Last Breath Read online

  He tried not to look toward the altar, toward the changes that were a reminder of what had happened, but his gaze was drawn there nonetheless, as if by a powerful magnet. His heart squeezed with anguish, and he fell into deep, questioning prayer, demanding answers from God.

  God rarely answered, of course. The Divine Plan was inscrutable, leaving a man with little to cling to except shreds of blind faith. And right now, the usual answers about how suffering drew one closer to Christ, about how every agony yielded grace and eventually became a source of strength, weren't working for Brendan anyway.

  This time he wanted, needed, to know why. He needed a reason. He needed some explanation of why such a beautiful young life had been cut so short in such a terrible, meaningless fashion. It wasn't that he hadn't seen young lives cut short before. He'd lost count of the times he'd buried a young person who had died in an accident, or a fight, or from illness.

  But there was something about this time, something so horrible, that he needed an answer.

  No voice thundered from on high. No bush burned in the night for him.

  But suddenly, as if from nowhere, a gentle peace filled him. It was as if unseen, loving arms wrapped around him, as if a quiet flood of tenderness filled his heart, driving away all the pain and horror.

  That night, he slept easily for the first time since the murder had been discovered.

  Victor Singh paused to wipe the sweat from his brow with a thin towel, then went back to work with the cordless saw. His white T-shirt was smudged with black, from hours of wrestling with old tires. He was nearly done with the saw. Then he'd feed the tires into the chipper to produce a mulch of old rubber.

  He could have bought the mulch. It was commonly used in playgrounds and parks, in place of cedar shavings. But his contact had said no. That would leave a paper trail. Instead, he'd had to go to landfills, looking for battered junk cars from which he could salvage the tires. He hadn't needed many — two dozen or so, his contact had said. That would make enough mulch.

  A mulch which, when burned, would produce a thick, acrid, oily smoke. That smoke itself might be enough to cause respiratory problems for an old person, or a young child, or someone who was ill already. But that wasn't the point. It was merely a medium. A way to make his real payload hang in the air to cause maximum damage.

  It was, he thought, terrifyingly simple to make a chemical weapon.

  Chapter 8

  The killer looked across the breakfast table at his wife, who was reading the newspaper. He was annoyed, because she had gotten to it before he had, and he was impatient to learn if there was any follow-up information about that kid's killing.

  “Terrible,” Jo said. “It's just terrible.”

  “What is?” he asked between his teeth. He was so tense he could barely sip his coffee.

  Jo looked at him, her graying hair still a mess from bed. “What is your problem this morning? You sound like you want to kill somebody.”

  His heart slammed, even though he knew she was totally unaware. “I’m just irritable,” he answered. “What's so damn terrible?”

  “The crucifixion of that young man. Can you believe anyone would do such a terrible thing? Such a blasphemous thing.”

  Count on Jo to find it blasphemous. Living with a Bible-thumping Fundamentalist was not the best way to spend more than thirty years. “Obviously someone did it,” he answered shortly. “Do they say who?”

  Because he knew he hadn't done that part. And he was going nuts from wondering who had seen him. And why they had done this to the body.

  Jo turned a couple of pages and read, leaving him ready to strangle her as he waited.

  “No, they have no leads. But they do say he was dead before he was nailed to the cross.”

  The killer gritted his teeth. “That's all?”

  “That's all they're saying.” Jo turned a couple of more pages, reaching the op-ed page. “Blasphemy,” she said again. “Even if it was a Catholic church.”

  “Well,” he said, “you might remember that our son was Catholic.”

  “Oh, that was just rebellion,” she said blithely, folding the paper so she could read more easily. “He'd have come back into the fold eventually. People always return to their roots.”

  The killer didn't have any roots in religion, but he didn't bother to point that out. It would only lead to another lecture about the state of his soul.

  Jo looked up at him with a smile. “Would you like the sports section, dear?”

  “What makes you think the priest knows anything?” the watcher demanded of the two men in the sun-filled room with him. The nameless men. “If he did he's had more than two years to blow the whistle.”

  The taller of the two men turned toward the window and puffed on his cigar. The other, seated on a mass-produced cheap hotel chair, rapped his fingers on the veneered tabletop. “He knows. He just doesn't know he knows.”

  The watcher felt a surge of annoyance. “How can you be sure? Look, if I’m going to keep this going, you've got to tell me more. You say there's a deadline. You say there's a priest who knows something, and you're using a loose cannon to remove him so there won't be a trail. But then you say the priest has known all along. It's not adding up.”

  The man with the cigar turned from the window. “This wouldn't be a good time to get an attack of conscience,” he said. The words chilled the air in the room.

  “I’m not getting an attack of conscience,” the watcher said. “I’m with this plan, you know it. Have you ever had reason to question my loyalty?” But he was sweating a little around his hairline. He hated getting crosswise with these guys; he knew what they were capable of.

  The man with the cigar turned back toward the window, as if forgetting all about the watcher. The other man drummed his fingers again: shave and a haircut, two bits. A familiar rhythm. Once a lifesaving signal for the man at the table. The watcher knew that much about him.

  “No, he's right,” the man at the table replied. “He's right. There's an unexpected wrinkle here, which,” he added, looking at the watcher, “we're investigating.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The priest,” continued the man at the table, “was a close confidante of one of our operatives a few years ago.”

  “He turned the guy,” said the man at the window.

  “We had to eliminate the operative,” added the man at the table.

  “Why didn't you just take out the priest, too?”

  The man at the table shook his head. “We couldn't get to him. By the time we found out about the priest, he was in a monastery, in seclusion. Those monks guard each other better than the Secret Service guards the president.” He gave a raspy laugh. “Hell, we couldn't even get to have a word with him. He was observing a vow of silence, they said. He didn't talk to anybody, and he never came out of the monastery.”

  “So he wasn't really a problem.”

  “Not then. But then we discovered he's left the monastery and is here … in Tampa. And that's too much of a damn coincidence. Even if he hasn't figured things out for himself yet, he will once things start happening. And he'll know too much.”

  “Exactly,” said the man at the window. He blew another cloud of smoke. “We've got nine days to eliminate him. The plans are in motion, and we can't call them back. I want that priest out of the picture.” He turned and smiled coldly. “And I don't give a damn about your back.”

  The watcher had always known he was the only one who cared about his own back. Nothing new in that. He had to figure out a way to get the cannon moving.

  “How's it going?” Matt asked, when he and Chloe met for coffee at a doughnut place the next evening. They hadn't spoken since the night before at the rectory.

  “Well, being a bodyguard was never my goal in life.”

  He grinned, a charming smile that once had drawn her like moth to a flame. “That's what you get for sticking your nose in where you shouldn't. You could just let me handle this case.”

  �
�Sure. I imagine you've already broken it.”

  His smile faded. “Play nice, Chloe. For once, just play nice. You got anything for me?”

  “Only that I don't think I could survive the pace that Father Brendan keeps. He started at seven this morning, and he's booked until ten tonight. Then he comes back to the rectory to make phone calls.”

  “Someone's with him?”

  “All the time, so far. You got anything for me?”

  He shook his head and wagged his finger. “Wait. I’m not done questioning you. Are you carrying?”

  She nodded. “I have a Glock. And a permit to carry.”

  “Good. What about the rest of your people?”

  “I seriously doubt that either Father Dominic or Sister Phil would consider carrying a gun.”

  “Yeah, you're probably right.” He shook his head. “Better if they don't. They don't have the training. They'd only hurt the wrong person … or themselves.” He paused for a moment, in thought. “Okay, another question. Is it easy to get Father Brendan on the phone?”

  “No, it's not. He's so busy, you usually have to leave a message or a voice mail for him.”

  “No cell phone?”

  “Well, yes, but only the office staff have that number. He has a pager, too, but same thing. A priest can't be interrupted while he's tending to parishioners, so voice mail it is.”

  “So it's unusual that he even got that phone call.”

  “Are you trying to say something?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not saying anything. I’m just thinking out loud. Ordinarily the caller would have been dumped to voice mail.”

  “Yes, usually.”

  “What about emergencies?”

  “Well, then of course, the staff would call him.”

  “At night?”

  “At night, he answers his own phone. He has a private line, and there's also an emergency rectory line. If there's an after-hours emergency, the answering machine gives out that number.”

  Matt pulled a pad out of his pocket, along with a pen. “Let me run through this again. The offices are in the rectory?”

  “Only the parish secretary's and the priest's private offices. The rest of the offices were moved to a new wing at the parish hall five years ago.”

  Matt made a note. “Doesn't that cause a problem, her being in one place and everyone else over at the hall?”

  “It doesn't seem to. She's basically a secretary to the priests.”

  “Okay. So we have the phone being answered over at the hall?”

  “Yes, unless someone calls the rectory directly. Then they get Lucy. Or they get the emergency number.”

  “Where's the emergency number answered?”

  “There's a phone upstairs in the priests’ residence area, and another one downstairs in the kitchen.”

  “And their private phones?”

  “In their bedrooms and offices.”

  “Okay, I think I get the picture.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  He sighed. “Only that my plan to have Father Brendan trace these calls is probably a waste of time. If he gets another one, it'll probably land in his voice mail.”

  “Probably. Unless the guy calls the emergency number at night.”

  Matt picked up his coffee mug and took a deep drink. He frowned. “It's getting cold.” With a finger he signaled the waitress, who replaced his cup with a steaming mug. “Hmm.” He looked down at his pad and doodled something. “I don't know if tracing will work if the call is transferred. I’ll have to find out. How secret are these unpublished numbers?”

  Chloe smiled. “Not secret at all. Ever since he got here, Father Brendan's been scrawling the number for his private line on every business card he hands out. I think 90 percent of the parishioners have it. And the rectory number is no secret at all. If you want it, you've got it just by calling after hours and copying down the emergency number. Or simply by asking for it. You have to understand, priests aren't trying to be inaccessible.”

  “Tell him about the trace anyway. He can do it by pushing star-five-seven. You never know. We might bag our guy.”

  “Of course. Now it's your turn.”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled with a suppressed smile. “I knew that was coming. What have I got? Very little. We're waiting for all the reports to come in. You know how it goes. And so far I haven't found anyone who's seen or heard anything.”

  “I hate these cases,” Chloe said flatly.

  “Me too.”

  “Some total stranger walks up, kills a kid, and there's nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “Well, except that the body was moved. More than once.”

  Chloe's head snapped up. “How do you know that?”

  “The criminology lab found some fibers that don't match the clothing the vic was wearing. Like rug fibers, only cheaper. Then there's gravel and dirt that they don't think go with the grass I told you about earlier.”

  “My God.” Chloe looked thoughtful.

  “Yeah. Now it may just be that somebody moved the vic's body to the church in a car trunk. But we've still got the gravel and dirt. The lab thinks it's from a recently paved surface, something paved with oil and gravel mix.”

  “That doesn't fit anything at the church.”

  “I know. There wasn't a whole lot of it. It could have been in the trunk when he was moved. I’ll tell you frankly, Chloe, that I don't like the possibility that body may have been moved twice.”

  “It doesn't make any sense. I mean, if you're going to transport a body in a trunk, why the hell would you take it out, then move it again?”

  “I don't know. Unless we've got more going on here than a murder.”

  Chloe's wheels were clearly spinning now, and she turned to look out the window beside them, into a parking lot that was nearly empty. Traffic whizzed by on the road out front. “Then there's the entire problem of how Steve was put up on that cross. That would take more than one person.”

  “Exactly. I watched them take him down. No way only one person could have done it. I’d say three at a minimum.”

  “Or an act of God.”

  Matt started to laugh, then broke off abruptly and looked closely at her. She wasn't kidding. A chill ran down his spine. “Don't go spooky on me.”

  Chloe looked at him. “I’m not going spooky. I’m looking at the senseless death of a good young man who was destined for the priesthood. Who's to say that the message in this crime wasn't being delivered by a power greater than us?”

  “Oh, Christ.” Matt shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “If you want to think that was a miracle …” He couldn't even finish. The thought appalled him too much.

  “I’m not saying it was. I’m just saying … I believe in miracles. If it was an act of God that put Steve there, I can guarantee you one thing.”

  “What's that?”

  “We'll never know. Anyway, I’m going forward on the assumption that there are bad guys involved, and that we can track them down. I’m a human, Matt. I know the evils we're capable of.”

  He felt better. At least she wasn't going to run off on some hoodoo religious tack on him. She'd be useless to everyone if she did.

  “Fair enough,” he said finally. “Just don't give me the willies again.”

  She smiled faintly. “You could use a little religion in your life, Matt. For a Catholic, everything in this world is a sign of the grace of God.”

  “Even what happened to the King kid?”

  “Even that. Some good will come out of it somehow.”

  “Yeah, I know what good will come out of it. I’ll nail the sick twists who did it. And that's all the good I need.”

  Chapter 9

  The call to present himself at the chancery ripped a hole in Brendan's day. He wasn't given an option of choosing a better time, or setting a mutually convenient appointment. He was simply told to show.

  He left Lucy scrambling to rearrange his appointments and get Dominic to fill in for him, an
d climbed into his car for the drive downtown. Somehow, somewhere in the back of his mind, he had known this was coming. There had been too many calls from Monsignor Crowell in the past few months, and with what had happened over the past weekend, things were bound to come to a head.

  For this trip, he had even managed to ditch his shadows. Since he'd been working at the rectory for a change, none of his self-appointed bodyguards had been with him to argue.

  He wasn't sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, it was nice that people cared enough to put themselves out this way. On the other, it was a relief to be going somewhere by himself. He spent so much time in the company of others that his car was an escape, a place of solitude.

  He could listen to music of his own choosing, or just take time to think things over and clear all the junk from his head. Because he certainly accumulated enough junk in the course of a day. Of course, like most priests, he was wonderfully forgetful when it came to information that people wanted to keep private. It was a talent developed over years of hearing confessions from people he still had to be able to greet with warmth and love only minutes or hours later. The worst secrets died a rapid death in his memory cells.

  Today, however, there was little room for anything except discomfort about the interview he was facing. It was strange to him that he'd been in the parish only six months and for some reason was facing serious opposition. He honestly couldn't think what he had done to make any of his parishioners so upset with him. Of course, he knew he must have done something, however minor. He wasn't holding himself free of responsibility. But it troubled him that he had no inkling of who or why. Perhaps today would clarify the issues and give him a clue so he could mend fences. He hoped so.

  But regardless of his hopes for the meeting, he was well aware that Monsignor Crowell didn't like him. Which meant there would be a great deal of unpleasantness along the way as he tried to discern what was really going on.

  He was kept cooling his heels in an anteroom for twenty minutes. Not surprising. He'd been around the block enough times to recognize an exercise of power for the sake of power. He'd seen it frequently in the navy.