Paul Cleave - Cemetery Lake

“Fuck you,” she says. “You don’t know a damn thing. You’re some washed-up private detective who thinks he can do what the hell he wants and get away with it, just because his daughter got herself killed. You think you’re the only person in the world to have lost somebody? You think her death is going to keep people feeling sympathetic toward you even after all of this? You’re the one who’s arrogant and stupid, Tate. Your career is over and I’m going to make sure of it. You’re a piece of shit murderer who isn’t going to keep getting away with it. And you’re going to see me every single day of your trial and I’m going to expose you to the world as the man you really are.”

I feel like jumping on her and slapping her until she gives up the name of her source, but that’s not going to happen, especially with the cameraman standing here probably hoping I do. I just have to trust that the tapes and the statements will tell me what she won’t.

I move past her and get inside and shut the door on the world. I stand in the hallway, my heart rate up, feeling angry at her and also angry at myself for letting her get to me. I go into my office and sit down, but I can’t focus on anything. I leave the tapes and the bank statements on my desk and I head out to the lounge. I switch on the CD player and turn the music up and walk around my kitchen, opening up cupboards looking for something to eat, wanting to do something to calm myself down, to find a distraction. I open the fridge, and there it is, the final glass waiting for me, full of liquid that can, for a brief moment, make me feel better.

I close the fridge door. Instead I make myself some coffee. I need something to calm me down, and I decide coffee isn’t it, and I let it sit on my counter and watch it go cold. The anger starts to fade. I do what I can to push Casey Horwell from my thoughts, and when she is far enough in the background I go back to the office and sit down with the bank statements.

I reckon the original statements would have changed color and style as the bank updated its logo and even its name from time to time, but the printouts all look identical. I start adding up the amounts, comparing them against the logs Father Julian kept. Over the years he has taken in almost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in deposits. He has made the exact same amount in withdrawals. The deposits are from the people on the tapes who didn’t know their Bless me, Father, for I have sinned s weren’t the first steps up to salvation, but steps down into Father Julian’s world. The logs go back twenty-four years. So do the bank statements.

The logs and statements and tapes all add up to blackmail. There really isn’t any other way to see it. Over the course of twenty-four years Father Julian blackmailed more than a hundred people. The amounts are different, and this probably reflects two things-the amount the victim was earning, and the amount the victim had to lose if his or her secret was found out. Maybe those being blackmailed never knew who had their secret. Could be they suspected, but people with secrets might be paranoid enough to believe someone more than just their priest knows. For almost a quarter of a century Father Julian played with fire. He must have known it would eventually burn him. Or perhaps it burned him the entire time. He was taking the money and using it to put out smaller fires.

In the end the fire got him. He recorded somebody who wasn’t willing to pay, and that somebody knew I was following the priest and would be an easy target to frame. It wouldn’t have been hard. Just flick on the TV and there I was, covered in blood one night and accused of murdering the caretaker, and two months later accused of stalking the priest.

But that’s only a theory. And if that’s the way it went down, then Father Julian’s death wasn’t related to the girls dying. Still, it would be a hell of a coincidence, although one that is entirely possible. Does that coincidence allow for the fact Henry Martins was the manager of the bank where Father Julian kept his tapes?

Julian must have selected his victims carefully, blackmailing only those he knew were non-threatening, those who for a price could have it all go away. He never tried to blackmail me, but I’m sure he recorded the session. Maybe he was scared of what I would do to him if he tried. I’d already confessed to one murder. He knew I was capable of another.

The anger kicks in and suddenly I wish Father Julian was still alive just so I could do something to him-I don’t know what exactly, surely not the kind of Quentin James something, and I try not to let my mind drift there. I’d hurt him. Hurt him a lot. The bastard refused to tell me about the confessions he had heard from the man who killed those girls-and, what’s worse, he must have known who those girls were. He found within himself the ability to blackmail people, to break the confessional vow he had with God in order to make money, but he couldn’t bring himself to save those girls. How could a man with such mixed-up priorities live with himself?

Maybe blackmailing was still a step away from actually revealing the sins he’d heard in secret. Could be he never shared any of the confessions, and never planned to. Does that mean he wasn’t breaking the confessional seal? I figure it’s a technical question that could only be answered by a man caught up in the dilemma it poses.

I wonder if he knew the fire was coming for him. Part of me thinks he did, part of me is sure he accepted it.

I go through the logs and bank statements, looking at the payments Father Julian was making. He doesn’t pay anybody for longer than sixteen years, but he pays some of them for less. Some considerably less. Most of the names are here, but not all of the people in the photographs are, and the number of names suggests there are more children out there than Father Julian had photos for. And there could be more children out there who aren’t on these lists-children Father Julian fathered and was unable to take responsibility for. I wonder which names line up with the Simon and Jeremy I found on the backs of the photographs, and suspect I’m only a few phone calls from finding out.

These are Father Julian’s child payments for the children he had in secret. The question is how many people could have known? I don’t know, but I’m pretty certain Henry Martins did.

The logs are chronological and well detailed, and there are far more confessors here than there are victims of Father Julian’s blackmailing. Before going any further, I head back two years into the dates and I find my name. Seeing it there brings everything into focus, as though any doubts I’ve had, or wanted to have, are peeled away, exposing the reality and grounding me to it. I find the correct tape. I put it into the machine, not sure that I’m prepared to hear myself from so long ago, not prepared to hear the man I used to be. I cue it up to the time stamp Julian listed. I’m not sure, either, where I stand on my belief of God, or where I stood on the matter two years ago. Part of me didn’t believe in God, another part hated Him, and a third made me sit inside that confessional booth with the need to tell somebody what I’d done. Since then I have learned to live with my own secrets.

I catch the last few seconds of somebody else’s confession, there are a few moments of silence, and then my voice. It sounds different. It sounds emotional, which comes as a surprise. At the time I thought I was completely detached.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

I close my eyes, and for a moment I’m back there, back in the confessional, dirt beneath my fingernails and a shovel in the trunk of my car. The gun I used was stripped down and buried out in the forest too. Father Julian’s voice plays from the tape and at the same time I remember his words, voicing them in my mind a moment before I hear them. He sounds calm. We could have been talking about anything, and at the time I remember being curious about what might have been the worst confession he’d ever heard. Was mine going to be it? Or would mine be tame? And if Father Julian was listening to the confessions of cold-blooded killers, why in the hell wasn’t he doing something about it?