by Lynn Bohart
“That would be nice. Joe,” she said, squeezing his arm, “there’s something I’ve been waiting to talk to you about.”
They were nearing the parking lot when a loud rattle interrupted them. Fifty feet ahead, a man was digging through a trashcan. Only his legs were visible. He looked as if he’d been swallowed up like Jonah’s whale. He emerged holding an empty bottle, his straggly hair falling to his shoulders. Angie stopped short.
“It’s okay. That’s just Oliver.” Giorgio called out to the old man. “Hey, Oliver! Get some good ones?”
Oliver leaned forward, squinting in the low light. He was short and slightly built, wearing dark baggy pants and a heavy, quilted coat. He smiled at Giorgio showing the darkened hole where his front teeth should have been.
“Hey, Detective. You bet. I got me enough for a th-teak dinner.” He gave a hoarse laugh.
Just then, Tony and Rocky ran up behind them tagging each other and laughing. At the same moment a Sierra Madre squad car pulled into the lot. Two patrolmen got out. Giorgio turned back to find Oliver, but the old man had evaporated into the night.
“Joe, we got a call.”
It was Officer Samson. Samson was in his late twenties and wore a patrolman’s uniform and leather jacket. He sauntered forward with one thumb stuck in his belt as if being a cop was as good as it got in this small town.
“Swan’s on duty tonight,” Giorgio said, opening the car door for Angie.
“I know, but the Captain is out-of-town and wants you in on this one.”
Samson tipped his hat to Angie just as Tony snuck in to stand just below the officer’s elbow. Angie stepped forward and twirled him around and marched both children to the opposite side of the car. The officers took the cue and walked a few feet away. Rocky joined them, and Samson greeted him with a quick nod before introducing him to his partner.
“This is Officer Maxwell. Rocky’s with San Marino.”
“What’s going on?” Giorgio interrupted.
He wanted to go for ice cream and bask in the glow of his family’s admiration. Then he wanted to stop by the closing night party. Whatever this was, he could take care of it in the morning.
“There’s been a murder.”
Maxwell spoke this time. He was a short, stocky man in his mid twenties who stood with his arms across the ample girth Giorgio thought would probably send him to an early grave.
Murders were rare in a town this size. Disturbance calls and assists to other agencies were more common. The low incidence of homicides had been one of the reasons Giorgio had moved his family here.
“Where?” he inquired with only a hint of enthusiasm.
The two officers exchanged looks before Samson replied.
“At the monastery.”
A sudden breeze swirled a handful of leaves around their feet just as one of the tall parking lights flickered and dimmed. Giorgio looked up thinking the city needed to replace a loose bulb.
“When?”
“About nine o’clock. A woman was strangled and hung by her bra in a supply closet.”
Rocky shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “Jesus, Jo Jo. Not many murders at a Catholic monastery. Can I tag along? Maybe I could help.”
Giorgio sighed knowing he couldn’t avoid this one. “Yeah. Let me tell Angie. We’ll take Rocky’s truck.”
“There’s one more thing,” Maxwell said, glancing a second time at Samson. “The tip of her little finger was cut off. We can’t find it.”
This information was met with a long moment of silence. Giorgio felt a deep chill settle into his bones.
“We’ll meet you up there,” Giorgio said briskly.
Samson nodded, and the two officers returned to the squad car while Giorgio went to relay the disappointing news to his wife. He’d known Angie since before Junior High School, and she’d endured a lifetime of sleepless nights while he labored over hopeless and sometimes grisly murder investigations in New York City. The last case had nearly killed him with a bullet wound to the chest. He’d promised things would change. The move to California was part of that promise. But he didn’t have a good feeling about this one making him wish he could blow it off and go for ice cream instead.
Angie got out of the car as he approached and switched to the driver’s side, a look of solemn resignation on her face. He reached in and quickly unlocked the glove compartment to remove his gun and his badge and then caught up to Angie as she climbed inside.
“I hope it won’t be too late.”
“I won’t wait up. I teach Sunday school tomorrow.” She offered her cheek for a quick kiss and then slid behind the wheel. “Just be careful.”
Her brown eyes impaled him with reproach. With a flick of her wrist, the car’s engine roared to life, and she backed out of the parking space. Giorgio watched his family drive away in the direction of the only restaurant in town open this late, knowing the bloom of his performance would be dulled by morning.
He started for Rocky’s truck just as a heady gust of wind forced its way through the trees like a runaway locomotive. A metallic clinking sound caught Giorgio’s attention. He turned to squint into the wind. A small object rattled its way down the walkway. When it reached the curb, it flipped off the sidewalk and landed at his feet. Curious, Giorgio bent over and picked it up. It was an antique brass button encrusted with age, its rounded edges battered and bent. One side was polished smooth with four hollow eyes for thread holes. The image on the other side caused gooseflesh to crawl up his arms.
It was an elaborate Latin cross. The kind usually displayed at Catholic churches.
Chapter Three
The deed was done. From recognition, to planning, to implementation, it had all taken less than ninety minutes to eliminate a threat, secure his identity, and craft a coded message that would reach the other side of the country. Not bad. Not bad at all.
He’d slipped in and out of the closet with the dead girl flung across his shoulders. No one had even noticed. Then he’d made it back to his room, stashed the disguise, and returned to his previous activities without a question from anyone. Fucking amazing. Now, he waited patiently to be interviewed by the police and continue the charade. Life was good.
Occasional voices echoed at the far end of the hallway, then faded to silence. What the hell was taking so long? The time spent cooling his heels had all but dulled his senses. Frankly, it was pissing him off. He stood up and rolled his neck in frustration. His blood began to flow again, bringing his muscles back to life. It was a far cry from the buzz he’d felt after killing the girl. After that, he’d been forced to dance around the room to use up excess energy. He couldn’t afford to appear manic when the body was found. Manic might have put even these idiots on alert. So, he’d exhaled slowly and counted backwards. Minutes later, he’d rejoined the group downstairs as if nothing had happened.
He’d almost regretted the deceleration, because for him the risk of getting caught had become a drug. It was all about the art of getting away with the deception. The feints. The parries. The near misses. In grade school, he’d taken great pleasure in setting up his classmates by stealing from someone’s locker, spreading rumors, or placing blame on someone else for practical jokes. Most of the time, no one knew who the culprit was, not even his victims. By the time he was in college, he’d used that cleverness to make a name for himself in the theater, feeding off the tension just before stepping onstage. Would he drop a line? Would the audience see past his disguise? Or, could he defraud them once again and make them believe the lies? Eventually, he’d entered law school and found he excelled at mock trials. One of his professors had even nicknamed him “The Closer” because of the ease with which he could craft a closing argument from either point of view. It was a gift he now took for granted.
When the girl’s body was finally discovered tonight, he was back downstairs giving a perfectly choreographed response, indistinguishable from the rest of the Greek tragic masks in the room. When the police arrived, they’d quickly
sent everyone to their rooms. That was over an hour ago. Now, he wanted back in the game.
He moved to the window as a way to ignore the urge to open the door. His gaze fell on the darkened shadow of the statue of Christ rising from the center of the garden below. A bent figure sat in the shadows. It was a monk, praying no doubt for the soul of the dead girl. Or, perhaps he was praying for the soul of the monastery itself now that a murder had taken place there.
The solemn picture of the monk stirred fleeting images of his father on the steps of St. Anthony’s Cathedral when he was just seven years old. It was a scene that played often in his mind. His father had been talking to the priest when a car had appeared out of nowhere, screeching around the corner and careening past the broken steps of the church. A flurry of bullets had erupted from a darkened window, ripping through his father’s chest and slamming his body against the large cathedral doors. Father Allejandro stood untouched by the carnage, but his mother’s scream as she dropped to her knees still reverberated in his ears. For one brief moment, his father’s eyes had fluttered open to search the nearby faces, finally landing on that of his only son.
“Il vostro percorso ẻ scelto, Cato” he’d whispered. Your path is chosen, Cato.
His father had used a family nickname to emphasize the words that would provide a roadmap for the next fifteen years of his life.
He pushed off the wall and paced the floor. He was on edge. In the closet was the small padded envelope with the blood-soaked baggie and severed finger. He remembered holding that delicate finger many years before, remembered it stroking parts of his body. He flexed the muscles on the back of his right hand at the thought, putting into motion the tattoo of an eagle. Pity he hadn’t had time tonight to revisit the pleasures of his youth. Pity there was no time now to satisfy the urge he felt at thinking of her. But the voices next door signaled the police were close. So as quickly as the thought arose, he deflected it. Discipline. That’s what his uncle would reward.
When his uncle came to mind, he thought again about the padded envelope. It would be mailed to the Sierra Madre Police Department in the morning to create chaos. His lips curled into a smile. The police were no threat. They were small town cops who were more used to handling domestic disputes than solving a homicide. The envelope would serve as a diversionary tactic. And it would send a message. In the end, the case would go unsolved, and he would be able to resurface using this new identity.
The sound of footsteps brought him to attention. He checked his watch. It was eleven-fifteen. He snuck a peek in the mirror to make sure he’d combed out the gray at his temple. The fake moustache and goatee were hidden along with the padded envelope. With little effort it seemed, he had taken care of business and eliminated the only evidence he ever existed at all. When the sharp knock resounded on his door, he took a deep breath and turned to answer it.
Show time!
Chapter Four
Rocky’s small pickup rattled its way north, past middle class neighborhoods with perfectly manicured lawns and well-worn basketball hoops hanging off garage doors. There were few cars on the road and most windows were dark. The town was going to sleep.
Giorgio glanced at the illuminated dial on his watch. It was eleven-thirty. Cold air forced its way through a broken seal in the cab window, bringing with it the smell of stale cigarette smoke and the faint aroma of perfume. Giorgio knew Rocky had gone out the night before and briefly wondered which leggy blonde had occupied the seat before him. Something clinked as it rolled across the floor, and he peered into the darkness at his feet. It probably wasn’t an empty Coke bottle. He contemplated saying something, but changed his mind, turning instead to watch the darkened homes flash past the window.
A golden moon stood alone in the night sky to challenge a bank of clouds gathering to the east. Nestled at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, Sierra Madre was a small bedroom community to Los Angeles where people knew their neighbors, mothers still volunteered for the PTA, and kids looked forward to decorating the annual Rose Parade float. The only points of interest were an old Victorian Bed & Breakfast reputed to be the most haunted house in Southern California, and a bronze replica of a violin spider in the central park. When Giorgio received the call for lead detective two years earlier, he hadn’t hesitated. It was exactly what Angie wanted − a normal life away from the dirt and crime of New York City. A few months later, Rocky followed, taking a position with the police department in San Marino, a posh community only a few miles to the south.
The little pickup passed through a set of sturdy iron gates with a cast-iron plaque that read “St Augustine’s”. Beyond the gates were two hundred acres of undeveloped church property bordered on the west by a row of homes and on the east by a large drainage ditch. The sprawling Spanish monastery held a commanding place at the top of the hill, while the distinctive bell tower loomed into the night sky like the centerpiece from a stage play. The dark outline of the mountains presented an overpowering backdrop framing the whole picture in relief.
Giorgio knew more than the average person about the monastery because he’d helped Marie research a paper the year before. St. Augustine’s had been a landmark in the area since the early twenties when it was built as a rural church on top of the ruins of an eighteenth-century Spanish rancho. Patterned after the Franciscan missions constructed along California’s coastal trail, the complex had been expanded over the years to include a monastery, commercial bakery, extensive library, and elaborate gardens. An important part of the tradition of the Benedictine monks who owned the property was education. For that reason, the building had been divided in the late 1930s to allow for a boys school. Unfortunately, a major scandal closed the school only a few years later. The monastery disappeared from public view for several decades until the monks opened the west wing in the early nineties as a conference and retreat center.
The road veered right at the top of the hill passing a small parking lot where the Medical Examiner’s van sat with the back doors open. A single news van was parked along the downside curb. Outside a young female reporter and her cameraman assembled their equipment. Giorgio recognized the local station. Fortunately, Sierra Madre was out of the direct line of media fire, and the main media wouldn’t pick up the story until the next day. But he was under no illusions. A murder at a Catholic monastery was almost as good as a political scandal. By the next afternoon they would be front page headlines.
Rocky circled around a three-tiered fountain and stopped where two police cars were parked head to toe. A uniformed officer stood next to the walkway interviewing a man clad in a white dinner jacket, bow tie, and pencil moustache looking very much like the late Don Ameche´. A woman stood off to one side dressed in a twenties-style white tailored suit, complete with a narrow slit-skirt and shoulder pads the size of saddle bags. While Don Ameche´ absently stripped the moustache from his upper lip, the woman used a small mirror to lazily apply fresh lipstick as if she were waiting to be called to the set.
As the brothers approached the main entrance, Giorgio couldn’t help a curious glance back at Don Ameche´.
“Must be a costume party,” he mused out loud.
“Either that,” Rocky retorted, “or we never left the theater.”
Giorgio chuckled as they moved up a set of wide, brick steps that curved towards the front door and past cactus gardens dotted with weathered benches, bird baths, and earthen pots filled with flowers. The path ended at a massive wooden door that could have come straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, complete with iron metal work. The doorframe was topped by a Moorish striped arch. Some ten feet above that, a small rose window was cut into the stucco. In between the arch and the window hung an ornate metal cross, reminding Giorgio of the brass button in his pocket.
Before entering, Giorgio glanced to his right where a metal door led into the base of the bell tower. The door was marked with a yellow and black sign announcing, “UNDER CONSTRUCTION/NO ENTRANCE”.
“I wonder if it�
�s locked.”
“I’ll check.” Rocky jogged over and tried the knob. “Locked,” he called back.
“This place is huge,” Giorgio said, his eyes following a colonnade of arches along the front of the building. “We’ll be here all night.”
Rocky rejoined him as he pulled open the main door and stepped into a wide entry where they were met with the smell of leather and incense. A large harvest-colored tapestry depicting Jesus being baptized by John covered the wall to their left. A darkened door to the administrative office sat quietly to the right with a plain cross mounted just below the window. Next to the door, two stenciled lines of verse stood out against the aged, stained stucco.
“Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ.
And may He bring us all together to everlasting life!”
Rule of Benedict
A few steps further in and they passed the darkened door to the gift shop. A hallway ran the entire length of the building to their right, connecting to the chapel at the east end. Just in front of them opened an expansive lobby.
Giorgio’s gaze swept across the terra cotta floor tiles and up a wooden staircase that descended from the second floor like a tongue lolling from an open mouth. Above their heads hung three authentic oiled wagon wheels, their electrified candle bulbs casting golden halos of light across the surrounding walls. A large oil painting of the Resurrection hung to the left of an imposing, river rock fireplace where small votive candles lined a rough hewn, wooden mantle.
The lobby was filled with dark, mission-style leather furniture. Heavy amber glass lamps anchored each corner of the room, while brass wall sconces dotted the walls like small glow bugs. If it weren’t for the three women sitting in front of the fire dressed in gowns circa 1940, Giorgio could have pictured Father Junipero Serra taking up residence here. Either way, he felt he was in the wrong time period.
