The 7th Canon

by Robert Dugoni

  Chapter 11

  Donley placed his briefcase on the table as the metal door shut. Father Martin stood across the county jail’s attorney-client room, staring out a rectangular, double-paned window. Through it, at a certain angle, Donley knew the priest could see the San Francisco skyline. Though it was only a short distance, it must have felt like a great divide.

  “Father Martin?”

  Father Martin turned and walked toward the table. “Please, call me Tom, Mr. Donley. Nobody calls me Father Martin.”

  “Peter. Nobody calls me Mr. Donley.”

  They shook hands, then pulled out chairs and sat on opposite sides of the table.

  “I’m not a murderer, and I’m not a pedophile,” Father Martin said.

  “I’m not a criminal lawyer,” Donley replied. “Well, I mean I’ve never defended anyone accused of murder. If we go down this path, I’ll need to bring in someone with more experience. The court will mandate it.”

  “I understand.”

  “I wanted to apologize for running out of the room the other day—” Donley started.

  Father Martin raised a hand. “I don’t blame you; you must have thought I was a lunatic.”

  “Why wouldn’t you speak to me?”

  Father Martin lowered his head. When he looked up, his eyes were moist. “I don’t know. Shock, perhaps. A lot of things, I suppose. The painkillers on an empty stomach; the feeling that I had somehow killed Andrew. I had gone back into that place I left behind many years ago when it was me against the world. You were an unfamiliar face. I thought you were from the public defender’s office.”

  “I understand the feeling,” Donley said. “But what do you mean that you felt you had somehow killed Andrew?”

  Father Martin took a breath before starting. “The boys called him Alphabet. I called him Andrew. Nicknames demean because they come from the streets. I use the names God gave each boy.”

  “So, you did know him,” Donley said, reaching into his briefcase for his notepad and pen.

  Father Martin shook his head. “I knew more of him. I don’t know anyone who actually knew Andrew. It’s not unusual. A lot of these kids live multiple lives. The person they display on the street is not who they are. They put up walls to survive.”

  Donley understood all too well about putting up walls.

  “Andrew survived the streets because he was smart and resourceful, but like most heroin addicts, he was always looking for a way to make or steal a buck. No one on the street had a good handle on him. He wasn’t interested in anybody’s sympathy or help, which is why I was so surprised when he came to the shelter that afternoon.”

  “What time did he get there?”

  “Early, about five o’clock. If he wasn’t the last person I expected to see, he was close to it.”

  “Did he say why he came?”

  “No. And I didn’t press the issue. He was agitated. I thought it was the drugs, but I decided to let him stay. I don’t normally do that. I won’t allow the shelter to be used as a crash house. I guess I held out hope his coming was his way of reaching out for help. I didn’t want to turn my back on him, or spook him. The hardest part is getting the kids to the shelter. My chances of helping them improve dramatically once they are there. Do you follow?”

  Donley did.

  “I left Andrew alone. When I went back to the dormitory later that night to check on him, he was gone.”

  “What time was that?”

  “When he left? I can’t say for certain, but I noticed he was gone around seven, right before I sat down to pay the bills. I figured he couldn’t take it, that he needed a fix. But I also couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have spent time with him, talked with him, that if I had, maybe he would have stayed. I let the stress of the shelter get to me; financially, it’s been tough.”

  “I’m going to need details,” Donley said. “And I’m going to force you to be painfully specific.”

  “I understand,” Father Martin said.

  Aileen O’Malley sat behind her desk thinking, Déjà vu all over again, or whatever the hell the saying was. Gil Ramsey and Linda St. Claire continued to grill both her and Detective John Begley.

  “I don’t know how he found out.” Begley held out his hands like he was presenting a sacrificial lamb to the gods. “These things tend to take on a life of their own; I can’t control what everyone says. Hell, it could be the friend of a wife of an officer who happened to run into someone in a grocery store who happened to know Donley.”

  Ramsey paced the office. O’Malley had never seen him so agitated. He extended a finger in her direction. “This will reflect poorly on your department and you. If they fight this, I can’t guarantee the evidence will get in.”

  She brushed aside the threat. “What’s done is done. He would have learned of the problems with the evidence eventually. It wasn’t going to stay hidden forever. The question now is, how to deal with it.”

  Ramsey turned to St. Claire. “Do you think he orchestrated Father Martin’s entering a plea so he could seek an expedited motion on the evidence?”

  “You’re giving him too much credit. He’s bluffing,” St. Claire said.

  “Really? Because it felt like he was calling our bluff.”

  “Then let’s play our hands. I like my cards a hell of a lot better than his. I told you forensic—”

  Ramsey cut her off. “The blood? The fingerprints? You heard him in court today. He’ll argue that away in a heartbeat. If the evidence gets thrown out, we have no murder weapon and no motivation. We have a priest who lives at a shelter who rushed to the aid of a dead boy. Donley will paint Father Martin as the damned Good Samaritan.”

  O’Malley stepped into the fray, hoping to move the conversation toward conclusion. She looked to Begley. “What do we have, John?”

  “Forensics picked up blood samples from the office, fingerprints, possible murder weapon. But Mr. Ramsey’s right; that might not matter. Father Martin lived at the shelter.”

  O’Malley asked, “What do you mean ‘possible’ murder weapon? I thought we had a positive?”

  Begley shook his head. “The ME will say only that the stab wounds are consistent with the puncture wounds he would expect the letter opener to make, not that it is the weapon.”

  “So, undetermined,” she said.

  “It had the kid’s blood all over it,” St. Claire scoffed, as if everyone in the room was stupid. “How else did it get there?”

  Begley shook his head. “Why would the priest kill the kid at the shelter and leave the murder weapon in plain sight? Why would he sit there with blood all over himself?”

  “Where was he going to go?” St. Claire said. “I’ve tried murderers who killed their entire families, then sat down to make a sandwich with the same knife. You guys have found them at the table dipping it in the mayonnaise jar. Who knows why these people do what they do?”

  “It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Begley said, sounding tired of the debate.

  “I’ll make it make sense,” St. Claire said.

  Ramsey shook his head. “You better hope Trimble is in a better mood.” He turned to O’Malley. “Where are we on the declarations for the warrant to search the shelter?”

  “Just about done.”

  “Good. I want to get in there as soon as possible after the holiday.” To St. Claire, he said, “I want the warrant to include any private residence the priest maintains, including the shelter. And put a guard at the entrance of the building until we can get in.”

  “A guard has been posted at the shelter since John froze the building,” Begley said.

  Ramsey turned to Begley. “What about other witnesses?”

  “Scattered like rabbits. The only one we know for sure was there that night is the one Connor put in the hospital, and he’s so drugged up on painkillers right now, he can’t give his name.”

  “There have to be records,” St. Claire said. “The shelter receives state funding.”

  �
�Did you find anything like that?” Ramsey asked Begley.

  Begley shook his head. “Didn’t look.”

  “Put it on the subpoena,” Ramsey said to St. Claire.

  “I’ll pull the victim’s juvenile file and see if there’s anything of interest,” Begley offered.

  “No,” Ramsey said. “It’s irrelevant unless we make it relevant. Leave it alone.” He turned to St. Claire. “Call Donley. See if his client has agreed to give a blood sample; if the priest’s blood is found at the crime scene, the landscape changes.”

  “There is something else,” O’Malley said. “After I suspended Connor, I had John pull his files so I could distribute his active cases. Not exactly the Christmas bonus my detectives expected.” She looked to Begley.

  “Connor had two files that caught my attention,” Begley said. “Two other street kids recently murdered.”

  “Is there any evidence of a correlation?” Ramsey asked.

  “I don’t know. One kid was shot. His body was found at Fort Funston. The other died by strangulation and was found in a dumpster south of Market.”

  “Do either of them have any connection to Father Martin’s shelter?” Ramsey asked.

  “Uncertain. The investigations haven’t gone anywhere,” Begley said. “They could have just been drug related; both victims were known to use heavy drugs.”

  Ramsey stood in the doorway, his jacket draped over his arm. “I don’t want to go off half-cocked on a wild goose chase. Unless there is some connection, let’s concentrate on this case. We need to keep our focus.” He looked at his watch. “It’s getting late. We all have places we need to be tonight.”

  Donley had loosened his tie, unbuttoned the collar of his shirt, and rolled his sleeves halfway up his forearms. Father Martin finished a Styrofoam cup half-filled with what was supposed to be coffee and tossed it into the wastebasket.

  “The sadness just overwhelmed me,” Father Martin said. “The loss of a life so young is such a waste, but for someone to kill Andrew and place him in a manger . . . what kind of sick individual would do something like that?” Father Martin shook his head, took a breath, and blew out a burst of air. “From there, everything just spun out of control. It was like I was in the middle of a bad dream and couldn’t wake up. Do you know what that’s like?”

  Too well, Donley thought.

  “When you came to my cell, you were just an extension of that nightmare. It wasn’t until the archbishop came to see me that reality hit.”

  “There was no need to enter a plea today,” Donley said. “It’s extremely rare at a first hearing.”

  “So is a packed courtroom full of media.”

  Donley smiled. “You did it on purpose.”

  “As you shook my hand on purpose. I learned while promoting the shelter that you can use the media or be used by it. I saw the courtroom today as a forum to let Andrew’s killer know this is not over.”

  “Let’s talk about your defense. The first thing you need to understand is that the legal profession is not the real world,” Donley said, mimicking a phrase Lou used with clients. “What may be black and white is often gray in the courtroom.”

  Father Martin stood and paced. “You’re telling me what’s true and what you can prove are two different things.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I understand, and I’m somewhat familiar with the judicial system. I got in my share of trouble as a kid.”

  “What will they find?”

  “A couple of convictions for petty theft, a joyride in a stolen car, malicious mischief, one or two others that don’t come immediately to mind. My mother raised seven children by herself. She had a lot of irons in the fire and couldn’t always be there.”

  “None of those are relevant; no way Judge Trimble lets those in.”

  “Maybe not, but the press will print them.”

  Donley sat back, stretching his legs. The stress of the past two days had started to subside, and his body slumped as though it was slowly deflating. He thought about his conversation with Lou that morning, about how scared Father Martin must be, especially if he were innocent.

  Donley pointed with the tip of his pen. “I couldn’t help but notice the tattoo.”

  “I grew up on the streets,” Father Martin said, sounding defensive. “I ran with kids who grew up on the streets, and I got in trouble for it. I tried drugs and alcohol, lost more fights than I won, and lost my virginity when I was thirteen.”

  “Thirteen? Wow.”

  “Where I grew up, the only thing you had was how you carried yourself. I keep the tattoo and the earring to remind me of how far I’ve come. It gives me hope with my ministry.”

  “I was just going to say I like it,” Donley offered. “I have a panther on my calf.”

  Father Martin stopped pacing. “Sorry, I guess I can get a little sensitive about it. Why a panther?”

  “High school mascot.”

  “You were an athlete?”

  “A football player. Why a hawk?”

  “A nickname.” Father Martin turned his head so it was in profile and pointed to his nose, which looked to have been broken at least once.

  Donley nodded. “So, how did you become a priest?”

  “I wish I had a better answer to that question.”

  “I don’t doubt you get it a lot.”

  “All the time. It would certainly make for a better story if I could tell the kids that I had some epiphany, you know, like the gates of heaven opening and a large hand pointing a bent finger at me through the clouds.”

  “If you did, I might be able to get you off on insanity.”

  Father Martin smiled. “Growing up, the church was always a part of my life. In fact, I might not have become a priest if I hadn’t grown up where I did. My mother used to drag all of us there every Sunday. I complained to keep in good graces with my brothers, but for me, when I reached those steps and opened those big wooden doors, the whole world changed. I smelled the incense and saw the flickering light off the gold and silver, and I just felt at peace. I felt at home.”

  When Father Martin stared at the floor, Donley knew the priest was wondering if he would ever feel that peace again. Father Martin lifted his gaze. “Is it true what the prosecutor said? Was Andrew tortured?”

  “She was reading between the lines,” Donley said. “The autopsy report raises more questions than it answers in my mind. It would be pretty tough for St. Claire to conclude that a street prostitute was raped and tortured. I think she was playing to the press.”

  “But there was some indication?” Father Martin persisted.

  “There’s some indication, yes. Let’s talk about that night,” Donley said. “Start with the power outage. Was it the fuse?”

  Father Martin shook his head. “I don’t know. I never got the chance to find out.”

  Donley made a note to find out if there had been a power outage that night in the electrical grid on which the shelter was located.

  “Any idea where the photographs came from?”

  “All I’ve come up with is one of the boys could have brought them in when they checked in that night and stashed them in their locker.”

  “And the letter opener?”

  “Mine. How Andrew’s blood got on it, I don’t know.”

  “When’s the last time you saw it?”

  “Earlier that night. I used it to open bills.”

  “So, it was on your desk.” Donley made a note to ask for the names of every boy who’d checked into the shelter. “OK, how does someone get a body—alive or dead—into the shelter without anyone noticing?”

  “May I?” Father Martin held out his hands for Donley’s notepad and pen. He diagramed a crude layout of the shelter’s floor plan as he spoke.

  “I’ve thought about this. From my desk, I can see anyone who comes up the stairs. Across the hall is the recreation room. In other words, nothing gets past me. I set it up for that reason.”

  “Any other entrances?”

&nbs
p; Father Martin nodded. “In the back of the recreation room, there’s a staircase that leads down to the furnace room. A door leads outside to a park, which is just a slab of asphalt surrounded by a chain-link fence. The homeless sleep there. The stairwell is not far from the street. I keep the door in the recreation room and the door to the park locked. Neither door has a handle on the outside, just a metal plate. You can’t get in unless someone opens that door for you from the inside.”

  “Who knows that beside you?”

  “A few of the boys who’ve stayed before; I’ve found the door propped open for friends to get in after curfew. I try to check it regularly, but . . . it should have been locked.”

  Donley sat back, thinking. “It would be a hell of a gamble for someone carrying a body—dead or still alive—to take a chance the door might or might not be open.”

  Father Martin nodded. “I agree.”

  “So, someone had to have propped both doors open.”

  “Andrew would have been my first choice, but of course, that makes no sense, unless maybe the killer double-crossed him.”

  “You didn’t check the door that night?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone else ever check it for you?”

  “Danny will on occasion.”

  “Who’s Danny?”

  “Danny Simeon. He helps out nights at the shelter.” Father Martin shook his head. “Danny wouldn’t do it, but he might have better insight into who could have.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “He keeps a room in the back of a bar. It’s called the Grub Steak or Grub House, something like that. At least, that’s what it used to be called.”

  “What about the other boys at the shelter that night? How would I find them?”

  Father Martin shook his head. “I’m not sure you will. They disappear, and they don’t speak to anyone they don’t know or trust.”

  Again, Donley understood. After so many years of waiting for someone to help him and his mother, he had eventually given up hope.

  “Let me worry about that. How would I determine who was at the shelter that night?”

  “I keep a log. It’s required by the state.”