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“Who else do you speak privately with about your problems? Who else do you confide in? Priests are basically free therapists as it is.”
“God, how did we miss that? So, I don’t know a whole lot about that world, but priests only work for a particular church, right? They’re not like locums?”
“They’re usually assigned to one parish.”
Ellaflew toher laptop,fingers quickly tapping the keyboard. She searched the area for religious houses of all kinds. “Dammit, there’s about fifty churches around here. Two synagogues as well.” When she looked up, Ripley was nose-deep in Gary’s textbooks again. “Couldn’t resist?”
“Shush,” Ripley said as she pushed the notebook across the table. She tapped her finger on a particular entry in Gary’s diary. “Read this.”
Ella read aloud, “First appointment with therapist, then walked to Greenbury’s to pick up newspapers. Visited my old church. Bad memories.”
“Gary was a church goer too,” Ripley said.
The fog of forgetfulness quickly dispersed,like a window had been opened, allowingtherecollections to flood in. “When I talked to Gary at the motel, he told me he was an avid church goer. He said alifetime of prayer and this is how he repays me.”
Ripley slammed her fist on the table. “Bingo. Our guys were religious. Of course they went to church. If they were long-standing members, they might have developed a rapport with the priests.”
Ella pondered, her mind spinning with possibilities. “Right. We just need to figure out which one they went to. If we can confidently put them all at one place, that gives us a lot to work with.”
Ripley said, “Maybe we need to dig further into their lives, look through their belongings, talk to their friends. If these victims were regular church-goers, one of them must havesomethingthat tells us.”
“We already did,” Ella said. “David and Gary had no friends by the looks of it. We looked through all of their stuff too. Nothing in there that suggested a local parish. We could look through Joanne’s house a little more ourselves but the sheriff said he cleared that place.”
An eerie stillness suddenly cloaked the room, the kind that came with a heavy weight of expectation. Ripley tapped her fingers on the desk fast and loud like a pneumatic drill. Ella glanced out through the cheap glass partitions that made up the walls of their office, losing herself, idly ogling a bobbing head across the way.
Then anepiphany struck, and the answer to the puzzle became clear.
Ripley said, “I don’t see any other way. The sheriff might not have known to look for religious…”
“Mia,” Ella interrupted. “We don’t need to dig into their lives at all. We have an advantage. A tool. We’d be foolish not to use it.”
Ripley ceased tapping, stood up and joined Ella at the window. After a moment of mutual reflection, Ripley let out a prolongedoh.
Ella said, “There’s no point digging into their lives, not when the man who knew them best is locked in the office next door.”
***
Ella requested that she go in alone. Ripley had obliged.
She and Ted Kowalczyk resumed their positions from an hour before. She looked the now-innocent man dead in the eye and said, “Ted, I need your help.”
Ted let out a hollow chuckle, his lips curved in a humorless line. “You throw me down the stairs. You accuse me of murder. And now you want my help? Don’t make me laugh.”
Ella wasn’t above swallowing her pride. Or at least, what little she had left of it. “I’m sorry. We got it wrong. Your alibi for the hospital checks out.”
“So, I’m an innocent man?”
“Yes. You’re an innocent man.”
“Then someone needs to come untie me because I’m out of here.”
“If that’s what you want, I can make it happen. But you could help us catch a serial murderer.”
Ted shrugged, no sign of distress on his face. “That’s your problem.”
“Yes it is.”
“Sorry, but I don’t trust you. How do I know you’re not trying to frame me? How do I know you won’t just arrest me again later?”
