Read Joe Dillard - 02 - In Good Faith for Free Online Page A

hesitated, and Mooney sensed what I was feeling.
    “You don’t want to look,” he said. “The man and the woman were both shot at least six times. Both of them were shot in the right eye. So were the children. I wish I hadn’t seen that little boy… .”
    His voice trailed off. I remembered that Mooney and his wife adopted an infant a few years ago. A little boy. Must be three or four years old now.
    “Do we know who they are?” I asked quietly.
    “We know who the man is. His name is Beck, Bjorn Beck. Thirty years old, Johnson City address. They left his wallet in his pocket. It had thirteen dollars in it.”
    “Nothing on the woman?”
    “Not yet. I’m assuming she’s his wife until somebody tells me otherwise. We’ve got TBI agents in Johnson City checking out the address right now. We should know something soon.”
    I began to rock back and forth and stamp my feet. Even though I couldn’t see my breath, the cold felt as though it had penetrated the marrow in my bones.
    “Cold, isn’t it?” Mooney said. His voice was trembling slightly.
    I didn’t say anything, but I looked at him. When he looked back, I could see fear in his eyes.
    “It wasn’t this cold when I left the house,” he said. “Seems like the temperature dropped twenty degrees when I got here.”
    “Yeah, I felt it, too.”
    “You ever hear or read anything about evil?”
    It was a strange question, one that I pondered briefly. Of course I’d heard of evil. Of course I’d read about evil.
    “Ever read anything about Catholic priests performing exorcisms?” Mooney continued. “They say they experience a sensation of coldness, just like this.”
    “What are you trying to say?”
    “What happened here was evil. The cold-blooded execution of an entire family. They didn’t take his wallet, so it wasn’t a robbery. All of them shot in the right eye. Running over their legs after they were dead.”
    I looked down at my boots for a moment. I’d noticed the drop in temperature. I’d noticed the reaction of my dog. I felt the presence of something I’d never felt before, but I didn’t want to admit it or discuss it. All I wanted was to get the hell out of there.
    Mooney turned towards me again. His eyes were moist, his voice still shaky. “You have to promise me something,” he said. “You have to promise me that when we find the sick bastards who did this, you’ll see to it that every one of them gets the needle. No screwups. No deals. Whoever shot those two children needs to be removed from the gene pool.”
    The words hit me like scalding water. I’d spent a good portion of my legal career trying to keep the government from executing people, and now there I stood, in the dark, cold woods, listening to a man tell me I must promise to use my newly acquired power to make sure someone died. I looked at Mooney again. He was nearly in tears.
    “I’ll do what’s right, Lee,” I said, “as soon as I figure out what it is.”

PART II

Monday, September 15
    Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Hank Fraley looked up from his desk to see a man walking through the front door.
    A fucking babysitter. Just what I need. I’ve got a loud-mouthed sheriff running around sticking his nose into everything, and now I have to deal with a goddamned lawyer.
    Fraley had been awake all night, his head was splitting, and the acid in his stomach made him feel as if he were being eaten from the inside out. He couldn’t get the images of the dead family out of his mind. The eyes haunted him. All of them had been shot in the right eye. Thirty years of working homicide cases in Memphis and Nashville—places a lot more violent than this—had steeled Fraley, but nothing could have prepared him for the carnage he saw when he got to the murder scene. Those beautiful, innocent children. The girl was about the same age as Fraley’s granddaughter, the boy just an infant. Who, or what, could do that to a baby?
    And now he had to deal with Joe