The Church of the Holy Child Read online

Rhyder put a hand on my arm as I turned to follow Griff. “Talk to him,” he said.

  I caught up with Griff on the sidewalk out front. He was standing beside the cruiser pointing two fingers at Sandra and cocking his thumb like he was taking a shot. From the backseat, she laughed.

  I had to turn away from her. I couldn’t look at the woman I’d sipped latte’s with while discussing weekend activities on a Monday morning, the woman my heart had broken for when they’d found Shirley Trudeau’s body. I couldn’t connect the dots from Director to serial killer. When I looked at her, I still saw Sandra, the Director of the women’s shelter. But she’d delivered the final beating to four women, cleaned their nails and left them for us to find. Now she had Eliza and Allie. My understanding of who she really was had to get clear pretty damn fast.

  It takes ten minutes to get from the Church of the Holy Child to the Portland Police Station. I had eight minutes left to calm Griff down enough so that he could understand Rhyder’s position or I could side with him and come up with a plan. I chose the latter.

  “According to Rhyder, what’s Sandra’s goal? The one thing she wants more than anything else?” I asked.

  He took a fast left and cut off a black Saab. A horn blared behind us.

  “Griff, answer me.”

  “Father Francis said her mother was her holy grail. Rhyder said the same thing.”

  “Right. And Rhyder said when he profiled her that in Sandra’s mind, all these other women represented her, but that she was the ultimate goal. A missionary serial killer has to complete the task. It’s their vocation, their life’s work. If they don’t complete it they’ve failed. We just cut Sandra off from reaching her calling and realizing her dream. She’ll go to prison or more likely to death with her mission incomplete.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “What if we make her think she still has a chance.”

  “We have no idea where her mother is.”

  “So it’s a safe bet that she doesn’t either and there’s no way Eliza could have given her any information. It’s been more than twenty years. She doesn’t know where Sandra’s mother is any more than we do. But what if we make her think we’ve found her and that she wants to see her, alone. She’ll be salivating. We tell her the only way we’ll let the meeting happen is if she tells us where Allie and Eliza are. She doesn’t want them anyway. They were just a means to an end. She’ll see the offer as an opportunity to complete her goal. A chance at her holy grail will be too hard to resist.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’ve got nothing else and if she lawyers up we’re screwed.”

  Griff clenched his jaw and nodded. “It might work.”

  FORTY

  John was standing in front of the observation window when we stepped into the darkened room. On the other side of the glass Rhyder sat on one side of a metal table that was screwed to the floor, Sandra on the other. Polaroids of the dead women lay face up between them.

  “They got what they deserved. Mothers don’t leave their children behind.”

  “Like yours did?” Rhyder said.

  “You don’t know anything about me. Don’t embarrass yourself.”

  “I know your mother went to the shelter to escape an abusive husband and neglected to take you with her.”

  “Neglected? You think she was neglectful? A neglectful mother forgets to brush her kid’s teeth. A neglectful mother shows up an hour after school gets out or doesn’t wash her kid’s clothes. My mother was a selfish bitch. She took off to save her own neck and left me behind like a pile of dog shit. But most people even pick that up, so that makes me less than dog shit in my mother’s eyes. And you call that neglectful?”

  “What did your father do to you after your mother left?”

  Sandra looked at him curling her lip on one side and for the first time, she looked the part.

  “You mean what didn’t he do to me. He didn’t show up at school on time. He didn’t wash my clothes. He didn’t make me dinner. He put his fist in my mouth so many times I’ve swallowed most of my own teeth. I have only partial hearing in my left ear. I’ve had seventeen broken bones and I spent an untold portion of my youth locked in a closet wearing pants caked with piss and shit. And all before I was sixteen years old. I guess you’d call him neglectful too.”

  “Until you burned your house down with him in it.”

  Sandra laughed. “A fitting end.”

  “Why didn’t you go to someone for help?”

  “I did. I went to a priest at the Church of the Holy Child.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He told me I would have to go to someone else for help because the rules of the church would not allow him to release information he heard in the confessional.”

  “Is that why you went to Father Francis?”

  “It’s why I went to that church. Not him specifically.” Sandra grinned. “But he surprised me. I didn’t think he had it in him.”

  “To call us?”

  She nodded.

  How does Peggy Taunton fit in? She wasn’t connected to the shelter.

  Sandra grinned. “A girl’s gotta have a little fun. It was supposed to be a quick roll in the hay, but then the stupid bitch had to open her mouth and get all emotional about the kid she lost. Like I was supposed to feel sorry for her that the state took away her child because she was a drug addicted whore. Boy did she get into the wrong car.” Sandra giggled and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  “You told Father Francis you were going to bring a picture of Eliza and Allie. Where is it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We know you have them. Don’t play games. It’s too late.”

  Sandra leaned back in her chair and sighed. “Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Fuck.” Griff pounded the wall with his fist.

  “That’s bullshit,” Rhyder said.

  She laced her fingers under her chin and smiled at Rhyder tight lipped.

  “I’m going in there to fucking kill her,” Griff said.

  “That’s not going to get us what we need.” John shoved his hands in his pockets and turned away from the glass.

  “Let me go in,” I said. I’ve questioned enough people on the stand from my days in the courtroom. I’m a little out of practice, but I still know how it works. Besides, Sandra and I were friends or something like that, she might let her guard down with me. And I have a plan.”

  “A plan?”

  Griff explained my idea to John while we watched Rhyder get nowhere.

  “Let me go in,” I said again. “Every minute we waste here lessens our chances of finding Eliza and Allie ali…” I stopped and looked at Griff.

  He turned away.

  “If your plan backfires we’ll lose her. She won’t trust anything we offer again.”

  “It’ll work.”

  John called Rhyder out of interrogation and ran the idea past him.

  “She won’t believe you. She has no respect for women.”

  “Well she’s not going to trust Griff because she knows Griff wants to kill her. You’re authority, she doesn’t trust you. But she knows me. I’ve always been up front with her. And I know she’s not who I thought she was, but she knows I still am, and that my word has always been good. If I make the offer, she might think it’s for real. It’s the only shot we have. Let me take it. It’s her chance to complete the mission. She won’t be able to pass it up.”

  Rhyder looked at Griff. “This could be a make or break situation. Are you willing to risk it?”

  Griff looked at me and I felt the totality of what I was about to do. If I failed and he lost Allie the case wouldn’t be the only thing that fell apart.

  “Do it,” he said.

  FORTY-ONE

  When I stepped into the room with Sandra I wasn’t sure which was worse, confronting my complete miscalculation of another human being or knowing Griff had bet his final hand on m
e.

  “Britt,” she laughed. “It’s lovely to see you, but are the boys really sending you in to do their job?”

  I sat down without looking at her and studied my fingernails. “Something else came up. They had to step out for a bit. It was important.”

  “More important than me?” There was a nervous edge in her voice. No serial killer wants to hear they’ve become page-two news.

  I wanted to drop her a notch or two. I also wanted her to think we were alone, no one shifting from foot to foot behind the two-way glass. I shrugged. “Life in the city. You know how it is, there are new crimes committed every day.”

  “But not like these.” She pointed to the picture of Karen Westcott on the table in front of her. “In the dumpster. How often do you find women in dumpsters?”

  “Too often,” I said. “And these women are last week’s news. I hoped I was getting through to her that if she wanted to be America’s Next Top Serial Killer she had to remind the public that she was still around.

  “I’ll be on the news tonight.”

  I nodded. “I think Rhyder already talked to the press. There was breaking news of your capture on television a little while ago.”

  She brightened and sat up. “Really?”

  It sickened me to see her like this and I had to keep reminding myself that this was her true personality. The Sandra I’d known had been no more than a cover. “He gave the press details of the arrest and a profile.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “That you grew up in an abusive household, sat in a closet and peed your pants, and that your mother escaped the abuse, but left you behind. Disappeared right before the holidays and so this time of year has become a trigger for you. The women you kill every November are stand-ins for the one woman you want the most, but still can’t find. It must be hard to live with.”

  “What?”

  “Failure. Knowing your mother won. That she got away and now you’re the one that’ll pay even though she’s the one who left you.”

  She sat very still. I could feel her eyes on my skin like a tick searching for a place to bite.

  “Did you ever find out where she went?”

  “West,” she said. California.”

  “So why were you in Joplin, Missouri?”

  “I’m impressed,” she said and grinned. “You’re familiar with my work.” She sat back in the chair and linked her fingers behind her head. “My mother was born there. I thought she might have gone back.”

  “And Rosa? Is that where she came from?”

  “What’s going to happen to her?”

  “You know as well as I do. She’ll be placed in the foster system.”

  “She has no one else.”

  “So you claimed to be a relative and took her?”

  “Someone had to.”

  “Because you killed her mother.”

  “She deserved it. Leaving a kid like that.”

  I took a breath reminding myself not to get caught up in Sandra’s illness. I was in here for one reason only.

  “And Hartford?”

  “I was born there. She’d stayed in touch with a couple of people who would have been more than pleased to help get her back on her feet.”

  “So why did you start working at shelters and how the hell did you pass the background checks?”

  “My mother was a do-gooder. If a shelter helped her escape my father, it would have been just like her to want to repay their good deeds. Play the Good Samaritan card. I volunteered at a number of shelters including Joplin and got hired in Hartford. My background is clean. I’ve never been picked up for anything. And a paper trail is easy to fake. It’s how I got Rosa. People like to assume the best. Especially when it makes for a happy ending.”

  “So what triggered the killing?

  While I was looking for my mother, I saw more and more women leaving their kids behind. Something had to be done to make them stop.”

  “So you killed them.”

  “They deserved it.”

  “But you never found your mother.”

  She looked away and bit her lip.

  “What if you had one more chance? To talk to her, I mean.”

  Sandra looked at me and sneered. “Don’t know where she is. No one knows.”

  I nodded and for the first time looked her in the eye. “I know.” I glanced over my shoulder toward the glass then back to Sandra. “I know,” I said again lowering my voice.

  “What do you mean, you know. You know what?”

  “I know where she is.”

  Her body locked. Then she smiled. “You’re full of shit, Britt.”

  “You know Kyle Sylvester?”

  “At Channel 8?”

  I nodded. “He called me. Seems a woman claiming to be your mother saw the “Breaking News” report. She called the station.

  “That means she’s local.”

  I nodded. “She always has been.”

  Her face reddened. “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I just got off the phone with her before I came in here to talk to you.”

  “What else did she tell you?”

  “That she wants to see you.”

  Her eyes darted from one picture to the next and her breath came faster.

  “Why doesn’t she come to the station?”

  “She doesn’t want cops swarming around while she reunites with her child. She wants something more intimate. She wants to have time to explain everything to you. She asked me if I could help.”

  “You’re full of shit.” Her knee bounced beneath the table, triple time. “How could you help?”

  “You’re going to need a lawyer. I still have plenty of friends over at the courthouse. I can get someone for you who will make sure you get a meeting with your mother.”

  “Alone?”

  I shrugged playing dumb so she wouldn’t think I knew of the horrendous image playing in her head or how her heart had picked up speed, pedal to the metal toward one last kill. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I want something from you.”

  “What?”

  “The address where you’ve got Eliza and Allie.”

  “No deal.”

  “Fine, but you know we’ll get it one way or another. I’m sure Griff will be more than happy to beat it out of you.”

  “I’m in a police station. That’s not going to happen. And I’m a woman.”

  “Oh right,” I said. “Women don’t get beat up.” I started to laugh at her absurd comment. “Don’t be naïve, Sandra. There aren’t many cops around during the night shift and if they leave on a call there’s pretty much nobody here except the desk sergeant and that desk is a long way off from where you’ll be.”

  She drummed her fingers on the metal table top then fisted and un-fisted her hands. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Call me sentimental, but I like it when everyone gets what they want. Griff gets Allie and before you go to prison for the rest of your life, you get your mother. Time with your mother, I mean, after all these years. I suppose I’m really doing it more for her than for you. She sounded so sad on the phone.”

  She rested her hands on the table. When she moved them there was a sweaty print in their place.

  The phone rang inside the room signaling me that my time was up.

  “I need an answer now. I may not get another chance to speak with you alone. Do you want me to find you a lawyer?”

  She stared at the photos without answering.

  “Okay, I’ll take that as a no. I’ll call your mother and tell her you’re not interested in a meeting.” I turned away from her so she couldn’t see my face as my hand touched the doorknob.

  “Wait,” she said.

  I looked at her.

  “Get me a lawyer.”

  I went back to the table and stood across from her.

  “What’s the address?”

  She didn’t answer. “You want your mother?�
�

  She started to laugh. “My mother, my mother,” she said. She looked up at me and swept her tongue over wet lips. “Seventy-five Park Street.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Rhyder and Stark tailed us from the Portland PD to seventy-five Park Street. Two cruisers with their lights flashing brought up the rear. Griff pulled onto the sidewalk before cutting the engine, scattering students on their way to college classes and mothers pushing strollers to Deering Oaks Park. He was out of the SUV before the engine died.

  I followed him into the three-story apartment building pushing away images of what we would find. Sandra had beaten the other women to death with bricks. There was no reason to think she had anything different in store for Eliza. I held onto Father Francis’ belief that she wouldn’t hurt a child.

  There was no answer from behind any of the three apartment doors. Most of the buildings along Park Street were rented by students attending the University of Southern Maine and nurses working at Maine Medical Center, at this time of day they were either at the start of a shift or at an end of the day happy hour.

  “Break ‘em down,” John called from the third-floor hallway. “Warrants’ on the way.”

  The sound of cracking wood filled the staircases and we coupled off to search. Griff and I were inside the first-floor apartment. Footsteps pounded overhead. There were books scattered everywhere, but not textbooks, travel books and maps of no place exciting, primarily the Mid-west and the California coastline. I glanced at Griff. He tossed the magazine he was holding onto the couch and headed for the kitchen. A couple of dishes in the sink and an empty bottle of Corona on the counter, the bedroom was stark, the bathroom clinical. We came up with nothing.

  “Look around,” I said. “No personal items. No pictures, no computer. No socks on the floor or a dirty towel in the bathroom. It’s more like a hotel room than a home.”

  John appeared in the doorway. “Nothing upstairs. Looks like students. You got anything?”

  Griff hesitated. “I’m not sure. It doesn’t feel right. It’s like nobody lives here.”

  I pulled open the center drawer of the desk beside me. A few pens, scraps of paper and more maps. When I tried the drawer on the right it pulled out too easily slid off its runners and dropped to the floor. I stooped to pick it up. With one hand on the knob, I slipped my other beneath it. “Jesus,” I said when my fingers slipped into something soft, almost furry. I flipped the drawer over. Taped to the bottom were strands of hair, each one an inch wide. The colors matched the hair of each of the deceased women. I didn’t see Allie’s flaxen blonde, but there was no mistaking Eliza’s highlighted umber. I hoped Allie’s wasn’t there because nothing had happened to her and not because Sandra hadn’t gotten a chance to mount her souvenir.