The Priest's Graveyard Read online

  Poking someone in the neck with a needle and injecting a drug into their jugular is much harder than most people imagine. Too shallow or too deep and you miss the vein. Either way, Emily would wake. The idea was to quickly, and I mean very quickly, inject the drug and get the needle out before she could interrupt the procedure.

  I carefully guided the needle to her bare neck so that it hovered in line with her vein. Then, taking a deep breath to steady myself, I jabbed the needle in, shoved the carefully measured dose into her bloodstream, withdrew the syringe, and dropped to the floor.

  Emily gave a short cry and slapped at her neck, jerking up onto one elbow. Beside her, Darby grunted. Finding no gargantuan mosquito hovering over her bed, Emily scratched her neck a couple of times and sank back to the pillow.

  On the far side of the bed, Darby rolled over. It was a shame I had to hurt her, but try as I might, I couldn’t think of a better way to deal with her without exposing myself. No matter what I did with Darby, she would probably wake up and identify me, if not in the bedroom, then later when she peered out through the window as I buried his body in the ground.

  Drugged, she would sleep soundly and wake in a few hours, groggy and with a bruise on her neck, but otherwise ignorant and safe.

  I waited several minutes on the ground beside the bed, then reached up and poked Emily’s arm. When she did not respond, I jabbed harder in her side.

  She was out. Now I could do my deed properly.

  I sneaked over to the lamp, turned it on, and then stood back as Danny had instructed so that Darby couldn’t easily reach me. The man was still snoring. I started to speak, then stopped to clear my throat and spoke with a trembling voice.

  “Wake up, you lousy viper.”

  They weren’t the most clever words, and Darby didn’t wake up.

  “Get up!”

  He jerked upright and twisted toward his wife. Uttered an unintelligible word.

  “This way,” I snapped. “Make any sudden moves and I’ll pull the trigger.”

  He swiveled his head and stared in my direction. “What?”

  “Turn over on your stomach and keep your arms spread,” I said.

  His eyes widened as his head cleared.

  “Now! On your belly. Now!”

  The man’s face darkened. “What do you think you’re trying to do?”

  “I’m trying to give you a chance to live, you stupid schmuck. Turn over like I said!”

  I almost pulled the trigger then, because instead of showing fear, he actually sneered like he was daring me to kill him. But I didn’t want to leave blood on the sheets or shoot a bullet in the wall.

  So I said, “I’m going to count to three. One…two…”

  His sneer softened and he lifted his hands. “Okay. Calm down.”

  “On your face.”

  “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

  “I’m dealing with a fool in his underwear. Turn over!”

  He clenched his jaw and finally turned onto his stomach. “What do you want?”

  “Arms wide.”

  He stretched his arms out, a frail little man at my mercy, face turned so that I could see it.

  “Tell me how I can get to Bourque and I’ll let you live,” I said.

  “You’re mental! You think I have any access to Bourque? He’s going to kill you, you know that. No one crosses him and lives.”

  “Tell me why and how you killed Lamont.”

  “I didn’t, you fool! I have no idea who he is.”

  “Don’t lie to me. Jonathan Bourque had him killed and I want to know why and how. Tell me!”

  “I am telling you! I don’t have a clue who—”

  “He worked for Bourque. We lived in Malibu. Blond hair, handsome man. You killed him.”

  “And I’m telling you, you have the wrong man. I’ve never heard of him.”

  “You’re denying that you’ve killed people for Jonathan Bourque?”

  “No. I’m not denying that. But whoever this Lamont is, I wasn’t involved.”

  I stood in silence. He was telling the truth? He said it with such conviction that I was tempted to believe him. This wiry snake had killed for Jonathan Bourque, but maybe Lamont wasn’t one of his hits.

  “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “Then who did?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. I’ve never heard of the man. Now are we done here?”

  “No.”

  My mind was reeling. Part of me was saying that he wasn’t guilty of killing Lamont, so I didn’t have the right to kill him and all my work digging his grave had been wasted.

  But another part was telling me that Danny would kill Darby regardless. He was the lowest kind of human, abusing those closest to him for his own gain. If there was any man who deserved justice, it was him.

  I imagined the children upstairs, cowering in the beds, and I felt rage boil in my face. I admit that my anger was probably partly motivated by the fact that I hadn’t uncovered Lamont’s killer, but anyone who physically abused his wife and children without showing the slightest remorse did not deserve to live.

  In fact, now that I was able to put Lamont’s death out of the picture, I saw that this ugliness in Darby’s character was worse than the role he played for Jonathan Bourque.

  I wasn’t prepared for the emotions that overtook me then. My hands began to shake and for a moment I thought I might fall.

  “Face the other way,” I said, eager to get his eyes off me.

  He stared at me angrily.

  I felt frantic. “Turn the other way! Turn toward your wife, you pile of vomit. Turn your head!”

  “What are you going to do?” The first signs of concern crossed his face.

  “Nothing, just turn. Turn away from me!”

  He turned his head and swore. I jerked out the second syringe, pulled the sleeve off using my teeth, and rushed up to him. “Will you just settle down? I—”

  It was as far as he got. I stabbed the needle into his neck and shoved the plunger home. I did it without taking time to think.

  Darby Gordon roared and came up like a tiger, clawing at the needle still stuck in his neck. I jumped back, gun level with his face. “Shut up!”

  But I’d missed his vein. It would take longer for him to go under and he wasn’t shutting up. He flung the syringe across the room, cursing bitterly, demanding in the vilest terms possible that I tell him what I had done.

  “Shut up!” I cried. The whole neighborhood would hear if he kept this up! “Shut up!”

  “You thupid…”

  His eyes clouded as the drug began to reach into his mind. Grunting like a cow, he lunged from the bed, took one long step toward me, and collapsed facedown at my feet.

  I stood over him, shaking from head to foot, gun still pointed at the bed where he’d been lying only a minute ago. Emily slept on in peace. The house had gone completely silent.

  I had killed him? But the rise and fall of his back said he was alive.

  No one rushed in to arrest me. The kids were not standing in the doorway wondering what all the hollering had been about. It was just Darby and Emily in a deep sleep, and me standing over them with a gun.

  Now what?

  The moment the question crossed my mind, I knew the answer.

  24

  DIRECTING THE SACRAMENT of penance would be the least missed of all Danny’s duties when he left the priesthood. This much he’d known from the first time he’d taken up position in the confessional and heard an older woman named Betty confess that her obsession with chocolate at two in the morning was the real reason for her obesity. But he’d missed two dates with the box in the last two days due to his preoccupation with Renee, and Danny felt obligated to make an appearance today.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been two months since my last confession.” A middle-aged female had taken the booth. Danny made a point not to identify those who bared their secrets to him, because he
had no interest in the paltry sins of the flock. Stealing, cheating, lying, fornicating, masturbating, overeating, gossiping, jealousy, anger, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera—the common sins of the masses, so banal, so human—were utterly predictable, and inevitable, no matter how hard people tried to avoid them, no matter how many prayers they uttered.

  What was the point? Go and sin no more, he would say, but they would. It was impossible not to.

  “But you are here,” Danny said softly. “God will reward you for that.”

  “I have thoughts, Father. They scare me.”

  Take this woman speaking in a timid voice now. If her thoughts were about hating and abusing others in a premeditated, purposeful way, he might find her confession more interesting. But to date, he’d never encountered such a person in this box. He’d met plenty outside the law.

  “Go on.”

  “It’s my mother-in-law. She’s coming for a visit and I hate her. My husband and I have fought for three days and I can’t take it.” She sniffed once.

  “Well, you don’t plan on killing her, do you?”

  The woman uttered a short gasp. “No!”

  “Good. That wouldn’t be wise.”

  She recovered and went on, and he listened dutifully, but he only heard the broad strokes. His mind drifted to the matter of Renee, who hadn’t called today and didn’t answer his call two hours earlier, at noon. She’d probably lain awake half the night thinking about her first solo effort. He had found sleep fleeting himself.

  It was unlike her to sleep in, but last night had been no ordinary night. It could have gone worse, much worse. At least she hadn’t done anything stupid, like attack the man, which Danny wouldn’t put past her. They would have to work on her impulsive nature.

  Such an enigma. So simple and innocent, yet so complex. World-wise in a way that drew him like a moth drawn to the flame. The fact that he might be burned wasn’t lost on him, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Killing the man who’d ended Lamont’s life was Renee’s obsession. Renee was his.

  He heard two more confessions, both from women—no surprise, 80 percent of all confessions were given by women—both involving paltry sins. He was about to call it quits when another person entered the booth and sat still, unspeaking. Perhaps a man. Men tended to be less forthcoming.

  “You’d like me to hear your confession?” Danny asked.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I put two bullets in a man’s head last night and buried him under the doghouse in his backyard.”

  Renee’s unexpected voice came to him like the sound of an angel.

  What she said robbed him of breath.

  “Are you mad at me?” she asked meekly.

  “I…” Had he heard correctly? He couldn’t move. They were in the church where, however unlikely, voices could carry! She’d killed a man?

  Now she spoke hurriedly. “I’m sorry, Danny, but I had to do it. You have to understand that.”

  “You…Who?”

  “Him,” she said.

  “You went back?” he whispered.

  She gripped the latticework between the booths with both hands and spoke with hushed excitement. “He’s dead. He was the worst of the worst. He—”

  “Not here!” Danny abruptly stood, sliding the gate between the booths closed as he did. “Meet me at the Starbucks two blocks down in fifteen minutes.”

  Then he walked out of the booth and strode for the offices without looking back. What had she done? What had she done?

  They sat at an outside table half an hour later, Renee staring at her herbal tea, Danny watching her over an untouched vanilla latte.

  There was no one within earshot, but that could change. “Go on,” he urged. “All the details. You’re in their room. Both are sedated…”

  Her eyes flitted up, bright, eager. The eyes were called windows to the soul, and he was already deep inside of hers, cohabiting. Their common character, their interests, the raw attraction…all of it had pressed them into the same mold. Even now, in the wake of her breaking sacred trust with him by going off on her own, he felt an inseparable bond with Renee.

  “I couldn’t leave them,” she said. “I don’t think he was involved in Lamont’s death, but when I thought about the demonic way he treated his wife and children, I just couldn’t leave him, right?”

  “Actually, you could have.”

  “Would you have?”

  He thought for a moment, scanning the area without moving his head. The strip mall’s parking lot was nearly empty. Danny often treated those in need at this Starbucks. Drug addicts, hardship cases, single mothers—the coffee shop was more of a confessional than the one in the church.

  “Maybe not,” he said.

  “That’s what I thought. So I—”

  “Hold on.”

  A car pulled up to the curb and two teenage girls piled out, laughing. This wouldn’t do. Renee was too volatile to trust in any public setting, and his nerves were wound too tight for his own comfort. Meeting her here was a mistake. He wasn’t clearheaded around her.

  “Let’s go for a ride in my car.”

  “Okay.” She stood without hesitating.

  Danny wore the collar now, and some might raise an eyebrow at the sight of a priest giving such a beautiful young woman a ride, but it was nothing new to the regulars here. The disadvantaged were often without wheels, and they were sometimes beautiful.

  He was overthinking the situation.

  He steered the car down Long Beach toward Ocean Boulevard, headed to Bluff Park on the beach. It would be nearly deserted at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday. She rode in the passenger seat, waiting for his direction like a good understudy who knew she was about to be reprimanded—already at work on him in her own subtle way, and unaware of what she was doing. She was smarter than she realized, he thought. Raw and undisciplined, but a natural. Perhaps even more gifted than he.

  He turned the radio on. A pop station was playing one of Beyoncé’s latest singles. “Okay. Now tell me.”

  She picked up exactly where she’d left off. “I couldn’t leave them, Danny. I just couldn’t. Her, of course, but not him. But I couldn’t kill him in the house, either. I knew I would leave evidence of a break-in because I’d cut a hole in the kitchen window, but that’s not exactly bloodstains on the floor, which is what I would have left if I’d killed him in the bedroom, right?”

  She was looking for his approval. “Go on.”

  “So I opened the bedroom window, dragged him over, and shoved him out into the backyard. Then I locked it, made sure there were no signs of a struggle, and went out to the kitchen, where I left the note.”

  “The note?”

  “On a piece of paper using a Sharpie I found on the counter.”

  “You left your handwriting?”

  “No. I wrote in block letters.”

  “Wrote what?”

  “He’s gone. Breathe a word to the cops and you’ll be next.” There was a twinkle in her eyes. “But here’s the smart part. I signed it Jonathan Bourque.”

  He grasped her reasoning immediately. There was a connection between Bourque and Darby Gordon. In the unlikely event that the wife went to the cops, Bourque would learn about it. He’d leverage his relationship with the authorities to shut down any investigation, keeping the note tying him to Darby Gordon from surfacing.

  “Smart,” he said.

  “I thought so, too.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I dragged the body to the grave and shoved it in.”

  “He fit?”

  “I had to jump on him a few times. Something broke, I think his legs.” Her voice had grown soft and she was looking ahead at the street now. “It made me queasy. But I just kept thinking about his wife and children.”

  “Then you shot him?”

  “Yes. I shot him twice in the head.”

  She went silent. He let her process without further coaxing. Danny had killed his mother’s killer a year after her d
eath. Even then, in a time of war, after planning the kill for so long, taking a man’s life had bothered him far more than he could have imagined.

  “It hurts,” he said.

  “It’s strange,” she said. “I actually felt sorry for him. Not that he didn’t deserve it. I would have felt even more sorry for his children and wife if I hadn’t killed him. It was the right moral choice.”

  She turned to him. “Leaving him alive would have resulted in much more destruction than killing him. And his abuse of them took away his right to life. He was the worst of the worst, Danny. I promise you that.”

  “Did I ask for justification?”

  “No. But you’re thinking it. I should have called you first, I know, but I was afraid you’d say no. And I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You’re right, I would have advised against it. And you did surprise me. I hope I’m not creating a monster.”

  “What? That’s what you think of me?”

  “No, I didn’t mean it like that. Just a figure of—”

  “Was God a monster for killing the Philistines? Were soldiers monsters for bombing Berlin?”

  The reverend mother’s voice whispered through Danny’s mind. Are you ever tempted to judge, Father?

  “No, they’re not monsters, and neither are we.”

  “So.” And that was that.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes, approaching the park on the left. What had he been thinking, bringing her into his way of life? Surely this could not end well. They were playing with the trigger of a bomb that could go off with the slightest misguided movement.

  “What did you do after you killed him?” he asked, breaking the silence.

  “I shoved the dirt back in, flattened it all down, and scooted the doghouse back over the grave. You can’t tell, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”

  “You left nothing behind?”

  “I put everything back exactly as I found it, drove home, fell into bed, and slept like a baby for the first time in months.” Her voice was subdued.

  Danny pulled into the park’s lot, aware that she was struggling between two poles pulling at her soul. Death, regardless of its form, had that effect on any healthy human.

  He slipped the car into park, quietly let the air out of his lungs, and stared at the ocean across the street. Other than a Corolla on one end of the lot and a Nissan pickup truck behind them, the spaces were empty.