Unholy Shepherd by Robert Christian (rooftoppers txt) 📕

in your army to continue in your name on to victory. As your perfect blood delivered us from the sin of Adam, so now shall the blood of the unblemished serve to cleanse all wickedness from this place. Receive these sacrifices as a sign of our unending devotion to you, Lord and Savior. Amen.”

She watched through the eyes as the hands delicately fingered the fringes of the cloth covering the altar, tracing each intricately stitched design. She had a bizarre feeling filling her, yet she struggled to put words to it. Lust, maybe? Could a person lust for a holy object? Whatever it was, the feeling unsettled her own mind enough to begin to pull away from the trappings of the dream. The scene began to fade into inky blackness, but she did hear one last sound: the sound of a telephone ringing somewhere overhead.

Maureen’s eyes flew open, and she sat bolt upright on the detective’s couch, searching all around for any sign of him or his phone. When none could be found, she realized that the ringing was coming from her dream and cursed herself for pulling away when she did. If she could have stared through the killer’s eyes for longer, it was possible that she could have listened in on his conversation and gotten his identity.

“Of course it couldn’t be that easy,” she mumbled to herself as she clambered off the couch and slunk down the hall toward the bathroom. She rubbed the fog out of her eyes as she went, tiptoeing as softly as she could so as not to wake the detective. His bedroom door was closed as she passed it. She stopped briefly, listening for any sound of him sleeping; maybe he was a snorer. His room was as silent as the hall that surrounded her.

Maureen began to wonder if he’d gone out, maybe on some errand for the FBI. She eased the bedroom door open and crept inside, overcome by a strange curiosity. She’d been in the room before to change, of course, but she had never done any proper snooping. The idea of finding something that would help her know him better—or make fun of him—was too tantalizing to resist.

The bed was empty, the sheets were mussed up, and the pillows were strewn about. The outfit the detective wore the previous day was lying on the floor near the corner, next to the hamper, which was nearly full itself. Aside from that, the detective’s room was relatively tidy.

Maureen carefully walked over to the dresser opposite the bed. She slowly opened the top drawer. It was full of neatly folded T-shirts, some printed with sports teams and some embroidered with raised designs that looked like the tattoos she’d seen on the arms of juiced-up meatheads at the gym. She could picture the detective wearing the shirts as a college student, doing bicep curls in front of a mirror. He looked like an idiot in her mind, and the faces she imagined him making made her laugh out loud.

She continued to rummage through his drawers, though she had no clue what she was looking for. She knew it was an invasion of privacy, and if she stopped to think, that was probably the reason she was doing it. He knew so much about her, and now it was time for her to know about him.

Maureen was looking through the detective’s sock drawer, hoping she’d find his porn collection or something else to throw a shadow over his squeaky-clean persona, when she lifted a pair of wool socks in the back to reveal a pistol. It didn’t look like the standard issue service weapon that she had seen him wearing day after day. She reasoned that it must be his backup weapon. She had heard most cops had them.

She stared at the gun for several moments, transfixed by it. Before she knew what she was doing, she grabbed it out of the drawer and ran out into the living room, stuffing it in the bottom of her pillowcase and covering it with the rest of her dirty clothes. She rationalized her actions by telling herself that before she was through in this town, she might need it. And if she ever needed to fire a gun, it might go better for her if it was one registered to an officer.

Maureen stood up and paced around the living room. She still could not detect any sound of movement in the house, and it was making her feel uneasy. She decided that a little television would take the edge off, so she stuffed her pillowcase underneath the couch, sat down, and grabbed the remote. After flipping through the channel guide for a minute, she decided on one of the home improvement and craft shows she’d heard talked about by patrons at any number of the bars and restaurants she’d worked at. She didn’t understand why people liked watching things like that, but figured that she could at least turn her brain off for a while. It would be the closest thing to therapeutic she could get at the moment.

She was in the middle of her third episode of the same show and wondering why the couple on the television would worry about something as trivial as the color of the kitchen counter tops when they could afford a half-million-dollar home, when the front door opened and the detective walked in. He was wearing a pair of jeans with his badge clipped on the belt, a shirt and tie, and a sport coat. He had shaved and put gel in his hair. He was probably trying to look impressive. In his hand was a thin booklet of papers bound with a plastic ring.

“Where did you go all dressed up?” Maureen asked. She tried to make her question sound as sarcastic as possible, to hide the fact that she was glad he was back and it was no longer just her in the house.

“Getting this,” he said holding up