4 Angel Among Us

by Chaz McGee

  As if to emphasize her words, a vase of flowers on an entrance table in the foyer below them suddenly tumbled over, spilling water and stems to the floor.

  ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ Calvano suggested.

  ‘I’m right behind you,’ Maggie agreed.

  THIRTEEN

  The rest of the day had been spent on interviewing Arcelia Gallagher’s co-workers and neighbors, checking in with the task force and plowing through any open cases that might possibly be connected to Arcelia’s disappearance. The only respite from paperwork came when Maggie and Calvano got a call that Danny Gallagher had been assaulted at a local restaurant. They rushed to the scene and understood at once what had happened. Danny had tried to resume some semblance of a routine, at the urging of those who knew him, but routine would not be possible. He had not been in the restaurant for more than a minute, waiting for the owner to come out so he could apologize for the lateness of his produce order, when a pair of elderly patrons had stood up in a huff and stomped out the door without paying, hurling names at Danny as they left. Danny had been too stunned to react, which made him an easy target for the drunk at the bar who decided to punch Danny in the face and teach the wife killer a lesson. Danny refused medical care and fled home. Neither Maggie nor Calvano thought he was likely to venture out again. Not with all the television networks broadcasting his photo and speculating that he killed his wife.

  Now, Maggie and Calvano had reported for a briefing with Gonzales. Unfortunately, they had little to offer him and Gonzales was not interested in either strange noises or Hollywood eccentrics. He dismissed their lack of progress at the Delmonte House with a shrug.

  ‘What did you expect?’ he asked them. ‘They don’t live in the real world. They have other people to do that for them. Maybe she’s just using pregnancy as an excuse to stay away from the public view while the scars of her plastic surgery heal. If she doesn’t come up with the kid, because she won’t be the first person to have elective surgery while pregnant, trust me, then she’ll announce she’s had a miscarriage in a couple of weeks, get a bunch of tabloid headlines, and that will be that. She’ll emerge from her so-called tragedy looking ten years younger than she used to and no one will notice.’

  ‘If she emerges looking ten years younger than she used to, then she’ll look like she’s ten years old,’ Calvano said.

  ‘I don’t care about Hollywood stars, got it?’ Gonzales said. ‘Enrique Romero uses our town like it’s a set for his press conferences. I won’t play into his hands. He probably wants to be accused so he can pull rank and then tell the press we’re persecuting him. From what you are telling me, I suggest you take a clue from the gardener and go talk to the priest again. Could he have made it any more plain?’

  ‘OK, sure, we can do that,’ Maggie said. ‘But you are aware we have to battle an army of reporters every time we come in and out of here just to report to you, right?’

  I had never heard her sound more frustrated with Gonzales.

  ‘I am aware of that,’ he said. ‘And I apologize. Right now, I’m mostly concerned that the majority of this town assumes Danny Gallagher killed his wife and hid the body. People keep calling in asking when we intend to arrest him. So if you two don’t find out whether that’s true or not, they’re going to start gathering their pitchforks and torches, and I don’t know that I can keep him safe if they do. I’ve got officers with him around the clock, and I put a few more men on him after this afternoon, but the threats coming into the station are ugly.’

  ‘It’s that woman’s fault,’ Maggie said. ‘She’s like a human bulldog. With rabies.’

  ‘Yes, Lindsey Stanford is fanning the flames of guilty as charged,’ Gonzales conceded. ‘And apparently her ratings are through the roof because of it. Perhaps giving her free rein was a mistake. But at least she is distracting everyone from our investigation. Just work the case. Go back and talk to the priest again.’

  Easy for him to say. Maggie and Calvano were only human. They needed to stop for dinner, or shower, or maybe even grab a drink, before they’d be able to keep going. It had been another long day. But I was no longer bound by the constraints of the human body, and so I could take Gonzales’s advice to heart. When Maggie and Calvano turned away from St Raphael’s in search of dinner first, I split and went in search of Father Sojak and the missing gardener on my own.

  I admit I was also in pursuit of that state of grace I had felt, however fleetingly, with Calvano in the church the night before. I did not find it. St Raphael’s was empty and felt more like a warehouse than a place of worship. I knew that beneath my feet, a roomful of families, with all of their hopes and dreams, teemed. But up above, amidst all the splendor, I felt cold and alone.

  I was not the only one.

  I found Father Sojak sitting by himself, hidden away in the confessional chamber, praying as he wrestled with his soul.

  There are times when I can go deep into a person’s thoughts, uncovering memories or sensing emotions otherwise buried by the external world. When people are in prayer, or meditating, or simply sitting quietly in the sun, it is as if the noises of the present world fall away and the pathway into the past, stored in the deepest recesses of the heart, opens up to me. So it was with Father Sojak. He was huddled alone in the confessional chamber, and I joined him on the other side of the panel, a place I had seldom occupied when I was alive for I’d had far too many sins to confess to ever accompany my family willingly to confession.

  I had never noticed how quiet and pleasant it was in the confessional booth. It smelled of cedar and the air seemed dignified and forgiving. I wanted to say, ‘Bless me father, for I have not only sinned, I died and then sinned some more.’ But, of course, I could not.

  On the other side of the partition, I heard Father Sojak murmuring. There were no conflicting emotions about faith in him. He was deep in full-blown, saint-invoking prayer. I stilled my thoughts and tried to feel what he was feeling. He was a complicated man.

  He held within him the memories of those who had come to him for help; not just who they were and what they meant to him, but how those poor souls had felt: what they hoped for, what they had feared and, most of all, how they had suffered. Whatever work he had done, and however much I believed – or didn’t believe – in his power to heal, I could feel that parts of the people he had helped had transferred themselves to his soul. He carried their sorrows and pain around in him. They weighed him down. It was a gift to some, but to Father Sojak I could not help but feel as if, as the years went by, it would be less of a gift and more of a burden.

  Deep within that stew of human sickness and desire, I could feel the spark that was Father Sojak himself. I saw him as a child holding his grandmother’s hand and entering a great, soaring Catholic cathedral. I could feel his wonder at its magnificence. I could smell Polish food cooking and hear his parents fighting as he huddled behind the paper-thin walls of his childhood bedroom, clutching a rosary and praying for it all to go away. I could feel him relaxing as a young man in the stark peace of the seminary. And I could also feel a heat in him that, I thought, perhaps, was his faith. It was a flame that burned deep in his center and warmed all that happened in his world.

  Yes, Father Sojak was a holy man. His faith was everything to him. He would not risk it for anything as fleeting as carnal desires – but he would risk it for his conscience.

  It was his conscience that he was fighting now. A woman was missing and would surely die if she was not found soon. And not just a woman, but an angel among us. Someone who devoted herself to helping others, someone who lived to bring light into the darkness. What kind of a man would he be if he abandoned her, yet what kind of priest would he be if he sacrificed all of the families living below him by revealing their presence to the police?

  Almost greedily, I tried to probe every nook and cranny of his soul, hoping for another taste of the glorious sense of grace I had experienced in the church the night before. But he was in too much turmo
il to be in harmony with the heavens, so I was out of luck. Grace is, after all, an emotion as finely tuned as a symphony.

  At last, he reached a decision. He adjusted his robes and left the confessional as silently as a shadow. I was curious as to where he was going, but I heard car doors slamming outside and I knew that Maggie and Calvano had arrived.

  I soon had my answer anyway: the two detectives were still standing in the doorway of the rectory, waiting for someone to answer the door, when Father Sojak appeared from behind a corner of the church with Rodrigo, the gardener at the Delmonte House, beside him.

  ‘I have been expecting you,’ Father Sojak said. ‘Mr Flores would like to speak to you.’

  ‘About everything?’ Rodrigo asked the priest dubiously, his eyes sliding toward the church. Below, I suspected, were his friends and relatives. Their discovery could mean deportation or even death for some.

  ‘If you mean everything about why Mrs Gallagher came out to the house then, yes, tell them everything.’ Father Sojak was a smooth one. Rodrigo got the message – he would tell them nothing about the families hidden below – but neither Maggie nor Calvano thought the exchange odd.

  The priest led everyone inside to the kitchen, where they all took seats around the table. The old nun awoke and came fluttering in, insisting on making cocoa for them all. I think she just wanted to hear what Rodrigo had to say.

  Father Sojak stayed silent as Rodrigo explained that bad spirits lived in the Delmonte House, unhappy souls who had torn through the veil of their world into this one. They were the unsatisfied dead who could move objects, make noises, cool the air and fill the house with unhappiness, he said. It made life difficult for those who lived and worked there. He had sought advice from Father Sojak, but Father Sojak had not been able to help him banish the spirits.

  ‘I wanted to,’ Father Sojak said in apology.

  ‘You are forbidden,’ the nun interjected sharply. She had been a nearly invisible presence until then. ‘You must let others do that kind of work. You are too connected. Just as you can find your way into the thoughts of others, there are things that might find their way into yours.’ She turned to Maggie and explained, ‘There are some in the Church allowed to deal with such things, but Father Sojak is forbidden. His gifts are too precious to risk.’

  Rodrigo crossed himself and Father Sojak looked down at his cocoa.

  ‘So you came to Arcelia Gallagher for help?’ Maggie asked, sounding unconvinced.

  ‘She offered to help me,’ Rodrigo explained. ‘At home in Mexico, her grandmother is known throughout the village as a witch. She is skilled at placating spirits and clearing houses of their sadness. Mrs Gallagher helped her grandmother as a child and knew what to do. She brought me oils and special plants to burn, and she told me to walk through the house and what to say as I did so.’

  ‘What did she tell you to say?’ Calvano asked curiously.

  Rodrigo began chanting a rapid-fire stream of Spanish incomprehensible to anyone but him. Maggie finally cut it short. ‘But you were seen arguing with her,’ she said.

  ‘Just about the spirits,’ Rodrigo explained. ‘She said it was dangerous what I was doing, that she could feel the house and it was unhappy, that I must be careful not to awaken more bad spirits. She wanted me to understand how serious the danger was. But I knew I had to do something. The spirit, it was unhappy and changing the people in the house.’

  ‘You don’t mean the housekeeper?’ Calvano asked. ‘She’s not possessed, she has Alzheimer’s.’

  ‘She is supposed to have Alzheimer’s,’ Rodrigo said, ‘but sometimes she looks at you like she is someone else and she knows things you do not. And then she speaks and . . .’ He shivered. ‘It is not good. It is a deep voice and it is not her. It is not holy. I tried to tell Mrs Gallagher this, to explain why I had to try to banish them, but she was worried about me and tried to convince me not to. But we were not fighting. She helps our people. I would never do anything to harm her.’

  ‘And when was this exactly?’ Calvano asked.

  ‘She came to see me last Tuesday, about a week ago . . .’ Rodrigo’s voice trailed off.

  ‘Tell them,’ Father Sojak said gently. ‘You must tell them.’

  Rodrigo reached into his jacket pocket and took out a photo of a man and a woman. The man was chubby with dark skin, tiny eyes and friendly features. He looked a lot, in fact, like Rodrigo. The woman was plump and happy, her smile beaming at the camera as she caressed the man’s cheek with her hands. ‘This is my brother Aldo, and this is his wife Carmen.’

  ‘And?’ Maggie asked. ‘What have they to do with Arcelia Gallagher?’

  ‘Carmen is missing,’ Rodrigo explained. ‘She is having a child and she is missing. She has been missing since a week before Arcelia Gallagher disappeared.’

  The room grew quiet. I had seen both Maggie and Calvano flinch. They did not want to even begin to think what this news might mean.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Maggie said. ‘Are you absolutely certain she did not simply return home to Mexico?’

  ‘I am certain,’ Rodrigo said solemnly. ‘My brother has looked everywhere for her. He has called everyone he knows in Mexico. He has called all of our relatives. She is nowhere to be found. She was to give birth this week. Now she is gone and he cannot go to the police. He does not have his papers and something bad will happen to him.’

  Maggie appealed to Father Sojak. ‘We have to talk to his brother,’ Maggie said. ‘You must help us with this.’

  Father Sojak had known this was coming and he had prayed about it before they arrived. ‘We are looking for Aldo now. He helps Rodrigo with the grounds of the mansion, but when he heard the police were coming to question everyone, he disappeared. He is afraid of being sent back to Mexico, or locked up so he cannot look for his wife. It may take us a while to find him.’

  ‘You must bring him to us as soon as you can,’ Maggie said. She took the photo that Rodrigo had placed on the kitchen table and pulled it toward her. ‘She’s a beautiful woman,’ she said softly, almost to herself. She looked up at Rodrigo. ‘Can we take this photo? We need a photo of your sister-in-law if we have any hope of finding her.’

  Rodrigo nodded solemnly.

  ‘Why did you not tell us this before?’ Calvano asked the priest.

  Father Sojak shifted uncomfortably in his chair and could not meet Calvano’s eyes. ‘You must understand that if you start looking into their world, you will discover many people who are not here in this country legally.’

  No kidding. Try one hundred of them right below our feet.

  ‘If you send them back,’ Father Sojak continued. ‘You are sending some of them to their deaths. Whatever you have seen of Mexico, whatever you have read about it lately, the reality is worse than you can imagine. These people come here because they are terrified. These people come here because they fear for their lives if they stay in Mexico.’

  Maggie and Calvano were silent. They did not want to argue with the priest, but neither were they sure they believed him entirely.

  Me? I knew he was telling the truth. I had seen the scars on Arcelia Gallagher’s body. I had walked through the row of the immigrants. I had felt their emotions and glimpsed their memories, and I knew with a certainty that what Father Sojak said was true.

  FOURTEEN

  That night, I roamed the streets of my town. I could feel the fury and speculation growing over Arcelia Gallagher’s disappearance. People sat in front of their television sets watching as Lindsey Stanford proclaimed Danny Gallagher guilty. Others called their friends to talk about the times they had seen Danny and his wife together and how they had noticed that something was ‘off’. Reporters worked frantically to find a new angle on the story to keep it alive. The only person who did not seem energized by the possibility that Arcelia Gallagher had been murdered by her husband was Danny Gallagher himself.

  I found myself drawn to the farm, once an oasis surrounded by quiet fields and now a clapboard fort
ress surrounded by news vans. But there was no way anyone could get through to Danny Gallagher. Gonzales had seen to that. Several patrol cars blocked the entrance and two men were guarding the house at all times. I don’t think the protection gave Danny any solace, though. He sat alone in the bedroom he had shared with his wife, sobbing on the edge of his bed. He was holding her yellow sundress and smelling it as he cried. He didn’t look much like a killer.

  I could feel death all around him. Not the death of a human being, but the slow decay of crops going untended in the fields: unpicked strawberries rotting; new shoots of corn starting to wither in the dry soil. Danny had become paralyzed by fear and shame that the town he had grown up in now saw him as a murderer.

  In the living room, even his own television set blared his guilt. He had been seeking information on his wife and found only condemnation of himself. I watched Lindsey Stanford reigning supreme over the cable airwaves for a few moments. Maggie’s ex-husband, Skip Bostwick, sat next to her, looking unnaturally handsome in a tailored suit and crisp white shirt. A forensic expert and psychologist framed them. Everyone looked very earnest and self-satisfied. There was apparently no shortage of people willing to speculate on how Danny Gallagher had gotten away with murder.

  It is difficult to get a reading of a person off a television screen. It is the perfect medium for disguising who or what you really are. It is all about appearances and it does not favor substance. But I wanted to find out what the real Lindsey Stanford was like. I wanted to know why she felt compelled to condemn people she did not know, why she could not wait and let the justice system do its job, how she lived with herself after so many instances of being wrong and destroying lives without any evidence at all, with only the motivation of higher ratings to drive her. Did she really believe that she was morally superior or did her self-righteousness come from some sort of void within?