The Penitent One (Boston Crime Thriller Book 3), Brian Shea [best non fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

He'd shot a text message to Gray yesterday, letting him know there was a new body, and it looked to be their guy. Gray had called back almost immediately, asking for the detailed case file to be sent his way so he could bring it up to his supervisors and petition to assist. Kelly hadn't heard back from him since that conversation, and as quickly as they had pulled him out last time, he wasn't expecting much in the way of support.

He pulled the Caprice into the gated lot of One Schroeder Plaza, then took the side entrance and climbed the stairs to the second floor. As he entered the hallway from the stairwell, the motion light activated, illuminating his path to the doors of Homicide. First on the floor. Routine restored.

As he fobbed his way in, he saw the light inside was on. Somebody had arrived a while ago, long enough for the motion sensor lights in the hallway to deactivate. So much for first in. Kelly assumed it must be Barnes. She too would want to reclaim her sense of routine.

He entered and looked toward his squad’s cubicle area but didn't see Barnes. To his surprise, FBI Special Agent Sterling Gray was seated at the vacant desk.

He smiled and held up the blue coffee mug in mock cheers.

"Didn't think you'd get here this quick, if at all," Kelly said.

"Neither did I, but when I showed them that picture of O'Toole’s hand and told my boss the connection the dead man has to the Irish mob, they immediately authorized my temporary reassignment to the case."

“How’d you get in?”

Gray pointed his mug toward the sergeant’s office, where Halstead was already seated at his desk. I guess beating the boss to work is a thing of the past, Kelly thought with a grimace.

"Well, I, for one, am glad to have you back, and like I said when we talked yesterday, I haven't moved forward much in the way of the Tomlin case. So this new body just means more work. I would say based on the way he was found, where he was found, the fact that he was submerged in the Charles River for an unspecified time period, and knowing how clean our perp is, the likelihood of this being much of an adrenaline boost to that dead case isn’t hopeful."

"Hey," Gray said, leveling his eyes at Kelly. "Every time a body drops it gives us a window in, small as it may be. Although we've been unsuccessful so far, you never know what this case will give us that the others haven't. Maybe it connects in some way that will help make order out of the chaos. You've got a dead priest and a dead mobster. That to me is a strange pairing if I've ever seen one, and from my experience and study of The Penitent One, he typically does not kill so close together, and to do so in the same area is also a red flag.”

“Maybe he's slipping,” Kelly said wishfully.

Gray cocked his head. “Not likely. But every case gives us new potential to find him.”

“Let me grab a cup from the back and I can get you up to speed on the O’Toole case before everybody gets in.” Kelly tossed his coat on the back of the chair and made his way to the break room. He topped off his travel mug and returned to Gray.

“Before we get into the O'Toole case, I wanted to show you something that has really been nagging at me with the Tomlin case."

Gray's interest was piqued. "Sure. What do you got?"

Kelly opened the drawer and pulled out the thick Tomlin case file, the same one he’d mulled over every day since it landed on his desk the Sunday before Thanksgiving of last year.

He rifled through the file and removed a small stack of papers. It was the dead priest’s work history or, more accurately stated, lack thereof. He’d called the church where O'Brien thought he'd heard him mention he worked, which turned out to be a dead end. Then, when reaching out to the archdiocese, he'd continually been met with red tape. Nobody seemed willing to share, or was able to find, any record of Father Tomlin's work history.

"What am I looking at?" Gray asked as Kelly slid over the stack of papers with notes scribbled in the margins.

"That's it. You're not really looking at anything. This right here is Father Benjamin Tomlin's work history, what little I could gather."

Gray looked down at it, thumbing through the few pages in the stack, most of which were in Kelly's handwriting.

"Nothing there. That’s my point. The only proof we had that he was ever a priest was the collar he wore at Saint Peter's. Prior to that, he was like a ghost. Everything I've checked doesn't seem to match. I can’t find anything on a Father Tomlin anywhere."

Gray stopped shuffling through the papers, reorganized them, and handed them back to Kelly, looking pensive.

"Something you want to say?" Kelly asked. "I mean, because I'm all ears. I've been staring at this case file, losing my mind, losing sleep, and letting everything else in the world fall down around me trying to put this one to bed. I’m grasping at air. And now, with another body on my desk related to this, I’m not sure what I’m missing. But something’s off. I've got four red cards on my murder board, and the doer is the same for each. I'm at a loss.”

“When I came here in November, I was under strict oversight. Any information I was to disseminate needed the approval of my supervisors, who are extremely tightlipped about what information can be released. Even with an ongoing active investigation into a homicide.”

“You’ve been holding back?” Kelly set his mug down and focused his attention on Gray.

“This case has been at the forefront of the FBI's list for years. The fact that they can't