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Ella came barreling through the door with the force of a hurricane, her entrance shaking walls and rattling windows. She found Ripley in the exact same position as she’d left her, only now with caffeine beside her.
“Ripley!” Ella shouted. “Listen to me. I know what’s going on.”
Her partner jolted to life, suddenly alert. “What did you find?”
Ella fired up her laptop, furiously typed an online search and turned the screen to show Ripley. “Our killer is recreating the Book of Job.”
Ripley’s face betrayed no acknowledgment. “The what?”
“A book from the Bible. Look.” She showed Ripley a synopsis of the story.
Ripley took one glance and looked back at her partner. “Just give me the overview, Dark. Tell me what you found. I’m not a literature fetishist like you.”
“The book’s about a righteous man named Job. He had everything: family, wealth, material gain. Satan told God that the only reason Job was so virtuous was because he had everything, so took it all away from Job to show that he’d still be faithful in times of suffering.”
“Right. And how does that relate to these killings?”
“We thought these were mercy killings but they’re not. These are trials. Trials that our victims failed.”
Ripley still looked none the wiser. “Keep talking. I’m not seeing the correlation.”
“God put Job through a number of trials, taking away the things he loved one by one. First, he allowed Satan to kill Job’s children. What happened to our first victim? She lost her child.”
“Okay. I’m following. Next.”
“Next God took away all Job’s livestock – the source of his wealth. He was forced into poverty, the same as our second victim.”
Ripley flashed a look of surprise. “Interesting. You could be onto something. Next?”
“God scorched Job’s land. Burned everything to ashes. Remind you of anyone?”
“Gary. The last victim.” Ripley scratched her cheek and said, “You’re sure about this? You’re not grasping at straws?”
Ella tapped her laptop screen. “It’s all right here in black and white. Read it for yourself.”
“It’s half making sense. I’m worrying that we’re molding things to fit the evidence. For example, Joanne lost an unborn baby, not a child.”
“I know, but that’s the only anomaly I can find. That’s not all, either. Remember that audio sample we caught from David’s murder? We thought the killer was saying something likenameless and unright.Maybeaimless.But that’s not what he was saying at all.”
“No?”
“No. He was asking David if he wasblameless and upright.The same way God describes Job in the book.” She grabbed her laptop, highlighted the text on the page and showed her partner. “Right there. Blameless and upright. Our killer wants these people to remain virtuous in times of hardships, but they all sunk further into despair. In our killer’s eyes, they failed God’s tests, so they had to be punished. He’s not killing them out of mercy, he’s killing them because they didn’t show perseverance.”
Ripley clasped her hands in the prayer position. Perhaps a subconscious move, Ella thought. “That would explain the positioning of the bodies. Praying to the heavens, asking for forgiveness.”
“Right? I’m not imagining things here, am I? This all weaves together like a delicate pattern?”
Ripley began reading the page in front of her. After a moment, she said, “If what you’re saying is true, I can’t see any faults, at least not yet.”
“Me either. I’m tossing and turning everything over trying to find a discrepancy but it fits like a glove.”
“Wait a minute,” Ripley said. “Aren’t we looking at this from the wrong angle?”
Ella’s heart stopped beating for a second. She was worried she’d missed something obvious, again. “How do you mean?”
“Well, this Job fellow is being punished. Whereas our killer is the one dishing out these punishments. So, our killer can’t possibly see himself as Job.”
“Exactly right,” Ella said. This was the part she’d battled with on the journey home, but something Father Alden had said helped her make sense of it. “What did Alden say back in that room? He said he’d sold the blade to an assassin.”
