Blessed are the Meek

by Kristi Belcamino

  “Yes. Sometimes the archbishop gets very frustrated with me,” Father Liam says thoughtfully. “But in the end, he always supports me. There aren’t a lot of Catholic churches that welcome the diversity of ­people that I do. In his heart, he knows that we are doing the right thing by offering these ­people a spiritual home even if our methods are a bit unorthodox.”

  I remember Donovan’s telling me that his church had openly gay ­couples with children, African-­Americans who wore their traditional garb to Mass, and liturgical dancers at many Masses. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Part of me really likes that the church welcomes all types, but I crave the traditional Masses that I was raised on. I’m not sure I would like the dancers flitting around with their scarves on the altar.

  I don’t get the friendship between Donovan and Father Liam. To me, priests have always been revered—­someone to have over for dinner, sure—­but always held a little at a distance.

  After he clears our soup tureens, Father Liam disappears for a few moments into the kitchen, only to reappear with a rack of roasted lamb that he sets in the middle of the table. A small side platter of roasted eggplant, zucchini, and peppers is nearby.

  After we finish our main course, Father Liam brings out a green salad. The vinaigrette is the perfect blend of flavors. A plate of fruit is brought out for dessert with espresso.

  “I’m glad that Donovan can turn to you for advice,” I say, taking a sip of my espresso. “Right now, he needs that more than ever. But I’m still a little thrown off by your relationship.”

  “Gabriella, what you have to realize is that while I am a priest, I am, also, a man,” Father Liam says. “I have chosen to spend my life serving God. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it has brought me more gratification than I could have ever dreamed. But my life in Ireland was not simple. Or easy. If you had told the teenage me that I would turn to the priesthood, I would have laughed. But sometimes, these matters are out of our hands.

  “I think that if you spend any time with priests, you will realize that they are like you in many ways. Except instead of pursuing a career, say in journalism, they have devoted their lives to bringing ­people to God. That doesn’t mean that we are immune to all the temptations and foibles of being human.”

  Okay. I get it. It’s a major paradigm shift for me to see a priest as somebody like me. I had a hard enough time reconciling that Donovan once wanted to be a monk, and say as much to Father Liam.

  “Donovan’s father’s death really tormented him. He thought the way to make his mother happy was to become a monk, but then he realized it wasn’t the right life for him. So he became a police officer.”

  “Those two professions seem like polar opposites. That’s one reason I have such a hard time imagining him as a monk.”

  “They are not very different when you think about it,” Father Liam says after a pause where he takes a bite of cantaloupe. “They are both professions of ser­vice. Donovan became a police officer because he felt that was the best way he could serve others in this world.”

  I am silent. Tears are ready to erupt. I clench my jaw until they go away. Crying won’t help anything. Donovan is in jail. For murder. I feel so guilty sitting here when he is in a squalid, smelly jail cell.

  “They’ve got to find the real murderer,” I finally say, once I compose myself.

  Father Liam closes his mouth and nods, looking at me. “Have faith, my dear. We know Donovan didn’t kill anyone. Have faith that the truth will emerge.”

  I’m Catholic, and I believe, but I decide right then, I’m not going to wait around hoping the truth will emerge on its own. I’m going to make sure to give it a little push. Or shove.

  Chapter 37

  I’M RESTLESS. I need to do something. Donovan needs my help right now, but I feel like I’m spinning in circles. I’m not a detective; I’m just a reporter. And I’m not even an investigative reporter, either. What can I do to help?

  I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. Not even when Caterina was missing. Then, I was just a kid and knew there was nothing I could do. I looked to the adults to do something. But now, I’m the adult, and if I don’t do something, the man I love might go away forever for a crime he didn’t commit.

  It’s late, but I try Annalisa’s line once again. She doesn’t pick up. I leave a message, another stab at reaching her. I’ve left messages for her all week.

  I pace. But no matter how long I stay up at night, lying in bed, racking my brains and trying to figure out if there is some clue or some detail I’ve learned that could clear Donovan’s name, I’ve got nothing.

  I’m torn by two different pressing needs and desires—­proving Donovan is innocent and finding the monster who killed my sister. I feel helpless to do either.

  Looking at the picture of Caterina and me on my nightstand, I realize that maybe there is something I can do. I have something. A name. A first name. I’m not sure what to do to help Donovan, but now that I have a name, a jail, and a crime, I can try to track down Caterina’s killer. And if I don’t act, that man might continue to kill, leaving a trail of bodies behind him.

  I feel guilty, remembering what Marsha told me about using the past to avoid dealing with my present. Well, I have to do something. If I can’t help Donovan, at least I can get some answers about Caterina. If I don’t, I’ll lose my mind.

  Liz, the librarian, hasn’t called and won’t be in the office again until morning. I don’t know if she’s had any luck with finding a Frank, or Red’s friend, Mickey. I know she has access to LexisNexis, which means she can find almost anything on a person—­their address, their criminal record, the year they got divorced or married, you name it.

  I set up my laptop on a small table in my room. Father Liam has AOL ser­vice. I sign in with my user name and after a few minutes am connected to the Internet. I start to search: burglary, underwear, women, Frank. Nothing. Then search with HotBot and excite.com.

  Nothing for a Mickey Menendez in Pleasanton. I grab my cell phone and punch in Moretti’s number.

  “Hey, kiddo. Come stai?”

  “Not so good, Moretti.”

  Of course he knows what I’m talking about. “Anything I can do?”

  “Prove he didn’t do it?”

  “Wish I could.”

  I can sense his sadness in the silence that follows. He’s a good friend.

  “Moretti, there’s actually something else you could help me with. Something to do with my sister.”

  My words immediately change the tone of our conversation.

  “Anything.”

  I tell him my story about Red. After a few seconds, Moretti clears his throat.

  “I know a guy who works at Napa. Haven’t talked to him in years, though,” he says.

  That’s it. I can’t sit still another minute waiting for someone else to do something about finding the man who killed my sister. “Well, I’m heading up there tonight,” I say. “I’ll be visiting the Napa hospital first thing in the morning. Can I use your name?”

  “Ask for Lonnie Sandoval.”

  I CHANGE INTO jeans and the bulky sweater and throw my pajamas and extra clothes and a toothbrush into the duffel bag. At the last minute, I stick Father Liam’s big black gun in, too. It’s already ten, but I need to get out of the rectory right this minute before I go crazy. I need to feel like I’m doing something useful. Otherwise, despair is going to settle over me, and once it’s made itself at home, it’s hard for me to get rid of it. I’ve felt this way before. I know where it leads. It’s not good.

  I dial Lopez.

  “Feel like going on a road trip?”

  “Sorry, man. My ma just landed in the hospital. Her blood pressure was super-­high, and she threw up. Doctors say she’s probably cool now, but I’m on duty to sit with her tonight.” I hear the hesitation in his voice. “But if you need me to, I’ll call
my sister.”

  “No. Give your mama a kiss for me. I’ll see if Father Liam wants to come with me.”

  I hang up, feeling guilty for lying, but I’m not going to pull him away from his sick mother. And I’m not going to wake Father Liam. I’ll just be extra careful.

  Downstairs, I stop by the kitchen and scribble a note to Father Liam.

  “I’m sorry to run out, but I didn’t want to wake you. I’m tracking down something in Napa. I’ve got your gun, and I promise to be careful. Here’s my cell number. Will call in the morning.”

  I feel like a teenager sneaking out of the house as I quietly pad my way to the door to the connecting garage.

  Chapter 38

  WHEN I PULL out of the rectory, a car parked on Lakeshore Boulevard turns on its lights and pulls out behind me, several hundred feet back. It gets on the freeway after me. I watch it in my rearview mirror. I’ve promised everyone I’m going to be careful, so if it stays behind me any longer, I’m pulling off and heading right to the Albany police station.

  But as soon as I merge onto I-­580, weaving in and out of traffic, I realize I’m being paranoid. Nobody is following me.

  Besides, if anyone is tailing me, it’s probably those damn detectives. Maybe they’ve been tailing me the whole time since I left the hospital, and I’ve never noticed. They can follow me all they want. Maybe they’ll learn something that proves I’m not the killer. Even so, I keep a close eye on my rearview mirror every time I change lanes or freeways.

  On Interstate 80, I’m sleepy and somehow miss the turnoff for Napa, ending up a bit northwest of the town. I’m too tired to care. I’ll get a room and hit the jail first thing in the morning.

  Nobody is behind me when I take the exit for the motel. I make sure. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I’m not taking any chances. It’s the least I can do since I already feel guilty about leaving without waking Father Liam. In my motel room, I shove a small dresser in front of the door. It won’t stop someone but will at least wake me up if it topples or moves. I put the gun near my head on the nightstand.

  It takes me a long time to fall asleep. I startle at every little sound

  At one point during the night, I hear voices in the parking lot and peek out the blinds. It’s a ­couple that appears to have been drinking. The woman laughs shrilly and totters in her high heels, leaning heavily on the man. I close the drapes and lie back down. I feel scared, lonely, and guilty that I’m not doing more to help Donovan clear his name. But right now there’s something concrete I can do to find Caterina’s killer, so I need to follow up on it. I fall asleep toward dawn, but only for an hour.

  Only once morning sunshine filters through the thick drapes and I’m showered and dressed, do I move the dresser aside to leave. I peer around the parking lot, but it’s quiet. There are a few other cars, all empty.

  I grab a bagel and coffee in the lobby when I check out. The map shows two different routes to the mental hospital One is a windy, mountain road. The other seems less daunting but is still a curving passage through steep hills. Either way, my old Volvo will strain chugging up the incline, but I opt for the slightly flatter route even though it will take me twice as long to get to the mental hospital I glance at my watch, but it’s still too early to call Father Liam. Besides, he has my number.

  The radio is blaring, “Pride” by U2, and the combination of this song and the brilliant sunshine fills me with a mix of hope and excitement and makes me punch the accelerator as I navigate the curvy road toward Napa and the mental hospital. The road is cut out of the side of a hill that is a soaring chunk of land. Seeing a sharp turn ahead, I gently tap on my brakes. My foot presses down flat to the floorboard a little too easily. But my car doesn’t slow. I press the brakes again. Nothing.

  I lift my foot completely off the accelerator and grip the steering wheel, realizing my brakes are shot. I have nowhere to go. The mountain road, which has begun to climb out of the valley is already about ten feet above the ground. My side is lined with pine trees and a wall of dirt and rock, roughly hewn out of the mountainside, borders the other lane.

  My car has slowed a bit since I took my foot off the accelerator, but it is still going too fast for the curve ahead, which is alarmingly close. Vaguely I register the radio is still blaring U2. At the last minute, I remember my emergency brake. I yank up on it and my car spins as the tires shriek. My car whirls violently and jerks around like a bumper car. The world around me is a blur of colors. I hear a loud crunch, then a rat-­a-­tat-­tat noise. Then silence.

  Distantly, as if I am watching myself in a movie, I note that my bagel is now upside down, cream cheese sticking it to the dashboard and my coffee with cream has disintegrated, coating the windshield in a weird light beige Rorschach pattern. My sunglasses somehow left my face, and I’m not sure where they landed.

  At the same time, my cell phone rings, but I’m not sure where it landed in the chaos. I hear the beep indicating someone has left a message.

  I can’t see out my front windshield. My side window is surprisingly dark. The dark is actually dirt. My car and window is jammed up against the hillside. I’m in the wrong lane, facing the wrong way. I spring to action, releasing my seat belt and scramble out the passenger door. I don’t want to be sitting in my car when an oncoming car rounds that corner.

  I fish around on the floor and find my cell phone. I have to push past a piece of my bumper to open the passenger door. I quickly open my trunk. Then I run as fast as I can to set up flares several hundred feet up the mountain to give a driver coming down the hill warning. Then I do one more flare on the road coming up before I stop, catching my breath, and dial 911.

  While I’m on the phone with the 911 dispatchers, another call tries to get through and goes to voice mail.

  I try to piece together what happened, tracing back my trajectory based on my skid marks. Apparently, the pine tree trunks were so close to the shoulder of the road, they acted like bumpers on a pinball machine, keeping my car from plunging off the side. There are about ten trees that have the bark completely stripped at about the level where my car would have scraped against them.

  My knee is howling. I think I whacked it on the steering wheel. My collarbone is chafed from my seat belt. My neck doesn’t hurt, but I remember whiplash usually doesn’t show up until the next day.

  I give my poor car a look. The front is mangled. Seeing my hood munched up into a triangle, I make the sign of the cross. I thank God, the Virgin Mary, and the engineers who design Volvos.

  I grab my duffel bag and catch a ride back to town with a nice friendly police officer. He offers to put my bag in the trunk, but I clutch it on my lap, hoping he can’t tell that it has a big fat gun inside. I’m sure his colleague, Detective Harry Gold, would love to hear I crashed my car in his county and am packing illegal heat. He’d lock me up for sure.

  I’m still a little nervous, hoping Gold wasn’t listening to his police scanner when they ran my driver’s information over the air talking about the crash.

  At the garage, the officer is sympathetic when he sees the tow truck pull up with my crunched Volvo hanging off the back like a fish on a hook.

  “Looks like she’s totaled,” he says.

  I nod solemnly. She was a good girl who served me well.

  “You were lucky,” the cop reminds me. “Volvo’s are tanks. Any other car would have probably collapsed like a tin can with you inside.”

  The tow-­truck driver, who is peering underneath my car, calls the cop over to him. I wander over to listen in. The brake line was cut. Not a drop of brake fluid was left. A cold chill races across my scalp. Thank God I hadn’t taken the steeper, mountain route to Napa. The attack at the park—­and now this. Those weren’t just warnings. I know for sure now.

  Someone wants me dead.

  A FEW MINUTES later, I eye an orange Dodge Charger circa 1980s with a FOR SALE sign on it.
It’s only $400. I head to the ATM inside the nearby convenience store.

  Within the hour, I’m motoring over the mountains in my new ride. I listen to my voice-­mail messages. Father Liam. He doesn’t sound happy. But I’m not going to call him back until I’m already at the mental hospital. It’s too late to turn back.

  The big orange car clunks, thuds, and even smokes a little, but keeps on puttering up the hill. The passenger door is completely crunched in. I’m sure that door won’t open. The driver’s side is spotted with bondo. The mechanic promised me the beater would get me from point A to point B. That’s all that matters. My neck is now starting to hurt, and it seems like every muscle on my body is sore and aches, so I pop more aspirin and make the sign of the cross that I’m still alive.

  When I pull into the Napa state hospital parking lot, I return Father Liam’s messages.

  “Good grief, child, you’ve had me worried sick.”

  “Father Liam, I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to wake you last night to tell you where I was going. I couldn’t sleep, but I, also, couldn’t sit still and do nothing.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Everything is fine.” I feel a surge or guilt lying to the priest, but I’m too embarrassed to tell him someone tried to kill me. “I’ll be back to the rectory by dinner.”

  “Please call me when you leave.” He doesn’t sound happy.

  COMMANDER LONNIE SANDOVAL’S office walls at the Napa State Mental Hospital are lined with a variety of awards and plaques. A big U.S. Marine flag takes center stage. His tight-­cropped hair, crisp uniform, and posture smack of a man who is good at following orders. That worries me. He doesn’t have to share any information with me.

  And he makes that clear from the get-­go.

  “The only reason I’m talking to you is because of Michael Moretti. We go back a long ways, and if he says to tell you what I have, then I’m going to give it to you because I’m sure he has a good reason.”