at that. He glanced openmouthed at Dupree, trying to gauge the boss’s reaction.
Emerson, at the end of his patience, looked around. “What kind of nonsense is this?” he exclaimed, throwing his hands up.
“Check again,” Dupree ordered calmly.
“But, Dupree, we already have the information!” Johnson protested.
“Verify it.”
Dupree sent her away so he could speak with the others. She sat in the car, the naughty girl forbidden to play with the rest of the kids. She watched Dupree, Emerson, and Tucker, all with their backs to her; she could tell from their gestures they were arguing without raising their voices. She was certain they were talking about her.
She saw Johnson return from questioning a group of neighbors who’d congregated nearby. He said something to Dupree, and then the group turned simultaneously and looked in her direction.
Amaia got out as they approached the car. Dupree deputized Johnson with a wave of his hand.
Johnson admitted she was right. “The woman under the roof is Belinda Wright, a childhood friend of Hugh Allen’s mother. She took Hugh in when he left foster care. Hugh lived with her and her husband on a little farm nearby until he married and set up here. When Belinda’s husband died years later, she moved in with the family. She wasn’t really his mother, but she might as well have been.”
Dupree imagined the sequence of events. “Somehow the woman managed to get out of the house, or maybe she was already outside when the killer arrived. He caught up with her in the field, murdered her, and dragged her to the roof and shoved her under it.” Dupree gave Amaia a look that showed he was impressed.
Tucker’s tone was considerably less adversarial when she next addressed Amaia. “Now I understand what you meant with ‘the cast of characters.’ It’s not so much that he’s looking for a family that exactly matches; instead, he wants one he can use to populate his scene. But it’s hard to imagine he’s choosing them by figuring out where a natural disaster is likely to hit.”
“That’s not quite it,” Amaia objected, starting to hit her stride. “It’s not that simple. We have to keep in mind it’s gotten easier to predict exactly where a storm or hurricane is going to hit. He knows that too. The hurricane tells him where to go. It’s God speaking to him. God and the weather forecasters anyhow,” she amplified with a rueful smile. “I believe that’s how he beats everyone else to the scene. He’s in the area before the hurricane arrives, waiting for God to give him the exact coordinates.”
Emerson clicked his tongue in disgust. “Let me see if I’ve got this right,” he said with false affability. “You’re imagining the killer doesn’t choose a family but instead a place—the place where a natural disaster will strike. Sure, they’re no longer that hard to predict, but only up to a point. But if that’s how he chooses the scene, how does our Composer find families that match his criteria once the weatherman tells him where to go? Does God tell him where disaster will strike even before the weather bureau does, so he’ll have enough time to identify candidates? Or do you think it’s all some sort of mystic hocus-pocus like burying bodies under the eaves of the house?”
“That’s idiotic reasoning,” she answered firmly. “And I’m not making assumptions, I’m building a case from the facts. It doesn’t matter what I believe. The important thing is whether he believes it. That’s the power of faith. If this killer justifies his actions as God’s will, or he’s at least convinced that God doesn’t see him as a murderer but as a just man, he’ll attribute to divine guidance events the rest of us think are insignificant. And he’ll have developed his own methodology for selecting his victims.”
Tucker spoke. “We’re still in the early stages, and we don’t yet have all the information, but evangelical killers believe they’re ridding society of the worthless, the perverse, and the miserable. They usually prey on prostitutes, drug dealers and addicts, and anybody they perceive as immoral. We’re just starting to look into the Allen family, but we’ve combed through the lives of the others, and I can tell you now they don’t fit that profile. They’re ordinary families with their good points and bad points, but as far as we can see, they weren’t the sort an evangelical killer would condemn as immoral. Nothing suggests they were guilty of anything.”
Johnson objected. “In the