by M. P. Cooley
“Sure, c’mon in.” He unbuttoned the top of his cassock as we climbed up the stairs, not waiting to see if I would follow. I waved the others into the church and ran to catch up to Monsignor, who threw questions over his shoulder as we hustled up the center aisle about my dad, Lucy, my health, and if I ever spoke to Kristen, my best friend from high school who had moved to California. Although his hair was gray, he moved quickly, and could still catch teenagers skipping school before they knew what hit them. Only the center front pews had the lights on and the church was chilly, two cost-cutting measures to keep it from closing. Monsignor would stop to straighten missals and flip up kneelers, and gave a quick sign of the cross as he passed the altar.
“I need to ask you to put the lights on through the whole church,” I said. “And do you want to accompany us when we search the altar?”
“I’ve got a conference call with the diocesan lawyers at eight and have to get ready for the funeral.” He stared past me to where the agents were leading police dogs up and down the pews, flashlights scanning below the seats. “Are there animals in my church?”
“Dogs that are on loan from the state troopers K-9 unit. Don’t worry—they’re better behaved than most troopers.”
“I trust you, June.”
“I appreciate that, Monsignor. But I also need a minute of your time to ask you a few questions.”
“Later would be better.”
I halted in front of a statue of Saint Agnes, a bank of votives before her. “Actually, doing it before the service would be a big help.”
Monsignor raised an eyebrow at me, mischief evident in the flickering light of the candles. “Okay, boss, it’s your show.” He walked back to me. “I can give you a minute.”
I flipped to my list so quickly the paper cut across my middle finger. I blotted it on my notebook and soldiered on. “Did you know Danielle?”
“She came to after-school Catholic Ed, so I saw her, but only talked to her at the big events, stuff the teachers brought me in for. It seemed as if she didn’t know how to talk to other girls, and they didn’t seem like they knew what to do with her, either.”
“But she knew how to talk to boys?”
“They went out of their way to talk to her. I heard Jimmy McCollough ask her to fool around in the empty bingo room, but she said, ‘Not in a million years,’ before I had to step in. I also heard one of the kids’ fathers ask her to go to a hotel with him. I was grabbing a smoke out back”—he waved in the direction of the confessionals, and I assume the parking lot beyond. “She said, ‘Is the hotel in New York City near Saks?’ I shut down that discussion immediately, and that father and I had a long conversation regarding the sanctity of marriage and where teenage girls fit into that equation.” Monsignor shook his head. “I told Phil, and he yelled, but not at her. More like near her. He aimed most of his anger at me.”
“And Danielle’s mom? Any sense of how they got along?”
“I know that back in high school Danielle didn’t like all her mom’s travel, but that was when she was a kid. She was proud of her mom.”
“She told you that in confession?”
Monsignor grinned. “Juniper, if the killer himself told me his sins in confession, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “So how did you know?”
“She and I got stuck next to each other at an Ancient Order of Hibernians dinner, right after she was thrown out of Catholic High. It seems she liked to time her high school expulsions with her mother’s campaigns, when she could get Mom’s attention.”
I wondered if Danielle had done that last year, when Amanda Brouillette had been defending her seat. I could imagine how that conversation at the Hibernians’ dinner went. I’d found myself confiding in Monsignor Ottario because he made it clear that he’d heard it all before—more than once—and your sins? Kind of boring. While he kept his eyes on the divine, his feet were firmly planted on the ground.
“Did you give her any advice?”
“I suggested she might want to figure out what course she wanted to chart, instead of charting a course against her parents. She had a hopeless attitude, convinced that her parents had all the major accomplishments covered. The Brouillettes emphasized how they were self-made and she should be, too, even as they handed her everything. She felt they cut her off at the knees whenever she tried to stand on her own feet. I tried to explain that money and power were not the only goals one could have in life.” He paused, considering his words. “I had hoped that with her move to California and her entrance into UCLA, she was finding her way.” He raised his thumb toward the sacristy. “We done?”
“Not quite,” I said, and Monsignor gave me a hurry up motion with his hand. “Have you seen Danielle recently?”
“She and her husband came to church around Christmastime, for a month or so. Or rather, she came once, and he came for a month. Danielle was one of those kids who were confirmed so that they could tell their parents they weren’t going to church anymore. I grabbed him once after Mass, and he said he was just checking out a little God. Not bad. Or at least trying not to be bad. I don’t think he had much practice at being good.”
“And her brother-in-law? Ray Jelickson? You know him?”
“Not at all, but I’m reasonably sure that you could ask Jackie DeGroot, Chuck DeGroot’s daughter. They were dating.”
I tried to think if I’d missed anything. Above me, Saint Agnes gazed down, looking less like a scared fourteen-year-old virgin martyr than like an assured young woman confident in her belief in God and in alignment with His will. Parishioners believed in her as well, based on the number of people who lit vigil lights to her.
I couldn’t think of anything. “You’re off the hook, Father, er, Monsignor.”
“Oh good, just in time for my conference call.” Monsignor stepped close, resting his hands on both my shoulders, an arm’s-length hug. “It’s nice to have you back, Juniper.”
I smiled. “Don’t get your hopes up about seeing me at Mass anytime soon.”
“What I meant was that we lost our hero, the woman who would push to make sure the world was a more decent place. It’s nice to have her back, no longer hiding her candle under a bushel basket. And of course, I’d be happy to see you here along with Miss Lucy—she’s quite the conversationalist.” I smiled at his very true description of Lucy, and he squeezed both my shoulders and nodded toward the agents who were continuing their sweep. “Don’t let them trash the place.”
“I’ll ask them to clean off any gum they find stuck underneath the seats.”
He swept off in a flurry of purple robes. I left the watchful gaze of Saint Agnes and walked down the wide aisle, passing the stained glass window that was my childhood favorite, the one showing the fires of hell. My parents would let me sit next to it, if we could, since I was less fidgety when I could study the devils with pitchforks and the flames licking the damned. It’s not like the windows of the saints were any less bloody: from stigmata to bodies pierced with arrows or crushed by wagon wheels, Catholic imagery, at least pre–Vatican II, was hardly known for its restraint. I had gone to church during a time in which they encouraged a folk quartet to sing light rock ballads in an effort to make the church hip and approachable, but my eyes had always studied this window where the wages of sin were writ large.
Moments later, the lights came on.
CHAPTER 16
THE IRISH CATHOLIC IMMIGRANTS had built the church a century ago, greater and higher than any other church in town, overflowing the pews every week with their crowded families. It’s a good thing they did, I thought. Danielle’s funeral had packed the seats, with more than two thousand people in attendance.
With the light shining down on her auburn hair, Amanda Brouillette gleamed like a copper penny in the front row. She hadn’t cried, and no doubt somebody in the audience was concluding that she had killed her daughter and that boy if she didn’t even cry. I remembered my own efforts to stiff-upper-lip it through Ke
vin’s funeral. “So strong,” my friends commented. “She never really cared,” my enemies said. In retrospect, I wasn’t fooling anyone—I could barely carry on a conversation in those weeks, and ended up with my clothes inside out more than once—but I needed to grieve in private because my sadness might wash me away.
Against thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight. . . .
Monsignor paused, the words from the Miserere sinking into the hearts of those witnessing the funeral for Danielle. The Mass was very fire and brimstone. Who had opted for the old-fashioned Mass? Probably Phil Brouillette, who sat next to his wife looking puffy from lack of sleep, too much alcohol, and maybe some crying.
Half hidden behind a pillar was Hale. He didn’t fit in, despite his sober clothes and somber expression. His perfectly fitting suit brought out his sharp angles and broad shoulders. He was a viper in with the garden snakes.
I recognized many of the faces, including the parents of grade school friends, diners at Spiak’s, perps I’d arrested. I didn’t see many people Danielle’s age. She either didn’t have many friends or the friends she did have were away at college. A sea of lobbyists flooded the pews, identifiable from their pin-striped suits and the smart phones under the sight line of the pew. The guys from the Brouillette plant wore ties tucked into their ski jackets, stood with their hands folded in front of them, and knelt as one when it was time—even if they didn’t know the Mass, they understood respect. Chuck and Jackie were within a few pews of the plant guys, and Chuck exchanged nods with several of them.
Jackie kept glancing back at Craig, who stood in the back, the province of young men who wanted to make a quick escape. Shifting from foot to foot, Craig glanced at the door Dave patrolled. I wondered if Craig was watching for the Jelicksons. I know I was. Marty had arrived alone. He wore the same suit he’d worn to the wake, an imprint from the iron on the back of his left sleeve. The congresswoman squeezed his shoulder as she passed, while her husband stared through Marty as if he wasn’t there.
Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God. . . .
Jason Byrne arrived shortly thereafter with his parents, his mother pushing his father’s wheelchair. I was surprised—I expected Mr. Byrne to be too sick to come. Braces around his head, torso, and neck kept him from sliding sideways, but his dull hair, ropy arms, and yellow skin made him appear decades older than his wife—eighty-five rather than forty-five. His brown corduroys had been carefully folded up at the ankles to keep them from getting caught in the wheels. He nodded to a few people, weakly and a beat too slow, but still alert and part of life. Jason raced ahead to Marty, who slid over in his otherwise empty pew. Ten rows back, Denise Byrne slowed and finally stopped, ignoring Jason’s wave; then turned, strode around to the side aisle, and parked her husband next to the pillar where Hale stood before she slid into the very end of the row, far away from her son and Marty.
Monsignor Ottario stood up to give the eulogy. He spoke of Danielle in the most general terms, how she was loved as a child of God and would be missed, but I knew he meant it. With a groan from the century-old hinges, the heavy wooden doors opened and the Jelicksons appeared. Zeke Jelickson’s hair was slicked back and his beard was trimmed, and he was wearing biker formal wear: polished brown cowboy boots peeked out from under a conservative wool suit. Linda Jelickson could’ve been any one of the politicians’ wives that crowded the first few pews, or even one of the politicians themselves, wearing a black pantsuit with her blond hair pulled back into a chignon. Her face was a little more weathered than the country club set, but her boots were Ferragamo.
I tracked them as they sauntered up the aisle. Dave ambled forward, squinting. Craig stepped sideways, into their line of vision, but they ignored him. Jackie waved, and Denise Byrne stood up and released the brake from her husband’s wheelchair before he jerked—a protest—forcing her to sit down again. Marty pushed over in the pew without saying anything, going so far as to hush his mother when she whispered to him.
Monsignor finished his eulogy, enlightening us on the endless love of God and his mysteries. At Kevin’s funeral, not much love had been lost between God and me, and as to his ways, well, I didn’t want to know. Lines formed to receive Communion, first the Brouillettes and the Jelicksons, and finally the rest of the communicants. The crowd avoided making eye contact when passing either family’s pew, with most looking at Danielle’s closed casket, hidden beneath the shawl of flowers. A few moments for contemplation followed Communion, the church quiet except for the occasional sob.
From the sea of bowed heads, Hale launched up, his hand to his ear and talking so loudly into his radio that even in the rear of the church I could hear the words “contain the threat.” He wasn’t running up the aisle, but it was close: the razor-sharp creases of his pant legs flattened against his shins as he hurried toward me. Marty shook off his mother’s grabbing hands and walked calmly up the aisle, head down. I stood up, ready to intercept Hale.
Dave opened the door. The gigantic sound he let in caused the whole congregation to turn as one toward the back of the church. He rushed out. Dave never rushed, and I broke into a run. I smashed the door wide and it slammed into the doorstop, almost bouncing back on Hale, who was on my heels.
What I found shocked me: lined up behind the hearse, two by two, was a whole posse of Harley-riding bikers.
In front of the group, Dave waved his arms and yelled. I crossed behind him to the middle of the road, flanking the line midway, around the seventh pair of riders. Hale moved opposite me, and six more agents positioned themselves in a star formation around the group.
I could make out some of Dave’s words. “Gentlemen!” he yelled, as well as “cease” and “engines.” The gargantuan man at the front of the line rolled his bike forward, within a few inches of Dave’s left foot. If he rolled closer, either intentionally or unintentionally, Dave would end up with a fractured leg. It didn’t help that the rider wasn’t on the smoothest surface, poised on the edge of a pothole with delusions of grandeur—it was almost a crater.
I stood on a crack and was thrown off balance, forcing me to widen my stance. Snow would have improved things, evening out the surface, but public works had taken their job seriously, moving not only the snow off the street but the snowbanks as well; everything plowed onto a truck and dumped onto the frozen river to wait for spring. With the street clear, the hole where the high school used to be looked like the bomb site it was, the demolition experts having used explosives to take down a building that big.
The bikers seemed more amused than fearful of the collection of law enforcement officers that surrounded them.
Dave shouted louder. “Disperse, or you will be under arrest.”
Hale approached the stony-faced man closest to him. “You heard what he said! Get out of here, now!”
“Showing our respects,” the rider said, nodding toward the FUNERAL stickers pasted below the green MERRIMEN patches. They weren’t the Abominations, but I had no idea if the Merrimen were good news or bad. Probably the latter.
The church doors swung wide. Marty emerged, shaking off Pete’s grip. He ambled down, straddling the front tire of the lead bike like a cowboy so he could face Dave, his nose inches from Dave’s chin. He spoke, and Dave gave a barely perceptible nod before stepping away. Marty took three breaths, his shoulders rising and falling, turned, and faced the gang.
“Brothers,” he yelled. “Thank you for the respect for the dead. For Danielle and Ray, and for me.”
“Your father,” said a guy with big lungs—and big everything else—who had no problem being heard above all the engines’ roar. “We’re here to pay respect to your father and his family.”
The exhaust choked me, but Marty seemed to have no problem getting enough oxygen. “For the funeral of my wife, a congresswoman’s daughter—”
“You know where you came from, boy?”
“I know.” In his quiet way, he controlled the scene, the bikers, their machines, and law enforcement
and our weapons. “I can never forget.”
The bells of the church rang out, announcing the end of the funeral Mass. Marty looked at the steeple, covering his eyes against a sun that wasn’t there, his wedding band bumping against the skull ring he wore on his middle finger.
He undid his tie. “Merrimen and Abominations, we’re blood.”
“You’re not blood,” the leader growled. “Your father. Your brother. For them, we’d die.”
“Then for them, we need a little reverence.”
The leader of the Merrimen was having none of it. “Reverence? For these people? Respect is better than reverence.”
“I know. But the pigs don’t. And Danielle’s mom, the congresswoman, she don’t. And they can fuck things up for us, but good.” The Merrimen seemed unimpressed with that argument, and I got ready for things to get ugly. Marty continued. “You know why? They don’t understand brotherhood and friendship. Having friends, closer than blood family, who watch your back no matter what. They don’t understand and they’re fucking envious.”
“And you do, turncoat?”
“I do. No matter where I go or what I do, I’m still one of you. Always, always.”
I shifted from foot to foot, my legs aching from the effort to stay in place. The agents waited for some signal from Hale.
“And I need the brotherhood right now,” Marty continued. “I need you at my back, to find who killed Dani and Ray. To be with me to see Ray off right, to make sure he gets his due. To get justice, our justice, real justice, ’cause God knows we can’t leave it to the cops.” Several heads nodded in agreement and Hale rolled his eyes at me.
“And if you get yourself arrested here for not having a parade permit”—Marty shook his head in disgust—“I’m . . . my family’s left hangin’. So go back to my place, down on Cataract Street, and we can plan this out right.”
The guy at the head of the line tilted his head, seemingly in consideration. Mirrored aviator glasses blacked out the top half of his face and a green bandana obscured the rest, and I had no idea what he was thinking. Seconds ticked by.