Judas Burning Read online

Beatrice Smart had only confirmed what he’d seen in the gory splashes of blood and the power of the blow that decapitated the figure of Mary. This was not the work of teenage pranksters, as he wanted most of the county to believe. A man had done this. A strong man, and one with a burn on for the Catholic Church, a symbol of miracles, or someone in particular at St. John’s.

  What he knew of Father Patrick did not lend itself to warped hatred. Still, it was an avenue J.D. would explore until the physical evidence he’d accumulated from the crime scene told him differently. Based on the blow that had been struck, he believed the assailant to be under six feet. A partial shoe print in the blood was a size ten sport shoe of undetermined brand. Most important, the perpetrator had not been careful. He’d tracked back and forth through the blood repeatedly, as if he didn’t care about concealing his identity, or as if he were justified in his actions.

  J.D. jotted down a few notes and put his hand on the phone. Dixon Sinclair had asked for a comment, and he had something to give her.

  A knock on his door interrupted him. When Robert Medino walked into the sheriff’s office, J.D. already knew as much about him as his deputy, Waymon, had been able to find out. Medino was a writer for a “very important” liberal magazine that specialized in politics and culture. He was an authority on Central America, and he was staying at the Magnolia Bed and Breakfast, where he had charmed the socks—and possibly the pants—off Ruth Ann Johnson. When Waymon had talked to Ruth Ann, she’d been all a-twitter about Medino’s accomplishments.

  “He went to Harvard,” she’d told Waymon. “Imagine that. A Harvard man here in Jexville. I asked him what he was writing about, but he said it was top secret.” Waymon had done a pretty good imitation of Ruth Ann’s breathless soprano. The fact that Medino was single didn’t hurt, either. Ruth Ann had sampled the men of Jexville and found them wanting. A writer would make a good pet for her, at least for a while.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Medino?” J.D. asked, curious about what a writer for a liberal magazine was doing in Jexville, a town with a head count of no more than five liberals.

  “It’s more like what I can do for you.” Medino held out his hand, reassessing J.D. “Since you know my name, you probably know that I’m a writer for Cue magazine. You’ve heard of it?”

  The man’s assumed superiority shimmered like an aura. “What can I do for you?” J.D. repeated as he took Medino’s hand.

  “I’m in town on a story,” Robert said, unfazed.

  J.D. leaned back in his chair. The man’s brown eyes were alert, almost amused. He reminded J.D. of a boy poking a snake with a stick. “What kind of story would interest you in Chickasaw County?”

  Medino smiled. “A good one.”

  J.D. didn’t react. But he found that Medino was equally good at saying nothing. “Let’s see, the president is coming to address the local rotary club, right?”

  “Not my type of story,” Medino said. “I’m more interested in the destruction of church property.”

  J.D. felt the muscles of his back tighten. A local story didn’t normally attract the attention of a national reporter. “Why does that interest you?” He shifted so he could better examine Medino. He was a lean man, built like a cyclist. His hair was long, unkempt, his jeans worn. Even his boots showed age and wear. He dressed like the farmers and ranchers of the county, but there was something in the way he held himself that said otherwise.

  “I’ve been following a story that starts in Zaragoza, Mexico, and comes straight this way, right down Interstate 10 East.”

  “Chickasaw County isn’t a big destination for illegals. We have a few in the nurseries, but that’s it.” J.D. saw the amusement in Medino’s eyes. “But it isn’t migrant workers you’re interested in, is it?”

  “Someone is vandalizing churches. Specifically Catholic churches. Even more specifically, images of Mary in Catholic churches.”

  J.D. let the information settle. “And you think this person or persons did the damage at St. John’s last night.”

  “I do.”

  “What would bring a roving religious fanatic to the backside of nowhere in Jexville? We’re fifty miles off the Interstate.”

  “It’s an obsession, and the statue is a work of art, created by a blind sculptor who regained his sight while working the stone.”

  J.D. had heard the blind-sculptor-regains-sight story, but it wasn’t uncommon for religious icons to generate tall tales. “I didn’t realize reporters for Cue got their leads from the National Enquirer.’’

  J.D. waited. Medino wouldn’t be able to let that pass without a reply.

  “I interviewed the artist, who also happened to be from Zaragoza. He can see. It’s a true story.”

  “And you have proof he was really blind?”

  Medino frowned. “I do. Couple that with the fact that the statue is now destroyed …” He shrugged. “It’s a sensational story.”

  J.D. didn’t try to hide his smile. “Right. Sensational.”

  “I’m glad you find me amusing.” Medino slouched against the wall. “The first destruction of church property was in Zaragoza about six months ago. My man is obsessed with images of Mary. He has defaced or destroyed over a dozen statues, broken fifteen stained glass windows depicting her image, and ruined over half a million dollars in church property.”

  “And you have proof all of these acts were committed by the same man?”

  Medino shrugged. “I have very good hunches.”

  “If I could arrest criminals on gut instinct, Chickasaw County would have a lot less crime. Unfortunately, the law requires proof.”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m merely acting as a good Samaritan and telling you that you have an obsessed, anti-Catholic, woman-hating criminal in Chickasaw County. You might want to keep your eyes open, because I believe he’s going to progress in his crimes.”

  “What, he might go after images of the disciples?” J.D. couldn’t help himself. Medino was too smug.

  “I don’t think he’ll go after more icons. The violence has escalated, and he’s moved on to killing animals.” Medino stepped closer. “Next, I think he’ll go after a priest, or a nun, choir girl, someone like that. If not here in Chickasaw County, then at the next stop. Or the next. You could catch him here.”

  Robert Medino might believe it, but the idea of a lunatic traveling around the south destroying religious statuary and breaking windows didn’t make a lot of sense to J.D. Then again, the damage at St. John’s didn’t make good sense either. Back in the nineties, there’d been a series of church burnings across the southeast. There was precedent for a religious kook, but there was also the fact that Medino was a man looking for a story. A sensational story. J.D. could smell ambition on him.

  “What kind of evidence do you have?”

  “Instincts and a map. Check it out, Sheriff.” Medino pulled a worn map from his back pocket. “I’ve marked the locations of every attack against a church. When the Arguillo statue was dedicated, I figured he’d come here.”

  J.D. looked at the page. A black line punctuated with stars marched from a small town in Mexico to Jexville.

  “I figure he’s still in this area,” Robert said. “That’s why I’m here. When I heard about the Arguillo statue, I was over in St. Martinsville, Louisiana. He broke four windows depicting Mary—only Mary—at a Catholic church. I’ve been getting closer and closer to him. This is where I’m going to catch up to him.”

  J.D. looked at the map. “What do you intend to do if you find him?”

  “Interview him. It’s part of a larger story on how traditional religion is failing people. This man feels betrayed by the Catholic church, betrayed by Mary. He’s furious, and he’s acting out. In Louisiana, he began splashing red paint on the lower torso of Mary. Now he’s using real blood, maybe to symbolize the blood of childbirth or womanhood. He’s working from a lot of rage, and it’s directed toward the feminine.”

  J.D. looked out the window of his office.
“Can I have a copy of that map?” he asked.

  “That copy’s for you. Call the law enforcement agencies in those towns. Check it out. You’ll see.”

  The hot day had melted into an oven of a late afternoon. It was five o’clock, and heat devils still danced on Main Street. Dixon swallowed a knot of frustration as she moved the typewriter platen backward to X out a misspelled word. The newspaper was antiquated—not a single piece of modern equipment in the place, except for the computer Linda used to set the stories in type. Just as soon as she could scrape together five hundred dollars, she was going to buy a word processor. Sharing one with Tucker would be better than using her own typewriter.

  It had taken all her savings to make the down payment on the newspaper, and even thinking about the risk made her hand shake and sweat touch her forehead. She needed a drink.

  Instead, she focused on the reasons she’d chosen the Independent. Good, solid, rational reasons. Jexville wasn’t just a random choice. Tentacles of the past held her here. Jexville had been her mother’s childhood home, a place painted as idyllic and safe, a place Dixon had few memories of. Marilyn McVay Sinclair had grown up not two miles away on Peterson Lane in the home that had been built by Will and JoHanna McVay. Had it not been for the fact that the McVay family home was still in the family, Dixon would have been sleeping on the sidewalk. Yes, economics were a solid, rational reason.

  That explained the location. The desire to own a weekly came from hope and fear. She hoped to prove herself the journalist her father always believed her to be, and she feared that she would fail. JoHanna had been only the first of the McVay women to run into trouble in this town, and Dixon felt a pulse of self-doubt. This was her last chance. If she’d chosen unwisely, the price would be too high. If she didn’t grab hold of her life and stop drinking, she would die.

  In the composing room Linda Moore’s rapid typing halted at the sound of her cell phone’s ring. Twenty-one years of marriage and three kids had given Linda a level head and a keen sense of the absurd. She was also one helluva typist and fast becoming a good friend.

  Dixon looked out the window at the town closing up around her, then refocused on her story. She had to finish. Linda would be waiting on her copy, and, so far, the decapitation of the statue at St. John’s and the Canaan Day Care fiasco were their biggest stories.

  The telephone jangled, and Dixon cursed under her breath. The damned phone hadn’t stopped. “The Independent. May I help you?”

  “Ms. Sinclair, this is Sally West in Senator Barrett’s office.”

  Dixon eased back in her chair. “Yes?”

  “The senator sends his congratulations on your purchase of the Independent, and he wants to invite you to his strategy session in Jackson Saturday evening.”

  There was an expectant pause. When Dixon didn’t respond, Sally continued. “This in no way obligates you to support his candidacy for governor.”

  Dixon felt herself slide into memory; time telescoped. She saw herself, hair still damp from the shower and thirty minutes late as she’d pulled her old red truck up in front of her father’s newspaper office. She could see her father through the plate glass window of the Jackson Standard, holding a page proof, scanning the headlines. He’d looked up, his face changing from concentration to a smile that absolved her lateness.

  The noise and glass had come simultaneously. The front window exploded. Ray Sinclair was lifted, and the world had become a mass of sound and pain and fire.

  Dixon’s hands began to shake.

  “Ms. Sinclair, are you there?” Sally West asked.

  “I won’t be attending any strategy sessions,” she said. She replaced the telephone receiver softly.

  A movement outside the window caught her attention, and she turned to confront the open stare of a young black man. She could not tell his age, but his copper skin and sharp eyes were familiar, and she realized she’d seen him before. Somewhere other than Jexville. His hair was cut close, and his T-shirt bore an emblem she couldn’t identify. He took a deep breath.

  Dixon started to speak but realized he couldn’t hear her. As she headed to the door, he turned away. By the time she got to the sidewalk, he was crossing the street more than half a block away. He looked back over his shoulder once but kept going.

  He was from somewhere in her past, and the past never paid her a simple courtesy visit. She felt a hand on her shoulder and jumped.

  “Is something wrong?” Linda asked.

  Dixon turned and saw worry on the typesetter’s face.

  “Just a kid watching me. What is it?”

  “One of my friends just called. Two teenage girls are missing.” Linda pressed her lips together. “From what I can tell, they’ve been missing since nine this morning.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The porch of the Chickasaw County education office was partially surrounded by azaleas that had grown nearly as tall as the roof. Sweat had collected beneath the belt of Dixon’s khaki slacks, and her once-crisp red blouse stuck to her back. Thank goodness the day was finally fading into dusk.

  She wiped her forehead and watched as a heavy woman with five children lumbered across the grassy square of the Chickasaw County Courthouse. The children, two of them wearing only underwear, screamed and careened across the grass as if tiny nuclear reactors had been implanted inside them. At the courthouse steps the children surrounded the woman and swept her inside, a behemoth captured and brought down by pygmies.

  Dixon stared at the empty square. Life in Jexville, population 1,654, was going to be very different.

  “Miss Sinclair!” James Welford walked across the peeling paint of the porch and picked up her hand. He pressed it between his thumb and forefinger. “Sorry to keep you waiting so long. This porch is hot as an oven.”

  Dixon felt as if he were testing her hand for depth of flesh and bone structure, perhaps to see if she’d cooked through.

  She took off her sunglasses. Welford’s silvery white hair looked mail-ordered from Hollywood, unaffected by the heat and humidity. She wondered if it was a toupee.

  “The Chickasaw County Board of Education had a meeting scheduled for six this evening. I’ve been waiting for the members to show up,” she said.

  “We met.” He never looked away.

  “Your secretary told me to wait here, that I’d be certain to see the board members when they arrived.” Dixon would not give him the satisfaction of showing her frustration.

  “Attie means well. She must’ve gotten confused. We moved our meeting over to the courthouse. Turns out our coffeepot was on the blink, so when Elton Cook offered us the use of the supervisor’s board room, I accepted.” He shrugged. “I had no idea you might want to attend the meeting. The Independent hasn’t sent a reporter for years. Augusta, the former owner of the paper, seemed happy going over the typed-up minutes.”

  Dixon pulled her notebook from the purse that was slung over her shoulder. “School board meetings are public, Mr. Welford. State law requires that the public be notified if the meeting time or place is changed.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for future reference.” His smile stopped before it reached his eyes.

  “Since I missed the meeting, you won’t mind answering a few questions for me, will you?” Dixon tapped the notebook gently against her thigh.

  “Not at all, but Attie will have the minutes typed up by tomorrow. You can have a copy then. And by the way, everything is settled at Canaan Baptist Wee Care. The facility will close for three weeks for some painting and then reopen.”

  “I’ll be sure and put that in the story,” she said. “As to the minutes, our deadline is Tuesday. That’s tonight.”

  Welford’s gaze narrowed, then he looked past her to the courthouse lawn. His expression turned rueful. “You have no idea what it’s like trying to educate the children here. Chickasaw County has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the state of Mississippi. We have students in the seventh grade who already have children. They drop them off with
a relative or day care, then go on to get pregnant again.”

  Dixon saw no reason to beat around the bush. “I understand the board was entertaining bids on sixteenth section timber land. Were bids opened?” Bid openings were prime opportunities for graft and corruption, which was why she’d waited two hours on a deadline day.

  “Actually, no.” He shifted from foot to foot. “Today’s meeting involved personnel.”

  “Hiring or firing?”

  “The latter. We have a touchy situation. A young man’s career hangs in the balance. We’d like for this teacher to leave without besmirching his name. No real harm has been done, and we simply want him to move along.”

  “What did he do?” Dixon lowered her pen.

  “As far as we can determine, the teacher has become … involved with a young girl. For the sake of the student and the teacher, it will be best to nip this thing in the bud.”

  “The girl has made a charge?”

  Welford’s hands tensed and then flexed. “No official charges have been made.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “A complaint then?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  For a moment neither said anything. “You’re firing the guy, and a complaint hasn’t been filed? How can he defend himself? Does he know you’re firing him?”

  Welford looked at his watch. “He will shortly.”

  Dixon stepped back. “It seems to me you don’t really have enough evidence to dismiss a teacher. No charges, no complaint. Where’s the cause for action?”

  “I know you’re used to big-city ways.” He frowned slightly. “In a place like Memphis, there’s a degree of anonymity. Governing bodies meet and discuss personnel, decisions are made, folks resign or get fired. Here in Jexville, it’s a bit more delicate. If we can prevent this problem from getting to the stages of a formal complaint, then we’ll have saved a young man’s career and a young girl’s reputation. This man can go on to teach and perhaps profit by the mistake he made here. But the girl has to remain. She can’t leave. This is her home. Ultimately, it’s the needs of the schoolchild that I base my decision on.”