Silent Killer Page 0,26
prayer, a resounding shout of “Amen” signaled the children that they could laugh and talk, which they immediately did.
As the teachers and parents entered the park, Tasha slipped her arm through her husband’s and smiled up at him. At six-three, Dewan towered over her by a good ten inches. He leaned down, kissed her forehead and then laid his big hand tenderly over her slightly protruding belly. After ten years of marriage, ten years of praying for a child, they were, at long last, expecting a little boy in three months. They had already decided to name him after their fathers, Sidney Demetrius Phillips, but they couldn’t agree on what they would call him. She preferred Sid, after her dad, and he preferred Demetrius, after his dad. She suspected that, in the end, Dewan would win her over. He always did.
“You go on in,” he told her. “I need to get those folding chairs out of the back of the van.”
Tasha joined the others in the park, following the mothers as they walked directly toward the tables near the rose garden. There was more shade in that area because of the enormous old oak trees growing nearby. The teachers herded the children toward the play equipment suitable for their age groups while the parents busied themselves with picnic preparations. When Mariah Johnson pulled a red-checkered tablecloth from her basket and unfolded it, Tasha grabbed one end and helped her spread it across the nearest table.
“The day couldn’t be more perfect, could it?” Mariah said. “It’s as if the Lord is smiling down on us.”
While chitchatting happily, they retrieved another tablecloth from Mariah’s basket. Then, just as they lifted the cloth over the next table, a loud, terrified scream shattered the adults’ cheerful conversation and the children’s beautiful laughter. Tasha stopped dead still, the ends of the tablecloth clutched in her hands. Two of the fathers, Eli Richardson and Galvin Johnson, ran toward the screaming Monetia Simmons, who stood stiff as a granite statue, her wide eyes fixed on something lying on the ground behind the concrete tables at the far side of the rose garden. As the men neared Monetia, they paused when they saw what had made her scream.
Dewan came racing toward Tasha. “What’s wrong? I heard someone screaming.”
Eli went over to Monetia and put his arm protectively around her trembling shoulders while Galvin hurried toward Dewan. He said in a low, calm voice, “Call the police, Reverend Phillips. There’s a dead man over there. It looks like he burned to death.”
“Merciful Lord,” Tasha gasped.
Dewan gripped her arm. “You and the other ladies gather up the children and take them back to the church. I’ll contact the police, and the men and I will stay here until they arrive.”
Jack stared at the photographs of Mark Cantrell’s charred body. Autopsy photos. What kind of person could douse another human being with gasoline and set him on fire? Someone completely devoid of any type of normal emotions—someone incapable of empathy or sympathy?
His own body retained the scars left from an explosion, scars no surgeon’s scalpel could ever completely erase. But he had been in the middle of a war zone when he’d been severely injured. And he had survived. Casualties were expected during a war. Mark Cantrell had been living in a small, quiet Alabama town. He had been a minister, a man of God, someone who taught love and compassion and forgiveness. His death had been unexpected and horrific in nature.
What must it have been like for Cathy to have watched her husband burn to death, knowing there was absolutely nothing she could do to save him?
Jack set aside the Cantrell file and picked up the file containing the copies of the Athens police department’s report on the death of Charles Randolph. Six months after Mark Cantrell’s vicious murder, the forty-nine-year-old Randolph, a Lutheran pastor, had been covered with gasoline and set on fire. His wife had heard his screams and rushed into the backyard. She had found him burning to death in the alley, where he had gone to place their garbage for the next day’s trash pickup. Randolph had lived less than twelve hours after being rushed to the hospital. In his condition, he had been unable to tell the police anything. And neither his wife nor any of the neighbors had seen or heard anything suspicious.
Jack shoved aside the files, leaned back in the swivel chair at his desk, lifted his arms behind him and cupped the