The Penitent One (Boston Crime Thriller Book 3)

by Brian Shea

  Kelly’s eyes were wide open to all the possibilities that lay ahead once those doors were opened.

  He looked down at his watch. "Mark the time. 11:13 a.m. We're beginning our preliminary search and walk-through now." He scribbled the time in his notebook and then tucked it away, leaving his hands free. He didn't want any distraction to interrupt his focus on the scene.

  Each member of the team donned Tyvek booties over their shoes and slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then the group entered through the church’s center door.

  Even though it was sunny outside, cold air worked its way past Kelly’s windbreaker, sending a shiver up his spine. At least that was what he told himself. In reality, a dead priest in a church shattered the norm and left him feeling a bit unhinged.

  Taking the lead, Kelly pulled the door open and was immediately greeted by the intense scent of the frankincense oil used during Mass, which seemed to linger and permeate every square inch of the church’s interior. The incense, burned as a purification ritual dating back to biblical times, tickled the back of Kelly’s throat.

  Stepping further across the threshold, he saw the light penetrating through the ornate stained glass high above the main entrance, decorated in a vibrant array of colors and arranged to look like a six-petaled flower. As the door closed behind them, the colorful beams streaming through the glass warmed the church’s interior. High gabled arches lined the ceiling in three columns leading down to the altar. The intricate details of the hand-carved wood bore testament to the incredible effort made in the artistic construction of this impressive church.

  Kelly knew the church well, having spent most of his youth in it, either forced by his father, or later, once he had passed, under the watchful eye of his mother. He was reminded of the ritualistic up-down-kneel his Roman Catholic upbringing offered, a fate no boy born of Irish descent in the Dorchester neighborhood could avoid. He had a love-hate relationship with the church, but being here now, and under these circumstances, was difficult to process. The murder of a priest was a tough pill to swallow.

  Kelly no longer needed to command his group of seasoned investigators. No one would touch anything and would only call out if they noted a potential piece of evidence, which would be photographed once they formally processed the scene. This walk-through was designed to give the grander scope, a wide-lens perspective of what they were up against before they dove deep into the minutiae that came with any crime scene.

  Every fourth step, Kelly paused. He scanned the pew to his right and then his left, eyes moving down to the floor in a slow, methodical visual processing of each row. Not that he was expecting to see a loaded pistol resting on one of the wooden benches, but there was always the chance of something left behind, an article of clothing or the like.

  He continued his measured approach to the altar, reversing the path Donny would’ve walked at the completion of the Mass. Mainelli did the same to his right and Ray Charles to his left, each man keeping an even pace with him and Barnes.

  She leaned over, her skin a combination of Irish Spring soap and something sweet like honey, and whispered, "This is crazy, right, Mike? Somebody shooting a priest? Worse yet, somebody shooting a priest inside a Catholic church. That's got to be a first, right?"

  Kelly stopped and looked at his partner, his date for his family’s upcoming Thanksgiving dinner. The lines were definitely beginning to blur. He found it harder and harder to separate his feelings for her from their work relationship. "I've never heard of anything like this. You seem a little more unnerved than usual. You okay?" he asked, recalling her reaction while standing outside the church door. Now, out of earshot of the other two, he was glad to be able to check in on his partner's wellbeing. "What's eating at you?"

  Kris initially shook her head. "It's nothing. It's... I just..."

  "What?" Kelly whispered, keeping his voice from echoing in the openness of the sanctuary.

  "Just brought back some memories, things I had tucked away long ago."

  Kelly furrowed a brow. "From before? During your foster care time? I mean, before you were adopted?" He wanted to approach the subject delicately to avoid offending her or bringing up something too intense to be dealt with adequately in the current circumstances.

  "Yeah, I guess so. It's funny what you can force yourself to forget.” Barnes visibly shook herself. “Anyway, I'm sorry. I was a little off when we first came in. I'm good now. I promise. My head's in the game. Let's figure out what's going on here. Focus on finding the killer."

  "Or killers," Kelly added. An assumption that one person was responsible immediately closed the investigative mind to other possibilities. It created a barrier, clouding judgment and, at times, overriding logical reasoning. If multiple people were involved, they’d have to take into account the possibility of lookouts or getaway drivers. And more importantly, the modus operandi going into the decision to commit the crime. Right now, everything was possible until proven otherwise. Eyes wide open, Kelly thought.

  "You're right," she said, "or killers. I guess we won't know until we really get down into this thing, huh?"

  "We never do."

  They continued plodding down the aisle until they reached the altar.

  Kelly felt strange getting a backdoor view into the church. His Irish-Catholic guilt kicked in, making him feel like somewhat of a heathen for not attending Mass in several years, especially after serving as an altar boy in his youth. This sacred place within the church carried an invisible barrier to all those parishioners who approached to receive communion, and Kelly felt it press against him now. It didn’t block him from continuing forward, though; he walked up the three short steps to the altar with Barnes beside him. She went left and he right as they circled the altar. They saw nothing leading to the back door, which Kelly knew led to the private area where the priest and his altar boys prepared for the day's sermon.

  Kelly's childhood memories returned full blast as he remembered sitting next to the priest. He remembered the sermons. He remembered his job there, the removal of the communion, the bringing of the wine, the servitude. As much as he hated dressing up and performing the task, he loved the routine of it, the same comfort he found at Pops' gym. The ritual and routine, the warmup. The structure was steadying. And maybe that was what so unnerved Kelly about murder. It broke every norm. It divided and shattered the idea of conformity. Murder was the biggest act of nonconformity a person could do to another. The taking of another human life was uniquely outside the bounds of society’s norms. That was what drew Kelly to this line of work in the first place.

  Satisfied they hadn't missed anything of value or seen anything worth noting on the initial pass, he turned to Kris. "Time to see the body."

  "Ray, Jimmy, anything on your end?"

  "Looks clean so far," Charles said.

  "Let's bring it tight. Over by the confessional."

  The confessional was another part of the church’s impressive design. Albeit smaller in scope, it was nonetheless as intricately detailed as its surroundings and set along the marble wall left of center when facing the altar. It extended upward approximately ten feet into three arches, the center one rising a foot above the others, each adorned with a cross. The lacquered mahogany was a blend of dark and light brown, a testament to its antiquity and the years of upkeep required for maintaining its pristine condition.

  Two doors with black steel handles led to the area where priest and parishioner could meet in anonymity, a closet designed to cleanse the soul for those who sought absolution. The door on the right was closed. The left was slightly ajar, the shadowed image of the priest’s curled body barely visible within the dark confines.

  The group was uncharacteristically silent. A murder cop’s dark humor usually reared its ugly head during moments like this, but this time, the levity that served to ease the horror was uncharacteristically absent.

  The four investigators stepped closer but kept their distance, stopping just outside the confessional. Kelly saw a foot
print, the burnt umber of dried blood. It moved out from the partially open door and trailed off in the direction of the center aisle, fading away near the toe of Kelly’s right shoe.

  "Looks like one of the guys dragged a little evidence with them on their way out," Charles said.

  "They always do," Mainelli added. “At least the medics or FD didn’t come through. Those guys can destroy a scene.”

  Kelly laughed. It was true. Cops commonly referred to their medical counterparts as the Evidence Eradication Team. All done with good intentions, but sometimes the most detrimental things were caused by them. Kelly knew well enough, from having been on patrol as a first responder on scene, as everyone in the group had been at one point in their police career, that the collection and preservation of evidence always had to be weighed with the preservation of human life. And if there was any chance the priest had still been alive, they had to render aid. To do so meant they’d have to enter the invisible barrier of the crime scene and make contact. This life-saving effort would result in an exchange. The obvious one was the priest’s blood being transferred to one or more of the responding officers' shoes. The patrolmen would have to note that in their initial report.

  Charles would have to photograph the boot, do a tread comparison. As tedious as the work was, and with little evidentiary value for the case itself, it ensured that if a suspect developed later, a defense attorney couldn't cast doubt on a potential case's veracity.

  A bloody shoe print at a crime scene was a great way for the defense attorney to cast doubt, therefore it was imperative they take the extra step in identifying who it belonged to. No punishment would befall the officers. They were just doing their job.

  In those initial moments when first responding to any crime, life trumped evidence every time.

  The confessional door was ajar, either opened by the responding officers or by the killer himself, which was doubtful. A quick conversation with the responding officers would clear that up.

  Peering through the gap in the door, Kelly found it plainly obvious that the priest could not have survived the gunshot wound to his left temple. The exit wound had been devastating, leaving its scattered remains on the interior wall. Kelly stepped to the left and looked at the outside wall of the confessional, where a section of the dark wood bulged. “Looks like the round didn’t penetrate the outer wall. That’s good for us.”

  “I’ve already made a mental note of it,” Charles said.

  Both sides of the lacquered box—where the priest dispensed penance and the congregant confessed their sins—contained potentially vital evidence that could lead to the killer, based on what was left behind. Locard’s exchange, a principle of forensic science, stated every criminal brought something of themselves into a crime and took something from the scene with them when they left. It was up to Kelly and his team, and particularly the in-depth forensic analysis of Senior Crime Scene Technician Ray Charles, to find that link. No matter how minute the exchange.

  The pieces of trace evidence could break a case wide open, whether it was DNA, a fingerprint, a fiber from clothing unique to the person, or the thousands of other potential variables at work during the physical exchange. They’d be searching for anything to give them a leg up in finding the killer or killers. A round recovered on scene would be a good place to start. Kelly’s mood brightened a bit at the prospect of recovering the spent bullet from the confessional’s outer wall; hopefully, it would be intact enough to make a comparison.

  "Looks like we can tighten our search to the area around here, but I still think we should leave the external barrier that patrol set on the surrounding streets,” Ray said, asserting himself as the evidence expert. “It looked pretty good. We’re going to have to sweep the area. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a surveillance camera system that picked up something useful. Inside the church, I think our focal point for evidence collection should be here." He indicated the confessional.

  Raymond Charles was the most senior of the group when it came to evidence recovery, and the most seasoned when it came to the handling of crime scenes. He'd served as a mentor to Kelly since he first arrived at Homicide, cutting his teeth on the Faith Wilson case. Charles had proven to be somebody Kelly could rely on when dealing with the uniquely different scenes he'd encountered in his short time in the unit.

  "I'm completely in agreement," Kelly said. "Let's back out. We'll do our official walk-through with photographs, and then we'll focus on the internal scene for processing. Does that sound good to everybody?"

  The group nodded in agreement. Mainelli added a grunt.

  They retreated outside, exiting through the same door they had entered twenty minutes ago.

  "All right. Unless you want to be in the first shots, you might want to step back." Charles fished out his Nikon from his oversized duffle.

  Kelly, Mainelli, and Barnes walked down the split concrete stairwell, out of view of the first few shots. Cops did their best to make sure they were out of sight when any crime scene photography was underway. Nothing worse than getting snagged in a photo and then being called into court to explain something you were doing. Another prime opportunity for the defense to attack a case, a tactic used quite often, especially with patrolmen captured by the camera.

  Kelly allowed Charles to do his photography and lead the team back into the scene. They followed the same entry point, retracing their steps.

  Charles was taking overalls, capturing the big-picture visual overview of the church, then working his way down the aisle to the place where the victim lay. Kelly and his team stayed a few steps behind the technician, moving at his pace.

  Kelly, notepad in hand, took a moment to do a rough sketch of the church's interior, a basic outline of the entryway leading to the confessional. Measurements would be taken later, but he would use this sketch to orient himself to the scene after he left.

  The progression down the center aisle was slightly quicker this time because they knew from their preliminary walk-through that there was no noticeable evidence in the pews and aisle areas leading up to Father Tomlin’s body.

  Kelly marked the first piece of evidence, laying a triangular yellow placard with the number one in black boldface print at the faded bloody boot print just outside the confessional.

  Charles focused his lens and began taking photos from different angles of the partially open confessional area containing the priest’s crumpled body.

  “Let’s open it up,” Charles said, still holding the camera to his face.

  Mainelli stepped around the bloody shoe print and reached up to the top of the door with gloved hands, minimizing his risk of contaminating any potential trace along the handle.

  The hinge creaked noisily at the movement, seeming louder due to the silence.

  Father Tomlin’s knees were folded awkwardly, as if he had been seated—which he most likely had been when the bullet struck his head. The impact sent him to the floor. The room’s small confines didn’t give the dead man much in the way of wiggle room. He was partially tucked underneath the wooden bench attached to the back wall, his body folded into an awkward Z pattern—his legs tucked underneath his buttocks and his body bent forward. The dead priest’s head rested alongside the left wall, just beneath a smattering of blood and brain matter.

  "Mike, I need to get a measurement on that entry wound on his left temple. Can you put up a point of reference for me?" Charles asked.

  Kelly did as he was asked. Retrieving a disposable ruler, he lay it alongside the wound, taking care not to make contact. He kept several measuring strips with him in his homicide go bag in the event one got soiled.

  Charles took several photographs, adjusting the settings on the camera to accommodate for the limited light within the confessional room. "All right, I've got my photos.”

  “We've got a small hole in the wall just above that chunk of brain matter,” Kelly said.

  “I see it, Mike," Charles said.

  Kelly knew the crime scene tech was also d
ocumenting his visual findings on the voice recorder he kept tucked in his shirt pocket.

  "Let's mark that as well,” he added. “Can you get up another measurement?"

  Kelly marked and measured as Charles took the photographs.

  "All right, we can work on retrieving the round later. I’ll probably take the whole wall with us," Charles muttered. “I need to get some close-ups.”

  Kelly backed out of the confessional box as Charles cautiously stepped over the priest’s body. He used his camera’s low light setting to capture the inside of the dimpled hole.

  "Son of a bitch," Charles said, partially to himself but loud enough for Kelly to hear.

  "What do you got, Ray?"

  "It's not there."

  "What's not there?"

  "The round. It's not in the hole. I mean, unless I’ve suddenly gone blind.”

  “Maybe it’s all that chicory your wife keeps putting in your coffee?” Kelly continued their long-running joke regarding his wife’s decision to cut expenses by taking away his one true love: Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.

  “Give me a little extra light."

  Kelly pulled a flashlight from his pocket and angled it over Ray's right shoulder. Both now could easily see that the hole where the round should have been was empty.

  "Strange," Kelly said.

  "Maybe it popped back out," Charles said doubtfully.

  "Ever seen something like that before?"

  "Never in my life, but there's always a first for something."

  They scanned the floorboard area without moving the body, but Kelly saw no sign of the round. "We'll do a more thorough search once we remove the priest's body, but I'm not holding out hope. Not a good sign," he said.