Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

“I was coming to that, it was a match. Who was it?”

“I’ll tell you later, Frank, and thanks for rushing it. Remember to sleep. You got any rafters you can hang from there?”

“Anybody ever tell you you were funny? They lied.”

I hung up. Dehan was sitting up, looking at me with sleeping eyes.

“We got prints?”

“Yup.”

“That’s good.”

I nodded. “It’s great. It’s a breakthrough.”

“Did we sleep on the sofa?”

“Don’t worry. I still respect you.”

“You’re cooking! That’s my job.”

“Go upstairs and have a nice, hot shower. You’ll feel better. I have something to tell you after.”

Fifteen

When we arrived at St. Mary’s, the mass was almost over. We sat at the back and listened to the end of the sermon. He had chosen Luke 18:16, suffer little children to come unto me. He had a good voice, compelling and strong, and it filled the church without the use of a microphone.

“And I ask you to meditate on this: what is the Lord telling us, when he says, suffer little children to come unto me? Is he telling us to be kind to little children? Is he telling us to be lenient and understanding with them? Is he telling us to provide for them, both physical and spiritual nourishment?

“Indeed he is. But he is telling us more than this. He is telling us that to achieve the Kingdom of Heaven, we must ourselves be as children. For only in that blessed state of innocence can we truly understand love, the love of Jesus Christ our Savior, and the sublime love and grace of God and the Holy Spirit. Only in that childlike state of sacred innocence can we find the divine echo of our holy state before the original sin, when we were fresh from God the Creator’s hands.

“Therefore, teach your children, feed them, care for them and love them, for they carry the divine spark of our Father in their innocent hearts, but more than that, learn to be as they are. Let us all learn to be God’s children in our hearts, for nothing is closer to God’s heart, than a child…”

It went on like that for another five minutes, and shortly after that they all started filing out. Dehan and I made our way down the nave and found Father O’Neil descending from the altar. He looked a little startled.

“Detectives, I thought we had said everything to each other that we needed to say.”

Dehan smiled like a woman who is scared to open her mouth because she is not sure what might come out.

I said, “I’m afraid not, Father. We need to talk to you some more about those photographs.”

I said it loud enough to make him glance at the exiting congregation. He gestured at the door to the rectory.

I shook my head. “Actually, I would like to talk to you in the churchyard.”

He looked a little sick. “In the churchyard? Whatever for?”

I didn’t answer. After the last stragglers had departed through the great doors, we made our way through rolling echoes toward the vast wedge of light that lay across the stone floor at the entrance. He stood a moment, watching me. I passed him and led the way along the footpath around the back of the nave, where it was shielded from the road and the apartment block by dense, mature trees, and made a closed angle with the old coach house.

I stopped among the fruit trees that stood there in the shelter of the old walls and studied his face. I saw anxiety there.

“Yesterday was not the first time you had seen those pictures, was it, Father?”

“This again?”

“Was it?”

“I already told you…!”

I interrupted him. “Father O’Neil, yesterday was not the first time you had seen those photographs, was it?”

His breathing was short and I could see his hands were trembling.

“I had never before seen those photographs. You cannot… There is no way…”

“Your fingerprints are on them. You handled each and every one of them twelve years ago.”

“That is an outright lie! There is no way fingerprints could last twelve years! You are trying to trick me into admitting something that is not true!”

Dehan was shaking her head. “A common mistake, Father. Fingerprints will last for years if they are protected. We have enough, right there, to arrest and convict you and put you away for the rest of your life and believe me, Father, there is nothing I would rather do. Although, my partner thinks you can be useful to us, so he is in favor of cutting a deal with you.”

His eyes were bulging and he was sweating. His voice shook when he spoke. “What kind of deal? I am admitting nothing, mind! But what kind of deal…?”

I said, “I want to dig up the churchyard.” I pointed to the small patch of fruit trees. “Right there.”

His skin turned a pasty gray and his legs seemed about to fold. “Oh sweet Jesus.”

I saw Dehan ball her fist and curl her lip. I put my hand on her shoulder. She stared at me. I shook my head. She looked back at Father O’Neil and snarled, “Suffer little children to come on to me? I ought to gut you right here and feed you to the dogs.”

“What’s it going to be, Father? We take you in and you take the fall, or you cooperate with us.”

He did what he had to do, what he had always done, and yielded to the prevailing wind. He stared first at Dehan and then at me, with a crying face that made you want to slap him.

“I will cooperate, of course, but it’s not what it looks like. It isn’t what you think, you have to let me explain.”

“Oh, believe me, I can’t wait. We will have plenty