Chuck Logan - Vapor Trail

Along with the 1950s decor and the tincture of tobacco, the rectory had sluggish, ancient air-conditioning. Malloy’s words were floaters in the sodden air.

“You tell me. Did you know Moros?” Broker said.

Malloy shook his head. “No. But it’s obvious that St. Martin’s was not an ideal post. There was bound to be talk about any priest moved quickly into an obscure cranny of the Church these days.”

“Right now WashCo is totally stalling the press on this,” Broker said. “When they have to give up some information, they’ll feather their way into it-tell them we’re handling it as a burglary gone bad. Which is true up to a point since they’re investigating along that track.”

“So you think someone might call in to take credit?”

Broker shook his head. “I don’t know. That wasn’t the Saint’s style.”

“No, it wasn’t. The Saint didn’t leave a trace, as I recall,” Malloy said.

“So, you can see. .,” Broker said.

“Exactly. The imagery is irresistible: Saint returns to clean house when the bishops won’t. Once you add the medallion to the mix, an entire scenario falls into place. High carnival on the archdiocese,” Malloy said.

Broker put down his coffee cup. “Jack, somebody from Moros’s parish in Albuquerque called in an anonymous tip. They told the secretary at St. Martin’s he’d assaulted a girl.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You knew?” Broker leaned forward.

Malloy held up his hand. “Slow down. I did some checking last night. I have a buddy in the archbishop’s office. We were classmates together in Rome, so we’re pretty tight. He expedited Moros’s transfer from Albuquerque. If the Saint is active again, he got the wrong guy. Moros comes up clean.”

“Tell me.”

Malloy nodded. “I don’t have documentation. But I can get it. And so can you. This is what happened. Moros dabbled in painting. Murals mainly, but he was competent enough in other mediums to teach classes, which he did on a regular basis at his parish in New Mexico.

“Last April there was an incident in one of his classes. The students were junior high kids, and this particular day they were working in pastel chalk. At the end of class, they were putting their sketches away.” Malloy paused. “You know anything about pastels?”

Broker shrugged. He thought vaguely of sherbet colors.

“Well,” Malloy said, “they’re real powdery. Unless you zap them good with fixative, they get all over everything. One of the students, who happened to be a teenage girl very mature in the physical department, tipped her sketch as she was putting it on a shelf. The chalk dusted down the front of her blouse and jeans. So Moros was standing there, and without thinking he goes-‘Oops, look out.’”

Malloy pantomimed sweeping his hand across Broker’s chest. “Moros goes like this, to wipe away the chalk. There were witnesses who said it was pure reflex, like shooing a fly.”

Broker winced, seeing it coming.

“Exactly,” Malloy said. “The girl blushes, sobs, and runs from the room.”

“Oh boy,” Broker said.

Malloy nodded. “The next morning, the parents and their lawyer come banging on the bishop’s door and it’s, ‘What’s this Mexican Rasputin doing molesting my lily-white daughter?’”

Broker felt a wrinkle of sadness. He remembered the tape outline of the shape Victor Moros’s body left on the carpet in the confessional. He had not even seen the crime scene photos yet. He did not know what Moros looked like. He could not put a face to the name.

Malloy continued. “So we have this great window into the current state of our culture-we have issues of hair-trigger litigiousness, of parental hysteria. And there’s a robust serpent of racism slithering through the whole business.”

“How’d he move out so fast?”

“Like I said, things are different. Moros wasn’t assumed to be a sinner who needed a thrashing. His bishop didn’t try to minimize or hide the allegations. There’s policy. The bishop moved immediately to investigate; he called in the cops.”

“Ah.”

Malloy nodded. “It should be on file with Albuquerque PD. They talked to witnesses who had a different interpretation of the event and decided that the charge was groundless. The bishop was all for fighting in court if need be. But. .”

“The intangibles. The gossip.”

Malloy nodded again. “Maybe Moros didn’t want to wage a long battle to resurrect his reputation in what was an upscale Anglo parish. I think he left because he could never confront the racist whispering campaign. That’s only a personal gut read.”

“So how did he wind up here?”

Malloy pursed his lips. “Because God is a golfer. Moros’s bishop and my bishop play golf together in Florida. A favor was requested; a favor was granted. And we parked Moros out at St. Martin’s as an interim posting.”

Broker shook his head. “What’s the moral to this story? Don’t dust spilled chalk off a teenage girl’s blouse?”

The creases in Malloy’s face ran deeper than Broker cared to contemplate, through a system of consequences that receded back through centuries, millennia, past mystery into eternity.

“So,” Malloy said. “You may well have a sicko out there who has a twisted sense of humor. But, according to my information, the Saint’s victim profile doesn’t fit. We obviously have our share of bad apples, but Moros wasn’t one of them. Even so. .”

“Yeah,” Broker said. “The appearance of it is still going to be a huge damage-control problem.”

Malloy raised his hands, let them fall. “We brought it on ourselves. The sin of clericism, all the shady in-house solutions that are now coming out. The Church has taken a beating for six months on this; Cardinal Law running a protection racket for Shanley and Geoghan in Boston, Weakland resigning in Milwaukee. . our very own sequestered coven of monks and priests at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville who’ve been accused of or have admitted to abuse. It’s been. .”

“Hot.”

“Exactly. So-no leads at all?”

“We have a guy who lives next to the church who saw a woman go in before it happened. We’re keeping him under wraps for now. And there was some fresh graffiti on the church, a Satanist pentacle. But that could be just creeps acting out. There’s been a rash of church break-ins in Stillwater. .”

Malloy raised his eyebrows.

Broker shrugged. “But our witness has the suspect wearing a navy blue Saints baseball jacket.”

“That sort of puts it, like we used to say, right on front street. Okay, so what do I tell people?”

“Nothing for a couple of days. John has me working a long shot,” Broker said.

“Hail Mary,” Malloy said.

“Knock on wood,” Broker said as he stood up. “Could you get a transcript of the bishop’s investigation? It will be useful to have it in the file. I’ll get our guys in contact with the coppers in Albuquerque.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Malloy said. “But I’m not sure about this secrecy about the medallion. I understand the need to protect your investigation-but there’s a serious public safety question. Priests should be warned.”

“I’d think every priest in America is already pretty security conscious right now,” Broker said. “Like I said, John thinks we have a solid local angle. We might catch this guy before. .”

“He kills another priest.”

“Okay, you’re right; but if we go public and put priests on warning, you get the media storm. For right now, let’s keep St. Nicholas between you and me, under the seal as it were.”

They walked out into the hall and were silent for a few beats. “I guess no one is really ever safe, are they?” Malloy said.