The next morning, Saturday at ten o’clock, Sandy and I were supposed to meet at the Pate Ministries complex. I saw her State car, but not her so I assumed she was already inside. I looked at my watch and discovered I was about ten minutes late. I had a search warrant for the complex tucked inside my jacket pocket. The lobby of the church had been converted from the wide open space I witnessed on my last visit to a smaller, more intimate setting, the latter being achieved by erecting a three-sided red pipe and drape system, the kind you see at trade shows and conventions. At the front of the enclosure an electrically operated viewing screen had been lowered from its ceiling mount and the images being displayed prior to the screening of tomorrow’s broadcast was a closed circuit view of the enclosed area where I now stood. There were about twenty to twenty-five people scattered about the area, some seated in padded folding chairs which were set out in four rows of twelve across the width of the enclosure. Others either stood or were seated in various places at the round four-top tables covered with white linen cloths and set with dishes and flatware.
I watched myself enter the area on the closed circuit system and almost tripped on the leg of a chair as I did so. A buffet was set up on the left side of the room and the wait staff were busy as they placed stainless steel chafing dishes into their holders. A faint wax-like aroma filled the room from the cans of chafing fuel that burned with blue flames under the containers.
Samuel and Amanda Pate stood at the front of the room next to the lowered view screen and spoke with another man and woman I did not recognize. Samuel had his back to me, the arm bands of his crutches clamped tightly around his suit sleeves. Amanda glanced my way and let her eyes skip across me as if I were not there.
Sandy and I saw each other at the same time, first on the screen, then in real life as she turned around in her chair and looked back at me. She leaned over and whispered something to a handsome man seated next to her, then stood and walked between the chairs to the end of the row. She wore a cream colored sweater dress with matching knit stockings that were just slightly longer than the bottom of her dress. When she walked the tops of her stockings peeked out from under the bottom of her dress and I felt myself swallow as I watched her approach, my mouth suddenly hot and dry.
“Hey, Jonesy,” she said, her hand on my arm. “How are you?”
I ran my tongue over the top of my teeth and tried to get some moisture back in my mouth, but before I said anything, Amanda was at my side and she slipped her left hand into the crook of my arm, the words she spoke directed at Sandy, not me. “Virgil and I go way back. I’m Amanda Pate, Samuel’s wife. You’re one of Virgil’s people, aren’t you?” I moved sideways, away from Amanda’s grasp and crossed my arms in front of my chest.
Her actions were vintage Amanda, I thought. She had the ability to put someone in their place, all while helping them conclude they did it to themselves, any victimization they might feel brought on by their own inadequacies or stature, not the words she spoke. But it wouldn’t play with Sandy, as I was about to find out, and in more ways than one, at that.
Sandy tilted her head slightly and said, “Something like that.”
“Well,” Amanda said with mock sincerity, “I love your little outfit. It’s so, so…”
“Yes?” Sandy said, her eyes blinking more than usual. It’s so what, exactly?”
“Well dear, it’s so, um, edgy I think is the word I’m looking for. Yes, that’s it. It’s so edgy I think I might be a little jealous. You’ve managed to capture just about every man’s attention here this morning. For example, that man you were seated next to just a moment ago. Do you know who that is?”
“It’s your party,” Sandy said. “Don’t you?”
“Of course I know, dear. I was just wondering if you did. He’s a very successful bond trader. Single too. In fact, don’t look, but he’s watching you right now. Would you like me to formally introduce the two of you?”
“We’ve already met, thank you,” Sandy said. “Speaking of attention, I think your husband is trying to get yours.” She looked at me, then said, “Detective Jones, could I speak with you for a moment?” Then to Amanda, “Can’t wait to see the show. I’ve heard it’s a hoot.”
Amanda looked at Sandy, then at me and walked away without saying anything more. Once she was gone I looked at Sandy and said, “hoot?”
She ignored me and waved at the bond trader.
“What was that all about?” she finally said.
“That,” I said, “was a master manipulator in action.”
“No kidding.” Then, a few seconds later, “What time are they coming?” She was still making eyes with the trader, or at the very least, letting him make eyes with her.
I looked at my watch. “In about thirty seconds. Donatti’s running this squad. Rosie’s at the Pate’s residence. Once they’re in, I want you to keep an eye on Amanda.”
“You got it, boss” she said, her head turned upward at me. I wanted to kiss her right then and there, and I might have, except a number of things happened almost simultaneously. Samuel Pate picked up a spoon and tapped it against the side of a water goblet and said, “Excuse me everyone, if you’ll take a seat please, we’re ready to-”
At the exact same time, Donatti and ten uniformed State Troopers came through the front doors of the lobby. Donatti shouted, “Police! Search warrant! Nobody move. Everyone stay right where you are and keep your hands where I can see them.”
I moved toward Pate. The bond trader who had been flirting with Sandy saw me coming, stood up to get out of the way and tripped backwards over the row of chairs behind him. I saw Amanda try to duck behind the drapery out of sight, but Sandy wrapped her arms around her and tackled her to the ground. The drapery and support rods got tangled up in their struggle and fell over the buffet table, then the table and everything on it crashed to the ground as well. People were screaming and trying to get away from the commotion by the buffet and Donatti was still yelling for no one to move. I pointed a finger at Samuel Pate, told him not to move, then ran over to where Sandy was still struggling with Amanda. I yanked the drapery free from the top of them both, then held her down while Sandy got up.
Sandy and I stood up, my foot stationed in the middle of Amanda’s back to hold her in place. Samuel Pate walked across the room knocking chairs aside with his crutches as he approached. I noticed his ability to move about was better than it had been in our previous meetings and I suspected the crutches, while obviously necessary to a certain extent, were just as much stage props as they were an aid to his mobility. “What in God’s name is going on here?” he said, his voice coarse with anger. “Will you take your foot off of my wife’s back please? Why are the police here?”
Sandy was still brushing herself off and straightening her dress. I held her by her upper arm and she had her hand on my own for support. “Step back please, Reverend,” I said. “I’ll speak with you in a moment.”
But he either did not hear me, or simply refused to listen amid the chaos of the events as they unfolded around him. He stepped closer and put his crutch against my hip, forcing me to remove my foot from Amanda’s back or lose my balance. “Step away from my wife, Detective. I insist you tell me-”
I let go of Sandy and used my own momentum against him. I grabbed the still extended crutch and pinched it under my arm, swept his legs out from under him and had him on the ground before he knew what had happened. I yanked the crutch from his right arm and pinned his hands behind his back. His arms felt like tree limbs under his shirt, and I had the impression he could toss me aside if he wanted to. I also felt like he knew it as well. I looked over at Donatti who ran toward me and placed his handcuffs around Pate’s wrists. I leaned down and whispered into Pate’s ear. “You ever place your cane against my person again I’ll show you the other end of it. I’ve got the resume, sir, believe me.”
“Release my husband this instant,” Amanda shouted at me as she stood up. “For God’s sake, Jonesy, he’s disabled. You’ve got a crippled man on the ground in handcuffs on his own property. What’s the matter with you? I demand to know what’s going on here,” she said. Why are all these police officers here?” She stomped her foot, her hands balled into fists at her side as she spoke.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the search warrant and handed it to her. “We have a warrant to search the premises, Amanda.” Then to Donatti. “Have your men take the file cabinets and everything in the desk drawers. You brought trucks and dollies?”
“We’re good to go, boss,” Donatti said.
“Alright, get started then. Get the computers, too. They probably have a central server somewhere. A closet, or a small office. Don’t miss that.”
Pate mumbled something I couldn’t quite catch. “What was that,” I said.
“It’s in the basement,” he said. “The door at the end of the hall.”
I looked at him for a moment. He lay on his side on the floor to accommodate the handcuffs. Then he lifted his head and smiled at me. “I’ve nothing to hide, Detective. Nothing at all. You’ll see. Then you and I, well, we’ll talk again, I suspect.”
I ignored his comments and nodded to Donatti who motioned for the other officers. They wheeled the dollies in and moved toward the offices. I looked at Amanda. Tears were running down her cheeks. She held the warrant in her hand, down by her side. “Read the warrant, Amanda. It gives us permission to search and seize anything in this building. Your house as well.”
Her head snapped up, the whites of her eyes veined with red streaks at the corners. “What? My house? You’re going to search my house?’
“Not going to, Amanda. Are. We’ve got a team there right now as well.”
“You bastard,” she said. “If you think I’m going to let you get away with this you’re mistaken,” she said, her finger pointed at me like she was admonishing a child. “I’ll have your badge for this, Virgil Jones. You watch and see. You think we don’t have any influence in this town?”
Samuel Pate looked at his wife and said, “Amanda, go home. Please, you’re not helping.”
“But Samuel, can’t you see what they’re trying to do to us? We can’t just let-”
“Amanda, I said go home. Keep your wits about you and get to the house and make sure they conduct their search in a respectful manner, then call Everett. Tell him what’s happened and have him meet me downtown. Can you do that for me, Amanda? Detective, is she free to go?”
I nodded. Amanda looked at me, the veins on the sides of her neck still bulging with anger. “This isn’t over, Jonesy. Not even close.” But I did not hear the rest of what she said.
Sandy was shouting as she pulled the rest of the drapery off their support rods. “Hey, I need some help here. Someone get a fire extinguisher. Those burner cans are still going. The drapes are on fire. Jonesy? Jonesy, I need some help over here.”
The burner cans from under the chafing dishes had spilled to the floor when Sandy tackled Amanda, but in the commotion that followed no one had noticed the smoldering drapery. I helped Sandy yank the rest of the curtains down, then we grabbed carafes of ice water from the tables and dumped them on the hot spots. A few of the people who were present to preview the Sunday broadcast and the rest of the wait staff picked up the smoldering curtains and pulled them outside and tossed them into a pile on the sidewalk.
Sandy looked at me and puffed out her cheeks. Her hands were shaking. “You okay?” I said.
“Yeah. Sorry. Fire sort of freaks me out.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said. “But I guess you knew that already.”
Sandy smiled at me. “Well, all in all, I think that went just fine, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Textbook,” I said.
My phone rang and when I looked at the screen I saw it was Cora’s home number, and I thought, Jesus, what now?
“I know we talked about it a little,” Cora said. “But if I’m being honest with you, my head’s a little foggy this morning.”
“How was your evening, Cora?”
“It was, um, productive. That about sums it up, I think.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I know. Listen, did you see everything you needed to over at that dilapidated church in Broad Ripple?”
I took the phone away from my ear for a minute, picked up one of the chairs that had been knocked over and set it upright then sat down upon it before I spoke. “Yeah, pretty sure. Why?”
“Oh, no reason. I guess last night while you were sleeping and Elliott and I were…uh, well, while you were sleeping, it blew up and burned to the ground. I just got off the phone with the watch commander. Looks like there was some kind of explosion. He said it blew the steeple right off the top. It’s laying in the alley behind the church. He said it looks like the pictures of the cockpit of that Pan Am jet they blew out of the sky over Lockerbie. Remember that?”
“I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”
“Slow down, Slick. There’s more. The firemen found a body inside the church. Unidentified female, but the car in the lot belongs to Amy Frechette, so you can do the math. Crime scene is on the way to the Frechette residence as we speak. Didn’t you tell me that’s where Murton Wheeler lives?”
When we pulled up to Murton and Amy’s house, two crime scene tech’s were waiting for us. Sandy hopped out of my truck, and when she did both of the techs said something to her, first one, then the other. I didn’t hear what it was.
Sandy looked at them and shook her head. “Oh my God, how about we all just pull our dicks out and see whose is bigger?” She looked at each man individually for just a split second, then said, “I’d probably win. We may or may not need you boys. We’ll let you know. Why don’t you wait in your van? Go on now,” she said, as she gave them a little wave of her hand. Once they were gone, she looked at me and said, “you want the front or the back?”
“Front I guess.”
I had to pop one of the small glass panes in the front door to gain entry. Once we were inside I saw that Amy Frechette’s house was old, but in good shape. The walls were stucco instead of sheet-rocked, the ceiling was made of a biscuit colored stamped tin, and the walk-ways between rooms were all arched. The wall opposite the front door was covered from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, and each shelf was filled with row after row of both religious and psychology studies. For reasons I can not readily explain, I expected to find a good selection of fiction novels, the utilitarian surroundings suggestive of an individual who lived through someone else’s imagination, but clearly that was not the case. Instead, what I found was book after book whose titles were reflective of someone who sought greater understanding of the people she served. Amy Frechette’s home did not appear to be a place of sanctuary from her work, rather a place of continued study of the work to which she devoted her life.
A hinged, two photo frame sat at eye level on one of the shelves. One side of the frame held a sepia-toned picture of a young couple’s profile as they looked at each other, the opposite side held a color photo, yellowed with age, of a young man dressed in jungle fatigues standing next to an airplane somewhere in the tropics. Her father perhaps. But it was a single photo next to the others which caught my eye and reminded me of Cora’s comments about not being able to serve the State and my own personal agenda at the same time. The photo was one of Murton and me, taken just after we’d arrived home from basic training, before we were shipped out to fight in the gulf war. In the photo we stood side by side, our arms around each other, both of us smiling at the camera. Just off to the side, part of her face cut out of the frame of the photo, was my mother. She was looking at us and the flash of the camera caught the tears running down her cheek.
I left the photo untouched and continued to search the room. A February 2006 issue of Psychology Today lay face up on the sofa, open to an article entitled, ‘A Field Guide to Narcissism.’ I wasted a few minutes as I scanned the article, but I ultimately decided I was not narcissistic, and tossed it back on the couch.
The kitchen was extremely small, a nook really, with only one florescent light bulb that hummed above the kitchen sink. The flickering light against the dark paneled walls reminded me of the times I had spent as a child with my grandfather when I’d wake in the early morning to the smell of percolated coffee and toasted wheat bread before we would go out to fish on his neighbor’s pond.
We spent close to three hours searching Amy Frechette’s residence, but the truth was, I did not know what we were looking for. I did not expect to find a ledger in Murton’s handwriting that detailed a master plan to kill Franklin Dugan. In fact, the best I could hope for would be to find nothing at all. I searched every drawer, every closet, the attic, the crawl space and every inch in between. In the end, we had made a hell of a mess but turned up no evidence whatsoever.
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket and when I looked at the screen the number that showed was not one I had seen before. “Jones.”
“You’re not going to find anything,” Murton said. “There’s nothing there. There never was. I’m not the man you think I am, Jonesy.”
“Murt, what the hell is going on? That was you in the cab, wasn’t it? If you’re not part of this, come in and we’ll-“
He laughed without humor into the phone. “We’ll what, figure everything out? Get me a lawyer? I don’t think so, Bud. We were going to be married, did you know that? Did she tell you that?
“Murt…”
“I left to protect her, Jonesy. I told them she didn’t know anything, that she was just a minister working with pre-school children. She was pregnant. We found out about a week ago. She died thinking I left her because she was pregnant. Jesus, what have I done?”
I picked up the phone from the kitchen while he spoke and dialed 911. “Murt, I’m sorry. Let me help you.” I could hear the 911 operator in the background asking if someone needed assistance.
“You know, I always sort of had it in my head that you and I might hook back up one day, but I guess that ship has sailed, but that’s not on you. Hey, what’s that we used to say? Pop ‘em and drop ‘em? That’s exactly what I’m gonna do. Tell your old man he’s the best, will you? And don’t bother trying to get a trace on this phone. It’s one of those pre-paid specials. It’s about to be road kill on the interstate. What a country, huh?”
Sandy came around the corner and saw me holding two phones. “What’s going on?” she said.
“I wish I knew.”