Mason slipped out of his coat, feeling overly warm. “How’d we end up with this family where the women are second-class citizens? At first I wrote it off as Lorenzo’s old-time culture, but damn it, it was handed down to his kids, who’ve trained their wives to hide and not speak to strangers. It’s like they were brought up in another country. I don’t fucking get it.”

Ray stared glumly at his latte.

Mason knew he hadn’t burst any bubble for Ray. He’d simply brought him back to earth. “All we can do is teach our kids to treat people well.” Mason stepped off his soapbox and scorched his tongue with a big sip of coffee. The pain felt good.

“And catch the assholes who abuse,” Ray added.

“Damn right.”

They drank in silence, looking out the window as water streamed down the glass in rivers. Puddles littered the parking lot. Not puddles, lakes. Mason eyed the hundred-foot-tall firs waving in the wind. According to the latest forecast, they were in for strong winds over the next two days. He’d rolled his barbecue into his garage before leaving for work that morning. He didn’t want the wind to turn it into a missile to blast through his glass slider to the deck.

But the biggest risk to the city and homes was the firs. Portland was thoroughly soaked. A strong windstorm after heavy rains was a recipe for disaster. Trees would topple everywhere, taking out power lines and putting fresh skylights in houses. He’d avoided buying a home with firs on the property. He’d already experienced a fir taking out the fence at his previous house. If the wind had blown a different direction, his son’s nursery would have been toast.

A chair scraped the floor and Michael Brody sat down at their table. The tall man brushed at his sleeve, sending a fine spray of water over their coffee.

“Watch it.” Mason made a show of wiping his coffee lid off with a napkin. He’d been watching the parking lot. How had he missed the reporter’s entrance?

“Brody,” Ray greeted him with a toothy smile. He liked the pushy reporter. Mason simply tolerated the man. He respected Brody because he knew how to get shit done, but he found the reporter’s laid-back view of privacy and basic law to be grating. He waited impatiently while Ray and Brody discussed the acidity and flavor of the coffee of the day.

It’s coffee! Just drink it!

Michael turned sharp green eyes on Mason as if he’d heard his thought. “Where are you at with identifying the three women from the old Forest Park killings?”

No pleasantries for me?

Mason appreciated the reporter’s directness. Brody knew better than to discuss off-topic crap with him. Ray was the one for that stuff. In an abrupt moment of clarity, Mason realized that the reporter had a powerful gift of reading people. Mason had worked for years on his skills; it was a tool that came in handy when dealing with suspects. Not for the first time, he cursed the reporter for not putting his skills where they could be utilized. Like at any police department in the state. Brody preferred to use them for his own devices.

Mason sipped his coffee, considering his words. Discussions with Brody called for discretion. “You asking because you care, or because you’re writing something?”

Brody didn’t blink. “This is for me. The old deaths are clearly tied to the new deaths, and the new deaths are tied to shots fired at the service I was at yesterday. I’m not cool with that.”

Who is?

“We’ve identified one, well, she’s ninety-nine percent identified. Her brother came forward with an inquiry that put us on the right track. Then he was murdered.”

Mason was rewarded as Brody’s eyes widened slightly.

“The Italian guy in southeast Portland?”

Did he just pull that out of his ass? What the hell? The reporter had an uncanny knack for putting two and two together. “That’s the one,” Mason admitted, fighting the urge to sulk.

Brody held his gaze for a long moment. Mason could nearly hear the gears spinning in his mind. “You know Victoria Peres asked me to help find her birth parents.”

Mason nodded.

“Her adoption was arranged by a church on the coast. This church placed quite a few babies back then. But it burned down about twenty-five years ago. At the time the property was owned by Lorenzo Cavallo. He was next on my research list when I found out this morning he’d been murdered yesterday after talking to you guys about the case. I didn’t know he’d offered information about a missing sister.”

“He ran the church?” Ray asked.

“No, just owned the land. He sold it ten years later. There’s a small strip mall in its place that struggles to hold tenants.”

“What else do you know about that old church?” Mason asked.

Brody leaned on their table, his gaze moving between Mason and Ray. “I’m not finding much. Old articles paint it as a small unique congregation. No denomination affiliation.”

“It has to belong to some branch of faith,” argued Ray.

Brody nodded. “You’d think so. It sounds like it was created more from a community of people who followed their pastor. I guess you’d call him a pastor. In my honest opinion, it’s got cult written all over it. A cult masquerading as a church. Everything seems to circle around one man.”

“Lorenzo Cavallo?” Ray asked.

Brody shook his head. “No, I think he was a member. Probably bought the land for the church. The pastor was a Cesare Abbadelli.”

“Italian?” Mason asked. Like Lorenzo Cavallo?