Chapter 8
Alex's alarm went off. They both jerked out of a deep sleep and she scurried out of the bed to turn it off. Bobby sighed and rubbed his face with his hands as she reset her cell phone.
"I'll meet you there," she told him gently.
He didn't reply. He had already fallen back asleep, his hands still against his eyes. Alex moved closer, and decided to give him another five minutes. She knew how elusive sleep was for him, and she didn't have the heart to wake him. She found her clothes and went into the bathroom to get ready. The makeup could wait. She had a make-up case in her locker at 1PP.
She pulled on her shoes and went to sit beside him, dropping her hand on his chest and running it over the bushy hair there. "Bobby," she said gently.
He moaned and stretched under her touch.
"Honey, you have to get up. We have to tell the Wylers about Kenny."
He blinked awake and rubbed his eyes again. Then he reached his hand out to touch her. She smiled at him, and he pushed himself up to a sitting position.
"I'll see you at the squad," she said. On an impulse, she reached forward and kissed him. Just a gentle touch to his lips, but with a lot of meaning behind it. "Bye," she whispered. He said nothing, but gave her hand a squeeze before letting her go, a tiny smile on his lips.
She had a cup of coffee waiting for him when he arrived at his desk. Alex was her usual sharp self now, dressed and made up and even her hair looked good.
"It's almost 10. Church activities have started by now."
"Let's go."
Mrs. Wyler was working with a group of teens when she and Bobby walked in. She finished reading a passage from the Bible, and then began a discussion amongst the kids.
"Try only for the praise of others, and what happens?" Mrs. Wyler asked.
"You miss the real purpose of life," a girl replied.
"Which is not the private sale at Barney's," the reverend's wife teased, "which some of us think is the second coming. And I'm not naming any names, Megan." The kids chuckled. She smiled and looked at one of her students. "Alex, you're never at a loss for words. Get a discussion going, I'll be back in 5?"
Bobby was smiling at the woman. Everything he'd just seen was being filed away in his private profile of her. She walked over to the detectives with her hand out to greet them. "Hello," she said, shaking Alex's hand, and then Bobby's.
They walked out into the empty hall, and spoke quietly under a chandelier. "Uh, there's no easy way to tell you we just got some news," Alex said. "Kevin Paxton," she continued, studying Mrs. Wyler's face as she spoke, "apparently a drug overdose."
The woman's jaw dropped, and she said "Oh my God," but she didn't seem particularly surprised. She took a few steps and sat on a bench beside the window. "He tried once before, sleeping pills, but they saved him."
Bobby stared at her, and Alex sat down beside her on the opposite end of the bench. "We know that, uh… you gave him a lot of care," Bobby said.
She shook her head as she spoke. "He was so damaged. His birth parents… father beat his mother to death. Imagine living with that?" She asked the question, but she didn't look to anyone for an answer.
Bobby knew the answer. Mark Ford Brady had nearly beaten his mother to death. He'd been sheltered from the knowledge as a child, told she'd been in a car accident, but now he knew, and he was forced to live with the truth. He looked over to Alex twice, seeking her strength, and said, "That kind of thing is hard for some people to get past."
"Why couldn't you have left him alone?!" It was a quiet accusation, her anger concealed. Wyler left them in the hall to return to her students.
Alex stood and after they watched Mrs. Wyler leave, she looked up at Bobby. It's not your fault, her eyes were saying.
As it turned out, the Reverend was unavailable. He'd gone out and wasn't expected back for a while. Bobby and Alex headed back in the SUV.
"She wasn't particularly heartbroken," Alex observed.
"She's all about control," Bobby said. "She has tremendous control over herself. Even her anger, as she left… y-you couldn't really hear it in her voice."
Alex nodded and checked the lane with a turn of her head before slipping the vehicle into it. "She's got a thing with you, Bobby."
"I made her angry at Conlon's wake."
"Yeah. I guess."
"She likes to control other people, too."
"She's the one really running that Church," Alex agreed.
"She has a lot to lose if… there was a scandal."
As Alex pulled into the parking structure, Bobby's phone rang. He answered it and spoke as he got out of the car. By the time Alex joined him, the call had ended. "Rodgers has the autopsy results."
With a nod, she followed him inside the building and to the basement.
Dr. Rodgers was waiting for them. "Bad combo," she said, "Methadone and alcohol? Sent him into respiratory failure and his heart stopped."
"Methadone? No one told us that Paxton was on a methadone program," Bobby said, looking to Alex for verification.
"For sure not the only thing they're keeping from us," she tossed this comment Bobby's way, looking down at Kevin's body on the table.
"Blood alcohol level of .34, and a methadone level consistent with an oral intake of 240 milligrams." Rodgers read from the report and looked up at Goren.
"Well they sometimes give take-home methadone to addicts who are doing well," Alex thought aloud.
Bobby shook his head slowly. "Suicide is… a hard choice for someone who's truly devout." His eyes fell upon Kevin's face as he spoke.
"I have… no reason to rule this as anything but suicide," Rodgers said. Both detectives nodded at her.
Bobby invited Alex to read the sermons, too. If they were going after Wyler, it would help for both of them to be fully informed. He had sifted through most of them already, so he pulled out the ones he thought were significant and set them in front of her, with the others off to one side. Alex immediately went to the pile he hadn't given her, which made Goren smile. This was why they were good partners. She was determined to fill in whatever he might have missed.
He gave her some time, and she read a few of the ones he hadn't chosen before turning to the ones he had.
"Wyler's way of making his sermons relatable—he always puts in a story about himself," she observed.
Bobby had been waiting for her to start talking about them. He hurried over and found another one to show her. "But sometimes it's what he doesn't say. This one on adultery… there's nothing personal in it, you know? In fact, he barely touches on the subject." Alex read along and looked a little shocked. Bobby spoke again. "He makes it a lesson in forgiveness. Kevin Paxton, he heard these sermons every Sunday. They could have been a big influence in his life."
"He didn't buy the Reverend's lesson in forgiveness."
"I want to go alone," Bobby told her. "If he's going to admit to an affair, it should be… easier… with…" he shrugged, "one of the guys."
Alex gave him a nod.
They showed him into a conference room. Bobby busied himself studying one of the sermons and making notes in his binder while he waited for the Reverend to appear.
"I'm sorry, I was trying to contact the other acolytes, Kevin's friends," The Reverend said as he entered the room. He went to the far end of the table and sorted through some papers.
"You had hopes for him," Bobby commented. "Hey, I've been reading your sermons. They're… fascinating, by the way."
"Oh, yeah, Trudy told me that you'd asked that the whole year be sent to your office." He sauntered over and looked over Bobby's shoulder at the papers on the table in front of him.
"You have a very methodical approach. You seem to hit every one of the seven deadly sins, but somehow… you manage to keep it fresh." Bobby looked up at him.
"Well, you fall into a rut, the congregation falls asleep," the minister said.
"Trying to think of your sermon on adultery." Bobby paused, then asked, "Do you think adultery is one of the lesser sins?"
He man was in a quiet panic. He hid it well. "A sin is a sin, Detective. Look, we're… we're, uh, dealing with loss right now. I'm not really up to a theological debate with you, if you don't mind."
"Kevin… do you know what made him despondent, suicidal?"
The man cocked his head and gestured one hand Bobby's way. "Well I think that's a question you might better ask yourself."
"I have," Bobby replied quietly, honestly. "Now I'm asking you." He met the minister's eyes with a steady stare.
"I believe we all had a hand in failing him."
"I'm even more inclined now to go with my motive, the one that you… avoid in your sermons… that he was having sex with Mrs. Conlon."
"No he wasn't." It was a quiet answer, but a very quick one. Certain. "No. You're wrong."
Bobby nodded and paused. "Well someone was," he tossed the other man's way. "Somebody was there that morning." Bobby turned his eyes away. "Doctor left for the hospital at 5 a.m. You an early riser?"
"Yes, I am, at times." Again, a quick answer, but not so quiet this time.
"I just remembered your sermon," Bobby said, with a touch of a grin. "Would you mind giving us a sample of your DNA?" he asked. "You might as well prove now that you're not the one that had sex with Mrs. Conlon."
The minister's face was incredulous. "Fine," he said. Looking down, he added, "I'll comply with your request when you have a court order." He got up and started out of the room. "Are you satisfied?" he asked.
"Yeah, yes I am. That's what I needed." Wyler walked out and gave him an aggravated wave as he left. Bobby was left frowning at the table, reviewing the interview in his mind. He thought again of the hypocrisy.
Bobby was at his computer when Alex came back from lunch. He was reading emails, and he had a smile on his face. Alex walked over, curious. There was a picture of a young girl in a jean jacket kneeling by a bunny rabbit in a pen. The picture was titled "Me and Marty hanging out." The email was titled "Hi Uncle Bobby."
"That's my niece, she's nine," he said.
"She's cute," Alex said.
He nodded and tapped a key to close the file. Time to get back to work.
"The academic background on Mrs. Wyler? I figured her for a degree in social work. Turns out she's a speech therapist."
Bobby took the paper from Alex's hands. "Master's in Speech and Language Pathology. You know, I remember… odd speech characteristics in Paxton's interview." He was thoughtful for a moment.
"Well, yeah. Certain words, he almost stammered. Let's read it over."
Bobby added the form to his binder and went rooting for the transcript of Paxton's interview.
He and Alex saw it right away. As soon as he'd gotten nervous, he had started repeating, "Yeah, that's right."
"I wonder why," Alex mused aloud.
"It's a… compensation technique." Bobby told her. "In speech therapy, with a stammer… you have to learn a way to get around it."
Usually Alex didn't care what the source of Bobby's knowledge was, but there was something about this one that seemed personal to him. "You were in speech therapy?" she asked.
He shrugged. "My fifth grade teacher, she was… best friends with the speech therapist. I never was, you know, formally, a student, but… I saw her a few times. My problem, it would come and go."
Alex nodded. It still did.
"You know, when I was under… more stress at home or something."
Now she really understood. "She helped you?"
"Yeah, I learned to pause, to slow myself down. It works for me."
She gave him a smile and a nod. "We should tell the Captain. This could link her with Paxton." Bobby nodded and went to find Ross while Alex dug a little deeper into Alison Wyler's past.
When Bobby returned with the Captain, Alex had just gotten off the phone with the Lincoln Youth Center. "Alison Wyler mentored Kevin Paxton when he was 14, and helped him get rid of a stutter."
"Alison brings him into the family," Bobby observed quietly, "the first that he's ever had, and then the affair between Reverend Wyler and Carrie Conlon threatens to tear it apart."
"Take the Reverend out of his comfort zone," spouted Ross. "See what jogs loose."
