by K. L. Murphy
“I’m fine,” Matt said, the words clipped, short. It was true the priest seemed genuinely glad to see him, but that didn’t mean anything. “Who was the cop, the one that just left?”
Father Joe started, his head turning toward the window. “What? Were you watching my house?”
“Who was he?”
“A friend.”
“He’s a cop.”
“Yes, and a friend. I’ve known his family for years.” The air in the room grew chilly as the afternoon sun waned. The priest sighed. “There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by that I haven’t thought of you, prayed for you. When you ran away, I was so worried about you. You were just a boy.”
“I can take care of myself.” Matt didn’t mean for the words to come out so hard, but maybe that was for the best. It wasn’t that he hadn’t expected the old man’s kindness, but after seeing the cop, Matt needed to be sure he could trust him. Everything depended on it.
Father Joe met his gaze. “Yes, I can see that. And yet, you’re here. Why?”
Matt repressed a smile. Father Joe was as feisty as ever. Good. “I need your help.”
“I see.”
“I’m eighteen now. I can’t be put in foster care anymore, but I can’t stay where I was.” Matt paused. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Father Joe rubbed his fingers across his brow. “What kind of help are we talking about?”
“I want a new life.” The priest waited. “But no cops and no cop friends.”
The lines between the old man’s gray brows deepened. He sat quietly for a minute, two. “A new identity?” he asked.
Matt laughed. Father Joe had never been one to mince words. It was one of the things Matt had always liked about him. “Not the kind you think. I want to start over. I want to do things right this time.” He watched the old man’s face as he spoke. “I want to help people now. Like you.” As he leaned forward, his eyes shone. “I want to be a priest.”
Chapter Eight
“The first thing he did was get his GED.” Father Joe blew on the coffee, watching the wisp of steam over the cup. “He was smart, and it didn’t take long. I helped him the best I could. He got his undergraduate degree in religious studies at a small college in the Midwest, then finished up at seminary. That was followed by a year in a parish outside Boston. Matthew seemed happy, thrilled to be doing what he’d dreamed of. I even thought he might settle there.” He put the cup down and sat back. “But he wanted to come home to D.C., to his old neighborhood.”
Smitty lifted his head, pen poised over a notepad. “You didn’t think that was a good idea?”
“I wanted him to escape his past. He’d had it rough. He turned his life around and made something of himself. Who doesn’t want that for someone they love?”
“So if things were great in Boston, why come back?”
Father Joe’s hands twisted in his lap. “I wish I knew. I still don’t understand it entirely. He wanted to come home and make things better, make things right, he said. I think . . . I think maybe he blamed himself for his mother’s death.”
“You said she OD’d. Why would that be his fault?”
Smitty asked one question after another but with each answer, the old priest’s eyes drifted back to Cancini.
“He was the man of the house. He felt like it was his duty to protect her. We never spoke about it, but I think he knew how hard it was for her to put food on the table, to pay the rent. She had trouble holding a steady job. Like I said before, she found other ways to make money. When she couldn’t do it anymore, it fell on Matthew to find a way to pay the landlord.”
Cancini sipped his coffee. Holland’s mother wasn’t the only junkie from the projects who sold herself for money and drugs, and Holland wasn’t the only boy to grow up in that kind of household.
“And Father Holland knew about his mother’s prostitution?”
The priest raised one heavy shoulder. “He never said so, but yes, I think he did. But he never would have blamed her. He loved her. There was nothing vindictive about his nature. That’s why he wanted to come back, I think. He wanted to offer others like his mother forgiveness and a chance to come to God. He wanted to give them the chance he thought his mother never had.”
“But surely they have drug users and prostitutes in Boston.”
“That’s what I said. As hard as it was to have him away, I thought he should stay there, build a new life. I begged him not to come back.”
“Were you afraid for him?”
Cancini sat forward.
“Yes.” Father Joe wrapped his hands around the coffee cup again. His chest heaved.
“Why?” Smitty kept his voice soft, questioning. There was no hint of accusation, only encouragement.
For a moment, there was only silence. “The neighborhood had changed. You know what it’s like. The gangs. The drugs. It’s all worse. But he wouldn’t listen.”
Cancini opened his mouth, then thought better of it. The old man’s answer, while probably partly true, sounded like bullshit.
“So, he came back,” Smitty said.
“It didn’t take long. He’d done well in his first year, and when it came time to cast around for a more permanent home, he pushed hard to get placed at St. William.”
“Was that difficult?”
“Not really. St. William was struggling to keep a regular priest. It’s been falling apart for years. I helped out there when I could—same as I did when Matthew was young.” He paused. “He was right when he said it was a parish in need. Membership had fallen steadily. There was no one to help with community outreach, no support. He told the diocese he wanted to help people, to give something back. He dreamed of growing the church, making it better. The diocese was thrilled. The fact that he knew the neighborhood was icing on the cake.”
“And did he? Make it better?”
“The membership was up. There was more hope than there’d been in a long time. He worked very hard.” Father Joe struggled to maintain his composure. “So yes, I think he did.”
Chapter Nine
2005
Father Joe stood at the kitchen sink wiping the plates and silverware dry. Matt, fresh from the shower, watched from the doorway. His hair hung wet and heavy on his cheeks, and his skin smelled of strawberries and Irish Spring. He rocked on the balls of his feet, waiting. The priest set the dishes and towel on the counter and waved a hand toward the table. “Let’s sit.”
Matt nodded and laid his black backpack on the floor next to his chair.
“You’ve grown so tall,” Father Joe said.
Matt grinned. He could see the old man reconciling the skinny teenager he’d known three years earlier with the six-foot man now sitting in his kitchen. “Thanks for letting me crash here, Padre.” They exchanged smiles. “Feels like old times, saying that.”
“I’m glad you’re here, Matthew.”
Matt tucked his damp hair behind his ears and cleared his throat. “You want to know about where I’ve been.”
“If you want to tell me.”
“I thought about looking for my real father once, but always seemed like if he’d wanted to be around, he would’ve been.” Matt was quiet a moment. “I had to leave. I couldn’t live with strangers, Padre. They didn’t want me anyway. They just wanted the money.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. I had to meet them first. The lady, the mother, she hovered all around me, touching me and stuff while the social worker was around, acting like she cared, but the minute the social worker left us alone, she had no interest in me.” The hard lines around his mouth softened. “My mom may not have been the best, but I know she never faked it with me.”
“Not all foster families are like that. There are some wonderful families out there.”
“I didn’t want another family. My mom was gone. She was my family. She didn’t need me anymore, so what was the point of sticking around? I wanted to be alone.”
Father Joe folded his h
ands in his lap. “So you ran away.”
“Yep. And I’d do it again.” Matt raised his chin as though challenging the priest, but he only nodded.
“Where did you go?” Father Joe asked.
Matt dropped his head. It was a logical question—one he’d been expecting. He’d been dead to the priest for three years. True, he’d had his reasons, but that was over now. Father Joe seemed sincere in his joy at seeing him again, but how would he look at Matt if he knew the truth? He’d done what he had to. He’d survived and he was alive. That was all he had to hold on to for now. In time, maybe. Matt shook his head. “You don’t need to know that.”
The priest sighed. “I tried to find you. Looked for months. No one knew where you were.”
“But eventually, you gave up.” The words were delivered without accusation, without rancor. “You stopped looking. Life moved on.”
Father Joe’s cheeks reddened. “Yes,” he admitted, “I gave up.” He unfolded his hands. “I guess I figured you didn’t want to be found. But you were in my daily prayers and always will be. Just like your mother.”
Matt blinked back tears. “I’m sorry I never thanked you for all you did for her. I know you tried to help, tried to get her a job.”
“She was a good woman, Matthew. She just got lost along the way.”
“Lost. Yeah, that’s a good word for it.” The young man stood, his chair scraping across the tile floor. “That’s why I’m here.”
The old priest craned his neck to look up at the young man. “What do you mean?”
Matt went to the sink, leaned over, and took deep breaths. It wasn’t going to be easy. Matt knew what he wanted, what he needed to feel whole again. He wanted to help women like his mother, women who’d been beaten by drugs and surrounded by violence. He wanted to help kids so they wouldn’t end up in rat-infested apartments and shitty foster homes. He wanted to give them a place, a home to believe in. He had faith, but he couldn’t do it alone.
Matt faced the priest and drew himself up to his full height. “I want to be a priest like you and help people. A man of God. That’s what I want.”
“Such determination from someone so young.”
Matt lifted his chin. “I can do it.”
Father Joe stood, too. “You don’t need to be a priest to help people, Matthew.”
“You’re wrong, Padre. I need to be a priest, more than anything.” He reached out and clasped Father Joe’s hands in his. “Will you help me?”
Chapter Ten
Smitty sifted through a stack of printed pages. “Janie Holland was in her early thirties when she OD’d.”
Cancini looked across his desk. “What else do we have on her?”
Smitty rolled his chair around the desk. “She was born and raised in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. According to her parents, she ran away when she was seventeen, her senior year of high school. The parents said she’d started staying out late, drinking, typical teenage stuff. They tried grounding her, taking away the car. They suspected she was sneaking out. Then one day, she didn’t come home from school. They filed a missing person’s report.”
“This was when?”
“In 1986. The local police did what they could. They interviewed her friends, went to the high school.”
“Boyfriend?”
“According to her friends there was, but no one had ever met him.”
“We’ve got nothing on him at all?”
“Nope, but she did start skipping school. Wait a minute.” Smitty paused to read. “Here it is. She skipped school five times in the month before she disappeared, twice that week. Police wrote her off as a runaway, most likely with the boyfriend.”
“Did the parents ever hear from her again?” Cancini asked.
“No. She turned up in D.C. a few years later with a kid. Registered him for kindergarten in the fall of ’92.”
“She would have needed a birth certificate.”
“Already got a copy. Matthew Holland was born in Sioux Falls, Idaho, on May 15, 1987. No father on the birth certificate.”
“And we don’t know how she got to D.C.?”
“No. Fell off the grid. When she started him in school, she applied for food stamps. They moved from apartment to apartment, but the last several years before she died, they were in subsidized housing at Barry Farm. Her employment records are sparse. She was picked up a couple of times for prostitution, but they didn’t keep her. She landed in an outpatient rehab once, but it didn’t stick. Then she died.”
Cancini ran a hand over the fresh stubble on his chin. “And that’s when Holland pulled his own disappearing act.”
“Yeah. Not right away though.” He rolled back to his desk and picked up a manila folder. “According to social services, the kid said very little. They tried to track down his maternal grandparents, but either they were dead, had moved, or just didn’t care. Your friend Father Joe was the only one who seemed to want to help him, but he didn’t have guardian status and wasn’t family, so the boy was set up to go to a foster family. That’s when he checked out.”
“Let me guess. They didn’t look for him all that hard.”
Smitty snorted. “You know it. They did a brief search, but according to social services, they’ve already got more needy kids than they can handle. They pushed it back on the police as a missing person, and they chalked it up as another runaway kid.”
“Figures. So, we’ve got nothing on him from fifteen to when he turned up on Father Joe’s doorstep at eighteen.” He dumped his empty cup in the trash. Three missing teenage years didn’t seem important, but Cancini was finding it difficult to fight his curiosity. Where had Holland been? How had he survived? This man meant a lot to Father Joe. And Cancini had never even heard of Holland until he turned up dead. Who was he?
Cancini stood, his chair sliding away from him. “Tell you what. I’ll grab us a couple cups of coffee and we’ll go over the interview list and make some calls. Holland’s secretary is due in soon, right?”
Smitty checked his watch. “Yeah, in about an hour.”
“Good.”
“What are we going to do about Father Joe?” Cancini’s shoulders tensed. “Do you think he knows something? That business about not wanting Holland to come back from Boston . . . seemed like there was more to the story than a bad neighborhood.”
“Possibly,” Cancini said after a moment, his voice quiet. His eyes wandered over the large precinct room. Pairs of desks were crammed together; partners facing off elementary school style. Phones rang and keyboards clacked. The large case board on the wall was filled, no detective unassigned. In bold letters, he saw their names and their case. HOLLAND. Pain pulsed at the base of his neck, the headache that came with each new investigation gathering strength. Lifting his chin, he swung back around and faced his partner. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Chapter Eleven
“She doesn’t look like a church secretary.” Smitty nodded toward the woman on the other side of the glass. “At least none I’ve ever seen.”
The lines around Cancini’s eyes crinkled. “Yeah? How many have you seen?”
“None,” Smitty said with a laugh. “Still. She’s a looker.”
“Who’s a looker?” Bronson ambled in from the break room, cinnamon bun crumbs on his upper lip and chin. A head shorter than Cancini, thick-waisted, and with a head full of slick-backed dark hair, he’d earned the nickname Penguin soon after joining the department. He stopped, let out a low whistle, and slapped Smitty on the shoulder. “I wouldn’t mind taking the lead on this one,” he said, a lopsided leer splitting his face. “If you know what I mean.”
Cancini shot Bronson a dark look. “No, Detective. What do you mean?”
Bronson raised his pointy chin. “Geez, Cancini, why you gotta be that way? I don’t mean nothin’ by it. She’s hot, that’s all, like Smitty said.”
“Hot or not, that woman’s boss was just shot in the face at point-blank range. In case you hadn’t noticed, she’s
wearing a wedding ring and praying. I don’t think she needs you taking the lead, if you know what I mean.”
Bronson frowned, thin lips turned down. “Whatever,” he mumbled.
“I’ll be handling the interview.” Cancini glanced into the precinct room at the rows of desks. “Where’s Jensen?”
“Went home sick.”
“Figures.” Cancini turned back to the glass. Smitty was right. The secretary was pretty in a West Coast, TV commercial kind of way. She had long ash-blond hair that fell in waves to the middle of her back. Perfect teeth, pert nose, almond eyes. She wasn’t tall, but she wasn’t short, either. Slim but curvy in ways her winter coat couldn’t hide. It was true she didn’t look like any church secretary he’d ever met before.
Behind the glass, she rose. Black mascara streaked her cheeks. She gripped the chair with both hands, swaying before she was able to steady herself. After a few moments, she resumed pacing.
“She’s been working at the church for two years, which is about when she and her husband moved here,” Smitty said. “Before that, they lived in Minnesota. They moved here for his job, one of those big building companies out in Tyson’s Corner. She’s thirty-one years old, no kids.”
“How long have they been married?” Cancini asked.
“Almost ten years.”
“Alibi?”
Bronson spun around. “You suspect her? The church secretary?”
Cancini’s eyes cut to Bronson. “Until I have reason not to, I suspect anyone who knew the victim and had contact with him in the last few days. That includes the church secretary. It’s called police work, Bronson. You should try it sometime.”
Bronson flushed and pursed his lips. “I’m gonna call Jensen and check on him.” He brushed by both detectives. “Asshole.”
After he was gone, Smitty said, “Still making friends in the department?” He stood square to the window, watching the pacing secretary.