“Impossible. She didn’t do drugs. Ever. We had a pact.”
“Goddammit.” Levi hit his desk, making me jump. “Stoned, as in killed withrocks.”
My stomach lurched as his words sank in.
Stoned with rocks.
It couldn’t be true. It was too horrible. Too shockingly cruel. He had to be wrong. “No.”
“Yes.” Some of his anger deflated. “I’m sorry. It’s still an active investigation, so they didn’t release the details. Besides, I’m sure Ottawa’s finest didn’t want to scare the shit out of the public by drawing attention to a religious hate crime.”
“Rishi was stabbed. That’s not religious,” I argued, as desperation began to seep in. I could feel the walls closing in around me. I’d been compartmentalizing for so long and now everything tumbled free and jumbled together, filling me with chaos.
“He was stabbed in the stomach.”
“You say that like it’s significant.”
“It could be. I did some research and the way Rishi was killed sounds a lot like the work of Ehud, the Judge.”
In the Old Testament, the Israelites screwed up a lot. Every time they did, God would turn them over to their enemies until he decided they were punished. Then He’d send a judge, or a hero of sorts, to free them. Ehud was left-handed, allowing him to smuggle a double-edged sword, undetected, into a meeting to stab Elon, the king of Moab, in the stomach thereby, freeing the Israelites.
“Rishi was wealthy, but he was hardly a king.”
“I don’t know a lot of zealots who care about things like details. What about the bloody X over the door?”
“So, you think the blood over the door symbolizes a bizarro Passover and the stomach stabbing is from Judges? That doesn’t make sense. They’re mixing up their Bible stories.”
“You think someone crazy enough to murder innocent people is gonna get caught up on logistics?”
Stabbed in the stomach. Stoned to death. A bloody, fucking X. I couldn’t even cope with this shit. “What the hell happened to‘Let him without sin cast the first stone’?”
“You know that’s New Testament, Meals. This guy seems to prefer the crime and punishment system of the old book. Grace doesn’t appear to be his thing.”
I groaned. “Well, if Polly was meeting a client, there would have been a deposit made into her account. I told Detective Monte to look for it. When you met with your friend from the motorcycle club in BC, did he say whether or not she’d received a payment?”
“No.” Levi shook his head and his eyes filled with compassion. “But Hicks, the detective I met with up in Vancouver, called a few days ago and said there were no recent deposits in her account. They don’t think she was there for a client.”
“She had to be. Why else would she go to a hotel?”
He clamped his mouth closed. I could almost see the internal struggle written all over his face. He had more to tell me, but he was reluctant. Whatever it was, it had to be bad to make Levi hesitate. A feeling of dread washed over me.
God, what else?
“You might as well spit it all out,” I said, feeling defeated.
“They went through Polly’s phone and email records, and didn’t find any messages with Bible verses. No appointments. Nothing. They have security camera footage of Polly’s killer, and although he was careful not to show his face, his build… his gait… they believe it’s the same guy who killed Rishi. My gut tells me this was never about Polly. It’s about you.”
If he was right, I’d had one friend—one goddamn friend in the whole entire world—and her association with me had gotten her killed. Guilt threatened to choke me as I wondered why. Had I done something to piss someone off? The reverend used to tell us that God was always watching, and if we strayed too far from the path, he’d destroy us like he destroyed the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah. I’d always shrugged off the reverend’s teachings, but now, after the heinous, violent deaths of two of my friends, the reverend’s warnings haunted me.
Was I cursed now?
Forty percent of homicides are never solved.
“Do you think this is my punishment for…” I glanced at Hound’s back, “for leaving the compound?”
Levi’s brow furrowed. “Depends on who you think is punishing you. I could see the reverend doing this, but God?” He shook his head. “I don’t even know what to believe about that anymore. If God is real, I wish he’d save us from His fuckin’ followers.”
His answer didn’t make me feel any better. “When did you find this all out, Levi?”
