Jeremy didn’t answer the landline so I tried his cell phone. He answered and in the background I heard a jumble of voices talking, yelling, singing.

“You’re out in the street, right?” I said. “In front of Schrum’s house?”

“It’s party time here, Carson. Schrum’s press office just released a statement suggesting the great man might be on the mend. The statement was a mix of medicine and mumbo-jumbo, but it’s got the crowd in an ecstatic frenzy. A rumor’s circulating that Schrum appeared at his balcony door last night, as if ready to step out, but turned away at the last moment. The throng is taking it as a sign that he’s up and about, which, as I’ve mentioned, has been since his arrival.”

“Maybe it’s a sign I’m supposed to call you. I need a bit of insight on a case.”

“Bit as in minuscule portion?” he said, amused. “You never need a bit of anything, Carson.”

“I simply need observations on religious psychopaths. You’ve known a few.”

“Yes, indeedy. I liked them.”

It threw me. “Weren’t they hard to control … being in the service of the divine and all?” For ten years in the Institute my brother had made a study of the shattered minds around him and turned it into a game: Seeing how fully he could enter their skewed landscapes and make them do his bidding. It was fiercely dangerous and more than once he’d been infected by their madnesses.

“Not that hard, Carson,” he said. “The trick is to figure out their personal symbology and use it to speak their language. Once you know that, you always find them governed by very strict rules.”

“How about you go someplace quiet and call me back, Jeremy. We can talk.”

“How about you send me candy and I’ll munch a while?”

I almost groaned. By candy my brother meant case files, reports, photos. He especially enjoyed photographs of crime scenes.

“No need, Jeremy. It’s just a broad question about—”

“You know I have a sweet tooth, Carson,” he said softly. “Feed it or you’re on your own.”

“They’ll be there in an hour,” I growled. “Stay by your damned computer.”

I checked on Belafonte, gathering all the low-hanging fruit on Hallelujah Jubilee, so absorbed in her work she didn’t see me. I sent Jeremy thirty or so pages, plus a dozen photos. I figured my brother would need several hours to start making conclusions.

After a half-hour I returned to see what Belafonte had unearthed.

“Here’s what I have from the internet, Detective. Hallelujah Jubilee opened eight years ago. It had a rocky financial start, loans coming due before much income was generated. It now seems a moderately successful enterprise. The park is a non-profit overseen by the Crown of Glory broadcasting network, headquartered in Jacksonville.”

“What’s Schrum’s part?”

“He and his wife started the network operation almost forty years ago from a tiny thousand-watt station in the middle of nowhere. She died several years back, cancer. Schrum’s chairman of the board … the front man for a big band.”

“But Johnson runs the whole show?”

“The business side at least. I don’t think Schrum goes near it: he’s the spiritual leader, the holy centerpiece.”

Bobby Erickson pushed open the door. “Gotta call, Carson. A Doctor Faustus.”

“Thanks, Bobby,” I said. “I’ll take it in my office.”

I trotted the hall to my office, closed the door and sat, looking at my watch. “Forty minutes, Jeremy? I expected it would take longer.”

“You have an afflicted fellow out there. A very religious upbringing, the word severe comes to mind, like being beaten senseless while Mummy or Daddy told him how diseased and evil he was. Do you know the effect that can have on a young mind?” He paused, then screamed, “WHERE ARE YOU HIDING, YOU MISERABLE LITTLE BASTARD?”

I froze. It was my dead father’s voice. Jeremy could mimic it perfectly. For a split second I was nine years old and hiding in a closet while our father raged through the halls, his insane anger like black lightning blasting apart our house.

“Jeremy—” I rasped. “Don’t start with the—”

My brother cut me off with, “I TOLD YOU NO GODDAMN ANIMALS IN THIS HOUSE!”

Words from my tenth birthday, our father clutching the pet hamster I’d kept hidden under my bed, slamming it into the wall as if pitching a baseball.

My palms were sweating as I found my voice.

“Stop it, Jeremy, or I’m hanging up.”

My brother’s normal voice resumed. “I was simply setting the stage, Carson. You’ve been there, I’ve been there. But as nasty as dear ol’ Da could be, he never made us dirty in the eyes of God. He must not have thought of it. We both escaped relatively intact, mentally speaking. This unfortunate fellow didn’t. He’s been so soaked in religion all he sees is good and evil, God and the Devil. It’s Manichaean, the world a constant struggle between dark and light, expressed in Christian symbolism. Your burning boy has a thing about women, making me suspect it was Mommy who sparked his torments. I think he sees women as evil, but not condemned to hell, not if he can help it. Maybe he’s saving Mommy.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s killing the women’s evil powers with the stonings. But it’s akin to an exorcism, their redemption coming when he wraps them in the lamb – how’s that for fun? – consecrates them with sacred oil, splashes them with the biblical magic-fire of naphtha, and flicks his Bic. I’d bet my next week’s stock profits he has an altar somewhere. He’d need the ritual aspect.”

“Wasn’t it Jesus who said let he without sin cast the first stone? If the perp’s so Bible-driven …” I let the question hang.

“He’ll have a mental construct to bypass it, Carson. A justification, some sort of special dispensation from God or Christ. He is, after all, saving women from their evil natures.”

“Thanks, Jeremy. That might be a help in my—”

“Now,” he interrupted, “what aren’t you telling me?”

I paused. “What, uh, do you mean?”

“I saw the data and the pictures. Give the forensics photographers a huzzah from me, Brother, excellent composition. And you did happen to notice the faint cross in the sand under the one body, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. But what little details aren’t in the reports?”

I thought it out; no harm done to tell him the latest. “We have a link between the cases: the victims had all been employed at a religious theme park up by Lakeland, Hallelujah Jubilee.”

A pause so long I wondered if we’d been cut off.

“Jeremy?” I said. “You still there?”

“You realize, Carson, that the fellow who founded the enterprise is supposedly dying down my block?”

“Schrum’s based out of Jacksonville, and the Crown of Glory network operates the park as a non-profit. I can’t see a—”

“Maybe you should ask your old partner what he knows.”

“Harry? Why Harry?”

“There’s a house behind the Schrum edifice that seems rented by folks in the righteous Rev’s entourage, comings and goings at all hours. Limousines, Hummers. Stern-faced men carrying bibles and briefcases. The Winklers. Attractive young people I assume to be staffers. A goofy and ever-present fellow dressed like Gene Autry. That’s a classical allusion to a—”

“I know who Gene Autry is. The point being?”

“Your Mr Nautilus is part of the proceedings. I saw him at the house three days ago.”

Jeremy had never met Harry. My brother was either deluded or jerking me around. “What makes you think that?”

“He was in the neighborhood and reading a newspaper. He offered it to me, points for civility.”

“No way. Couldn’t have been Harry.”

“Does Nautilus have some form of chauffeurly duties? He was leaning against a Hummer as he read, as if the vehicle was his charge.”

I stiffened. Only a handful of people knew Harry was driving for the Owsleys. And he’d joked about the Hummer and the hush-hush nature of the job. Was my brother telling the truth?