CHAPTER SEVEN
Marcus shook his head as he navigated the three blocks to St. Francis’s Parish Church. Why was he doing this?
Because she’s right far more often than she’s wrong.
His face pulled into a scowl. That was the answer: simple, elegant, and frustrating as hell.
He didn’t want Kate to be right. He wanted her to be safe.
He wanted her in a safehouse in Quantico rooming with a half-dozen HRT counterterrorism agents with chips on their shoulders and psych records that fell just barely on the right side of psychopathic.
He wanted to either find Cox hiding in some rabbit hole in the forest or for Cox to get stupid enough to walk into those psychopaths and end up with more holes than a cheese grater.
He wasn’t supposed to want anyone dead, even a suspect, but he’d shed no tears when Elijah Cox finally met his maker.
He chuckled at the image of Elijah Cox answering to the God he pretended to worship. Oh, to be a fly on that wall.
He didn’t really want Cox to die though. He just wanted Kate to be safe.
Which couldn’t happen. Not as long as they worked this job. If it wasn’t Cox, it’d be some other asshole.
He sighed and ran his hand down his face, grimacing when he felt the stubble on his cheeks. When was the last time he’d shaved?
A car horn sounded. He looked up and found himself a couple steps away from being pancaked by a Ram dually pulling a trailer full of landscaping equipment. The passenger of the Ram leaned out of the window and threw his hand up in the air. “Que hace, puto?”
Marcus lifted a hand in apology and said aloud, “I wish I knew, buddy. I wish I knew.”
The parish church was across the street, a modest building about twenty feet tall with a simple steel cross in the center of the front facade adding another ten feet.
A street sign with backlit white tiles advertised mass every Sunday at seven a.m, ten a.m., and three p.m. A row of blank tiles separated that information with the message SANCTUARY ALWAYS OPEN!
Marcus waited until the road was clear, then crossed the street. There were two cars in the parking lot, an old Lexus sedan and an even older Toyota minivan. Both vehicles had peeling paint, and the van’s rear bumper was attached to the chassis with a trio of orange bungee cords.
He walked through the door and found an interior as modest as the exterior.
The carpet was the thin, scratchy hotel special that seemed ubiquitous to any building constructed between 1950 and 1970, and ventilation was provided by a pair of loud fans in the ceiling.
The pews were pine and had once been laminated, but that lamination and the stain underneath had been worn to a pale beige everywhere but the backs, which retained the artificial darkness intended to convince people that the cheap pine was some sort of exotic hardwood.
The sanctuary displayed a smaller version of the building’s cross, just as plain, and was devoid of other adornment.
“Welcome,” a gentle male voice said behind Marcus. “How can I help you today?”
Marcus turned to see a priest approaching.
He was around fifty with blond hair slowly losing the battle to gray and gentle brown eyes covered by thin, wire-rimmed glasses.
He gave Marcus the beatific smile he’d come to associate with most priests, but this one appeared more than surface deep.
He walked with a slight limp on the right side, but if he felt any pain, he didn’t show it.
“Hi,” Marcus said. “This is your church?”
“Well, not mine, of course,” the priest replied, nodding at the cross. “I am the shepherd of this flock, though.” He extended a hand. “Father Dennis Holbrook.”
“Right,” Marcus replied, taking his hand. “I’m Special Agent Marcus Reid, FBI. I’m here about Warren Schulz.”
The priest’s smile vanished. His shoulders slumped, and now pain showed on his face. “Ah. Yes. I heard about him. Just terrible. He was… Well, I suppose we should go to my office.”
He led Marcus to a door to the right of the altar. An elderly woman wearing an ochipok stepped through the door and looked questioningly at the priest. He spoke a few words to her in Ukrainian. The woman nodded and beamed tenderly at Marcus before moving past them.
“Olena,” Father Holbrook explained. “She’s been attending this church for sixty years. She volunteers her time to keep the grounds clean. Her son helps from time to time, more now that she’s getting older.”
“It sounds like you have a close-knit community.”
“Well…” His voice trailed off until the door closed behind them. “For the most part that’s true, but not everyone manages to integrate.”
He led Marcus into the office. The low-roofed room was crowded with books: Bibles, commentaries, histories, and treatises by numerous Catholic thinkers from antiquity to the present day.
They filled a bookshelf about as tall and wide as Marcus and occupied every spare square inch of the small desk (the same faded pine as the pews) and one of the two upholstered chairs in front of the desk.
Twin piles flanked the bookshelf, and another pair flanked the desk.
Apparently Father Holbrook was a reader.
The father gestured to the empty chair. Marcus took it, testing his weight before trusting it to the old chair. It creaked concerningly but seemed steady enough. He leaned forward just in case. “I take it Mr. Schulz never managed to integrate.”
“No, sadly,” Holbrook agreed. “He was pleasant to all, but he resisted any attempt at closeness.”
“How so?”
“Passively. He politely declined my invitation to join me for Saturday prayer. He managed to avoid interacting socially with other patrons at the church, and he never attended any of the informal functions here. He was content to arrive every Sunday for mass and to confess.”
“To confess what if I may ask?”
Father Holbrook gave Marcus a gently scolding smile. “You may ask, but I believe you know my answer.”
Marcus returned his smile. “Worth a shot.”
Father Holbrook nodded acknowledgement.
“Did you happen to have any visiting priests recently?” Marcus asked.
For the second time, Father Holbrook’s smile vanished. His left eye twitched, and there was a slight tremor to his voice when he replied, “Why do you ask?”
Marcus chose to be honest. Mostly. “We think the person who killed Warren Schulz may have been posing as a priest.”
“I…” Father Holbrook blinked. “Oh my.”
“That’s a yes, I take it.”
Father Holbrook nodded. “I had surgery on my hip three weeks ago. A bone spur. I was in bed for two days. The Diocese of Richmond sent a priest to take confessions while I was recovering.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow. “Richmond, Virginia?”
“Yes.”
Shit. “Is that normal? To have a priest come to Ohio all the way from Virginia to cover a parish church?”
Father Holbrook swallowed. His eyes were big as saucers and all the blood had drained from his face.
It was clear this was the first time he’d considered that his visitor might not have been who he said he was.
“No. Ordinarily the local diocese will make arrangements. He just happened to be in town, and he offered. I saw no issue with it, especially considering the absence was so short and didn’t include a Sunday. No mass to lead.”
“You said three weeks ago. He left after that?”
“Yes. He said he had other flocks to minister to. I told him he was always welcome… I didn’t…” He swallowed again. “Surely you’re not suggesting a priest was responsible for Warren’s murder?”
“Not a real one,” Marcus replied. “Can you describe this Father…”
"Glover," Father Holbrook replied. "Father Raymond Glover.
He was, um…" He cleared his throat. "Tall. Like you but not so broad. On the slender side, actually. He had short, silver hair and unusually bright blue eyes. Very crystalline. He had the sort of gaze that could pierce through to your soul. I thought when I met him that he would be an excellent confessor. He had the sort of will that made you want to tell him the deepest secrets of your soul.”
A weariness came over Marcus then. A part of his mind tried to insist that it didn’t have to be Cox. That description could fit plenty of people.
But he knew better. Kate was right once again. The scourge of the Portland Field Office, the scourge in particular of one thirty-seven-year-old field agent who’d spent her entire adult life battling demons, had struck once again.
No. Not once again. Four times. And the only guarantee Marcus had was that he would keep striking until they found him and put him down.
A dark voice in the back of Marcus’s mind, one he hadn’t heard since his military days, suggested it might be best to put him down for good this time.