Eleventh Hour

by Catherine Coulter

  It was early, only seven-thirty on a very cold Monday morning, two weeks into the new year. Savich rose slowly from his chair, his eyes on Dane’s face. Dane looked bad—pale as a sheet, his eyes shadowed so deeply he looked like he’d been on the losing end of a fight. There was pain radiating from his eyes, and shock. “What happened, Dane?”

  “My brother—” For a moment Dane couldn’t speak, and just stood in the open doorway. He felt in his gut that if he actually said the word aloud, it would make it real and true and so unbearable he’d just fold up and die. He swallowed, wishing it were last night again, before four o’clock in the morning, before he’d gotten the call from Inspector Vincent Delion of the SFPD.

  “It’s all right,” Savich said, walking to him, gently taking his arm. “Come in, Dane. That’s right. Let’s close the door.”

  Dane shoved the door shut with his foot, turned back to Savich, and said, his voice steady and remote, “He was murdered. My brother was murdered.”

  Savich was shaken. Losing a brother to a natural death was bad enough, but this? Savich said, “I’m very sorry about this. I know you and your brother were close. I want you to sit down, Dane.”

  Dane shook his head, but Savich just led him to the chair, pushed it back, and gently shoved him down. He held himself as rigid as the chair back, looking straight ahead, out the window that looked out at the Justice Building.

  Savich said, “Your brother was a priest?”

  “Yes, he is—was. You know, I’ve got to go see to things, Savich.”

  Dillon Savich, chief of the Criminal Apprehension Unit at FBI headquarters, was sitting on the edge of his desk, close to Dane. He leaned forward, squeezed Dane’s shoulder, and said, “Yes, I know. This is a terrible thing, Dane. Of course you have to go take care of it. You’ll have paid leave, no problem. He was your twin, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, an identical twin. He was my mirror image. But inside, as different as we were from each other, we were still so much alike.”

  Savich couldn’t imagine the pain he must be feeling, losing a brother, a twin. Dane had been in the unit for five months now, transferred in from the Seattle field office, by his request, and strongly recommended by Jimmy Maitland, Savich’s boss, who told Savich that he’d had his eye on Dane Carver for a while. A good man, he’d said, very smart, hard-nosed, tough, sometimes a hot dog, which wasn’t good, but reliable as they come. If Dane Carver gave his word on something, you could consider it done.

  His birthday, Savich knew, was December 26, two hours after midnight. He’d gotten lots of silly Christmas/birthday presents at the office party on the twenty-third. He’d just turned thirty-three.

  Savich said, “Do the local cops know what went down? No, back up a moment, I don’t even know where your brother lived.”

  “In San Francisco. I got two calls, the first just before four a.m. last night, from an Inspector Vincent Delion of the SFPD, then ten minutes later, a call from my sister, Eloise, who lives down in San Jose. Delion said he was killed in the confessional, really late, nearly midnight. Can you believe that, Savich?” Dane finally looked at him straight on, and in that instant there was such rage in Dane’s eyes that it blurred into madness. He slammed his fist on the chair arm. “Can you actually believe that some asshole killed him in the confessional? At midnight? What was he doing hearing a confession at midnight?”

  Savich thought Dane would break then. His breath was sharp and too fast, his eyes dilated, his hands fisted hard and tight. But he didn’t. His breathing hitched, suspended for a moment, and then he made himself breathe deeply, and held himself together. Savich said, “No, it doesn’t make sense to us, just to the person who killed him, and we’ll find out who and we’ll find out why. No, stay seated for a minute, Dane, and we’ll make some plans. Your brother’s name was Michael, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, he was Father Michael Joseph Carver. I need to go to San Francisco. I know the reputation of the department out there. They’re good, but they didn’t know my brother. Not even my sister really knew him. Only I really knew him. Oh God, I thought I’d never say this, but it’s probably better that my mom died last year. She’d wanted Michael to become a priest, prayed for it all her life, at least that’s what she always said. This would have destroyed her soul, you know?”

  “Yes, I know, Dane. When did you last speak to him?”

  “Two nights ago. He—he was really pleased because he’d managed to catch a teenager who’d been spraying graffiti on the church walls. He told me he was going to make the boy a Catholic. Once he was a Catholic, he’d never do that again because he wouldn’t be able to bear the guilt.” Dane smiled, just for an instant, then fell silent.

  “So you didn’t sense anything wrong?”

  Dane shook his head, then frowned. “I would have said no, that my brother was always upbeat, even when a local journalist tried to come on to him.”

  “Good grief, what was her name?”

  “Oh no, it wasn’t a woman. It was a man.”

  Savich just smiled.

  “It happened quite a bit, but you’re right, usually it was women. Michael was always kind, it didn’t matter if it was a man or a woman doing the coming on.” Dane frowned, fell silent again.

  “Now that you think back, there is something, isn’t there?”

  “Well, I’m just not sure. He said something recently about feeling helpless, and he hated that. Said he was going to do something about it.”

  “Do you have any idea what he meant by that?”

  “No, he wouldn’t say any more. Maybe a confession that curled his toes, maybe a parishioner he couldn’t help. But there was nothing at all that unusual about that. Michael dealt with lots of problems, lots of nutcases over the years.” Dane curled his fist over the chair arm. “Maybe there was something there, something that frightened him, I don’t know. I could have called him back and talked to him some more about it, pushed him when he clammed up. Why the hell didn’t I?”

  “Shut up, Dane. You’re a cop. Don’t freeze your brain up with guilt.”

  “It’s hard not to. I’m Catholic.”

  A meager bit of humor, but a start. Savich said, “None of this was your fault. You need to find out who killed him, that animal is the only one to blame here, the only one. Now, I’ll have Millie make the reservations for you. Tell me again, who’s the lead inspector on this?”

  “Vincent Delion. Like I said, he called me right before Eloise did last night, said he knew I was FBI, knew I’d want to hear everything they had. It isn’t much as of yet. He died instantly, a shot through the forehead, clean in the front, you know, it looked like an innocent tilak, the red spot Hindus wear on their foreheads?”

  “I know.”

  “But it wasn’t just a red dot on the back of his head. Jesus, not on the back.” His eyes went blank.

  Savich knew he couldn’t let Dane get sucked down into the reality of it, couldn’t let him dwell on the hideous mess a bullet made of the head at the exit wound. It would just bury him in pain. He said very precisely, using his hands while he spoke to force eye contact, “I don’t suppose the killer left the gun there?”

  Dane shook his head. “No. The autopsy’s today.”

  Savich said, “I know Chief Kreider. He was back here last year to appear in front of Congress on commonsense approaches to avoid racial profiling in the Bay Area. I met him down at Quantico on the rifle range. The man’s a good distance shooter. And my father-in-law’s a Federal judge out in San Francisco. He knows lots of people. What do you want me to do?”

  Dane didn’t say anything. Savich thought he was too numb with shock and grief to process what he’d said, but that would change. The good thing was that along with the rage and the pain he would have to deal with moment to moment, he would have his instincts and training kicking in. He said, “Never mind. Tell you what, head on out to San Francisco and talk to Delion, find out what they’re doing. See if our office out there can help. Do you know Bert Cartwright,
the SAC in San Francisco?”

  “Yeah,” Dane said, his voice flat as a creek-bed stone. “Yeah, I know him.” There was sudden animosity on his face. At least it masked the pain for a moment.

  “Yes, all right,” Savich said slowly. “You two don’t get along.”

  “No, we don’t. I don’t want to deal with him.”

  “Why? What happened between the two of you?”

  Dane just shook his head. “It’s not important.”

  “All right, you get yourself home and packed. Like I said, I’ll have Millie take care of everything for you. Do you want to stay in the city or go to your sister’s?”

  “I’ll stay in the city. Not at the rectory, either, not there.”

  “Okay, a hotel downtown, then. It’ll be FBI approved, so you can count on it to be basic. You’ll call if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Yes, thank you, Savich. About my cases—”

  “I’ll see that they’re covered. Go.”

  The two men shook hands. Savich watched Dane make his way through the large room with workstations for nine special agents, only six of them occupied at the moment. His wife, Special Agent Lacey Sherlock Savich, was in a meeting with Jerry Hollister in the third-floor DNA analysis unit, comparing a DNA sample taken from a Boston rape-and-murder victim with a DNA sample from the major suspect. If they got a match, the guy was toast.

  Ollie Hamish, his second in command, was in Wisconsin consulting with the Madison police on a particularly vicious series of murders, all connected to a local radio station that played golden oldies. Go figure, Ollie had said, and started humming “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”

  Savich hated crazies. He hated unsolved craziness even more. It amazed and terrified him what the human mind could conjure up. And now Dane’s brother, a priest.

  He dialed Millie’s extension, told her to make arrangements. Then he walked over and flipped on his electric kettle to make a cup of strong Earl Grey tea. He poured his tea into an oversized FBI mug and went back to MAX, his lap-top, and booted up.

  He started with an e-mail to Chief Dexter Kreider.

  SAN FRANCISCO

  At three-thirty on Monday afternoon, San Francisco time, after a five-hour-and-ten-minute flight from Dulles, Dane Carver threaded his way through the large open room toward Inspector Delion’s overloaded desk. He paused a moment, studying him. The older man, with his bald, shiny head and thick handlebar mustache, was hunched over a computer keyboard, typing furiously. Dane sat down in the chair beside his desk and said nothing, just looked at the man at his work. It was like every other large cop shop he’d ever been in. Cops with their suit jackets hung over the backs of their chairs, their ties loosened, sleeves rolled up, a young Hispanic guy in handcuffs lounging in the side chairs, trying on sneers, a couple of lawyers in three-piece suits doing their best to intimidate—nothing at all unusual for a Monday afternoon. A decimated box of jelly donuts lay on a battered table in the small kitchen, a coffee machine that looked to be from the last century beside it, along with stacks of paper cups, packets of sugar, and a carton of milk Dane wouldn’t touch in a million years.

  “Who’re you?”

  Dane came to his feet and extended his hand. “I’m Dane Carver. You called me last night about my brother.”

  “Oh yeah, right.” He rose, shook Dane’s hand. “I’m Vincent Delion.” He sat again, waved Dane to do the same. “Hey, I’m real sorry about your brother. I called you because I knew you’d want to hear what was going on.”

  The brothers had been close, Delion knew from Carver’s sister, Eloise DeMarks. And Delion wasn’t blind. The man was hurting, bad. He was also a Fed. All the Feds Delion had ever met hadn’t seemed to feel much of anything. They all just wanted to press their wing tips down hard on his neck. Of course, he’d never seen a Fed in this situation before. Murder of a family member—something very personal, something over which he had no control at all. It couldn’t get tougher than this.

  Dane said, his voice effortlessly calm and compelling—it was a very good interview voice, Delion thought—“Yes, I appreciate that. Tell me what you have.”

  “I’m really sorry about this, but the first thing we need to do is go over to the morgue and you need to identify the body, not that there’s any doubt, just procedure, you know the drill. Or maybe you don’t. You ever been a local cop?”

  Dane shook his head. “I always wanted to be an FBI agent. But yes, I know the drill.”

  “Yeah, I hear that’s usually the way the thing works. Me, I always wanted to be local. Okay, Dr. Boyd did the autopsy this morning, and yeah, I was there. Your brother died instantly, like I told you last night. Boyd also says that was the case, if it’s any comfort. I’ve spoken to your sister. She wanted to come up today, but I told her you would be here to handle things, that you’d fill her in. I’ll need to speak to her, but in a day or two. I figured you’d rather take care of things.”

  “Yes. I’ve spoken to Eloise. I’ll speak with her tonight. Now, about the gun—”

  “No gun found at the murder site or anywhere in the church or within a two-block radius of Saint Bartholomew’s, but the coroner extracted a twenty-two-caliber bullet from the concrete wall behind the confessional. So the bullet passed through your brother, out the confessional, and another six feet to the wall, not very deep, just about an eighth of an inch into the wall, and it was in pretty good shape. Our ballistics guy, Zopp—yeah, that’s really his name, Edward Zopp—was on it right away. The thing is, you know, your brother was a priest, a very active, well-liked priest, and that’s got priority over about everything else going on. The bullet was intact enough to weigh and measure, and Zopp was very happy about that. Usually it’s not the case. Zopp said he counted the grooves and the land, and determined, of all things, that the gun is probably a JC Higgins model eighty or a Hi Standard model one-oh-one—both of those weapons are really close.”

  “Yeah, and they’re also pretty esoteric. Neither of them is made anymore, but they’re not hard to find, and they’re not valuable. They’re cheap, in fact.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Also Zopp told us it was weird because it’s like the same gun the Zodiac killer used back in the late sixties and early seventies. Ain’t that something? You remember, the guy was never caught.”

  “You’re thinking there could be some sort of connection?”

  Delion shook his head. “Nope. We’re wondering if maybe our perp is an admirer of the Zodiac killer. Hey, it’s a real long shot, but we’ll see. Since we got the bullet, when we find the gun, we’ll be able to match it for the DA.”

  Dane sat back in his chair and looked down at his wing tips. He hated this, hated it to his soul, but he had to ask. “Angle of entry?”

  THREE

  “The killer was sitting right opposite your brother. They were looking at each other. The killer raised the gun and fired through the screen.”

  Jesus, Dane thought, seeing Michael, his head cocked just slightly to one side, listening so carefully to the penitent, trying to feel what the person confessing was feeling, trying to understand, wanting to forgive. But not with this guy, Dane was sure of that. His brother had been worried about this guy. The guy just raised the damned gun and shot him right through his forehead? For a moment, Dane couldn’t even think, the horror of what had happened to Michael deadening his brain. He wished it would deaden the rest of him, but of course it didn’t. He felt hollow with pain.

  Delion gave Dane Carver some time to get himself together, then said, “We’ve already started checking local gun shops to see if they still carry either of these models or have carried them in the past, and if so, who’s bought one in the last few years. Our local gun shop folk keep very thorough records.”

  Dane couldn’t imagine using such a gun to murder someone, particularly if he’d bought the gun here in San Francisco. He’d get caught in no time at all if he bought it here, but it was an obvious place to begin.

  “How was he discovered?”


  “An anonymous call to nine-one-one, made only minutes after the murder.”

  “A witness,” Dane said. “There’s a witness.”

  “Very possibly. It was a woman. She claims she saw the man who shot your brother come out of the confessional, the proverbial smoking gun still in his hand. She says he didn’t see her. She started crying—and then she hung up. Nine-one-one calls are taped, so if you’d like to listen to the call, we can do that. We haven’t got a clue who the woman is.”

  “The woman hasn’t called again?”

  Delion shook his head.

  “She didn’t say whether or not she could recognize him?”

  “Said she couldn’t, said she’d call if she thought of anything helpful.”

  Great, okay, Dane thought. At least there was someone. Maybe she would call back. He said, “Have you spoken yet to the other priests at the rectory?”

  For the first time Vincent Delion smiled beneath his thick mustache, the ends actually waxed, Dane realized when he saw him smile. “Guess what? I figured you’d be ready to climb up my ass if I didn’t let you in on that. So, Special Agent Carver, are you ready to move out?”

  Dane nodded. “Thank you. I really appreciate this. I’m officially on leave from the FBI, so I’ve got time. Father Binney’s got to be first. When we exchanged e-mails last week, Michael mentioned Father Binney.”

  “Oh? In what way? Something pertinent to this?”

  “I’m not sure,” Dane said, shrugged. “He just wrote of problems with Father Binney. There’s something else,” Dane added, raising his head, looking straight at Delion’s mustache. “My brother said something to me on the phone the other night—something about how he felt helpless and he hated that. I’m hoping that Father Binney will have some ideas.”

  They passed the small kitchen area with microwave, coffeepot, and three different bowls of peanuts.

  “Hey, you hungry? Want some peanuts, a cup of coffee?”