by Kara Lennox
All eyes turned to her. “I don’t want to rain on your parade,” she said carefully, “but I don’t think we should break out the champagne just yet.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT THIS from a D.A.’s point of view,” Jamie continued.
Claudia had to admit, even though Jamie was wearing a bikini top and a grass skirt, she managed to look like a district attorney. Her commanding presence was one of the reasons she’d won the election despite her relative youth.
Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose, as if he knew what was coming.
“Angie is Mary-Francis’s daughter. Her flesh and blood. Now that the date of her mother’s execution is drawing near, all quarrels are forgotten, and she might be apt to say or do anything to save her mother’s life.”
Billy’s expression changed abruptly from one of elation to a look of dawning horror. “She can’t be making it up. She gave too many details.”
“On video?” Jamie asked.
“No, it was a spontaneous confession. But we had witnesses.”
Claudia groaned inwardly. “Most of them have already forgotten the particulars of Angie’s confession. Her lawyer will urge her to recant. She’ll claim she said whatever you wanted to hear because she was afraid.”
“Damn.” Billy scrubbed his face with his hands. “Damn! So we’re back to square one? We have to find Eduardo and trot him before Fitz to save Mary-Francis’s life?”
“I’m not saying you can’t try, going with what you’ve got,” Jamie said. “But a living, breathing Eduardo Torres is what you really need.”
“Then we’ll get him,” Billy said, pounding one fist into his palm. “We’ll set a trap. I’ll get the cops to let Angie go. She’ll get in touch with her father, tell him what she learned about the priest taking the statue full of coins.”
“You’re going to use an aging priest as bait?” Daniel asked.
“Hey, he stole the statue. Besides, it’s the only way. We’ll arrange for Angie to be released tomorrow morning. We’ll stake out the church. Someone will show up, guaranteed, and whoever it is, if it’s not Eduardo himself, will lead us to him.”
“We can’t just let Father Benito sit in his church, unaware,” Claudia said. “We need to warn him that he now has a big, fat red target on his back.”
Billy looked at Ford, who looked at Daniel, then back at Billy. This was his operation. They wanted him to make the call. The priest’s life might be riding on his decision.
“We need to make sure Angie doesn’t talk to her father until we’re ready,” Billy said. “I’ll talk to the priest this afternoon. I’ll send him someplace safe, then we’ll get a team into place, then arrange for Angie’s release.”
“What if he won’t cooperate?” Daniel asked.
“I’ll talk to him,” Claudia said. “Father Benito is afraid of Billy, but he likes me. I’ll gain his cooperation.”
Billy was shaking his head, but Daniel clearly liked the idea, if she was correctly reading the slight shift in his weight and the quirk at the side of his mouth.
“I’ll take care of Angie,” Jamie said. “I’ll keep her on ice until you say. But she might already have called her father. Arrestees are allowed their phone call, you know.”
“Eduardo won’t be that easy to contact. Remember, all the phone calls to Angie suspected to be from her father were incoming, each from a different number. I’m betting she doesn’t know how to get in touch with him. He was too afraid she would give him away.”
“Let’s move,” Daniel said quietly. “Billy, you and Claudia go now. It’s imperative to get the priest and any other civilians out of that church. I’ll put the surveillance team together. I won’t be far behind you.”
“Then I’ll turn Angie loose,” Jamie said. “I’ll put one of my investigators on her.”
It wasn’t until Billy and Claudia were in a silver Jaguar borrowed from Daniel, a vehicle Eduardo wasn’t likely to recognize, and heading for the church, that Billy spoke again. “I don’t know how you managed this. You’re supposed to be lying low, keeping yourself out of sight. Now you somehow have insinuated yourself right into the middle of things. Again.”
“You need me,” she said plainly. “I won’t pretend there’s no danger at all, but you guys risk your lives every day for causes you believe in. Well, this is something I believe in. I want to save Mary-Francis, and if that means a small amount of personal risk, that’s okay with me.”
“I don’t like it.”
“We all have to put up with things we don’t like.”
“I don’t like it so much that I might have to stop the car and puke.”
“Billy.”
He did pull off the freeway, but he didn’t get sick despite his threat. He parked on the shoulder, but left the engine and air-conditioning running, for which Claudia was grateful.
“I should tell you how Sheila died.”
“What? Now?”
“Yes. I was running an undercover operation. I brought Sheila in because she was young and hot and a new face, not one my target would know. I needed her to elicit one small piece of information from him. Just one word, in fact, and we could make the arrest. They were supposed to trade information. She supposedly knew the location of a drug mule who’d gone missing with a large shipment of heroin, he was supposed to cut her in for a percentage of the recovered drugs. She had a wire and I was outside the meeting place, listening. I was waiting for the guy to say enough that we could get a conviction. But he kept dancing around the issue, playing dumb.
“Finally I realized he knew she was a cop, and he was playing her, but it was too late. He shot her through the heart.”
“Oh, my God. Billy.”
“Yeah. So you can understand why I’m nervous. She was a trained police officer, for God’s sake. You’re a pure civilian. You probably don’t even know how to use a firearm.”
“This situation is very different.” Her heart went out to him. No wonder he’d been hesitant to return to field work. “We’re just going to warn the priest. Maybe he has something to hide, but he’s not violent. He’s not packing, he’s not going to hurt anyone.”
“He took the coins. He has something to lose. Or he could get hurt.”
“He won’t. Eduardo doesn’t know Father Benito took the statue, not yet. By the time he finds out, we’ll be ready for him. You’ll be ready,” she amended. “I’ll be far away. I promise.”
“You know, it’s a little scary, but you’re starting to think like one of us.”
“Don’t worry, I have no aspirations to become a Project Justice investigator. If I did, this past week would have cured me of it, that’s for sure.”
Once they reached the church, Billy drove twice around the block, peering at every parked car, giving a couple of homeless guys a long, hard look before deciding neither one was Eduardo or Pedro, his buddy.
Finally he parked not far from the front door. The church looked quiet. From somewhere nearby, children shrieked happily as some firecrackers went off. Claudia hoped they were being careful.
Billy’s phone rang just before they reached the front door. He checked the screen, then answered. “Yeah, Daniel.”
Claudia watched his face closely. This time, he knew she was watching and gave nothing away. She waited patiently as he nodded, then disconnected.
“What?” Claudia asked.
“They released Angie. The moment she arrived at the station.”
“Seriously?”
“Some joker at the city lockup said she had a get-out-of-jail-free card and just let her go. She’s off the radar.”
“And possibly talking to her father right this second. She must have some way to get hold of him in an emergency.”
Billy glanced back at the church. “Let’s get this over with. I’m giving you ten minutes to convince Father Benito to cooperate with us. Then I’m transporting you, and the priest if he’ll go, to the nearest hotel.”
“What if Eduar
do doesn’t come?”
“He will. We might have to wait for him awhile, but he’ll come.”
The church’s front door was unlocked. Billy instructed Claudia to stand aside as he entered alone, his hand resting on the grip of his gun, which was thrust in the back of his khaki shorts. He’d traded his flip-flops for a pair of running shoes, but hadn’t wanted to take the time to change clothes.
Churches were supposed to be places of sanctuary, and it must have been hard for Billy to carry his weapon into a building he’d been trained since childhood to believe was sacred, hallowed ground.
But apparently his prime directive—to catch the bad guy—was stronger.
“Okay,” he whispered, “no one here but the old nun.”
Claudia gasped. “Billy, the nun. She’ll have to be taken to safety, too.”
“They’ll all go with you. In fact, I’ll stay here, you can take the car keys.”
“First we have to talk to Father Benito.”
They made their way through the nave along the side wall to the little door that led to the vestry and Father Benito’s office, but the door was closed and locked.
“Excuse me, Sister,” Billy said in a hushed voice. “I apologize for disturbing your prayers, but we need to find Father Benito. Do you know where he is?”
She shrugged but said nothing. Maybe she’d taken a vow of silence.
Claudia tapped Billy’s arm and pointed to the confessional on the other side of the church.
“Didn’t you say something about the church opening for confession?” she whispered.
“Right.” He started toward the confessional, but Claudia halted him.
“Let me.”
The confessional consisted of two small closetlike rooms tucked into the corner behind the organ near the Virgin Mary statue. Mary looked as serene as ever, glowing in the light of the many candles lit in her name.
Small signs on the doors indicated that the priest’s side was occupied, the penitent’s side, available. Claudia opened the door and found herself in a space so small she could barely turn around. But she managed to contort herself onto the worn velvet kneeler and closed herself in, pushing the sign so it would read Occupied.
She wasn’t Catholic, but she remembered the words to the Sacrament of Penance, taught to her by her fellow seventh graders when she asked what went on behind those mysterious closed doors in the church.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”
* * *
BILLY SAT WHERE HE HAD a good view of the confessional as well as the door leading to the priest’s office and the main church entrance. It wasn’t easy to keep his eye on all three, but he did. The clock had started running as soon as Claudia had closed the door.
After a couple of minutes, the nun made the sign of the cross and pushed her arthritic body to her feet. Clutching her rosary beads, her hands completely hidden by the long sleeves of her old-fashioned habit, her head bowed, she made her way to the locked door, creaking along, leaning heavily on her cane.
She had a brass key ring identical to the one Father Benito carried—and she tried first one, then another on the locked door, seeming to have no luck.
It was then that something odd about the nun registered in Billy’s brain. When she’d made the sign of the cross, she’d done it backward. With her right hand, she’d touched forehead and heart, but then she’d touched her right shoulder first, rather than her left.
No real nun would make that kind of mistake.
He jumped out of the pew and made it to her in two strides. “Here, Sister, let me help you with that.”
“No, I can get it.” She sounded half-panicked, and not nearly as old as she should have. As she finally found the right key, the door opened and she attempted to slip inside and slam it in Billy’s face, but he got his foot wedged inside. He pushed inside the hallway, and the nun was running—skirts hiked up, revealing a pair of rhinestone sandals that wouldn’t be part of any nun’s habit.
Billy was after her like a bolt of lightning and caught her arm just as she reached the back exit.
She turned and fought him like a wildcat, scratching and biting and screaming for him to let go.
He yanked the veil off; it was Angie Torres. He’d made another rookie mistake by not looking past the habit, the thick glasses and the supposed nun’s arthritic gait.
“Let me go!” she screamed again, still struggling, but Billy was sitting on her and had her arms pinned so she couldn’t do him any more damage. She’d landed a good scratch on his face, and he could feel the blood trickling down his cheek.
“For your sake,” he said, “I hope the nun this habit belongs to is alive and well. Where is she?”
Angie went stonily silent, looking up at him with a smart-ass expression, as if she was the one who had him pinned to the carpet rather than the other way around.
“Fine, we’ll do it the hard way.” He flipped her on her stomach and reached into his back pocket for a pair of handcuffs that weren’t there. Damn it. He hated not being a cop.
That realization stunned him.
Improvising, he grabbed the discarded nun’s veil, intending to tear a strip of fabric from it to use as a binding.
“Wait,” Angie said. “Let me up, and I’ll take you to my father.”
“Where is he?” Billy cranked her arm a little harder behind her back—not hard enough to cause injury, but just enough to remind her he could deal out a whole lot of pain if he chose.
“Not here. He’s meeting me here. If I don’t call to give him the all clear, he won’t come. You’ll never catch him. If I take you to him, you’ll say I cooperated, right?”
“If you cooperate, I’ll tell the cops the truth.”
“Then let me up.”
Billy knew better than to give her her freedom. At the first opportunity, she’d bolt. But she was small and weak, no match for him physically. So long as he kept one hand on her, she couldn’t get away.
He finished tying her hands behind her despite her protests. The fabric from the veil was old and fragile, but Billy wrapped it around several times and tied it in a square knot. He frisked Angie to make sure she didn’t have any weapons, then finally let her up.
“Where’s the nun?” Billy demanded.
“What nun?”
“The one who belongs to this habit. If you hurt an old nun, there is no prison bad enough for you.”
“I didn’t hurt her.”
“Then where is she?”
“Do you want my dad or not?”
“Not until I make sure the nun is okay.” Billy’s hands were itching to get hold of Eduardo, and he hoped the guy resisted arrest. He wanted an excuse to beat the crap out of him.
Then he remembered that he couldn’t officially arrest anybody.
Angie sighed. “She’s in that room, you know, where the priest gets dressed.”
“It’s called a vestry.” He dragged her to the small room in which they’d met with Father Benito yesterday. That door was locked, too.
“Keys, keys, where are they?”
“I dropped them when you assaulted me.”
Billy saw the keys gleaming from the worn carpet near the doorway leading back into the church. He wasted precious seconds hauling a resisting Angie to the door, retrieving the keys, dragging her back to the other door, then painstakingly trying one key after another until he finally found the one that worked. He opened the door and turned on the light.
There was the nun, lying on the carpet in only her shift, her hands and feet secured with zip ties. She blinked myopically at him, her eyes filled with terror.
“Good God Almighty,” Billy swore. “How could you do this?” He threw Angie facedown into the carpet. “Do not move one muscle, you hear me?” Then he knelt beside the nun and gently peeled the duct tape from her mouth. “It’s gonna be okay, Sister. Don’t be afraid of me, I’m here to help you.”
Once her mouth was free, she gulped in several breaths of air as Billy us
ed his pocketknife to cut the zip ties from her hands and feet. He yanked his cell phone from his pocket and dialed 9-1-1.
“I’m gonna need an ambulance at the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Hope.” He rattled off the address.
“And what is your name, sir?” the operator asked.
“Sergeant… Scratch that. Billy Cantu. I’m with Project Justice.” It wouldn’t carry quite as much weight as if he were a police officer, but maybe it would help.
The nun was sitting up now, rubbing her hands together and weeping. Billy yanked the cloth off the small table where they’d sat the other day and draped it over her shoulders, figuring she was probably humiliated to be sitting there practically in her underwear in front of a strange man.
“I can’t talk right now,” Billy said to the operator. “But I’ll leave the channel open. Oh, um, send cops, too. A nun’s been assaulted.”
The nun was trying to tell him something. She was pointing and mumbling, and it took her a few tries to make herself understood.
“Father Benito.” She kept pointing to a heap of vestments in the corner. Except it wasn’t just clothes. It was the priest, unconscious.
“Father!” He was halfway across the room before it occurred to him. If Father Benito was in here, who was hearing confession?
* * *
“HELLO, FATHER BENITO. It’s me, Claudia Ellison. I know this is an unconventional way for me to talk to you, especially since I’m not even Catholic.”
She waited for him to acknowledge her presence, but he said nothing. He was there, though. She could hear him breathing on the other side of the carved wooden grate lined with fabric that separated confessor from confessee.
“Look, I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble. I just want to save Mary-Francis’s life. Her husband is alive, somewhere, and I feel like perhaps you know where he is. Or you can at least guess.”
Still, he said nothing.
“I promise you, anything you say to me here will remain confidential. I guess only a priest can extend the seal of the confessional, but I’m a therapist. I’m protected by confidentiality, just like you.”
She waited. Nothing.
“I know you took a statue from Theresa’s house. I suspect it was filled with valuable coins. I know your intention was not to steal them, because you’re a good man. I can sense that about you. Perhaps you were only safeguarding them? Anyway, I’m not the only one who knows you took the statue. By now, Eduardo Torres knows. And he’s likely to come here looking for his property. Billy and I want to take you someplace safe. And then Project Justice will deal with Eduardo, or his thugs, when they get here.
