The Old Chapel Hall was a womb of dark, ornate woodwork. Every inch of the small chamber, from the timber roof beams, to the lectern, to the stained glass windows, had been painstakingly crafted by hand. The room was intimate and of another time. Two narrow rows of pews faced a stage with a small but elaborately scrolled pulpit, and four large chairs, fit for kings. A long rope hung slack over one of the timbers. One end was loose and ran to the floor. The other end draped to the floor as well, but this end, rather than hanging free, was instead tied in a perfectly beautiful noose about the neck of a stout, homely man. The man was quite dead and laid out neatly on axis in the aisle of the chapel. His hands were folded across his waist and, like his feet, were cuffed with plastic restraints. Across his chest was a bloody A.
Kris was taken by the exquisite quaintness of the room as he entered. The room beckoned weary pilgrims stay and reflect, to rest in her divine stillness, and Kris wished terribly that he had discovered this jewel under different circumstances. The confined area felt crowded as uniformed officers and forensic agents scurried in and out of the room. Maggie was actually seated out-of-the-way in a flanking pew, dressed in her standard coal-grey “man-o-flage” suit. She seemed bored or aloof as she stared blankly at the body, but Kris had come to recognize that this was the expression of her working out the scene.
Kris tried to be unobtrusive as he investigated the body. A thin woman with a massive camera was taking photographs. Kris took in what he could without interrupting and then took a seat beside Detective Kennedy. “Sacred Heart”, Kris pointed out, which was shorthand for, “I can’t believe that there has been a killing right here at Sacred Heart! I mean, I know that this is why we are here, to sniff out the killer among us, but I still can’t believe that this happened right in our own back yard. Strangely enough, I’ve sort of been growing accustomed to this place, and it feels a bit like home now, and the fact that this happened right here, on campus, is shocking to me. And of course, I am sure that you find that all very naïve. Who do you think did this?” And Maggie got all of that.
She did not respond, though. “What are you thinking?” Kris wanted to know.
The detective reached into her overcoat, pulled out a piece of gum, and started vacantly chewing it. “I know this man,” she said. “This is Donnie Gomez, the plant manager.”
“You’re kidding! But why? “Kris asked, “And why a man? Why him?” Kris could not imagine this figure possessing anything that another human would covet, be it financial, sexual, or otherwise.
Maggie looked absent still, “I guess if your number’s up, your number’s up.”
A cop with a baby-face approached Maggie, “Detective Kennedy, we may have found something useful.” Kris and Maggie followed the young man across the aisle to a row near the back of the room, where he pointed out the former contents of someone’s pockets, laying on the floor beneath a pew. “Four dollars and 97 cents,” Baby-face said, “And a keychain, and receipt for gas.”
“Fingerprints?” Maggie asked.
Another man, dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit, answered, “Nah. No way. I thought maybe on the keychain, but still, nothing.” The man in the jumpsuit bent over and picked up the keychain with the business end of a pencil. It was in fact a sobriety token from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
“In-teresting,” Maggie said. “Well, Christopher, it looks like we’ve been barking up the wrong trees.” Then to the officers she directed, “Track down whatever you can on that receipt. You get me an actual car and lunch is on me for a week.”
Just then the tall, heavy doors to the chapel flung open and in barged Paul Gomez, followed closely behind by Mary Pendleton. Paul was in a complete fury of grief. Mary was chasing after the man in a futile attempt to contain him. The cops were caught off guard and Paul was able to make it to the body. He flung himself down upon Donnie and wailed, “¡Oh, no, no, no, que hizo esto! ¿Cómo pudo ocurrir?” The officers were of course upon him instantly, tugging him away. They pulled, but Paul held on, stroking Donnie’s face, “Tú eres mi primo. Tú eres mi hermano.” Paul was not given much time to mourn as they were soon able to pull him off of the body and tote him away. It took three men.
When the dust settled, Maggie found herself standing in the company of Kris and Mary. She was no longer lost in thought, but quite wide-eyed and alert. “Well, that should be great for my crime scene. Can someone tell me what just happened here?”
Mary was frazzled. Her hair was wilder than usual and she had sweat forming on her brow and lip. She was winded. “Donnie is Paul’s first cousin. They grew up together here in the neighborhood. They’ve been best friends their whole life. So as you can imagine, this is just breaking poor Paul’s heart in half.” Mary panted, trying to catch her breath, “Whoo. I’m too old to be chasing Paul around the halls of Sacred Heart any more. . . Paul got Donnie his job here. Donnie, as I am sure you have noticed, is not the sharpest tool in the shed. Paul has always watched over him. He’s always been protective over the boy, jealous for him. Hm, I say boy, he’s probably my age. Or was my age, I should say.” Mary dabbed her brow. “This is a real mess.”
Maggie was flummoxed, perturbed, not happy, “And why am I just learning about this?”
“Oh Maggie, you had to know! Everyone knows. It’s just part of the Sacred Heart history, like our biggest benefactors being the Leokadia family, or the fact that the church is built on the old original Mission site. Everyone knows, Maggie. And you are the detective here after all.”
The anguished yells of Paul Gomez could be heard trailing down the hallway.
“By the way, detective,” Mary said, “Paul’s latest girlfriend has been AWOL for three weeks.”
“Excuse us,” Maggie said to Kris, and escorted Mary into the hall.
“Oh, of course,” Kris excused the two red-heads. He still couldn’t believe how similar they looked to each other. Maybe he could court Mary and live out his crush on Maggie vicariously though her. What, after all, is a decade or two in the face of true love?
Alone, Kris took the seat where Detective Kennedy had stationed herself earlier. Activity swirled about him, but Kris himself was in the dead-still eye of the storm. He scrawled a bit on a small electronic pad that cost about 300 times as much as its pen-and-paper equivalent, and walked through the killing in his head. He took a deep breath, and cleared his mind. He said a mantra to himself, “Je. Ne. Sais. Quoi. What is it?”
Everything was just right: the gown, the Alpha, the sanctity and theatricality of the location, even the quasi-humaneness of the murder. It was still unsettling that the murder should be staged right here at Sacred Heart. Was it boldness or folly that led to this choice? Or a message perhaps? And then there was the matter of the victim being male. What was the pattern here? What do all of these victims have in common? And what then the motive? He had assumed that it had to be some sort of dominance or perversion? But Donnie Gomez? He had a face that only a mother could love.
Kris tried to use the Jedi mind trick that Maggie had taught him. He reached out and tried to feel the crime scene; he listened to his gut. “Je. Ne. Sais. Quoi.” Everything was just right. But did this feel like sanctification? No, it did not. Kris didn’t know what this crime was about, but he felt sure in his bones that it was not like the others.
So what then did it feel like? He couldn’t get at it. Kris quieted his mind, mulled over the details, but he couldn’t pin it down, couldn’t get at the essence of the thing; it seemed to be cloaked in trickery.
So what? Could there possibly be three killers?! How many crazies can one town support? Surely he must be wrong; the mathematical probability of two serial killers in one zip code must be astronomically small, Kris thought. The likelihood of three killers, coinciding at one lovely, but undistinguished church – well, that would just be absurd.
Amidst all of the comings and goings in the little chapel, Kris detected the faintest sound, dragging itself across the background noise of the room. Beneath the clamor was silence, and beneath the silence was Truth, at once evasive and persistent.
Kris felt the tiniest prick at his newly-reclaimed serenity, as if someone or something were picking the lock on his soul.
“Je. Ne. Sais. Quoi.”
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