In the Wrong Hands, стр. 26

“Thank you.  Hold that thought.  I’ll be right back.”

Leo threw the curtain open and ran to the side exit.  He slammed his hands against the switch bar, and the door to the courtyard flew open.  There were two gardeners.

“Did someone just run through here!?”

The gardener that was pulling weeds looked up at his co-worker who was pruning the rose bushes.  The pruner shook his head.  The weed puller looked at Leo and did the same.  Without response, Leo slammed the door shut and stood alone in the sanctuary.  The whole room seemed to expand and contract as he did his best to pull himself together.  The killer must have run to the offices.

Lynch.  He had to call Lynch.

Even under normal conditions, getting to his pants pockets while wearing his vestments wasn’t easy.  The sound of the zipper echoed through the empty room as he wriggled his shoulders out of his robe, revealing his clerical garb underneath.  With a pile of black cloth around his ankles, Leo pulled out his cell phone and his wallet, but he couldn’t get his fingers to work, and his wallet flew out of his hands as soon as it cleared his pocket.  The muffled sound of leather against carpet caused Leo to look down just in time to see it bounce under one of the pews.  He dove for it, slamming down the kneeler and almost crushing his right thumb in the process.  Near injury was quickly joined by insult as he snatched up his wallet, tried to stand, and realized his feet were still tangled up in his robe.

His last sliver of calm left him.

He started kicking furiously.  The robe flailed up and down like a hooked marlin, until Leo, at last, felt full range of motion in his legs.  His phone and his wallet never left his hands.  He pulled himself onto the pew and sat up in an attempt to regain his sanity.  It wasn’t working.  He looked up and widened his eyes upon the crucifix to try to gain some focus but found it to be spinning with the rest of the room, so he shook his head with a hard blink and looked back down.  The finger situation was not improving.  Fed up with himself, he flipped open his wallet with one hand, dug out Lynch’s card, abandoned his wallet, held up the number, braced both hands on the pew in front of him, and dialed.

“Jim, I think I just met our killer.”

He thought he heard detective Lynch say something about scones.

“Father Leo?”

“Si…I mean, yes.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the church.  St. Al’s, I mean.”

Leo briefly went through what happened.

“Is he still in the building?”

“I don’t know.  He could be.”

“Okay.  Get out to the street.  If there’s anyone else in the church that you can take with you safely, do it.  We’ll be there in five minutes.”

Leo instantly felt the blood return to his head.

“Okay.  Sure.  No problem.”

He hung up and reached for his robe.  The woman inside the confessional had overheard the conversation and was halfway out of the church.

The room was still spinning but not as quickly.  Fear gave way to relief.

“They’ll be here in five minutes…(sigh) five minutes…”

He eyeballed the door to the offices and had a thought that he and his pastor would later describe as uncharacteristically stupid.

“If he’s still here, that’s where he is…maybe I can get a look at him.”

He stood and, without any real sense of self, started walking.  There was a two-by-four against the wall, used for propping open the door to the courtyard.  Barely breaking stride, he picked it up.

“Just a look: enough to help with a sketch or a line-up.”

Maybe the killer was sneaking around the offices looking for a safe way out or crouched behind the water cooler…unlikely, but the priest was jacked.  On top of everything else, the little prick had pissed on the sacrament of confession.

The hallway behind the sanctuary was L-shaped and lined with six doors.  Leo edged his way along the wall, holding the two-by-four like a tennis racket.  He stopped two inches short of the Church Secretary’s office and peered around the jamb to find her obliviously typing with earbuds in.

No killer there.

“Hesper! (son of a…) Hesper!”

“Hi, Father.  What’s with the wood?”

“Rat…a big one.  Take the rest of the day off.”

“But I told Edith…”

“I’ll let her know.  Scoot.  Go do something fun.”

Next was a closet that, to his knowledge, hadn’t been opened for three months.  He tried the handle.  It didn’t budge, as if welded shut.

Next was his office.  The door was closed just as he left it.

A glimpse, that’s all.

He crept forward and turned the knob slowly.  St. Al’s was built when Eisenhower was in office.  All the doors were original.  Even with slow, careful motion, the latch popped like an old-fashioned pinball machine rendering any further attempts at silence moot.  Leo pressed his ear to the door.

Nothing.

If the killer was in there, the racket didn’t spook him.  The good priest considered the absurdity of what he was about to do for a fleeting moment before being taken over by the false notion that it was too late to turn back.

He tapped himself on the forehead with the wood to psyche himself up, held his breath, ducked down, re-popped the knob, and slid into the room.

Barren and almost unchanged…almost.

“Phew!  Yuck!”

Leo’s office had its own bathroom, complete with a sink, toilet, and sixty years of embedded odors.  It helped to keep the door closed. When left ajar, even slightly (as it was), urine, mold, and disinfectant went straight up the nostrils.

The priest was getting used to his situation.  He spoke to be heard.

“Someone left the bathroom open, and it sure as shit wasn’t me.”

Done fuckin’ around.

Three angry strides took him to the stinky door.  He gave it a yank.

Empty.

The hand soap wasn’t where it usually was, but that was easy to explain.  It was always falling on the floor, and Archbishop Fellini had used the bathroom the day