Chapter 15
Kate stared down at the phone in shock as Simon’s panicked voice pounded in her ears. “Father McCain, the priest at the church, is dead,” he cried out. “The same church I’ve walked into several times this week.”
“I have,” he replied, “but I can confirm that he’s not alive.”
“And how do you know that?”
“He’s not breathing. He’s bloody all over.”
“Christ,” she muttered, and she bolted out to the parking lot.
Rodney grabbed her arm and offered, “I’ll drive.”
“Let me know when the medics get there,” she told Simon, her tone rushed. “We’re on the way now.”
“Good,” he whispered.
“Was anybody else in the building with you?” she asked him.
“Not that I could see,” he noted, his tone calming down.
Yet Kate knew that the scenario had unnerved him. “And you didn’t see anybody when you got in there?”
“No,” he stated forcefully. “Honest to God, now I feel like shit because I refused to walk in earlier. If only I had come in then—” He stopped, and she waited so that he could collect his thoughts.
“Look. I don’t know how to explain it, but I didn’t want to be forced into the church.
… So I refused to go up the steps and to come inside. ”
“So why did you now?”
“I turned around and left, but I got warning bells in my head. So, I raced back. I didn’t know why I was running, but I was.
And when I came in, I sat down in a pew and looked around, still pissed off and fed up.
Then I saw a foot sticking out into the aisle, and I bolted forward.
It’s the priest I spoke to—Father McCain. ” He groaned. “He’s dead.”
“It’s okay. I’m on my way.”
“Like, … dear God, he’s dead.”
“Are you afraid you are somehow responsible?”
“No, I’m not responsible. Yet I do feel like. … If I had just listened to the first prompt to check inside the church, if I had not fought over coming into this damn place, I might’ve either been able to stop it or to see the killer.”
She didn’t say anything to that because that was an awful lot of what ifs.
“We’ll deal with what we have to deal with.
You did not kill the priest, and that’s what I care about.
I want you to step back so that you’re not putting your DNA all over the place any more than you have to.
And take another look around and confirm that you can’t see anybody there. ”
She was already searching their surroundings to see where they were. Her heart raced at the thought of Simon being the next victim. “And Simon …”
“Yeah?”
“For God’s sake, be careful.” She ended the call, looked over at Rodney, who was driving as fast as possible, sirens blaring.
Rodney nodded. “That’ll be a tough one for him to get over.”
“I know, and its BS because it’s not his fault.”
“But you can’t ignore the possibility that if he had listened—”
“I don’t want to hear about any possibilities here. We don’t know that,” she snapped. “That’s like saying, if you hadn’t done something, you could have walked away from God-only-knows what kind of mess.”
“I know. I know. I feel bad for Simon. He walks into a church, and there’s a dead man.”
She groaned. “A dead man he has spoken to a couple times recently … about our cases.”
Rodney shot her a horrified look.
She nodded. “So, now Simon’s really afraid that he had something to do with this.”
“Oh, good God, that’s even worse.”
“It’s worse from his perspective. Yet I don’t know,” she muttered, looking out the windshield. “Something’s just been completely off about all this. I feel as if we’ve been running around in circles, and we’ve never known quite what we’re doing.”
Rodney snorted. “This has been very much that kind of a case. I don’t know myself from one moment to the next what’s going on. So, it’s a case that isn’t like a lot of them. It’s not clear. We keep waiting for something else to happen.”
“Well, something else has happened,” she declared, “and this needs to be the last thing.”
“You really think it’s connected?”
“Yes, I absolutely think it’s connected. Matter of fact, I’m sure of it. What I don’t know is which of my suspects had something to do with it.”
He shot her another startled look. “What suspects?” he asked. “I didn’t think we even had suspects yet. You want to fill me in?”
“I’ll see what today brings,” she explained, “and then I can absolutely try to fill you in. But, if you’re looking for the whys and the wherefores, I don’t have it. All I’ve had so far is bloody instincts.”
His lips twitched.
“And that’s got absolutely nothing to do with psychic ability.”
He laughed. “You can say that until you’re blue in the face, but that doesn’t mean anybody else will believe you.”
“Maybe not, but we have plenty of other issues to deal with right now,” she pointed out. “So, let’s just keep that one closed.”
Rodney pointed when they pulled up to the church and found that the 9-1-1 responders were already here. The police and the fire department were coordinating, and the place was being cordoned off.
She looked over at him and noted, “We got here pretty damn fast, and yet we’re still behind.”
“I know it,” he said. “I’ll start a perimeter search first, and the cops inside should do a complete sweep of the church.”
She nodded. “You handle that. I want to confirm that nobody’s outside watching everything.”
She walked over to one of the cops, who was holding the gathering crowd back. She pulled him aside and suggested, “We need to confirm that somebody here doesn’t have a particular interest in keeping an eye on things.”
He nodded.
“So, start taking photos, will you? I want a snapshot of every person who’s gathered here to see what’s happening.”
He didn’t say anything but immediately pulled out his phone.
She smiled at that and headed inside. As soon as she got in, she was surprised to find Smidge here and not in his regular coroner’s outfit.
He turned and glared at her, his hands on his hips. “Is there no end to the carnage you bring me?” His tone was unpleasant.
She shook her head. “Apparently not.” She glanced at his outfit. “I gather you weren’t at work.”
“No, I wasn’t. I was at work,” he clarified. “I was trying to go home until you brought me this lovely BS.”
“Yeah. Lovely BS is right.”
“Who kills priests?”
She looked at him and shrugged. “Unfortunately, there could be a lot of people.”
He snorted. “It was a rhetorical question. You didn’t need to give me an answer.”
“Yeah. And it was a rhetorical answer,” she replied. “You don’t need to give me a lecture.”
He froze, stared at her, and started to laugh. “Good God, don’t ever change.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” she quipped cheerfully.
Several of the cops looked at her in shock, as if understanding that she had some sort of a relationship with the brusque coroner.
She smiled at them and waved them off. “Anybody checked the entire building?” she asked the uniforms. “I want it checked out top to bottom. Confirm that there are no places where anybody can hide, and I want the outside camera feeds like now.”
Smidge gave her a narrowed gaze, and she nodded at the poor victim. Smidge asked, “How are you here this early when the 9-1-1 call was made—”
“Simon found him.” She didn’t want him to put out feelers and to reel Simon in. Better tell him, so that his name stayed out of the way.
His eyebrows shot up, and he nodded. “Well, hell.”
“Yeah. Well, hell is right. He feels bad that he didn’t get here in time.”
Smidge looked down at the body. “I don’t know how quickly Simon got here, but the priest’s been dead … maybe two hours.”
She turned to him. “I’ll say that’s good news for Simon because he didn’t want to come into the church today.”
“Why?”
“That’s not for me to say, but, as he tried to walk past it,” she lowered her voice and added, “his system wouldn’t let him.”
Smidge shook his head. “I’m really glad I don’t have his system. I deal with this shit all the time. Yet I can’t imagine going to places that I’m not even called to and getting caught up in something like this,” he muttered. “Where is he?”
“He’ll be sitting around here somewhere.”
Just then a voice called out from the far side, “I’m here.” He came closer. “I just figured you guys could, you know, do your little hellos before anybody dealt with me.”
Smidge walked over to him and asked, “What did you see?”
“I saw nothing except feet,” he replied, as he stared at the dead man.
“I came in, not sure what was upsetting me. I sat in that pew over there.” He pointed it out.
“As soon as I sat down, I saw one foot. I bounced up again, came over immediately.” He stopped for a moment, then added, “I’ve talked to this priest several times over the last few days.
” He shrugged and turned to Kate. “I mean …”
“I know,” she replied.
“What do you know?” Smidge asked, facing her.
“It’s heartbreaking.” She shrugged. “That’s what he would say. It’s heartbreaking.”
Smidge looked at Simon. “Is that what you will say?”
“Yeah, it is.” He frowned at her. “Stop reading my mind.”
She retorted, “Stop being such an open book, making it so easy to read your mind.”
Smidge snorted. “The two of you are a class act. Now the trick is to coordinate enough so this shit doesn’t happen,” he snapped, growling at the two of them.
“Agreed.” Simon nodded. “I would absolutely love for that to happen.” He looked down at the priest and then turned back to Kate. “Kate …”
“I know. I’ve got people all over the place on this one,” she told him.
“It has to be the last one,” he whispered, facing her. “It has to be.” And then, obviously upset, he walked over to the far side, where he sat down alone and just closed his eyes.
Smidge stared at him, then at her. “The last one?”
She frowned, glanced down at the priest. “When you look at this case,” she suggested, “look at it from the perspective of it being connected to my other three.”
He stared at her, shook his head, and muttered, “Oh, hell no.”
She nodded. “Oh, hell yes.”
*