Steel never told Williams more than the basic summary during one of these case reviews. He figured if he went too far and set expectations too high, he’d look like he wasn’t doing his job if things didn’t work out by the outline he had provided.
The computer beeped in the office, indicating that Williams had gotten a new email.
He twirled his chair toward the monitor, grabbed the mouse, and poked his chubby fingers into the keyboard, typing about a sentence worth of words.
Steel thought about the case and replayed what he had just told Williams. He often did that, for confirmation that he’d said everything the right way. Perfectionism—his master, his worst enemy, his root cause of depression, but at times his best friend.
Marisa crossed her legs, pressed her elbows into the arms of the chair, leaned her chin in her hand, and dangled her shoe, waiting for the conversation to pick back up.
Williams sensed her impatience and pointed at his computer screen. “I have to take care of this. Gonna be a while. We’ll pick this back up.”
“No worries,” Steel said. “We’ll keep you posted, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you.”
“And I hope everything goes well with your daughter.”
“Me, too, they’re so cute,” Marisa said.
“Thank you both.”
Steel thought how he’d love to say that to Desiree Jones’s mother, that he hoped things would go well with her daughter, but Desiree was gone—and so was Jeanette. And he knew he would get to the bottom of this case if it killed him as well. His job was his life, and he’d die for it if need be. Somebody had better put Steel on a leash because he was on the verge of going into the abyss, wherever it led him.
PART THREE
THE ABYSS
30
T
he priest hoisted a gold chalice filled with wine, the symbolic blood of Christ inside, and held it toward the sky before lowering his hands. He reached and gripped the host between his thumb and first finger, symbolizing the body of Christ, raised it up, and half sang, half said words a cappella. Next he said, “Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which Earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.”
All the voices in the church meshed together into a loud, deep answer that bounced off the high hand-painted ceilings: “Blessed be God forever.”
The church fell silent, only the priest’s footsteps thumped the floor while he stepped down the altar, through the aisle lined with maroon carpeting, and stopped in the middle of the church where the back and front wooden pews met and formed a small gap. Two Eucharistic ministers in baggy white gowns trailed the Father on either side of him, holding the golden chalices, and spread out on both his right and left side, on each corner. The choir leader, a skinny man with combed-over black hair and rough acne on his pale skin, stepped up to the podium, flipped his palm and slowly raised it. After a moment, he swirled a finger, signaling for the musicians to begin the song. Each member, who also wore baggy white gowns, tapped at their instruments and played the “Communion Song” in unison. A short, stocky nun poked at the powerful organ so loud the rhythm of pipes rattled the red and yellow stained-glass windows and shook the imagines of Jesus, Mary and the Apostles. A voice from the choir belted out, “Christ has come, Christ has risen, Christ will come again…” The loud voice got full attention from the parishioners.
The aging priest stood still. He had bushy gray eyebrows over his round stare and wrinkled white skin hanging from under his chin. He adjusted his shoulders under his white vestment, and a gold strip of cloth wrapped around his hood and over his chest. He gripped a circular tan host from the gold container and held it up toward the ceiling, following it with his eyes. Within moments, the church guests from Marisa’s parents’ neighborhood poured out of their seats and stepped behind one another in a single-file line—both lines leading to the priest.
How did Marisa get me to come here on my day off? Steel thought.
He had made a promise to her a week prior that as part of their relationship he’d go to church with her once a month on his day off. Having an off day was strange to Steel, and he reflected. People always felt they had nothing to do, yet so much to accomplish. Had time to think of the things they had already done in life but also things they haven’t. They’re somewhat bored, yet entertained, and wish they weren’t bored but wouldn’t rather be working. They’re depressed, yet excited. Maybe it was that people’s days lacked structure without work and, Steel knew, a lack of routine could ruin the best of men, that scattered intentions and an unoccupied mind led to varied and uneven results, temptations, that by prioritizing important things in life, you give them the appropriate attention and water each enough until they grow and blossom by steady work each day.
He hadn’t been to a full Mass in over ten years, about the time he stopped being a Catholic, even a Christian for that matter. That’s when he took on agnostic views, choosing that path because he believed the world had a Creator, or personal God, but stopped asking who or what the deity was, and had come to the conclusion that we, as humans, were incapable of knowing, that it was a mystery, and would remain a mystery until we died. But he thought we were capable of feeling God on Earth through intuition and interactions with others, how we treated people and the emotions those interactions created. He considered himself a spiritual person who believed in a benevolent higher power or intelligence but didn’t believe in any specific religion. God had to be benevolent, he reasoned. If not, why would the joys of life create positive emotions instead of negative ones? And why would God envision a world where love exists, even if through a flawed human existence? His thoughts were that we were souls placed on Earth in bodies to learn and grow through the pains of being infallible, mortal—to except love, to love others, and to be loved—because that’s what God was, in his opinion, love. Sometimes he felt religions were divisive, derived from regional yearnings of man who lived during a time when all they had was imagination, not science or technology. But he didn’t know for sure, questioned himself and his own beliefs often, never fully excluded the possibility that other beliefs were correct. God was something you feel, he believed, available to one at all times, through our interactions with one another and how we chose to use our free will. He felt the deity was all around us in the physical and psychological world. We just had to pay attention to it. The Universe was too detailed and mathematically accurate for there not to be a Creator, he’d tell people if they asked about his religious views. And God was good, he’d say as well, and he’d use the example that the warm feelings people got or the endorphins that were released in the brain when helping or doing something good for someone else was God giving them a hug. He didn’t know what or who the higher power was and was skeptical when others were so sure they did. He’d argued and debated a lot over religion when he was younger but was becoming more patient with people and their beliefs with age, even if he disagreed with them; he respected all opinions and religions.
Marisa eyed the Communion line and slid her hand on Steel’s kneecap, as if to ask him, Aren’t you coming up to get Holy Communion?
He spread his palms across his lap and shook his head no.
She and her parents squeezed past Steel’s knees as he twisted his body and let them out to join the line of people, each person inching closer to the priest with their hands folded and eyes wandering throughout the pews, looking for familiar faces. Marisa cut into the line and glanced back at Steel and smiled, didn’t seem bothered that he didn’t go with them.
Steel noticed that everybody was still kneeling but him. He dug his kneecaps into the strip of maroon padded-wood just off the floor and hunched over the pew. He didn’t make prayer hands but just slid his fingers through each other and into a ball. And he couldn’t kneel the right way, with his back straight and buttocks off the seat, so he leaned back and half sat, half kneeled. He wasn’t even Catholic and couldn�
��t believe he was even kneeling in the first place. Strange things you do for love.
He studied the altar, especially the backdrop, and it resembled the Christian kingdom of God—pointy gray edges poking through the air like a castle, and a hand-painted scene of Jesus on the cross crafted on the wall behind it. Angels with wings played harps in billowing white clouds and swirls of baby blue skies, just above the crucifixion scene. On each end of the altar were sculpted gray statues of the Mother Mary, and what looked like a saint, a halo over the man’s stone head, each molded and chiseled to perfection, the faces and bodies down to the finest detail, as if hand-made by Michael Angelo himself. Steel thought churches were beautiful for a reason, to make the atmosphere heavenly, not Earthly, as though you were in the presence of God—safe, protected, away from the evils of life.
Steel rubbed his nose. Thick clouds of incense aroma still floated through the air since the altar boys had shaken out the thurible by his pew. He suddenly remembered he had shaken hands with the people in the pews in front and back of him during the sign of peace and stopped touching his face. The germs, he thought, damn. He frowned and cursed his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and stared at his hand as if his eyes would somehow cleanse the bacteria on his fingertips. He observed an elderly woman sipping the gold chalice. After she was done, the Eucharistic minister wiped where she drank from with a white cloth and spun the cup around for the next person. How in the world can strangers drink wine from the same universal cup? Steel thought. The whole church drinks from the same glass. He couldn’t understand it during his middle school days and still could not understand it as an adult. He’d joke and tell people there were probably eight types of strep throat and five different bacteria of the common cold floating in that wine from backwash. Maybe it was just him and his OCD, but he couldn’t have been the only one wondering it, he reminded himself. And he felt like shit for thinking blasphemously in church, so he told himself Jesus could be real, really could be God, could really punish him for his criticism of Mass. Who knows? he thought. I have no clue about God. I’m just a tiny speck in the Universe, my intelligence a single strand of sand on the beach of the infinite. He said a prayer in his mind and asked if God could show him if Jesus was real, to send him a sign or message, and pondered if that were an attempt to play it safe for having offended Jesus in his home with his thoughts. Good Old Catholic guilt still etched in his bones. Once a Catholic—always a Catholic, he thought and smiled to himself.
He glanced some more, especially at the expressions of complete apathy, frowns and somnolent eyes across 80 percent of the faces in the pews. People fidgeted in their seats or ducked out early after they had received Communion to get a few slices of “church pizza” from the corner bakery or catch some of the pre-game show before the start of the Eagles matchup. Most of the church was made up of Italian-Americans and some went home to start the pot of “gravy.”
Steel envisioned the conversation between the parishioner and priest.
Parishioner: “Sorry Father, but you’re known as the priest who takes an hour to do a service. I was hoping to get the other guy who takes under fifty minutes, so I’m headin’ home to watch the football game and get ready for dinner.”
Priest: “Seven Hail Mary’s for your sins. But I’ll cut the punishment to five Our Father’s if you put money in both the first and second church donation collections. Now you may go, my child.”
Steel could have sworn he even saw people dosing off when the priest had read a letter from Paul to the Corinthians during the Gospel earlier on, and he didn’t like the tone of the priest and all the finger-wagging during the Homily. Maybe it was his disdain for authority, maybe not, but he never liked the way some priests treat members of their church as if they were children. Now he really felt like shit and wished he didn’t criticize everything so much, but couldn’t help it—it was in his nature. He was an observer, an introvert, a thinker, enjoyed watching and analyzing. But he never thought he was better than anyone or that his opinions were always right, but embraced the converse thought processes. He believed he was a worthless piece of shit, that his life was meaningless, that he wasn’t worthy of God. That’s why he took on an adversarial approach to most things, and especially with religion, because he knew one area where he could usually excel and beat people was intellectually. He’d often spend hours researching topics so he’d never be embarrassed in conversation, so that he’d always be prepared—the height of insecurity—constantly seeking knowledge and self-validation while feeling unintelligent and irrelevant at the same time. Catch 22. Steel’s mind was the worst, torturous at times, called him a moron, coward, worthless, stupid, inadequate, unlovable—fed him shame and guilt and depression and anxiety. Maybe I should go up there and down that glass of wine, he thought, maybe it’ll cleanse my mind. But that was his brain and personality, the one molded for him by the deity. His battle in life, his way to overcome this world by not letting his mind defeat him, his way to choose and recognize that God is benevolent in spite of it all. He was learning to control and embrace the craziness, to master his mind. Shakespeare was right: “To thine own self be true.”
Marisa drummed a few fingers on Steel’s shoulder and broke him from his thoughts. He sat up, and she and her parents slid by him and knelt.
Another thought popped in Steel’s mind about the case, more of a question, a hunch. He wanted to know more about John Fratt, and the only person he could ask was Desiree’s co-worker, Jimmy.
Steel tapped Marisa on the arm and pointed to his cell phone. Marisa didn’t say anything. She twisted her lips and shot him curious eyes, and snapped her head back toward the altar. Steel got up and tip-toed down the aisle toward the exits. The faces in the pews mixed of growing eyeballs in anticipation of the close of the Mass and some light personal grooming taking place, brushing hair with fingers and straightening clothing, in preparation for the handshakes and catching up with people from the neighborhood after the service.
He reached the door and stared at its golden cross imprint before stepping outside. The stone steps glistened with glitter and his shoes rested on its cold surface. A wild wind smacked him and shook his clothing fabric and his jeans jiggled. He shivered and his teeth clattered as his body adjusted to a quick transition from warm to freezing cold.
He dialed Jimmy’s cell and the voicemail at the end of the unanswered rings told him to call over to his office because he was working today. Steel called Fratt & Johnson. He waited through two rings and got the receptionist.
“Good morning, Fratt & Johnson. How may I direct your call?”
“James Finndle, please.”
He listened to her poke at the keyboard.
“Sorry, James is out of the office for the remainder of the day.”
“You sure?”
The woman sounded confused. “Yes,” she said and typed some more. “Yes, sir, I just confirmed it.”
“Okay, thank you.”
“Can I take a message, transfer you to his voicemail?”
“Nah…I’ll catch up with him.”
“Have a good day, sir.”
“You too.”
Steel hung up and thought, Where the hell are you, Jimmy? I need to fucking talk to you, ask you about that cocksucker Fratt. I need to know about your boss. He lowered his head at the steps, watched the edges sparkle, and listened to the choir begin singing in unison and the organ picking back up and realized he shouldn’t talk like that in respect of his location. I need to ask you something. Where the “heck” are you, Jimmy?
31
S
teel stood over the lake and stared down at the still water, a lone plastic water bottle and fallen branches floating atop its smooth surface. He dug each hand in his jean pockets and stared at patches of liquid that had frozen when temperatures dropped a few days prior. On his day off, he liked to get away from people, from his job, and chose to spend it in his home or out in nature. FDR Park was a perfect getaway, a state park in South Philly,
but wasn’t far from his apartment in Center City, a fifteen-minute drive. If it were summertime, it would be packed with people. There would be bicyclers whipping around the narrow concrete pathways wide enough to fit a single car and one or two people. The paved grounds would be surrounded by healthy green grass and trees on either side. In the distance, people would occupy baseball fields, tennis courts and a golf course. People jogged, walked, had picnics in the beds of grass, played baseball, soccer, tennis, and football, fished in the lakes and ponds. On a July day the air smelled natural—of pine and earth and muddy grass—and the sun’s heat beat down on your skin and the brightness turned the black ground light gray and the trees bright green.
Nature had a way of calming him, soothing him. Maybe it was the tree-scented air, or the feeling that he was alone with the Universe and God’s creation. And something made him relax on this day while he stood on the shrubs of dingy grass, surrounded by the lifeless trees with just brown branches and without leaves. He preferred to visit another state park nearby, John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, because it was more enclosed, less sports and social activities, and had more wildlife to see, more of pure nature, but he liked to go there with someone else, not alone—it was just too quiet and isolated in there on a cold winter’s day for him. And FDR was more of a park, more open and less nature. On rare occasions he’d spot deer, gopher, and rabbits, but that was about it, unlike John Heinz where he’d see various animals and different types of birds.
He bent down and snatched rocks from mud on the ground. A few pigeons flapped their wings and soared through the frigid wind, sensing his weight shifting and hand digging. He stared out into the icy lake, brown branches poking from tree trunks and tangling around one another and hovering over the water, and up to the dreary gray winter sky, and rolled his fingertips against his palm, dropping the rocks.
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