The Last Straw (The Jigsaw Files #4) - Sharon Sala Page 0,47

told him we didn’t want his troubles. I told him we’d pray for him. He left. Why is the FBI involved, and how did he die? Did y’all kill him?”

“No, we didn’t kill him, but we did go to his house to serve arrest and search warrants, and found him deceased in his yard. He’d been shot.”

Samuel groaned. “Lord, Lord, Lord, I feared something like this, but hearing the words just breaks my heart. Do you know who did it? Do you think it has anything to do with that woman he threatened?”

“Inadvertently, maybe. She had nothing to do with his death. But his public desire to see her dead likely called too much attention to himself. It appeared he was packing up to leave. The trunk was up. The car was about half-full of stuff, and there were two packed suitcases beside his body.”

Samuel’s eyes were full of tears, but he kept thinking, if he hadn’t told Jeremiah to leave, whoever killed him might have come to their house looking for him and killed Samuel and Maisie, too.

“What were y’all going to arrest him for?”

Vance hesitated, but the facts would soon be public knowledge.

“Money laundering and threatening bodily harm.”

Samuel groaned. It was just as he and Maisie had feared.

“Do you know who killed him?” Samuel asked.

“Sorry, this is an ongoing case. I can’t say more.”

“When do we claim the body?” Samuel asked.

“Someone will call you when the ME releases it. I’m very sorry for your loss,” Vance said and disconnected.

Samuel was in shock. He didn’t know what the hell Jeremiah had been mixed up in, but he had to call the rest of the family and give them the news.

He got up from the bed, finished shaving and then went to find Maisie. She was his rock, and the calm in every storm life had ever brought to him.

When he walked into the kitchen, she turned around, smiling. Then she saw the look on his face, remembered hearing the phone ring and took the bacon off the stove.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

And so he told her.

* * *

The people in the community where Jeremiah lived had seen the black SUVs with the government tags. They’d also seen a van with the medical examiner emblem on the door. They put two and two together and got nine, and while Samuel, who lived way out in the bayou, was just receiving the official word of his brother’s death, most of his parishioners already had it figured out before they’d gone to bed the night before.

They didn’t know exactly what had happened, but they were ready to blame the government—until the morning news. It appeared their guesstimates were wrong.

The Feds had found him dead when they came to serve an arrest warrant—to a preacher—for money laundering.

Holy shit became the phrase of the day.

* * *

Since the Church of The Righteous was beginning to crumble, it affirmed a decision that Jordy Gooch, Jessup Wallis’s drinking buddy, had been wrestling with ever since he’d heard about the quarter of a million dollar bounty.

Granted, Jessup was drunk when he told Jordy that the preacher was sending him on a holy quest to kill a demon, but in Jordy’s mind, that just made him mean and stupid.

Then he’d seen the video and put two and two together, and he’d still stayed mum. But with Raver dead, Jordy wanted that money. He’d always wanted to live where it snowed. He’d seen it once when he was a kid, and never forgot. He could get good and lost with a quarter of a million dollars, and never be judged for where he got it.

That video was still all over social media, with the contact info and everything. So he pulled it up on his phone and wrote it all down. Now all he needed was a picture of Jessup, and he had plenty. He just needed to find one where he wasn’t drunk and laughing, then send it with the name.

* * *

Farrell Kitt was almost home. His panic to see his wife and his kids, and talk to Jeremiah, was uppermost. He was coming up on the church when he saw yellow crime scene tape across the driveway.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” he groaned.

He didn’t know what had happened, but he stomped the accelerator to put as much distance between him and the church as possible. But to get home, he also had to pass where the preacher lived, and when he saw more crime scene tape