“Yeah, Ree. You did.”

  “Ok, I guess I did. I didn’t know how much you believed. I thought the tattoo—I thought it had been a phase. Or maybe that you had just liked the wording, that it had meant something to you.”

  “It does mean something to me.”

  “So you really—” Hazard paused. “You really believe all that?”

  “That’s a pretty broad question.”

  “That’s all I want right now: a broad answer. You’re a believer?”

  “Sure.”

  The Interceptor rolled down the asphalt, tires humming.

  “Is that a problem?”

  For a very long minute, the only answer was the hiss of the air in the vents. Then Hazard said, “No. No, I don’t think so. I just need to . . . adjust.”

  “You can ask me whatever you want. I’m not a nutjob.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m still a big old faggot.”

  “You’re really not,” Hazard said with a grin, “but I still love you.”

  “All right?”

  “Yeah. I think so. And I am sorry.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Somers said in his best announcer’s voice. “Call the people at the Guinness Book of World Records. Emery Hazard has just apologized!”

  He barely dodged Hazard’s swat.

  IN THE STATION, they found Swinney behind her desk in the bullpen. She shot out of her seat when she saw them, the single lock of red-blond hair flapping, and waved a paper at them. “It’s about damn time. I was going to go looking for you.”

  Somers glanced at Cravens’s office. The chief’s door was closed, and the room was dark.

  “She’s trying to keep a riot from breaking out.”

  “A riot?” Hazard said.

  “The pilgrims, or whatever you want to call them, keep coming. They’re parking wherever they want, throwing up tents on public land, making a damn nuisance of themselves. And people are starting to get mad. Leonard Bint got his shotgun and blasted a hole in one of the six-man Coleman’s. Thank God nobody was inside.”

  Somers grimaced. Bint caused plenty of problems: public urination, public indecency, public nudity, public intoxication, just to name a few. But he wasn’t really hot-tempered. Things were getting bad in town if the old man already had his shotgun out.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Hazard said. “Walden is dead. His body goes missing. And all of the sudden, everybody believes he’s Jesus Christ come back to earth. I don’t buy it. People have to be smarter than that.”

  “Most people are. We’re talking two hundred, three hundred of these pilgrims. The numbers aren’t really that big, but in a town like this, it feels like a lot. We’re a small town, and a small town feels cramped fast.”

  “Three hundred,” Hazard said. “Three hundred morons who pulled up stakes because they think John Oscar Walden is Jesus.”

  “In a state with six million people. Plus a few million on every side. It’s not hard to find three hundred crazy people out of six million. Did you find God or something?”

  Hazard glanced at the Bible; Somers guessed the big man hadn’t even realized he was still toting it around.

  “What do you have there?” Somers asked, glancing at the paper in her hand and trying to change the subject before Hazard got going again.

  “This is from Idaho’s child services, or whatever they’re called up there. Came through on the fax today, mixed in with a bunch of other stuff that Taney County sent up about that dead girl you found. I figured you’d want to see it.”

  Hazard glanced at the paper—that’s all, just a glance—and passed it to Somers. Somers needed more time, and he read the document slowly and studied the picture in the center of the page. It was the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare record for a child in foster care: Britney Cowper. The record had last been updated in 2016, but the picture was from 2012. In 2012, Britney had been twelve years old, but the girl in the picture looked ten at the outside: scrawny, her bare arms folded across her chest, her face set in a ferocious scowl. The scowl was the only part of her that looked old; it belonged on a woman past ninety, a woman who had seen everything rough and tumble since the Dust Bowl. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, the girl could have blended in anywhere if not for that scowl.

  “Is it her?” Hazard asked.

  “She ran away in 2016,” Swinney said. “But they didn’t have any more recent pictures.”

  “Is it her?”

  Somers nodded. The girl he had seen in the cave had been in the earliest stages of bloat, with blood sponging around her mouth and nose, maggots already crawling in the wounds. Three days dead at least, which fit with Britney’s disappearance. And they had found Walden’s missing car nearby. And now this, the picture of the girl with dark hair and dark eyes. The bloody foam had looked like something out of the ocean, delicate and dried out and preserved. Some of her long dark hair had stuck in that rust-colored spume.

  “It’s her. She grew up to be a lot prettier. Jesus, that’s messed up.”

  “So now we have John Oscar Walden dead and Britney Cowper too. Why?”

  “They were fighting. We know that much.”

  “She had something on him,” Swinney said, tapping the picture. “Look at this girl. Mean as hell. A scrapper. She might have gone along with all the mumbo-jumbo that Walden was throwing up, but a girl like this? This girl looks like she’s seen every mean trick and invented one or two herself. And she was twelve when they took the picture. Twelve.”

  “So because of a picture,” Hazard said, “from five years ago, you think she was a blackmailer and was murdered for it.”

  “It makes sense,” Swinney said. “They were arguing. What did they have to argue about? Not sex; she was giving that out already. Walden was getting plenty of it, no doubt.”

  “A child,” Somers said.

  Hazard threw him a sharp look. “You think she was pregnant?”

  “It’s a possibility. One of the girls was already, once, when they were living in that cave”

  Swinney nodded slowly.

  “If it was a child, the autopsy will show that,” Hazard said.

  “Jesus, this is messed up,” Swinney said.

  “More than that,” Somers said, “it opens up some possibilities. If the fights were about a pregnancy, maybe it wasn’t Walden who killed her.”

  “Kelley Jane,” Hazard said.

  “If she and Jesse were going to get rid of Walden, if they were planning on taking control of the cult and using Walden’s death to do it, then they couldn’t leave Walden’s child. It would be a . . . a successor, I guess. A threat to their spot at the top.”

  “Besides,” Hazard said, “Jesus didn’t have any kids.”

  “Don’t tell Dan Brown that,” Swinney said with a smirk. “Oh, I almost forgot. The bloody prints on the walls in Walden’s house? They match Britney Cowper’s. They were in the file.”

  “So she was in the house on Sunday,” Hazard said. “She was in the house after Peyton had left to meet Rex. Walden was there. Kelley Jane was there. And Clyde was there. One of them stabbed her repeatedly. She managed to get away—no, that’s not right. She staggered, tried to keep herself upright, tried to get to the back door.”

  “And left a track of bloody handprints along the way,” Somers said. “Why were you sitting on that, Swinney?”

  “Just because there’s a bloody handprint belonging to Britney Cowper doesn’t mean she’s the same girl you found. I wanted to see what you’d say.”

  “It damn well helps, though. All right. So Britney is stabbed and killed. What about Walden?”

  “Stabbed and killed too,” Hazard said.

  “At the same time? Before? After?”

  “If Walden killed Britney, then it was later. He stabbed her, drove her body south to the caves, and came home.”

  “Hard to imagine Kelley Jane and Clyde not hearing a murder. Britney must have screamed for help.”

  “If they were out in the barn,” Hazard said, “they might not have heard.”

  “And you said that woman was a pretty vocal fuck,” Swinney said. “If they were playing stick the weasel, they might have missed the Blue Angels.”

  “God damn,” Hazard said. “All right. I guess we need to talk to Kelley Jane. Too bad we don’t have Jesse in custody. It’s always easier to crack conspirators when you can play them against each other. Especially two like Jesse and—” He cut off; those scarecrow eyes were distant, like two frozen chips of yesterday’s sunset.

  “You’re just going to ask if she killed her husband?” Swinney said. “And if she might have killed a pregnant girl while she was at it?”

  Hazard didn’t seem to hear her; he sure as hell did a good job of playing that he hadn’t, anyway. Somers poked him in the ribs.

  “Of course not,” Somers said. “Hazard’s got some kind of plan. Don’t you?”

  Scowling, Hazard rubbed his side. “Some kind, yeah.”

  With a grin, Somers poked him again and then danced backward. “Then let’s get started.”

  AS USUAL, IT WAS SOMERS who did all the work while Hazard pretended he was a thundercloud. The dark-haired man brooded and stormed and thundered behind his desk, turning through the Bible he had taken from Clyde, flipping back and forth a single page, his lips moving silently.

  Somers, meanwhile was stuck printing and copying and cutting and pasting and using White-Out, and within fifteen minutes he had spatters of the damn stuff on the inside of his arm and up his nose, and he was pretty sure Hazard had made the whole plan extra complicated on purpose.

  Blowing out a frustrated breath, Somers looked up from his work. “You know, there’s a name for people who have to say every word that they read.”

  Hazard ignored him, still mouthing words as he read.

  “Kindergartners. That’s what they call them.”

  Without lifting his head from the Bible, Hazard shot the bird.

  “Really classy. You’re holding sacred scripture in your hand and giving me the finger.”

  “It’s not sacred to me. Now will you stop talking?”

  “I can read without moving my lips, you know. I’ve got that much going for me.”

  “Oh yeah?” Those scarecrow eyes floated up from the text for a moment, flashing like lightning in a drought.

  Somers nodded gravely.

  “How well do you think you’ll read with two black eyes?”

  “Message received.”

  After the final copy was complete, Somers inspected the document and then perched on Hazard’s desk. He slid the page over the Bible, blocking Hazard’s view of the text.

  “Get that out of my way.”

  “Is this what you wanted?”

  “More or less. Now move.”

  Somers twitched the page but left it where it was. “Usually people say something like thank you. Or well done. Or good job. Or I’m proud of you.”

  “Get it the fuck out of my way.”

  “You’ve got the right energy level, but the words—”

  With a growl, Hazard clamped onto Somers’s wrist and moved his arm. Somers let him read for a moment before saying, “You really haven’t made much progress. That’s the page you started on.”

  “What does this mean to you? And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.”

  “It sounds like it’s from the Bible.”

  “For fuck’s sake.”

  “Isn’t that a story about Joshua? A big battle, something like that.”

  “Joshua and the Israelites fought the five kings of the Amorites: the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king of Eglon. It was a huge battle. They fought all day, and Joshua commanded the sun to stand still so that they could keep fighting.”

  “I thought Jerusalem was where the Israelites lived.”

  “You’re absolutely no help.”

  With a pout, Somers dangled the document he had spent the last hour forging.

  “Fine. You’re some help.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “Well, that’s all you’re getting.”

  “For now.”

  A question lined Hazard’s forehead.

  “Later,” Somers said lazily, “I’m going to make you tell me all sorts of good things about me. When we’re alone. Together.”

  Scarlet dusted Hazard’s cheekbones, and he swallowed.

  “But since we can’t make the sun stand still,” Somers said, “let’s go find Kelley Jane before she has her grand appearance with the faithful.”

  Hazard’s scarecrow eyes lost focus. This wasn’t yesterday’s sunset; this was a hundred years ago, that kind of golden blaze of distant light. And then he swore. “I’m such a fucking idiot.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s go.”

  Somers tried asking what Hazard meant, but Hazard ignored him, pushing past Somers and grabbing his jacket. Somers trailed after him. Hazard refused to answer; the chips of sunlight in his eyes were glassy, and finally he snapped, “I’m still trying to work it out, Somers. For God’s sake let me think.” After that, Somers focused on driving.

  They reached Truant Park with the shadows long and a fuzzing brushwork of mica in the light. Against that glistening backdrop, the patches of darkness were longer and deeper, like pools you could dive into and come up miles away if you came up at all. Overnight, crowds had transformed the park. Wherever the trees broke into grassy clearings, tents crowded the available space. Somers tasted woodsmoke in the air, and the smell of fire licking meat, and shit. The campers weren’t too concerned about digging latrines; from the looks of it, they were taking dumps wherever they felt like it. Apparently cleanliness wasn’t next to godliness in Walden’s religion.

  Hazard was still deep in his thunderclouds when they arrived, so Somers took the lead, asking the squatters where Kelley Jane was. The answers were vague at first—evasive, in fact, as most of the pilgrims seemed to recognize that they were cops and were unwilling to offer anything substantive. As they moved deeper into the camp, though, Somers started to get answers. And with the answers came blatant hostility: jeers, angry calls, threats. When Somers turned to look, the squatters always had their eyes averted. A stone snapped against his shoulder, a piece of gravel no bigger than Somers’s thumb, but the sting of it ran down to his elbow like electricity.

  “This is a powderkeg.”

  Hazard, of course, ignored him.

  When they found Kelley Jane, she sat apart from her followers, in a glade at the edge of the park where someone had strung bedsheets to screen her from the unwashed masses. An April breeze stirred the cotton, carrying the scent of Gain detergent, and the fabric surrendered a soft whisper to the air. It was the illusion of privacy, but only that much; likely, Kelley Jane had people carefully positioned to provide testimony if anything went wrong. Or, perhaps, to act as muscle.

  Walden’s martyrdom had worked wonders for her. Like Peyton, Kelley Jane had undergone a transformation. Both transformations had been fueled by money, but where Peyton had metamorphosed like a caterpillar into a butterfly, acquiring all the cosmetics and trappings that a rich California girl might need, Kelley Jane had moved in the other direction. Her hair had been trimmed and colored, but it was a delicate, ash-gray, and the cut made her look severe rather than beautiful. She wore makeup too, but earth tones and dark colors that gave her a grim, distant look. The white robe she wore, although plain and unadorned, was silk, and it draped well across her figure, a look that was both monastic and obliquely sexual. She was well on her way to taking control of Walden’s cult, Somers realized. And if she said the word, the squatters would likely tear Somers and Hazard apart.

  “Detectives,” she said, glancing up from the pages she held in one hand. Her speech, Somers guessed. “Can I help you?”

  “It’s time we talked honestly,” Somers said, and now he was treading a tightrope, all his trust solely in Hazard. “We know, Kelley Jane.”

  “Know what?”

  “How you killed your husband.”

  Her eyes looked like she wanted to laugh, but only her eyes. The rest of her face she had locked down, and her expression was sober. “My husband is not dead. He lives again—”

  “Enough of that,” Hazard said.

  The air stirred, and the sheets rustled and snapped. Somers glimpsed a heavyset man, hair down to the middle of his back, pacing behind one of the lengths of cotton. The sun was perfectly positioned to hide him, but now that Somers knew he was there, he could track the man’s movements. Did he have a weapon? A club? A knife? A gun? Would he shoot without looking?

  “You have nothing,” Kelley Jane said. “You are gentiles. You are wolves in sheep’s clothing. You prowl among the flock of the faithful, looking for your prey, and now you think that you have found the weakest. But the Lord protects the weakest of the weak. I will be your right arm, the Lord says. I will go before you to battle.”

  On the far side of the sheet, the big man’s steps had stopped, and he had turned towards them.

  “You’d better ask your friend to keep moving,” Somers said. “Or I’m going to do something stupid like put a few holes in him.”

  Kelley Jane’s irritation sparked and flared before she suffocated it. “Go on, Brother Jeremiah. We will be fine.”

  “Don’t come back, Brother Jeremiah,” Somers called after the big man. “Unless you want to see if God’s any good at healing a bullet between the eyes.”

  The crunch of leaves under footsteps faded, and then there was only the rustle of the cotton, the smell of detergent, and Kelley Jane’s breathing.

  “You don’t have anything on me.”

  “If you confess,” Somers said, “it’ll go easier. When we have to drag it out, when we have to go into all the details, things get a lot uglier.”