by K. L. Murphy
“This still sounds funny to me,” Martin said. “We know he used money from the account to set up the foundation, so he must have known what was going on.”
Smitty spoke up. “Not necessarily. I went by the branch where the account was originally opened and I talked to the manager there. Father Holland came in a little more than a month ago to ask why he wasn’t getting any paper statements. Like Terry said, the manager told him he’d opted out of them when he selected online bank statements and transactions. Father Holland asked him when he did that and the manager told him it had been almost two years.”
Cancini addressed Smitty. “Did the manager say he seemed surprised?”
His partner nodded once. “He thought maybe he was, but apparently, Father Holland tried not to let on. The manager said he just sat there for a minute, then asked if he could have a copy of the statements for the last few years. Told the manager his printer was broken or he’d do it himself.”
“Clever,” Cancini said.
“Yep. And that was it. He left, and the manager didn’t see him again until he shut down the account.”
“When was that?”
“Two weeks ago.”
Landon pointed to the report. “If you look at the dates just before Holland shut down the account, you’ll see three large deposits. The total was close to a half-million dollars. And if you look at the pattern over the last two years, a transfer to Germany would have happened that same day. But the account was closed before that could happen.”
Cancini turned the pages one by one. If he was understanding Landon’s theory, Holland had found the pattern. Three deposits over about a month, followed by a total transfer. A couple of months later, it would start again.
“Holland requested that last transfer in person,” Smitty said. “The manager told me he came in and personally submitted the paperwork. He waited, and when it was done, he made a call, then said it was verified.”
“Can we get his phone records for that date?” Cancini asked.
“The request is already in,” Smitty told him.
“How much did he transfer exactly?”
“It was $488,599.”
Cancini looked out the window, then back down at the transactions listed. He added the deposits in his head. Over the course of two years, millions of dollars had been funneled through the dead priest’s account. And if Landon was right, shortly before his murder, Holland had stolen nearly a half million from that someone. That wasn’t small potatoes in anyone’s book.
“After the transfer, Holland asked the branch manager to close the account permanently. And according to the manager, he wouldn’t leave until it was done.” Smitty paused. “That’s not all. Later that morning, a guy came in, upset that he couldn’t access his account. It was Holland’s closed account. The manager got suspicious and asked the man for identification. The man left before the manager could find out anything else.”
“Do we have this man on camera?
“No. He ducked the cameras from every angle. About all we’ve got so far is a brief description. Six feet, one hundred eighty pounds, dark hair, beard, brown leather coat.”
Cancini blinked. “Did you say brown leather coat?”
Smitty nodded. “Yeah. Mean something?”
“There was a guy at the service last night in a coat like that,” he said, dark brows furrowed. “I think Henderson was spooked by him. And I may have seen him the morning Holland was found—on the sidewalk across the street.”
Martin perked up. “Did you get a look at him?”
“Not really. He was with a woman last night, though. I’m guessing a parishioner. It was too dark to get a good look at her or the plate on her car.”
Martin stood. “Can we get a sketch artist to meet with that bank manager?”
“Already put in for it,” Smitty said.
“Good.” Cancini handed the pages back to Landon. “Is there anything else about these accounts we should know?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“What about any evidence he used the money personally?”
“No, sir. Only for the church.”
Cancini gave a single shake of his head. “If any of this turns out to be right, Father Holland was stealing from someone engaged in money laundering, and trying to use that same money for good. It’s like he was a modern-day—”
Martin raised his palms. “Don’t say it. The press would have a field day.”
“Don’t say what?” Landon asked, his young face upturned.
“Robin Hood,” Cancini said. The pain in his neck radiated to his skull. “A modern-day Robin Hood.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Saturday, February 13: One Week Before the Day of
Matt’s stomach turned over and his hands shook. The black car was there again. Inside, a lone man sat smoking. If the man slept, if he ate, if he left the block, Matt didn’t know about it. He thought about the flimsy locks on the windows and doors of his apartment, but realized if Carlos got serious, the locks would be worthless anyway. His hand rose to the cross around his neck. He wouldn’t be able to avoid his former friend for much longer. He hadn’t left the apartment except to attend to church business in two days. It had to stop soon.
Dusk fell over the city, and the streetlamp on the corner came to life. A handful of cars filled the gravel parking lot. He quickened his step. His parishioners waited. Inside the church, he exhaled and made his way to the reconciliation room.
An hour later, he rose from his chair, his book in his hand. The door opened again and he hesitated. The hour was up, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d made allowances. He sat down again. The wooden chair on the other side of the confessional creaked and a man sighed heavily.
“How can I help you?” Matt heard a clicking noise followed by silence. The odor of cigarette smoke drifted through the screen. “I’m sorry. You can’t smoke in the church.” he said.
“I don’t think you’re in a position to tell me anything, Father.” The guttural voice echoed in the small space.
Matt froze. He didn’t recognize the voice attached to the invisible body. “Are you the man who’s been sitting in the car on the street for two days?”
The man chuckled and blew smoke through the screen. “I like you, Father. You got guts. I’ll give you that.” His voice changed, got hard. “So listen good. Your friend doesn’t like what you’ve done and he wants his money back. You have one week.”
“I don’t have his money.”
The stranger clucked his tongue. “Yeah, you got guts, but don’t be stupid. One week. Or else.”
Matt shivered under the heavy cassock. “Or else what?”
“Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
“I could call the police.”
The man laughed, the sound loud and high-pitched, as grating as the screeching of a mewling cat. When the sound died, Matt liked the silence less. After a moment, he heard the man shift and the sizzle of the cigarette being extinguished. “You won’t call the police,” he said. “They can’t help you.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
Martin slammed the door behind Cancini. “Sit down.” The captain moved behind his desk but remained standing. “Goddammit, Cancini. Sweeney must know something. Hell, even I can figure that out.”
Cancini slumped in the chair, his mind on the funeral, the voice of the captain droning in his ear. Again, the church had been filled to capacity, and again, he’d scanned the parishioners for anyone out of place, anything unusual. The Hardings, Henderson, the old ladies. All there as expected. Missing was the man in the brown leather coat.
“Are you listening, Cancini?” Martin slammed his palm against the desk, and Cancini flinched. He sat up straighter. The captain looked down at Cancini and gestured toward the men in the precinct. “All these detectives devoting hours to this case, and the answer could be right in front of us.” His face grew redder with each word. “The media is having a field day with this priest thing, and the br
ass is breathing down my neck. I don’t need these headaches. Your priest friend knows something and we need to know what it is!”
Cancini bristled under the captain’s glare but knew the captain was right. Father Joe did know something, but it wasn’t that simple. He couldn’t avoid the subject of the confessions any longer. “He won’t talk.”
“That’s unacceptable. Lawyer or no lawyer, I want you to get him in here as soon as possible. That’s not a request.”
Tired and aching, Cancini struggled to keep his irritation in check. The captain was unusually ticked off, but they were all under pressure. Aloud, he said, “I can get him in here, but he still won’t tell us anything.”
Martin leaned forward over his desk. “Then threaten him with obstruction of justice, whatever it takes. Get a friggin’ warrant to search his house.”
Cancini shook his head. “It won’t work.”
The captain’s mouth fell open. “Are you defending him? I don’t give a damn about your relationship, Cancini, or about the big-deal lawyer. I’ve had it with the games. Holland was one of their own. They should be happy to help.”
“He would if he could.”
Martin gaped at him. “What the hell does that mean?”
“In the simplest of terms, it means he’s bound by his position as a priest to never reveal what was told to him in confidence.” Martin cocked his head, deep lines creasing his brow. “Do you know what confession is?”
“Isn’t that where a person goes in and tells the priest about his sins like how many times he told a lie or cheated on his taxes or some other stupid thing?”
“More or less. The priest hears the confession, offers penance, and then forgiveness. Father Joe acted as Father Holland’s confessor. Apparently, this is something he’d been doing since Father Holland was just a teenager.”
“So what? I don’t care if he smoked some weed or stole some beer when he was a kid. We only need to ask him what Holland told him about those bank accounts.”
“He can’t tell us.” He kept talking before the captain could interrupt. “It’s like the doctor-patient privilege, but more serious.”
The captain dropped into his seat. He reached for a toothpick and stuck it in his mouth. “We’ve found ways around that. We can find ways around this, too.”
Cancini shook his head. “There aren’t any ways around it. It’s called the sacramental seal, and it’s unbreakable.”
“Nothing is unbreakable.”
“This is. According to papal law, the sacrament of reconciliation is absolute. If someone comes in to confess their sins, they have to know that nothing they say will ever leave the confessional.”
“This is different. It’s a murder investigation. There must be exceptions.”
“No.”
Martin’s face flushed pink. “We can subpoena him.”
“It won’t matter.”
“This is bullshit.”
Cancini understood the captain’s confusion. “Look, let’s say someone walks into the confessional and tells the priest he is planning to kill his wife that day. He tells him everything, how he’s going to do it, when he’s going to do it, even why he’s going to do it. The priest can try to talk the man out of it. He can try to get the man to go to the police. But he can never tell a soul. The best he can do is alert the police that the woman might be in danger, and even that can be tricky.”
“That’s crazy. He’d have an obligation to tell the police, wouldn’t he?”
“No. His obligation is to uphold the sacrament. You can’t reveal anything you’ve ever heard, even ten years, twenty years later.”
Martin shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Cancini shrugged. “Maybe not, but that’s the way it is. If people thought priests were allowed to reveal what they confessed, even small things, they’d never tell a priest anything.”
“This is different.” Martin tossed the gnawed toothpick into the trash. “Maybe priests can’t say anything while a person is alive, but Holland is dead now. What difference does it make?”
“Still not allowed.” Cancini brushed his spiky hair with his hand. He had his own reasons for wanting to bring Father Joe in again. “I’ll have him come in, but I can’t promise anything.” He got to his feet. “That’s the best I can do.”
The captain stood and shoved his hands in his pockets. “That’s not good enough. It’s been four days and you don’t have diddly. No suspect. No forensic evidence. You’ve got a trail of money and no clue where it leads. The brass is breathing down my neck. The press is going crazy and the archbishop of something or other is calling the mayor every day.” Desperation crept into his voice. “Find something . . . anything.”
Chapter Forty
FBI Agent Derek Talbot stifled a yawn and nodded toward the stately grandfather clock. “It’s Saturday, Mike. Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Not unless I have to.” Cancini gestured toward his young partner. “This is my Smitty.”
Talbot reached across his desk and shook the young man’s hand. “Heard about you. You’re a brave man to partner with an asshole like Cancini.”
“So I’ve been told,” Smitty said. “He’s not all bad, though.”
“You haven’t worked with him long enough.” Talbot waved a hand at the guest chairs. “Mike, it’s good to see you.”
“It hasn’t been that long, Derek.”
Talbot glanced at Smitty and spoke in a voice mimicking the older detective. “Good to see you, too, Derek. How’ve you been? How’s the family? Thanks for coming in at the crack of dawn on your day off.” Talbot’s eyes crinkled as he spoke. “You haven’t changed a bit, Mike.”
Smitty laughed out loud.
“Are you done yet?” Cancini asked, but there was no resentment in his voice. Talbot was an old friend and they’d recently worked the Coed Killer case together. “How are you, Derek? How’s the family?”
“They’re fine. Girls are good and Allison says hi.” He winked at Smitty. “See. Not so hard.” He turned back to Cancini. “And you? How’s your dad?”
“As well as can be expected.” Cancini’s hands tightened around the file in his lap. “Did you get the sketch?”
Talbot opened the folder on his desk. “I got it. His name is Carlos Vega. Twenty-nine years old.” His lips turned down in a frown. “Reportedly, he’s the leader of the Eastside Gang.”
Cancini nodded once and pulled out a pen to take notes. “What can you tell me about him?”
“Most of what we know about Vega is vague. He started as a runner as far we can tell, probably thirteen or fourteen at the time. He delivered drugs, collected the money, and got paid a few bucks by the Dragons. That was before they joined with the Eastside Gang. He was arrested at fifteen for possession, but as a juvenile, got a month and probation. A few years after that, the captain of the Dragons—a guy named Wayne Johnson—went missing. He turned up stabbed to death. Wayne’s girlfriend came forward and named Carlos as the murderer. Claimed there was another witness, but we never found him. She OD’d before the police could bring charges.” Talbot paused.
Cancini remembered the case. Another drug dealer dead by his mid-twenties. It had barely made any waves. No witnesses. No evidence. No case. “Who was the other witness?”
“Another runner, kid who’d worked for Wayne. Matty was his name. Good-looking, she said.”
Cancini’s skin tingled. Good-looking? Matty? Holland would have been about seventeen or eighteen then. “You never found him?”
“Vanished. The timeline’s a little hazy after that, but we do know Vega became the head of the Dragons, and when they merged with Eastside, he was still at the top.”
“I’m guessing you don’t have anything on him or he wouldn’t be on the streets.”
“That’s right. He never moves without a bodyguard, and technically, he’s clean. He owns four Chicken del Rey franchises. He purchased the first one with a bank loan cosigned by his mother. He pays his taxes. He liv
es alone in a two-bedroom house at the edge of Georgetown. He drives a Ford SUV. There are no red flags.”
Cancini looked up from his notes. “Something tells me there’s a ‘but.’”
“Oh, there’s a ‘but,’ all right. You and I both know the history of gangs in this city. The police, the FBI, we do what we can, and we were making some headway, but not anymore. Vega’s organization is tight, the tightest I’ve ever seen. Runs it like a mafia.”
Smitty frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Rumor is that Vega has strict rules. According to one source, he’s forbidden anyone close to him to buy a mansion, drive a car that costs more than sixty thousand dollars, or throw money around like a fool. One story says he had a man shot on his boat after his girlfriend flashed a gigantic pink diamond ring. The girl was shot, too, and the third finger on her left hand was gone. The ring was never found.”
“I remember that one,” Cancini said. “Wasn’t that up in Annapolis?”
“Yep. The gun used to kill them was left on the boat. No prints. No way to trace it or tie it back to Vega. Still unsolved.” He paused, shaking his head. “He doesn’t like attention. He’s been under surveillance for a couple of years now and we’ve got nothing. That’s why his operation is so hard to pin down.”
“How big is it?”
“It’s hard to say. There are dozens of gangs in the city and more in the suburbs. Most are small-time, neighborhood gangs. Eastside is different. They started small, but Vega branched out, pulling a lot of the gangs under his wing. Each of the smaller gangs still sports their own colors, has their own territory. Eastside is like the holding company and the small gangs all report to them. I’m not sure how many Vega controls, but for all intents and purposes, Vega runs the largest drug trade in the city. He dabbles in prostitution and gambling, but from what we can tell, he focuses on the money business.”
“Drugs.”
Talbot tossed the folder back on the desk. “There’s more. Vega is tough, but he’s also very protective of his men. When one of his guys is arrested, he gets him a lawyer, usually one just good enough to get him a decent plea deal. When the guy gets out, his reward for keeping his mouth shut is a legitimate job. It keeps the probation officer happy and no one is the wiser.”