The Fallen (Amos Decker #4)(16)

“Damnedest thing I’d ever seen,” said Green as he chewed his gum. “Sitting right there, and bam. They both died instantly, the ME said. Close quarters with a shotgun usually has that effect.”

“Did the vics live here?”

“Not as far as we know. No one lived here legally. The bank owned it too, like the other place.”

“Any connection between the two people?”

Green consulted his official notebook. “None that we could run down. Different walks of life. No known ties.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Joyce Tanner was white and fifty-three years old. She worked at JC Penney before it closed. She was unemployed at the time of her death. She was divorced with no kids. Her ex left the area a long time ago. We’re still trying to track him down, but there’s no basis right now to believe he had anything to do with it. Toby Babbot was white and forty years old, on disability because of a work-related injury.”

“Babbot have any family?”

“Never married, no kids that we could find.”

“Were they from Baronville?”

“No. Babbot moved here from Pittsburgh about six years ago and worked at a plant building air-conditioning units. Plant closed down. Then he did some miscellaneous work.”

“And Tanner?”

“Her parents were killed in a car accident in Connecticut. She came here to live with her aunt and uncle about forty years ago. They raised her here and then they died too. Natural causes,” he added.

“Any idea how the pair ended up here?”

“No. We canvassed the neighborhood after it happened. But you can see for yourself, there aren’t that many folks around who could have seen something. So we got no leads at all.”

“Were they eating dinner when it happened?”

“No. It was like they were made to sit in the chairs and then they were shot.”

“Anything else about the deaths that was curious?” asked Jamison.

Green pointed to the wall that still bore the bloodstains from the homicide. “Their killer wrote something there with a Sharpie. We cut it out and collected it as evidence.”

“What?”

“A Bible verse.”

“Which one?”

“Not one of the well-known ones. I’m a good Methodist. Go to church every Sunday. And I still had to look it up.”

Green glanced down at his notebook and flipped through some pages. “Slaves, accept the authority of your masters, with all deference. For it is to your credit if being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly.”

He closed his notebook and looked up at Jamison.

Jamison said promptly, “It’s from the First Epistle of Peter, two-eighteen.”

Green looked at her in surprise. “That’s right. How did you know that?”

“My favorite uncle was a minister. I helped him teach Sunday school. He got me to read the Bible backward and forward. He was also a respected religious scholar and introduced me to a lot of writing and arguments on the subject.”

“So, can you put on your religious scholar hat and give me some context on the verse?”

“Peter was imprisoned and beaten for his beliefs. So he might have been talking about keeping his own faith through that terrible experience. And there were a lot of slaves back then. It might have been a justification for keeping slaves and trying to tamp down any sign of insurrection. I mean, if God says it’s okay?” She frowned. “Pretty diabolical, actually.”

“Anything else?”

“Many religious scholars don’t believe that Peter even wrote that epistle.”

“Why?”

“Because the writing indicated an advanced knowledge of the Greek language and a scholarly background in philosophy that Peter simply didn’t have. And widespread persecution of Christians didn’t commence until long after Peter’s death.”

Green smiled. “Well, you’re a fount of knowledge. Thanks.”

However, Jamison frowned again. “But I don’t see how that gets us any further along with the case unless you have any slave rings operating around here.”

“It could be that it’s a warning. Cross us and this will happen to you. But killing people who didn’t even know each other and have no demonstrable connection? I don’t get that. It could just be random, I guess.”

Jamison mulled this over. “Look, Baronville isn’t exactly a huge metropolis. Yet you have three separate crime scenes occurring very close together involving a pair of victims at each. Here there’s a cryptic Bible verse written on the wall. Then there’s animal blood at the crime scene we stumbled onto. What about the place where Decker and your partner are now?”

“A guy had a death mark on his forehead,” said Green. “I guess that counts as weird.”

“My point is, I can’t believe that all these murders are not connected somehow. I really think we’re dealing with one killer, or one set of killers, Detective.”

Green sighed resignedly. “Great. Serial killings in Baronville. The town is trying to get back on its feet and this crap is going to hit the national pipeline at some point and make it a lot harder for us to attract people here.”

“You ever think about calling in reinforcements? State police?”