force. The fingerprint belongs to Kirby Moss. We know that. And we believe Moss worked for a security consultant named Gil Rankin.

“The reason that's significant,” she went on, “is because Kwan Park worked for the same organization that Gil Rankin worked for. So, they're all connected.”

His eyes narrowed and he glanced for several minutes through the reports that Fischer and Shipman had prepared. Finally, he looked up.

“And you have evidence that this Gil Rankin was involved? Because I don't see anything here.”

“Not yet, but we will,” Hunter said. “I suspect the DNA on Kwan Park will come back as his. But it's also significant, you understand, because the other three victims—­I know you don't want to make them part of your case, but I think you're going to have to now—­also worked for the same organization. August Trumble's organization. That's what ties these killings together. So I don't see how we
can't
make them part of the case.”

“But I don't see that here.”

“No. But you will,” Hunter said. “We're working on it.”

Stamps frowned. “But Jackson Pynne's DNA was at the crime scenes here and in Virginia. And possibly in West Virginia,” he said. “And this man's fingerprint was in
his
town house. So you're saying Pynne did this in collaboration with these other two men?”

“No, the opposite,” Hunter said. “His DNA was planted, as I said earlier, by these men. The boots, two cigarette butts, a plastic soda cup. That's what we have on Jackson Pynne. That's what you're basing your case on. Sir, we can't go forward with charges against Mr. Pynne.”

Stamps's face remained stoically blank, as if he were thinking about something else, even though Hunter suspected he was beginning to sense the case was crumbling.

His eyes went to the clock on the wall. Hunter looked, too.

“Is the FBI aware of this?”

“Not yet.”

He nodded, as if that meant something. “Who is this man, Ralph Gilbert Rankin?”

“Gil Rankin.” She handed him a two-­page fact sheet that Fischer had prepared, the last document in her folder. “He's a former police detective from New Jersey. He retired after allegations that he had planted evidence in a drug case and roughed up a potential witness in another case. No charges were filed in either incident, although there were internal investigations. He later worked security for Exxon for two years. He runs a very high-­end security consulting firm now, called Private Excelsior Security Consultants, based in South Florida. From what we're told, his main client—­probably now his only client—­is August Trumble's organization.”

“But you don't have any evidence confirming that?”

“No, sir. Not yet.”

“Huh.” The state's attorney nodded. He closed his eyes for a moment and rubbed his temples. “But so—­what are you thinking? I mean, motivewise. Can you tell me that again?”

“Jackson Pynne didn't do this, sir. I believe Gil Rankin did, on orders from August Trumble. And I think they've come here now to silence Pynne, thinking he knows more than he does. And then tie this up in a bow and go home. Except things haven't worked out quite the way they expected.”

As Stamps continued watching her with his impassive expression, Hunter began to entertain a wild idea: what if the state's attorney was in on this, too, in some way? Stamps was evasive by nature, far cleverer and more deceptive than the sheriff, but every bit as much a protector of the old order. And he'd had issues with Jackson Pynne years earlier, too. What if Trumble's organization was paying him to see that things went a certain way?

“Go on,” he said.

“There's no more, sir.”

“Okay.” He glanced at the reports on his desk. “Then let me review these and give it some thought. Can I hold onto these?”

“Yes. Those are your copies.”

“Thank you, Hunter. I appreciate your efforts.”

She felt a charge as she walked out past Connie Elgar and back down the long corridor to her office at the other end of the building. The play of sunlight in the glass arcs of the hallway, the luminance of the clouds, took on a sudden magnificence. The details of the investigation had just rearranged themselves into something that resembled a final form. This was the championship now, and nothing else mattered to Hunter—­not next season, not the rest of her life. She had a real opponent at last, a single target—­and a clear sense of what had happened. It was one of the best feelings she knew.

She whipped out of the parking lot that afternoon onto empty blacktop and drove west, speeding toward the Methodist church. But then she remembered the threats against Luke and his wife and slowed down, deciding it was best not to go there.

H
UNTER WORKED INTO
the night, determined to learn all that she could about Gil Rankin. She'd brought two cans of Red Bull and her iPod to the office so she could blast Maroon 5 and Ani DeFranco to periodically recharge her energies.

Pulling together a profile of Rankin wasn't easy, though. There was almost no information about him for the past ten years, other than an address in Miami, Florida, and his listing with Private Excelsior Security Consultants. The only photo was twelve years old. She sensed he'd been deliberately sheltered working for Trumble. According to Pynne, Rankin had hurt ­people and raped women. But he had no criminal record. Hunter also wondered if maybe
he
wanted out of Trumble's organization now. Maybe that's what this was—­an elaborate breakout on Rankin's part?

Fischer and Shipman stayed late in their respective offices, like separate tenants, still combing through surveillance tapes and running data searches. Three other state homicide investigators from out of the region were pitching in as well, reviewing tapes. It was busywork again, but it wasn't strictly a Tidewater County case anymore, despite what the sheriff and prosecutor thought.

At 9:20
P.M.,
Ship came in and plunked himself in her guest chair, hooking his right leg over the arm. He did this occasionally, often under the pretense of needing to borrow a pen or an Altoid, but really to compare what he was thinking with what she was thinking. Fischer never did; she couldn't recall the last time he had entered her office.

“So, we having fun yet?” he said. His usual opener.

“Not yet.”

“Figured everything out?”

“Some, not everything.”

“Good.” Shipman exhaled as if he were exhausted. Finally, he asked his question. “You don't think Pynne was involved, do you?”

“No, I don't. As I said earlier. I think Gil Rankin did this.”

He nodded. “Why, though? I don't get it,” he said. Then he asked a better question: “Why this way, I mean?”

“Well.” Hunter glanced at Trumble's old mug shot again on her corkboard, next to Kwan Park's picture
.
“I don't have it all figured out yet. Except I think they were creating a specific narrative that Jackson Pynne had helped set up an embezzling scheme involving these four ­people. Which is why there were four accounts. And then, for some reason, a conflict arose among the partners. He got greedy or paranoid and ended it. The narrative also involved a fight between Pynne and Kwan Park.”

Ship was nodding ever so slightly, meaning he was with her. “But that's not the real narrative.”

“No. I think it's designed to conceal the real narrative.”

“Which is?”

Hunter realized that he was waiting for her to explain what he'd probably been sitting in his office trying to figure out for the past hour or so. “Well,” she said, “that Trumble felt his organization was threatened by these disloyal ­people, that they were planning to betray him and maybe ruin him. And so he decided he needed to have them eliminated.”

“But so—­why leave behind the series of calling cards?”

She smiled. “We're still working on that, aren't we?”

“Right.” Ship absently swung his leg up and down. “You don't really think the sheriff or the state's attorney might be involved?”

“Well, I don't know. Anything's possible.”

Shipman continued to watch her, his eyes hungry for more.

“Anyway,” she said, “we should get back to work so we don't have to speculate like this anymore.”

“Right. Okay. Ten-­four,” Ship said, rising from the chair.

It was at about a quarter past eleven, after Shipman had gone home, that Dave Crowe called. He'd again waited hours before getting back to her.

“Where've you been?” she said.

“Sorry,” he said. “My girl at the
Post
just called. She asked me what I could tell her about Ralph Rankin. What am I missing here?”

Hunter said nothing at first. Serves you right, she thought.

But then she summoned a reasonable tone and said, “I'm not sure what you mean.” She needed Crowe on the team, after all. Also, she was curious why the
Post
reporter would have asked about Rankin. Was the timing just coincidence?

“I read the interviews with your source,” she said.

“And?”

“At one point, she—­or he . . .” Hunter cleared her throat and waited for Crowe to clarify, but he didn't so she continued. “ . . . talked about being afraid of Trumble's security guys. Pynne mentioned them, too. And Jackson gave me two specific names—­a man named Kirby, and another named Gilly.”

“Okay, I read that.”

“I think Gilly is Ralph Gilbert Rankin. He goes by Gil. Gil Rankin.” When Crowe didn't respond, Hunter said, “You knew that, right?”

“I mean, sure, we know about a man named Ralph Rankin. Security man employed by Trumble. One of about eight or nine we've identified over the years. We don't frankly see him as being a big player in this case.”

“I think he is.”

“Why?”

“As I just said, I think Rankin is Gilly. The big guy. And I think he did this.”

“Did what?”

“The murders.”

Crowe laughed, a nasally high-­pitched sound that didn't seem like it could have come from him. “Why?” he asked. “Because Jackson Pynne said so? Of
course
he'd say that. Look at what he's facing.”

“No,” she said. “Because of new evidence. And because it makes sense. It ties everything together.”

“The evidence is against Pynne, though.”

“Not any more.”

Crowe went silent. Were his sources that bad? Hunter wondered. Or was he deliberately being steered away from Rankin by his bosses at the FBI?

Then she flashed on something else: If Sheila Patterson was the FBI's informant and she'd been murdered, was the Bureau now trying to cover its ass in some way? Is that what this was all about? Was that the real reason the case had to go “a certain way”?

“What's the new evidence?” Crowe said.

Hunter glanced up at the trees bending in the night winds, debating whether to tell him anything. Remembering how reluctant he'd been to share information the first night he phoned. But not telling him now would be counterproductive. She needed them to work together.

Crowe listened as she explained—­completely silent, diminished, it seemed, by these new details, recognizing not only that this evidence was going to change the case, but also that the story he had been pursuing—­about August Trumble—­might in fact be the wrong story.

J
ACKSON
P
YN
NE WAS
tired but unable to sleep, tossing for hours on his tiny bed. He'd said what he needed to say to the homicide detective, but he didn't feel good about it for some reason. Something about her had thrown him off.

For the first ­couple of days, Pynne had felt protected here. Now, the idea of spending months, or years, in a cell with these human sounds and odors felt deeply disturbing. He wanted to be out again, speeding down the highway with the windows open, a Chesterfield between his fingers.
We'll be known by the fruit of our actions,
Pastor Luke used to tell him.
So our lives should be about producing good fruit
. Amen, that was what it all came down to. He understood that now.