Page 107 of Forever Dark
Connor opened his notebook.“Did you ever see someone named Brenda Colter there?Lauren Gimble?Or Tara Brennan?”
Bernice frowned.“Oh, I know Tara.Pretty girl.Tired-looking.Hospital type.The other two, I couldn’t swear to.”
“Did anybody around the revival take special interest in women who came alone?”
“No.”
“Anybody act strange?”
Bernice stopped pacing.“Sheriff, have you met religious people?”
Connor said nothing.
“We all act strange.”
Arnold lost the fight with his smile.
Connor tried another angle.“What about the people who travel with Croft?”
“Nice enough.His security fella had calves like bridge supports.I remember a woman with gray hair who handed out pamphlets and smiled too much, which I distrust on principle.”
“Any of them seem… dangerous?”
She looked at Connor.“Dangerous?What’s this all about?”
Connor took in a breath.“I’m sorry to say that Tara and the other women I mentioned have been murdered over the last few days.”
“Oh, my heaven… Poor Tara.”She shook her head and rubbed her cheek for a moment in disbelief.Bernice then drew herself up.“But if you’re here trying to pin those murders on Reverend Croft or his flock, save your shoe leather.That man is a servant of God.”
“People can be two things at once,” Connor said.
Her eyes sharpened.“Not him.”
“That certainty come from faith or charm?”
“Experience.”She pointed a red-nailed finger at him.“He remembered my late husband’s name after hearing it once.Men don’t do that unless they’re holy or selling life insurance.”
Connor wrote that down mostly to keep Arnold from laughing.
At the door, Bernice called after them, “If you arrest that man without cause, I’ll write the governor.”
“Please spell my name right,” Connor said.
“I won’t.”
Back in the SUV, Arnold buckled in and shook his head.“I liked her.”
“Of course you did.”Connor started the engine.“Give me the next name on the list.”
The second interview took them to a trailer beside a salvage yard where washing machines, rusted truck doors, and a boat with no bottom sat in crooked rows.
A lanky man in a sleeveless flannel shirt answered holding a ferret.
Connor stopped at the sight of it.He could almost sense Arnold sayingWhy do all these religious folks keep animals?But his deputy stayed silent.
The man noticed Connor looking and lifted the animal.“This here’s Gideon.”
“Eh… Nice to meet you, Gideon,” Connor said.
