by Blake Banner
FIFTEEN
When we arrived at St. Mary’s, the mass was almost over. We sat at the back and listened to the end of the sermon. He had chosen Luke 18:16, suffer little children to come unto me. He had a good voice, compelling and strong, and it filled the church without the use of a microphone.
“And I ask you to meditate on this: what is the Lord telling us, when he says, suffer little children to come unto me? Is he telling us to be kind to little children? Is he telling us to be lenient and understanding with them? Is he telling us to provide for them, both physical and spiritual nourishment?
“Indeed he is. But he is telling us more than this. He is telling us that to achieve the Kingdom of Heaven, we must ourselves be as children. For only in that blessed state of innocence can we truly understand love, the love of Jesus Christ our Savior, and the sublime love and grace of God and the Holy Spirit. Only in that childlike state of sacred innocence can we find the divine echo of our holy state before the original sin, when we were fresh from God the Creator’s hands.
“Therefore, teach your children, feed them, care for them and love them, for they carry the divine spark of our Father in their innocent hearts, but more than that, learn to be as they are. Let us all learn to be God’s children in our hearts, for nothing is closer to God’s heart, than a child…”
It went on like that for another five minutes, and shortly after that they all started filing out. Dehan and I made our way down the nave and found Father O’Neil descending from the altar. He looked a little startled.
“Detectives, I thought we had said everything to each other that we needed to say.”
Dehan smiled like a woman who is scared to open her mouth because she is not sure what might come out.
I said, “I’m afraid not, Father. We need to talk to you some more about those photographs.”
I said it loud enough to make him glance at the exiting congregation. He gestured at the door to the rectory.
I shook my head. “Actually, I would like to talk to you in the churchyard.”
He looked a little sick. “In the churchyard? Whatever for?”
I didn’t answer. After the last stragglers had departed through the great doors, we made our way through rolling echoes toward the vast wedge of light that lay across the stone floor at the entrance. He stood a moment, watching me. I passed him and led the way along the footpath around the back of the nave, where it was shielded from the road and the apartment block by dense, mature trees, and made a closed angle with the old coach house.
I stopped among the fruit trees that stood there in the shelter of the old walls and studied his face. I saw anxiety there.
“Yesterday was not the first time you had seen those pictures, was it, Father?”
“This again?”
“Was it?”
“I already told you…!”
I interrupted him. “Father O’Neil, yesterday was not the first time you had seen those photographs, was it?”
His breathing was short and I could see his hands were trembling.
“I had never before seen those photographs. You cannot… There is no way…”
“Your fingerprints are on them. You handled each and every one of them twelve years ago.”
“That is an outright lie! There is no way fingerprints could last twelve years! You are trying to trick me into admitting something that is not true!”
Dehan was shaking her head. “A common mistake, Father. Fingerprints will last for years if they are protected. We have enough, right there, to arrest and convict you and put you away for the rest of your life and believe me, Father, there is nothing I would rather do. Although, my partner thinks you can be useful to us, so he is in favor of cutting a deal with you.”
His eyes were bulging and he was sweating. His voice shook when he spoke. “What kind of deal? I am admitting nothing, mind! But what kind of deal…?”
I said, “I want to dig up the churchyard.” I pointed to the small patch of fruit trees. “Right there.”
His skin turned a pasty gray and his legs seemed about to fold. “Oh sweet Jesus.”
I saw Dehan ball her fist and curl her lip. I put my hand on her shoulder. She stared at me. I shook my head. She looked back at Father O’Neil and snarled, “Suffer little children to come on to me? I ought to gut you right here and feed you to the dogs.”
“What’s it going to be, Father? We take you in and you take the fall, or you cooperate with us.”
He did what he had to do, what he had always done, and yielded to the prevailing wind. He stared first at Dehan and then at me, with a crying face that made you want to slap him.
“I will cooperate, of course, but it’s not what it looks like. It isn’t what you think, you have to let me explain.”
“Oh, believe me, I can’t wait. We will have plenty of opportunity to talk in depth and in detail, but first, there are a couple of things I need to do. Number one, you are going to write me a letter of authorization, on letter-headed paper, with an official stamp, allowing me to dig up the whole, damned churchyard if I need to. If you don’t, I will get a court order from a judge. You understand me, Father O’Neil?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Now you have one chance, one shot. I haven’t decided what to do with you yet, but cooperate with me and I will listen to your story.”
“I understand.”
“After you have written the letter of authorization, I want a full confession, detailing the parts played by Mick Harragan, Conor Hagan, Sadiq Khan, Bishop Bellini…” I watched his face carefully as I mentioned each name, the frowns, and the winces. “All of them. Do we have a deal?”
He seemed to sway, like he was about to pass out. “Yes. Please, take me inside, I don’t feel well. ”
“Okay.” I took his arm. “Let’s go.”
We went to his study where he wrote out the letter of authorization in careful long hand, then signed and sealed it. After that, he called Mrs. Doyle and asked her to pack him an overnight bag.
“I shall be assisting the police with their inquiries over the next couple of days.”
She looked impressed and hurried upstairs to prepare his bag.
At the station house, we left him in the care of a uniformed officer in one of the interrogation rooms and Dehan and I climbed the stairs to the captain’s office. I knocked and opened the door as he answered. He looked surprised, but not as pleased as he had been the day before.
“Stone, Dehan. It seems like only yesterday…”
I dropped the letter on his desk and didn’t sit down. He looked at it, then at us. He opened it and read it, then sighed.
“Detective Stone, you are an implacable man. I am glad I am on your side…” There was an implied ‘but’, but he didn’t go there. He dropped the letter on the desk and asked, “How did you secure this? Presumably if he is agreeable, there is nothing to dig up?”
It was Dehan who answered. “His fingerprints are on each and every one of the photographs, from twelve years ago.”
He echoed the Father. “Sweet Jesus!”
I took back the letter. “He has agreed to cooperate fully on the condition we listen to his story, and on the off chance of a deal.”
“There was no trickery or entrapment?”
“Of course not.”
He rubbed his face with his hands. “The shit is really going to hit the fan, Stone. I don’t want any of it to land on the 43rd, you understand me?”
I took a moment to answer. “The shit is going to land where the shit is going to land, Captain. We are cops simply doing our jobs, and if the investigating officers had done their jobs twelve years ago, we wouldn’t be in this situation now.”
Dehan had to speak up. She couldn’t keep quiet.
“Sir, there are probably twelve or thirteen young girls’ remains buried in St. Mary’s churchyard. Those girls were probably forced into prostitution and murdered, and Father O’Neil has as much as admitted all of this. I am having trouble unders
tanding exactly what the options are, and what it is we are discussing.”
His face went rigid, but he couldn’t think of an answer. I gave him a sweet smile and said, “Detective Dehan isn’t looking to get promoted any time soon, sir, but I would have to agree with her. We have no option but to dig.”
He nodded. “Take four men, and a Crime Scene team. Where is Father O’Neil now?”
“In interview room three, waiting to give us a statement.”
He frowned. “You can’t hold him without charge. Once he has given you his statement, you either charge him or let him go.”
I sighed. “Yes, sir.”
He said, a little reluctantly, “It’s good work, both of you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
As I opened the door, he said, “Stone, don’t ambush me again. I’m on your side.”
“Wasn’t my intention, Captain, I just did what I needed to do to get the job done.”
“And Dehan?”
“Yes, sir?”
“It was a fair point, it’s just,” he spread his hands, “things aren’t always that simple on this side of the desk.”
“Yes, sir.”
On the stairs, Dehan said, “You want me to take O’Neil’s statement while you assemble the team and call Frank? I can join you at the church when we’re done.”
I stopped and stood chewing my lip for a minute. Then I shook my head.
“No, he’s going to wriggle and writhe and squirm like a worm on a hook. He won’t know whether to implicate the world and his cousin to save himself, or protect them all to save himself. We’ve got a few hours before we need to let him go. Let him sweat and think through all the angles. Sooner or later, he’ll realize he’s out of choices. Meanwhile, I want to see what we find under those trees before we talk to him.”
“Makes sense to me.”
SIXTEEN
Frank’s team had brought a Bobcat in the back of their truck, and before the guys with the shovels and spades could get started digging pits, the Bobcat had to uproot and remove the fruit trees. Meanwhile, I had the uniformed officers seal off the churchyard with tape. Once the trees had been pulled out and removed to one side, I had them set up screens and the CSI team moved in. While the guys in uniform dug, the CSI team sifted. It was a slow and painstaking task, and it drew attention. Pretty soon there was a small crowd peering through the railings and standing behind the tape at the church gate, seeing if they could catch a glimpse of what was going on.
I saw Dehan looking at them.
“They were inevitable, we all knew some people would show up to watch.”
“It will get back to Hagan pretty soon.”
“And the bishop and Sadiq Khan, I’m counting on it.” I looked at my watch. “We need to get back to Father O’Neil.” I glanced at the shallow pits. There were no bones yet, but they had barely got started. “I’d hoped to have something to pressure him with, but we’ll make the most of what we’ve got.”
I called over to Frank where he was sifting through a pile of earth. “I’m going back to the station. Call me as soon as you find anything.”
He didn’t look up, but touched his forehead with two fingers in an affirmative salute.
My cell rang just as we were approaching the car. It was the precinct.
“Stone.”
“Detective, it’s John, the captain.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Listen, Father O’Neil has gone.”
“What?!”
“You left him too long, Stone. He got tired of waiting and he got spooked. He said he was leaving and there was nothing I could do to stop him. You hadn’t charged him, and I couldn’t arrest him without screwing up your investigation. You overplayed your damn hand, Stone!”
He was right and I knew it, and I swore accordingly.
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No, he just said he was leaving.”
“God dammit!”
“Fix it, Stone. Now!”
He hung up. Dehan had stopped walking and was watching me. “He’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“He walked out. I tried to be too damned clever, Dehan. I should have charged him.”
She shook her head. “If you had, he would have clammed up like an oyster.”
“Where is he going to go?”
“To the bishop?”
I shook my head. “The bishop won’t touch him with a barge pole.”
“Hagan?”
“Too dangerous, none of his associates. Where the hell is he going to go?”
“Stone?” I looked at her, but I already knew what she was going to say. “His life is in danger, and right now he is all we’ve got.”
“I know. Call in; get an APB put out to notify me if he’s seen and then try calling his cell. I’m going to talk to Mrs. Doyle.”
I found her in the kitchen making a beef stew. She looked pissed. She gave me a look that would have had Mikhail Bakunin standing to attention.
“Would yiz mind at all tellin’ what in the name of Jaysus is goin’ on? The Father gone and youse uprootin’ me feckin’ trees!”
“Mrs. Doyle, I need your help.”
“It’s not enough that you’re causin’ me all this feckin’ hassle. I have to help you an’ all!”
She picked up two handfuls of bloody meat in her hands and dumped them into a big, cast iron pot. There was a loud hiss and clouds of steam billowed out.
“Father O’Neil has gone missing. He’s in trouble, Mrs. Doyle, he could be in danger and we are trying to help him.”
“Help him, indeed! Indeed! This is what youse call help, is it? A fine feckin’ way to help a body, this is!”
She started peeling potatoes like she was auditioning for a slasher movie.
“You know who Conor Hagan is?”
“That bastard!”
“The Father may have got into trouble with Hagan…”
The ferocity of her peeling eased.
I pressed. “He was trying to help people and things got out of hand. He was helping us, giving us vital information, but he panicked…”
“He’s a good man, but he never did have any balls.”
“He walked out of the station and we don’t know where he’s gone.”
She threw the potatoes in the pot and started axing some carrots. She threw them in too and scowled at the contents of the pot like they didn’t deserve her pity. “He wouldn’t go to the bishop, dirty fecker. He might go to Father Sullivan, at St. Patrick’s, or if he’s got any sense, he’ll come back here, to me.”
“If he does…”
“You want me to call yiz.”
“He needs protection.”
“Don’t you worry, I’ll protect him!”
“Mrs. Doyle…”
“I’ll call yiz, aye. Don’t worry.”
Dehan was waiting for me, sitting on the hood of my car. As I approached, she said, “His cell is switched off.”
I opened the door.
“We’ll try St. Patrick’s.”
St. Patrick’s was at Clason Point, on Lacombe Avenue. It wasn’t far, but the traffic was heavy and it took us almost twenty minutes to get there via Bruckner Boulevard and Sound View Avenue. It was a quiet, residential suburb of detached houses with large gardens. I parked a hundred yards up the road by the junction with Thieriot and watched the church for five minutes. Nothing happened. Nobody went in or came out. No cars arrived.
“Let’s go in and talk to Father Sullivan.”
The road was really still and really quiet. The slam of the car doors was loud. There was a gentle breeze and the sound of birds in the maple trees. I felt uneasy, and though we started out at a steady walk, by the time we were approaching the church we had both broken into a steady jog.
It was a modest church, much smaller than St. Mary’s. A simple nave with a small steeple and a bell tower. A broad flight of six steps led up to the porch and I took them three at a time. We stepped inside. Like the st
reet, it was still and quiet, though not completely silent. There was a murmur of voices that was interrupted by our footfalls.
Two men were standing by the north transept, talking softly to a dark-haired man in a hassock. They looked at us standing in the doorway. We crossed ourselves and sat in the rear pews, like we were praying. The men left the priest and approached down the left aisle. They were both tall, sandy-haired and blue-eyed. They looked tough. They looked Irish.
They stepped out the door and I could hear their feet on the steps outside and rose. The priest looked as though he was about to leave through a side door to the vestry. I raised my voice. “Father! Father Sullivan?”
He stopped and turned to face me.
“I am Father Sullivan.”
We approached and showed him our badges. “Detectives Stone and Dehan. We are looking for Father O’Neil.”
“And why are you looking here?”
Dehan smiled. “You don’t seem surprised that two NYPD detectives should be looking for Father O’Neil.”
He was younger than Father O’Neil, maybe in his late thirties or early forties. He returned Dehan’s smile with the same lack of feeling that she had given it. “Presumably, you have your reasons. What I am curious about is why you think you might find him here.”
“Whatever you are curious about, Father,” I gave him my own unfeeling smile, “we think he is here. Is he?”
“I haven’t seen Father O’Neil for some time.”
“You’re a good Catholic, Father, you’re working hard not to lie, but with every evasive answer you give us, you put father O’Neil’s life more at risk. Where is he?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “His life is at risk?”
“I haven’t got time to explain, Father Sullivan, but if he dies because of this delay, you will have to live with that on your conscience. Where is he?”
Somewhere in the distance, I heard the hum of a car engine. He heard it, too. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
The impulse to smack him was hard to resist. Dehan said, “You’re a damn fool!”
I pointed at the exit. “Who were those men?”
He gave Dehan a once-over that had more disdain than regret and turned back to me. “They wouldn’t tell me who they work for. They were also looking for father O’Neil.”