21. A Field Trip

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Read Part 20

When Parme hit the diner door, both Gilbert and Fr. Martin jumped. Pat didn’t. She had been watching him from the time he left the precinct house across the street. She could tell he was not happy by the way he walked. He was using that John Wayne gait that meant he was just looking for an excuse to kick someone’s ass. When he came through the door and found Gilbert sitting on his side of the booth, Pat was sure he’d found it.

“Coffee, gentlemen?” she asked brightly.

Parme, who had been glaring at his partner since he hit the door, slowed down for a half a step and looked up at her. Damn that woman, he thought. How does she do that. He refused to smile, not because he wanted to withhold the pleasure he knew it would give Pat to know that she could change his mood just by speaking to him, but because he wasn’t willing to be any less angry than he was right now.

And right now, the primary cause of his anger was sitting in his bench on his side of his booth in his diner.

There is a sense a prey animal gets just before it becomes a predator’s next meal. If it’s lucky, it comes with just enough time to zig when it’s expected to zag and it lives another day. If it’s not, it’s the last sense it registers before it enters the long sleep. Gilbert was getting that sense now as he watched his partner stomp across the diner in his direction, with the Cardinal, who know appeared much shorter than he had the night before, trailing in his wake like the tail of a kite.

Gilbert started to stand up but realized that he wouldn’t make it to his feet before his partner go to him and probably shot him. Suddenly, Pat was standing between them. Parme came to a stop just in time, his shirt brushing once against her chest just below the old “Barb” tag she wore on her blouse.

“Hi!” she said brightly. “Coffee?”

By the time Parme had growled a reply that only she seemed capable of translating, Gilbert has slid out of the booth and was standing next to Fr. Miller. He took a small amount of comfort in the idea that at least he would get last rights.

“Grab your gear,” Parme told Gilbert. “We’re taking the Cardinal and his associate out to the crime scene, at the Captain’s request.” He looked down at Pat for a moment but didn’t smile. She did and then returned to her work.

Parme led them outside and across the street to his car. Gilbert rode shotgun, while the priests filled the back seat. They barely had their doors closed before Parme took off. Gilbert snapped his seat belt, noticing with a sidelong glance that Parme wasn’t buckled in. 

“Where are we going?” Gilbert asked.

Parme looked over at him, not with malice but with something that made Gilbert uncomfortable. “We’re taking them to see the basement, where the book was found. Then they’ll look at the book. Then, that’s it.”

The priests didn’t argue. Fr. Miller looked ahead and seemed quite pleased and comfortable with this turn of events. Cardinal Mara was directly behind Gilbert and so he couldn’t get a read on him. Now that he thought about it, the cardinal hadn’t said a word since he had entered the diner.

Gilbert turned around in his seat to get a look at the Cardinal, then asked him, “Did the Captain release the book to you?”

“Not yet,” he replied and Gilbert heard the Italian lilt in the older man’s voice, not that he could tell exactly how old he was.

“I expect that we’ll have the chance to examine it upon our return.” Parme neither confirmed nor denied the cardinal’s expectations. They made the rest of the ride in silence.

Gilbert felt relieved that his friend would finally have an opportunity to review the notebook. He felt certain that most of what it contained would be revealed as gibberish, but it would good to knock one more theory off their list. Not that demonic possession had ever been one of their theories. In hindsight, he felt stupid for ever sending Marty the material in the first place.

As they neared the apartment building, previously occupied by one Arlington C. Eagen, now deceased, they could see that Wayne Singlton and one of his techs were already on the scene.

“How did Wayne know…” Gilbert began.

“I called him,” Parme growled. “We’re not going to go stomping around a crime scene without him.” 

“I thought you said the basement wasn’t a crime scene, detective,” Cardinal Mara said.

Parme turned around and shot him a look that said many things, none of them good. Gilbert couldn’t see what effect this had on the clergyman, but he hoped his partner never looked at him that way. 

“Let’s go,” Parme said and exited the vehicle.

As Gilbert and Parme approached Singleton, he slid off the back of his cruiser and met them at the walk leading up to the building. “What are we doing, boys?” he asked.

Parme’s frown deepened and Gilbert answered. “These two are from the Catholic Church. They may have a line on translating the book we found and they want to see where we found it.”

“Not much to see down there, but okay.” Singleton ordered his associate to grab a set of lights out of the trunk and follow them down. He then turned to the priests. “I’m Wayne Singleton, I run the crime scene team. You guys know the basement isn’t a crime scene, right?”

“We were informed,” Cardinal Mara replied. He introduced himself and Fr. Miller and then the six of them headed into the building. They followed Parme down the hall to the basement steps and then own the stairs into the basement. At the bottom, Parme clicked the switch to turn on the string of lights down the center of the building and lead them down the concrete walkway.

When they got to the division that held the desk, Parme stopped. Singleton’s technician had unrolled an extension cord and was setting up a work light. Gilbert recognized him as Ronnie Smith, the tech he had met the night Eagan’s body had been found. Smith clicked on the work light and the “room” came out of the shadows, exactly as they had left it. The desk and two chairs against the right hand wall and the pile of used and broken furniture covering much of the rest of the space.

“Here we are,” Parme said to the priests. “Knock yourselves out.”

Read Part 22