Kay Hooper - Blood Sins

"Ellen Hodges was one of their members."

"Yeah. Do we know the same about this woman?"

"According to them, nobody's missing."

"And you're not buying it."

"No. Not that it matters what I believe on that countunless you can give me something, some bit of evidence, to tie that woman to the church."

"Wish I could. Sorry."

"Goddammit."

Macy frowned. "Are you still getting pressure from Ellen's family?"

Sawyer reached over and tapped a stack of messages to the left of his blotter. "Of this dozen messages, ten are from her father. Today."

"But they aren't coming to Grace?"

"Pretty sure I talked him out of that."

"What about their granddaughter?"

With a shrug, Sawyer said, "I gather they buy the church's story there. That Kenley Hodges took Wendy and left the church, the Compoundand Grace. For all I know, he's been in touch with them; they've certainly stopped pushing for more searches of the Compound."

"I'm a little surprised the judge granted you a warrant to search it in the first place."

"Because he's a church member? Probably why he signed the warrant. Didn't want to be seen openly protecting the church or Samuel."

"Yeah, you're probably right." Macy shrugged. "It also gave them the chance to publicly clear the good name of the church. You didn't find Hodges or his daughter, didn't find any evidence that Ellen was killed there, and everybody was extremely cooperative."

"Oh, yeah," Sawyer said. "They were just cooperative as hell. They always are."

"You know, it's just barely possible that they cooperate because they have nothing to hide."

"You believe that if you want to, Tom."

Almost apologetically, Macy said, "It's just that I can't think of a reason why. Why kill these women? What would Samuel or his church have to gain by it?"

"I don't know," Sawyer replied bluntly. "And that's what's driving me nuts. Because every instinct I have is telling me that all the answers are inside that Compound. I just don't know where to look for them. And I'm not at all sure I'd recognize them if I found them."

For Samuel, meditation after services was even more necessary than it was before services; as well as becoming centered and calm, he needed the time to focus his mind, to assess his condition. And, of course, God required of him this self-examination.

It was never easy, reliving those early years, but he did so, again and again, because God commanded him to.

Reliving the hell of abuse, experiencing the pain as though it were happening all over again. And, always, the blackout he could never penetrate, that lost time during which horrible things had happened. Horrible things he never wanted to believe himself responsible for.

But you are , God insisted. You know what you did. You know what happened. You know you punished them .

In my name. With my strength, you punished them.

You were my justice.

You were my sword.

He accepted that, because God told him it was so. But no matter how many times he tried, he could never remember just what precisely had happened.

His life entered a new and in many ways equally painful phase after he turned his back on that burning motel and walked away. He had to keep moving, for one thing; a child with no adult guardian within sight drew attention, and remaining too long in one place guaranteed that would become a problem. Likewise, he soon found that hitchhiking was risky and more than once escaped by the skin of his teeth from both predatory truck drivers and those good Samaritans who wondered why a little boy was all alone.

He would realize later that God had, clearly, watched over him during those early years, but at the time he saw nothing especially remarkable in his ability to take care of himself. He had taken care of himself for most of his life. If he had depended on his mother to feed and clothe him he would have gone hungry and worn rags more often than not.

He kept moving. He didn't really have an ultimate destination other than Survival and remained in any one place only until his instinctsor some eventtold him it was time to move on. The money that had seemed a fortune didn't last very long, even though he was careful, but he was able to pick up a day's work here or there by skillfully convincing this shopkeeper or that farmer that his mother was sick, the baby needed diapers, and his father had disappeared on them.

He developed a sure eye and ear for the more gullible or, some would say, more compassionate souls he encountered. And he managed to get what he needed, what was necessary for lifeeven if that life was hardscrabble and lonely.

He wandered. He managed, somehow, to mostly stay out of trouble so that the law was never interested in him. It was a matter of self-preservation; he knew records existed of petty thievery charges incurred while he was still with his mother, and despite the lack of convictions (because they'd always skipped town), he knew those charges would surface if he were to be picked up.

So he was careful. Very careful. Not that he never committed an illegal act, but he took pains to make sure to not get caught.

Samuel shifted uneasily in his chair, disturbed as always by the unpleasant memories. Because there had been times, when decent work was impossible to come by and thievery untenable, that he had resorted to using the only commodity he knew he could sell. His body.

Soul-shriveling, those times.

And maybe that was why he had so often paused during his wanderings at this or that church. Sometimes they offered a meal and a cot, but even if they didn't, they were at least warm and dry inside. He would find a dim corner and settle there, sometimes dozing and sometimes listening if there was an especially passionate preacher delivering an interesting sermon.

Somewhere along the way, he was given a Bible, and though his first inclination was to sell it, he tucked it inside the increasingly worn duffel bag instead. He had taught himself to read, and eventually he began to read the Bible.

There was a lot he thought was good.

There was a lot he didn't understand.

But, somehow, it spoke to him, that book. He read it and reread it. He spent hours and hours thinking about it. And he began to spend more time in churches of all denominations, listening to sermons. Watching how the congregation didor did notrespond. Making mental note of what obviously worked and what failed to move people.

Within a few years, he was preaching himself, in small churches and on street corners and in bus stations.

He found God.

Or, more accurately, God found him. On a scorching hot July day when he was thirteen years old, God reached down and touched him.

And his whole life changed.

He was very good at eluding electronic security. Any kind of security, really, but especially the electronic kind. He called it his own personal stealth technology, and as far as he knew it was unique to him.

Part of what made him special.

Getting past the fence and into the Compound would be easy. They did not, after all, want to look like they were an armed camp bristling with weaponry or technology. They did not want to appear threatening or even especially unwelcoming. The surface had to be peaceful and calm.

Simple folk, that's what they were supposed to be.

What most of them were, probably.

At any rate, they didn't electrify the pretty wrought iron and brick fence, they merely set up an electronic detection zone just inside it, so they knew who was coming into the Compound.

Usually.

He made certain he was far enough away from the gatehouse that no guard with infrared binoculars might be able to pick up what the security cameras would never see, but otherwise he didn't worry about being detected. It was late, and he was reasonably sure that most of them were tucked safe and sound in their beds.