Chapter 98

Israel Cobb ejected the fifth video from his top-loading machine, a forty-year-old JVC. He put the cassette back in its cardboard sleeve and handed it to Poe.

Poe didn't want to touch it. He hadn't wanted to touch any of them, didn't think there would be enough soap in the world to scrub his hands clean. Nevertheless, he took the video and placed it into one of the evidence bags he'd brought in from his car. Just as he had done the previous four times.

So far, each video had been horrifically and gut-wrenchingly similar. The camera had started rolling when the victim was already strapped into the mercy chair. Four were hooded, one hadn't been. Cobb said they were given a choice. Poe wondered what he would have done if it had been him. Was it better to see it coming, to watch the rock all the way home? Or was it better to close your eyes and hope the first one turned your brain into mush? He hoped he would have had the courage to look his killer in the eye, scream ‘Fuck you!' as the first one was hurled, but he suspected he'd have taken the hood.

The boys were brought in and there was a moment of shock while Cornelius Green explained what he wanted them to do. Although most of them pushed back, none of them were able to stand up to Cornelius when he turned into full-on foam-flecked ranting man. Like bending a dry twig, they could only bear so much before they snapped. Poe had little trouble believing Cornelius held the same control over the Children of Job members. No doubt they had been terrified and enthralled in equal measure.

So Cornelius had ranted and panted and sprayed spittle everywhere and eventually each boy had taken the rock he offered them. Some threw them hard and fast, no doubt hoping to get it over with. Nathan Rose and the other boy aimed to kill from the first rock. Others were less sure. Maybe they hadn't played sport at school and weren't as confident with their throwing; maybe they just didn't want to hurt someone that day.

It was the gesture, a commitment to their cure that counted though.

If the boys threw one stone or ten, it didn't matter. Not to Cornelius. When the boy refused to take the next stone he was offered, really refused, Cornelius hugged him and cried with him. And after Israel Cobb had used his Stanley knife to finish off the man in the mercy chair, the three of them ignored the pooling blood and dropped to their knees to pray together.

Nathan Rose's victim was in his teens and couldn't have weighed more than eight stone. He had long, stringy hair and it sharply contrasted against Nathan's short back and sides with the neatly combed parting. He had refused the hood, the first one to do so, and as soon as he'd understood what was about to happen, he hurled venom at Cornelius, Israel and Nathan. Some of his words must have hit home as Cornelius threw Israel a roll of duct tape and told him to gag the boy. The tape was thick and adhesive, the kind Poe had called ‘black nasty' when he was in the army. He didn't know whether that was just army slang or whether it was the tape's actual name.

Nathan threw ten stones and aimed for the victim's head each time, but it was obvious he didn't believe in what he was doing. Nathan Rose was the type of man who'd married a woman he wasn't attracted to simply so he would be accepted. Poe had little doubt he stoned a man to death for the same weak reasons.

In that moment, Poe hated him for it, and he was glad he had jumped through his loft hatch with a tow rope around his neck. Poe had carried the burden of thinking he had dredged up unpleasant memories. Now he knew Nathan Rose had ended his life so he wouldn't have to deal with what was coming.

What a fucking coward. Poe didn't care that he was dead.

***

Cobb reached for the sixth and final video, Aaron Bowman's video, but Poe said, ‘New pair of gloves first, please.'

Poe had no control over the prints that were already on the videocassettes, but he could damn well make sure no more were added. As far as Poe was concerned, every single person who had watched these videos was going to prison and that meant giving forensic services the fairest possible crack of the whip. If Cobb was insisting they watched these videos before he'd tell him what had happened to Bethany Bowman, they were both going to wear rubber gloves while they handled them.

Poe wasn't sure if he'd believed Cobb when he said Bethany was dead. It could simply be a ruse to make Poe suffer the same way Cobb had no doubt suffered over the years. Poe didn't care who you were; having images such as these playing on a loop in the memory bank would turn even the sanest person crazy.

This could be Cobb's last act of spite.

But if Bethany Bowman was buried in a shallow grave, they needed to know. Not just because her body would have to be recovered, but also because she was Superintendent Nightingale's one and only suspect in Cornelius Green's murder. If Bethany Bowman was dead, not only had she not killed Cornelius, she hadn't slaughtered her family either.

Poe couldn't risk Cobb clamming up after taking legal advice. So, even though he knew these videos would undoubtedly cause untold psychological scars to manage in the not-too-distant future, he told Cobb to play the final tape.

It was time to watch the Aaron Bowman video.