But Andrews fought him, and the Composer had to shoot him to get the twenty-two. The killer had to have been carrying a different gun. Maybe he didn’t need it for the other murders, but he had to be prepared in case things went wrong. In this case they did. He killed the father with his own gun and then murdered the others with the father’s gun.”
“What about the bullet in the door frame? You think Andrews managed to get off a shot?”
“It’s from Andrews’s pistol, but I think it was fired after the father was dead. Suicides typically shoot themselves in the head or, in rare cases, in the heart. No one intending to kill himself would be able to shoot himself twice. If he had two bullets in his skull, that would literally have been a dead giveaway. The killer had to place the twenty-two in the father’s hand and fire it to leave powder traces, but Andrews was dead and lying on the floor. That’s why the trajectory was low.”
Johnson inhaled deeply and let out a long, slow sigh. “And the Composer had seen he was left-handed.”
Dupree punched the call button. “I want an exhumation order for Andrews Sr. If I can convince the judge it’s urgent, we might get it by tonight.”
Amaia muttered, “I need to tell Joseph Jr.”
Dupree rejected that idea. “Salazar, we don’t need the boy’s permission. We know from experience that sometimes it’s better for the families not to know until it actually happens. They suffer less that way.”
“Salazar’s right,” Johnson said. “It may be painful to young Andrews, but it’s the closest thing to a victory he’s had in a long time.”
19
MARY WARD
Cape May, New Jersey
The ring of the telephone broke the quiet of the Ward Funeral Home. It startled Mary and made her look up, half-annoyed and half-amused. She’d been in the profession for forty years, and she still jumped like a scalded cat at any sudden noise. She preferred to work in silence. That’s how her father had done it, and she’d followed his example, at least until the day Ben, her son, decided to accept tradition and dedicate himself to mortuary work. She was happy to work with Ben, but their conflicts over the heavy metal music he blasted at work had come close to wrecking their relationship and ruining the family business.
They’d negotiated a compromise. Ben could stay with the firm, but he’d have to listen to his music through headphones only. There was one disadvantage to having him wear headphones all day long, though: he couldn’t hear anything else. The problem with all this was that someone might call requesting services and he wouldn’t hear the phone ring. Ben had solved that problem by installing a commercial-grade notification system like they had down at the firehouse. Whenever the phone rang, loudspeakers blasted the sound throughout the building. Ben heard it despite his headphones, and Mary practically went through the roof.
Mary gestured to her son to keep on working. She picked up the phone and smiled when she heard a young woman identifying herself as an FBI agent. How things had changed! Mary was a bit disappointed, because she doubted they’d be able to help. After the storm killed the Miller family, Cape May’s city government had declared their place a ruin and ordered it bulldozed as a safety measure. Nothing from the house had been preserved. But her son and several of their employees had removed and transported the bodies after the judge released them. Her Ben had taken violin lessons from age five. He had poor coordination and a terrible ear, so he finally gave up at age ten. But his memory was excellent; if there’d been a violin in the room, he wouldn’t have missed it.
Mary put down the phone with a little grin. He was working with his back to her, that infernal music blasting in his ears. She crept up on him and ran her chilly hand down his neck.
20
PREACHER
New Orleans, Louisiana
10:00 p.m., Saturday, August 27, 2005
They hadn’t eaten a proper meal all day; they’d scarcely touched the snack the owners of the hotel had brought up while they were studying the case files. The team went downstairs together.
Distant music from the street complemented the bar’s quiet piano medley. They passed through the bar to an indoor patio where sand-colored walls were lit by candles in hurricane lamps.
“That’s the original 1930s paint job,” Bull said. “They say a New Orleans mayor owned the