The Priest's Graveyard Read online

  When Danny locked the second door at the top of the stairs, I lost myself. I blamed everything I felt on him.

  On Danny. This was his fault, not Lamont’s.

  I don’t even know what I was thinking, going berserk, banging into the door, pulling at my hair. I was screaming. A high-pitched sound that made me think something had broken in my head, which only filled me with more alarm.

  I had to get away, you see. The sight of the open closet made me crazy with terror. I had to get out, and Danny was the only one who could help me get out. But Danny was the one who’d locked me in here.

  This is why he locked you up, Renee. Lamont knew you were only a dog who would return to its vomit, just an animal who would run around and scream, just a worthless excuse of a life. That’s why he was teaching you how to behave properly.

  Eat the right foods.

  Wear the right clothes.

  Stay clean, clean, clean.

  As the memories started to come in, my throat began to fail me and my wailing started to fade. I threw myself on the floor, facedown, dried of sobs. My face was in the corner where the walls met and I imagined that I could hide there, but that didn’t help. Somehow I ended up in the middle of the floor, curled up in a tight ball.

  I was nothing.

  I think I stayed like that for at least an hour. Maybe two. But the human spirit is built to deal with everything, including nothing. Slowly, I began to accept my nothingness. Raw pain gave way to resolve.

  I had put up with this before, right? Sure, I’d shut it all out of my mind, but I’d been strapped to the wall in that room back there for days at a time until I learned to smile and kiss Lamont and show him all the appreciation he deserved for being my “law unto life,” as he liked to say.

  Now it was going to start all over again, only this time it was Danny who’d locked me in.

  My mind melted, thinking about that. Why Danny? I had been so sure that he loved me for who I was, not for who I could be. I thought he liked me. He’d been so kind and patient and showed me so many things.

  My mind wandered in lazy circles, spiraling down to a place of familiarity. Lamont’s early lessons came back to mind: the way he’d first treated me so nicely, feeding me drugs, always those drugs to keep me mellow. The lessons had ramped up slowly over several months.

  I had been such a messy girl, and he’d only set up the laws to help me.

  What a fool you are, Renee. You’re here again, back where you started. It always comes back to the same thing—no matter how hard you try, you can never measure up. You will always be too fat or too stupid or too messy or too ungrateful or too mean or too rude or too talkative or a dozen other toos.

  The thoughts bogged me down and I settled into a haze. I slowly slipped back into a more manageable state of mind, where denial and fancy head games were friends who led me to safety. I had been here so many times, hadn’t I? I was an expert at this.

  I wondered how long it had been since the office had been properly cleaned. Maybe I should clean it before Danny returned.

  I lifted my head, looked around the room, and saw that I was still alone. Of course, always alone. Lamont had left me like this for days, but I didn’t really blame him. He was only trying to help.

  But Lamont was dead. Danny was the new law. And although I didn’t really blame Lamont, I hated, hated, hated the thought of starting all over again with Danny.

  More rules. More too this, too that. More punishment. I mean, look what Danny did to the worst of the monsters. He killed them!

  I settled back down and stared at the corner where a spider was lowering itself on a long string of web. Normally I would have jumped up and killed the spider with a tissue, then thrown it in the waste can, but at the time I remember thinking that at least I had someone to share the room with.

  A thought came out of nowhere and stopped me cold. If Danny is the new law, then I have to kill him.

  I had to kill Danny because he had killed Lamont, and now he was the law and the judge just like Lamont had been, and I couldn’t do that again, I just couldn’t.

  Really, those who demanded perfection when there wasn’t any were the worst.

  I pushed myself up and thought about that. Danny’s law of punishing sin with death was the only thing in the world worse than his Pharisees. Wasn’t that right? In fact, it made him a Pharisee. A viper.

  I glanced at the door and saw where one of my bullets had gouged a hole in the wall nearby. My gun lay on the floor next to a sheet of paper.

  That was odd. I didn’t know where that paper had come from. The wind had blown it off the desk? But there was no wind. It had fallen out of Danny’s kit? But he’d left his bag out by the bed.

  The paper had been slipped under the door?

  My pulse surged with a memory. Lamont used to slip me notes under the door sometimes. Usually to ask questions, like, What did you do with the black paring knife? That meant it wasn’t where it was supposed to be, which in turn meant I was in even more trouble.

  I crawled over to the piece of paper, picked it up, and read the brief note scrawled there: I beg you, hear my confession. I’ll be waiting.

  It was signed, Danny.

  Confession? It sounded like some cruel trick. He expected me to hear his confession through this door? What that could possibly mean, I had no idea.

  I don’t need to hear your confession, Danny. I already know your sin. And you have the gall to accuse Lamont.

  I picked up my gun and checked the clip. Empty. I tried to account for the shots. Three to Bourque. Which meant I had to have gotten off six more down here. I didn’t remember all that, but I had a full clip in my kit upstairs, if Danny hadn’t taken it.

  I reached up and tried the doorknob just to be sure that it was still locked, an old habit from my past. The handle twisted and the door swung in and I jerked back like I’d been stung by a bee.

  It was open!

  The bedroom beyond waited in darkness. I scrambled to my feet, gun out, ready for his trick even though I had nothing. He’d believe I’d shoot. But when Danny didn’t appear after ten or fifteen breaths, I dared to take a step forward.

  “Danny?”

  The empty house swallowed his name.

  I walked out into the bedroom, but it was empty, too. I crept up the stairwell and stepped through the open doorway at the top.

  There was no sign of Danny.

  I checked the kitchen. Nothing. My bedroom. Empty. The only thing in the hallway was my kit, exactly where I’d left it.

  The full clip lay on top of the kit. I couldn’t remember putting it there, on top. I reloaded.

  Then I tried the front door, opened the latch, and stepped out into a cool Southern California night.

  Danny was gone.

  Waiting for me at confession.

  34

  IT WAS ALMOST 9:00 PM when Danny pulled into the back of Saint Paul’s on Long Beach Boulevard in Long Beach. The parking lot was vacant except for a maroon-and-white bus. The parish’s name was stamped in big bold letters on the side, under a silhouette of a dove.

  He parked his Malibu behind the bus and turned off the engine. City noise filtered into the cabin—the faint hum of traffic, the soft growl of a truck as it gunned its diesel engine through the intersection at the front of the building. A small dog barked and another returned the challenge.

  But back here in the lot surrounded by the tallest trees on the city block, there were no other signs of life.

  The church rose into the night sky, dark except for a lone bulb over the rear staff entrance. For the hundredth time, Danny questioned his decision to leave Renee at the glass house by the sea. Losing control of a situation so completely didn’t come naturally to him, and he hadn’t been in the clearest frame of mind. Maybe he really had thrown it all away this time.

  But of course he had, hadn’t he? Life as he knew it was over. What happened now was wholly in her hands. He was the puppet on her string. It was the only way. The ri
ght way. He’d come to that conclusion as he’d wept outside the prison he’d locked her in.

  What if she didn’t come? With each passing mile as he headed south, south, and farther south, the notion haunted him with increasing dread. Surely Renee wouldn’t stay there in her torment, not knowing he’d unlocked the door. Surely she would come.

  Surely he had made the right decision.

  He’d left the house and approached the cab. A thousand dollars had persuaded the driver to wait an extra hour, two hours, three—all night if that’s what it took. If Renee didn’t emerge before sunrise, then he was to place a call to Danny’s cell phone.

  What if the driver didn’t wait? Left a thousand dollars richer and no worse off for the gift? What if she passed out in the basement without finding his note? What if she found it but didn’t understand it?

  He’d told the driver to bring her to Saint Paul’s, but what if she refused? Danny might have been better off waiting for her outside the house. He might be better off to return now. But he’d passed a point of no return the moment he hit the Pacific Coast Highway. If he missed her by even a few minutes she might reach the church ahead of him, find no one there, and leave.

  Danny closed his eyes for a moment to still his spinning head. Forgive me, Father. If you are there and you hear, bless me, for I have sinned.

  He reached for his kit, withdrew his Browning nine-​millimeter, checked the load out of habit, then palmed it and stepped out of the car.

  He took a deep breath, eased the gun behind his belt, and walked toward the lighted back door, aware of each footfall on the paved lot. It took him a full fifteen seconds to find the right key on his ring, because his mind was still back there in the basement with Renee.

  It’s the right decision, Danny. It’s done, and it’s the right thing.

  He tried to insert the key and had to flip it three times before it slid in. Entering, he closed the door quietly behind him and started to twist the dead bolt. No, better to leave it open—she might come this way.

  If she came. If he was right.

  The hall brightened with a flip of a light switch. He’d leave this light on for her. She didn’t know the way.

  What you must do, do it quickly.

  The church taught that a man who committed suicide did not go to heaven. Then again, by their reckoning, suicide was the least of the sins Danny would have to account for.

  Danny took the side door into the main sanctuary. It was dimly lit by two rows of electric candles, which were mounted on seven pillars on each side of the empty pews. There would be no witnesses tonight.

  Walking faster under the watchful eye of the crucified Christ, he crossed the foyer, stepped up to the large mahogany doors at the main entrance, jerked the brass bolt to one side, and unlatched a second restraining chain.

  The church closed its doors at six on weeknights unless there was an evening service or social event. It was highly unlikely that anyone would try the doors this late into the night. The locals were accustomed to the schedule, and the area wasn’t a hangout for tourists or night dwellers.

  Danny cracked the door to be sure it was open, then eased it closed.

  He walked to a bench along the wall, opened the seat’s built-in storage compartment, and withdrew a hymnal. This he placed on its end against the front door. Any attempt to enter would knock the book flat on the wood floor. Then the empty halls would know. And the crucifix would know.

  And he would know.

  What you must do, do it quickly, my dear.

  Danny retraced his steps through the sanctuary, then turned right and approached the confessional nearest the front. He entered the booth reserved for laity and lit a small candle reserved for show. If the wax gave out too soon, he would turn on the night-light near the floor. But the occasion seemed to demand a flame.

  There was a short bench in the booth, well worn by sinners seeking absolution over the church’s twenty-seven-year history. Renee wasn’t Catholic—he wondered if he should leave a note outside the booth instructing her to enter this side. The sign at the top of the door would have to suffice.

  He backed out of the booth, closed the door, and looked around the sanctuary one last time before taking his familiar place inside the left booth. Releasing two small swivel latches, he freed the metal screen from the window between the two booths. Soft yellow light flickered through the wooden latticework that remained in place.

  He rested his gun on the floor next to a two-inch gap that ran the length of the wall. A nudge from his foot would push the weapon into the next booth.

  Now he would wait for the sound of the toppling hymnal, the telltale thump that would announce the beginning of the end. He took a deep breath, laced his fingers together, leaned against the bench’s backrest, and waited.

  After half an hour, he began to wonder if she might have killed herself in the basement. He’d been so focused on his own moral choice that he’d forgotten to consider the dangerous state of her mind. While he was down here in Long Beach, waiting to do the right thing, she was there in Malibu, dead on the floor.

  He stood, fighting an urge to rush to his car and go back to the house. But if she came, he would be gone.

  He sat and steadied his hands. No, this was the only course. The right choice. The moral path. A poetic and just if poignantly ironic ending to his journey.

  You live by the law, you die by the law.

  Lamont had lived and died by that law. Now it was Danny’s turn. That Danny had even considered the possibility of killing Renee was the gavel that had finally sentenced him. It hit him like a brick as he’d wept on the floor.

  He was as guilty as them all.

  And now he would pay the price.

  After an hour, he began to wonder if he’d misjudged Renee’s nature. For his own sake, it was critical that the terms of their relationship be decided by the code that had put them in this situation. For Renee’s sake, it was critical that she become what he’d made her: judge, jury, and executioner.

  If she judged him and found him guilty, she must do what she must do.

  After an hour and a half Danny began to sweat.

  The hymnal did not fall.

  35

  I WAS GOING to kill Danny.

  I was Judas, who was being paid in the silver of vengeance and justice. Danny knew it, and I knew it. In fact, I wasn’t so sure he didn’t want me to kill him.

  He had killed the guilty in the name of justice, and by doing so he had become guilty. He had killed Lamont, and now in my mind he was Lamont. And although I didn’t blame Lamont for the state of my life, I could not allow another law to take his place.

  I had one chance to be set free and never look back. It was either that or Danny was waiting to kill me, and I was okay with that, too.

  I stepped out on the curb in front of Saint Paul Catholic Church and walked away from the cab without looking back. But Raymond wasn’t leaving, so I looked back and saw that he was watching me.

  “You sure you’re okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. Standing out there on the sidewalk I felt like a ghost who’d mistakenly walked into the real world. I was being watched from a hundred sides. I knew because I could hear the voices clearly again for the first time since I’d been chased down the alleyway by gunmen and saved by Lamont a year and three months ago. Only this time I was the one with the gun.

  I gave him a halfhearted wave. “Thank you.”

  He nodded, then pulled away, and I walked up to the front doors. Not daring to look back in case someone was staring at me, I pressed the large thumb latch and pushed. The door opened. He’d left it open for me. Danny had always been such a gentleman. I had to love that about him.

  I stepped in and shut the door behind me. My breathing was thick and my fingers were twitching, but inside the church I was safe from the street. Dim light glowed through the deadly quiet foyer. Someone had left a book on the floor. A hymnal.

  Oddly enough, I felt more threat fro
m the voices in my head than from Danny. My last real encounter with the voices had left me with a fractured mind and a broken, half-dead body. Danny, on the other hand, had never shown the slightest inclination to hurt me, not even when I was shooting at him. Yes, he did lock me in the room, but he probably could have killed me.

  I didn’t hate Danny. I didn’t hate Lamont. I’m not even sure I hated Jonathan Bourque anymore. Instead, I hated that they had made me who I was.

  I hated that I had to kill Danny, but there was nothing I was more eager to do than just that. An image from that movie Apocalypse Now flashed through my mind. A soldier went up a river during the Vietnam War to kill an army colonel named Kurtz, who’d gone off the deep end. Kurtz accepted his death willingly. He embraced the horror with as much boldness as he’d dished it out.

  I was the soldier and Danny was Kurtz. There was an understanding between us, a nobility that most people would never get.

  These lofty thoughts joined the voices whispering in my head, forming a strange, fractured soundtrack of terrible wonder. But above it all there was a much clearer sound, a voice that said over and over, You’re gonna kill him, Renee, You’re gonna kill, Renee, You’re gonna kill Danny, Renee.

  I really was finally doing what I had been born to do. Or at least what I had become reborn to do.

  I set my kit on the floor, unlatched it, pulled out my gun, and stood up.

  I would kill Danny or he would kill me. Then I would gladly die because I couldn’t live anymore, not like this. I wasn’t thinking about what I would do after I killed him. Escaping the police wasn’t on my mind. How ending Danny’s life would change me wasn’t my concern.

  I was simply doing what I had to do, because Danny deserved to die.

  Maybe God would send another killer to kill me for killing Danny for killing Lamont. Maybe human nature is the ultimate assassin, finally taking every life because we are all guilty on one level or another.

  I stood in the foyer for at least a minute, maybe two or maybe even five, swimming in a whirlpool of thoughts.