Crosses In The Dark

The sea wind off the Atlantic worried the trees behind Saint Brigid Church, pushing damp grit under the tape line and into the collar of Carla Montez’s jacket. She stepped out of the unmarked sedan with her badge already clipped to her belt, the plastic warm from the car’s dashboard, and watched the blue-and-white lights stutter across the church façade. The sound came a second later - sirens bouncing off brick and stone, then settling into a steady hum as the officers tried to keep the crowd back.

A uniformed patrolman held the tape with one hand and a phone with the other, his expression fixed on a screen like it might explain why the dead were always found where people prayed. “Agent Montez,” he said, relief threaded through his voice. “They moved him - her - nobody touched her, but… the locals got loud.”

Carla didn’t ask who “they” were. She cut under the tape anyway, letting the fabric bite her knuckles as she passed. The grass near the front steps was pressed down in long, careless paths, as if someone had paced there for hours. Somewhere inside the church, an air vent clicked with a tired rhythm. The air smelled like wet hymnals and cold metal, the kind that rose from blood before the body was even covered.

At the doorway, a uniform pointed down the nave toward the side altar. The church was dimmer inside, the stained glass turning the world into bruised color. Carla’s flashlight beam swept over pale stone, then caught on a figure laid out with deliberate care on the floor - still dressed in the clothes she’d worn to die, still arranged like an offering rather than a crime scene.

“Jesus,” the patrolman muttered behind her.

Carla didn’t answer. She went closer, boots sinking slightly where someone had tracked in mud from the parking lot. Her gloved hand hovered above the victim’s shoulder, not touching. The woman’s skin had the cool, waxy tightness of time already moving on without permission. One arm lay across her chest, the fingers curled as if she’d tried to hold something that slipped away.

Then Carla’s light tilted - just enough - and she saw the cross.

It wasn’t a prop leaning against a wall. It was part of the display, wood and iron arranged with a precision that made her stomach tighten. A small church cross had been placed near the body, the arms facing outward like a sign meant for anyone who could look up. Someone had nailed something into the wood - dark stains, old and fresh, soaking into grain. The arrangement wasn’t messy. It was ritual.

Carla’s radio crackled in her ear. “We got a call at - ” a voice began, then broke off when Carla lifted a hand.

She didn’t need the time stamp. She needed the pattern.

Kade Kinkurk had been a name in her files for months, a rumor with teeth - childhood friend turned killer, the kind of person who didn’t just kill but staged. The bureau had said “alleged” and “unconfirmed” and “possible copycat” until Carla’s patience thinned to nothing. Now Saint Brigid’s altar floor held the kind of evidence that didn’t care about paperwork.

She turned her head toward the edge of the nave where the security officer had been standing, watching like he could will the scene into a different shape. “Who was first on scene?” she asked.

“Local priest,” he said. “Father O’Donnell. He - he was outside when the call came in. Folks were already gathering. He said he’d… he’d keep people back.”

Carla’s gaze narrowed. “And did he step inside?”

The officer hesitated, the way men did when they wanted to be honest but feared what honesty would cost. “He came in after the lights. He said the cross was already there.”

Already there. Already arranged. Already watched over by someone who should have treated it like evidence instead of a holy tableau.

Carla bent closer to the cross, careful not to disturb the victim’s position. Her flashlight traced the iron nails: evenly spaced, heads slightly flattened as if hammered with the same pressure every time. The wood was rough where the grain had been worked by hand. The victim’s clothing - fabric damp from the coastal air - had been arranged so it didn’t smear the stains. Whoever did this knew where to place things to keep the story readable.

Carla swallowed once. The taste wasn’t in her mouth, but it sat behind her teeth anyway: copper and salt, a combination her brain associated with blood and the ocean she’d grown up near. She’d never been able to explain why she remembered the taste of places she hadn’t visited. She’d chalked it up to nightmares.

Now her mind did something else, something it had never done with this case.

Images pressed at the edge of thought - wood slats, a room too bright and too cold, a voice saying words that didn’t sound like prayer. The sensation came and then retreated, leaving her with nothing concrete but a sudden, irrational certainty that she’d seen this cross before.

She jerked her attention back to the body. Her hands remained steady. Her pulse didn’t.

...