Wolf Lake. John Verdon
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sir, I’m not. Young fellow at the next desk caught that one, thought everything was cool when the ME signed off on probable suicide. Course that all went to hell once the Reverend Bowman Cox dropped by to tell us it was murder, and the killer was Satan.”
“What?”
“You don’t know about that?”
“I was told that Wenzel confided to a local minister that he’d been having nightmares ever since he’d seen a Dr. Hammond up in Wolf Lake. And after Wenzel showed up dead, the minister told you guys about it. Then one of you called Hammond, but nothing really came of that conversation, until Hammond called back a week later to tell you he’d just heard from a detective in New Jersey about a second suicide. That’s the way I was told the story—no reference to any murder committed by Satan.”
“How are you getting your information?”
“In a roundabout way.”
“You’re not a trusted confidant of Senior Investigator Gilbert Fenton?”
“That’s one way of putting it. Tell me more about Satan.”
“Well . . . that’s not an easy thing for me to do. Our chief of detectives has made a request that details not already reported in the press be kept in the house. I did agree to abide by that request, word of honor. However, Reverend Cox is under no such constraint. I understand he can be reached at the Church of Christian Victory down in Coral Dunes. The reverend is a man of strong convictions, with an equally strong desire to share them.”
“Thanks, Bobby. I appreciate this.”
“Glad to help. Now, maybe you can answer a question of mine? Actually, it’s a question on the minds of many down here.”
“Ask it.”
“What in the name of holy magnolia is that hog’s ass, Fenton, up to?”
That launched them into a long discussion of the unconventional aspects of Fenton’s approach to the press. Becker was particularly unhappy with what he perceived to be the BCI investigator’s assumption of the role of law enforcement spokesman on all aspects of the case and his grandstanding with the national media, which resulted in the detectives in the other jurisdictions losing control of the flow of information and finding themselves in awkward positions with local reporters.
And then there was the matter of the criminal hypothesis Fenton was promoting, which Becker considered “unprosecutable and sure-as-hell unprovable.” Which brought Gurney around to a question that troubled him more than Fenton’s actual behavior:
Who in the Bureau of Criminal Investigation—or elsewhere in the New York State Police hierarchy—had signed off on his approach to the case? And why did they?
Someone above him had to be on board. Fenton, after all, exuded the essence of career cop. This dour, close-to-retirement law enforcer would be constitutionally incapable of acting outside a chain of command.
So whose game was this?
And what was the prize for the victor?
For now, all Gurney and Becker had were questions. But the fact that they both were bothered by the same questions provided a measure of reassurance.
Becker ended the call with an afterthought on the Reverend Cox. “To prepare you for any contact you may have with the good minister, I should tell you that he bears a keen resemblance to a large, degenerate bird of prey.”
GURNEY’S CALL TO THE PHONE NUMBER ON THE WEBSITE OF THE Coral Dunes Church of Christian Victory resulted in a trip through an automated answering system that led him eventually to the voicemail of Bowman Cox himself.
He left his name and cell number, explaining that he was one of the detectives looking into the quadruple suicide case and was hoping that the reverend might be able to provide some additional insight into Christopher Wenzel’s state of mind and perhaps share his own theory of the case.
Less than five minutes after he put down his phone, he got a return call. The voice was all Southern-syrupy. “Detective Gurney, this is Bowman Cox. I just received your message. If your area code is any indication, you are located in upstate New York. Am I correct?”
“Yes, sir, you are. Thank you for calling me back.”
“I believe that things happen for a reason. I got your message moments after you left it, because I was about to leave my hotel room and I wanted to check my phone mail first. And where do you think my hotel room is?”
“I have no idea.”
“It’s where you might least expect it. In the belly of the beast.”
“Sir?”
“The belly of the beast—New York City. We are here to defend Christmas from those who hate the very idea of it, who object to its very existence.”
“I see.”
“Are you a Christian, sir?”
It wasn’t a question he would normally answer. But this wasn’t a normal situation.
“I am.” He didn’t add that his own version of Christianity was probably as far from Bowman Cox’s as Walnut Crossing was from Coral Dunes.
“That’s good to hear. Now, what can I do for you?”
“I’d like to talk to you about Christopher Wenzel.”
“And his nightmare?”
“Yes.”
“And how all these deaths have come to be?”
“Yes.”
“Where exactly are you, Detective, right now, as we speak?”
“In my home in Walnut Crossing in upstate New York.”
For several seconds, Cox said nothing. The only sound Gurney could hear over the phone was the soft tapping of fingers on a keyboard. He waited.
“Ah, there you are. Convenient things, these instant maps. Well, now, here’s a proposition for you. My feeling is that this conversation is too important for the phone. Why don’t we meet, you and I, face-to-face?”
“When and where?”
There was another silence, longer this time, with more keyboard tapping.
“Looks to me like Middletown would be a perfect middle point between us. There’s a diner on Route 17 called Halfway There. I feel that the Lord is pointing the way for us. What do you say—shall we accept his suggestion?”
Gurney glanced at his phone screen to check the time. It was 12:13 PM. If he got to the diner at 1:45 and spent an hour with Cox, he could be back home by 4:15. That would leave plenty of time to resolve any open issues regarding the following morning’s trip to Wolf Lake.
“Fine, sir, I can meet you there at 1:45.”
The drive down through the Catskills to Middletown was familiar and uneventful. The sprawling parking lot of the Halfway There diner was equally familiar. He and Madeleine had pulled in there for coffee many times during the year they’d spent searching for a country house.
Fewer than a third of the tables in the dining area were taken. As Gurney scanned the room, a hostess approached with a menu and an overly lipsticked smile.
“I think I see who I’m meeting here,” said Gurney, his eyes on a self-important-looking man sitting by himself in one of the four chairs at a corner table.
She shrugged, handed him the menu, and walked away.
By the time Gurney got to the table, the man was standing, well over six feet tall, with his right hand outstretched. He engaged Gurney in an enthusiastic handshake, while raising his other hand to display an iPad.