Still mulling his new idea over, he threw on his jacket, gloves and stocking cap on his way out the back door. Outside, the night was still, aside from a slight breeze. No snow fell for the first time in hours and a silvery disc of a moon was surrounded by crystal stars flung into the dark night sky.
These predawn hours were much like, he supposed, the clarity and calm of the night of Christ’s birth. He even searched the sky for the star of Bethlehem that the Magi followed.
Mullins’s heart opened a little and his fears abated as he contemplated the magic and mystery of the Christ child’s birth. Here, in God’s showcase, alone in the outdoors, he found his true spirit, his communion with the Father.
From the breezeway connecting the parsonage with the church, he glanced at the crèche and then stood in awe of the snow-shrouded figures.
Carefully placed lamps illuminated the snow-covered nativity scene where the Christ child lay in the manger Mullins himself had fashioned years ago. Mary and Joseph leaned over their precious newborn. An ox’s and donkey’s head were visible over stall doors positioned behind the manger.
It truly was a work of art.
Something was off though. He broke a trail in the fresh snow to adjust the spotlight on Mary to make certain that her poignant smile was visible from the road. Then he looked again at the scene to make sure everything was perfect. It seemed so; the shepherd carrying a lamb hadn’t fallen and the three kings, wise men seeking to give the savior gifts, approached, all covered in snow, all piously ... wait a second.
Why were there four kings?
He blinked. Looked again. Counted softly, his breath clouding: “Gaspar ... Balthasar ... Melchior ... and a fourth?” One without draping robes or a crown or a gift held in extended hands. No, the fourth figure, covered in snow, seemed more like a modern-day Frosty the Snowman.
Probably some kid’s idea of a prank.
“Great,” he muttered, trudging through the snow, disturbing the perfection of the scene. And, yes, he saw impressions where someone else had been here, though the tracks were softened with a three-inch layer of snow. So whoever committed this sacrilege had done it hours before.
Wait a second. The figure, partially obscured with a frosting of snow, was definitely female. Seriously? And he could see ice beneath the snow. A sculpture. Blasphemy! That’s what this marring of the nativity scene was. Was the sculpture of a woman intended to be some kind of political statement, some ultraliberal nonbeliever’s way of pointing out that the only woman in the crèche was the blessed Virgin Mary? Or was it, perhaps, something worse?
At least he found it before morning light, or rush hour, if that’s what you could call it here in Grizzly Falls. At least school buses wouldn’t stop at the corner where the children inside looking out the windows might see the obvious mistake.
Or perhaps this was something much worse. Could it be that someone knew what had happened in Tucson and was sending him a personal and humiliating message? Someone who wanted to embarrass him? Cecil Whitcomb, Peri’s father? He’d never been satisfied with Mullins’s slap on the wrist. Could he have traveled all the way north to Grizzly Falls for retribution? Cecil had wanted, no, make that demanded, Calvin’s resignation from the clergy and, as furious as he was, Cecil wouldn’t have been satisfied with a public flogging.
Nonetheless, he couldn’t afford a breath of scandal to whisper through this parish, so he had to get rid of the offensive statue or whatever it was. Using his gloved hand, he tried to dismantle the thing, but it was rock solid. Heavy. “Come on, come on,” h
e whispered, brushing the snow from the thing’s “head” with his gloved hand. Sure enough, it was an ice sculpture, the features definitely feminine, but in the darkness, it was difficult to see.
Taking the time to adjust one of the spotlights so it was easier to work, Preacher Mullins returned to the crèche and the offensive piece of “art.” Something was very off about this ... It was more than a prank. With mounting dread, his innards tightening with a dark, new fear, he carefully brushed more snow away to stare deeper into the face of the sculpture and his own heart turned to ice.
Inside the thick ice, he stared into the wide, blue eyes of a very dead and frozen woman.
Chapter 10
Pescoli’s jaw hardened as she shined her flashlight into the face of the dead woman, a face distorted by an inch or so of ice. “What the hell is this?” she whispered, wondering at who would place a dead woman, naked and encased in ice, in the middle of a nativity scene at a church. Her red hair fell to her shoulders, her skin so white as to be translucent. All trapped in a thick, molded layer of ice.
The entire area was roped off with crime scene tape, and the techs were going over the churchyard, looking for trace evidence in the snow. Preacher Mullins, who’d made the 911 call, was huddled under the overhang of a breezeway linking the parsonage with the church, and his wife, white-faced and shaken, stood at his side. Police vehicles were parked on the street and the road had been blocked, traffic diverted.
From an upstairs window of the two-storied Victorian parsonage, the silhouettes of three girls and another woman, someone from the church no doubt, were staring at the activity. Every once in a while, Lorraine Mullins glanced over her shoulder and shook her head, indicating her children were to be spared this horror, but as often as the children were shooed away from the window, they returned, fascinated.
Alvarez exhaled a pent-up breath as she checked in with the officer in charge. A news van had rumbled up and parked near the roadblock at the end of the street. Traffic slowed to a standstill as it passed and bystanders were collecting in groups.
“I think we just found Lara Sue Gilfry.”
“Really?” Alvarez studied the ice-encased woman. “Who would do this?”
“Don’t know, but I’d think the case is ours, as the church is just outside the city limits.”
Lips tight, Alvarez stared at the weird sculpture and Pescoli filled her in on the details, how the preacher getting ready for his early-morning regimen had stumbled upon an anomaly in the crèche that he’d personally built and obviously took pride in setting up year after year. Neither he nor his wife, nor, they were certain, any of their children had heard the noise that had to have surrounded the placement of the ice sculpture.
“Looks like it was dragged here,” Pescoli said, showing the trough in the snow that wound from the church’s lot to the front of the crèche. They were hoping for a footprint that would show the tread of a boot or shoe, or a tire track but so far hadn’t found anything.
Alvarez shined her own flashlight over the single track that was covered in snow. Shaking her head, she said, “I don’t get it.”
“Who does?”