Last Breath (16 page)

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.”

Matt then did something very unusual for him. He dropped his forehead into his hand. “I can't believe this,” he said. “Most people are willing to do damn near anything to save their lives.”

“I’m not most people,” Brendan said quietly. “And there are many things more important than my own life.”

“Yeah?” Matt raised his head. “Then why'd you bother to call the cops, Father? Why don't you just ignore this caller until he puts a bullet in your brain like he did to Steve King? Maybe you'd
like
to be crucified?”

“Matt!” Chloe said his name warningly, but before she could go on, Brendan spoke.

“No, Matt, I don't
want
to be killed, and I certainly don't
want
to be crucified. But whether I am or not is in God's hands more than yours. Whether you like it or not. Now, I’m willing to cooperate in any way that I can without sacrificing my priestly duties and responsibilities in the process. But I
do
have that limit, and I will
not
cross it.”

Dominic was nodding his full agreement. Phil looked worried. And Chloe … Chloe suddenly had an idea.

“Is there some way calls could be traced, but only Father Brendan sees the numbers? So he can sort out which ones don't belong to parishioners?”

“Maybe,” Matt said, looking relieved to have another idea.

“It still doesn't work,” Brendan said. “Plenty of people call me who aren't members of the parish. People who are thinking about coming back to the Church, people who are just having a problem and need to talk to someone. I don't want to subject them to harassment either.”

Matt expelled a heavy, loud sigh. “Let me tell you something, Father. This guy, assuming he means what he just said, wants to tell you something. There's something eating at his gut so bad that he wants a face-off with you. That's the only reason he's making these calls. So you gotta figure that when he acts, maybe he won't just come up behind you and kill you unawares. He'll want to spew whatever it is he has to spew. So that means you gotta be careful about where you go, and make sure you're not alone.”

“To a point I can do that.”

“But,” said Chloe, “if he spills the story on the phone, then there's going to be no face-off. He could do to you what he did to Steve.”

“Maybe if I could talk to him —”

Matt interrupted, looking at Chloe. “Tell me I didn't just hear that.”

Chloe turned to Brendan. “Father, you've got to be realistic about this. If this is the same guy who hurt Steve, and if this guy really wants to hurt you, you're not going to talk him out of it. Something has happened in his head, something he's not going to be talked out of.”

“In short,” Matt said, “he's a sick twist, and ten years of counseling probably wouldn't be enough.”

Brendan rubbed the back of his neck, but didn't say anything.

“I think,” Dominic said after a moment, “that for a while everyone in this parish is going to get used to having two priests answer every call.”

Brendan turned toward him. “There's no way.”

Matt spoke. “Get real. Fathers. Get real. Father Dominic, you wouldn't be any more protection for Father Brendan than no one at all. All it means is the killer uses two bullets instead of one.”

“But Chloe is protection?” Brendan asked.

“She's a trained cop,” Matt said firmly. “She knows what to be on the lookout for, and she knows what to do about it.”

“Well, she can't be with me every moment of the day, and if you'll pardon me for saying so, she's as vulnerable to an unexpected bullet as anyone else.”

“All right, all right,” Chloe said, holding up her hands. “Maybe we can compromise.”

“How so?” Matt asked.

“Father Brendan goes on visits only when he knows the person who calls. He knows the person, and he knows the address is legit. Otherwise, he stays put on parish property. And we put guards on the property.”

Matt frowned. “Chloe, I don't think I can get enough cops to guard this whole place. It's a big property, with what, five buildings? Athletic fields. A cemetery.”

“The church can hire some off-duty cops. We do it all the time.”

“They're expensive,” Brendan said. “We can't really afford —”

Chloe cut him off. “We can't afford to lose
you.
”

Silence greeted her words. For a minute or two, no one spoke. Finally, Brendan broke the silence.

“Okay, I’ll admit I’m scared. But I’m even more angry than scared. And I can't function as a priest with a perpetual bodyguard.”

“He
is
nuts,” Matt said to Chloe. “Really and truly nuts.”

“Well, it's a holy kind of nuts,” she answered.

“Yeah. Holey. Full of holes.”

“Cut it out, Matt. Don't be insulting.”

“Maybe if I insult the man enough, he'll develop a sudden case of common sense.” He turned back to the priest. “Listen, Father. Please, just listen. If the same guy is after you that killed Steve, you've got a real problem on your hands. A life-and-death problem. Now I’m not a religious man, but I
have
read the Bible. Once upon a time, I even went to church every week. And I don't remember one damn thing where it says you ought to throw your life away carelessly.”

“I’m not being careless.”

“Maybe you don't think so, but from where I sit, you look about as careless as it gets. This isn't martyrdom we're talking about here. This isn't dying for the faith, or being eaten by the lions in the Roman Circus. This is about some sick son of a bitch who wants to kill you, and you won't prove a damn thing by getting yourself killed.”

Brendan was looking straight at Matt, and now he waited, as if wanting to be sure Matt had finished. When he spoke, his voice was gentle.

“Matt, it
is
about proving something. It's about proving that nothing and no one will prevent me from carrying out the duties to God and His faithful that I undertook at my ordination. It's about keeping my word to God, and fulfilling the mission He gave me when He put me in this world. I can't make it any clearer than that.”

“Don't tell me you want to be a martyr!”

“Nobody wants to be a martyr, Matt. But sometimes … sometimes it can't be avoided.”

Chloe and Matt left a little while later, after Matt made a recording of the phone message. Dominic said he was going to call Merv Haskell about getting off-duty policemen to patrol the parish property. Out in front of the rectory, a squad car, summoned by Matt before he left, pulled up silently and parked. Phil excused herself to go back to her apartment. She had a full day of teaching ahead of her.

Brendan went to his room, leaving Dominic alone.

The first thing Dominic did was call Merv as he'd promised. Merv sounded groggy, but he promised to rattle the bars of the Finance Council members the next morning, and get permission for some kind of security. By the time he hung up, Merv sounded wide-awake, and Dominic suspected the man wasn't going to wait for morning, but was going to hound the Finance Council immediately.

All well and good. But there was one not so well and good, and Dom sat for a long time on the edge of his bed, debating whether to call Monsignor Crowell. The excuse of reporting “everything that went on” would cover his butt, but what he wanted to say to the monsignor was something else altogether.

For a priest who'd spent most of his career at the chancery, buried in an office, he'd managed to avoid the almost unavoidable politics. Unfortunately, he had somehow become considered a friend of Crowell's. At least from Crowell's perspective. And fool that he was, he'd been flattered.

So when Crowell had told him he needed someone he could trust to come down to St. Simeon's and find out what the problems were that parishioners were complaining about, Dominic had assumed the monsignor had the best interests of the parish at heart and simply wanted to know if there were real problems or merely the inevitable complaints of a small number of people who wouldn't have been happy if Christ himself had pastored the parish.

He'd never guessed what he was stepping into. But after his last call to Crowell, he'd realized that Crowell was biased against Brendan, and this mission was designed to force Dominic to give Crowell what he wanted. Thus the outcome would appear to be completely free of political taint.

Dominic hated to be used. But even less did he like the feeling he had now that Crowell's machinations might be putting Brendan in grave danger. Calling Crowell just to vent would be a foolish thing to do, though. Especially so late at night.

He rubbed his eyes, continuing to stare at the phone. Throughout most of his priestly life, doing the right thing had been easy. After all, he'd been dealing with people who were stories on paper and listening to the recommendations of their priests. It had been ugly, yes, but it had been morally easy. Never, not once in all those years, had he been called upon to stand up for his beliefs in a way that might harm him.

Brendan's devotion to the priesthood was beginning to shame Dominic. And it was shame that drove him to reach for the phone.

Outside the rectory, away from the squad car parked out front, walking across the rear parking lot toward their cars, Chloe and Matt said little at first. When they reached their cars, however, neither of them started to get in. Instead they leaned back against their own vehicles and faced each other across six feet of grass.

Finally, Chloe spoke. “He's a truly holy man, Matt.”

“Yeah.” He made a sound of disgust. “I believe in evil, Chloe. I’ve seen enough of it to make a snake vomit. It's everywhere, in every dark corner of people's lives. Even in nice people who all of a sudden do something so totally out of character that everyone who knows them reels. I believe in evil. It lives, it breathes, and it slinks into people's lives to steal every good thing.”

“But you don't believe in God.”

“It's kinda hard, since evil seems to be running the place.”

“That's a cop's warped perspective, Matt. You ought to try hanging out with some of the good people. The really good people.”

“Like churchgoers?” The words were almost scornful.

“Not necessarily. But I’ll tell you something. It was the good people in this church who saved me, back then.”

“Hell, I saved you, too, Chloe. Me and my stubborn streak.”

“True.” She sighed. “Maybe I never said thank you. Thank you, Matt.”

“Just doing my job.”

“No, just being a good man.”

He looked away, then looked back at her. “You know, if this priest of yours keeps on this way, he's going to have me believing in God.”

“Heaven forbid!” She laughed quietly.

“Yeah. I don't need that.”

“Or maybe you do.”

It was his turn to sigh. “Just … let it be, Chloe.”

“Okay,” she said indifferently. “So … wanna come to my place for a drink?”

Crowell was almost jovial when he answered the phone. Either he was well into his brandy for the evening, or he was really pleased with the way things were going. Dominic hoped he wasn't pleased because of having dirt on Brendan.

“Dominic,” Crowell said warmly, “how are you doing, my son?”

Since they were of an age, Dominic wasn't exactly taken in by being called “my son.” It was one of Crowell's affectations, one better suited to the Church of another age than the modern U.S. Church. “I’m doing fine, Monsignor.” Dominic resisted the urge to call him Freddy.

“So, you have something to report?”

“Yes, actually, I do.”

“Good, good, I was beginning to wonder if you were up to the job. And I have such faith in you.”

Dominic was surprised to discover that he was developing a bullshit meter, and just then it was about to pop off the scale. He'd never needed one before, but latent abilities were beginning to stir within him.

“Well, Monsignor, what I have is this. Someone wants to murder Father Brendan.”

For once Crowell was silent. Dominic guessed he was imagining the headlines if a parish priest were found brutally murdered. They'd be worse, even, than the ones about Steve King.