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“Yes, in the two hours you allowed your eyes to close, I gathered enough information to bring a suspect in for questioning and all but close the case.”
“I’m sensing sarcasm in that statement.”
“I always said you were smarter than the average mortician.”
“You’re a laugh a minute.” I smiled, but it faded as he stood there looking at me, his eyes serious as they stared into mine.
I braced myself for the panic to hit as Jack brought his hand up and slid it down the back of my hair, just like he’d done a thousand times before. But something was different this time. There was no fear of being touched or wondering how I’d get away—no walls closing in on me. But my stomach clenched and places low in my body overheated. My pulse thudded and my chest tightened as I held my breath, waiting for—something.
Energy crackled between us, and I froze where I stood, unsure of what to do or how to react. I knew how my body was reacting, but that was a completely different animal from what was going on in my brain. Before I could make the decision to take step back or move closer, Jack made it for me and went around to the other side of the table to slide onto the bench. The crackle dissipated as if it had never been, and I wondered if I was simply going crazy. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. There was certainly enough of it in my family tree.
“Officer Cheek came by and picked up the fingerprints I took of the vic. He called about a half hour ago and said we’ve got a match from the ones he got at Reverend Oglesby’s place. Daniel Oglesby is our victim.” Jack took a drink of coffee and pulled out the list he’d been making so I could see. “Lewis and Martinez are going through Oglesby’s background, looking for known acquaintances and conducting interviews. It’ll keep them busy for a while.”
I breathed out slowly and then took the bench across from Jack.
“I also checked in with Colburn. They’ve combed a mile radius from the crime scene, and so far they’ve found those beer cans and used condoms Colburn mentioned, but they also found some cigarette butts not too far from the body and a red bandana. It might or might not belong to our perps, but we’ll be able to sew them up with DNA if we can find them.”
“Busy morning,” I said. “It can’t be much after noon.”
“It’s almost three. You were really tired.”
I winced and ran my fingers through my disheveled hair. “I need to get back to the body soon. What else did they find?”
“Damn, woman. Was what I told you not enough?”
I rolled my eyes and finished my coffee.
“They spotted tire marks that led to the road on the opposite side of the park. I need to go check it out. Colburn says he found at least four sets of footprints, possibly more, but the dried leaves and brush make it difficult to tell, and the ground is dry right now.”
“I don’t understand this. Bloody Mary doesn’t have mafia ties. And this isn’t the work of kids. You’re telling me that we’ve got a group of killers in our town who go about their normal lives, and then all of a sudden they decide they’ll torture and kill a preacher and dump him in the woods?”
“That’s partially true.” Jack dug through his papers until he came up with a copy of the wax impression I’d taken of the brand on Reverend Oglesby’s hip. “But it’s not the mafia. This is a hate crime, pure and simple.”
My mind wasn’t computing what Jack was showing me. The symbol of the shield, sword and crowd wasn’t reminiscent of Richard the Lionheart after all. I looked closer at what Jack was showing me that I’d missed the first time. The cross guard of the sword, just below the hilt, was bent slightly in opposite directions. Similar to a swastika.
Jack placed an exact replica from an Internet article he’d printed beside the copy we’d taken from Oglesby’s body.
“Aryan Nation,” I said. “Shit.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s hard to think of things like this because society has evolved so much, but Virginia is still south of the Mason-Dixon line and this town is generational, as is most of the whole damned county. I’d heard whisperings of the Klan and other groups when I was a kid, but I didn’t pay much attention because nothing ever came of it to my knowledge.”
He pressed his finger and thumb against his eyes and turned away to look out the window.
“So what do we do?”
“The problem is that something like this isn’t going to be confined to Bloody Mary, or even King George County for that matter. I did a little research while you were asleep. The state of Virginia has one of the largest and most active chapters in the entire nation. Reverend Oglesby’s body was found in King George Proper, not Bloody Mary, but the road where they parked their vehicle and carried his body through the woods was in Bloody Mary. There’s no telling how many people are involved in this.”
“Where do we even start?”
“In the few articles I found about membership, you have a better chance of being accepted into the organization if you have a family member sponsor you. So I’m going to be looking at the oldest families first, and then narrow it down by those who have sons and grandsons still living in the area. I’ll need to reach out to the sheriffs in the other counties and see if we can find any like crimes.”
I was listening with one ear to Jack while reading the printouts he’d made of all the information he could find in such a short period of time.
“Jack, according to everything I’ve read, these people think they’re sanctioned by the church. It’s part of their religion to wipe out the unclean.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” he said, eyes hardening.
“So the question is, why was Reverend Oglesby a target? He doesn’t represent the kind of victim they’d normally look for. White male. Man of the cloth. A leader in the church.”
