A Sounding Brass Read Free Page A

face
     on the situation that she could.
    “You know what Phinehas said,” Owen reminded her now, with a little of Phinehas’s own gentleness.
    “But with him on trial tomorrow, maybe we should look at my situation again.”
    “Claire, the Elders have a lot to think and pray about right now. Please be considerate.”
    Her desire to move away and have a real life was inconsiderate? Tears burned the back of her throat as Owen stepped around
     her to shake someone else’s hand.
    She should be used to it by now—the bitter flavor of unwillingness.
    * * *
    INVESTIGATOR RAYMOND HARPER of Washington State’s Organized Crime Task Force ran his fingers through his hair and gripped his skull as he read through
     his notes early Monday morning. The district attorney’s assistant detoured around the desk temporarily on loan to him and
     dropped a pile of papers on the corner of it.
    “Your depositions came back from Transcription,” she told him. “George thought you might want a look.”
    Great. One more thing to do, one more thing keeping him in beautiful downtown Pitchford instead of back in Seattle doing what
     he’d signed up to do.
    Sexual abuse wasn’t his bailiwick—organized crime was. But two things had prodded him into taking the case: the fact that
     this religious group was statewide, which put it in the OCTF’s purview, and Tamara Traynell’s big brown eyes and the depths
     of pain he had seen in them as she’d told her story. He’d left Ross and Julia Malcolm’s dinner table that night if not a changed
     man, then certainly an angry one. He had at last understood why his partner and best friend had made busting bent religious
     groups his particular mission. Trust wasn’t Ray’s biggest fault, but it was in plenty of people—people who gave their faith
     and their money to a group and got nothing but abuse and a bunch of happy brainwashing in return.
    Which is why it puzzled him to see Ross and Julia and their daughter Kailey tripping off to church as if Ross’s daily disillusionment
     about human nature never happened. The guy must have superhuman powers of denial. Or a bigger capacity to love and forgive
     than Ray himself possessed.
    With a sigh, he closed his notebook and laid it on top of his file on Emile Johan Rausch, who thought he was going to get
     away with running cocaine over the line into Canada in the guise of horseback-riding trips, and the frustrating case of Brandon
     Boanerges, the invisible fraudster with the beautiful voice who had been driving him nuts for a year. He opened the deposition
     file for the rape case.
    This Philip Leslie guy—aka Phinehas, aka the senior minister of the group Julia, Dinah, and Tamara had belonged to—was a real
     prince. As his arresting officer, Ray had been delighted to be subpoenaed to testify against him. As far as he was concerned,
     the prosecution’s case was open and shut, but he still had to show up on the stand and say his bit about the arrest.
    He had no doubt young Tamara would hold herself together while Leslie gave her the hairy eyeball from the defendant’s chair.
     Her sister Dinah, who was also on the prosecution’s witness list, had lost her fear of the man, too. He glanced through the
     young woman’s deposition. Her answers had been clear, concise, and full of damning detail, just the way Ray liked them. In
     Prosecution 101, this girl would get an “A.”
    TRAYNELL : Phinehas is an itinerant minister, so he stays in the homes of the Elect. He would come to my room at night and have sex
     with me against my will, telling me that I was a vessel filled with love and my purpose was to give love to him so he could
     have the strength to go on preaching the gospel.
    HARPER: For how long did this go on?
    TRAYNELL: Ten years. It started when I was fourteen.
    Ray’s stomach turned over. Justice was supposed to be blind, but the people in her service didn’t have to be so impartial.
     It was a stroke of luck they’d pulled Judge