by James Carver
“Because something went wrong. The deal went sour.”
“That means Earl was involved in organ harvesting too?”
“No. No, I don’t think he was at all. In fact, I don’t think Earl had anything to do with any of this. Maybe he was even completely unaware it was happening. I certainly don’t think Earl was the killer.”
“But they found his DNA.”
“He’s been framed, Fox. It wasn’t Earl,” Devlin said adamantly. “The coroner said that whoever cut up the first victim was right-handed. And that kept niggling away at me. And then I realized why. Earl was left-handed.”
“How do you know?”
“Earl fought southpaw. When I fought Earl, he led with his right and followed with his stronger left hand. I’d bet the shirt on my back he was left-handed.”
“Come on, Devlin, the news report said they found Earl’s DNA at the scene? Him being left-handed? It’s slight to say the least.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But if Earl went to Brendan’s after the fight with me, he would have likely left blood there. Maybe he got cleaned up there. He was bleeding heavily. That’s a good enough reason why his DNA was there. But the other thing, the thing that bothers me about the two murders is that they were fundamentally different.” Devlin took a mouthful of smoke and reflected for a couple of seconds. Then he said, “When I was back in seminary, we were taught philosophy, and Aristotle said—”
“Aristotle?”
“Hold on. Hear me out. Aristotle was always looking for the ‘quid rei,’ the essential nature of things. Well, the essential natures of the two murders are completely different. The first murder was an improvised act born out of desperation. Done in the lashing rain at the edge of a forest. The second murder was deliberate and cold, done to replicate the first in every way but motive. Done to implicate Earl.”
“If all of that’s so, if everything you say is true, it still doesn’t account for one big thing—the one thing that needs accounting for. It doesn’t explain what’s happening with the fifty million dollars. That wouldn’t be swallowed up in an operation like you’re suggesting.”
“Yeah, I admit, right now I don’t exactly see where all the fifty million is going. But look at all the other things that don’t add up. Why’s Dr. Claude Lazard, a heart and lung specialist, treating people at a free walk-in clinic?”
“Maybe he’s just a charitable guy! Maybe he just wants to give something back. Someone in your line of business shouldn’t find that so hard to believe”
“No. Not Lazard. Don’t buy it. You’re telling me there’s no one else can do that? No one less qualified? I think the Halton Medical Center has been set up by Freedom and Logan to screen for suitable organ donors, to screen vulnerable people, illegal immigrant workers. People without insurance. People who need money. To match their tissue types to paying customers. The chances of Miguel Alvarez’s tests randomly matching another person’s so closely are astronomical. Those two test results have been selected with extreme care.”
The silence was heavy. Fox’s expression was distinctly stony, unmoved.
“Come on, Fox, it makes perfect sense,” said Devlin. “If you wanted to find young, healthy men who were invisible, had no records anywhere but were maybe desperate for money, the kind of instant cash an organ donation would make, the illegal workers on the Logan Ranch would fit the bill.”
“What about the Long Pine victim? Everybody knew about him.”
“Yeah. And that’s why I think it was a mistake. For some reason, it went badly wrong. Maybe he bailed at the last moment. That’s why he was found out near Route 36. He almost got free, but someone stopped him. He was a mistake they had to fix there and then. And that’s why they cut him up; they knew that would be enough to prevent identification. Because he was an illegal, because of the total lack of records they knew a DNA search would be unlikely to reveal a match. And Brendan McKenzie was a setup, to make Earl the fall guy for the first murder.”
Fox still looked very skeptical.
“It makes sense, Fox,” said Devlin. “More sense than Earl suddenly turning double killer. That’s why the medical center is so secretive, and it’s why Lazard is the key to this. He and Alvarez are our way in. I’ve said to George, the guy running the Homeland operation, that I’d help him. I’d find out what Clay Logan is up to. Where the fifty million dollars has gone. And I will. I’d like your help, but I understand if that’s something you don’t feel convinced enough to give.”
Devlin was done talking. He’d await Fox’s response however long it took and whatever it was. She took a drag, blew a cone of smoke, and then asked, “You didn’t catch Greg’s press conference, did you?”
“What? No. Why?”
Another drag and Fox looked at Devlin with a directness, scrutinizing him. “I watched it on WTDN. My paper did a takedown job on you. Asked Greg why you were involved in the investigation. They said you were an alcoholic, you didn’t believe in God, that you have a conviction for violent assault.”
Devlin fell silent for a moment, let the smoke drift out of his mouth, and picked out a flake of tobacco from his teeth. “It’s ’cause I’ve been asking around about Ed,” he said. “Because I took Lazard’s notes. Someone’s looked into my past and leaked it to a journalist at your paper. They’re coming after me. Well, good. If there squealing, then I’m poking in the right places.”
Fox didn’t look remotely satisfied with Devlin’s answer.
“Is it true?” she asked.
“Is what true?”
“Were you really an alcoholic, Devlin?”
“I was. I am.”
“But you’re clean now?”
“Apart from one slip, yes, I am. Clean for seven years.”
“Do you have a conviction for violent assault?”
“That happened twenty years ago. I was a young man in a bar fight, and I was provoked.”
“Did you say you didn’t believe in God?”
“Maybe. Probably. Sort of.”
“Sort of? You sort of believe in God, or you sort of don’t believe in God?”
“Yes, I believe in God. I believe in God, but I think God is the mystery. We are all at the edge of existence, at the very edge of the light staring into darkness, feeling our way toward the unknown fraction by fraction. And, to me, that unknown is God. Anyway, I’ve never said I didn’t believe in God. I have said God could be something more…strange and interesting.” Devlin crossed his arms and fixed his gaze on Fox. “I know what this is about, Fox. This is about who I am and how much you trust me.”
“Well, I am a journalist. And it occurs to me that I don’t know anything about you.”
“I don’t know anything about you,” Devlin shot back.
Fox shrugged. “What’s to know? I’m a workaholic, I’m uncomfortable with commitment, I left my husband crying in a ball on the carpet when I walked out on him. I hate gossip. I hate people who are two-faced, I once ran over a dog and didn’t go back, I hate Christmas. I love Susan Sontag, and I slept with three of my tutors when I was at UPenn.” Devlin nodded his head as he listened. “You working out my penance, Devlin?” asked Fox.
“No, because that wasn’t a confession. You were playing your hand because you want to see mine. You figure there’s something…something unresolved.”
“Yeah. That’s right, I do. I really do. I guess I wonder why you just upped and left your church all of a sudden. I guess if this were your profile I was doing, the question I would ask as a journalist is, just what is it you are hiding, Father Devlin? What are your secrets?”
Devlin saw this moment for what it was: his confession. Not to be forgiven, but because he had asked so much of Fox and would ask more. And Fox was a very smart, very shrewd individual. She wanted to know who the hell exactly she had fallen in with. Devlin was suddenly possessed of an intense belief that he had to tell Fox everything. And either that was something Fox would find a way around, or it wasn’t.
“You want to know w
hat I’m hiding?” asked Devlin.
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you. And I’ll begin by telling you that I have only told one other person. And that was done within the seal of confession.”
43
Father Hector Hermes walked the path from the sidewalk up to the rectory entrance rolling a large suitcase behind him. The rectory, like the church itself, was a grand gothic affair and, also like the church, in winter hellishly drafty. Now, even in late spring, it was incredibly stuffy, despite fans having been placed everywhere. Hector shut the door behind him. After three days leading a youth convention in Wilmington, he was mightily relieved to be home, even though home could do with better AC. He stowed his case in the hallway, hung up his coat, and started toward the stairs. But he stopped short of the staircase, feeling certain he’d heard a noise in the living room. Was it the cleaner? She kept odd working hours, but at this time?
Hector called out, “Mrs. Quinlan?” But there was no reply. He reassured himself that he was being paranoid about burglaries like he always was when he had been away for a few days. Even so, he decided to check the living room just to be sure. He opened the door, walked in, and froze. A fat, bald man in a suit was sitting in the chair by the fireplace.
“Who are you?” yelled Hector. “Get out of my home—I’m going to call the police!” But as he backed away, he came up against a body standing behind him. He turned and saw that it was a tall, thin, sweaty man also in a suit.
“Sit down, Father,” said Bradley softly. “We’ve been waiting an awful long time for you to come home. There’s no need to be alarmed. No harm will come to you if you tell us the information that we need.”
Hector sat pensively in the middle of the sofa facing the two men. Otterman sat in the chair by the fireplace, and Bradley stood by the door, which he had closed.
Bradley spoke first. “Father, we need to talk to you about a man named Gabriel Devlin.”
“What about him?” Hector answered nervously.
“We know that he came to you last Saturday. We know he confessed to you. We just want to know what it was he confessed.”
Hector glanced nervously from left to right, rubbed his clasped hands gently, and said quietly, “I’m afraid I can’t reveal anything that he said to me on his last visit.”
“Father,” said Otterman. “It’s really in your interests that you tell us.”
Hector’s breathing quickened, and his mouth twitched.
“We don’t believe in a heaven or hell,” said Bradley. “So our actions here, whatever those may be, are of no consequence to us.”
“If I were you, I’d make things easy on yourself,” said Otterman.
“I can’t,” replied Hector.
“I’m sorry? I don’t think I heard you right. ‘You can’t’?” said Otterman.
“What Father Devlin said to me was said during the sacrament of confession. I can’t reveal what he said in confession.”
“Yes you can,” Otterman said. “You just tell us. It’s that simple.”
“No, you don’t understand, I am forbidden…” Hector insisted and then repeated a passage learnt by heart: “Whoever shall dare to reveal a sin disclosed to him in the tribunal of penance we decree that he shall be not only deposed from the priestly office but that he shall also be sent into the confinement of a monastery to do perpetual penance.”
Otterman gave Bradley a weary look. Bradley shrugged. Otterman turned to the priest and said, “Yeah, fuck all this Game of Thrones shit, Father—we’re not interested. Tell us what we want to know, or we’ll break your fingers one by one. And that’s for starters.”
44
Devlin put his smoking cigar in an ashtray by the bed and paused while he considered where the best point to start was, absentmindedly running his tongue around his teeth looking for stray bits of steak.
Fox waited patiently for Devlin to speak. She watched his strong brow crease in thought, his bright blue eyes search for the words, his thick tanned arms tighten across his broad chest in concentration. She wondered what it was going to be. Knowing Devlin, if he had this much trouble telling her it must be big. And that worried her, because it had the potential to change how she felt about him.
“About nine years ago,” Devlin began, “my wife was killed by a heroin addict in a 7-Eleven parking lot in Maryland. She was shot. The man who shot her was imprisoned for eighteen years, some leniency being given for his situation and the circumstances of the crime. He was an addict with no previous arrests for violence. My wife had struggled with the assailant when he forced his way into her car, and the prosecution could not prove that the gun had gone off with deliberate intent to kill or maim. I was at the trial every day. I gave my services tirelessly and continually without rest to prove that the suspect had intentionally shot my wife. But it wasn’t possible. Given all the evidence in the car and what could be gleaned from CCTV, I was not able to definitively establish what had happened in that car that night.
“So you see,” continued Devlin, “for all my glittering commendations and successes as a detective, I could not find the truth about the one person, no, the two people I loved and cared for above all others.”
“Two people?”
“My wife was six months pregnant when she died.”
Fox placed a hand on her heart as if to ease its shock. “Oh my God, Devlin. I’m so sorry.”
“But time passed and in desperately seeking to find a new way to live, a way to make sense of my loss, I decided to train to be a priest, and most importantly, I actually forgave that man. And I thought that was an end to it.
“About three months ago I happened to be up in Baltimore for a conference, and I’d gone downtown to do some shopping. I’d come out of a store and was crossing to my car when I spotted a guy who looked familiar to me. He’d walked around the corner onto the sidewalk opposite me. He kind of stood out anyway because he had long hair and a beard that was tangled, greasy, and unwashed, and his clothes were filthy, old military surplus. But it was him. I immediately knew it was him. The man who had killed my wife. And it was like I had been hit in the guts by a direct strike of lightning. And if God was testing me, then I was only too glad to fail. Here was the man who took the life I should have had from me, and he was walking the streets freely.
“I followed him a couple of blocks until he got onto the subway. When he got on the train, I jumped on the next car down and traveled out to his stop. He got out, and I followed him back to his apartment. So now I knew where he lived.
“I looked him up and discovered that he’d served half his sentence due to good behavior. It shouldn’t have been a big surprise; I was told that was a possibility when he was sentenced. And over the next few weeks, I watched him come and go. Watched him so I got to know his routine. When he stayed in. When he had visitors. When he was alone.
“One night, a midweek night, when I was as sure as I could be that he would be recovering from partying over the weekend and be alone. Not long after his dealer had dropped by. I took the gun I kept in the safe in my study and drove over to his place and parked a few blocks away. Then I walked to his front door and tried the bell. There was no answer. I figured there wouldn’t be. I figured he was high and wouldn’t answer to anybody calling if he wasn’t expecting visitors. So I picked the lock and entered his apartment. The entrance hall was dark, and I could hear the TV playing. There was one light coming out of the bathroom and one coming out of the TV room. So I went to where the TV was playing and stood in the doorway. And there he was, sitting with his eyes half-open in a battered threadbare armchair. He was so bombed out of his head he didn’t even notice me until I called his name.”
“What was his name?” asked Fox.
“Felix. Felix Lemus.” Devlin said it like he knew it better than his own name. “When he saw me, he clasped the sides of the armchair and screamed. I put my finger against my lips and gestured for him to be quiet. It did the trick. I grabbed a chair from the kitchen dine
r and sat down opposite him. And for a while, I just looked. I looked at this guy. This weak, frightened, dirty, stoned little guy with his ridiculous beard and heavy, dark eyes who had taken my life away from me. He was exactly the kind of person I should give all of my protection and love to. Meek and lost.
“He asked me not to hurt him. Begged. I said that I wouldn’t hurt him if he told me the truth—the truth about what happened that night, nine years ago in my wife’s car in the 7-Eleven parking lot. But if he lied to me about that night, I would kill him. He asked me how I’d know if he was lying. I said that was my job. His job was just to tell me the truth. So, he told me on that night nine years ago that he was just another junkie that had to score but without any cash. When he saw my wife get into the car, when he saw she was pregnant, he thought she’d be a soft target. He said his whole body was on fire, he was shaking and felt like he was fighting to even get breath. He had to score. Just had to. Like he didn’t have a choice. So he ran over to my wife’s car and reached in through the open window and wrenched the door open. He pointed a gun at her and told her to move over. She did as he said, and as he slid in, she reached for his hand, the one holding the gun, and it went off in the struggle. That was exactly how it happened, he said.”
“Did you believe him?”
“No. It was the same story word for word that he’d told in court nine years before. I didn’t believe it then, and I didn’t believe it after all that time. He pleaded with me that that was exactly how it happened. I said that all I was asking for was the truth. The truth had become more important to me than the consequences. So I asked him one last time to tell me the truth. He hesitated, weighing up his options. Seeing if he could trust my word to him. Then finally, after all the lying and the pain and the bullshit, he told me what really happened that night. He told me she wouldn’t give him the money. She point-blank refused. So he shot her. Just shot her. Simple as that. And this time, for the first time, I believed him.