Page 39 of In Her Prayers

The killer stood motionless, his spectacled eyes peering from the thicket across the street from his home.He pressed his back against the rough bark of an ancient oak, its gnarled branches casting a web of shadows on the ground.His breathing was shallow and controlled as he observed the officers moving through the rooms where he had lived for many years.

From his concealed vantage point, Larry Clark watched Sheriff Graves and her deputy as they departed, leaving behind a quartet of officers.His eyes narrowed, a predatory focus in his gaze.

He knew precisely what they had found in his home—a sacred space violated now by prying eyes, with four picture frames hung on a wall.Three were occupied by the portraits of those whose voices he still heard resonating through the chambers of St.Michael’s Church.And then there was the fourth frame, its vacancy an open invitation to fate.The revelation clenched at his heart with a cold hand—the realization that his role as the orchestrator of the carillon’s hidden symphony was nearing its final cadence.

Larry’s mind raced back to yesterday, when whispers of the gruesome discoveries in St.Michel’s had begun to unsettle Trentville—two bodies unearthed, their resting places within the church walls no longer a secret kept by stones and silence.The realization had struck him like a tolling bell; the law was already striking at the heart of his life’s work.

At the previous night’s parish meeting, he had gauged the investigation’s progress.The sheriff, Jenna Graves, with those eyes that seemed to pierce through lies and facades, had been there, mingling with the concerned townsfolk.Larry had approached her, feigning the same worry that troubled his neighbors, searching her gaze for any flicker of suspicion.But it wasn’t there—not yet.

He’d analyzed the subtle tilt of her head, the way her eyes scanned the crowd—nothing betrayed a direct link to him.For the moment, he was just another face in the sea of parishioners seeking comfort in shared grief.He’d walked away from the conversation with a sense of relief, clinging to the hope that maybe he could remain obscured a while longer.

But now, as he watched those silhouettes through the dimly lit windows of his house, Larry knew that his borrowed time was evaporating.And he could guess what fatal piece of evidence had betrayed him once and for all.It was that class ring he’d foolishly left behind when he’d walled up Caroline Weber in the closet in the Sunday School room.He should have removed it somehow, even if it meant ripping up the drywall, retrieving the ring, and sealing up the enclosure all over again.But now it was too late.His heart slowed to a heavy, methodical thud—a metronome counting down the final moments of his freedom.

He closed his eyes, lost in memory, back to a time when innocence had not yet been consumed by compulsion.He was ten, wide-eyed and eager as he became Kip Selves’ apprentice.It was under Kip’s tutelage that he first learned the delicate art of tuning pianos, but more sinister lessons as well.

Kip had a theory, one that fascinated young Larry—that the carillon, with its majestic chime, could be revitalized and enhanced with the essence of purity and beauty if the right voices were sealed within the church walls.This belief, whispered in the dusty confines of the repair shop, became a doctrine for Larry, a sacred truth.Kip spoke of it with such conviction that Larry, in his youthful naivety, never questioned the moral precipice they skirted.

The memory of Rachel Cavanaugh crept into Larry’s thoughts.She was the first; her voice had been an angelic lure, leading Kip to fixate on her with an unholy passion.Larry remembered standing unseen, watching Kip’s hands move with grim purpose as he wrapped them around Rachel’s slender neck.Her eyes, filled with terror, haunted Larry even now.

He had been the dutiful assistant, handing Kip the strips of drywall and joint compound as they worked to conceal Rachel’s body in the closet at the back of the nave.The work was methodical, each piece measured and cut with precision—a perverse mimicry of the meticulous care Larry took when tuning the keys of a piano.

As they had plastered over the final seam, sealing Rachel away, Larry had felt the first stirring of what would become his life’s obsession.With each layer of spackle, each smoothing stroke of the putty knife, he had been anointed into Kip’s legacy.

The deed done, the conspirators had stood in the silence of the church, the weight of their actions settling around them like dust.In the years that followed, as Larry grew from apprentice to master, the vibrant song of the carillon bells served as a constant reminder of the pact he had entered.

The first time he had heard the carillon after Rachel Cavanaugh’s death, he recognized a difference in its chimes.They seemed richer, fuller, as if her soprano voice had indeed joined the bells.It had been a sound of pure, resonant beauty, a symphony that validated their sinister deed.Beside him, Kip had nodded in silent approval, their shared secret binding them closer than any spoken word could.

That initial rush, the thrill of their dire sacrament, it was intoxicating.However, within days, that heady triumph had been quashed by Kip’s sudden collapse—a stroke that robbed him of speech and movement, leaving him confined to a sterile hospital bed.

Larry remembered sitting beside Kip in the pallid room that smelled of antiseptic and stale air.The man who had been both mentor and co-conspirator could only communicate through strangled gasps and the desperate flitting of his eyes.But even in his diminished state, Kip had conveyed one final command: find more voices for the carillon.Keep the sound beautiful.

The duty had fallen upon Larry, who straddled the cusp of adulthood with an old man’s burden.Twice since then, he had obeyed—Ezra Shore and Caroline Weber had followed Rachel into silence, their unique timbres absorbed by the carillon.Both times, Larry had selected carefully, listened intently, and acted ruthlessly.With each act, he fortified the chorus that sang from the tower, a macabre ensemble known only to him.

A year prior to Caroline’s visit, he had hidden a microphone within the nave’s intricate woodwork to capture the voices that wandered unwittingly into his domain.She’d entered the church one quiet midnight, her voice rising in a spontaneous rehearsal, unaware that Larry just happened to be haunting the tower on that very night.

With her sultry alto and dreams of blues stardom, her voice had been nothing short of a revelation.The microphone had transmitted every note, every nuance of her performance to Larry high in the tower.He had responded, coaxing the bells to mimic her melody.It was a call she could not ignore.

When curiosity brought her to the spiral staircase that led to him, Larry had been ready.He remembered her ascent, each step resonating like the ticking of destiny’s clock.The look of wonder in her eyes when she realized the bells had echoed her song—a look that transformed into horror as he made his move.In the struggle that followed, her voice was extinguished but immortalized as he had desired.

The task completed, he’d secreted her away, adding her to the church’s hidden choir along with Ezra, the wandering minstrel he’d ensnared years earlier.In the aftermath, Larry would ascend to the bell tower, listening as the carillon sang with new depth.He’d heard Ezra’s folk strains and Caroline’s blues notes weaving into the bronze chorus, enriching the resonance that spilled over Trentville.

For years, he had curated the chorus of the bells, each victim’s voice a note in the grand arrangement that only he could hear.But now, as the inevitability of capture loomed over him, a profound sadness washed through Larry’s being.Not for the lives he had taken, nor for the punishment that awaited him, but for the music that would cease to evolve under his guardianship.He had kept the promise made to a dying man, but what would become of the carillon’s song without him?Who would understand the delicate balance between life and sound as he did?

Yet, a spark of resolve flickered within Larry’s spectacled eyes.There was one last task to complete, an act that would ensure his legacy endured beyond the reach of handcuffs and prison bars.His confidence swelled as he considered the third body, still secreted away where prying eyes had yet to intrude.

Larry’s anticipation grew.Tonight, he mused, the spirits enshrined within St.Michael’s walls would awaken to play their part in the eternal concert.While the town slept unaware, the dead would serenade Trentville once more in a way that even Larry had never before imagined.He, the conductor of the deceased, prepared to cue the opening chord of a spectral recital.

He clutched the old key in his pocket—the one that unlocked a forgotten door—and a faint smile played across his lips.Larry fingered the key in his pocket.The door it unlocked hadn’t been opened by anyone for many years now, not even by him.It led into a long-neglected little corridor that connected with the tower.

He hoped his key still worked.With luck and stealth, he ought to be able to enter the tower without anybody noticing.

“Tonight,” he thought, “the dead will make their own music.”And with that cryptic promise, the old piano tuner slipped away from the oak tree and into the embrace of the night.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

“Larry Clark,” Jenna muttered as she drove her patrol car through the night streets of Trentville.“We know it’s him, but he’s become a ghost.”

“But we’ll get him.”Jake replied.“We have to.”

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