Sure enough, Bell, who'd taken the park, had spotted a minister walking nervously toward the school. Bell had started to tail him but was spotted so he'd peeled off. Another SWAT officer picked up and tracked him to the school. A third detective from Bell's SWAT group approached and asked about the concert, checking visually for signs of weapons, but not finding any obvious ones—and hence having no probable cause to detain and search him.

But the suspect remained under close surveillance and as soon as he was seen pulling the gun from his attaché case and starting for the decoys he was taken down.

Expecting a fake priest, they'd been surprised to find that they'd caught a real one, which the contents of Swensen's wallet confirmed—despite the contrary testimony of the embarrassingly bad sermon. Bell nodded at the H&K automatic.

"Pretty big gun for a priest," he said.

"I'm a minister."

"Meant to say."

"Ordained."

"Good for you. Now I'm wondering: I read you those rights. You want to waive your right to remain silent? Tell you, sir, you bow up to what you just did and things'll go a lot easier for you. Tell us who wanted you to kill Mr. Grady."

"God."

"Hmm," Bell said. "Okay. How 'bout anybody else?"

"That's all I'm saying to you or to anybody. That's my answer. God."

"Well, all right, let's getcha downtown now and see if He's inclined to throw bail for you."

Chapter Twenty-four

They call that music?

A thud of a drum and then the raw sound of a brass instrument rehearsing short passages penetrated Rhyme's parlor. It was coming from the Cirque Fantastique, across the street in the park. The notes were jarring and the tone gaudy and brash. He tried to ignore it and returned to his phone conversation with Charles Grady, who was thanking him for his efforts in collaring the minister who'd come to town to kill him.

Bell had just interrogated Constable, down at the Detention Center. The prisoner said he knew Swensen but had drummed him out of the Patriot Assembly over a year ago because of an "unhealthy interest" in the daughters of some parishioners.

Constable had had nothing to do with the man after that and he'd fallen in with some backwoods militiamen, according to local gossip. The prisoner adamantly denied that he knew anything about the attempted killing.

Still, Grady had arranged to have delivered to Rhyme a box of evidence from the crime scene at the Neighborhood School and one from the Reverend Swensen's hotel room. Rhyme had looked through it quickly but found no obvious connection to Constable. He explained this to Grady and added, "We need to get it to some forensic people upstate, in—what's the town?"

"Canton Falls."

"They can do some soil or trace comparisons. There might be something linking Swensen to Constable but I don't have any samples from up there."