Unholy Shepherd by Robert Christian (classic literature list .txt) 📗

the community college had much better internet connectivity than his place and, obviously, many more computers. He wanted to actually have some kind of breakthrough before he made any report to Agent Layton.

The look on Maureen’s face told him she wasn’t going to enjoy it very much.

TWENTY-THREE

The library of the community college was about as busy as they expected for a Tuesday night a week before classes were to start. Relieved that they could work in privacy, Manny had little trouble finding two computers away from the others in the computer bank. He sat down in front of one machine and pulled out the chair in front of the other. Maureen sat, albeit with some hesitation. Manny slid the mouse across the pad to wake up the computer. Out of the side of his eye, he noted that Maureen was mimicking his movements with her own machine.

“All right,” he said typing in the website he wanted on the keyboard, “I’ll search for what this scientific name that Derrick gave us means; you see if you can make sense out of those numbers and letters you wrote down yesterday.”

Maureen stared at him and didn’t move. The look of confusion on her face told him that he may as well have been speaking Greek to her.

“Have you ever used a computer before?” he asked.

“Of course I have! It’s just been a while.”

“Well just jump on the internet,” he replied, “and pull up the search engine.”

“Which one is the internet?”

He leaned over to her computer and helped her. “That’s the search engine,” he said pointing at the screen. “Just type in what you’re looking for in the bar there and hit Enter.”

He watched as Maureen pulled out the piece of newspaper she’d written her scribbles and symbols on and laid it next to her on the desk. She then slowly, with only her index fingers, began to type. Manny couldn’t help but grin as he turned his attention to his own computer.

“Commiphora gileadensis,” he read off the screen. “Says here it’s a tree that grows mainly in the Middle East. Used to make balsam or myrrh. Sometimes referred to as ‘balm of gilead’. Why does that sound familiar?”

“Sounds almost biblical,” Maureen said while her eyes were on her own screen.

“It does,” agreed Manny as an idea sparked in his head. He vigorously typed on the keyboard, and what he found gave him the answer. “That’s it! It’s not an accelerant, it’s chrism!”

Maureen stared at him with a furrowed brow and tilted her head.

“Olive oil plus myrrh,” he said, “or balsam, if you want. It’s chrism. What they call holy oil. This sicko is pouring holy oil on the kids.”

“Why would he do something like that?”

“What did you come up with?”

“I don’t know. I typed in what I wrote down and got a bunch of stuff in a list. Which one is what I’m supposed to be looking for?”

Manny slid over and scanned down the search results. It didn’t take but a moment to find what he was looking for.

“Leviticus, chapter six,” he said, clicking on the link and reading, both to himself and out loud, the passage that it brought up, “‘They must bring to the priest, that is, to the Lord, their guilt offering, a ram from the flock, one without defect and of the proper value.’ Good God! ‘The burnt offering must be kept on the hearth of the altar throughout the night, until morning, and the fire must be kept burning on the altar.’ Guilt offering, burnt offering. The liver and kidneys shall be offered? What the hell?” The reading made Manny start to feel queasy as he pictured the bodies of the young boys burned and left on the stacks of wood. “This is almost like a full description of the crime scenes.”

“Type in that other word you have written there,” he told Maureen.

She slowly typed Urim into the search engine.

“Says here that Urim is generally accepted to mean ‘light’ in ancient Hebrew,” he read. “It’s starting to makes sense.”

“So, the guy is an uber-religious nut?” Maureen said.

“Looks like it, but that’s not entirely what I meant,” he said. He decided it was time to tell Maureen. “When you were having your nightmare in the holding cell,” he continued, turning her chair toward him so he could look at her straight on, “it was like you were speaking in tongues.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said impatiently. “But I already told you I don’t know what I was saying, so what about it?”

“Maureen, I was able to understand one word. It was the last thing you said before you woke up. You said, ‘Amen.’”

Maureen sat still for a moment, her eyes cast to the side, seemingly in deep thought. “So, I was saying a prayer before I killed those kids,” she whispered. Her face began to redden and her eyes became glassy.

“You didn’t do anything,” Manny reminded her, placing his hand tenderly on her knee. He knew Maureen Allen wasn’t a saint, that’s for sure, but in that moment, she was just as much a victim. “This sick bastard is the one doing it. I’m just sorry that you have no choice but to watch.”

“Wouldn’t be how I’d choose to spend my nights,” she said, giving out a morose laugh. She looked down and saw his hand on her knee. She picked it up and laid it in his own lap, giving him a warm smile as his consolation. “Thanks,” she said and wiped her eyes, erasing every look of distress from her face. “So, what now? I mean, now we know we got a religious whack-job on our hands. How do we find him?”

“We can’t assume anything,” he said carefully. “This could all still be about money laundering. They could just be using the biblical imagery to send a message to Tom Lowes and Sandra Locke. In any case, we might as well pay a visit to St. Mary’s.”

“Why?”

“Nobody would know their flock better than a shepherd,”