Bad Bones (9 page)

Father Simon, the priest at Sacred Heart, the church Stella’s family went to, lived in the rectory, a large, two-storey building next to the church grounds. Stella pulled up outside, put the Toyota in ‘Park’ and switched the engine off.

“OK –” she started to get out of the car – “let’s see what he has to say.”

“He won’t mind me not being Catholic, right?”

“He won’t mind, and he won’t try and convert you, either. At least not straight away.” Stella caught the look on Gabe’s face and laughed. “Just kidding. He’s cool.”

“For a priest?”

“For anyone.”

The door was answered by a woman, which surprised Gabe, for a second making him think,
Is this priest
married?

“Hi, Mrs Callaghan,” Stella said. “We phoned
earlier, Father Simon is expecting us.

The woman, Gabe had worked out she must be some sort of housekeeper, showed them in and took them down the hallway to a back room with French windows that looked out on to a mid-sized garden, all lawn, with high cypress hedges. A man, frizzy white hair and gold-rimmed glasses, dressed all in black with a white back-to-front collar, looked up from his desk as they walked in.

“Ah, thank you, Mrs Callaghan, thank you.”

Mrs Callaghan hovered by the door. “Your supper’s in the fridge, Father, so I’ll be going, if that’s all right.”

“That’s completely fine –” Father Simon smiled, his face creased with arcs of laughter lines – “and I will see you tomorrow.”

The priest got up, seeming shorter than he’d looked sitting at his desk, and walked across the room to an armchair, waving at the sofa that faced the French windows. The light from outside shone through his shock of unruly, thinning white hair, turning it into a wiry halo.

“Sit down, sit down.” He followed his own advice. “And so, Stella my dear, how can I help?”

“This is Gabe, Father, Gabriel Mason, a friend of mine.” Stella sat one end of the sofa, Gabe went to the other, further away from Father Simon. “He’s found some things and I hope you may be able to figure out what they are.”

“Nice to meet you, Gabriel.” Father Simon got up and stuck out his hand. Gabe had no choice but to get up himself, lean across the table between them and do the same, and they shook hands awkwardly. “So, what have you found?”

Gabe glanced at Stella, then got out his phone and brought up the first picture of the gold pieces he’d taken from the skeleton. He handed the phone to Stella, who leant over and showed the picture to Father Simon, then gave him the phone.

“You know how to swipe and everything, Father?”

“I may seem very last-century, but I keep up.” The priest spent a few minutes looking at the pictures, closely examining one in particular before he put the phone down on the table. “Very, uh, interesting… Where did they come from, these items?”

Stella looked pointedly at Gabe, the silent message being, ‘Your turn, guy’.

“I, y’know, I found them, ah…” Gabe couldn’t
quite bring himself to say ‘Father’. He didn’t call his own father Father.

“We can cut the formalities here. Call me Simon, or Mr Murrow, if you like; whatever makes you comfortable,”

“OK, ah, Simon… I found them, buried with this old skeleton up in a canyon off Ventura.” Gabe leant forward, elbows on knees.

“
Exactly
like they are here?”

“I washed the dirt off, that’s all.”

“And the cross, that’s how it was when you found it?”

Gabe shrugged. “Sure.”

Father Simon picked up the phone and sat back in his chair, flicking through the photos again. Gabe tried to read the expression on the man’s face, but all he could get was a sense that he was worried. Which was not what Gabe wanted to see.

“Is there anything else, Gabriel?”

“I guess, but I didn’t have the tools with me to do any more digging, but—”

“No, no – I meant apart from the gold.”

“Yeah… Yeah, there is.” Gabe stood up, retrieved the square of paper from his pocket and handed
it over. Father Simon unfolded it very carefully, frowning as he did so.

“Parchment … the real deal too, I’d say.”

Gabe leant forward. “Parchment? Cooking paper?”

“No, son, writing paper, or at least writing
material
made from animal skin. This is old. Where did you get it?”

“A person, some guy, gave it to me.” Gabe flicked a glance at Stella. “Today, earlier today.”

“Do you know this person?”

“Not really, I’ve just seen him a couple of times…”

“He beat Gabe up, Father,” Stella cut in. “I found him just after it’d happened.”

“I see…” Father Simon looked back at the piece of paper.

“Do you know what it says, ah, Simon?”

Father Simon nodded. “I do, Gabe, and if they still taught Latin in schools today, you two might have been able to work it out for yourselves:
Quod meum est mei, noli prohibere
… What is mine is mine, do not withhold.” He got up and went to his desk, his back to them as he rummaged in a drawer until he found what he wanted. He turned back with a
magnifying glass in hand, angling the paper towards the window as he examined it.

“What, um… What does that mean?”

Father Simon swivelled round his office chair and sat down. He collected various items out of drawers in his desk, setting them up in front of him, and switched on an LED desk light. “It means exactly what it says, Gabe. It’s a statement, a demand and a threat, all rolled into one neat little sentence.”

Stella got up from the sofa and went to stand next to the priest. After a moment’s hesitation, Gabe followed suit. He watched the priest as he used something that looked exactly like a surgeon’s scalpel to gently scrape a tiny amount of ink from the paper into a glass vial. He then added a few drops of three different colourless liquids, shaking the vial after each addition.

Stella leant closer. “What are you doing, Father?”

“Mixing the sample you saw me scrape off the parchment with isopropyl alcohol, phenolphthalein, and hydrogen peroxide.” Father Simon shook the vial one last time and held it up; the liquid had turned a delicate shade of pink. “As you may know,
what I used to do for a living is now my hobby. You can take the man out of the crime lab, but you can’t take, etc, etc.”

“You were a CSI?” Gabe couldn’t hide his surprise. “How…”

“How did this happen?” Father Simon pointed at his collar. “When you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, Gabe, you can’t help but end up believing in true evil … the devil. I couldn’t, anyway, which means you also have to take on board the
other
side of the equation. I saw the darkest of the dark side, and then I saw the light. You could say.”

“So what’s the test for, Father?”

“Blood, Stella. And it’s positive.”

Gabe froze. The note – this all-in-one statement/demand/threat – was written in blood? What he’d assumed was brown ink was
blood
?

Regular people didn’t get given threatening notes written on pieces of old parchment in blood, or in Latin; definitely not both. At least not normal, sane, regular people. On top of Cecil LeBarron’s murder, this was really creeping him out. He went and sat back down on the sofa and stared out into the garden, not actually looking at anything, just thinking. Thinking,
How could this be happening to me? What did
I
do?
He felt a hand on his shoulder as he kept repeating to himself that he’d found the gold, not stolen it … found the gold, not stolen it … found…

“Gabe, are you OK?”

A sense of déjà vu washed over him, hearing Stella’s voice, just like the day before when she’d had
to scrape him off the street. He clicked back out of his trance and blinked up at her.

“Yeah, I’m fine … just a bit…” he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and saw the concerned look on Father Simon’s face. “It was a shock, you know? The blood thing? That’s all.”

“I’ll get you a glass of water, Gabe.”

As Stella left the room, Father Simon stood up and went over to a cabinet. He got out a bottle of bourbon and a small shot glass, which he put on the table.

“Purely medicinal.” He uncorked the bottle and poured a finger height and handed it to Gabe. “Water’s fine, if all you are is thirsty, but I have found that a shot of Kentucky straight not only greases the wheels and oils the engine, it calms the nerves a whole lot better. Knock it back, son.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Father Simon put the bottle away, watching Gabe drink the small shot of bourbon down in one, screwing up his face as he did so. “An acquired taste, like most of the best things in life. Now, Gabriel –” the Father stood, his arms crossed, looking down at Gabe – “I think you already have
an idea that this situation you find yourself in is serious, and from what I’ve seen, you are correct…”

Stella came back in with a glass of water, which she gave to Gabe before sitting down. “Sorry, have I interrupted?”

“Not a problem, I was just saying that this
is
serious, and if I am to help here, you –” he looked pointedly at Gabe – “have to tell me everything. Every little thing, son.”

For the second time that day Gabe started with how he’d discovered the skeleton and finished outside Cecil LeBarron’s antique store, where he’d found the piece of paper in his hand. Like when he’d told Stella, laying the facts out in a logical order, crazy though they seemed, had a calming effect on him. Nothing made any more sense the second time round, but talking about it to another person, especially someone like this Father Simon, was good. Really good.

“So, what d’you think, Father?”

“I think young Gabe here has inadvertently jabbed a big stick into a wasps’ nest, Stella.” The Father got up and went to the bookshelves lining the wall behind him. “Tell me again what happened
when you found the first piece of gold, would you? I don’t recall you saying if you were standing or sitting or what.”

“I was…” Gabe thought for a second, recreating the scene in his head. “Yeah, I think I was kneeling down … that’s right, I was. And I remember now, I was really hoping that the bracelet was, you know, special … that finding it would make a difference… I wanted it to make things better, be a chance for a new start. At least be the start of a new start, right?”

“If you’d been in a church, it might have been said that you were praying.” Father Simon found the book he was looking for, took it off the shelf and went back to his armchair. “And unfortunately, I have a feeling your prayers may have gotten an unwanted answer.”

In the silence Gabe felt his scalp contract, and he shivered. “What d’you mean?”

“As I was saying to you before: to be able to believe in God, you also have to believe in the devil.” He held out his right hand. “Dexter –” he then held out his left hand – “and sinister. Good and evil, light and dark … the Yin and the Yang, as Confucius would put it. And while my church, and its adherents, has
always tried to walk a righteous path there have been those, more than a few, no point in denying it, who have chosen to go the opposite way.” Father Simon paused.

“I believe you found the last resting place of one such person. A man once of the cloth, as I think the crucifix seems to suggest, buried in unconsecrated ground, along with some shall we say
interesting
earthly belongings … all of which are intact, except for the cross. One has to ask why? What could he, and it, have done to deserve such treatment?”

“This all happened way back, right?”

“It did, Gabe, way back.” Father Simon flicked through the book. “I suppose you could say it all began with the Spanish, and particularly Cortés, who was responsible for asking for Franciscan priests to be sent from Spain to convert the indigenous people to Christianity. The first to arrive, in 1524, were called The Twelve Apostles of Mexico. After Cortés had destroyed the Aztec empire he moved northwards – made the Baja some time around 1530, if my memory serves.

“But it took another two hundred years, give or take, for the Spanish to settle here, in what they
called Alta California; it was sometime in the mid to late 1700s that they set up the first missions.”

“You think that’s when this person I found died and was buried?”

“I have a feeling this man did not die a natural death, Gabe. And if I was able to get his remains into a lab there’s an outside chance I
might
have a better idea how he did meet his end.”

“I wonder who he was.”

“That I don’t know, yet –” Father Simon tapped the book on his lap – “but I’m not just a forensic scientist, I am also something of a forensic historian. Someone like this person may well have left a trail, and if he has, I will find it.

“I’m no expert, but after what you told me about your dreams, the gold pieces could well be Aztec… That does look very much like a ritual knife. But it’s the cross that really interests me. If you look carefully at the picture, there’s a ring at the top so it can be hung from a chain, yes?”

Gabe swiped to the picture he’d taken of the cross and nodded.

“The way you took the shot, you can see there’s also a hole at the bottom. This cross could be, and
most probably was, worn hung upside down…”

“Oh my…” Gabe’s eyes widened as an image flashed in his head.

“Son?” Father Simon looked at Gabe, all the colour drained from his face. “Are you OK?”

“In my dream, just before I woke up … I remember now, the guy with the knife was wearing a cross, and I thought there was something odd about it…” Gabe sat back on the sofa.

“What was it?” asked the Father. “What did you see?”

“I’m sure it was hanging upside down,” Gabe said. “Why would he do that to it?”

“I believe because he worshipped false gods, including the Fallen Angel.”

Gabe sat forward again and rubbed his face. He was hungry, he was confused and more than a bit freaked out. “Sorry, but in my house we’ve never really done church and stuff,” he shrugged. “Not my parents’ thing, I guess … so this all sounds, you know, kind of way out there? I mean, I’ve kicked around some loopy ideas since this all started and just told myself to grow up and shut it with all the Halloween nonsense. Ghosties and ghouls, right?
But you’re telling me all this good and evil and worshipping fallen angels, this is for real? Who is this guy? Some kind of, I don’t know, evil living dead reincarnation?”

Father Simon pursed his lips, stony-faced, and didn’t say anything.

“Father?” Stella sounded scared, which spooked Gabe.

“Look –” Father Simon took a deep breath – “there have been a lot of claimants to the title of The One True Church. I believe it is mine, a belief which I am truly convinced has saved my eternal soul, but over the centuries many hundreds of thousands of people, probably millions, have died because their own beliefs differed from others. Not because they were wrong, just different, one religion’s adherent being another’s infidel. At another time, in another place, that could have happened to me.

“But the truth is that you can’t destroy beliefs that have deep roots; the harder you try the more they cling on. They might appear to fade away, but they will continue as obscure sects and cults. Religious belief is a powerful thing – a weapon or a comfort, depending on whose hands it is in –
and the more I think about this heretic man, with his ancient gold and perverted crucifix, the more I think there were things he knew, things he did, that no man should. That’s why they, whoever they were, killed him.”

“And he’s back?” Gabe looked out into the garden. “You think
I
brought him back?”

“I’d like nothing more than to be proved wrong, but I think it’s possible. The antique store? That was no burglary gone wrong, and if I thought for one minute that it would be any use taking this note down to the station house – getting them to check the blood it’s written in against the store owner’s for a match – I’d run it straight down there right now.”

“But you’re, like, an ex-cop –” Gabe looked surprised – “why
wouldn’t
they listen to you?”

“Because I’m an ex-cop, they’d listen, but I very much doubt they would take what I had to say seriously. Not until it was too late.”

“Too late for what, Father?” There was that nervous edge to Stella’s voice again.

“You think I’m gonna die, don’t you?” Gabe couldn’t believe what he’d just heard himself say,
but he knew it was true. That was what the priest believed.

“I think anyone who has any of the gold in their possession is in grave danger, is what I think, Gabe.”

“But he doesn’t
have
the gold in his possession, Father. It’s in his locker at school, remember?”

“
Quod meum est mei, noli prohibere
… What is mine is mine, do not withhold.” Father Simon pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Remember? Monday, you need to get everything you took from that skeleton and bring it here to me.”

“What’ll you do with it? Why won’t
you
be in just as much trouble as me and Cecil LeBarron?”

“Because I have faith that I can stop this.”

“But what am
I
supposed to do till Monday?”

“I’ll give you something…”