Page 45

And I am.
“Dirk Benson. Maria Santiago. Lucas Reisling. Sara Cinnabar. Jose Gutierrez. Paolo Lorenzo… almost.”
He flinches at each name.
“I’m a writer,” I tell him. “I had nothing but time on my hands this year. You’re lucky no one else connected the dots. Especially if you’d added Paolo to the list.”
His mouth tightens. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His stony reply has me smiling. “Don’t you? Each one was a parishioner in your church. Each one died from an unusual suicide. Is that why you moved so often? I wondered but didn’t have confirmation until tonight. Does the Church know and they cover it up?
“It’s the makings of a mystery novel. Or an angel of death...”
“I don’t prey on the innocent,” he snaps, before he brakes to a halt, teeth grinding as he realizes the imprudence of what he just admitted.
I’m not sure why he thinks he can deny it. After all, I saw him with a knife in his hand and Paolo’s wrist vulnerable to the blade he wielded. There’s simply no avoiding what he was doing. No ignoring it.
“What did they do?” I question. “What makes you do this to yourself? Do you self-flagellate after each one? To atone?”
I don’t say ‘after each murder,’ even though that’s what it is.
Instead, because I know something deeper is happening here, because I know I wouldn’t have been led to him if he didn’t need my help, if he wasn’t on a righteous path, I wait for him to answer.
When he doesn’t, I muse, “Let me see. Paolo abused his niece.”
“You heard his confession?”
Our conversation had taken place in English thus far. But at his sharp reply, I murmur, “Si.Ogni parola.” Every word.
“You speak Italian?”
“I do.” And I carry on in that same language. “He confessed to?—”
“‘Taking’ her,” he scoffs. “Rape is the right word for it. He won’t stop?—”
“I know he won’t. Unless you help him.”
“How can I help him? He’s perverted. Wicked,” he snaps, tone seething, eyes dancing with a light that exposes the chasm in his sanity. “He needs to be stopped.”
“There are other ways.” I nuzzle the edge of his shirt aside, exposing his pec, and press my finger to his chest. Blood stains his flesh with the whorls and loops of my fingerprint.
Staring at it, then looking into his eyes, I see them dilate as he rasps, “What do you want?”
My answer is simple. “You.”
He rears back, but with the door behind him, he can’t go far.
“What do you mean?”
“I want you.”
“I’m a priest.”
“Aren’t you also a man?” I counter instantly, pressing my palm to his chest where I can feel his heart pounding. “A manwith weaknesses. A man whoseesweaknesses. What did they do?”
My urging, the reply I gave him, astounds him—his heart tells me the truth.
The darkness in him recedes somewhat only to surge forward. Onward, onward. Like a tidal wave that— “They were murderers. Rapists,” he hisses. “Evil that needed scourging because the police never even looked in their direction. Children were murdered, andhurt, women butchered. Men killed and violated?—”