15. Unwelcome Guests

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Parme and Singleton made room in the hallway so the two uniformed officers could escort Mark Boyle past Eagan’s apartment and on down the hallway toward the stairwell. Gilbert caught a glimpse as they passed by and it looked like the suspect wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping up with his escort. He could hear Boyle becoming increasingly agitated the further he was taken from his own apartment. His cries and complaints were abruptly cut off by the slamming of the stairwell door.

“Wayne, make sure your boys get some good shots of that design on the ceiling,” Parme said before turning to another uniformed officer in the hallway. “Canvas the building. Find out if anyone saw or heard anything. And keep everyone out of that apartment,” he said, pointing to Boyle’s door.

He turned back to Singleton. “I guess we’ll need your boys in there next. It looks like this is going to be a long night.”

Singleton smiled, but didn’t reply. He just started giving orders to his technicians.

“And keep an eye out for any blood-covered blunt objects,” Parme deadpanned.

Gilbert was still studying the ceiling and trying to figure out how a person could have created that pattern. It was too large to fit on the ceiling so some of the marks on the outside of the main circle extended down the walls. It was almost a perfect a match for the mark on the leather journal they had found downstairs. But there were no brush strokes of any kind. It appeared to have just splattered there, which was impossible.

Parme turned to Gilbert. “Good job, Rookie.”

The younger detective was caught off guard and jolted out of his reverie, both by having his thought interrupted in Parme’s typical style -- Gilbert realized that his partner tended to speak at you instead of to you -- but also by the fact that he had just been praised. “For what?” he asked.

“For realizing that Eagan had an accomplice.” Gilbert still had a confused look on his face so Parme continued. “The second chair in the basement. You asked who the second chair was for.”

“You heard that? I thought you were gone.”

“I hear everything you say, Rookie. Remember that.” Gilbert thought he caught the shadow of a smile on the older man’s face. Then his cell phone rang.

“Gilbert,” he announced into the handset. He listened for a moment, made a few replies and hung up. When he looked up, Parme was standing closer to him.

“Hot date?” he asked slowly.

“Actually, that was Father Miller, the friend…”

“I know who he is,” Parme grunted. “Did he know anything of value?”

“Not yet, but his plane just landed and he wants to help.”

Parme looked at the younger man for a moment before replying. “Landed where? Help with what?”

“Corporate Charter Services,” Gilbert replied. “Out at the airport. He thinks he might be able to help with the case.”

“Unless you’re in bad need of confession, you don’t need a priest’s help. And it’s against department regs to share any information about an open case without approval anyway. And we don’t have approval. So, tell him to fly home.”

Gilbert grimaced. “He said he flew all the way from Boston just to see me. I should at least see him.”

Parme stared at his partner and thought this over for a moment. About the time Gilbert opened up his mouth to make another argument, Parme answered. “Fine. We’ll both go see him.” Without another word the older detective headed for the exit.

Singleton was in the hallway outside of Boyle’s apartment, supervising some techs as they moved lights and cases of equipment inside. “You guys leaving?” he called down the hallway. “It’s still early.”

Gilbert look at his watch. It read 10:45 PM.

“Good night, Wayne,” Parme said over his shoulder without looking back.

Once they got outside, Parme headed straight for his car. He said over his shoulder, without looking back at his partner, “Follow me.”

Gilbert made his way carefully through the snow the city plows had piled up against the curb to his own Crown Vic and started it up. Parme had already left the curb so Gilbert gunned it to keep up.

The ride to the airport took about 30 minutes. It took another 5 minutes or so to navigate around the main terminal building to the private terminals. On the ride, Gilbert thought about the strange turn of events. He was having trouble making it all fit together.

Eagan wasn’t their killer. The DNA evidence had ruled him out. He was afraid to go home and it appeared that he had reason to be afraid. What was left of him had been shoveled into a body bag. All except the blood and plasma that had become part of some kind of gruesome art project on his apartment ceiling.

The artwork was completely indecipherable. But what about the other facts?

Someone had been waiting for Eagan to return home. Either in his apartment or outside, though probably inside or he would have seen them and fled. The killer let him get into his apartment and then beat him to death with a blunt instrument. Then, for some reason, the murderer set the victim’s body on fire, setting off the fire alarms in the process and alerting the authorities.

Once the authorities arrived, a man stumbled out of the apartment down the hall covered in blood. If it was Eagan’s blood, this case was closed. Or was it?

If Eagan had an accomplice and that’s who he was afraid of and if that accomplice lived down the hall from him, why did he go home at all? Why didn’t he just tell the authorities and have Boyle arrested?

If Boyle did it, why didn’t he run? And if he was going to stay, why call attention to the murder with a fire in the building? And if he was going to stay and call the authorities to the scene, why stumble out into the hallway covered in blood? In his experience, there were no criminals this stupid.

The key had to be in the image on the ceiling and his old friend Father Miller, who had gone to the trouble of flying in from halfway across the country to see him, must have information to share.

Gilbert followed Parme into the airport and then around to the private aviation section. There was a single private jet parked outside the big building marked Corporate Charter Services. The office was a small metal box that seemed bolted onto the side of a large hanger. The jet bore no distinctive markings.

Gilbert parked and stepped out to join Parme, who was already standing by his car and looking out at the jet. It was big and expensive looking, but other than that there was nothing Gilbert could discern from it. The older detective didn’t remark on the aircraft, just glanced over at his partner. Gilbert just shrugged.

Double glass doors on one end of the building led into a comfortable lobby, made to appeal to a corporate clientele. A long counter was situated along the wall on the right and at the end of it another set of glass doors led further into the building. Only a hallway was visible through the glass doors, with the same industrial carpeting on the floors and framed certificates on the white walls. The rest of the lobby was appointed comfortably enough, with couches, chairs and coffee tables one would expect to see in the waiting room of any mid-tier corporate office.

The room was empty at this late hour, save for two priests who shared one of the couches farthest from the entrance and who stood as soon as the detectives entered. One was younger and stood a head taller than the other, dressed all in black save for the small white Roman collar at his heck. The other was older and dressed in long black jacket that looked more like a cape, lined with a very dark red material so dark that it seemed almost black. Something about the cut of his clothing didn’t look domestic.

The younger man smiled as soon as he caught Gilbert’s eye and moved quickly to close the distance between them. Gilbert extended his hand but was instead embraced by the smiling priest. He was surprised by the warmth of the embrace. Fr. Miller broke it to look into this friend’s eyes.

“It’s good to see you, Rob,” he smiled. “It really is.”

Fr. Miller’s companion had come up on his shoulder and so the priest made a half turn to make the introductions. “May I introduce His Eminence Armando Cardinal Mara of The Vatican.”

“It is good to meet you, Detective Gilbert,” Mara said. “And this must be your partner, Detective Parme, is it?” He gave it an Italian pronunciation so that it sounded like “Parm-ay.”

Parme stuck out a thick hand, which the Cardinal shook without hesitation. “Glad to have met you. We can’t discuss the case with you. If you had told us you were coming, we could have saved you the trip.”

Gilbert and Fr. Miller locked eyes but neither moved. Mara just smiled at Parme. “Of course,” he replied. “We would not expect you to discuss your case with us, however we understand you have a document in need of translation.”

“Our people have looked at it and judged it to be gibberish that is not related to the case,” Parme said.

“If it’s not related to the case, then there should be no harm in having it examined,” Mara answered in a calm voice. “I assure you, we have experts in the Church who can tell you with certainty…”

“No, thank you,” Parme said. “I’m afraid it’s still evidence in our ongoing investigation. It was good meeting you both. Enjoy your stay.” He turned to Gilbert and said, “We don’t discuss open cases. See you in the morning.” He left the building.

The three men watched him go and then Gilbert turned to the priests. “I’m so sorry…”

Mara took his arm. “It’s fine. He’d doing his job. A good man does his job. Come, sit with us a moment.” He led him to the seating area and sat down in a chair across from the sofa. He motioned to the sofa. Gilbert sat down and Fr. Miller sat beside him.

Mara leaned toward Gilbert. “We have studied the photographs you sent Fr. Miller. We have reason to believe that these markings are related to early Church writings. We would be very interesting in seeing the journal. We could review it in your presence. There would be no reason to remove it from your possession.”

Gilbert shook his head. “I’m afraid that would be very difficult, Cardinal Mara. I don’t have the authority to grant what you ask.”

Mara leaned back. “I understand, of course. Tell me, detective. Were there numbers written in this journal?”

Gilbert thought back and then shook his head. “I didn’t see any numbers. Just strings of characters. Although I guess some of those characters could have been numbers in a language I don’t know.”

“But none of the characters were arranged in columns. It wasn’t a ledger,” Mara suggested.

“No, I don’t think so,” Gilbert replied.

Mara glanced over at Fr. Miller, who met his gaze. Mara rose.

“It’s late. We shouldn’t keep you. Thank you for coming out to meet with us,” Mara extended his hand. Gilbert shook it, then turned to his friend.

“How long will you stay? I’m really very interested in anything you can tell me about the symbol on the book. Despite what my partner says, I can’t help but think it’s related to our case,” Gilbert said. “Besides,” he said turning to Fr. Miller. “I really would like some time to visit with you.”

Mara answered, “We’ll be in town for a few days. You two will have time to catch up.”

Both men smiled. “How about lunch tomorrow?” Gilbert suggested. They exchanged numbers and said goodnight. When the detective had left the building, the two priests sat down.

“If it’s not a ledger, then it won’t have anything to do with the Church finances,” Fr. Miller said. “I knew he wasn’t investigating us.”

“And you were right. He has no idea what he is investigating,” Mara said and turned to study the doors that Gilbert had just passed through. “But it’s more dangerous than he knows.”


Read Part 16

14. Another Murder Scene

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Read Part 13

Gilbert surveyed the cheap formica countertop that took up most of the tiny kitchen in his rented apartment and the ingredients he had lined up carefully along its fake green-veined granite surface. Tomatoes, red onion, three kinds of peppers, blue cheese crumbles and the cheap bag of salad greens that would form the base for his dinner. He would have liked to have had a jar of sun dried tomatoes, but he was out and hadn’t been to the grocery. He would have to do with what he had.

He didn’t really care, from a culinary perspective. All of his salads seemed to taste pretty much the same, which he didn’t mind. It wasn’t the taste of a salad that attracted him to it, nor its lack of weight inducing calories. He thought of it as art. He had found over the many years he had lived on his own, that if you combined all of the right ingredients, you couldn’t help but have a satisfying outcome when it comes to a salad.

As it turned out, that rule didn’t always hold when it came to other forms of cooking because heat created its own problems. Even with all of the right ingredients, a mistake over the fire would render the result less than satisfying. In some cases, downright catastrophic. Salads, on the other hand, required no heat and had therefore become his culinary art form of choice. He was just dropping some sliced banana peppers into the salad bowl when his phone rang.

By the time he got to Eagan’s apartment building, the fire department’s trucks were already rolling away. He could see the crime tech’s bright lights shining from the window off the 4th floor corridor. He shook his head as he trotted up the front steps to the apartment building’s front door.

He couldn’t believe that Parme was right. He could see his partner waiting for him through the glass front door. They had cut Eagan loose and he had killed someone in his own building. He felt like a fool for falling for his act. As soon as he opened the door, the smoke hit his nostrils and he came up short.

“I didn’t know you smoked?” Gilbert said. “You stink!”

“It’s not me. And it’s about time you decided to come to work, Rookie. Come on,” Parme said as he turned to the stairwell. Gilbert fell in line behind him.

“The fire department responded to a building fire on the 4th floor. It was contained. Singleton said they smothered it with a blanket,” Parme said.

“Oh, Singleton’s here? I like him,” Gilbert replied.

“Great. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to hear it,” Parme said. “Where else would he be?”

“I can’t believe you were right about Eagan,” Gilbert said. “I guess he really was crazy. We never should have let him go.”

“For the record,” the older man said as they passed the third floor doorway and continued on up toward the fourth, “the lab is very rarely wrong. It’s not our job to second guess them, so the department did nothing wrong by releasing him.”

“Who is the victim?” Gilbert asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Gilbert said as they reached the fourth floor landing. “I hope it’s not another kid.” As soon as they opened the door to the fourth floor corridor, the stench hit them like a wall.

Wayne Singleton was standing in the door to Eagan’s apartment when the detectives arrived. He wore a mask and latex gloves. His shoes were covered with disposable booties.

“We’ve got to quit meeting like this,” he said through the mask.

“What have we got, Wayne?” Parme asked.

Singleton just nodded at the apartment’s open door and offered the detectives both masks. “You’ll want these. Have a look.”

As they neared the doorway, the smell got even worse, causing both men to slap the masks up over their mouths and noses. Gilbert’s eyes were starting to water. It was cold inside the room, suggesting that someone had opened up the windows in the back to disperse the smoke. It wasn’t working very well. Clouds of it still hung in the air, mostly in the vicinity of a pile of burned human remains just inside the doorway.

“Oh God,” Gilbert mumbled involuntarily. The floors and walls were covered with splattered blood, as was the furniture, except for a band on the bottom and back of the couch, where something must have been sitting and later removed. The stench was almost overwhelming. Parme donned the mask and started pulling on the latex gloves.

“Do you have an ID yet?” he asked.

“These remains belong to the resident, one Arlington C. Eagen. C for Conrad,” Singleton replied.

"Are you sure?" Parme asked.

Singleton nodded. "A victim of foul play, it would seem."

“Yeah?” Parme growled, though not unkindly. “What was your first clue? Shouldn’t you leave the detecting to the detectives?”

Singleton’s eyes suggested a smile over the mask. “Well, I suppose he could have set himself on fire, but probably not after bashing in his own skull and breaking most of his own bones with a blunt object.” He pointed to a large plastic bag that held a blood-stained crowbar.

Gilbert donned his mask and gloves and then asked a nearby tech for a pair of shoe covers. He looked at Singleton for permission and then, after receiving the nod, moved carefully into the room.

“We didn’t find a crowbar among Eagan’s possessions on our first visit, did we?” Parme asked. 

Singleton just shook his head. “It seems to have been left by the victim’s assailant.”

Gilbert had only gone a couple of steps into the room. He stopped and turned around to face the lead tech and his partner. “Well, that doesn’t make any sense.”

Something about this scene was altogether wrong. People who committed murder, unless it was purely motivated by passion, did not create unnecessary problems for themselves. Gilbert couldn’t imagine anyone getting that passionately angry over Eagan and yet this scene was filled with problems.

The assailant cooks the body in the middle of his apartment, absolutely guaranteeing that the body will be found immediately when the fire department responds, and then leaves the murder weapon to be found by the police? Gilbert shook his head. Cooking always causes problems; who doesn’t know this?

“Why didn’t he just leave the body?” he asked his partner. “Why burn it? It would have been days before anyone noticed that Eagan was missing. We had written him off and wouldn’t be surveilling him. The killer could have drug the body to the basement and it would have been months before the weather warmed up and the smell led someone to the body. This doesn’t make any sense.”

“Crazy people seldom do, Rookie.” Parme said quietly. “Besides, no one outside of the department knew we had written him off."

"Even so," Gilbert shook his head.

"But it looks like you were right about one thing," Parme continued. "We should have been asking who that other chair in the basement was for. It appears that Eagan had an accomplice. Someone who knew he was talking to us. He won’t be talking to us anymore.”

Down the hallway, someone opened one of the apartment doors and stepped into the hallway. Parme turned to tell whomever it was to remain in their apartment and out of the way, but then stopped. Singleton turned, too, and both men stared at Mark Boyle as he stood in the center of the hallway, looking like he’d just awoken from a nap.

He saw them staring at him and then slowly raised his hands to see them covered in dried blood. “What the…,” Boyle shook his head as if trying to clear it and then blinked his eyes. That’s all the time it took for the two police officers stationed at the far end of the hallway to tackle him.

From inside the apartment, Gilbert heard the scuffle in the hallway. He head a man yelling all of the things criminals always yell when they are arrested, but he had other things on his mind. He stood in the center of the room, fishing around in his pockets for the copies he had made of the cover of Eagan’s book. He unfolded the image and then turned slowly around the room. The rational part of his brain was feeling stupid, but something made him search the blood stains for the pattern that was engraved into the leather journal.

Finally, he found what he was looking for. Parme and Singleton were no longer in the doorway, so he called over the closest member of Singleton’s team.

Ronnie Smith answered his summons, his eyes narrowed over his disposable face mask. Detectives were always asking questions at crimes scenes that the techs were in no position to answer. The information had to be carefully gathered, transported back to the lab and then tested and considered before any clues would be revealed or meaningful conclusions could be drawn. Cops always wanted quick answers and in his line of work there were never any quick answers. Anyone who offered one was bound to be wrong.

“Yes, detective?” he asked cautiously.

“Could any of these bloodstains have been painted on the walls?”

Smith shook his head. At least this was an easy one. “No,” he answered quickly and started to turn around.

“Then,” Gilbert said, placing a gloved hand on his shoulder, retarding his escape, “how did that get up there?” He pointed up at the ceiling.

Parme and Singleton returned to the doorway in time to hear his question and they, too, looked upward.

While the blood was splattered as expected on the floor, walls and furniture, on the ceiling it had created a circular pattern that matched, almost exactly, the printed image that Gilbert had in his hand. A couple of the techs began snapping photos of the image, but Smith just stood there, his open mouth pulling down the disposable mask.

“Why, that’s impossible,” he said.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Gilbert replied to the technician, but he was looking at his partner.

Read Part 15.

13. A Sudden Trip

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Read Part 12

Cardinal Armando Mara sat at the small desk in the room he had been given for his use and studied the paperwork officer Gilbert had faxed to his friend Father Martin Miller. He had asked that a copy be made before releasing the originals to Fr. Miller. He instructed the younger priest not to respond to his friend until he had chance to study the material himself. Fr. Miller didn’t look like he understood the request, but he understood chain of command. That was something Mara knew well, also.

Even after being a priest for more than 25 years, Mara still didn’t consider himself a priest first. He was a soldier who happened to preach the Gospel of Christ. Not a soldier for Christ, for Jesus could never condone the work he did for the Church. Rather, Mara was a trained killer. He took the body and blood of Christ in Communion each day, and the blood of those who opposed his Lord whenever possible.

He held the page with the Seal of God up to the light of the small lamp. It was not the real seal, he realized. It was altered, making it something else. Something Mara recognized. He had half expected this when the Monsignor had asked him what it all meant. Miller had left the room, presumably to return to his office and the work of investigating Church finances, leaving Mara alone with Monsignor Copani.

“What does this all mean?” Copani had asked, his right hand was clenched into a fat fist on the desk while his left played idly with the silver crucifix that hung by a chain around his neck. Mara couldn’t help but notice that the Monsignor didn’t know how to make a proper fist. He would dislocate his thumb if he ever hit anyone with that hand, not that Mara could imagine the older man doing such a thing. He wasn’t a fighter. His first wasn’t a sign of aggression; he was clinging to something, something he hoped would save him. Cardinal Mara rose from his chair and paced to the other side of the room.

When he turned back to face the Monsignor, he was no longer the friendly Italian clergyman who had arrived, unannounced, the previous evening.

“We are under attack,” he said, closing on the Monsignor’s desk and leaning over it. Copani leaded back in his chair, his eyes wide. He started to mouth a response, but Mara wasn’t done. “What we do next may well decide the fate of the Holy Catholic Church in America.”

Mara saw the shock and fear in the older man’s face and sighed internally. It was as he feared. He would get no help from this office. He stepped back away from the desk and lowered himself into the seat that Fr. Miller had previously occupied. He resisted the urge to shake his head. These American priests were so soft. They were completed disconnected from the epic struggle the Church was intended to win for Christ on Earth. He couldn’t possibly explain to this man what was really going on. Fortunately, thanks to his rank in the Church, he didn’t have to.

“This is not something that truly concerns you, Monsignor Cobani. My apologies. I must travel to meet with this police officer and find out how this involves the Church precisely,” he said.

“Oh, of course,” Copani whispered the words. The relief on his face was unmistakable and his hand opened on the desk, still trembling slightly. “I’ll ask Fr. Carlson to make any arrangements you need.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Mara said, rising. “I have my own transportation. I’ll be leaving as soon as I’m packed.” He turned toward the door, taking the file with him. Copani seemed pleased to see the information leaving his office.

Mara opened the door and stepped into the hall, but before he closed it, he turned back to Copani. “I’ll be taking Fr. Miller with me, as a translator. I’ll return him when we’re finished.” He stepped into the hall and closed the door.

Now, back in his small room, his small suitcase packed and sitting on the made bed, Cardinal Mara glanced through the paperwork one last time. He resisted the urge to break out his satellite phone and place another call to his team. At last contact, they were headed to La Paz to deal with something that could not be ignored. He knew they were unavailable. He was on his own.

There was a knock at the door. Well, not completely, he thought. He opened the door to find Fr. Miller standing in the hallway.

“Are you packed?” Mara asked.

“I’m ready,” Miller replied, but said nothing more. Mara smiled for the first time that day.

Read Part 14

12. A Friendship Questioned

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Read Part 11

Fr. Carlson led Fr. Miller down the long hallway that ran the length of the main building and when he reached his destination, turned abruptly to face the door to Monsignor Copani’s office. There was no marking on the door, just a wooden portal similar in all respects to the others they had passed. Carlson knocked twice and opened the door, leading Fr. Miller into a richly appointed office. The Monsignor sat behind his very large desk, where a second chair had been pulled around for a man that Fr. Miller had not yet met.

“Fr. Miller, as requested,” Fr. Carlson said and then stepped smartly to the side to allow Fr. Miller to step up. When he failed to do so, Fr. Carlson cast him a disapproving glance.

“Thank you, Fr. Carlson,” the Monsignor said. “That will be all.”

This clearly caught the smaller priest by surprise, but he recovered quickly and stepped from the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

“Thank you for coming straight away, Martin,” the Monsignor said. Copani had been a Catholic priest for over 30 years. Now, at the midpoint of his 50s, he appeared much older. There was a tiredness hanging under his eyes that made him look melancholy even when he smiled, which was rare. He was not smiling now. “Please meet Cardinal Armando Mara.”

The Cardinal stood and Fr. Miller let out a small gasp. He hadn’t been paying attention. The clerical clothing worn by the clergy in Italy differed from that worn in America. He had assumed that Copani was the highest ranking priest in the building. A thoughtless mistake! Mara saw the younger priest’s embarrassment clearly on his face and extended his hand with a smile. Smaller of frame and darker of hair and eye than Copani, Mara seemed younger than the Monsignor, and quite fit.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Father Miller.” His English was excellent, but the Italian accent made it twist and curl like a true romance language. “Please have a seat.”

Fr. Miller sat down in a high backed chair that faced the desk squarely. Behind and on both sides of the large desk were framed paintings, that could have come from an Italian museum for all he knew, not being an expert. The dark wood of the frames went well with the dark paneling. It all conspired to make the room feel like it was home to more power than a similar 12-foot by 12-foot office elsewhere in the building. However, Fr. Miller thought, with both the Monsignor and the Cardinal tucked behind the large wooden desk, it probably was the epicenter of power at the moment.

“You haven’t been to your office yet,” the Monsignor said. It wasn’t a question so Fr. Miller merely nodded. “When you get there, you’ll find that you have received a message from an old friend of yours, a police officer by the name of Rob Gilbert. Do you remember this person?”

Fr. Miller was momentarily taken aback. First, how did the Monsignor know about his message before he did? And what form did this message take? Was it a voice mail message? E-mail? And Rob Gilbert. He hadn’t heard that name since he was an undergraduate at the University, almost a decade ago now. These thoughts, though moving quickly, gave him pause and he realized that he had been silent a moment and that both priests were now watching him very closely. He suddenly felt like he was being examined.

“I do remember, Rob. He was my roommate when I was in college many years ago,” he replied. “Is there some problem that I should be aware of? Has something happened?”

“Have you been in touch with Officer Gilbert recently?” the Cardinal asked. His accent made the question sound less like an accusation, but something in his eyes was giving Fr. Miller an uncomfortable feeling.

“No, I have not,” he replied. “What is this about, please? What is this message and why, if I may ask, did it come to your attention before my own?”

The Cardinal started to lean further across the desk, his face darkening, but the Monsignor spoke first.

“Martin, your message came to my desk because a keyword filter directed it to me. We set that system up during the crisis that almost bankrupted our diocese some years ago. The fact that the message came from a law enforcement organization caused it to be re-routed to me.”

Fr. Miller had just become a priest when the child abuse scandal rocked the Church to its core. By the time it was over (if one could ever call it over, given the ongoing suffering of those involved), hundreds of millions of dollars had been paid out by the Church in legal settlements, leaving a number of diocese across the nation bankrupt. The Archdiocese of Boston was particularly hard hit, but survived, financially, in large part due to the measures taken by the Monsignor’s office.

“I didn’t know such a system existed,” Fr. Miller said. He felt a cold weight in the pit of his stomach. He personally knew priests, men he had known for years and respected, who were accused during the scandal. He felt certain then that they were innocent of any crimes and continued to be convinced to this day, but during the crisis, even the suggestion of wrongdoing put enormous pressure on the Church to settle. Had someone accused him? “But I see why one is necessary. Of course, this could not be related to…”

The Monsignor stopped him with a raised hand. “Of course not, Martin. That has not been suggested.”

“But we are very interested in what this is related to,” the Cardinal added.

Fr. Miller looked from one priest to another and then shook his head. “I haven’t even seen the message.”

Monsignor Copani explained that Gilbert was asking for help on a case and had promised to send over materials that he would like Fr. Miller to examine. Those materials were expected to be faxed to his office as soon as the staff at his parish in Texas arrived at the church office. Instructions had been sent that would reroute those materials to the Monsignor’s office.

Fr. Miller’s confusion showed clearly on his face. “I have no idea what this could be about,” he said.

“It could be nothing,” Monsignor Copani said. “Just an old friend seeking some spiritual support.”

“Or,” added the Cardinal, “it could have to do with the government’s investigation of our financial records, in which case we must take great care in how we respond.”

Now, Fr. Miller was really confused. He recalled Rob Gilbert as a serious young man who’s only goal was to get into law enforcement and investigate crimes, specifically those against what he called defenseless victims. He was not involved in financial crimes and, in any event, Fr. Miller had found no evidence that there was any crime to be found in the Church’s financial records -- aside from the possible crime of losing too much money. He was about to point this out when they were interrupted by two quick knocks on the door, which was then opened to admit Fr. Carlson. He held a stack of papers.

He placed them carefully on the desk, each page stacked perfectly above the one below it, and then stood at attention near the corner of the desk. The monsignor pulled the stack of papers over, messing them up in the process and causing Fr. Carlson to grimace.

“Thank you, Fr. Carlson,” the Monsignor said. “That will be all.” The small priest’s grimace began to trend toward a scowl. He spun on his heel and left the room.

The Monsignor and the Cardinal studied the printouts for a moment and then both sat back in their chairs. Neither man looked happy. Fr. Miller waited. Finally, the Cardinal took one sheet from the stack and pushed it slowly across the desk. “Do you know what this is?” he asked.

Fr. Miller studied the page for a moment. It was a copy of a drawing of the Sigillum Dei, the Seal of God. “Yes,” he replied.

“Is it possible that your friend is investigating the Church?” the Monsignor asked him directly.

Fr. Miller shook his head. “No. I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t even spoken to him yet. Besides,” he said, lifting the sheet with the medieval symbol and holding it up to the light, “what can the Church’s finances possibly have to do with this?”

Monsignor Copani sat back in his chair but Cardinal Mara leaned forward. “Everything,” he said.

Read Part 13

11. An Urgent Mission

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Read Part 10

Gilbert’s telephone voicemail message to Fr. Martin Miller remained unheard for most of the following day. He wouldn’t find it until about the time that Gilbert was waking up and checking in with his partner about the failed DNA test. Fr. Miller would hear of the accompanying e-mail message from his old friend much sooner, as it had already come to the attention of his superiors by the time he arrived at his temporary office in Boston that morning.

As Fr. Miller was making his way carefully across the snow and ice covered parking lot of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council building in Braintree, Monsignor Copani, the head of financial affairs for the Archdiocese, and Cardinal Armando Mara, the Vatican’s director of Financial Forensics were studying Gilbert’s e-mail message. A keyword had been detected by scanning software used by the Archdiocese and caused the message to be diverted to land on the Monsignor’s desk.

The message referred to an open case his friend -- a US law enforcement officer -- was working on. Gilbert’s e-mail said he had tracked Fr. Miller down to St. Bartholomew's Catholic Church in Pawchuck, Texas, where he had been assigned until very recently. He got this e-mail address from one of the nuns working in the church there, but was unable to get a fax number that he could be sure would reach his friend. So, he had faxed some documents to the church in Texas that he hoped Fr. Miller could examine at his earliest convenience. He did not provide any details regarding the documents, but said that Sister Katie promised to forward it to Fr. Miller in his weekly package.

The two read through the brief e-mail and then sat back in their chairs. They frowned, but did not speak to each other. Cardinal Mara placed a call to the church in Texas, but it was early there and no one was in the office. He left a terse message. The Monsignor dispatched his assistant to fetch Fr. Miller as soon as he arrived.

It had been many years since Fr. Miller had heard from his college roommate and he would be very surprised to learn that he had received a message from him. In truth, he hadn’t thought of his old friend in a long time. During the two semesters they had shared a dorm they had became like brothers. Miller had enjoyed similar relationships after he left school and went to the seminary, but he had never met anyone else like Gilbert. Since then, their relationship had faded into the back of his mind, displaced by the work of running his church and ministering to his parishioners.

The two had enjoyed many long theological discussions in those days, even before Miller had confided in Gilbert his desire to leave school to join the priesthood. Gilbert was in pre-law. Miller was studying forensic accounting. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what had attracted him to it. If asked, he would reply, “God’s will” for it was his training in that discipline that had quickly elevated him from priest of a small parish in southwest Texas to the role of important advisor to the Archbishop and, by extension, to the Vatican.

Fr. Miller had recently been flown to Boston and asked to take on a special project. Of course, being asked by an Archbishop is rather like being asked to send a check by the Internal Revenue Service. Refusal is frowned upon. In this case, Fr. Miller had been excited by the prospect. This seemed like important work and while he wasn’t sure what he could bring to the project, he was proud, despite his best efforts to be humble, that he had been called from so far away to serve in this capacity.

The Bank of the Vatican had run afoul of American bank regulators when a Catholic priest working for the bank was found carrying a large amount of cash, U.S. dollars, by train from Italy to Switzerland. The United States wanted to know that the dollars were not on their way to a country that was currently under sanction. The Vatican had stalled for as long as possible, but when it became apparent that it would have to share information with the American government, the Vatican had requested a trusted expert look over the records before they were released. Fr. Miller was called to Boston.

As he understood it, the project required him to investigate the records just like the U.S. government would and reveal to the Archbishop anything that the records would reveal to the government’s investigators. When he asked what he was supposed to find, he was simply told, “whatever is there to find.”

And so for the past three weeks, Fr. Miller had been poring through bank records involving hundreds of international transactions, originating at the Bank of the Vatican but moving through institutions around the world, involving many parties and multiple currencies. Sure enough in his faith to know that the transactions represented God’s work, he was still finding reason to feel troubled.

First, there were a great many transactions that went to third parties that were either impossible to identify or described in such general terms that it was impossible to tell what they were. Secondly, the Vatican seemed to switch currencies on a whim, sending first dollars, then British pounds, and even using Bitcoin for some transactions. Finally, and perhaps most troubling, the Church as consistently losing money on the currency swaps. A lot of money was being lost in what appeared to be highly inefficient fiscal practices. He wasn’t sure what it meant yet, but it was there for him to find and so he planned to get to the bottom of it, in service to the Archbishop and the Holy Catholic Church.

Fr. Miller entered the building and shook the snow off of the heavy coat he had been loaned and ran a hand through his short blonde hair. It came away wet and cold. His ears were burning, not because at that very moment Robert Gilbert was mentioning him to his partner over a greasy breakfast, but rather because he hadn’t been loaned a hat. Something he planned to ask for shortly. He rubbed his hands together and then clapped them over his ears. He was standing like that, exactly like the hear no evil monkey, when Farther Carlson stepped around in front of him.

Fr. Carlson was a short man. He wore the traditional garb of the Catholic priest with the addition of a clipboard. Fr. Miller had never seen him without it, nor the worried expression he always wore along with his wire-framed glasses. From the moment he’d met him, Fr. Carlson gave the impression that he was late for something, or thought you were.

In truth, it wasn’t time that worried Fr. Carlson, it was entropy. He lived in fear of nature’s tendency to march forever toward disorder. Maintaining order was his true calling, one he secretly held even higher than his mandate to preach the living Gospel. There were a great many priests who were capable of delivering a decent sermon. There were few that could keep an operation like the financial center for the archdiocese on track. Maybe one. His prayer each night was that he continue to be that one.

For now, helping Monsignor Copani keep his department orderly was his role, but he dreamed -- and prayed -- that one day he would be called to a higher purpose. Some said that the Devil was in the details. Fr. Carlson knew that was wrong. The Devil was hiding just beyond those details and waiting for the opportunity to reveal himself should they be mishandled, as they too often were.

Fr. Carlson always got a small thrill from urgent missions because he knew that crisis was the battlefield where entropy clashed swords with order. He could hear the call to battle in the Monsignor’s order to fetch Fr. Miller. He wasn’t sure the reason, but he was quite sure that disorder would follow in the wake of failure to fulfill this mission. He opened his mouth to address his charge when he was interrupted.

“Good morning, Father Carlson. Do we have any hats in the chancery?”

The shorter man was caught by surprise at the question. He sputtered for a moment and then admitted that he did not know, but would ask someone who might at a more appropriate time.

“We’ll see to that later,” Fr. Carlson said. “You are summoned by the Monsignor. He would have words with you.”

“Very good. I’ll just drop my coat in my office,” Fr. Miller began.

“Actually, we should go now,” Fr. Carlson said. His light blue eyes, made slightly larger by his glasses and his will to see order maintained, stared at the other priest and did not blink.

Fr. Miller managed a half-hearted smile. “Very good. Lead on.”

Fr. Carlson stepped out ahead of him and marched down the narrow corridor toward the Monsignor’s office. Fr. Miller shook his head and followed

Read Part 12

10. A Dead End

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Read Part 9

It was nearly 5:00 pm when Gilbert finally awoke in his apartment. The sun was already setting on what appeared to have been a cold winter day. He couldn’t remember any details about the weather, only that they were finally making some progress on their murder case. He rolled over and grabbed the phone.

Parme picked up his cell phone on the second ring. “What?”

“Did the lab call? About the DNA.”

“Yeah,” his partner growled on the other end of the line.

Gilbert rolled out of bed, sitting up on the edge and letting his bare feet touch the cold hardwood floor. “Well, are you going to tell me?” He could hear Parme spit on the other end of the line. He must be outside or in his car. Now that he listened, Gilbert could hear street traffic. Not much of a rush hour in this town, it seemed.

“It’s not him. We cut the little bastard loose this afternoon.”

Gilbert blinked. He wasn’t sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, he never really believed the little man was capable of the brutal murder he was investigating. On the other hand, he was really looking forward to cracking his first case. He didn’t have to guess how Parme felt about it. He decided not to rub it in.

“So…,” Gilbert started.

“So, we keep working the case. I’ll see you at the diner first thing in the morning. And Rob, don’t be late.” There was an edge to his voice that made tardiness sound like a very bad idea.

“Yeah, right. Good night.” Gilbert hung up the phone. The sun was just falling below the horizon. Darkness was coming. He thought about Eagan. If he hadn’t committed the crime he tried to confess to, he must be crazy. Crazy and alone. And heading home in the dark. Whatever he was afraid of would be waiting for him there.

Gilbert thought briefly of going over to Eagan’s apartment, but the thought withered when his mind went back to the case. You don’t waste time on dead ends. That just creates cold case files. Better to focus on the investigation, continue to run it to ground. Anything else was a waste of his time.

He got out of bed and headed to the bathroom.

Across town, his partner shut his cell phone and dropped it unceremoniously into the cup holder next to his seat. He couldn’t believe that little shit wasn’t the perp they were looking for, but he’d learned long ago not to question the lab results. That’s a battle the detectives never won.

He had toyed with the idea of pressing charges against him for popping him in the nose, but had decided it wasn’t worth the crap the other detectives would give him. He was too old to chase down punks like Eagan and give them the beating they deserved, so he let it go.

Letting go of things was something Parme had become good at over the years. Everything was a lot easier that way. It was a lesson he wished he had learned on his first ex-wife. He hadn’t. It had taken a second divorce to get the lesson through his thick skull, but now it was one he wouldn’t forget. He was practicing with his current girlfriend. They were close, but he knew that he could drop the whole thing in a heartbeat if he needed to.

He watched her from the car as she left the diner and headed to the curb, making a beeline for his car. She looked as pretty as she had when she’d served him breakfast that morning. She always did. She leaned against the passenger door and put her head in the window.

“Hey, sailor. Give a girl a ride?”

Parme smiled in spite of himself. He knew he looked like a dork when he smiled, but she brought it out of him. He looked down at her blouse, stained from a long day of moving food from counter to table and back again. She still wore “Barb” on her name tag because it was the same old pin her mother had worn. Not good at letting go, this girl.

“Sure,” he said. “Get in.”

As Pat was slamming the door of Parme’s car, Arlington Eagon was opening the door of his apartment building. He had been released earlier in the afternoon and took a cab from the precinct house back to his apartment, but at the last minute he had asked the driver to pull over and let him out a few blocks away from his building. He had been wandering around the neighborhood since then, afraid to go home. Now, he was almost frozen and had chosen to enter the building instead of risk hypothermia.

Eagan new he was sick. Crazy, actually. Which might be the same thing, but he wasn’t sure. He had been to doctors and therapists and psychic healers and they’d all told him pretty much the same thing. He had a victim complex and people who had that were going to get victimized. That’s just how it worked.

He had hoped that by simplifying his life, he could avoid much of the confrontation that led to his eventual victimization and it had worked, for a while. But now that he knew he was not in control of his own body when he fell asleep, his fears had taken on a whole new dimension.

He had thought about what he could do about his situation for hours, as he walked the streets of his neighborhood. He kept coming back to the same solution. The only solution. He would have to run. Fast and far. And he would have to start this very night.

Deep down, he knew he hadn’t killed that girl. He was pretty sure he had never hurt anyone in his life. He figured he was probably incapable of it. He froze up during conflict of any kind. The whole confession thing was just a desperate attempt to run away from his apartment. It was a strategy that was woven out of panic and, predictably, it had failed.

This time, he would plan his run to freedom better. He would not panic. He would simply pack up the few things he needed and call a cab. He would meet the cab at the curb and then take it to the nearest hotel, where he would spend the night. Tomorrow, he would check himself into the nearest psychiatric facility, telling them that he was having visions of murder and that he was afraid he would hurt someone. They would have to take him.

They would put him in a room he could not escape, probably give him medication to help him sleep and make sure that he was never lured away into the darkness again. He would finally be safe.

He went over this plan again as he walked up the four flights of stairs to his floor and then down the hallway to his apartment. He was feeling much better when he inserted the key and opened his door. He stepped into his apartment and his plan was immediately forgotten.

There was a man standing in his living room. A large, hairy man. He squinted up at him for a moment and then recognized him as the factory worker who lived down the hall, Mike or Mitch or something, he couldn't remember now. The man was holding a crowbar and staring at him with heavy-lidded eyes.

The girl on his couch caught his eye when she moved, bringing a lit cigarette to her lips in a smooth motion. She was small and blonde. Eagan couldn’t remember ever having seen her before. She wasn’t wearing much clothing. She had the same half-asleep looking eyes. Were they both on drugs?

“What is this,” Eagan stammered. “I don’t have any drugs...or much money.”

“Do it, Mark,” the girl said calmly. “Do it now.”

The big man took a step toward Eagan and swung the crowbar at his head.

Read Part 11

9. A New Relationship

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Read Part 8

Gilbert headed home and fell into bed. He had been asleep for about an hour when Mark Boyle started to wake up across town in apartment 407 in Arlington Eagan’s apartment building.

It was just before noon when Boyle's alarm clock jarred him out of a dreamless sleep. He groaned and sat up on the couch in the small apartment that had become his entire world. The layout was exactly the same as Eagan’s apartment and every other in the building.

Boyle never slept in the small bedroom. It had another purpose. Most of his time, when he was not at work, was spent in the apartment’s main room. A comfortable leather couch that doubled as a bed shared the space with a big screen television, a gaming console, a couple of cheap shelves filled with video games and an end table for his beer.

There was a nearly empty bottle sitting on the end table. Boyle reached for it and drank the warm beer. He grimaced as it went down and then tossed the empty bottle into a plastic recycling container, half filled with last night’s empty glass beer bottles. At least I recycle, he thought. He used to be proud of that fact. Now, he felt nothing.

He sat back on the couch for a moment, briefly considered going back to sleep and then headed for the shower.

It took awhile for the hot water to make its way to his shower, as it always did. When it was warm, Boyle stepped under the spray and let it bring him back to life. If you could call what he was living a life. He let his head fall forward onto the tiled wall and wondered for the millionth time how he had come to this.

When Boyle left high school, his ambition had been to become a video game programmer. He’d attended technical school where they taught him to program computers that were decades out of date. It should have come as no surprise that when he emerged he was only qualified to work on machines that were as old as he was, which almost no one used anymore.

He found work in a small manufacturing facility that specialized in creating prototypes. He programmed the old CNC equipment to create whatever the engineers wanted and when that was done he programmed it to create something else.

But Boyle didn’t give up on his dream. He set aside the small bedroom in his apartment for his office, bought some used office furniture and started educating himself. He saved up for a cheap computer and an internet connection and then used those to learn how to build a faster machine. Once he had a serviceable computer, he set out to learn the new technologies that powered the latest video games.

He knew what he wanted to create. He had been an avid gamer for as long as he could remember. Instead of cable television, he spent his entertainment budget on a subscription to a gaming network, giving him access to a world of other players and a window out of his crappy apartment and into the world he really wanted to live in.

For a while, he had been learning, a little more each day. But lately, he had been beset by a lingering depression, a feeling that he would never reach his goal, never escape this dreary life. His bedroom/office had fallen into disuse and he spent more time playing old games and drinking beer and less time working on his future. Well, no time, lately. He had fallen into a routine. A rut, to be more accurate.

To add some stress to his depression, there were rumors at the company of another round of layoffs. The older systems were giving way to newer technologies. Instead of relying on programmers to tell them what to do, the new machines had access to a near limitless list of pre-programmed jobs. Untrained workers could tell the machines what to do by pressing a few buttons. The only good news what that the new tools were expensive and it wasn’t clear whether his firm would invest. But the threat of it filled him with dread.

The hot water started to run out and he hadn’t washed his hair yet. Quickly, he lathered up and rinsed before the warm water was completely gone. He threw on his clothes, briefly considered shaving but abandoned the idea. He grabbed his car keys off the kitchen counter on his way out of the apartment.

His apartment was at the front of the building so he didn’t have to walk far to get to the stairwell. He started down and was surprised to see the door to the 3rd floor hallway open and Sandy Gallagher leaning against it.

“Hi, Mark,” she purred at him. He stopped short.

Mark had spoken to her once, about a year ago or so at one of the ill-fated building holiday parties that the new manager had thrown in an attempt to create a sense of community. It was an awful little affair held on the small square of lawn behind the building. No one had anything in common with each other, so they sipped free bottles of beer and waited together for the delivery pizza to arrive.

Sandy had been (and remained) the only other person in the building who seemed to be near his age, so he had introduced himself. There were maybe a couple dozen words shared and then it was over, all but the pizza eating anyway.

She had never looked at him again, though he sometimes pretended it was because he came and went on an odd schedule. And now she smiled at him from the doorway to the third floor, in her nightgown. A question about why she was home at this hour was playing in the back of his mind, but it couldn’t get to the front because he was wondering why she was nearly naked. He realized he could see through the thin, white material to her small nipples.

“Um, hi,” he replied when his attention made it back up to her eyes and he realized she was waiting.

“Can you help me with something?” she asked.

“I was on my way to work.”

“It will only take a second.” She smiled at him and led him across the hallway to her apartment, which was situated directly beneath his.

She led him through the living room and into the kitchen, pulling a light bulb, still in its box, off the shelf as the went. “Can you help me put this in,” she asked sweetly. “I can’t reach it. See?” She stretched up toward the light socket, she was a few inches too short. Boyle didn’t notice that as he was caught up in the movement of her short top rising up her legs until he could see the white strap of a thong, high on her hip.

His eyes slid off her exposed legs to the kitchen chair behind her, a steady enough platform to allow a person much heavier than her reach the light. What was going on?

Boyle was not the kind of guy that girls came on to. He had been, when he was younger, but the more dedicated he became to pursuing his dream of becoming a game designer, the more ridiculous he began to look in the eyes of potential dates. He became accustomed to the confused look a date would get when he finally told her that he hoped to make a living making video games one day. It usually put a serious road block between him and a second date, to say nothing of sex.

“Well, are you going to do me...this favor or aren’t you,” she teased.

“Yeah...sure.” He took the bulb, reached up to the fixture and threaded it into the socket. The light, which was already on, came to life in his hand. He flinched and she reacted immediately by throwing her arms around him.

“Wow! That was a little scary,” she smiled up at him.

Certain that she was making fun of him, he untangled himself from her and backed away. “Well, there you go. Nice to see you, Sandy.”

She moved quickly by him and beat him to the front door, closing it securely and turning the deadbolt. “You’re not going to leave without letting me thank you, are you?”

“I’m going to be late for work. I really should go.” He felt like he said these words with some authority, but in reality his mind was spinning and it came out weakly. Logically, he knew that what he desperately hoped was happening couldn’t actually be happening. Even if it was, it would all end as soon as she found out who he really was. She was all smiles, playing with her blonde hair and batting her blue eyes. He really did not want to see her change when she learned what he was all about. That was never pretty.

“I should go,” he started, but she pressed her little hands to his chest, which he noticed had the effect of pushing her breasts together nicely, and pushed him backward to the couch. He fell into it and was surprised by how comfortable it was, but only for as long as it took for Sandy to climb on top of him. Then he forgot everything but her. She put her elbows on his shoulders and looked down into his eyes.

“I want to thank you,” she said, “and I plan to.”

Her eyes had seemed blue before, but for the life of him, Boyle couldn’t tell what color they were now, they were just beautiful. So beautiful. Her lips parted and she kissed him, deeply. He lost his breath and felt the fear start to loosen its grip on him. Maybe she would understand. He opened his eyes and looked into hers again. Yes, he was sure she would understand.

She pulled back and smiled. He realized something was happening to his body that hadn’t happened in the presence of a girl in a long time. She realized it, too, and settled herself onto him more securely.

“I’m going to thank you properly for helping me,” she said. “And then you’re going to do one more favor for me.”

He may have said yes. Later, he would swear that he could not remember anything that had happened after the time he first saw Ms. Gallagher in the stairwell.

Read Part 10