Sins of Our Fathers

by A. Rose Mathieu

  Mayor Reynosa raised a tumbler of aged scotch to his lips and took a slow sip. He savored the taste in his mouth before swallowing. “Relax, will you. Sit down. You’re making me seasick watching you.”

  Sullivan sat at the edge of a textured print chair with dark wooden trim and rapidly bounced his knee. The delicate chair seemed an odd match for him. “I’m not going down alone.”

  “Don’t forget who you’re talking to.” After another languorous sip, Reynosa continued. “The jury is ours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t think we’d leave this to chance, now do you? Let’s say we have an insurance policy.”

  Sullivan shook his head. “How does that help? You buy off a juror, Miller’s found guilty, then what? That doesn’t tell us who killed Rossi.” He got himself worked up, and his tone increased as he spoke.

  Mayor Reynosa stared at Sullivan, his drink perched halfway to his lips. “The confession of the retard was real, yes?”

  “Yes. Miller’s confession was clean.”

  Mayor Reynosa raised his hand in surrender, attempting to placate him. “I don’t doubt you. Think about it; if he confessed, it means either he’s behind this or he knows who is, and we need that name. Unless Mr. Miller is securely locked up again in our fine institution, we’ll never get the name out of him.”

  Sullivan worked his mouth from side to side, and then finally nodded.

  “Now leave before anyone sees you and don’t come here again,” Reynosa commanded.

  Sullivan rose and walked toward the door.

  “The back way,” said Reynosa.

  Sullivan changed his direction and exited.

  “Moron.” Reynosa removed a phone from the drawer of a dark mahogany table. He pushed a series of buttons, and a male voice answered, “May I help you?”

  “This is Mayor Reynosa. May I please speak with Bishop Pallone?”

  “It is rather a late hour. May I ask what this is regarding?”

  “A confession.”

  While placed on hold, Reynosa resumed his affair with his scotch.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Elizabeth was startled awake by a metallic-sounding version of “Happy.” Disoriented, she slapped at her alarm clock, but the offending noise continued. She pulled herself up on her elbows, opened her eyes half-mast, and snatched up her cell phone.

  “Hello?” she croaked.

  “Elizabeth?”

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “This is Father Parker. I’m sorry. Is it too early?”

  “What time is it?”

  “About nine a.m.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes flew wide open. “Holy shit.”

  The father softly chuckled.

  “Sorry, Father.” She banged the palm of her hand on her forehead.

  “Should I call back later?”

  “No, I’m good. I didn’t mean to sleep this late. Thanks for calling me back.”

  “I didn’t see your message until this morning. What can I do for you?”

  “I was wondering if you have some time to meet and go over the Raymond Miller case. It seems you’re the only person I can talk to about it.”

  Father Parker agreed, and as Elizabeth hung up, she sat staring at the phone in her hand, thinking of the strange turn of events. A Catholic priest had become her closest confidant.

  When she walked into the kitchen, she found Raymond, with the upper half of his body covered in a fine white powder, eagerly stirring a sticky mixture in a bowl with a wooden spoon. His tongue jutted out of the side of his mouth as he worked, and Elizabeth’s mother stood over him offering words of encouragement.

  “What ya making?” Elizabeth asked him.

  “Pancakes!” Raymond said with more volume than necessary.

  “Wow, that sounds great. I’m hungry.”

  “He did it all by himself,” Elizabeth’s mother said with pride.

  “I can tell,” Elizabeth responded, looking at the various spills on the counter and floor.

  After a satisfying breakfast with an overabundance of syrup, compliments of Raymond, who insisted on serving, Elizabeth set out to meet Father Parker.

  As she pulled up into the church parking lot, she found him standing by the church entrance. He approached her car, and she rolled down her window. “Hi, Father.”

  “Good afternoon, Elizabeth. Beautiful day. I thought I’d get a bit of sun while I waited for you.” He leaned into the open passenger window. “If you don’t mind, I thought we could get a cup of coffee. Mary is a wonderful and very efficient woman, but her coffee leaves something to be desired.”

  “Coffee it is,” Elizabeth responded. He opened the door and reached down and picked up a crumpled paper resting on the passenger seat before sitting. She took the crumpled paper from his hand and shoved it into her sweatshirt pocket as Father Parker pulled the seat belt tight. She chuckled. “I’ll take it easy on you.”

  After a relatively subdued ride to a coffee shop, by Elizabeth’s standards anyway, they settled into a shiny red booth opposite each other and perused the menu. They placed orders for coffee and slices of pecan pie, and she went into story mode, giving him a rundown of the trial.

  “But here’s the kicker. When asked about the anonymous phone call, Sullivan said something about God leading him. That made me think of the school motto on the gate, ‘Does do.’”

  “Deo duce,” the father corrected her.

  “Right. You said it means ‘God leads us.’”

  “‘God as our leader,’” he corrected her again.

  “So, I’ll bet you the check where he went to school.”

  “Saint John’s,” he responded.

  “Bingo.”

  “Well, what do you think that means?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s all a coincidence, but somehow I don’t think so. I was hoping you might have some thoughts.”

  “I do think that it’s curious, but maybe he didn’t see the relevance of the school, other than it being a remote location that served as a safe final resting place for the victim.”

  Elizabeth sat twisting her napkin as she contemplated his statement. It sounded reasonable, but she was up to playing devil’s advocate with a priest.

  “What if there’s a connection between the first priest that was murdered and the school, like Father Samuel Rossi. What if he worked there too? And based on Sullivan’s age, he would have been attending the school around the time it closed.”

  “Assuming this were true, what does it mean?” the father asked.

  “I don’t know yet, but I intend to find out.”

  “Why does that frighten me?” he asked.

  She ignored him and continued in her thought process. “Sullivan found a convenient scapegoat in Raymond Miller, who, for reasons we don’t know yet, confessed to the killing. Perhaps Sullivan forced Raymond to confess. A confession means the case doesn’t go to trial, and it’s all closed out neat and simple.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “That’s it. Perhaps?”

  The waitress returned with their order, and Elizabeth and the father sat quietly until she left. “I don’t know what disturbs me more, the murder of innocent people, or the thought of an officer covering a murder and framing an innocent boy,” Father Parker said as he wrapped his hands around a cup of coffee.

  Elizabeth watched the father’s internal turmoil as a grim expression crossed his face, and they finished their coffee in silence. The waitress’s offer of a refill woke them, and they both declined. Elizabeth reached for the bill and jammed her hand into her sweatshirt pocket for money. She pulled out the crumpled paper that obstructed her access and threw it on her plate, then picked it up again for a better look.

  “What the…?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She remained silent as she read what was on the paper. “This was left on my car yesterday when I got out of court. I thought it was just an advertisement, but there’s a note or…something on the back.
” Elizabeth handed the paper to him.

  Buried beneath the lovers’ tree

  Lies the secret of Infinity

  Thirty B, upon level three

  Continued the devil’s iniquity

  Sins of our fathers will always be

  For children to bear indemnity

  Elizabeth looked at Father Parker as he read the lines several times over, trying to make sense of it. She was grateful that she uncovered the note in the father’s presence because for reasons she couldn’t explain, it spooked her. When he didn’t speak, she tried to lighten the moment, more for herself than the father. “You think it could be more obscure?”

  Father Parker returned the paper. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what it means.”

  “I guess it would be too easy if you did.”

  *

  Elizabeth returned Father Parker to the church and went to the clinic to research the cryptic note, believing it would be quieter than her parents’ home. Based on the last several days with her mother and Raymond, who knew what activity they would be engaged in.

  As Elizabeth pulled on the clinic door, she found it locked. Not overly surprising for a Saturday, but she half expected to find Dan there, as he often worked on weekends, citing it to be the best time to get anything done. However, today it looked like she’d be doing it alone. She pulled her keys from her bag and fumbled through them trying to locate the correct one, contemplating when she last had to open the front door. Once inside, she secured the lock again and headed to her office.

  As she walked through, the clinic seemed different. It was devoid of the usual ordered chaos of bustling people trying to manage an impossible load, all the while quelling the rising rebellion of the office machines. Instead, Elizabeth was standing in quiet, but for the soft humming of a computer as it slept.

  She moved past to the sanctuary of her office and flipped on only her office light. She looked at BD. “Looks like it’s just you and me.” She stroked its top and took a seat and booted up her computer. She turned to her CD player to fill the silence and wiped a thin layer of dust on the cover. Despite her love for music, she never got the opportunity to use the player because Dan deemed it a distraction. But when Dan’s away, Elizabeth shall play. She popped in a Heart’s Greatest Hits disc and cranked it up, taking advantage of the empty office.

  She laid the paper flat on her desk and smoothed it over several times with her hands. She stared at it, waiting and hoping that something would stand out, then she read it aloud slowly. “Buried beneath the lovers’ tree / Lies the secret of Infinity / Thirty B, upon level three / Continued the devil’s iniquity / Sins of our fathers will always be / For children to bear indemnity.”

  She blew a raspberry with her lips and cradled her chin in her hands over the paper. “Seems clear enough,” she snorted.

  She turned the paper over and studied the flyer on the backside, which commemorated the city’s year-long anniversary celebration. The multiple graphics made it difficult to take in all the information the celebration had to offer. She might have overlooked a small photo of Mayor Reynosa in a ribbon cutting ceremony mixed in the collage, but a goatee and set of horns colored on the mayor’s image caught her eye. Elizabeth turned to her computer and searched for the event, which honored the opening of the city’s first civic arts center. The performance selection got her attention, a modern rendition of the 1960s play The Devils by John Whiting.

  She turned the paper back over to review the line, Thirty B, upon level three, Continued the devil’s iniquity. She drummed her fingers next to the keyboard and then pulled up the theater’s website. Although she realized it might be a stretch, it was the most sense she could make of the piece of paper that was left on her car, and she reserved two seats for the show.

  Elizabeth closed down her computer, followed by her CD player, and glanced at her watch. It was later than she expected. She turned to look through her bar-covered windows and saw that the alley was covered in shadows. It was suddenly deathly quiet in the room with the absence of the music, and a chill ran down her spine.

  She rose, gathered her things, and turned off her office light as she exited. Now plunged into darkness, she carefully made her way forward, a little uneasy in being cast alone in the nearly black office. She allowed her head to wander, envisioning herself in a parody of a slasher movie. A few steps into her journey, she was stopped by the light touch of something striking her in the face. “What the—”

  She quickly stepped back into her office, banging her shoulder into the door frame on her way in, and switched on her light. As she re-emerged, she sucked in a sharp breath and pushed her body back against the doorway, dropping her bag to the floor. Dangling from a light fixture, a hangman’s noose swayed side to side, as though mocking her. Elizabeth quickly stooped, grabbed her bag, and ran for the exit. She yanked on the front door to find it already open. She didn’t stop to lock it, and she ran, not looking back. Her heart pounded in her ears, and spots began to swim in her eyes. Her knees threatened to betray her, as they shook violently with every step. Sheer fear forced her on, and she didn’t stop until she reached her car.

  Nearly hyperventilating, she practically dove into her car and hit the locks. She dialed Dan’s home number, but it went to voice mail. She disconnected and dialed his cell, and he picked up on the third ring. Without waiting for a greeting, she jumped into her story at a rambling pace, not leaving out the detail that she was sure she had locked herself in the office.

  “Dan, I just ran. I didn’t even lock the door.”

  “All right, just breathe. Get home. I’ll go to the office and look around.”

  “We need to call the police.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Just go home.”

  Elizabeth did as she was told for a change and pointed her car in the direction of her parents’ home. As she pulled her car into her parents’ drive, she debated what to tell them. She feared if she revealed her story, her parents would have more ammunition in their fight against her work with the clinic. Deciding silence would be her best course of action, she took several deep, stabilizing breaths before entering the house. However, she found the usual suspects absent, and the house quiet, for which she was grateful, and she settled into the safety of her childhood bed.

  She called Michael and unburdened on him, but instead of offering the support she had hoped for, he jumped on her parents’ bandwagon. “Girl, it’s not worth it. Get out of there and away from this case and don’t look back.”

  “I can’t. Raymond is here. This case is a part of all of us now. I can’t just walk away.”

  Michael offered a sigh in response. “I’ll protect you, then.”

  “I don’t think they’ll be afraid of your skillet.”

  “You mock my skillet?”

  Elizabeth enjoyed the senseless banter and took a cleansing breath. “Come with me to the civic center tomorrow night.”

  “What’s playing?”

  “The Devils.”

  “Sounds like that will cheer you right up,” he said.

  Elizabeth gave a quick rundown of the surreptitious note on her car. “I got tickets on level three, and there’s a row thirty. I figured it’s a start.”

  “Oh, yippee.”

  A loud grumble could be heard across the phone line.

  “What was that?” Michael asked.

  “My stomach. I’ve only eaten pancakes and pie today.”

  “What are you, three? You have a stash of Halloween candy under your bed?”

  “No,” she answered. “In my closet. My mom will find it under the bed.”

  Michael laughed, but little did he know, she wasn’t kidding.

  “Shut up and good night. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.” Elizabeth ended the call and debated raiding the refrigerator downstairs. She set her feet on the floor, then she pulled them back up and sank under the covers. Maybe I’ll wait until my parents get home.

  *

  Elizabeth and Michael arrived at t
he theater early, and Elizabeth approached her seat on level three and moved up and down the row. The chairs were red cloth seats that reclined slightly, offering greater comfort to their occupants. She ran her hands along the cloth of the seats feeling for any anomalies. Finding nothing irregular, she got on her knees and searched underneath. She continued down the row of seats, groping at the cloth as she went.

  “Get up. What are you doing? The floor’s disgusting, and I can see more than I care to,” Michael protested as he stood behind Elizabeth.

  She ignored him and ran her hand along the underside, finding a wad of gum stuck at the bottom of an armrest. “Gross. What’s wrong with people?”

  “Coming from a woman in a dress crawling under the seat.”

  “Shut up. You’re not helping.”

  “I’m sorry. Should I go around the back and stick my head under the seat from the other side?”

  She ignored him and resumed scanning the bottom of the seat, its sides, and the floor for any markings.

  “Excuse me, may I help you with something?”

  Michael turned to find a young man dressed in a gray suit with the theater’s logo emblazoned on the pocket. “Oh no, we’re fine. She’s just really into the theater experience, and it isn’t the same if she can’t roll herself on the ground under her seat to feel the aura of those who sat there before her, as well as find any loose change that might be hiding.”

  The attendant backed away. “Okay, sir.”

  Elizabeth rose and plopped herself into the seat. “Nothing,” she sighed. “Here.” She deposited a pink lump into Michael’s hand.

  “What’s this?” He stared at his hand and then shrieked. “That is disgusting.” He chucked the gum to the front of the theater. “I can’t take you anywhere. Where were you raised, in a barn?”

  “You were just complaining about being hungry.”

  As the theater started to fill up, they settled into their seats. Halfway through the performance, Michael slumped into his chair with his elbow on the armrest propping up his chin. He leaned into Elizabeth and asked in a stage whisper that would make even the best thespians proud, “Can’t blame the nuns for being so angry, look what they had to wear, and there’s no sex. Maybe that’s why they’re called nuns. Because they get nun, nada, zilch.”