Faithless Read online

“Like a bad penny,” he said. “Nothing I did to that girl ever got through. She never listened to anything I said.” Connolly stared into his coffee, but there wasn’t a trace of remorse about him. “Abby was in the family way.”

  “She told you that?” Jeffrey asked, and he could imagine Abby trying to use the information for leverage, thinking she would talk the crazy old man out of putting her in the box.

  “Liked to broke my heart,” he said. “But it also gave me the conviction to do what had to be done.”

  “So you buried her out by the lake. In the same spot Chip had taken her to for sex.”

  “She was going to run away with him,” Connolly repeated. “I went to pray with her, and she was packing, getting ready to run off with that trash, raise their baby in sin.”

  “You couldn’t let her do that,” Jeffrey encouraged.

  “She was just an innocent. She needed that time alone to contemplate what she had allowed that boy to do. She was soiled. She needed to rise and be born again.”

  “That’s what it’s about?” Jeffrey asked. “You bury them so that they can be born again?” Connolly didn’t answer, and he asked, “Did you bury Rebecca, Cole? Is that where she is now?”

  He put his hand on the Bible, quoting, “‘Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth . . . let the wicked be no more.’ ”

  “Cole, where’s Rebecca?”

  “I told you, son, I don’t know.”

  Jeffrey kept at him. “Was Abby a sinner?”

  “I put it into the Lord’s hands,” the other man countered. “He tells me to give them time for prayer, for contemplation. He gives me the mission, and I give the girls the opportunity to change their lives.” Again, he quoted, “‘The Lord preserveth all them that love Him, but all the wicked will be destroyed.’ ”

  Jeffrey asked, “Abby didn’t love the Lord?”

  The man seemed genuinely sad, as if he had played no part in her terrible death. “The Lord chose to take her.” He wiped his eyes. “I was merely following His orders.”

  “Did He tell you to beat Chip to death?” Jeffrey asked.

  “That boy was doing no good to the world.”

  Jeffrey took that as an admission of guilt. “Why did you kill Abby, Cole?”

  “It was the Lord’s decision to take her.” His grief was genuine. “She just run out of air,” he said. “Poor little thing.”

  “You put her in that box.”

  He gave a curt nod, and Jeffrey could feel Cole’s anger revving up. “I did.”

  Jeffrey pressed a little more. “You killed her.”

  “‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked,’ ” he recited. “I’m just an old soldier. I told you that. I’m a conduit through which He speaks.”

  “That so?”

  “Yes, that’s so,” Connolly snapped at his sarcasm, banging his fist against the table, anger flaring in his eyes. He took a second to get it back under control, and Jeffrey remembered Chip Donner, the way his guts had been pulverized by those fists. Instinctively, Jeffrey pressed his back against the chair, reassured by the pressure of his gun.

  Connolly took another sip of coffee. “With Thomas like he is . . .” He put his hand to his stomach, an acrid-sounding belch slipping out. “Excuse me,” he apologized. “Indigestion. I know I shouldn’t drink the stuff. Mary and Rachel are on me all the time, but caffeine is the one addiction I cannot give up.”

  “With Thomas like he is?” Jeffrey prompted.

  Connolly put down the cup. “Someone has to step up. Someone has to take charge of the family or everything we’ve worked for will go to the wayside.” He told Jeffrey, “We’re all just soldiers. We need a general.”

  Jeffrey remembered O’Ryan telling them that the man at the Kitty gave Chip Donner drugs. “It’s hard to say no when someone’s waving it in front of your face.” He asked, “Why were you giving Chip drugs?”

  Connolly moved in his chair, like he was trying to get comfortable. “The snake tempted Eve, and she partook. Chip was just like the others. None of them ever resist for long.”

  “I bet.”

  “God warned Adam and Eve not to partake of the tree, yet they did.” Cole slid a napkin from under the Bible and used it to wipe his forehead. “You are either strong or you are weak. That boy was weak.” He added sadly, “I guess in the end our Abigail was, too. The Lord works in His own way. It’s not our job to question.”

  “Abby was poisoned, Cole. God didn’t decide to take her. Somebody murdered her.”

  Connolly studied Jeffrey, coffee cup poised before his mouth. He took his time answering, taking a drink from the mug, setting it down in front of the Bible again. “You’re forgetting who you’re talking to, boy,” he warned, menace underlying his quiet tone. “I’m not just an old man, I’m an old con. You can’t trick me with your lies.”

  “I’m not lying to you.”

  “Well, sir, you’ll excuse me if I don’t believe you.”

  “She was poisoned with cyanide.”

  He shook his head, still disbelieving. “If you want to arrest me, I think you should go ahead. I have nothing else to say.”

  “Who else did you do this to, Cole? Where’s Rebecca?”

  He shook his head, laughing. “You think I’m some kind of rat, don’t you? Gonna flip on a dime just to save my own ass.” He pointed his finger at Jeffrey. “Let me tell you something, son. I—” He put his hand to his mouth, coughing. “I never—” He coughed again. The coughing turned into gagging. Jeffrey jumped from his chair as a dark string of vomit emptied from the man’s mouth.

  “Cole?”

  Connolly started breathing hard, then panting. Soon, he was clawing at his neck, his fingernails ripping into the flesh. “No!” he gasped, his eyes locking onto Jeffrey’s in terror. “No! No!” His body convulsed so violently that he was thrown to the floor.

  “Cole?” Jeffrey repeated, rooted where he stood as he watched the old man’s face fix into a horrible mask of agony and fear. His legs bucked, kicking the chair so hard that it splintered against the wall. He soiled his pants, smearing excrement across the floor as he crawled toward the door. Suddenly, he stopped, his body still seizing, eyes rolling back in his head. His legs trembled so hard that one of his shoes kicked off.

  In less than a minute, he was dead.

  Lena was pacing beside Jeffrey’s Town Car when he made his way down the stairs. Jeffrey took out his handkerchief, wiping the sweat off his brow, remembering how Connolly had done the same thing moments before he died.

  He reached in through the open car window to get his cell phone. He felt sick from bending over, and took a deep breath as he straightened.

  “You okay?”

  Jeffrey took off his suit jacket and tossed it into the car. He dialed Sara’s office number, telling Lena, “He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t have long,” he told her, then asked Sara’s receptionist, “Can you get her? This is an emergency.”

  Lena asked, “What happened?” She lowered her voice. “Did he try something?”

  He was only faintly surprised that she could suspect him of killing a suspect in custody. Considering all they had been through, he hadn’t exactly set a great example.

  Sara came onto the phone. “Jeff?”

  “I need you to come to the Ward farm.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Cole Connolly is dead. He was drinking coffee. I think it must have had cyanide in it. He just . . .” Jeffrey didn’t want to think about what he had just seen. “He died right in front of me.”

  “Jeffrey, are you okay?”

  He knew Lena was listening, so he just left it at “It was pretty bad.”

  “Baby,” Sara said, and he looked past his car, like he was checking to make sure no one was coming, so Lena wouldn’t read the emotion in his face. Cole Connolly was a disgusting man, a sick bastard who twisted the Bible to justify his horrible actions, but he was still a human being. Jeffrey could t
hink of few people who deserved that kind of death, and while Connolly was up there on the list, Jeffrey didn’t like being a spectator to the man’s suffering.

  He told Sara, “I need you to get over here fast. I want you to look at him before we have to call the sheriff in.” For Lena’s benefit, he added, “This isn’t exactly my jurisdiction.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  He snapped the phone closed, tucking it into his pocket as he leaned against the car. His stomach was still rolling, and he kept panicking, thinking he had taken a drink of coffee when he knew for a fact he hadn’t. This was the only time in his life that his father’s miserable habits had actually benefited Jeffrey instead of kicking him in the ass. He said a silent prayer to Jimmy Tolliver to thank him, even though he knew if there was a heaven, Jimmy wouldn’t make it past the door.

  “Chief?” Lena asked. She’d obviously been speaking. “I asked about Rebecca Bennett. Did he say anything about her?”

  “He said he didn’t know where she was.”

  “Right.” Lena glanced around the farm, asking, “What do we do now?”

  Jeffrey didn’t want to be in charge right now. He just wanted to lean against the car, try to breathe and wait for Sara. If only he had that option.

  “When Sara gets here,” he told her, “I want you to fetch Two-Bit. Tell him your phone wouldn’t work out here. Take your time getting there, okay?”

  She nodded.

  He looked into the dark barn, the narrow flight of stairs looking like something Dante would’ve written about.

  Lena asked, “He admitted to doing this to other girls?”

  “Yes,” he said. “He said that none of them had ever died before.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Somebody wrote that note to Sara. Somebody out there survived this.”

  “Rebecca,” she guessed.

  “It wasn’t the same handwriting,” he told her, remembering the note Esther had given him.

  “You think one of the aunts wrote it? Maybe the mother?”

  “There’s no way Esther knew,” he said. “She would’ve told us. She loved her daughter.”

  “Esther’s loyal to her family,” Lena reminded him. “She defers to her brothers.”

  “Not all the time,” he countered.

  “Lev,” she said. “I don’t know about him. I can’t pin him down.”

  He nodded, not trusting himself to answer.

  Lena crossed her arms and fell silent. Jeffrey looked up the road again, closing his eyes as he tried to regain control over his sour stomach. It was more than queasiness, though. He felt dizzy, almost like he might pass out. Was he sure that he hadn’t tasted the coffee? He’d even drunk some of that bitter lemonade the other day. Was it possible he had swallowed some cyanide?

  Lena started pacing back and forth, and when she went into the barn, he didn’t stop her. She came back out a few minutes later, looking at her watch. “I hope Lev doesn’t come back.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Less than an hour,” she told him. “If Paul gets here before Sara does—”

  “Let’s go,” he said, pushing himself away from the car.

  Lena followed him back through the building, for once keeping quiet. She didn’t ask him anything until they were inside the kitchen and she saw the two cups of coffee on the table. “Do you think he took it on purpose?”

  “No,” Jeffrey said, never so certain of anything in his life. Cole Connolly had looked horrified when he’d realized what was happening to him. Jeffrey suspected Connolly even knew who had done it. The panic in his eyes told Jeffrey he knew exactly what had happened. What’s more, he knew that he had been betrayed.

  Lena walked carefully past the body. Jeffrey wondered if the room was hazardous, what precautions they should take, but his mind wouldn’t stay on any one thing for very long. He kept thinking about that cup of coffee. No matter what the circumstances, he always accepted an offer of a drink from someone if he was trying to get information out of them. It was Cop 101 to set the other party at ease, make them think they were doing something for you. Make them think you were their friends.

  “Look at this.” Lena was standing at the closet, pointing to the clothes neatly hanging on the rod. “Same as Abby’s. Remember? Her closet was like this. I swear, you could’ve put a ruler to it. They were the same width apart.” She indicated the shoes. “Same here, too.”

  “Cole must have put them back,” Jeffrey provided, loosening his tie so that he could breathe. “He came in on her when she was packing to leave town.”

  “Old habits die hard.” Lena reached into the back of the closet, pulling out a pink suitcase. “This doesn’t look like his,” she said, setting the plastic case on the bed and opening it.

  Jeffrey’s brain told his feet to move so that he could go over, but they refused. He had actually stepped back, almost to the door.

  Lena didn’t seem to notice. She was pulling at the lining of the suitcase, trying to see if anything was hidden. She unzipped the outer pocket. “Bingo.”

  “What is it?”

  She turned the case upside down and shook it. A brown wallet dropped out onto the bed. Touching only the edges, she opened it and read, “Charles Wesley Donner.”

  Jeffrey tugged at his tie again. Even with the window open, the room was turning into a sauna. “Anything else?”

  Lena used the tips of her fingers to slip something out of the lining. “A bus ticket to Savannah,” she told him. “Dated four days before she went missing.”

  “Is there a name on it?”

  “Abigail Bennett.”

  “Hold on to that.”

  Lena tucked the ticket into her pocket as she walked over to the bureau. She opened the top drawer. “Just like Abby’s,” she said. “The underwear’s all folded the same way hers was.” She opened the next drawer, then the next. “Socks, shirts, everything. Looks identical.”

  Jeffrey pressed his back against the wall, his gut clenching. He was having trouble catching his breath. “Cole said she was going to leave with Chip.”

  Lena went to the kitchen cabinets, and Jeffrey told her, “Don’t touch anything,” sounding like a panicked woman.

  She gave him a look, walking back across the room. She stood in front of the poster, hands on her hips. A large set of hands was pictured cradling a cross. Fire radiated out from the cross like bolts of lightning. She smoothed her hand over the poster like she was brushing something off it.

  “What is it?” Jeffrey managed, not wanting to see for himself.

  “Hold on.” Lena picked at the corner of the poster, trying not to rip the taped edge. Slowly, she peeled back the paper. The wall behind it had been cut out, several shelves nailed into the studs.

  Jeffrey forced himself to take a step forward. There were Baggies on the shelves. He could’ve guessed what was in them, but Lena brought them over anyway.

  “Look,” she said, handing him one of the clear bags. He recognized the contents, but the more interesting part was the fact that there was a label on it with someone’s name.

  He asked, “Who’s Gerald?”

  “Who’s Bailey?” She handed him another bag, then another. “Who’s Kat? Who’s Barbara?”

  Jeffrey held the bags, thinking he was holding a couple thousand dollars’ worth of dope.

  Lena said, “Some of these names sound familiar.”

  “How so?”

  “The people from the farm that we interviewed.” Lena went back to the cutout. “Meth, coke, weed. He’s got a little bit of everything here.”

  Jeffrey looked at the body without thinking, then found himself unable to look away.

  Lena suggested, “He was giving Chip drugs. Maybe he was giving these other people drugs, too?”

  “The snake tempted Eve,” Jeffrey said, quoting Connolly.

  Footsteps echoed behind him, and he turned to see Sara walking up the stairs.

  “I’m sorry
it took so long,” she told him, though she had gotten there in record time. “What happened?”

  He stepped out onto the landing, telling Lena, “Cover that up,” meaning the poster. He slipped the Baggies into his pocket so he could process them without having to wait for Ed Pelham to take his sweet time. He told Sara, “Thanks for coming.”

  “It’s fine,” she told him.

  Lena joined him on the landing. He told her, “Go get Two-Bit,” knowing there was nothing else they would find. He had put off bringing in the Catoogah County sheriff long enough.

  Sara took his hand as soon as Lena had left.

  Jeffrey told her, “He was just sitting there drinking coffee.”

  She looked into the room, then back at him. “Did you have any?”

  He swallowed, feeling like he had glass in his throat. That was probably how it had started for Cole, a feeling in his throat. He had started coughing, then gagging, then the pain had ripped him nearly in two.

  “Jeffrey?”

  He could only shake his head.

  Sara kept holding his hand. “You’re cold,” she told him.

  “I’m a little upset.”

  “You saw the whole thing?”

  He nodded. “I just stood there, Sara. I just stood there watching him die.”

  “There was nothing you could do,” she told him.

  “Maybe there was—”

  “It killed him too quickly,” she said. When he did not respond, she put her arms around him, holding him. She whispered, “It’s okay,” into his neck.

  Jeffrey let his eyes close again, resting his head on her shoulder. Sara smelled like soap and lavender lotion and shampoo and everything clean. He inhaled deeply, needing her scent to wash away the death he had been breathing for the last thirty minutes.

  “I have to talk to Terri Stanley,” he said. “The cyanide is the key. Lena didn’t—”

  “Let’s go,” she interrupted.

  He didn’t move at first. “Do you want to see—”

  “I’ve seen enough,” she told him, tugging his hand to get him moving. “There’s nothing I can do right now. He’s a biohazard. Everything in there is.” She added, “You shouldn’t have even been in there. Did Lena touch anything?”