I’m anxious to listen to the tapes, but I have no way of playing them. I dump the contents of the evidence bag on the passenger seat. There are perhaps forty tapes inside it. I open the accounts book and see it’s a log of some kind. The dates seem to match up with dates scrawled across the sides of the microcassettes. I start looking through the bank statements. There are over two hundred and fifty of them, one for each month. I figure Erica must have had a few printers going to get them all done in the small amount of time she had. The statements are full of random amounts and dates and names. I look in vain for Henry Martins’s name, but what seemed like a random connection between Rachel Tyler and Henry Martins suddenly seems a lot less random.
I toss everything back into the bag and pull away from the curb.
I hit the mall and again struggle to find a parking space. Late Saturday afternoon and it seems nobody in this city has anything better to do than come out shopping an hour before the mall closes. At the electronics store the only thing they have in stock for recording conversations is digital, but they suggest another couple of shops to try. I finally find what I’m looking for.
“Last one in stock,” the guy tells me. “Hardly anyone uses them anymore. Even secretaries use digital.”
“I have a thing for old technology.”
I get back to my father’s car only to find that a shopping cart has strayed from the flock and smacked into the back bumper, creating a small dent that I know my dad will spot around the time I’m turning the car into their driveway. This is the reason, he’ll tell me, he didn’t want to lend me the car in the first place. If he realizes that I’m driving without a license, then that will confirm it. If we can put a man on the moon, surely the digital age will reach a point where shopping carts can guide their way back into the supermarket by themselves.
I load fresh batteries into the tape recorder and pick a tape at random. I’ve been pretty certain about what to expect, and when I push play my suspicions are confirmed after just a few seconds of hissing.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“How long has it been since your last confession?”
Father Julian’s voice is deep and clear. It makes me shiver to hear a dead man’s voice, and I feel sick to know he was violating all of the people on these tapes. The other voice could be anybody. It’s a male. Could be twenty years old. Could be eighty. I pause the tape. I have to. I have to sit in silence and let what has happened sink in. I have to prepare myself to hear the things that I’m going to hear. It makes me feel like I’m complicit in some way just by listening. I press play.
“Done what again?”
I look at the names Julian has neatly written into his log. The confessional is supposed to be completely anonymous, but I suspect the reality is that it’s not. I think at minimum the priest has a good idea who they’re talking to because it’s likely to be somebody from their congregation.
“Cheated. On my wife. I know it’s wrong, Father, but the problem is I can’t help it. It’s like another person takes over. It’s like I know what I’m doing is wrong, but at the time I can’t consider the consequences.”
“Maybe you do consider them but choose to ignore them.”
“I don’t know. Maybe that’s true. It would explain a lot.”
I push the stop button and fast forward the tape for a while. When I push play I hear Father Julian’s voice.
“. . . to realize you are hurting more than just yourself.”
“I know, I know.” It’s a woman’s voice. “It’s just that, well, sometimes I can’t help it. It’s like a different person takes over.”
“Perhaps you should look at it from another . . .”
I push stop. Is this everybody’s excuse? That they aren’t responsible for anything in their lives? That their actions are justifiable because another person takes over?
“I’m a different person when it happens. I’m no longer me,” Quentin James told me as he stood by the grave he had dug, waiting for me to forgive him.
Was that my excuse too?
Maybe. But I don’t think so. I wasn’t switching between personae. Alcohol made Quentin James the man he was, and he would live with a foot in each of those worlds, existing as two separate men. I’m different. Quentin James made me into a different kind of man, and there’s no going back from that. There is only one Theodore Tate.
When I get home my body is exhausted, but my mind is still racing with excitement: it’s a weird combination that makes me want to sleep, but at the same time pace the room. I don’t get to do either, because walking from the driveway to my house I’m brought to a stop by Casey Horwell and her cameraman. I don’t see a van anywhere, and assume they must have been camped out in a dark red sedan parked opposite. Again Horwell is wearing enough makeup to look like the media whore she is. I can see the thin lines and cracks in the foundation. She smells like stale coffee. I lower the bag of tapes and statements and hold it to my side, out of sight of the camera.
“Mr. Tate,” she says, getting into my face. “It hasn’t taken you long to get behind the wheel of a car since losing your license. You manage this, and you’re a suspect in the murder of Father Julian. Your friends in the department you seem exceedingly proud of must really be working overtime to keep you out of jail.”
“I thought reporters liked asking questions, not giving statements,” I say, immediately wishing I was saying nothing.
“Actually we do both.”
“Just not accurately.”
I start to move around her, but she sidesteps into my way. She probably wants me to push her, and that’s exactly what I feel like doing. I want to grab her by the arm and escort her off my property, but then I change my mind and go with a different tactic.
“Would you care to tell us how the murder weapon came to be found in your garage?” she asks.
“What murder weapon?” I ask.
“The hammer.”
“What hammer?” I ask.
“The one that killed Father Julian.”
She frowns a little, unsure of where I’m going with this. “The man whose church you have been parked outside of for the last four weeks.”
“What church?”
The frown becomes a deeper crease and breaks a line into her makeup. “Is this a game to you?”
“What game?”
“People are showing up dead and you’re the only commonality.”
“What’s a commonality?”
The creases deepen. Her smirk fades, quickly replaced by her annoyance, and beneath the surface of her makeup a different Casey Horwell is simmering.
“Where is Sidney Alderman?” she asks.
“What’s an Alderman?”
She turns to her cameraman. “That’s it,” she says, and the camera is lowered.
“You’re finished,” she says. “We got you on tape driving into the street, and that makes you look bad.”
“You think that’s the best you can do?” I ask.
“Actually no. You haven’t seen the best I can do, but you will. Come on, Phil,” she says, turning to her cameraman, “let’s go.”
“Wait,” I say.
She turns back toward me. She gives me such a dark look I’m sure she’s trying to cut me open with it. “What for?” she asks.
“Your source. Who is it?”
“Are you that stupid? You think I’m going to tell you?”
“Just tell me this,” I say. “Is it a cop?”
“I’m not telling you anything.”
“Is it a cop?” I ask, and this time I yell it at her.
She takes a step back, and the cameraman swings his camera back up and starts to film me again.
“I suggest you back down, Tate.”
“And I suggest you think about what you’ve got yourself into,” I say. “This source of yours, if it’s not a cop, then who can it be, huh? Who else can possibly have fed you all that bullshit about the murder weapon, huh? There’s only one possibility. You’re being played, Horwell, and you’re too stupid to know it, and when you figure it out you’ll be too arrogant to admit it. But you’re responsible for anything that happens now, you get that? If you keep that name to yourself and it turns out to be the guy who killed those girls, and he kills again, then that’s on you. You get that? You keep your mouth shut and don’t go to the police, you’re as good as helping him.”
“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 sinneds 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.