A priest was dead. That’s all Cyrus Tremont had been told in the thirty-second phone call that had summoned him to a house on the corner of Rose and Annunciation Street.
When he arrived at the yellow house, he was let in by a uniformed police officer guarding a body lying face down on a small red rug. On second look, Cyrus saw it wasn’t a rug.
“Jesus, God.” He slapped a hand over his mouth and took a step back. One of these days he would learn not to answer his phone when the police called him.
Cyrus stared at the dead man, what was left of him. White male, tall, thin, but not unhealthy. Couldn’t see the face, so he looked at the hands. Put the man’s age between fifty and sixty. He wore a bright red Casio watch on his left wrist. He’d seen that watch before.
“Christ, that’s Father Ike.”
The cop nodded. “Killed himself. You know him?”
“A little bit. He and my fiancée used to work together,” Cyrus said. He stared down at the body again, the blood turning from red to brown as it oxidized. Blood was alive even when the body was dead, but the blood turned brown as the oxygen fled the cells. It had outlived its host. It wasn’t drying so much as dying.
“What did he use?” Cyrus didn’t see a gun anywhere.
“A .243 Winchester hunting rifle. It’s being processed,” the officer said, his voice cracking a little. Cyrus glanced at him. Kid didn’t look more than twenty-two, twenty-three. This might be his first suicide.
“Makes sense,” Cyrus said. “He liked to deer hunt.”
He heard a car pull in the gravel drive. The uniform skirted the edge of the floor and went out the front, trading places with the new arrival, Detective Katherine Naylor. About time, too. She was the one who’d dragged him into this nightmare.
“Katherine,” he said, nodding. She wore a trim gray suit, white blouse, an expression that was all business.
“Cyrus. I hear congratulations are in order. Paulina’s finally making an honest man out of you.”
She probably expected a joke, but he did not joke about Paulina. Keeping his face and tone neutral, he tersely replied, “Thank you.”
“Sorry to get you out of bed so early.”
“I was already up,” he said. She raised an eyebrow. “Working a case.”
“Something you can drop?”
“You serious? You know this is not my area.” Cyrus wasn’t a police detective anymore, but a private detective. He helped women with cheating husbands and children with deadbeat dads. Women and children first. Women and children only. That was his motto. He’d seen enough death in his days on the force to last him a dozen lifetimes.
“Didn’t you know him?”
“Yeah, but I don’t work suicides. Wait, this is a suicide, right?”
“It’s definitely a suicide,” Katherine said. “Approximate time of death was 11:30 last night. House was locked from the inside. No signs of forced entry. No signs of a struggle. No drugs or alcohol in the place except for a few bottles of wine under the sink—all unopened. Rifle recently fired. Plus, he left a voicemail message with a Sister Margaret last night at 11:25, which is why I’m guessing TOD was 11:30. That might change, though.”
“What did he say in the message?”
“I haven’t heard it, but according to the sister, he said…” Katherine pulled a small notebook out of her jacket pocket and flipped to a page. “‘I’m sorry for what I’m about to do, but I’d be sorrier if I didn’t do it. I can’t do this anymore. Forgive me. Pray for me, Margaret.’ She missed the call, didn’t hear the message until five a.m., and panicked when she didn’t find him in his apartment at the parish house. She knew he came here a lot, so she asked the police to check the house. An officer performed a wellness check, saw the body through the window at 6 a.m.”
“What is this place?”
“Belongs to St. Valentine’s parish. It’s a guest house for visiting priests or sisters, sometimes an emergency shelter. Sister Margaret says Father Murran came here all the time for peace and quiet when it was unoccupied. He liked the neighborhood, she said.”
“I’m still waiting on why you called me.” God, how was he going to break this to Paulina? They’d eaten barbeque with the man at their engagement party not four months ago.
Katherine peeked through the blinds. “Coroner’s here. Let’s go out back.”
The backyard wasn’t much more than a postage stamp surrounded by a wooden fence that needed repainting. An elderly couple sat in rockers on their porch across the street, watching with interest. A pretty brown girl of about eleven or twelve walked slowly past the yard, clearly trying not to linger but also curious about the fuss. A pair of fairy wings on her back glittered in the early morning light.
He and Katherine waited in silence for the girl to pass. This was no place for children to be playing. Not now, maybe not ever. Once she turned the corner, Cyrus spoke.
“Talk.”
Katherine took a deep breath and leaned back against the fence. He stood opposite her, a small fire pit full of ashes between their feet.
“Thanks for taking my call,” she said.
“Call, yeah. Case? Not yet.”
“Look, I get it. You don’t want to work with us, and I don’t blame you. But hear me out. Please.”
No, Cyrus did not want to work with the police. Two years ago, he’d been shot on the job by a fellow officer who had a file overflowing with excessive force complaints. Luckily, Cyrus had a good lawyer who’d wrangled a very nice settlement from the city. Nice enough, he didn’t have to take any case he didn’t want to take.
“I’m not comfortable with this,” he said. “Working with you? For you? Investigating someone I knew personally? Ike and Paulina used to work together at Blessed Sacrament. You ever hear the phrase ‘conflict of interest’?”
He so did not want to take this case. Katherine had a way of getting on his nerves—she was white, and acted like that made her something special down here.
She was also the last woman he’d slept with before meeting Paulina.
His life was B.P. and A.P.—Before Paulina and After Paulina. All that was B.P. meant as much to him as the ashes in the fire pit at his feet. But he tried not to hold that against Katherine. Not her fault they met on the wrong side of his salvation.
“Do you know how hard it was for me to ask you for help? You were a real ass to me, and you know it,” she said. Cyrus turned away, didn’t admit it, but he didn’t deny it either. “Doesn’t that tell you how serious I am? Something is wrong here. You’re the only PI in this town I even halfway trust.”
“Thank you very much.”
“You’re good and we both know it. There. Happy?”
“Thrilled. Now please tell me what the hell is going on here. Even if I don’t take the case, whatever you’ve found, you know I’m not going to tell anyone.”
She gave a dry laugh. “It’s not even seven yet, and Archbishop Dunn’s already making phone calls. He says everyone knew Isaac Murran suffered from depression. That’s all. Open and shut and lock it up. We are not allowed to investigate this, I’ve been told. And when someone tells me not to investigate…”
“Catholic Church trying to cover up something embarrassing? This is my shocked face.”
“Right,” she said. “That’s why I called you. I need you to dig.”
“Dig for what? What aren’t you telling me?”
“First of all, Sister Margaret swears up and down that Isaac Murran was not depressed. Not now, not ever, from what she could tell. She’s got a degree in counseling, and she’s been pouring his tea for fifteen years. She knows the symptoms of depression, and she knows him. Knew him.”
Cyrus stuck his hands in his suit pockets. He was tired. He’d been on a stakeout all last night watching the comings and goings of a man who was going places he shouldn’t be going and coming with people he didn’t need to be coming with.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Katherine said. “I wish I knew someone else to call. I was here for ten minutes before Captain Latour was telling me to drop it. I shouldn’t even be back here now. I’m going to get hell for it.”
Katherine had been in a turf war with the Catholic Church for years. She’d been sent to investigate a robbery at a church, and the priest had demanded a male officer instead. He’d said police work was too dangerous for women, especially for a woman who dressed so “provocatively.”
“Sometimes people kill themselves and we never figure out why,” Cyrus said.
“I might know why.”
He raised an eyebrow. Now she’d gotten him curious.
Katherine reached into her blouse and pulled something out of her bra. She held it out to him, and he reluctantly took it. A business card in a plastic evidence bag.
“You didn’t get this from me,” Katherine said. “You didn’t get it from anyone. That card doesn’t exist. Unless I decide it needs to exist.”
“Where’d you get it from?”
“Our victim’s pocket.”
“You’re contaminating a crime scene and interfering with a police investigation, Katherine.”
“Not if there’s no investigation to interfere with. Look at it.”
He exhaled heavily before looking at the card.
“Red business card, black ink,” Cyrus said, flipping it over. “Only a phone number. No name. That’s unusual. A 212 area code. New York City?”
“Manhattan,” she said. “The number’s a Chinese place now, but it used to be registered to a woman named Eleanor Schreiber. She writes dirty books under the name Nora Sutherlin.”
“You’re worried Father Ike liked dirty books? He’s a sixty-year-old celibate priest. Give the man a break.”
“If that were all, I wouldn’t be here and neither would you. I saw his phone. He called that number last night before he shot himself. He called Sister Margaret, then he called that number. We know why he called Sister Margaret. We need to know why he called Nora Sutherlin.”
“Maybe he just likes her books? Maybe he thought it was a suicide hotline?”
“Maybe he was following orders?”
“Orders? What the hell does that mean?”
“I mean Nora Sutherlin moonlights. I’ll give you one guess.”
He sighed heavily. “Just so you know, next time you call me with a case,” he said, “I am not answering.”