Free All the Blue-Eyed Angels by Jen Blood

of the extensive damage to the remains and the way the crime scene had been corrupted by Ashmont and his cohorts—my mother included—there was some question as to who, exactly, the investigative team had unearthed after the fire. Identification of the bodies had been slow, and because so many of the members of the Payson Church had little in the way of medical records, there had been a lot of guesswork that went into the process. Thirty-four bodies were recovered, but only thirty had been identified conclusively. The remaining four—two women and two children—were anyone’s guess.
    While this was less than confidence inspiring. I wasn’t surprised. Dr. Pratt, the Chief Medical Examiner, let me take copies of all the files she had, but based on what I’d learned so far, I didn’t expect them to reveal anything earth shattering. A dead body is a dead body is a dead body… Or so I thought at the time.
    It was after four by the time I got back from Augusta. I debated going out to the island, but decided instead to set up shop at the Trib and start going through the box of files and photocopies I’d gotten from the Fire Marshal’s office. An uncharacteristically quiet Diggs set me up in a closet-sized office with Internet access and a boxy little window overlooking the harbor, and I went to work.
    Since I’d already seen most of the official paperwork before, I focused on the investigators’ notes. There wasn’t that much to go on—they’d followed protocol, just as Flint had said. My father was a suspect early on, that much was clear, but the police apparently ruled him out thanks in large part to the alibi I’d provided.
    Or maybe not. At the bottom of a file marked “Witness Statements,” I found a copy of handwritten notes dated August 28, 1990. My mother’s name was in the upper left corner, with mine written beneath it.
    One word was written directly underneath, underlined twice:
    Lying??
    I stared at the page. The file belonged to Jim Abbott, a police detective I’d heard of before in researching the investigation. The notes were paper clipped to my mother’s official statement.
    I called Sergeant Flint. Ten minutes on hold and a transfer to records later, and I had the phone number for Jim Abbott in my hot little hand. I could get used to this whole cooperating-with-the-press thing.
    For the next several hours, I sat in my office and read reports and notes, looked at photographs, wrote down names. I borrowed Scotch tape from Diggs and began putting photos up on the walls: the barn before the fire, the barn after. The padlocked door. I taped the only photos I had of my father, Isaac, and several members of the Church just below the crime scene shots. I wrote down what I knew so far. It wasn’t much.
    May, 1976—Isaac starts the Payson Church of Tomorrow
    January, 1979—Dad joins the Church
    August, 1990—Payson Church burns
    Of course, I knew plenty beyond that, but no matter what I tried, I couldn’t make what I knew add up to the fire. I’d studied other cult suicides over the years: Jonestown, the Solar Temple, Waco… In each instance, there was always something in the dogma that gave a good idea of what the congregation had been thinking would happen when their numbers were up.
    The Payson Church was a fundamentalist, Christian church. As such, they had a very clear view on suicide. Essentially: you do it, and you never make it to the pearly gates. I remembered the Paysons. They were all about those pearly gates.
    I added another note to my timeline:
    October, 1989—I leave Payson Isle.
    I stared at the entry for a few seconds, then added one more word:
    Why?
    I tossed that question around without any major revelations until one o’clock that morning, when Diggs knocked on my door.
    “Come on—we’re going home.”
    “I’ll be there in a while. Go on without me.”
    He didn’t budge. I looked up to find him standing with his arms crossed over his chest, leaning against the wall. My