Steven Gore - Act of Deceit

The day before her death: A came by. He’s ready to go back to New Jersey and turn himself in, even if R doesn’t. I gave him the name of Mark Hamlin.

Donnally sat back and folded his arms across his chest. If A was Artie Trueblood and R was Robert Trueblood, then Mark Hamlin probably had known their true identities for decades.

Did Hamlin try to arrange Artie’s surrender? Did he try to convince Robert to go along? And who paid Hamlin’s fee? Anna? Trudy? Sonny?

Did Hamlin also know they were dead?

Two days before: Melvin came by crying. Confused. Heard that Father Phil has been assigned to Holy Names in San Francisco. Will go see him.

Who is Melvin? Another crazy homeless guy like Charles Brown? Did he want money to go see his priest? Or maybe it was Anna who was going to visit Father Phil.

Three days before: R came by looking for A. Said A had given him last week’s money like we agreed. I told him that he couldn’t keep living like he was. He was going to kill himself.

Suicide? Was Robert planning to kill himself? Then what was the point of killing Anna? If he was dead, she couldn’t have hurt him anymore. And if she was giving him money, there was no reason for him to rob her.

Four days before: A heard his mother died. Afraid to go to her funeral.

A killer who’s a mama’s boy? Nothing unusual in that, Donnally thought. Death row was lined with them.

A week before: Sherwyn showed up. Unannounced. Said I should stop interfering. I was damaging to his progress.

Whose progress? Sherwyn’s? In doing what?

Two weeks before: Dr. Sherwyn got my message. Came by. Acknowledged he was called Rabbit. Said he got caught in the middle of an internal conflict at New Sky and that everyone knows it. Asked him about the theory behind his treatment methods. RT. Referred me to a textbook. Said he had a contract with the church.

The notes mirrored what Brown and Trudy said they’d overheard, except the letters R2T2 were missing.

Donnally wondered whether what was said about R2T2 wasn’t important enough, or maybe too dangerous, to write down. Maybe that was why she wrote only the letters RT.

He reread the notes. Treatment methods? Treatment of whom? Melvin? Father Phil? Someone else?

Sixteen days before: A came by, gave him some more money. Looks bad. He will pass on R’s share. Thinking about surrendering.

A guy thinking about turning himself in isn’t going to commit a murder. Suicide, maybe. Murder, no-unless something changed in the weeks leading up to it.

Donnally read back through the notes. Artie had later decided to turn himself in, Anna had hooked him up with Hamlin, and Robert had gotten his money. No motives there.

Eighteen days before: Melvin asked to talk to me after class. St. Mark’s. Father Phil. Twice. Sent for counseling. Called the church. Father Phil not available. Message left.

Melvin must have been a student, and whatever his problem was, he first got counseling with Father Phil. Maybe that’s why Anna wanted to talk to the priest, to check on Melvin’s progress.

Donnally then searched further back through the calendar looking for entries relating to Melvin, Sherwyn, and Father Phil. He found none. The few references to A and R seemed to relate only to handouts of money.

Leaning back and rubbing his eyes, Donnally realized that he’d been talking to himself for the last two hours in the voices of people he’d never met, except Sherwyn’s. He took in a long breath, then read through the entries he’d highlighted, but this time in chronological order.

A was dead and R was dead.

What about Melvin?

And Father Phil?

Sherwyn was alive. But if Sonny was telling the truth about the doctor’s role in covering up the murders, Sherwyn wouldn’t be talking, at least to Donnally.

D onnally hadn’t worn a suit since his grandmother’s funeral nine years earlier. He felt like a clown at a wake as he sat in the Holy Names Church library after services among the screaming Hispanic kids who’d been herded inside by their Sunday school teacher.

But it was worth the awkwardness.

The 1986 church directory he located on a shelf with others had a color photograph of Father Phil and a last name: McGrath. There wasn’t a picture of him in the directory for the year before or the year after.

Father Phil looked to Donnally more like a man who’d spent most of his fifty-five years sitting on a barstool drinking neat bourbons, rather than in a confessional, with his cheeks becoming more ruddy and his eyeglasses becoming less fashionable in the eternal semidarkness of a neighborhood bar.

Donnally wasn’t sure how he’d pry Melvin’s last name out of the priest when he tracked him down, but he hoped that with the passage of time, the demands of confidentiality would give way to an old man’s nostalgia.

The church secretary’s eyes turned to glass when Donnally spoke the father’s name. The beatific afterglow of the morning service that had greeted him when he walked through her office door vanished just as fast. It was replaced by a waxen face and a defensive stare.

“He’s no longer here,” she said, looking up at Donnally, her voice even. “He left many years ago.”

She didn’t use his name. Just “he,” spoken as if she’d used the word “it.”

“Do you know where he might be now?” Donnally asked, guessing that the answer would be some form of a snide for me to know and you to find out.

The secretary’s voice was not at all singsongy when she answered; it was shaky, as if she’d already used up her allotment of self-control.

“I… I don’t know where he is.”

“Don’t you have some sort of directory of priests?” he asked. “Or somebody I can call?”

She reached for a message pad and wrote out a telephone number.

“You can call the diocese. Maybe they’ll help you.”

Donnally accepted the slip of paper, then thanked her and turned away. It wasn’t lost on him that she’d said “maybe” rather than “can.” Even before he reached the threshold, he grasped that the answer from the diocese would be “won’t.”

Moments after the door closed behind him, he heard the secretary’s muffled voice.

“I’m sorry to bother you on Sunday, Mr. Pagaroli, but a man was just here asking about Father Phil… I didn’t give him your name or the name of your law firm… I’ll let the monsignor know… sure… I’ll do that.”

Donnally smiled like a former altar boy at two elderly women walking past him and down the hallway, their short, plump bodies shrouded in black. But he wasn’t smiling inside as he drove away, for he now understood that whatever Father Phil McGrath had done twenty years earlier lived on in the present like a cancer in remission.

A half hour after leaving the church, Donnally walked into Fort Miley and asked the receptionist to page Charles Brown. A few minutes later, Brown walked unescorted into the lobby. He was still clean shaven, his hair was trimmed, and he was wearing a brown sweater and black pants. His face aimed at an earnest expression, but his eyes betrayed him. Donnally followed Brown’s leer toward a young woman sitting alone along a wall, then he stepped in front of her, so she wouldn’t be forced to see herself in Brown’s predatory reflection.

Brown finally looked up and greeted Donnally, then led him to the visiting room, where they sat facing each other across a metal table.

It seemed to Donnally that the medications Janie had put Brown on were now working, or at least he was at a lucid mid-point between the extremes.

Donnally opened the church directory and pointed at the photo of Father Phil. Brown squinted at it, then nodded.

“He came to see Anna.” Brown grinned. “He was drunk and Anna made him go away. But he came back, even more drunk. He said that Anna was going to ruin him.”