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

They stepped out the door and I could hear their feet on the steps outside and rose. The priest looked as though he was about to leave through a side door to the vestry. I raised my voice. “Father! Father Sullivan?”

He stopped and turned to face me.

“I am Father Sullivan.”

We approached and showed him our badges. “Detectives Stone and Dehan. We are looking for Father O’Neil.”

“And why are you looking here?”

Dehan smiled. “You don’t seem surprised that two NYPD detectives should be looking for Father O’Neil.”

He was younger than Father O’Neil, maybe in his late thirties or early forties. He returned Dehan’s smile with the same lack of feeling that she had given it. “Presumably, you have your reasons. What I am curious about is why you think you might find him here.”

“Whatever you are curious about, Father,” I gave him my own unfeeling smile, “we think he is here. Is he?”

“I haven’t seen Father O’Neil for some time.”

“You’re a good Catholic, Father, you’re working hard not to lie, but with every evasive answer you give us, you put father O’Neil’s life more at risk. Where is he?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “His life is at risk?”

“I haven’t got time to explain, Father Sullivan, but if he dies because of this delay, you will have to live with that on your conscience. Where is he?”

Somewhere in the distance, I heard the hum of a car engine. He heard it, too. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

The impulse to smack him was hard to resist. Dehan said, “You’re a damn fool!”

I pointed at the exit. “Who were those men?”

He gave Dehan a once-over that had more disdain than regret and turned back to me. “They wouldn’t tell me who they work for. They were also looking for father O’Neil.”

I took a step closer to him and stared him hard in the eye. “He is a key witness in a murder investigation. Those men may have been looking for him to silence him. If you don’t help us find him, you could be sentencing him to death, Father Sullivan. You need to get with the program. Where was he going from here?”

He had the good grace to look a little ashamed and said, “He refused to tell me. I don’t think he knew himself.”

“You lend him your car?”

He nodded. I gave him my notebook and my pen. “License number, make and model.”

He wrote it down and I gave it to Dehan. “Get an APB put out, will you?” She walked away, dialing the precinct. I turned back to Father Sullivan. “If he comes back, keep him here and call me. If he contacts you, find out where he is and tell me. If you hear anything at all, I want to know.”

He nodded.

The sun was sinking in the west and the shadows were growing long when I stepped out onto the stairs. Dehan was a couple of steps down, hanging up the phone. She looked up at me.

“White Ford Ka.” She gave me the license number. “APB is out. What now?”

I scanned the empty streets. The first haze of dusk was enfolding the trees. “I don’t know. I really cocked up, Dehan.”

She shrugged. “If you did, we both did. I agreed with your plan. I don’t see what else we could have done.” She shrugged and shook her head at the same time. “Who could have foreseen he’d run? What the hell did he run for? Where could he be safer? And he had the chance of a deal…”

“Doesn’t make much sense. What the hell was he looking for?”

The voice came from behind us, at the top of the steps. Father Sullivan stood looking down at us, a black shadow against the arch of the church door.

“Confession,” he said. “And absolution.”

SEVENTEEN

By the time we got back to St. Mary’s, dusk was turning to evening and the CSI team had set up a string of ark lights over the dig. It was an eerie sight, with the guys in their plastic suits appearing and disappearing behind the screens, in the glow of the lamps against the church wall. We ducked under the tape and made our way along the footpath. We could see they had dug four trenches at right angles to each other, and the team was about waist deep in them.

The uniformed cops had removed their jackets and had their shirt sleeves rolled up. They looked tired. Dehan quickened her pace and pointed but I had already seen it. There was a large plastic sheet laid out, and on the sheet there were bones.

Frank saw us approaching and climbed out of the trench. He held up one hand as though to stop me.

“Before you ask me, John, I don’t know. At this juncture, I know what you know, you predicted they’d be here, and they are. So that tells you something, but not much. As to the bones, whom they belong to, whether they are male or female, what age, how many…” He shook his head. “Don’t bother asking me because I don’t know, and I won’t know until I get them back to the lab.” He pointed at the sheet. “You can look, but you can’t touch. Now, I have to get back to work.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and hurried back to the trench. Dehan and I moved to the plastic sheet. There were two skulls. They were small. There were a few bones that might have been ribs. Nothing more.

“Is one of them Alicia?” I looked sharply at Dehan. She had tears in her eyes. “I used to play dolls with her when we were kids. Is that her, there?” She turned to look at me. Her eyes were large