“No one ever expressed dissatisfaction?”Another thought came to her.“What about at a wedding she planned?Anyone start a fight?”
“I asked him if anyone had shown up at a wedding recently and caused trouble, and he said no.”
“Hmm.”Kate looked back at Diane Walker’s body.The paramedics, directed by a coroner’s assistant, were carefully lifting the body onto a gurney.“We need to figure out what she was hiding.Our killer wouldn’t target an innocent wedding planner.She’s hiding skeletons in her closet.We need to figure out what those are.I’ll bet anything those bones belong in the same crypt as the Carltons’ and Patricia Hammond.”
“You’re probably right.”He pursed his lips and scowled.Kate braced herself for a return to their previous conflict, but he only said, “Maxwell installed a security camera at his apartment.I called him after I got here, and he sent me footage proving he was home all night.He’s not the killer.”
Kate kept her tone neutral.“Got it.”
Marcus looked back at the body.“I’m just so sick of him.”
Kate didn’t need to ask who he was talking about.“Yeah.Me too.”
They stood there and watched the paramedics take Diane Walker out of the church.Jesus Christ watched from the cupola above, staring lovingly at the blood spilled at His altar.
Marcus broke the brief silence.“Come on.Let’s go see what Diane Walker is hiding.”
***
An hour later as they worked over breakfast at their hotel, the answer was “not much.”Diane Walker was one of the few people Kate had ever come across who she could honestly describe as saintly.Happily married for eleven years to the same man.Never divorced from him or anyone else.Donated a substantial amount of her moderately substantial income to charity.Active in her own church, not the Catholic but the Episcopalian.Three other employees they talked to broke down in tears upon learning of her death and spoke effusively of her kindness.No criminal record of any kind.Zilch.Nada.Not even a parking ticket.
“Son of a bitch,” Marcus finally said after hanging up on the treasurer of the Good Citizens Club chapter that Diane chaired.“This woman is an angel.”He frowned.“Was an angel.”
“Has Rivera talked to her husband yet?”Kate asked.“Maybe she was a different person at home.”
“He talked to him, but it was on a collect call.He’s with Doctors Without Borders in Ukraine.He’s going to get home as soon as he can, which will depend on whether or not Russia decides to destroy the airfield he’s supposed to fly out from next week.”
Kate sighed.“Well, shit.”
“Yeah, whole lot of that.”Marcus rubbed his chin and crossed his arms.“So, what now?What do we do?”
She glanced at the nightstand next to her bed.Her notes were in the top drawer.“I’m going to get back to the cipher.We’ve run out of leads to chase, so it’s time to go back to basics.The ciphers always clue us into the motive, and the motive always leads us to the killer.We keep trying to go for this miracle path where we can find the answers we need without having to work for them.I think that’s a mistake.We need to go back to what works.”
“Fine by me,” Marcus said.“You do that.Keep me posted.I’m going to get some fresh air.”He stopped by the door, seemed to wrestle with himself for a moment, then admitted, “Actually, I’m going to call Cheryl.”
Kate looked away from him and once more fought to keep her tone neutral.“All right.”
“I have to do the right thing here, Kate.She didn’t deserve to have this sprung on her the way it was.”
“That’s fine,” Kate replied, losing the battle to keep her tone neutral.
Marcus didn’t say anything else, just left the room.
Kate sat where she was, arms folded across her chest for a moment.Marcus was right.Cheryl didn’t deserve this.She was wrong for Marcus, but she wasn’t a bad person.
Diane didn’t deserve what happened to her either.Neither did Patricia Hammond.Neither did Richard and Vanessa Carlton.
So once again, Kate put her personal feelings aside.She retrieved her notes, spread them out on the table, added the new pictures she took from Diane Walker’s crime scene, and got to work.
Hopefully she had been right earlier, and the mystery would be revealed when she decoded the killer’s notes.Otherwise, she and Marcus were adrift on this case, able to see the hurricane approach but not able to escape it, forced to watch as the storm tore the world apart.
