Cody McFadyen - The Darker Side

"I understand."

Alan pokes his head into my office. "Got something," he says. He seems excited.

"Cardinal, I have to go. I appreciate your help."

"I'm available when you need me, Agent Barrett."

I bet you are, I think as I hang up. Don't need more scandals now, do you?

The discourse on homosexuality and his refusal to use the name of Lisa has stirred up some of my old angers with the Catholic Church. There was a time I loved the purity of prayer. Just me and God. It was simple, and there was a kind of peaceful truth to that. I never understood or enjoyed what I perceived as the intolerance, the unwillingness to think beyond, to look beyond. Not much seems to have changed.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Andrea told Father Yates her name was Andrea True."

"True? Are you kidding?"

"I know, big funny on their part, ha ha ha. You were right. It was a false name. No Andrea True ever worked for any police department in Ohio. No Andrea True in AFIS, CODIS, etc., etc."

"Perhaps she's just a transient who gave a fake name," Callie observes.

"That'd be some coincidence," Alan says. The tone of his voice is more than doubtful.

I shake my head. "No way. She's a part of it."

Here we go, I think. Here comes the downhill side. Everything picks up speed now.

"Callie, you're coming with me to the Redeemer. Bring your forensics kit. Alan, get on the phone with Father Strain in Virginia. Grill him again on anyone he might have seen associating with or interested in Lisa Reid. Go in the other direction this time-look for the last person he would have suspected of anything."

"Got it."

FATHER YATES STILL LOOKS TROUBLED.I feel bad that I'm about to make things worse for him.

"Andrea True is a false name, Father," I tell him.

"That's not so unusual here."

"There's no Andrea True that ever worked for any police department in Ohio."

He runs his hands through his hair. His eyes find Jesus again. How many times a day does he look to that paint-chipped savior for comfort?

"You think she was working with the Preacher, don't you?"

"I do."

I explain to him how I came to this conclusion. He begins to sag, and it only gets worse as I lay out the probable MO: infiltrating the congregation, bugging the confessional, picking a victim and getting close to her, passing the victim off to her partner, sticking around for a while after the victim disappeared to throw off suspicion. He doesn't want it to be the truth, but Father Yates has worked too close to the hard parts of this society for too long to ignore evidence of evil when it's presented to him.

"Everything you say makes sense, God help me. Andrea moved the day after you spoke to her. She said that it was time for her to go home and restart her life again." His voice is bitter. "I trusted her. I took her in, I gave her Communion and confession. I held her when she told me about her dead son and she wept for him."

Callie has been silent throughout until now.

"Sometimes they're wonderful actors," she says. "It's not that you were blind or stupid, it's that they can give Oscar-worthy performances when they need to."

He gives her a halfhearted smile of agreement but he doesn't seem to take much true comfort from her words.

"How can I help?"

"I think Andrea left something behind for us on purpose. This is coming to an endgame for them. They want us to catch them, but they want us to have to work for it. He said everything we needed to find them was there."

"Is there anything in here that Andrea was in regular contact with?" Callie asks. "Anything she touched a lot, anything she paid an undue amount of attention to?"

His eyes widen.

"What is it, Father?" I ask.

"The chalice. She asked to be given the job of cleaning it. She said that she loved touching the chalice, that it made her feel closer to God."

"That was probably true," I say.

"Can we see it?" Callie asks.

"Of course. Wait here, please."

He leaves and comes back in a moment carrying a blue drawstring bag. He motions for us to come forward to the altar.

"Put it down, please, Father," Callie asks.

He does.

We both watch as Callie puts on a pair of gloves. She doesn't reach into the bag to remove the chalice, but instead opens the top of the bag and then pulls it down toward the base. The chalice is gold and it gleams even in the poor night light of the church. Callie takes out a fluorescent flashlight and proceeds to examine the outer surface.

"Nothing on the exterior at all," she says. "Not even any smudges."

Disappointment rises, but then an idea occurs to me.

"Check on the bottom, underneath the base. I bet that spot gets missed during cleaning by most. If she wanted to leave us a clue, she'd want to make sure that it couldn't get wiped away by accident."

Callie upends the chalice and applies the light. She looks at me and smiles.

"Bingo. Nice big thumbprint, clear as day."

That electric feeling, all over again. It's not the endgame, but we're on our way there.

Callie makes the print visible with fingerprint dust and raises it with clear celo-tape. She attaches the tape to a white card. She takes digital pictures of the print as well, so we have a backup in case something happens to the print card. The camera flashes seem alien here, man-made lightning strikes. Jesus and the altar appear in a moment of daylight before returning to the shadows caused by the candle flames. The chalice lights up like it's been set on fire.

I stare at it and wonder, when exactly did this happen? How did I arrive here? When I was a girl, I sipped from the lip of a similar cup and it meant that I was close to God. Now it means I am close to a monster.

Is it a choice? I ask myself. The monsters or God? Is it possible to get so near them, to understand them as well as I do, and still have room for a concept of the divine?

The flash fires and I wince against its painful brilliance, a light that has nothing to do with God, nothing at all.

"That's all I need for now," Callie says.

I turn to Father Yates. "We need to take the chalice, Father."

He grimaces. "Feel free. It's not fit for use anymore, as far as I'm concerned."

"Her thumbprint erases God's presence? Seems like a lot of power you're granting her."

He finds that smile, the one he's been giving me all along as I've challenged him with my own disbelief and bitterness. One-part tolerance, two-parts compassion, and kindness, through and through.

"No, it's not that. I simply won't allow any part of them to coexist with that holy moment. They don't deserve it."

I realize that I've been projecting. Father Yates has been troubled by recent events, true, but his faith has never been shaken. Uncertainty about God is my bailiwick; he's always remained loyal.

"What are you going to pray for now, Father?"

"Justice, of course."

My mouth twists as some more of that dark bitterness rises inside me. It seems like there's no end to it.

"My kind of justice, or God's?"

"I don't have to pray for His justice. His justice is certain. So I guess I'll pray for yours."

"WE'RE CLOSE NOW," CALLIE SAYSas we drive back. "We'll know who they are soon."

"Yes."

"Must be nice, to have the kind of faith that man has."

"I suppose. I take it you don't?"

She laughs and pops a Vicodin she'd had waiting in her hand.

"I believe in me and a select few and that's hard enough as it is."

A-fucking-men, I think.

"What about you?" she asks.

"Ask me after we catch him. I will tell you one thing, if you can keep your big mouth shut."

"The unkindest cut." She sighs. "But tell me."

"Tommy and I are going to move in together. In the middle of all this, that's one thing I was able to figure out, and I'll admit, Father Yates played a part."