J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

I ignore this. “Tomorrow morning I’m driving up to Huntsville. I’d better get my head down for a few hours.”

“We were just talking about Carter’s job,” she says. “If you have a few minutes to spare, maybe you could give us your opinion.”

“My opinion on what?” I lay my damp jacket over the back of a breakfast table chair, then help myself to some of the newly brewed decaf. “If it’s a life coach you’re after, I’m not exactly your best option. Not tonight.”

“Things with Murray are getting a little awkward,” Carter says.

His boss, Murray Abernathy, is a wealthy benefactor in the mold of Curtis Blunt, only instead of minting DVDs of himself preaching to a studio audience, Murray bought an old brick building off of Westheimer and opened an outreach center for the community, a place where people can walk in off the street for a little social interaction, shoot the breeze about the great philosophical conundrums, and leave feeling better about themselves. When Carter was a suburban youth pastor, he’d taken a group of his teenage charges to the center to do volunteer work, and a couple of them met their future murderer, a man named Frank Rios. Personally, I would have razed the place to the ground before taking a job there, but I’m not Carter.

“Awkward in what way?” I ask. “Murray seems all right.”

“It’s not him exactly. It’s just. .” He glances toward Charlotte. “I assumed Murray was dipping into his own pocket to support the center, that it was a labor of love. And I found out today it’s not exactly like that.”

“What did you discover?”

“Usually Murray keeps me out of the support side of things, but I saw some paperwork I wasn’t supposed to. Turns out the center wasn’t Murray’s idea. Some of the larger churches around here got together and they came up with this as a kind of experiment. They brought him in to run the center. I asked him point-blank and he admitted it. The center’s a laboratory for new ideas. What we’re doing today, he says, will be best practices for the church of tomorrow.”

I smile at this. “In that case you should ask for a raise.”

“It’s not funny.”

“I realize that, but what exactly is the problem?”

“When I made the move, I was looking for a more authentic ministry. I wanted to get clear of the corporate church and all the ordained CEOs. I wanted to do something real.”

“And now you’re out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

“Pretty much. With a baby on the way, I feel like there’s a decision I need to make. Do I keep up this charade, or do I move on?”

“What does Gina have to say?”

He gives me a pained look. “She’ll support my decision either way, but she says it’s up to me to decide.”

“Oh.”

“Exactly. As it is, she’s already making more from her teaching job than I bring in, so what am I supposed to tell her? I want to quit again and look for something else?”

“Carter,” Charlotte says, and by the tone of her voice I know what’s coming.

She’s going to swoop in and solve his financial anxiety: If you need money, you just have to ask . I stop her with a look. I’m not against helping the couple, but there are some problems the magic money wand can’t wipe away.

“Gina is right,” I tell him. “You do have to make this call on your own. If Murray’s deal somehow violates your principles, then suck it up and walk out. If you can live with it, then stay there.” Charlotte starts to interrupt, but I shake my head. “But if you’re hoping to find the perfect scenario, you should give up now. You already know what I think. Everything’s tainted, and this is no different. If you believe in the work, what does it matter who pays the bill?”

“It does matter on some level.”

“If you say so. It’s your choice to make. I’ve already been accused once tonight of being the devil, so maybe you shouldn’t listen to what I have to say.”

“The thing is, if I could just get clarity. On just one thing.”

“Give it up,” I say, patting him on the shoulder. “We always operate in a muddle. That’s the human condition.”

Charlotte comes over to me, loops an arm under mine, and leads me toward the stairs.

“Now you do sound like the devil,” she says.

“It’s the company I keep.”

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 13–10:13 A.M.

Against a backdrop of tall pines, a statue of Sam Houston looms over I-45, marking my arrival in the prison town of Huntsville. He’s made of concrete atop a granite base, but to me the lack of detail from the neck down makes him look like an oversized soap carving. This morning the great man is wreathed in fog, glowering down on the half-empty highway, bone white against the gray sky.

Across the highway from the penitentiary, there’s a museum in the form of a miniature block house, complete with a half-sized guard tower. Inside, you can put your head and hands through the holes in a painted display and have your picture taken as a prisoner in old-fashioned black-and-white stripes. I’ve always wondered how many wives and kids visiting Daddy in jail actually stop by and take some souvenir snaps.

One day I’ll grow up to be just like him.

The seventy-mile drive gave me plenty of time to think, and I get plenty more at an empty visitors’ table, waiting for the correctional apparatus to deliver the requested prisoner, a repeat offender named Coleman who once helped put some of his colleagues behind bars. Thanks to that cooperation, he spent his first few months back in prison waking up each day expecting a shank in the ribs. But I talked to some connected people inside, doing what I could for him. I even visited his grandmother a few times, a courtly old lady who walks every morning to Emancipation Park, finds herself a shady spot, and reads her daily psalm. Today I’ll discover whether Coleman appreciates my effort.

The visitors’ area is silent. On the other side of the door I hear the muffled hum of voices, the clang of metal, the squeal of rubber soles on linoleum floors.

It’s always possible that Jason Young did murder his estranged wife, that afterward, consumed with guilt, he sought to punish himself in a series of provoked fights, until he finally found the darkness. If I could ignore the Fauk connection, ignore the oddly detached frenzy of the wounds to Simone Walker’s body, then the textbook answer could be made to fit.

The only problem is that I don’t believe it.

Whatever inner demons haunt that man, they aren’t ones that would drive him to such a controlled and depraved execution.

Which leaves Joy Hill, an unlikely perpetrator to say the least. Middle-aged academics might be likely murderesses in an Agatha Christie yarn, but in real life not so much. The only scenario in which I can imagine Dr. Hill wielding the knife is a crime of passion, if she found herself overwhelmed by thwarted desire. But in that case, the scene would have looked very different, the deed stamped indelibly by the motive that drove it.

It sure looks like a serial killing.

Cavallo’s words, and they happen to be right. Which means she is probably right about the rest, too. The blind man in this situation isn’t Lauterbach. It’s me. I need to turn the table on this thing, to look at it with fresh eyes.

The door at the far side of the room opens. Coleman is escorted in. When he sees me, he stops in his tracks. He’s put on a few pounds since last time, lost some of his muscled definition. Maybe he hasn’t been putting in as many hours on the prison yard weights. Maybe he’s afraid to. A couple of corrections officers hang by the door, giving us plenty of space.