Page 11 of Go Home
After that initial confusion, things fell into place.Certain sensual anchors told her where she was, beginning with the small, crunchy pillow.Then the smell of dust, that rag doll that had scared her when she was very small.The pattern on the curtains, which sometimes looked like paw-prints, sometimes like a crowd of surprised faces.She’d hear her parents talking softly on the deck outside with their morning coffee, their quarrels forgotten.And something would at last unlock.I’m here.
Code-cracking was the same.An unbearable tension at first, this traffic-jam of letters, numbers, symbols, a sense of time running out.Like someone trying to escape an unfamiliar city: you tried one route, then another, retraced your steps, lost your patience, tried again.Sometimes, sleep was the only solution – you had to step away from the conundrum, physically and mentally, before clarity would come.
And it always did.Kate was trying to remind herself of that as she sat at her desk in the cramped back room of the county police headquarters.It would come.It had to.
But not yet.
Right now, she was blaming Marcus for that.He’d agreed to start interviewing the townsfolk while she got to grips with the cryptic hymn-sheet, but instead of getting out there and knocking on doors, he had decided to start with everyone in the PD building.He was currently talking to the younger of the two traffic cops, Arthur.Arthur had the inside track on Douglas Cove’s underworld.Or at least, Arthur wanted to give that impression.
“Literally two guys and an RV, parked in the woods, about seven miles out of Marburg.Flooded the state with crank.”
“Seriously?Don’t they know howBreaking Badended?”
“Few days after the bust, guy calls up, says him and his brother found a suitcase full of the stuff, buried near the trailer.Wants to know if there’s a reward.So we say, sure, bring it in.I mean, there’s no reward, but we want that meth off the streets, right?”
“Sure.”
“So they bring it in.It’s a hundred pounds of bath salts.It evensmellslike bath salts.There’s no way you couldn’t know that.The guys are all ‘we didn’t know, dude, we’re just a pair of good citizens, where’s our reward?’We do some checking, there’sfootageof them at Walmart, buying the suitcase.”
“What did you charge them with?”
“Chief wanted to book ‘em for making false reports.But Father Thomas came up and had a word.He knows the boys and the boys’ families.Well, weallknow them.The whole family’s… how can I put it? It’s not so long since they were all living in the trees.”
Kate sighed.She shared an office with Marcus back at base, but when they were there, he seemed to understand when she needed quiet and privacy to do her work.Why didn’t he think that applied here?
As the cop ambled out to the main office, Marcus came over.
“Getting anywhere?”
“Seriously, Marcus?”
Marcus made his stunned and innocent “What did I do?”face, which sometimes looked a bit cute, but on other occasions made her want to slap him.She wondered how his fiancée, Cheryl, dealt with it.Judging by what she’d heard about Cheryl, Cheryl probably slapped him.
“Maybe I should go out so that you can complete your work in peace and quiet.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea.”
“There is no need for sarcasm.”
With a martyred expression, he pulled on his coat, grabbed the car keys, and his phone.He turned back in the doorway.
“It’s the lowest form of wit.”
“No, Marcus,youare the lowest form of wit.”
She returned to the images.She’d worked out so far that they were pages seventy-nine and eighty of the Saint Joseph Sunday Missal, published in 1986.
She made some notes for further checking:
Chase prints, DNA on page
A St.A hymn book, or the killer’s own?
She’d also found some detail on the hymns.On the side with the circles was “Faith of our Fathers,” a tribute to the Catholics martyred in the British Isles after King Henry VIII fell out with the Pope.Written in 1896, its author, she noted, was a Protestant clergyman who converted to Catholicism.
She made some more notes:
Martyred = burned at stake?
