Page 64 of Devil's Hour
“Thank you.” Royce took a sip of the coffee and sighed. “Perfect.”
“I know how you like your coffee.”
Royce had a sudden urge to cup his face and pull him in for a kiss, which wasn’t an option.Use your words, dumbass.“I was talking about you.” He added a wink when Sawyer just stared at him. So, he wasn’t the most vocal about his feelings outside of sex, but he did more than grunt and drag his damn knuckles.
“Not even close, but you’re sweet to say so.”
It was the last serene moment of his day. Tobias didn’t have any intel to share with them about the missing evidence, so that was a dead end. The mayor’s press conference was televised on a local affiliate, and the detectives in the bullpen gathered around to watch it. Ryan was nowhere in sight, but he couldn’t blame the kid. Royce was surprised to see Call Me Skip standing behind his wife on stage, but anyone looking could tell he’d rather be anywhere else. Beside him was a priest, who Royce recognized as Father David from Holy Trinity Church, where Marcus and Candi attended mass. Father David had officiated their wedding, prayed over Candi during labor, baptized the children, and presided over Marcus’s funeral. He’d even attended the kids’ backyard birthday parties.
Seeing him reminded Royce of all the vows Marcus had broken. It also made him want to forget about the case and ignore interviewing witnesses so he could charge Marcus’s phone and look through the pictures on it until his eyesight blurred. Royce needed to remember the Marcus he’d loved, not the one who’d given up.
The two FBI agents, Duffy and Aston, arrived at their precinct with sticks up their asses. Rigby invited Royce to join them, introducing him as the sergeant leading The Purists task force. Duffy and Aston didn’t bother playing nice with others. They laughed at Rigby’s suggestion of a joint-force operation and announced they were taking over the case. The chief put up a good fight and got the agents to concede that Amber Neilson’s death was most likely a result of her being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that was as far as they’d go.
“Why was Agent Neilson undercover at The Alley Cat?” Royce asked.
“I can’t answer that. It’s a need-to-know basis,” Aston said with a wry smirk Royce wanted to knock off with a right hook.
“How original,” he replied instead.
“Turn over your files to agents Duffy and Aston,” Chief instructed him. Her shrewd gaze said, “But make copies first.”
It didn’t take Royce long to gather the information for them since they were still pretty much shooting in the dark. Rigby offered them a workspace, which they rejected without bothering to hide their distaste. After they left, she looked at Royce and said, “This changes nothing. Continue to interview employees, get an ID on the rogue clergyman, and trail the arsonists.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, saluting her moxie.
Her lips trembled as she fought off a smile. “And don’t get caught.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
To avoid Duffy and Aston catching on to them, Royce divided surveillance up between five others in the unit plus himself. Sawyer, Ky, and Ashcroft volunteered to take the first overnight shift, so he sent them home while he, Willoughby, and South took the day shift. The goal was for them to keep switching up vehicles from the carpool and swap around targets to avoid detection.
For their first stakeouts, Willoughby took Bennett, South took Grange, and Royce tailed Pullman, the man with the access to paint thinner, which Blue had reported was the accelerant used to torch The Alley Cat. He’d also been too friendly when they interviewed him the first time, which immediately made Royce suspicious.
Royce dreaded tailing suspects for many reasons, but one of them was being confined to the vehicle. He felt like a caged animal, but getting out to stretch his back and legs wasn’t an option. The radio wasn’t a good distraction either because the local stations were talking about The Purists nonstop. Royce gritted his teeth just thinking of the sanctimonious assholes. They’d added a ticker at the bottom, showing how many times their videos were viewed. They’d gone viral with more than a million hits each. Googling Savannah not only brought up links to their sites but links to dozens of articles written about the scandals plaguing the city. The Purists were being touted as heroes online and from people calling the radio stations until the chief held her press conference announcing that two people were killed in The Alley Cat fire. She didn’t divulge names, but she made it very clear vigilante justice was the cause of death as much as smoke inhalation. She cautioned for cooler heads to prevail and urged citizens to report crimes directly to the police or Crimestoppers rather than take justice into their own hands.
The tone of the calls coming in to the stations changed drastically, but there were still some who believed whores and flesh peddlers deserved their day in hell, and who cared if they went there sooner or had help arriving? He knew the radio stations would report any credible threats, but he texted Holly and asked her to reach out to the station managers anyway.
It didn’t take long for the tone to shift with the online articles, which now referred to The Purists as killers and religious terrorists. And while the ticker number at the bottom of the page didn’t stall completely, it slowed down significantly. It was a small victory, but he had to take them where he could or lose his fucking mind.
The risk to the backlash was The Purists going to ground. A phone call to Jonah put his fears to rest there.
“Maybe, but it would only be temporary,” he’d said. “Someone who craves this level of attention won’t stay quiet for long. Also, if these deaths were truly accidental, maybe their conscience will get the best of them. Maybe they’ll confess and roll on the mastermind.”
“Maybe,” Royce said hopefully.
Tailing Pullman literally amounted to watching paint dry. The man worked fast, efficiently, and took very few smoke breaks. He’d unpacked a cooler on the tailgate of his truck for lunch and was back on the job in twenty minutes or less. It was all Royce could do to keep his eyes open. He checked in with Willoughby and South to see how their days were going.
These have to be the dullest criminals in the history of the world, South replied.
I need to duct tape my eyelids open, Willoughby lamented.
Royce snickered, yawned, then looked at his watch for the millionth time. There were too many hours remaining before Ky took over, and he’d never stay awake unless he found something to distract his inner whining.
He decided to turn on the local AM station that invited local clergymen to give sermons live on air or take calls from listeners. He’d been tuning in and out throughout the day to see if anyone stood out. So far, no one used syntax similar to The Purists or tripped any warning bells. There’d been plenty of frothing mouths and holier-than-thou attitudes, so he’d been unable to listen for long periods of time. Royce would just check in once an hour to jot down the name and demeaner of the clergy—man or woman—acting as DJ. He would supply the names to Detective Megan McGuire, who he’d assigned to create the photo lineup of local clergy to make sure they didn’t overlook anyone.
It was almost the top of the hour and time for them to switch over. Royce tuned in and caught the closing sermon from a man who’d never heard the term inside voice; the kind who thought talking louder meant you were smarter or more righteous.
“If you don’t want to believe me that a day of reckoning is coming, then fine. Maybe you’ll believe this passage from the book of Revelations. Chapter twenty and verse ten says ‘And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.’ The devil who deceived them. Let that sink in for a bit, especially considering the recent revelations today. We’ve been tricked into believing the devil is an ugly monster that we can easily detect with our naked eyes, but the truth is the demon can take the shape of anyone and anything, finding you at your weakest moments and leading you on a path to the lake of fire. Often, the evilest people are the most beautiful or charismatic ones, so you don’t discover your error until it’s too late and you’re in too deep. Join me, Preacher Samuel Brimmer, at Faithview church to begin your path to salvation.”