“I’m Methodist, I guess,” Somers said, taking Hazard’s hand as they started towards the precinct. “Do you want to break up?”

  Hazard tried to laugh.

  “I believe in God. Or I believe in something better than me. Bigger than me. I’ve felt that. When I hold Evie, I feel that sometimes.”

  “You can be Methodist. You can be Buddhist. You can be a witch for all I care.”

  “Good. That’s really good. I’m thinking of becoming a sexual wizard.”

  “You pretty much already are.”

  And this time they both laughed, and some of the wire around Hazard’s chest unspooled.

  “But you don’t have faith in anything? That’s not an attack. Just a question.”

  “No. Faith is irrational. I make decisions. I decide who to trust and what to trust based on reason. Once you get beyond that, people believe what they want to be true or what they’re afraid is true, and either way, they’re only justifying their own opinions. I’d rather not fall into that trap.”

  Somers had that furrow between his eyes again, and Hazard imagined kissing it away. “That’s an oversimplification.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m not trying to pick a fight.”

  “All right, let’s hear it.”

  “I don’t know. Not yet. But that’s what my gut’s saying: there’s more to this.”

  “When your gut has a thesis statement,” Hazard said, bending to kiss Somers on the cheek, “let me know.”

  SOMERS TURNED OVER HIS CONVERSATION with Hazard as they settled into their desks at the bullpen. He knew, instinctively, that there was something important he needed to say to Hazard. He just didn’t know what. He also knew that he might punch out Hazard’s father when he met the man. Hazard’s story had shaken something inside Somers, like someone had run down an ordered aisle, sweeping the shelves clean just to be an ass. That was the kind of disorder Somers felt: he needed to pick everything up, sort it out again, and he had no idea where to start.

  Across from Somers, Hazard was grimacing at his phone. He tapped the phone once, then again, hard enough that Somers expected to hear glass cracking.

  “What’s that all about?”

  “Can we get some goddamn work done and not worry about this piece of shit phone?”

  “Right. Work.”

  Something was up with Ree, something serious, but Somers wasn’t ready to push it. Instead, he set to work making phone calls while Hazard began researching. His first calls were to the major satellite TV companies. With each company, he had to go through the same song and dance, identifying himself, explaining why he was calling, and then working his way up a chain of managers and supervisors until he finally got someone who could tell him what he needed: had they sent someone out to the Waldens’ home in the last two weeks?

  The answers, as Somers had expected, were slow in coming, but he got them. When he rested the phone in its cradle, Hazard glanced up at him.

  “Dish sent a local installer to the Waldens’ home on the ninth. His name is Rex Kolosik; we’ve got a Smithfield address for him.”

  Hazard nodded. “See if Cravens will send a patrol car by.”

  Somers did, and Cravens agreed. When Somers returned to his desk, Hazard was waiting for him. “Want to make any guesses about what John Walden did before he became the Son of God?”

  “Carpenter?”

  “Very funny. He was a cop. A small town in northeastern Missouri. He resigned.”

  “That must have been when he felt the calling.”

  “Or when he realized he was about to get his ass busted. He was married at the time, and he left his wife.”

  “Kelley Jane is a second wife?”

  “That’s right. Kelley Jane Willenborg is originally from Las Vegas, where she was convicted for wire fraud and grand larceny.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, Sister Mary, the Bride of Christ, used to be a pretty big deal as a psychic out West.” Hazard turned his monitor so that Somers could see. On the screen, a pixelated image of a newspaper showed a much younger and thinner Kelley Jane huddled under the arm of a thin man whose face was turned away from the camera. “She had a partner in crime—he was a kind of Rasputin—named Philip Garnet. Somehow he skipped town and managed to avoid prosecution, and I can’t find any trace of him.”

  “Good God. And here she is, running a whole new type of scam.”

  “Successfully, it looks like. We’ll have to get a warrant to look at their financials, but I looked up that farm that Sister Naomi mentioned. It’s prime agricultural land. Six hundred acres.”

  “That’s got to be—what? A million-dollar property?”

  “Estimated value: one point seven million dollars.”

  “How do the reincarnated Christ and his ex-psychic Bride get that kind of money?”

  “They bought it from a woman named Shirley Scheidt for one dollar.”

  “So who’s Shirley Scheidt?

  “You don’t recognize the name? I thought maybe they were a family from around here.”

  “You grew up here too,” Somers said.

  “Maybe somebody who’s lived here longer,” Hazard said.

  “Murray’s older than dirt.”

  “You talk to him.”

  Somers groaned. But Jim Murray, bent over the front desk, nose hairs tickling his chin and a voice like cornstarch, didn’t recognize the Scheidt name. He did, however, want to tell them about a family called Smythe, who had lived in Wahredua for about twenty years and who’d had twin daughters Murray’s age, and he’d courted first the one and the other, and it took Somers almost fifteen minutes to disengage, and by then he’d heard more about the Smythe girls than he ever wanted.

  When Somers got back to the bullpen, Hazard was deep into his research again, clicking and scrolling and occasionally picking up the phone to shout at someone in a dusty public records department.

  The desk phone rang. “Somerset.”

  “It’s Foley.” That was Patrick Foley, one of the uniformed officers. “We stopped by the address the chief gave us. Kolosik.”

  “Nobody home?”

  “Nobody answering the door, at least. Hold on, Moraes is saying something. Ok. Ok. Moraes says there weren’t any cars in the garage. He thinks the guy’s split. Mailbox was pretty full too. If he’s home, he’s not coming outside.”

  Somers thanked them and disconnected. He looked at the computer, but what he needed wasn’t really the computer. The computer was too modern for what he needed to do next. Rex Kolosik, the troublesome satellite TV installer, wasn’t home; Somers’s gut told him that Foley was right. But why? He had gotten in a fight with Walden; Sister Naomi had told them that much. A fight over what? Where the satellite dish should go? No, that didn’t seem likely. Walden looked like the kind of guy who would pick a fight as fast as he picked his nose, but it wouldn’t have been the dragged out, nasty kind of fight that would make Sister Naomi name Kolosik as a suspect. That kind of fight, the kind that led to murder, were usually either about sex, money, or drugs. And there were two girls missing from Walden’s cult family.

  So, that meant sex. And sex meant a cheap motel somewhere—both because it offered some degree of privacy if someone came looking for them and because, when Kolosik got tired of the girls, they wouldn’t be able to follow him home. And a cheap motel—well, they weren’t always listed on the internet. Especially not the ones that Kolosik would use.

  First, Somers started with the phone book. He ran through motels and hotels, jotting down the names in separate categories: dives, chains, boutiques, and unknown. Most of the names he recognized—he had, after all, grown up here—and most of the names he listed as dives. He did a quick google, but he didn’t turn up anything additional, which was more or less what Somers had guessed.

  Then he started calling.

  “Deluxe Drive-In,” a bored woman’s voice answered. Somers imagined two-inch-long nails, poison red. He pitched his voice harder, angrier, rougher than usual.

  “Yeah, I’m looking for my girl. That dumb bitch is trying to two-time me. I don’t care so much about that tired old pussy, but she’s got my Camaro.”

  At the other desk, Hazard’s eyebrows shot up. He tried to look like he was focused on the screen, but the big bastard was listening so hard his ears were going to grow. Somers hid a smile.

  “Mister, we don’t give out that kind of—”

  “I’ll pay you two hundred dollars if she’s there.”

  Hazard was typing something, but the keys he was hitting were bullshit, and it looked like it was costing him a hell of a lot not to turn and look at Somers.

  “You going to come down here and hit on her? Because we don’t want any trouble.”

  “I’m going to beat the shit out of him, you better believe it. But I can do that in the parking lot.”

  “You serious about the money?” Somers could almost see the poison-red nails clicking on the counter.

  “If that cheating bitch is there.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “She might have told you it was Sarah. Or Hagar. And she’s with this real dumb bastard, young guy, in his twenties. Dark hair.”

  “Hagar? Now what the hell kind of name is that? This some kind of game?”

  “You want this money?”

  Hazard had given up all pretense of typing now, and he looked like he was trying to glue his eyes to the screen. Somers turned the mouthpiece away, caught Hazard’s attention, and said, “Get back to work.”

  With a start, Hazard flushed. Then he flicked Somers off.

  “Listen, mister: you sure she was with a young guy? Because pretty girl came in here, but it was an older man. Like he was her grandpa. They paid cash, and I bet they’ll be gone in an hour.”

  “That’s not her. Thank you, though.”

  “If she comes in, you want me to call you?”

  “I’ll call back.”

  “I’m on until five—”

  He hung up.

  Hazard was typing like his life depended on it. The keyboard shook. The whole desk shook.

  “You all right?”

  “Why not just tell them who you are?”

  “Because these places are rat-holes. If I tell them I’m a cop, they’re not going to give me anything. It’d be bad for business.”

  “But it’s not bad for business if they take some money?”

  “You can always count on good old human greed. Plus some stupidity thrown in for good measure.”

  “Brother,” Hazard said. He hit the keys so hard the mouse rattled off the desk, and he had to catch it, flushing, without so much as glancing at Somers.

  “What?”

  “You’re looking for your brother. He stole your girl. Or your car. You can’t describe the girls, but you can describe Kolosik.”

  A smirk grew on Somers’s face. “That’s all you want to say?”

  “You, uh. You don’t usually talk like that.”

  Huh. Well, wasn’t that interesting?

  Somers tried the next place on his list, and he used Hazard’s idea: the same story, but with the focus on the brother who might have dragged a piece of ass or two with him to the motel. One by one, Somers crossed the motels off the list. As he called, his slipped more and more easily into the character and that rough, insistent voice. Hazard was glowing after about four phone calls, working a finger under his collar. On the fifth call, he shoved himself away from the desk and drank two glasses at the water cooler, sweat shining on his forehead.

  Very, very interesting.

  But aside from getting Hazard messy and bothered—a long, dark curl had worked itself loose from the neat part in his hair and now lay plastered to his brow—Somers hadn’t really accomplished anything by the end of the list. He studied the pad of paper for a while and then collected it and stood.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just to ask some questions. You need anything while I’m up?”

  Focused on his screen, Hazard shook his head.

  “A glass of water?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “A cold shower?”

  “You’re a prick.”

  At the front desk, Murray was bent almost double, his lanky, tired frame supported on the wood.

  “Murray, if you were eighteen again and you had a chance to sneak the Smythe girls out of the house, where would you take them?”

  Murray inhaled deeply, his nose hairs trembling. “Both of them?”

  Good Lord. Somers hoped he never had to have a conversation like this again.

  “Yeah, both of them. You’re taking them to a motel.”

  “The Blackfriar Motor Court.”

  “That burned down fifty years ago.”

  “But the girls would have loved it. They had these crystally lamps and a big mirror, and I want that mirror so I can see both of them when I—”

  “What about today?” Somers asked hastily. “Somewhere that’s still standing.”

  “The Grand Rivere Rooms. You can rent there by the hour.”

  “I already called there. Somewhere else.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Another place, Murray. What are some of the motels around here, the real dumps?”

  “Now why’d you come to me about this?”

  “Because you know this town better than anybody in the department.” And, Somers was realizing, because Murray was a very dirty old man.

  “What about the Smithfield Arms?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It used to be the tops, but ever since all the trouble in Smithfield, it’s gone downhill. Used to be real fancy. I wouldn’t take a girl there unless I wanted to buy her dinner and a drink first.”

  Good Lord, Somers thought again.

  “Now,” Murray said, “I heard they’ve got those ladies that aren’t quite ladies. You know what I mean. In my day, you wanted something like that, you had to go all the way to Kansas City. Now, we’ve got them here.” He announced this as though Wahredua had just gotten a new fast food restaurant. “If I wanted to keep things quiet, I’d take them to the Smithfield Arms.”

  “All right. Thanks, Murray.”

  “You know those ladies got gentleman parts too.”

  Sweet Jesus. “Yeah, Murray. Thanks.”

  Murray opened his mouth to say something else, but Somers sprinted back to his desk.

  When he got there, he was surprised to see Swinney perched on Hazard’s desk, the two detectives conversing in low voices. Liz Swinney was Wahredua’s only female detective. She had her reddish-blond hair buzzed short, except for a few long strands in the front, and although she was still a few years shy of middle age, she looked like it had already hit her hard. The last few months, in particular, had taken a toll on Swinney—she had realized, along with Hazard and Somers, that her partner was crooked, and she had been forced to work against him in order to help Hazard and Somers solve a murder. Albert Lender, her partner, was still on the force though; they didn’t have enough to bring him down. Yet.

  Swinney raised a hand as Somers approached. “I was telling Hazard about the last cult that came through here.”

  Somers shook his head.

  “It was before you started. The New Jesuits in Christ. Some sort of Catholic splinter, ultra-conservative. They were also pushing meth pretty hard. I guess the Vatican cut the purse strings when they went rogue.”

  “Anything in common with Walden and his group?”

  Snorting, Swinney nodded. “They’re all the same. Sure, the bullshit’s different. They dress things up their own way. But underneath, it’s all the same. Cults are about power. They have a charismatic leader at the top, and everybody else is at the bottom. The leaders are narcissists. They’re also the linchpin. Most cults tend to dissolve if something bad happens to the leader. The brainwashing shit they do is effective, but it doesn’t matter how much they mess with your brain if there isn’t someone around to tell you what to do.”

  “This one seems different,” Hazard said. “He’s got a wife. She seems like she’s a step above the others.”

  “Sure, there can be some variations. Sometimes a leader has a lieutenant, some kind of second in command. You think she killed this guy? You think this is a coup?”

  Somers shrugged. “It could be. Right now, she’s got a boy giving her an alibi, and she was locked in an apartment. That doesn’t mean much; we’re still figuring out the timing.”

  “That kid in the interview room? How old is he? Twelve?”

  Shaking his head, Somers said, “Seventeen. Barely old enough that we can’t stick her with statutory rape.”

  “She was sleeping with him?” Swinney whistled. “That’s messed up.”

  “From what she told us,” Hazard said, “that’s the tip of the iceberg.”

  Whistling again, Swinney pushed herself to her feet and gave them each a mock salute. “Good luck, boys.”

  Hazard opened his mouth to respond, but then he began digging through his pockets. He produced a phone, scowled at the screen, and answered brusquely.

  “I already told you this isn’t a good time. We’re working a case. Yes, I know, Dad. We’re always working a case. That’s because it’s my job. No. No, that’s not what I—” He jerked the phone away from his ear, his face tight. “If you’d just listen to me—yes. That’s fine, you can stay there. All right. All right. All right. Goodbye.”

  “Why can’t he stay at our place?”

  Hazard shoved the phone into his pocket and turned his attention back to the monitor.

  “We’ve got a spare bedroom.”

  “No. That’s my bedroom.”

  “You haven’t slept there in weeks.”

  “Keep it up, and I will tonight.”

  Somers dropped into his seat and flipped through the phone book again, looking for a number for the Smithfield Arms. It wasn’t listed under motels or hotels, so he tried finding it alphabetically. It was there, with a local number, and he picked up and dialed. A man answered with: “Smithfield Arms, hold.”