The Priest's Graveyard Page 15

  My heart stopped. Was it his ghost?

  Then his ghost blinked and I took a step back.

  “Hello, Renee,” he said.

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even breathe.

  He brushed aside my shirts, stepped past me, and stood with his arms by his sides, staring at me. He looked like a boy who’d been caught with chocolate on his face ten minutes before dinnertime.

  “Father Hansen?” I said.

  “Call me Danny,” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t make a very good priest.”

  My relief at seeing him rather than anyone else was so profound that I lost my mind for a moment. I rushed up to him and threw my arms around his neck.

  “It’s you!” I cried. “Oh! Thank goodness it’s you!”

  He stood still without returning my embrace, and it occurred to me that my reaction might be somewhat startling. I released him quickly and stepped back.

  “I’m sorry…Thank you. I mean that it’s you and not someone else.”

  “I’m so sorry, Renee. It’s not what you think.”

  I began to think about that. He’d been in my stuff and his face looked a little different than I remembered, like he’d been crying maybe. What if Danny Hansen was some kind of pervert?

  “What are you doing in my closet?” I asked.

  He spread his hands apologetically. “I’m sorry, I had no right. I…Our conversation last night was bothering me. I…We said some things. I was thinking that maybe I was a little too quick to judge you.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “So you’ll help me?”

  “I didn’t say that. I—”

  “Did you touch any of my stuff?”

  “No.”

  “Did you sit on my bed?”

  He hesitated. “Well, yes. I was…I’m sorry, I just—”

  “Are you some kind of pervert?”

  “No! Oh no, oh no! It’s not like that.”

  “Then tell me what it is like, Father Hansen who wants to be called Danny? Tell me why you broke into my house and snooped around my closet. Tell me why you were on my bed. Did you go through my food, too?”

  “Food? No!” Then he added, “I looked in your refrigerator.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m trying to tell you, if you’ll just slow down and let me explain!”

  I crossed my arms. “Fine. Explain. I want to know why a priest is so good at breaking in and snooping around. Because I have some thoughts on that.”

  “I had to know how sincere you were about all that you said. I had to know if you really did plan on going after these people. I had to know, because I really do think you’re putting yourself in real danger.”

  “Well, now you know. You saw my gun. I’m going to shoot Jonathan Bourque dead. Satisfied?”

  He turned away. “I see that. And no, I’m not satisfied.”

  “Why not?”

  He swiveled to me, angry. “Because I like you!”

  You see, I was right. God had brought Danny Hansen to save me, just like he’d brought Lamont to save me. Three months ago, I might have thrown my arms around him again, but I was older and wiser now. I was someone to contend with.

  “That’s nice, Danny. I like you, too. And you obviously know much more about this kind of thing than I do. So why won’t you help me?”

  “Because I’m not going to help you kill a man!”

  “Then at least help me find out more about him. Help me expose him. Help me find the whole truth about him. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You want to know what I think?” I said. “I think that you’re much more than just a priest. I think you’re here because you’re more like me than you admit. I think you’ll do anything to stop a man from killing innocent people. You did it before, when you went after the people who killed your mother, and maybe that wasn’t the last time.”

  His eyes widened, just slightly, but I was sure that I had said something that took him off guard. He looked at me for a few seconds, then ran his fingers through his hair and started pacing.

  “This is crazy. You’re right, I have my reasons for wanting to help you, but it’s not what you think. I have a terrible weakness when it comes to self-righteous dogs who destroy others for their own gain. Yes, I’m sure it has everything to do with my own experience, but that doesn’t mean I could possibly stand by and support you in this crazy crusade of yours.”

  “So why are you here? Why do you want to help me?”

  He was prowling like a lion in a cage.

  “I swear, you can trust me,” I said, suddenly hopeful.

  “You don’t know how much danger you are putting yourself in.”

  “I was facedown in an alley dying, just a year ago. Don’t tell me I don’t know about danger.”

  “Going after someone like Bourque will get you killed.”

  “My only reason for living is for justice, and if that gets me killed, oh well.”

  Danny turned his face up to the ceiling. “Dear God, help us.”

  “No. You, Danny. You help me.”

  He lifted a trembling finger. “Not to kill. Not that! And you must also promise me you won’t try to kill him or do anything so absurd.”

  It was all I needed to hear. The mere thought of bonding with someone who would help me was overwhelming.

  “Thank you.” Tears flooded my eyes. “Thank you, thank you so much. I swear I won’t let you down.”

  “We’ll do a simple investigation, nothing more. Promise me.”

  “I promise! I promise you with all my heart. I just need to know the truth, that’s all. I just…” My voice froze up with emotion.

  “I thought you already knew,” he said.

  “I do. I just want to really know, you know. So I know I’m not crazy.”

  “You’ll have to do exactly what I say. Nothing more. And no one can know. Not a soul.”

  I stepped up, wrapped my arms around him, and hugged him. “Thank you, Danny.” I could hear his heart pounding in his chest. This time he put one hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  I felt like I had come home. Like I was lost and had been found again.

  I finally pulled back and wiped my eyes.

  “I should go now,” he said. “Come to my house tomorrow at noon. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  Then he turned on his heels and left the room.

  16

  THE NEXT THREE days were the happiest days of my life.

  Looking back now, I can say that with complete confidence. A brilliant light had blazed into my dark world.

  I’d had so many happy days with Lamont, of course, but my early days with him had been fogged by heroin and blurred by the new drugs prescribed to deal with withdrawal symptoms. In their dulled state, my emotions couldn’t match the level of intensity that I felt bonding with Danny after three months of isolation and uncertainty.

  I remember the first time I got a real Christmas present. I was seven. My father hated the holidays because he said the whole thing was just a lie made up by big corporations to sell junk that no one needed. He called it robbery. All of the neighborhood kids got gifts, but I didn’t, so I hid out in my house over Christmas.

  But for one Christmas, that changed—I still don’t know why. I think my father wanted to appease my mother, who’d caught him cheating that December. Whatever the reason, when I woke up that Christmas Day there was a new red bicycle with a white bow on it in the living room.

  I could hardly stop jumping up and down. I rode the bike up and down the street all day to show the other kids that my parents could be cool, too.

  Two weeks later I ruined our neighbor’s rosebush by crashing into it by mistake. To punish me, my father broke all the spokes on the bike. But for those first two weeks, I was in heaven.

  That’s how I felt going over to Danny’s house that fi
rst day, like I’d gone from having nothing to having everything in just one day.

  I was so excited that my hands were shaking when I knocked on his door. I wanted to rush in and throw my arms around him when he opened the door. I didn’t, of course. I just said, “Hello, Danny,” and walked in. But we were both smiling.

  He had a pot of tea ready, and my first question had nothing to do with killing people. “Why do you like tea so much?” I asked as he poured the steaming tea into two white porcelain cups.

  “In Bosnia, my mother used to serve us tea twice every day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon. She said tea had medicinal value. I guess the habit stuck.”

  I lifted my cup. “Then we will drink to your mother,” I said. He smiled. I think he liked that.

  “To Mother,” he said. And he sipped his tea.

  “So, when do we get started?” I asked.

  “We have already,” he said. “If we’re going to work together, we need to know a little more about each other. I need to know what you do and don’t know about Jonathan Bourque. Infiltrating the enemy’s a dangerous business, and if you’re not prepared it will get you killed. I would like to avoid that.”

  “Good thing I wasn’t an enemy yesterday,” I said. “I could have killed you in my closet.”

  “Touché.” He smiled, but I think he was just being gracious.

  We were soon sitting and talking very comfortably, as if this sort of thing was common for both of us. He wanted to know everything—where I’d come from, why I’d gotten into drugs, how Lamont had rescued me, what life was like living by the sea. And I didn’t hold anything back. After all, he was trusting me by taking me into his confidence, so I was eager to do the same.

  We talked about so many things over so many hours those first three days. I can’t begin to explain it all. Although we first met at his house, we spent the rest of our time at a park on the east side of town where our meetings would be less conspicuous. His neighbor, an older widow named Ellen Bennett, would undoubtedly sit him down and interrogate him for long hours if she saw him coming and going with a beautiful young blonde, he explained.

  I was like an apprentice, and Danny was the wise, experienced master. He was thirty-two, not really much older than my twenty-four, but he’d been to hell and back, whereas I had only been to hell (not counting my year with Lamont). He, the priest, would help me find my way back. At least that’s the way I looked at it.

  In some ways, he did seem like the perfect priest. He spoke with a sure voice and listened with those kind blue eyes. He oozed such an unwavering confidence that it was impossible for me to imagine we could do anything but succeed, never mind his insistence that exposing Bourque would be dangerous.

  “Of course,” I always said to that. Of course, of course. But I was thinking that Danny had eaten danger for breakfast. I felt like he and I could conquer the world.

  During our walks in the park, he told me about growing up in Bosnia, about the war, about the brutal deaths of his loved ones, about his path to justice. Hearing Danny tell the story, my heart broke for him.

  The laws in Bosnia were a shambles, so he took the law into his own hands. After killing those who’d raped and murdered his family he’d joined the militia and learned how to fight like a man. By the time he was seventeen, he was leading an entire squad of scouts, assassins who killed enemies in their own homes.

  Like I said, Danny ate danger for breakfast. He began to methodically teach me some of the fundamentals of hunting an enemy—surveillance, planning, preparation, execution.

  In a private corner of the park sheltered by oak trees and dense greasewood shrubs, Danny taught me about weapons. Though I had learned a fair amount about the basics, Danny was the Zen master of personal weapons.

  “Here, let me show you,” he said on the second day as I practiced wielding a large bowie knife.

  “Sure.” I handed him the knife. He effortlessly flipped the blade over and spun it once. He wasn’t showing off. In fact, he hadn’t even started to demonstrate what he wanted me to see. He was simply examining the blade by rote.

  But he had me there, at the grip of his strong hand on the hilt of that blade, the flex of his forearm as he spun it, the perfect balance and control he had over the weapon.

  He caught my look of adoration. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Go on.”

  I forget what he showed me. I was too enamored with his command of that blade.

  Danny owned only seven guns, which he let me see and handle, but he knew every firearm currently in use, or so it seemed to me. And he could palm a pistol like a gunslinger.

  He demonstrated much more than I could possibly remember those first few days, but more than the weapons, he talked always about love and true religion and his longing for justice. He only wanted what everyone wants, he said, and the reason everyone wants justice is because God is just.

  These were the truest words anyone had ever spoken to me, because I, too, only wanted God’s justice. They gave me hope. Danny’s hatred of injustice began to flow in Bosnia and now spilled out on the streets of Los Angeles. He had many beautiful faces, but his love of justice was his most attractive to me.

  Danny would cross the street to help a woman pick up a dropped bag of groceries. Or stop traffic to give an old man time to cross. He would sit with widows and pray for a husband and he would take time to bounce a ball with an orphan boy. I could see it in his eyes, he loved them all.

  And he hated anyone who stood against them.

  Many other things Danny said drifted over my head, especially when my mind was focused on the way he was handling a gun. But I tucked away the rest like a secret treasure.

  He left Bosnia after the war and came to America to start over thirteen years ago. Changed his name to Danny Hansen to make the break clean, entered seminary, and set out to be a true man of God, to atone for the many so-called Christians in Bosnia and the rest of the world whose sins spit in God’s face.

  At the same time, he seemed nothing like a priest. He never wore his collar when I was with him. He said that he wanted children one day. Even more, he didn’t strike me as a very religious man, but more of a philosopher. His occupation seemed to be more of a convenience than a calling.

  According to Danny, it was the rules set down by religion that most often got in the way of truly loving people. Religious authorities made it too easy to feel good about following those rules, regardless of love, and to frown on people who didn’t follow the rules.

  True religion, he said, should be about love. This is what he learned in Bosnia, and this is what he had set out to prove to himself here in America. Justice was a supreme act of love.

  He was very eager for me to understand this, and I assured him that I did, although I think he could tell that I was distracted. I was itching to go after Bourque, an act that didn’t require quite so much philosophy.

  I admit that I was a little distracted by Danny himself. After Lamont, I’d thought I could never look at another man with even mild interest, but Danny was different. I can’t say my thoughts were necessarily romantic, but I’m not sure how else I would characterize them.

  I was in awe of him. He was a beautiful man with a strong jaw and soft eyes. He was very kind and smiled a lot and, even more endearingly, he actually laughed at my antics. I could tell that he liked me, and I think he could tell that I liked him.

  We were so different from each other, he being a priest and me a recovered junkie. He being a man who stood nearly six feet and solid as a steel beam, me being a woman just over five feet, weighing in at about half his size. He growing up in Bosnia in a loving family that had been killed, me growing up in Atlanta with two parents who didn’t love me enough to stick around. He being a meat eater, me being a vegetarian.

  But in other important ways we were similar, I thought. We both valued cleanliness. We both loved people. We both hated injustice. We both listened to jazz and classical music as well as pop and roc
k.

  We both had an interest in Jonathan Bourque.

  I was surprised to learn that Danny was actually at the fund-raiser where we met because of Bourque. He’d started his own investigation into the man, having stumbled on information from an attorney named Cain Kellerman, evidently one of Lamont’s co-workers.

  My suspicions had been right—Danny had purposefully followed Redding into the basement that night.

  I wondered why a priest would start his own investigation rather than turn the matter over to the police, but when I asked, Danny just shrugged and said he had a thing for exposing injustice. At any rate, he hadn’t learned anything more than I already knew.

  “So when are we going to do this?” I asked while we walked in the park on the second day.

  “We are doing this,” he said, hands clasped behind his back.

  “Of course. But when are we going to…you know…go after Bourque?”

  “We’re not going to go after Bourque. We’re going to let Bourque come to us.”

  I never could quite understand the difference between the two but I let it slide.

  “When are we going to start our surveillance?” I asked.

  “When the time is right.”

  Danny was as steady as a rock, but I wasn’t sure I had the patience to watch a rock. I was more interested in picking up that rock and slinging it into Bourque’s head.

  Most of our time was spent rehearsing what I knew, what I didn’t know, and what I should know in regard to how to conduct myself in the field: choosing methods of surveillance, tracking subjects, breaking into secure locations, avoiding detection, foiling security systems. It was a kind of hopscotch approach to fieldwork primarily because I kept changing the subject.

  As he drove me home from the park after our third meeting, my mind was rattling with facts.

  “Fieldwork,” I said, thinking of the Ann Rule books I’d read. “Seems more like FBI talk than war talk.”

  “Like I said, I was with a militia. We were hunters with personal weapons who blew up bridges and infiltrated the enemy. My primary duties involved finding key targets and neutralizing them. It was a different kind of war.”