“They know everything,” Harry said, amazed.

“She said, ‘sources close to the deceased,’” I said. “That’s not the usual line when someone on our side is yapping. Then it’s a source close to the investigation.”

We heard a click as the intercom was activated. “Lieutenant? Lieutenant Mason? Chief’s on line one.”

Tom rolled his eyes. Flicked the phone to private. He said the word Yup five or six times, followed by an uh-huh. He hung the phone up.

“The Chief just got a call from the Mayor who just got a call from –”

“James Carleton the third,” I ventured, stepping into a wide-open space between words.

“That Scaler’s lawyer?” Tom asked.

“The one and only.”

“Mr Carleton is nasty upset at the news reports coming out. The report goes into stuff Mr Lawyer thinks could only come from the MPD.”

“Back in a few,” I said, sprinting toward the door.

I caught the stringer standing beside the news van and applying fresh lipstick in its side mirror. Her videographer was wandering down the sidewalk singing a Green Day song along with the iPod wired to his ears. The woman’s name was Nell Pomeroy; I’d met her when dating a local reporter a while back.

“Hi, Nell,” I said.

“Hey, Carson. How you doing?” Her eyes looked happy to see a potential leak. “Are you on the Scaler case?”

“I’ve got too many other cases,” I finessed, suddenly becoming of no interest to Pomeroy. She turned back to her lips, making a kissy face at her image in the mirror. It reminded me of Harry in the PICU.

“Could I ask where you got the details on Reverend Scaler’s death, Nell? I promise not to tell a soul.”

She dropped the lipstick in what was either a purse or a daypack. “Sorry, Carson.”

“I’m not asking names of sources,” I said, though that’s exactly what I’d hoped for. “But they aren’t inside the MPD or forensics, or the ME’s office?”

She thought, measuring words. “We’re getting stuff from several places. Nothing big came from the cops or the ME’s folks. I can’t say anything else.”

I loped back to Tom and Harry. Shook my head.

“Not us. Sounds like it came from someone with a line into the Scaler organization.”

Harry shook his head. “They’re the last group on earth who’d want Righteous Rev.’s legend besmirched. They have the biggest stake in Scaler having an immaculate legacy. And does anyone on the inside even know all the grim details?”

“Tutweiler,” I grunted. “I told him what happened, remember?”

“Tutweiler would be the last person in the world to expose Scaler,” Harry said. “Everything in Tutweiler’s life is Scaler trickle-downs. The guy made his living riding on Scaler’s coattails.”

“How d’you know that?”

“I’ve been back on YouTube, Carson. Scaler and Dean Tutweiler go back years.”

I nodded toward the conference room. “Show me.”

Harry pulled down all his downloaded material. He tapped the keyboard and Scaler took the monitor by storm, bible in one hand, microphone in the other, preaching at a ball field in a park, the stage over the pitcher’s mound, the crowd in the outfield.

“This is Scaler after leaving his small church up in Pickens County,” Harry said. “I guess it didn’t give him a big enough audience. He’s back on the salvation circuit, pulling the bucks with that big stage presence, Wayne Newton with a chip on his shoulder. Scaler’s sermons often veer close to white-supremacy rants. Watch this next scene…look close at the curtain behind Scaler on the stage. Every now and then a face pops through.”

I leaned close to the monitor. A woman’s face parted the folds of cloth behind the stage, mouth heavy with lipstick, almost a leering face, as if amused there was a party going on in the back, while up front the faithful were falling to the floor, speaking in tongues or offering afflicted parts up to the stage for Scaler to heal.

Harry said, “Here it comes…”

A face parted the curtain, eyes scanning the crowd as though counting money, the lips curling up in what? Amusement? Sneer? It was Tutweiler; no mistaking that square jaw and rack of white teeth. He turned his head backstage, behind the curtain, yelled something, grinned, let the curtain fall back in place.

“He looks like a happy man,” I said.

“He’s got an early seat on the Scaler gravy train,” Harry said. “Who wouldn’t be smiling?”

I shrugged. “What’s your point? Who cares if Scaler and Tut have been buddies since way back?”

“Remember Scaler’s weird tape: ‘I have been led astray by false companions over years’? Tutweiler’s been around for a long time. And I don’t think Scaler had many real friends.”

I watched as the scene shifted to people walking across a field, past cars, folks eating chicken, drinking sodas and iced tea and lemonade. The camera panned past a small guy in a light-colored suit, the clothes making him a parrot in a field of crows. He was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck and spooning cake into his mouth, talking to those around him.

“Go back for a minute,” I said. “Freeze when I say freeze.”

Harry moused back the vid to the start of the scene.

“Just a bunch of crowd shots,” he said. “What are you –”

“Freeze,” I said, leaning forward. The guy in the suit had a half-dozen men around him, heads craned, as though between bites of cake he was giving out first-rate stock tips. I knew those guys, as a type, anyway: quintessential rednecks in white tees and Big Ben overalls, jeans and blue work shirts, mud-caked boots. They looked grown from hard soil, tight-eyed and grim. They’d been born with a grudge and life was a daily matter of nursing it.

I tapped my finger on the small guy with white cake stopped just south of his lips. “Seen that particular piece of hate before?” I asked. “Like maybe he was once a dozen feet from you?”

“Arnold Meltzer,” Harry whispered. “The head of the Aryan Revolutionary Army.”

“Not back then, I expect. But it looks like he might be finding the Scaler audience ripe for recruitment.”

“Let’s talk to Tutweiler again,” Harry said.

Chapter 35

Tutweiler was pulling into a parking slot as we arrived. Actually, Tut’s driver was doing the pulling, the Tutster in the rear seat and barely visible through the smoky windows of the black Yukon. His license tag read KING2. I bet I knew who KING1 had been.

The driver slid out, opened the rear door. Tutweiler scowled when he saw us pull in beside and get out. He looked at the driver.

“Go on along, Desmond. I’ll call the garage if I need anything more.”

Tutweiler turned the chiseled face to Harry and me. Something about the Tutster looked worn, like some event had drained fifty per cent of his air out.

“Yes, Detectives?”

“A few questions, Dean,” I said. “How long have you been with Richard Scaler?”

“We’ve been…” he paused, as if trying to decide something. “We’ve been friends for over twenty years.”

“Where did you meet?”

“A prayer breakfast in Jackson. Richard had been preaching a week-long revival. We started talking and I’ve been with him ever since. I started as an advance man, meeting with churches, setting up revivals, making sure we’d have enough seating when Richard came to town. It was an exciting time, doing the Lord’s work out in the fertile fields.”

I stared directly into Tutweiler’s eyes. “We’ve come upon what seems a fertile field in the Reverend’s oeuvre, a recent videotape where he speaks about something wrong with a house he built.”

Tutweiler did bewildered. “Richard and Patricia used the finest builder available for their house over in –”

“No, Brother Tutweiler,” I said. “House as a parable, a metaphor. Brother Scaler speaks of building under false pretenses, of false companions over years. Any idea what he’s referring to? Or who?”