The Pinch Runner Page 5

  He was making sense, and she didn’t like the sound of it. First, the idea of someone from their church being the murderer made her stomach roll. Second, she didn’t like her husband being better at the puzzle solving than she was. Why hadn’t she realized it had to be someone from the church? Maybe because she didn’t want to think that?

  “So either someone unlocked the church to put the bat back that night, or they snuck it in later the next day or on another day. Either way, it’s not good.”

  She was quiet as that soaked in.

  “Maybe they didn’t have a key,” Peter said.

  Oh great. Now her son was doing it too.

  “Maybe someone broke into the church,” he added. “People leave doors and windows unlocked all the time.”

  “That’s an excellent point,” Nate said. “But it still doesn’t point to a stranger. If you weren’t familiar with our church and you needed a murder weapon, you wouldn’t go searching for our bat bag. There are easier ways to find a weapon—”

  “Guys!” Sandra cried, exasperated.

  “What?” Nate looked so innocent.

  “You tell me I can’t get involved with this, and now here you are trying to figure it out!”

  “We’re just talking,” Nate said, sounding injured. “We’re not chasing bad guys into a forest during a snowstorm. There’s no harm in talking—”

  “Well, cut it out. I feel like a drug addict trying to stay away from the drugs, and now you guys are using right in front of me.”

  At first, no one said anything. Then Peter said, “I think that’s an exaggeration.”

  “I made my point,” she snapped. She wasn’t really angry at them, though. They were just really making her miss Bob. She wanted to talk to him about all this. He helped her process this stuff. Though, thinking about him gave her an idea. She glanced nervously at Nate, having this odd fear that he could read her mind, but he looked clueless. So, she stayed silent all the way home, and she didn’t talk as she put the frozen pizzas in the oven. Then she approached Nate, who was sitting on the couch watching television, from behind, kissed him on the top of the head and whispered, “Would you mind getting the pizzas out of the oven in twenty? I set the timer.”

  He craned his neck around to look at her. “Why? Where are you going?”

  She leaned on the back of the couch. “I just want to go for a drive,” she sort-of lied. “I’m not hungry.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you going to meet Bob?”

  She snorted. “No, I promise. I’m not going to meet Bob. He quit crime-fighting, remember?”

  He didn’t look convinced. “I remember.”

  She kissed him on the cheek and then stood up straight. “I promise, no angels, and no chasing anyone into the forest. I’m just going for a drive.”

  “Okay, then.” His tone suggested it was not okay at all. “But will you call and check in? I’ll worry.”

  “I won’t need to. I won’t be gone long.”

  He frowned.

  “Okay, I’ll call and check in.” She said good-bye and then sneaked out before her kids could notice she was leaving them and freak out. Then as she slid out the door, she reached up and grabbed Nate’s keys off the hook. She’d said she was going for a drive. She hadn’t specified with which vehicle.

  Chapter 14

  Sandra slid Nate’s church key into the lock and then slipped into the cool, dark, empty building. She’d never trespassed before and felt extra guilty that her first foray into the crime was a church—her own church, no less. She fervently hoped the church angel wasn’t watching. Did it count as breaking and entering if she didn’t steal anything? She feared so. It was a moot point, however, because if she found what she was looking for, she planned to take it.

  She knew from general church scuttlebutt that the master key that unlocked the outside door also unlocked most of the doors in the building, except for the pastor’s office and the treasurer’s office. That was okay. She didn’t think she needed to go into either of those rooms. She gave her eyes time to adjust to the dim light provided by the emergency exit signs and then headed for the secretary’s office door. In seconds she was inside. Thank goodness Nate frequently volunteered for youth group activities; this mission would be far more difficult without his key. She looked around the neat but cluttered office. She quickly spotted the small television screen, which was turned off, but she didn’t see a box of tapes anywhere. Maybe she’d been watching too many old detective shows. Maybe New Hope’s security footage was digital. She groaned, which sounded freakily loud in the silence. She continued her search, but as the tapes didn’t appear, she grew more and more sure that there were no tapes. She turned to confront the secretary’s computer. Sandra wasn’t a computer whiz. Was it even worth turning it on?

  She hadn’t come this far to just give up. She looked for the computer’s on button and learned that it already was on. It was just sleeping. She jiggled the ergonomically-correct mouse and the screen sprang to life, blinding her with its brightly lit password request. Shoot. But then she saw a combination of letters and numbers taped to the bottom of the computer screen. No way it could be that easy?

  But it was. She was soon inside the belly of all things New Hope. Sunday school curricula, bulletin templates, and schedules galore. The desktop was full of icons, one of which read “Cameras.” She opened the file folder and found several thousand video files stretching back years. That was a lot of empty parking lot footage. She was beyond grateful to learn the files were organized by date, and she quickly scrolled down to locate the footage from that fateful Saturday night. Then she scrolled back up. Then down. It wasn’t there. There was a video for Friday and the following Monday, but nothing for that Saturday or Sunday. She scanned the other dates to see if missing videos was a common occurrence, but it wasn’t. On a hunch, she checked for the Tuesday when she’d first seen Phoneix, and that recording was missing too. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Someone had deleted three days’ worth of footage? Who could have done that?

  Anyone could have done it. She’d just proved that their church wasn’t exactly Fort Knox. It occurred to her that she could delete the current day’s footage that showed her sneaking into the church after dark, but she decided she’d crossed enough ethical lines for one day. She closed the folder, hoped the computer would go back to sleep soon, and then sneaked out of the office, taking care to lock the door behind her. Then she was outside, making sure she didn’t look directly at the security cameras and hurrying to Nate’s car, which she’d parked out of their view. And then she was on her way home, her small guilt about what she’d just done completely dwarfed by her curiosity. She’d assumed that the police hadn’t asked for the videos, but maybe they had? But even if they had, that didn’t mean they would have been deleted, did it? Wouldn’t they just have copied the videos? No, she was sure the police hadn’t yet asked for the videos. They’d only just taken custody of the bats that evening, so unless they’d had another reason to suspect the killer was someone from the church, she doubted they’d made the leap yet.

  She resisted the urge to swing through the Dunkin drive through for a sweet treat and was almost back to her driveway when Bob appeared in the seat beside her. She shrieked, and the car swerved toward the ditch as she stared at him.

  “Keep it on the road!” he cried, bracing himself with one hand on the dash.

  She straightened the car out and then opened her mouth to ask him why he was trying to kill her, but before she could speak, he told her to pull over.

  “Pull over? You just told me to keep it on the road!”

  “Pull over right now!”

  She slowed and pulled the car onto the dirt shoulder. It always made her nervous when he injected his voice with angel authority.

  Chapter 15

  “Are you out of your mind?” Bob cried.

  “What?” She didn’t know what he meant. Surely he couldn’t be this wound up about her sneaking into her own church?

/>   “You broke into a church!”

  “How do you know? Have you been spying on me?”

  She might as well have suggested he’d spent the last several hours crocheting doilies. Spying on her was obviously beneath him. “Certainly not. Mannaziah told me to come rebuke you, and he’s acting as though it is my fault that you are behaving like this.”

  “Who is Mannaziah?”

  He flinched. He’d said too much. “Your church angel,” he muttered. “But that is not important right now. You can’t go breaking into the church.”

  “I didn’t break in, Bob. Don’t you think you’re being a touch dramatic? I had a key.”

  “Sandra!” He sounded exasperated. “You said you were going to sit this one out.”

  “And I have! I mean, I did! Until my seven-year-old found the murder weapon!”

  His eyes widened. “What? Tell me what happened!”

  She told him, and he hung on her every word. He’d obviously missed this too. “Wow,” he said when she’d finished.

  “And there’s more. I wanted to look at the security tapes, only there aren’t any actual tapes, but anyway, I tried to watch the videos, but they weren’t there—”

  “You mean someone deleted them?”

  I would tell you if you’d stop interrupting. “Yes, I think someone deleted them. Bob, I think someone from our church killed that man! Do you understand how horrible that is? I mean, I don’t know everyone who goes to church there, but I still find it pretty difficult to believe. And whoever did it returned a bloody bat to the bat bag! Who does that? Why not wipe it off first—”

  “Unless he was trying to frame someone from your church.”

  She gasped. “You’re right! Maybe that is the case!”

  “Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.”

  She didn’t know, and it was killing her. “So someone took the bat out of the church, walked into the woods with it, clobbered a man, then brought the bat all the way back to the church, put it in the bat bag, and then deleted the video of them doing all this.” She looked at him. “That murderer has a lot of intestinal fortitude!”

  He stared straight ahead at the dark road in front of them. “Or they’re just plain evil.”

  “Or that.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Bob, I hate to do this, but I have to get home. I promised my husband that I wasn’t sneaking out to meet you.”

  Bob chuckled. “All right. I don’t want to get you into trouble, but ...” He didn’t finish.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I promised Mannaziah that I would get you to stop the investigating, and I’m not confident I’ve done that. Instead, you’ve managed to get me intrigued.”

  “Does this Mannaziah know who killed Phoenix?”

  Bob didn’t answer her.

  “Oh my goodness, he does, doesn’t he? Well, can’t he just tell you and then you can tell me and then I can tell Chip?” Her voice reached an embarrassingly high pitch by the end of that sentence.

  “I don’t know if he knows. He wouldn’t tell me if he did.”

  “But he probably does, right?”

  “I don’t know. Angels don’t usually meddle in human affairs as much as I do. I’ve been a bad example for you.” He sounded so discouraged, so vulnerable, that she couldn’t stand it.

  “Bob, you are the best angel ever.”

  He snickered.

  “I mean it. Otis would be dead if it weren’t for you.”

  He nodded and studied his hands, which were folded in his lap. “Maybe. Or maybe without my meddling, he never would have been in that bog in the first place.” He looked up at her. “I’ll let you go now.”

  She opened her mouth to say goodbye, but he was already gone. She took a moment to calm herself down and then drove the rest of the way home, trying to imagine which of her church friends could be a killer. She pictured them in her mind, one by one. Each deacon, each elder, each Sunday school teacher. She pictured the pianist, the base player, and the drummer. She paused on the drummer’s face. He was a maybe—always seemed a bit shady. She pictured her friends and Ethel’s friends and then laughed aloud. She couldn’t picture any of the senior saints swinging a bat—wait. Was she certain that the bats had been in the church when the murderer had picked out his weapon? As she’d told Nate, they hadn’t always been put away. She tried to think back—who had dealt with the bat bag that Tuesday? She’d been so busy watching the police chase Phoenix into the woods that she couldn’t summon up an image of someone picking up after the team.

  She pulled into her driveway and hurried inside, suddenly exhausted. She tried to be discreet as she returned the keys to their hook and then she sank into the couch beside her husband, who hadn’t moved since she’d left him.

  “I was thinking ...”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Do you have any idea who put the bats away after that Tuesday game where Phoenix helped us out?”

  He scratched his chin and then said, “Yeah.”

  “Well? Who was it?”

  He turned his head, and because he was slouched down, he was perfectly eye level with her. “It was me.”

  Chapter 16

  For the first time ever, Sandra was worried the cops might be suspicious of her. Apparently, her husband had been the last to handle the bat bag before the murder. And then she’d gone and broken into a church. Not cool, Sandra, not cool. The more she tried to tell herself not to worry, the more she worried.

  Though she was in bed before ten o’clock, when the alarm went off at six, she’d slept less than two hours. She dragged her body out of bed, her anxiety momentarily displaced by a single overwhelming thought: coffee.

  With a half a cup of creamy java in her belly, she sat at the kitchen table and waited for it to make her smarter.

  It didn’t, and yet she was still able to come to a decision: she needed to confess. She dug through her purse until she found Chip’s number, and this time she added him as a contact. If she was going to call him this frequently, she might as well have him on speed dial. She started to call and then realized it was probably too early. So she finished the pot and puttered around the kitchen watching the clock. She took a long shower, almost nodded off under the hot water, and then put on one of her church dresses, specifically, the one she thought made her look the least like a murderer.

  Finally, it was eight o’clock, and she decided not to wait for nine. A man had been murdered. If Chip wasn’t up yet, he should be.

  He was. At least, he answered on the first ring and sounded perky. He was reluctant to meet her in person. He didn’t understand why she couldn’t just say her piece over the phone, but she persisted. And so, for the first time, she was invited to the Major Crimes Unit office. She left a note for Nate, telling him she was going to see Chip, but not to worry, and that he was in charge of the children until further notice. She planned to get home before he got up and saw the note.

  She pulled into the small parking lot less than a half hour later, her hands trembling. She really wished Bob were there. He probably wouldn’t allow himself to be seen by the detectives, but she’d still like to have him along for moral support. But he wasn’t there—at least not to her knowledge—so she dug deep and approached the office one nervous step at a time.

  An ice-cold receptionist made her anxiety even worse, but then Chip breezed out into the small lobby, and his sincere welcome put her mostly at ease. He invited her back into his office, and though the two desks in the room suggested he shared the room with Slaughter, she was nowhere in sight. He pulled Slaughter’s chair over near his desk. “Have a seat, Sandra. I was just thinking about how well you’re doing staying out of this one, and then you called.” He chuckled as he folded his hands in his lap. “So, what’s up?”

  She sat in Slaughter’s chair and then swallowed hard. “I have a small confession to make.”

  He waited for her to say more, but she was at a loss for where to begin. “Okay.” He drew out the second
syllable far too long.

  She needed to jump right in. She took a deep breath and then let loose. “So I know that I shouldn’t have, but I got to thinking about who had access to that bat, and so I thought it had to be someone from my church, and then I thought, hey, we have security cameras around the church, because about eight years ago we had some vandalism ...” She gasped for more air and then kept going. “Anyway, so the cameras aren’t everywhere, but I knew there was one over the door, so I snuck into the church at night and checked the videos from the security cameras, but the videos from the day of the softball game, the day that Phoenix ran into the woods, and the day of his murder, and the day after his murder—all those videos are gone.” She gave him about a second and a half to respond to that before asking, “And you didn’t take them, right?”

  He shifted in his chair. “When does the confession start?”

  Huh? “That was the confession.”

  He furrowed his brow. “What, that you snuck into church?”

  Suddenly, she felt very small and very silly. “Yes. And because I interfered with your investigation.”

  He blew out a puff of air. “That’s okay. I don’t want you to make a habit of it, but to be honest, we hadn’t gotten to the church’s cameras yet.”

  She got the distinct impression he’d had no plans to ever get to those cameras.

  “Well, I just wanted you to know that I didn’t delete them.”

  “And I didn’t delete them.”

  “But someone did.”

  He nodded contemplatively. “And we need to find out who.”

  She wanted to offer a suggestion, but didn’t want to step on his toes. “So maybe we should fingerprint the secretary’s office?”

  His eyebrows flicked upward and then came right back down. “Yes. I will make that happen.”

  “And did you find any fingerprints on the bat?”