Last Breath Page 12

  After Mass, however, Chloe managed to get Brendan aside. “I need more information, Father.”

  “More?” He looked a little distracted, as if he couldn't quite shift gears from talking jovially with his parishioners to considering the threats that faced him.

  “About that young man who committed suicide.”

  “Chloe …” His gaze focused on her, as did his full attention. “You know I can't —”

  “I need to know his name, and the date and place of his death. And that's not privileged, Father. That's public record.” But she hated herself right then. For a few minutes, among the church members, he had almost looked like his old self. In a mere instant, he looked old and worn again.

  “You're right,” he said. “I could tell you that. If I knew.” He sighed and did what was for him a rare thing: He stuffed his hands into his pockets.

  “Well, you must know his name.”

  His expression became haunted. “I don't remember his full name. I honestly don't. It troubles me, Chloe. It's troubled me for a long time that I can't remember. I know he was Tom.”

  “But didn't you perform his funeral?”

  “Oh, no. Evidently his family claimed the body and took it home. In fact, I only heard about his death weeks later, when someone told me about it.”

  He looked so distressed that she almost reached out to him.

  “So many people,” he said sadly. “Over the years … You know, I was transferred five times in my twelve years in the navy. I served on three different ships, seasick every minute of every day.” He gave her a self-deprecating smile. “And there were all these young people. Amazing numbers of young people, most of whom were indistinguishable because they wore the same clothes, had the same haircuts, and had these very fresh, youthful faces. And while I got to know the members of my congregation by sight over time, there were many of them I never knew by anything except first or last name, depending. It was enough. I didn't need to know if Bill was Bill Blowden or Bill Corelli. I knew the face, and I had a name to go with it. They came and they went, and I got to know each of them a little, but the changes were so quick sometimes that things didn't get burned into my memory unless something spectacular happened. Or unless I did a lot of in-depth counseling.”

  “But wouldn't this suicide have made the young man stick in your mind?”

  “It did. But I don't know if I ever knew his last name. He would have stuck in my mind regardless. He was a very troubled young man who was wrestling with some serious things. But I didn't need to know his last name to help with that, or to listen, or to provide absolution.”

  He looked down, and she could see his fists tighten in his pockets. “I feel bad about that. Really bad. It's one of the reasons I wanted to leave the navy and come to a parish. It was enough rootlessness. I wanted names to go with faces and long-term relationships that might last a lifetime.”

  “I can understand that.”

  His smile was humorless. “Can you? You seem to avoid them like the plague.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Well, it's my turn to make you uncomfortable. Anyway, to get back to the subject of your concern, I was already on my way out of the navy when Tom turned up in my life. He struck me as a fine young man who took moral and ethical concerns seriously. He had just come into the Church, as I recall, though it was one of the other chaplains who brought him in.”

  “Where was this?”

  “Three years ago at Norfolk.”

  “And he died when?”

  “Again, I’m not sure exactly what day, but it had to have been sometime in November, two and a half years ago.”

  “That should be enough.”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  Chloe shook her head. “Because some police detectives won't take my word for anything. I’ve got to provide proof.”

  “Ah. Well, I don't see how this helps anything.”

  “It just makes it clear that the parallels are exceedingly thin. But you never know. One thing can lead to another.”

  “True. In fact, it always seems to.”

  Chloe called her office from her cell phone and got put through to Naomi.

  “You owe me, girl,” was the first thing Naomi said. “You owe me big-time.”

  “Okay, so I’ll pay for your cruise to Antarctica, far, far away from phones.”

  Naomi was silent a moment. “How did you know I want to do that?”

  “I have my methods.”

  “God, sometimes you're positively eerie. Well, it's too damn expensive.”

  “No it's not. I figure you're earning it. In fact, maybe we'll go together and tell all the drunks and criminals to give it a rest for a month.”

  Naomi laughed. “I wish. Okay, what do you need?”

  “I need to track down a death and get as much info as possible on the circumstances.”

  “Oh, piece of cake. I’ll put Dianna on it.” Dianna was their part-time investigator.

  Two minutes later, Chloe disconnected. Almost immediately, before she could do more than start her car engine, the cell phone rang. She picked it up and answered.

  “Chloe Ryder.”

  “Well, well, Ms. Chloe,” said the all-too-familiar voice of one Matt Diel. “What did the horse say?”

  “What makes you think I spoke to the horse?”

  “The fact that you're sitting parked in the lot of the church. What gives?”

  “I don't want to talk about it on the airwaves.”

  “Fair enough. I’m parked across the street from the lot. Meet you at IHOP?”

  “Can't you ever pick a place where cholesterol isn't the top item on the menu?”

  “The day I eat alfalfa sprouts will be the day I cock up my toes.”

  She sighed loudly, on purpose, wanting to give him a little dig. “Okay, okay. Which IHOP?”

  Fifteen minutes later, they were facing each other across a table in a booth.

  “We've got to stop meeting like this,” Matt said. “People are going to think we've got something going.”

  She eyed him sourly. “We never had anything going.”

  He raised his gaze to her, and for once there was nothing in his eyes except honesty. “We almost did. Once.”

  “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.”

  “Maybe. But maybe it doesn't have to be.”

  She regarded him uncomfortably and didn't say anything.

  “All right, I’m a dork,” he said. “Always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “So you don't have to. What did you find out?”

  “It was a suicide. I have my investigator tracking it down right now.”

  “A suicide? How the hell can anyone link a suicide and a murder like this one?”

  “Well, I guess it's enough that both victims spoke to the same priest, and both were gay. The vics, I mean. Not the priest.”

  “Yeah. I guess that's enough. In some minds. Not in mine, though. Why the hell would someone from the chancery pass along that garbage?”

  “Maybe because they don't know the real story. Or maybe because they don't like Father Brendan. Hell, Matt, don't ask me to explain human behavior. How many cases have you had where there was no good motivation?”

  “Too many. It would be nice if people were rational.”

  “Hah.”

  “Exactly.”

  As expected, he ordered a stack of pancakes and an extra side of sausage. Managing not to shudder, Chloe ordered coffee.

  “You know,” Matt remarked, “we could never live together.”

  “Why should we want to?”

  “That's not the issue. The issue is whether we could. And we couldn't. You shudder every time I eat.”

  “I shudder because what you're eating isn't healthy. It'll shorten your life expectancy.”

  “I’m touched,” he said after a moment.

  “Touched?”

  “You care.” He looked at her and
smiled. “Gotcha.”

  “It's only the general kind of caring I have for humanity at large.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  She didn't dignify that with an answer.

  “Say, have you heard the joke? Some college professor …” He trailed off as the waitress set his breakfast before him and refilled Chloe's coffee cup.

  “Anyway,” he continued, pouring on enough maple syrup to support the entire state of Vermont, “this professor was teaching his class about double negatives. You know, like ‘I’m not gonna not do that,’ and how the double negative makes a positive.”

  “So?”

  “So, he goes on that we use double negatives all the time to express the positive, but that nowhere in the English language is there a double positive that means a negative. And this kid in the back pipes up, ‘Yeah, right.’”

  Chloe laughed. “That's cute.”

  “I don't know if it's a true story, but I like it anyway.”

  Matt had always liked wordplay, Chloe remembered. In the past he'd driven her almost nuts with his constant punning. Sitting in the car with him for hours on end sometimes left her feeling frustrated beyond words because everything she said drew a pun out of him. But it had also been funny. The thing was, back then he wouldn't ever let anyone get serious around him. It was as if the wordplay was a way to divert everyone.

  She thought about that while he dug into his meal, and tried not to think about those pancakes clogging his arteries.

  “Okay,” he said, swallowing. “We've got a suicide and a murder that someone is trying to link. Ergo, we have someone with a huge grudge against your Father Brendan. It might be really interesting if we could figure out who's involved in this little vendetta.”

  “Good luck. The silence from the Church can sometimes be thunder.”

  “I know. But whoever's doing this has prior knowledge of Father Brendan because the information isn't in his file at the chancery.”

  “Right. So I’m thinking it's someone he knew back in the navy.”

  “Exactly. How many thousands would that be?”

  “Quite a few, according to him. He told me this morning that he got transferred five times.” But then she cocked her head. “However, it's likely that this person knew him at his last station. Otherwise, he or she wouldn't know about the suicide.”

  “Bingo.” He smiled at her. “I always thought you should've stayed on the force. You'd make a hell of a detective.”

  “Well, it became a little difficult.”

  “Yeah.” He frowned. “It's too damn bad you were married to a cop. Any other Joe, and they'd all have been on your side.”

  Chloe was glad she hadn't ordered anything to eat, even dry toast. Something she'd put firmly behind her had come up twice in less than twelve hours, and she was beginning to feel as taut as a bowstring. “Matt …”

  “I know. You don't like to think about it. But you know what? I can't help thinking about it. I remember how you were back then. Well, before you married that jerk, anyway. And I see what all that did to you, and it's just not something I can ignore.”

  “I’m okay.”

  He shook his head and pushed aside the calories, reaching instead for the black coffee. “You're not okay. Any jerk who knew you then can see that. I’ve noticed it every time we've run across each other for the last eight years. You're getting by, sweetie, but you ain't living.”

  “Please don't call me sweetie.”

  He shrugged. “Whatever. Fact is, you've gone so far away inside yourself that it'd take an ice pick to get to you.”

  She didn't answer. She couldn't answer. For the first time in a long, long time, she was feeling something, something so strong that it filled her throat with a painful lump and wouldn't let words come. She almost hated him for causing her to react.

  “I’m still working on it, you know.” He spoke as if oblivious of her reaction, but Chloe had a feeling he wasn't. Even with her features frozen, she feared something was showing in her eyes. And Matt missed very little.

  “On the murder,” he explained when she didn't speak. “I’m going to find that son of a bitch and clear your name completely.”

  She managed to clear her throat. “It's been a long time. It's a cold, dead trail.”

  “Maybe. But that doesn't mean I have to stop trying. And I’m not going to.”

  Chloe had absolutely no hope that Matt would find her husband's murderer after all this time. She'd learned to live with that, and she refused to accept any other possibility at this late date. Matt had managed to clear her enough that she'd been able to get on with her life. That was sufficient.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I shouldn't have brought it up. But sometimes … sometimes, Chloe, it just plain hurts to look at you.”

  She had to fight to keep the ice around her heart from cracking, a crack that would allow her feelings to pour through. “Then don't look at me.”

  He surprised her by laughing. “It's kinda hard not to. But okay, back to bidness. These rumors are coming up at the same time as a terrible murder. I don't think it's a coincidence. Either we've got someone taking advantage of the current situation, or we've got someone who is in some way involved. You get my drift?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And we have a chancery that wouldn't talk if we put hot needles under their fingernails, so we're not going to get any answers there.”

  “I can virtually guarantee that.”

  He reached for his plate again and ate another mouthful of pancake. “So we gotta find this suicide, and see what links we might be able to make.”

  “I agree.”

  He looked at her, his eyes sparkling. “So what do you say, Chloe? Maybe it's time we started working together, as partners. Two heads are always better than one.”

  “Your bosses —”

  “Screw my bosses. They don't have to know.”

  “Matt, you could get into serious trouble. Sharing an official investigation with a civilian is not a minor peccadillo.”

  “Again, they don't have to know you're anything except a source in the parish. But I’ll tell you something, Chloe. Something I haven't told anyone else. There's an odor to this that's really bugging me. You know I’m not a religious man, and I know that's always wound your crank, but even so, the thought of crucifying somebody in a church really sets my hackles up. It's more than a nasty murder.”

  “Yes,” she agreed quietly, “it is.”

  “And I’d really like to be able to sleep again. This damn case is waking me up in the middle of the night, and I’m tired of it. So instead of quid pro quo, let's just put our heads together and solve this damn thing.”

  Her agreement was simple. “I hope this doesn't cost you your job.”

  Chapter 13

  The call came late at night. It was there on his voice mail when Brendan returned to the rectory around ten, having attended a somewhat uncomfortable meeting of the pastoral council, which seemed to be looking at him through a changed lens.

  Dominic was still out, tending to a hospital emergency. Sister Phil, who was his guard dog this evening, had stationed herself downstairs until Dominic returned.

  This was the first time Brendan had been alone since seven that morning, and he didn't even want to reach for the telephone. He needed time to pray and reflect, and sort through his thoughts and feelings. But first, duty called. He settled at his personal desk with a notepad and reluctantly reached for the phone, bracing himself for the litany of grief, anger, and problems that were invariably waiting on his voice mail. Ordinarily these calls reminded him he could be useful. Tonight they felt like an intolerable burden.

  He punched in his code, and the litany began. He scrawled down names and phone numbers, and made small notes of the problems mentioned and how urgent they were. Some of these calls could be answered tomorrow or the day after when time permitted. Some might well need to be answered tonight. Some he couldn't tell; all they said was, “I need to talk to you. Please
call me.” Those he marked for answering that evening or tomorrow morning, just in case.

  And then came the one that froze his blood. A whispery, raspy voice filled his ear. “It's your turn. Say your last prayers, priest.”

  Quickly, Brendan punched the number to save the message. Then he put down the receiver with a trembling hand.

  A moment later, shock fled, replaced by anger. Enough was enough.

  The group gathered again in the rectory parlor: Phil, Dominic — who had just returned — Matt, Chloe, and Brendan. They sat on the uncomfortable armchairs and listened as Brendan described the call.

  “I need a recording of it,” Matt said.

  “I can do that,” Brendan agreed. “I’ll punch it up for you, but I don't have a tape recorder.”

  Matt reached into his suit jacket pocket and held up a minicassette recorder. “I do. It balances the cell phone in the other pocket.”

  No one smiled.

  “Is the call time-stamped?” Matt asked.

  “Yes, time and date.”

  “Where were you when it was placed?”

  “At a meeting of the pastoral council.” He shook his head a little as if the memory wasn't a particularly good one.

  “People can testify to that?”

  “Seven of them, at least.”

  “Okay.” Matt stuffed the recorder back into his pocket. “That's good enough for me.”

  “But that doesn't solve the problem,” Dominic remarked. “If someone wants to kill Brendan, we've got to find this maniac.”

  “Obviously,” Matt said acerbically.

  Dominic spread his hands apologetically. “Sorry, I wasn't questioning you, just wondering what we can do to help Brendan.”

  “Well, first,” said Matt, “I need to put a trace on all incoming calls to that line.”

  “No.” Brendan's voice was firm.

  “No?” Matt raised his eyebrows. “Father, forgive me, but are you nuts?”

  “Maybe so,” Brendan said, annoyance creasing his brow, “but the fact remains that I don't want you checking up on every parishioner who calls me with a personal problem. Or worse, questioning them.”

  “But —”

  “No buts,” he said. “People have a right to call a priest without having to fear that the cops are going to get their phone numbers.”