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The seven deadly sins hadn't been on Ella's radar since she'd stopped believing in God around age twelve, but now they were all she could think about. It was the kind of revelation that should have come sooner, but Ella told herself she was just distracted by the fact that someone back in D.C. was using her DNA to frame her for murder. Pride goeth before a fall - or, in Dr. Summers' case, before a blade across the throat.

Ripley's rental car cut through Granville's twilight streets as they headed for Jeremy Caldwell’s apartment. The GPS said they were two miles out.

‘So if I'm right, we've got Lust and Pride checked off his list,’ Ella said. ‘That leaves Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, and Wrath.’

Ripley kept her eyes locked on the road. ‘So five more victims if he's working through the full set.’

Outside, Granville had transformed from quaint college town to something ominous. Christmas lights hung in storefront windows. Holiday shoppers hurried along sidewalks with heads down, instinctively sensing the darkness that had taken up residence in their community. Evil had a way of changing atmospheric pressure. People felt it without knowing it.

Ripley floored the gas through an empty back road. She took a hard right onto West Hollows Way. A sign proclaimed HOLLOWS GROVE APARTMENTS in faded letters, and someone had spray-painted an L on the end of GROVE. The place was three stories of depressed brick with fire escapes etched against the outside like metal scars. Nothing about it suggested holy missions or righteous wrath. Just the architectural equivalent of a shrug.

Ripley pulled into the parking lot. ‘West Grovel Apartments. Looks like a good place to get an STD.’

‘Then let’s try our luck.’

Ella's stomach knotted with anticipation. This part – the approach, the unknown – always concentrated her senses to painful acuity. Sounds sharpened. Colors intensified. Even the stale air in the car became textured.

Ripley said, 'Remember, I'm unarmed, so you've got to do the dirty work.'

‘Try and stop me.’

They were out of the car and at the entrance to the building. All security measures seemed to have evacuated the building long ago because the front door was half-open and the electronic lock mechanism was dangling by exposed wires.

‘Someone did our B and E for us.’ Ripley pushed the door with her elbow. It screeched inward, announcing their arrival to anyone with functioning eardrums. ‘After you.’

The lobby was an olfactory assault. Ella scanned for security cameras and spotted one aimed at the bank of mailboxes beside her. A sign on the elevator declared it was temporarily out of order, but Ella guessed it was the permanent kind of temporary. A bulletin board nearby advertised community college classes, cash-for-gold schemes, a revival tent show and a whole host of other crap. Ella took a mental snapshot of it.

‘Stairs it is,’ she said.

They climbed up to the third floor. Graffiti marked their ascent, and the third-floor landing featured a masterpiece of profanity spray-painted in red across the fire exit map. Apartment 332 waited at the end of a hallway. The paint around the doorframe had bubbled and peeled, but a fresh brass cross hung at eye level. Below it, someone had taped a printed card: WELCOME TO THE HOUSE OF THE LORD.

A scent wafted from beneath Caldwell's door. It wasn’t the expected funk of bachelor living, but something much sweeter. Incense maybe, or devotional candles. The odor of Sunday school.

‘You smell that?’

'Yeah,' said Ripley. She reached for the handle, and it turned with ease. The door clicked open, but before she could push through, Ella grabbed her partner's wrist.

‘Are you nuts?’

‘What? The door’s open.’

‘If you go in first, you’re just trespassing. You don’t have that federal fairy dust on your badge. Hell, you don’t even have a badge.’

‘Good point.’ Ripley moved back and gestured for Ella to take the lead. ‘My hero.’

Ella drew her weapon and nudged the door with her foot. ‘Mr. Caldwell? FBI.’

The apartment swallowed her voice. She stepped inside with her Glock leading the way and found herself in what could have been a monastery's waiting room. Everything gleamed. No dust, no clutter.

‘Oddly clean,’ Ripley said. ‘Don’t trust anyone who has a clean house near the end of the week.’

The living room connected to an equally immaculate kitchen. Dishes dried in perfect formation on a rack. Appliances stood at attention like soldiers awaiting inspection. A Bible lay open on the counter beside three candles.

But there was no sign of Jeremy Caldwell.

‘Clear,’ Ella called, though Ripley had already started exploring the space with the comfortable disregard of someone who'd done this a thousand times before. ‘Got anything?’

‘Empty, but he’s been here recently. There’s a cup of tea in here, and it hasn’t got that weird film on the surface.’

‘Yeah, these candles have only just been put out. We must have missed him by a few minutes.’

Ripley emerged from her search. ‘No bodies in the bedroom, alive or dead.’

Ella moved to the bathroom. Same clinical cleanliness as the living room and kitchen. White towels folded into perfect thirds. Single toothbrush standing at attention in a glass holder. One razor. One bar of unscented soap. The medicine cabinet contained precisely one bottle of each basic necessity; aspirin, antacid, cough syrup. And a small orange prescription bottle with the label partly torn off. She noted the remaining letters: SPER. Risperdal, maybe? It was an antipsychotic, probably prescribed by Dr. Summers.

‘Anything?’ Ripley called from the living room.

‘Nothing. As clean as an operating room.’ Ella rejoined her partner in the main space. ‘What can we do? We can’t just wait for him to come back. We could have another body by then.’

‘We’ll get someone to watch this place while we search for him. Come on.’

The apartment's perfection made Ella’s skin crawl. Not because cleanliness signaled psychopathy, but because this particular brand of order suggested the ability to compartmentalize. The kind that let a man slice throats by night and fold towels into perfect thirds by day .

Ella turned in a circle and committed every detail of this place to memory. She needed to retain psychological fingerprints people couldn't help but leave behind. The pristine surfaces. The absence of personal photographs. The bookshelf where religious texts stood shoulder to shoulder.

Then she saw it.

Mounted beside the window, a framed print dominated the wall. It wasn’t the usual saccharine crucifix scene that decorated evangelical homes, but something more artistically ambitious.

It was a radiant city on a hill, rendered in gilt and azure. Jerusalem? Babylon? Jericho? Ella had no idea, but it wasn’t the imagery that drew her attention.

It was the proverbs below it.

All of the usual suspects were there; turn the other cheek, judge not lest ye be judged. But one proverb in particular jumped out at her.

Isaiah 47:10: For you have trusted and felt confident in your wickedness; you have said, 'No one sees me.'

Ella's breath stalled in her lungs. Those words. The same ones scrawled in blood in Dr. Summers book.

‘Mia, look.’ Ella rushed over to the poster and tapped the text. ‘No one sees me.’

Her partner materialized at her shoulder. Ella felt Ripley's body tense as she registered the connection.

‘'No one sees me,'‘ Ripley read aloud. ‘Same phrasing from the Summers scene.’

Ella stepped back and found herself disappearing into that pure analytical space where connections formed faster than she could articulate them. She quickly broke free of it, then found herself thinking of five minutes previous, when she was just outside of this apartment.

Her synapses fired, and a connection snapped into place. Something she hadn't clocked on her way here, but now made sense.

‘We need to hit the streets,’ said Ripley.

‘No. Follow me. I know where we need to go.’

Ella barreled out of the apartment with Ripley in tow. They closed the door behind them, as though they’d not been here at all. Ella sprinted down the stairs and came to an abrupt stop in the foyer.

There it was.

On the community board.

‘The hell are you waiting for?’ Ripley asked.

'This,' Ella said. She plucked a flyer off the community board. It was a glossy rectangle featuring a blue background, the roof of a tent, and a barrage of text.

GRANVILLE REVIVAL TENT.

BE CLEANSED IN THE LIGHT OF THE LORD.

SPEAKERS INCLUDE:

Pastor James Mitchell

Reverend Sarah Whitman

Brother Jeremy Caldwell

Sister Mary Catherine

Brother Thomas Reed

GRANVILLE COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS

DECEMBER 15 TH – 7 PM.

Ripley grabbed the flyer off her. ‘Brother Jeremy Caldwell. Dammit, we got him. Good eye, Dark.’

‘Seven PM. We’ve got an hour before the show starts.’

‘Let’s go, but I gotta ask… what the hell is a tent revival?’

Ella took the flyer back and pocketed it. Somewhere in Granville, canvas walls were going up. Sinners were gathering. And Jeremy Caldwell, murder suspect, was preparing his speech.

‘Oh, you’re in for a treat.’