Twisted Reason Read Online Free Page A

and looked up as Reverend Wrigley descended the stairs with a furrowed brow and a harsh frown. “Reverend?” she said.
    He jerked to a stop with a gasp. “Lieutenant, you startled me.”
     “Sorry, sir. I do need to ask you a few questions.”
    “You know, ma’am, as the family’s spiritual and marital counselor, I have to hold everything they told me in strictest confidence.”
    “So, Vicki and Eric needed marriage counseling.”
    “I didn’t say that,” Wrigley objected.
    “Not exactly. But you did say, and I quote, that you were their ‘marital counselor’. Now, it seems to me, Reverend, that unless they needed help with their marriage, you wouldn’t be filling that role.”
    “There was nothing wrong with their marriage, it was just that . . . I can’t say anything more. Please. No more questions,” he said, holding up open palms in front of his chest.
    “Okay. Nothing more about their relationship. What about Edgar Humphries?”
    “What about him?”
    “Did he attend your church?”
    “He did when he first moved in with his son.”
    “When was that?”
    “About two and a half years ago as I recall.”
    “So he lived here for two years before he disappeared?”
    “Something like that.”
    “But then he stopped attending church?”
    Wrigley sighed. “We allowed him to serve the same function in our church as he did in his former church in Nelson County. He was an usher. He was responsible for handing out the church bulletin before the church service and helping pass the collection plates to accept the gifts the congregation bestows upon us in exchange for my spiritually uplifting message. Then one Sunday after finishing the final pew, he just kept walking out the door. Eric found him a couple of blocks away. The collection plate was nearly empty – he’d been handing out the money to the people he met in the street as if it belonged to him and not to God.”
    Lucinda swallowed hard to keep a spontaneous laugh from erupting. She didn’t think the good reverend would appreciate her sense of humor. “He stopped coming after that?”
    “Not right away. At first, we just took away his responsibilities. But even though we welcomed him into the bosom of our church as a member, not participating as an usher seemed to agitate him. He complained about it each Sunday when he shook my hand after the service but he didn’t do anything more. Then during one service, he bolted out of his seat, ran up and down the aisles and tried to forcefully remove the collection plates out of ushers’ hands. Coins, bills and checks went everywhere. A couple of kids started crying when they got hit in the face by flying quarters, dimes and nickels. It was so disruptive and, of course, so terribly tragic. God bless that poor man.” He folded one palm across the other and bowed his head.
    Something about the retelling of the event and his assumption of the pious pose seemed phoney to Lucinda. She suspected it was how he played his congregation to feed his own ego. Irritation scratched dissonance into her voice. “Well, did you at least minister to him here at home?”
    “He never asked for me, the poor man, not once.”
    “That’s lame, preacher man. He was a lost soul. You could have responded to that without an invitation,” she sneered. “Here’s my card. You think of anything that can help my investigation, give me a call.”
    “I’ll pray for you,” he said in a meek tone of voice.
    “Quite frankly, sir, a good lead would be far more productive.”
    He stared at her with pity-filled eyes. Lucinda feared he’d fall to his knees and break into prayer for her immortal soul right where he stood. Instead, he broke his gaze with a sigh, turned and walked outside without saying another word. She mentally labeled and filed him under ‘hypocritical blowhard’.
    The card she’d given him lay abandoned on the floor where he stood. She bent to pick it up and became aware of small sounds of movement in the