by Blake Banner
“Father O’Neil. So Sean must have had friends at the church.”
“Oh, he did that.”
Kathleen smiled briefly. “And a lovely girl. God alone knows what she thought when he just vanished, Mexican, but a lovely sweet child, as devout as he was. Isn’t that how they met? In the soup kitchen, and delivering clothes during the bitter winter. They were both besotted, bless them.”
Dehan asked, “What was her name, Kathleen?”
“God forgive me, I can’t remember. Isn’t it a shame? I only met her the one time when he brought her over for dinner. But it’s that long ago, I cannot remember her name. Can you remember, Jim?”
He shook his head. “No. It was one of them Mexican, Spanish names. Maria, was it? Or Carmen…? I don’t recall.”
I asked, “Any idea how we could find her or contact her?”
Kathleen looked at me as though I were a bit slow. “Sure, won’t he have her address and telephone number upstairs?”
I smiled. “Upstairs?”
“Of course! I have all his stuff upstairs. His computer, all his papers, his diary… everything, I mean, until today…” Her face started to fold up into wet grief again. “…We had no idea if he was coming back. He might have turned up at any time, walked through the door…!”
I watched her a moment, trying to conceive what kind of hell she must be going through. I couldn’t even begin. I turned to Jim. I saw the same hell behind his eyes, but I knew from his face he was going to keep it together until we were gone, until Kathleen couldn’t see him.
I said, “We need to take his things away and examine them. Have you any objection? It will all be returned to you after the investigation.”
“We have no objection. Take what you need. Just catch the bastard who did this to our son.”
I pulled out my phone and called the 43rd. “I need a CSI team to collect evidence from the following address…” I told her where it was. Then added, “It is just papers and IT stuff. No, no body.”
When I hung up, Kathleen said, “Of course, it all depends how much was taken in the burglary.”
Dehan sat back and sighed. I tried not to look at her. “Burglary?”
“Didn’t it all happen at the same feckin’ time. They say it never rains but it pours. The very night after he never came home, didn’t we have a feckin’ break in? They went into his room, God alone knows what they expected to find up there…”
Jim shrugged. “The policeman said it was probably opportunistic, you know, broke in on the off chance.”
I stared at them both for a moment, trying to fathom the depths of human stupidity.
“It didn’t occur to you, or the cop, that his disappearance and the break in might be connected?”
They looked blank. Kathleen said, “No. Why would it?”
I smiled. “Sure, why would it? Did anything go missing from Sean’s room?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” said Jim. “He kept all his stuff very private. Nobody was allowed to touch it, but I wouldn’t have thought so. Sure, they left the computer, didn’t they? A real fancy one at that, and who’d be interested in a lot of papers? So you’re probably all right.”
I nodded and looked at Dehan. “No doubt.” I made to stand. “We won’t take up any more of your time. A van will be here shortly to bag up and take the stuff from Sean’s room. Please don’t go in there or disturb anything. We’ll keep you posted as to any developments.”
We left them holding each other at the door and climbed into the Jag. Dehan frowned at me. “You don’t want to look through his stuff before we leave?”
I shook my head. “I’m more interested in what isn’t on the computer. We’ll go over everything at our leisure back at the station, but I think we’ll find anything of interest has already been taken.” I fired up the engine. “Where to now, Dehan?”
She smiled. “Sure, isn’t it time you spoke to Father O’Neil?”
I nodded. “It sure is.”
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Table of Contents
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One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Epilogue
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
LAST CHANCE
EXCERPT OF BOOK THREE...
Two
Three
