Page 4 of Go Home (Kate Valentine #1)

“This is the last load,” Marcus observed, as he hauled another trio of archive boxes to their resting place, under a pretty stained-glass window.

Oddly enough, the headquarters of the county PD was located in an old church, and despite the familiar aroma of cops, coffee, and printer ink, the whole building had a musky, woody scent that reminded Kate of choir practice.

True to his word, Daniels had loaned them a room full of filing cabinets and boxes.

He’d thrown in the services of a pair of beat cops, too, but one of them kept complaining about his back and the other one, despite being a fresh-faced guy in his mid-twenties, moved boxes like a grandfather feeding goldfish.

Fueled on doughnuts and irritation, Kate and Marcus had done most of the heavy shifting themselves.

Kate was kicking herself. She had taken photos of the hymn book page, front and back, with her camera phone.

But the techs had been anxious to get back on the road, and she’d felt their mounting impatience as she snapped her images, ending up with three that were blurred, one which missed most of the top right corner, and one which was a high-resolution, pin-sharp portrait of her right hand.

Rookie mistake. Secure your evidence. Secure access to your evidence.

“You shouldn’t have let them bully you,” Marcus said, squatting on the edge of the desk. “You’ve got your priorities, they’ve got theirs, but you’re calling the shots.”

Kate sighed. It was a very pertinent demonstration of what A.D.

Winters, their boss, had said at her last performance review.

Kate “lacked assertiveness” and was “too ready to defer to colleagues, sometimes to the detriment of ongoing, investigational needs.” Now, she had no decent images of what was obviously key evidence, and she’d have to wait until everything was photographed and uploaded to the server, three hours away in Portland.

“I could drive back there in two and a half if I ignore the speed limit,” she said.

“Or you could call them, and tell them to make that piece of paper their number one priority for imaging and uploading. Better yet, get them to pull over now, take a couple more shots and email them.”

Kate picked up the phone.

That was the other thing Winters had said at her review. Sometimes she didn’t see the forest for the trees. Which wasn’t a great attribute for a cryptanalyst. She was lucky to have Marcus as a partner, though she’d only admit that under torture.

Just as Kate finished talking to the tech, Marcus received a message.

“That was quick.”

He flipped open his laptop and clicked on the screen.

“Jack!”

The screen showed the blank tiled wall of the mortuary lab. The M.E., Jack Kazarian, insisted on face-to-face briefings, even for the simplest of exchanges. He craved the company of the living, he said.

The screen tipped as if being adjusted, and as the face of a small North Asian girl came into view, Marcus and Kate exchanged a puzzled glance.

“I’m Dr. Cindy Yu,” she said. “Call me Cindy.”

“Where’s Jack?” Marcus asked.

“Dr. Kazarian was taken ill, last night,” said Dr. Yu, somewhat stonily. “I’m a fully qualified M.E.,” she added. “With ten years’ experience in Hong Kong and Maryland.”

Kate felt a stab of sympathy for Dr. Yu, whose fresh complexion – and probably her size and gender, too – meant she would be perpetually obliged to justify her presence. She must have trouble buying a beer, too.

“Wow,” said Marcus.

If Kate had been closer, she would have nudged or kicked him. Instead, she moved closer to the screen.

“Cindy, hello, I’m Agent Kate Valentine. We were expecting to speak to Jack this morning.”

“Last night the doctor suffered a myocardial infarction, probably due to underlying rupture of an atherosclerotic plaque.”

Kate mouthed the words “heart attack” at Marcus.

“He’ll be undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention in a few hours’ time,” the M.E. added. “Doubtless entailing some sort of paxol-based elutive stenting system.”

As the daughter of a cardiothoracic surgeon, Kate understood more of this than her colleague, but even so, she felt Dr. Yu could have made some concessions to her audience.

There were better ways to say that Jack Kazarian was having an operation to unblock an artery in his heart.

However the doctor put it, though, Jack was out, for now.

And Cindy was in. So, like the roomful of cobwebs and the blurry photos, it was just something they had to deal with.

“I’ve got some preliminary findings to share. The subject was a sixty-seven-year-old male. Particulate analysis of the lungs, respiratory tract, and nostrils indicate asphyxia caused by smoke inhalation. Body posture consistent with rapid loss of consciousness.”

“How can you tell that?” Kate asked.

Dr. Yu blinked, as if she hadn’t expected questions.

“The body’s natural response to danger is to make itself as small as possible.

We curl up, wrap our arms around ourselves, tuck our heads between our knees.

That won’t provide protection from a fire of several thousand degrees Fahrenheit, but it’s what our instincts tell us to do.

By contrast, the subject here was found in an open posture, legs apart, arms outstretched.

” Dr. Yu looked up from her notes. “In other words, he lost consciousness before the fire caused any tissue damage.”

“Guess that’s a blessing,” Marcus said.

Dr. Yu continued. “Due to the clenched presentation of the pugnus, some eighty percent of the unguis digitus is intact. Fingernails,” she added.

“Analysis yielded minute fragments of wood and a nitrocellulose substance. Varnish. On first impressions, the wood seems to be the same wood from which the confessional box was made, along with most of the benches inside the church building. It comes from the acer sacchinarum tree: the silver maple.”

“So he tried to claw his way out,” said Kate.

Everyone was silent for a while.

A short time later, after thanking Dr. Yu for her assistance, they decided to quit the office.

Officially, it was to visit Annie’s Place, the cheery, homespun-looking diner across the street.

But really, they wanted to be out of that room, to put the autopsy and the murder behind them, however briefly.

A lot of the job was like that: situations you could only endure for very short intervals, like hot sun, or radiation.

“Think Jack’s going to come back?” Marcus asked, as they slid into a booth. “I’ll put that another way. I really hope Jack’s coming back.”

“Cindy’s okay.”

“Cindy’s a robot. A robot disguised as a sixth-grader.”

“And can you imagine how often guys like you question her ability to do her job?”

“’Guys like me?’ Don’t make me out to be some kind of frat bro. You were shocked when she popped up on that screen.”

“Momentarily.”

“Like a little elf.”

“Stop it. I was just expecting Jack.”

A tall, broad waitress approached, like a cruise ship docking in a small harbor. Middle-aged, and wearing it well, with bright, pink, plastic earrings and a slash of matching lipstick. Her name was sewn in cursive script on her blouse. Annie .

“What can I fetch you, folks?”

They ordered apple pie and coffee. Annie, who wore her hair pinned up in a complicated forties style roll, shouted their orders to someone called Clyde, who was nowhere to be seen. With that business seen to, she put a hand on the edge of Marcus’s seat and said, “This was where he always sat.”

Kate and Marcus exchanged a glance. News travels fast .

“You knew the Father well?” Kate asked.

“We’re not exactly church folks,” Annie replied.

“Heathens, Tom called us. He was…” She took a breath.

Kate could see a tear forming in the woman’s right eye.

She took a napkin from the dispenser on the table and handed it to her.

“Thank you, sweetie. Oh, you’re a pretty thing, aren’t you? ” she said.

Kate hadn’t expected that. She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing, and smiled.

“Father Tom was one of the best.”

“We’re sorry for your loss,” Kate said. “What was he like?”

“You want to know about Tom? A decent guy. Stood up for what was right, you know?”

“We heard that from other quarters, too,” Kate said. “But what sort of things are we talking about?”

“Well, let me tell you a story about one thing he did, because it’s something I actually saw and heard, so I know it’s not just talk, or what-have-you.”

Kate smiled, and shifted in her seat, thinking Annie would sit down and join them. But she didn’t. She stood right where she was, twisting the napkin in her fingers.

“Every Christmas, we have a big social, up at the marina, and you know how it is, some folks drink more than they should…. And after the party, one year, I think it was his second Christmas with us… We were up in the clubhouse clearing up and Father Tom was helping. He’d always be the one to help, you know, he was the –”

She lost her thread momentarily and blew her nose loudly. Kate noticed that even though Annie called herself a “heathen,” she still referred to the priest as “Father.” Perhaps everyone saw him like that, she thought. As a kind of father.

“We were all clearing up and we heard a noise from the parking lot,” Annie continued.

“This big old brute of a man was out there whaling on his wife. And she’s a tiny thing, the wife, Mary, a slip of a girl.

And suddenly, the Father’s out there. We didn’t notice he’d gone out.

He’s right in between them and we heard him, because we had the windows open, airing the place after the party.

And he says, ‘You want to hit someone, Joe, try me.’ Now Joe Kerrigan was as drunk as a skunk that night, and he took a swing at Father Tom.

And you know what Father Tom says? He says, ‘I’m glad you did that, Joe.

’ And he laid him out flat with one punch! ”

“Nice,” said Marcus.

“And when Joe’s down on the floor, the Father kneels down and says something to Joe.

Nobody knows what he said in his ear. Mary had run up to us in the clubhouse.

So whatever he said, that was between Tom and Joe and maybe God, if you believe He was there, too.

Whatever it was, Joe Kerrigan left town.

Mary moved back in with her mom, and nobody heard from Joe again. So…”

A hatch opened on the other side of the counter. A thick and hairy pair of arms deposited two slices of apple pie on the ledge, and the hatch closed. Annie went to fetch them, returning with the coffee pot.

“He wasn’t what I expected a priest to be like,” she continued, as she filled up their cups.

“He was happiest sitting out on the pier with a fishing rod. Liked a drink or two at Rourke’s.

Loved to tinker round under cars and trucks.

I don’t know if he believed all that God and sin and resurrection stuff, I guess he musta.

But wouldn’t a guy like that have been happier with a loving wife and a big ol’ houseful of kids and dogs?

Then he wouldn’t have had to… go that awful way… ”

Annie’s voice cracked for good this time and she fled into the kitchen.

“Sounds like he might have made an enemy or two,” Marcus observed quietly.

“A priest who wasn’t like a priest,” said Kate.

“And do we think Joe Kerrigan really left town?”

She hated how their minds worked sometimes. A much-loved man had died a horrible death, a close-knit community was in shock. And here they were, digging for secrets, handing out guilt and blame and suspicion. Assuming the worst, because it was their job to do so.

And who knew, in any case, if Father Tom’s awful death had anything to do with Father Tom or the community he ministered to?

The message on the hymn book page – the letters of her name spelled out, and perhaps other signs and warnings, too – took this brutal killing away from the place where it had happened, and landed it right at her own feet.

It was impossible to ignore that one, simple, chilling thought.

The killing of Father Tom was a message to her. But why? What did they want with her?