More Twisted

what’s greed nowadays? And I figured it was Enron, Tyco, CEOs, internet moguls . . . . And Cahill Industries.”
    Silverman nodded slowly. Robert Cahill was the former head of a huge agri-business complex. After selling that company he’d turned to real estate and had put up dozens of buildings in the county. The man had just been indicted for tax evasion and insider trading.
    “Successful farmer,” Silverman mused. “Has a big windfall and gets in trouble. Sure. Just like the parable.”
    “It gets better,” the minister said excitedly. “There was an editorial in the paper a few weeks ago—I tried to find it but couldn’t—about Cahill. I think the editor cited a coupleof Bible passages about greed. I can’t remember which but I’ll bet one of them was Luke twelve, fifteen.”
    Standing on the intake loading dock, Silverman watched the van carrying Randy Pease arrive. The detective and the guard looked around them carefully for any signs of threats as the armored vehicle backed in. Everything seemed clear. The detective knocked on the back door, and the witness and his bodyguard hurried out onto the intake loading dock. The van pulled away.
    Pease started complaining immediately. He had a small cut on his forehead and a bruise on his cheek from the attack at the safe house but he moaned as if he’d fallen down a two-story flight of stairs. “I want a doctor. Look at this cut. It’s already infected, I can tell. And my shoulder is killing me. What’s a man gotta do to get treated right around here?”
    Cops grow very talented at ignoring difficult suspects and witnesses, and Silverman hardly heard a word of the man’s whiny voice.
    “Cahill,” Silverman said, turning back to the minister. “And what do you think that means for us?”
    “Cahill owns high-rises all over town. I was wondering if the way you’re going to drive your witness to the courthouse would go past any of them.”
    “Could be.”
    “So a sniper could be on top of one of them.” The reverend smiled. “I didn’t actually think that up on my own. I saw it in a TV show once.”
    A chill went through Silverman’s spine.
    Sniper?
    He lifted his eyes from the alley. A hundred yards awaywas a high-rise from whose roof a sniper would have a perfect shot into the intake loading dock where Silverman, the minister, Pease and the two guards now stood. It could very well be a Cahill building.
    “Inside!” he shouted. “Now.”
    They all hurried into the corridor that led to the lockup and Pease’s babysitter slammed the door behind them. Heart pounding from the possible near miss, Silverman picked up a phone at the desk and called the captain. He told the man the reverend’s theory. The captain said, “Sure, I get it. They shoot up the safe house to flush Pease, figuring they’d bring him here and then put a shooter on the high-rise. I’ll send a tactical team to scour it. Hey, bring that minister by when you’ve got Pease locked down. Whether he’s right or not, I want to thank him.”
    “Will do.” The detective was miffed that the brass seemed to like this idea better than the anagrams, but Silverman’d accept any theory as long as it meant keeping Pease alive.
    As they waited in the dim corridor for the lockup to empty out, skinny, stringy-haired Pease began complaining again, droning on and on. “You mean there was a shooter out there and you didn’t fucking know about it, for Christ’s sake, oh, sorry about the language, Father. Listen, you assholes, I’m not a suspect, I’m the star of this show, without me—”
    “Shut the hell up,” Silverman snarled.
    “You can’t talk to me—”
    Silverman’s cell phone rang and he stepped away from the others to take the call. “’Lo?”
    “Thank God you picked up.” Steve Noveski’s voice was breathless. “Where’s Pease?”
    “He’s right in front of me,” Silverman told his partner. “He’s okay. There’s a tac team looking for shooters in the building up the street. What’s up?”
    “Where’s that reverend?” Noveski said. “The desk log doesn’t show him signing out.”
    “Here, with me.”
    “Listen, Mike, I was thinking—what if the CI didn’t leave that message from the Bible.”
    “Then who did?”
    “What if it was the hit man himself? The one Doyle hired.”
    “The killer? Why would he leave a clue?”
    “It’s not a clue. Think about it. He wrote the biblical stuff himself and left it near the body, as if the CI had