“I’m going to call John’s daughter—although John seems to have his phone! Still, if he’s sleeping, I don’t want to wake him.”
He nodded as he drove, and then listened to Amy’s side of the conversation.
John was sleeping. He was doing very well; it had been a “minor” attack and he had been lucky.
When she finished the call, he was parking at the church.
There were several cars in the lot. Hunter wondered if they had one of their group sessions going on.
The church door was locked; they walked around the side where the long building stretched out. The office door was open.
Karyl was at her desk. She looked up with a welcoming smile.
Hunter thought it faded a bit when she saw who was there, but she rallied quickly.
“Hey!”
“Hi, Karyl,” he said. “Is Pastor Colby in?”
“I’m afraid not. He’s not due in today until lunchtime.” She stood. “I have my youth group gathering. That’s the way our structure works. I’m new at this, and I get the youth groups. I’m not complaining—I love the youth groups. But I’m afraid I have to get to it now.” She walked toward them, making it clear she needed to leave, and so did they.
She stopped halfway, though.
“Did you find her, by any chance? Did you find Billie?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Amy said. “She hasn’t come back here, right? Do you think she might be part of your youth group?”
“Oh, no, Billie is twentysomething. Maybe just twenty-one, but...well, she wouldn’t be in this group. I have older teens in this.”
“Mind if we peek in?” Hunter asked her.
“Peek in?”
“I’d love to see your youth group. It’s so inspiring to see young people in church,” Amy told her.
“Well, just—”
“Actually, I’d like to ask them to be on the lookout for Billie. Would that be okay?” Hunter asked her.
“I, uh, I don’t know. I mean, if Billie is hiding...” Karyl let her voice trail and looked at them a little weakly.
“We need to find her. Before someone else does,” Hunter said flatly.
“Well, still, I’m not sure what Pastor Colby would say.”
Amy smiled at her sweetly. “Pastor Colby has made it clear he wants to help us in any way.”
“Yes, of course, yes, sure. Uh, we’re down in Classroom B.”
She made her way past them and then waited until they were out to lock the office door behind her.
“I’m surprised you have to lock up around here,” Hunter said pleasantly.
“You never know who might drive by,” she said, and then she winced, looking down. “Driving by or stopping just north of here to kill a woman. You—you don’t know who she is...was...yet, do you?”
“I’m afraid not,” Hunter said. “If anyone is missing from this area, it hasn’t been reported. Police are out canvassing, doing door-to-door questioning, Detective Mulberry assured me.”
“On the one hand, we’ve always been so easy around here... It’s a friendly place. On the other hand, so many people do just drive through. I have always locked the doors,” Karyl said.
“Locking up is always a smart thing to do,” Amy told her.
Karyl looked down and her sandy bob wagged along with the shake of her head. “I still can’t believe that this...that this happened! Our biggest crimes are usually bar fights.” She shuddered and started down the hallway toward her class again.
Amy suddenly paused, reaching into her pocket for her phone. Hunter hung back, waiting. Karyl did the same.
She gave her attention to the call quickly, thanked someone and ended the call.
“Be right there!” she told the other two.
Hunter nodded; Amy had to be getting good information. He smiled at Karyl. “Shall we?”
6
It was John’s daughter on the phone again. John had asked Brenda to call her.
“Dad says he’ll behave and lie in his hospital bed and let me help him at home—staying low and calm and healing—as long as we let him use his friends and resources to help the investigation. I guess it’s better than him getting anxious,” Brenda said wearily.
“Yes, I know your dad.”
“I know you do—you’re like his third child,” Brenda said. “Anyway, he talked to some friends in Miami. Jared Colby’s daughter, Casey, has been down in the Greater Miami area several Sundays in the last few months, attending a church down there. The pastors at the Miami church know Pastor Colby—the churches are all different but have a loose association because they are Unitarian. Anyway, Dad found out that a Pastor Marino down there was worried about Casey, so, Dad thought you might want to find out what you could about her, or about what might be bothering her.”
“Thanks—and tell your dad thanks for us, too, okay? Tell him it’s a deal—he can talk on the phone and do research, as long as he behaves.”
Brenda laughed softly. “Will do.”
Amy ended the call quickly. The door to the classroom was slowly falling closed, so she hurried down and entered the room just in time to see Karyl setting a folder on a chair at the front and center of the group.
The young pastor’s youth group seemed to be composed of older teens in their last years of high school or first years of college.
They were chattering and whispering as she entered, and fell silent as they saw not just Karyl but Hunter and Amy enter behind her.
“Good morning, all!” Karyl said, nodding toward Amy, as if pleased Amy had managed to join them before they began. “We’re going to get back to our Bible study and how it can affect the way we choose to live our lives in just a minute. But first, I wanted to introduce you all to Special Agent Amy Larson of the FDLE and Special Agent Hunter Forrest of the FBI.”
“FBI!” an older boy with a thatch of dark hair over one eye echoed. “Oh, yeah, the murder.”
“Right,” Amy said. “But we’re here because we need your help. You know about the murder that occurred just north of here. Police were out to most of your homes, I know, looking for anyone who might have seen anything unusual.”
“Yeah,” another boy, eighteen or so, wearing a band T-shirt said. “My dad was talking about it. He said whoever did it was smart. They made sure they were north enough so there were no houses near—just state forest and sugarcane fields. We’re close to that area, but we didn’t hear anything or see anything.”