Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

He smiled. "It's not confession time. I just wanted to talk to you."

"I'm not good to talk to right now," she said, without a softening smile.

Matt could understand why she intimidated Temple. Lieutenant Molina was serious, direct, and competent to the point of a matching plainness of dress and manner. All women who competed in a once thoroughly masculine field like medicine or police work adopted that protective coloring--or lack of coloring. Women who would be priests shared that same single-minded purity of performance that sometimes made them seem slightly inhuman.

"Did Father Hernandez offer any new information?'' he asked.

"Only that the pranks around the convent phones had spread to the church. Red dye in the holy-water fonts, that kind of thing." She frowned, her expression abstracted.

Matt wondered if she envisioned her daughter's hand dipping into a still surface of blood-tinged water. "Did he consider Satanists, or would-be Satanists?"

"He didn't mention it. I thought of it. Look, I can check with the ritual-crime team, but I doubt it's anything like that. Father Hernandez certainly is frightened of something he wasn't a few weeks ago. He puts on a good act, but he's scared white down to his cassock hem. Perhaps it's fear of losing the Tyler estate. I've got a call in to the parish lawyer's office."

"There's something I don't know if I should tell you," Matt began.

He realized from the instant, hungry flare in her eyes that even by mentioning it, he had gone too far to retreat. His false sense of familiarity with Lieutenant Molina through Temple tended to make him forget that she was a seasoned homicide detective, and was not about to play games with anyone's conscience.

"What?" she demanded.

"Father Hernandez," he continued, wishing he hadn't mentioned it.

"He drinks," she finished for him in a clipped, unshocked voice. "That rumor's been running riot over the parish for two weeks. Something new for Father Rafe, all right. He's Old World, autocratic, often an infuriating pastor, at least for those of us who don't feel that clutching rosaries is the beginning and end of devotion. But he was never a drunk."

"Then you agree that this new behavior is disturbing."

"Sure it is, so's yours."

Matt blinked as if to shake the hypnotic gaze of a cobra. Lieutenant Molina's eyes were such a deep, lucid blue that it was hard not to fall into them, and fall into her eternal trap, maybe. Everyone in the so-called helping professions dealt in charisma of one kind or another.

"Mine? What's so disturbing about my behavior?" He used the disarming tone that worked so well on lady librarians, nurses and church housekeepers. "I'm pretty low-key."

It did not work on Lieutenant Molina. Her narrowed eyes reduced her compelling blue pupils to fractured glimpses through bristling eyelashes. "That could mean that you've got something to hide, or that you'd prefer to hide, something more than your past profession. This case--if it is murder and it is a case--reeks of some sort of religious kink. Anybody with a religious background is a suspect."

"At least that leaves Temple out for once," he retorted. "She'll be pleased to learn that lukewarm Unitarianism has such protective qualities."

"No, it doesn't. Miss Barr is a born victim of guilt by association."

"You're referring to the magician."

"And others." Molina's single arched eyebrow had far more effect on her stoic face than it would have had on anyone else's, The Mr. Spock syndrome.

"That's what I was going to suggest, that you check the background of everyone involved with Miss Tyler. You must have ways of finding out everything from how many fillings they have in their teeth to what their confirmation names are."

"We have ways, as you well know. Are you still miffed about my discovering your absent driver's license?"

"No."

"Or reporting it?"

"Maybe."

Lieutenant Molina had turned so that they were strolling into the hot sun and back to the convent. Matt glanced at the sports watch on his left wrist as a burst of childish screeching exploded somewhere behind the church. Mid-morning already; the kids had been let loose for recess.

Molina stopped dead, her head lifting like an animal's-- alert and relying on some secret sense. Did she consider her young daughter, playing so near what could be the scene of a particularly cruel murder of a defenseless old lady? But all murders were cruel.

Then her corrosive gaze rested on him again.

"So you're still annoyed that I looked you up?" she pressed.

"I still wonder why. Maybe you were trying to protect Temple from another mystery man."

"She needs protection." Molina's voice grew low, almost angry. "That woman should not be let out without a leash, or at least a license. No, it's not Miz Barr I worry about." Molina leaned nearer. Matt was struck by her solid size, her height so like his own, the training that made her formidable in many ways not expected in a woman. "I want Max Kinsella," she said, her words underlined with an intensity he had never heard from her. "Nobody does a vanishing act without leaving traces. In his case, the only clue so far is a dead body at the Goliath Hotel. Nobody gets away scot-free with an open file on my desk."

"You think he'll come back," Matt said with sudden in-sight, "For Temple."

"Why not?" Molina's tone grew defensive, as if she'd had to defend her interest in this old case before, to colleagues and superiors. "Look at how Kinsella arranged for the condo, even before he vanished. Everything set up in both their names so Miss Barr could simply take it over. He knew he might be leaving."

"You think Temple knew that, too?"

She backed off suddenly, even gave a small laugh, a laugh that dismissed her own passion and pursuit. "Maybe, maybe not. Certainly she didn't stage her own attack. Those men meant business. It's a good thing you're teaching her some self-defense. If she's going to keep sticking her neck out, she should learn how to keep it from being chopped off. How does--did--a priest get involved in martial arts?"

"We're allowed hobbies, you know. And prayer and meditation aren't too different from the contemplative side of many martial arts. But, to answer your question, I wasn't always a priest. I started tae kwon do in high school."

"Catholic high school in Chicago?"

He nodded.

Lieutenant Molina stopped walking again and glanced toward the church, past it to the unseen school and playground. The streets were quiet now. Recess was over. "I don't know if I'll keep Mariah in Catholic schools. It's a solid education, and God knows, there's less violence and gang activity than in the public schools, so it's good for her now. But later it might betray her."

"Too Catholic, you mean?"

She nodded, and then looked away. Matt realized that she had fallen into the trap everybody did, that of consulting him, without him even trying to encourage it. She stuck a hand in her jacket pocket, angry about forgetting herself, her position, her authority, and his position as a possible suspect, however remote.

"Did they betray us," he asked softly, "or did we betray them?"

She recognized an ambiguous question, too, especially when it was so germane. Her look was swift, and as swiftly reestablished their relationship of hunter and hunted.

"Maybe it was a victimless crime," Lieutenant Molina said briskly, stepping up her pace toward the convent. "I'll check out everyone's background--I was going to do it anyway--beginning with you. What seminary did you attend?"

"Saint Vincent."

"Where?"

"Batesville, Indiana."

"How did a confirmed Midwesterner like you end up in Vegas?"

"Looking for luck, I guess. Aren't you from someplace else?"

"I'm asking the questions."