The Absolve- Paris, page 27
part #3 of Saint Michael Thriller Series
Michael shook his head. “He’s fine, Luc, and I don’t need a doctor yet. We do have to discuss a few things.”
“Of course, I expected you might return for me to hear your confession, and then the explosion hap—”
“How do you know Gerard?”
Luc’s expression showed deception and nervousness. “He’s a friend, a parishioner.”
“I assume you told your friend that we had discussed his case, because he knew too much about me, including that I’m a priest.”
Alpha’s mouth fell agape, and he stared at the parish priest. “Luc, what have you done?”
“Rien, peut-être quelque chose.” He shook his head. “Sorry, I mean, perhaps nothing. It is possible, maybe—”
“You told him about me. You gave him my name, Luc.”
Luc bowed his head and closed his eyes. “Perhaps we both have things to confess to each other, Father Andrew.”
Michael stood and stepped in front of Luc until he’d deeply invaded the priest’s personal space. “Bullshit. I have nothing to confess to you, and I can’t trust you with it, anyway. I didn’t do a damned thing to that guy back there. I didn’t even make him suffer when I probably should have.”
“Please,” Luc’s voice trembled, “please forgive me, I—”
A distant scream from inside the massive cathedral grabbed Michael’s attention and all three men briefly stood in place. He and Alpha glanced at one another, and Michael realized his training partner had heard the same thing.
“Allah Akbar!”
“On me!” Alpha leapt toward a second scream and Michael sprinted right behind him.
His pain and suffering now made a recent memory by the magic of renewed adrenaline, Michael waited to draw his pistol until he could move more cautiously. Alpha led him through the sacristy and to a small doorway that required him to simultaneously step up and duck down to quickly pass through it. An explosion of panic and mayhem echoed through the massive central corridor of the cathedral, and Michael now led Alpha toward it. He didn’t understand what the victims and civilians shouted around them, but the repeated frantic shouts of Allah Akbar propelled him on faster.
Alpha shouted at him as they ran. “They are yelling about a knife, a man with a knife that’s cutting people!”
The two-man team moved in concert and shouted at bystanders to flee as they rushed through the long nave. Up ahead near the entrance to the cathedral, a young man stepped in front of a woman and a child who had fallen to the floor. Michael lost sight of him while the mother and child frantically crawled away, but the man quickly re-emerged with fresh cuts on his forearms and dark red blood streaming to the stone beneath him. The Good Samaritan slipped and fell backward, and, in a panic, flailed his arms and kicked out with his legs to keep the unseen attacker at bay.
Alpha ran along Michael’s right side and everyone now moved themselves from the priests’ obvious path. To their right, an elderly man struggled to get his wife out of a pew and made eye contact with Michael. He shuffled closer to their vector and held his cane out for them like a relay baton. Alpha veered right and accepted the tool without slowing. Michael wondered if his French colleague had ever before swung a baseball bat with precision at a dead run. An early twenties, able-bodied tourist stood near the end of a pew on Michael left, and recorded the horror with his cellphone. Michael swatted the device away as they sprinted past, and it shattered on the stone floor behind him.
As they closed in on the chaos, a Middle Eastern man emerged from the far side of a pillar two dozen yards in front of them near the left side of the narthex, the long entryway at the back of the structure. Two men, each of whom had found a folding chair, tried to keep him at bay like a trained lion, but one slipped in a blood pool and awkwardly fell onto his knee. The assailant struck out and cut the man’s arm. As the latest victim shrieked in pain and terror, the aspiring murderer shoved him down to the floor and dropped on top of the victim’s waist in one swift and practiced motion. His eyes widened with bloodlust and he continued his frenzied shouts of Allah Akbar.
Michael leaned forward and sprinted toward the attacker’s left chest and shoulder. No time to stop, draw, and shoot! He watched the assailant raise the bloody knife in his right hand and hold it over his head for a moment to further terrify his panicked and pleading victim. Michael lowered his body and lunged forward as the aggressor’s hips and shoulder collapsed down for the kill. Contacting the man’s upper left torso, Michael propelled himself through the tackle.
whuh
Michael felt the man’s lungs collapse, and the tremendous force cast the smaller and lighter assailant back and to his right. The open-field hit freed the victim, redirected the knife’s downward stroke, and plunged the long blade deep into the attacker’s left abdomen.
thock
The attacker’s skull struck the ancient stone floor and sounded like a ripe, wet watermelon breaking open on concrete.
Michael’s momentum carried him up and over the lighter man, and he crashed hard onto his knees and right shoulder. He leapt up and prepared to defend himself, but the unconscious aggressor laid in an awkward heap on his right side where he’d struck the stone floor. The man’s own knife had buried deep into his spleen and intestines. Only his left eye was open but unfocused, and it endlessly stared at the floor as a growing blood pool emanated from an unseen injury on the right side of his head.
The parishioners all backed away from the sudden corpse.
Without a further fight before him, Michael doubled over at the waist, put his hands on his hips, and gasped for each breath. Alpha lowered the borrowed cane he had no opportunity to use. Luc finally arrived, and fell to his knees next to the decedent and crossed himself.
“What, are you doing,” Michael asked him between gasps.
“Leading by example,” Luc offered, out of breath himself. “We must pray for this man’s soul and his forgiveness.”
Michael resisted the urge to spit at the corpse and stood upright. “He can go to hell. You do what you want. I’m gonna help his victims.”
SIXTY-TWO
May 12, 11:43am local.
San Miguel Chapel. Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Michael shuffled into the small rectory, the parish priests’ shared living space in his historic home chapel. He closed the door behind him and found his mentor, Monsignor Eduardo Hernandez, sitting on the small living room’s threadbare couch. He’ll always remind me of Jerry Garcia.
“Woof!”
Ira, the border collie-heeler mix Michael rescued from Wyoming last February, barked once and rushed to greet him. Despite his aches and pain, Michael knelt and petted his beloved dog. Hernandez looked up, smiled, and folded the afternoon newspaper.
“You look a damned sight better than the last time you came home.” H stood and walked over, grabbing a letter-sized envelope from the kitchen countertop as he did so. “Apparently, your dog isn’t the only one that misses you.” He presented the envelope to Michael.
Curious, Michael stopped petting Ira, stood with some effort, and accepted the envelope. It had been addressed to him, for delivery simply to “San Miguel Chapel, Santa Fe, New Mexico.” The return information showed only an address and didn’t identify its sender. Who do I know in Switzerland? Michael roughly tore open the glued, back flap and pulled out a heavy-stock card. The front displayed a high-resolution photograph of the Alps. Michael opened the card, skipped the handwritten paragraphs, and looked to the bottom for a signature. Merci. She must have moved her research facility.
“So, who’s it from?” Hernandez sounded both curious and accusatory.
“The doctor I met in Columbia last year, Merci Renard.” Suddenly self-conscious about the woman’s attention, Michael blushed.
“I remember telling you to be careful with her. She called here, you know, after you came back from Bogotá, and she sounded very much like a woman in love.”
Ira nudged Michael for attention, so he scratched the dog’s head while he read the card. “I don’t know about that, H,” Michael weakly replied as he read the doctor’s beautiful cursive.
“Dearest Father Michael—
I am incredibly grateful to have met you. I’ve thought of you often since our last conversation, every day, in fact, and I don’t know why. I can’t imagine what might come out of our friendship, as our lives are so very different and separated by so much distance. Despite the effort and rational thought I’ve put into leaving you in my past, your memory refuses to allow it.
I cannot explain why, but I believe God does not yet intend for us to part ways. I hope this isn’t too brash or assuming, and, selfishly, I need to know that you feel the same way. Please know that I’m sending this without a specific hope or agenda, and I do not wish to ever ask you to leave your work with the Church. I only wish for you to know that you remain important to me, and that I do hope we can one day meet again. Love & Light, Merci”
Michael looked up from the note and blushed again.
“That’s the first time you’ve smiled in a few months. There’s gotta be a reason for it.”
“I don’t know, H, I really don’t. Doctor Renard is an incredible person, with this amazing, compassionate heart of action and selflessness, but, I don’t know what to do with that.”
“What would Michael the Episcopal priest do?”
“You mean, if things were different and I could marry and not have to maintain my vow of celibacy? I’d probably pursue her. I loved Catherine, back when we were together in Silver City, but I didn’t hold the same esteem for her.” Michael leaned back against the small kitchen counter and looked at the floor. “It would be cruel enough for a parish priest to let a woman hope for a relationship with him, even more so with what I’m actually doing for the Church. It’s guaranteed heartbreak when one of the investigations spins out of control.”
“I think ‘guarantee’ is a little harsh—”
“No, really, H, I think this assignment will be what ends this life for me. I’ve almost been killed, several times now, and, just for bonus points, I’m now...”
“Hang on, it sounds like you have something to confess.” Hernandez’s tone was more direction than observation.
Michael nodded and both men moved to the rickety bistro-sized table next to the kitchen and sat in its unstable chairs. Michael crossed himself, and H did the same. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been six days since my last confession, and I have grief and sorrow in my heart.”
“Go on,” Hernandez offered as he rose and walked to the small refrigerator. “Just gonna make this official.” The aging monsignor pulled out two bottles of Trappist ale and opened them while Michael spoke.
“I feel guilty, H, but not for what I’ve done, directly, I mean. I feel guilty for not feeling guilty. I had a hand in ending the lives of two men yesterday. Two. Both intended to die in a mass suicide bombing plot all across Paris, and one of them did just that, so I’m not even sure that I get credit or blame for him. The other one, though, I gave him the shove that ended his life. Even though he was trying to carve up and murder a bunch of innocents, and I had to stop him from killing another man he had pinned on the floor.
“The worst part is, the local parish priest, he showed up right after I killed the second guy, and his knee-jerk response was to drop to the deck and pray for that asshole’s soul, beg God to forgive him.”
H set their beers on the bistro table, sipped from his own, and sat back at the table. “What was your knee-jerk response?”
“To stop myself from spitting on the corpse.” Michael paused after his sheepish admission. “I think I said something about hoping the guy went to hell, and I was gonna triage his victims instead. Something like that.”
“Who’s to say either of you are wrong?”
“I get that both things have to be done, and we should have that much capacity for forgiveness and compassion in our hearts, H, but I wasn’t there. At all. I’m still not. Maybe, after every single victim was treated, then I might consider praying for his soul. Which, of course now means that I feel guilty for not feeling guilty. Not for either of them.”
“Alright. What else is eating you? I can see you got something else.”
“It’s an arbitrary definition, H, and it’s tied up in my gut with this Doctor Renard thing…”
“And?”
Michael hung his head and forced his words. “I’m a, uh, I’m a serial killer, H. A damned serial killer, at least by F-B-I standards.”
“Why?”
Michael looked up at his mentor’s obvious surprise and ignorance. “Well, so, after a man kills three people in a similar manner and for similar reasons—”
“Bullshit! If you’re gonna look at it that way, almost every soldier that came home from the fields in Europe, a lotta troops comin’ outta the sandbox and the ‘Stan, they’re serial killers, too. All the pilots who’ve seen combat and dusted at least three other pilots. You’d call them serial killers, too, right?”
Michael felt even more sheepish. “No, of course not.”
“How many men have you sent for judgement now, Michael?”
“Five, including Bogotá.”
“You’re at war, Michael. A foot soldier combating the greatest evils that walk the face of the earth. You’re no serial killer, son. Hell, if anything, you’re a goddamned ace!”
Later that night, Michael sat alone at the petite writing desk in his bedroom. A single bulb desk lamp illuminated his work surface, and Ira had curled up by his feet. Michael donned medical exam gloves and carefully removed a Ziploc bag concealed inside his backpack. Pulling a manila envelope from inside the plastic, Michael retrieved its contents and cast the envelope aside. Reading back over the two pages in his gloved hands, he considered whether he wanted to proceed. Once I do this, there’s no going back.
Michael pondered the possible outcomes for what felt like a long time. I want to know who the hell I’m working for. Tired of finding my ass in a sling for people who don’t trust me with their name. He retrieved a Silver City Police Department latent fingerprint kit from the bottom desk drawer, and used its magnetic brush to apply black print powder to John’s memo explaining the new operational security arrangements with the Oremus hotels. Six viable latents appeared along the edges. Might be his prints, might be Jacques’, might be someone else I don’t know.
After he collected the black fingerprint images on his old department’s print tape, Michael packaged them for delivery in tomorrow's mail. He waited to address the envelope from sheer paranoia that its contents might be discovered before morning. A man has to protect his sources.
That task completed, he pulled a yellow legal pad from the desk’s top drawer and grabbed the first working pen he found. After a moment’s hesitation, Michael began the letter he’d feared writing.
Doctor Renard—
He stared at the title, and then tore that page out and crumpled it. I need to say everything I want her to know and understand, even if it’s from the grave because H sends it after my burial.
Dear Merci, I just got
knockknock
“Michael!”
At the urgent sound of his mentor’s voice, Michael turned the legal pad over and shoved the bottom desk drawer closed to conceal the print kit and the sealed envelope of print tapes. “Come in.”
Hernandez stepped into the room, his face ashen with worry. “The bishop just called. The pope, he’s, uh, he just resigned.”
EPILOGUE
May 13, 7:45am local.
Vatican Housing Complex. Rome, Italy.
Bishop Harold Hoffaburr and Cardinal Paul Dylan sat in the cardinal’s furnished luxury residence. As usual, Dylan’s open window blinds allowed his southern view overtop the Vatican City wall to dominate the apartment’s living area. Saint Peter’s Basilica glowed under the warmth of the rising, late spring sun. Despite the early hour, both men smoked rich, dark Cuban cigars and sipped Italian liqueur while they relished their view and the morning’s news.
Harold hadn’t seen his mentor so jubilant, but hesitated from directly asking how the resignation impacted them. He took another pull from his snifter of Centerba, a traditional Italian liqueur made from herbs and medicinal spices in the Abruzzo region. Despite his lack of detail, Dylan gloated over his future while fielding dozens of phone calls from other cardinals and bishops, several of which came from Cornelius’ innermost council. As he’d done throughout their relationship, Dylan obviously withheld information and wanted to ensure Harold knew he did so. Harold, meanwhile, strove to merely ensure he stayed in the best of his cardinal’s graces. His future is mine, just as I’ve long professed.
The Italian CNN broadcast played with English subtitles. Dylan claimed it helped him brush up on the language, but Harold found the delay between the audio and inaccurate transcript frustrating. A passionate local Roman anchor discussed the sudden and unexpected resignation of His Holiness, Pope Cornelius II.
Harold thought the announcement shocked everyone but Dylan. And yet, we’re suffering through the local info-tainment as though we might learn something through public information channels.
Dylan pointed his smoldering cigar at the screen and its rolling transcript. “I have sacrificed so much over the past two decades to be in this moment, in this position.” His words slurred a bit, and he took another pull from both the cigar and his drink. “We’re standing at the precipice of success and vindication, Harold. Everyone who shunned us and our traditional views of Saint Peter’s church and its rightful place in the human experience. Our sacrifices and persecution will have all been made worthwhile after the conclave convenes, I assure you.”
“Notizie Urgenti” flashed across the screen, and the anchor broke into their nonstop wailing and pontificating. Harold had to wait for the transcript to catch up.
