“You touched a nerve.”

“Maybe. I hope so.” He sighed. “And I also talked to Erika Mann.”

“Who is she?”

Rafe opened his e-mail with a shake of his head. “The reporter who followed the Herbert Hampton story back in the late eighties.” He showed her the e-mail from Zoya. “Bunker found her.”

“‘I hope this shuts you up,’” Mercy read. “‘Jeff was up all night searching online archives from L.A. newspapers. Erika Mann is the reporter you need to talk to. Here is her current contact information. You’re welcome very much.’” She looked up with a wince. “Ouch. Zoya is pissed with you.”

“Maybe I deserve it.” He sighed when Mercy lifted her brows. “Fine, I deserve it.”

She patted his thigh. “Spoken like a man who’s exhausted all of his plausible defense strategies. What did Ms. Mann say?”

“Mostly what Amos said. She had a few more things to add. Hampton’s résumé falsifications included claims that he’d graduated from Yale’s Divinity School and had a PhD from UC Berkeley. Neither school had heard of him when she investigated.”

“Who spilled the beans initially?”

“This is where it gets interesting. One of the members of the church—a college-aged kid—got suspicious because he was studying at UC Berkeley and they didn’t have the program that Hampton claimed had awarded his degree. The kid asked his professor about it and the prof got curious. The professor checked with the registrar and discovered that there was no record of Hampton having ever attended. He then called Yale and found the same thing. He told the kid, who called the church elders. Specifically one Amos Terrill, who she described as an elderly man with an almost fanatical devotion to Pastor Hampton.”

“Amos’s grandfather.” Mercy frowned. “And then what happened?”

“Terrill didn’t believe the college kid, according to Ms. Mann. Then the church split, just like Amos described. And then the whistle-blower kid was the victim of a ‘random beating’ outside an all-night diner near his parents’ house in L.A.”

Mercy gasped. “Oh my God. Amos wouldn’t do that.”

At least Rafe could give her comfort on that point. “No, the grandfather had died and Amos had disappeared by then. So had Hampton. But even after Hampton left, the members who’d finally successfully ousted him wanted justice. The boy’s family was part of this group and they were actively searching for Hampton and calling him a crook. The kid graduated from Berkeley and became a reporter. Ms. Mann said she mentored him and he had a lot of promise. He was determined to see Hampton brought to justice. He’d even started looking for him. But after the beating, he retreated and left town. She doesn’t know where he is, but thinks he changed his name to throw his attackers off the trail, because his parents’ house was torched a few days after the beating.”

“Wow. Amos said it got vicious, but that’s worse than I expected.”

“I know. Mann says that he told her he was afraid for his parents, that seeing Hampton in jail wasn’t worth their lives. She got the impression that whoever beat him up had threatened his family too, but he wouldn’t confirm it to her.”