Blind Spot (27 page)

“As a matter of fact, I do.” He fished his cell out of his pocket and flipped it open.

“How about you introduce me and then let me take it from there?” she asked.

“This is my parish priest I’m thinking of tapping. How about
I
ask him the questions and
you
keep slogging through the files?”

Garcia was afraid she was going to insult his pastor, step on some sacred toes. He was probably right. She’d let him make the call. Besides, the pastor was his resource, not hers. She went over to the table and sat down. “Sure.”

“You keep an ear tuned,” he said. “I’ll try the rectory.”

Bernadette watched as he sat down across from her and started punching in a number. She noticed he didn’t have to look it up in his database; he knew it by heart.

He put the phone to his ear. “Scribble any additional questions and shove them under my snout.”

She picked up her pen and clicked nervously while Garcia waited for someone to answer.

“Father Pete? Anthony Garcia.”

Bernadette grinned. When it came to the priest, her boss was
Anthony,
not
Tony
. She dropped the pen and drummed her fingers on the table while listening to Garcia’s precursory pleasantries:

“How’re you doing?…I’m good, thanks…How’s the planning for the fall festival?…Really?…What do you need? Maybe I can scare up some toy badges or balloons…Yeah. Yeah. They say FBI on ’em…No. No pens. Sorry.”

Garcia lost patience with the notes Bernadette repeatedly passed under his nose. He said into the phone: “Father Pete. I’ve got an agent working the case. Bernadette Saint Clare. She’s sitting right here. Got some questions of her own she’d like to run by you. Mind if I put her on?” Bernadette reached across the table for the phone, and Garcia held up his free hand to stop her. “Sure. We can do that. Where you want us to meet you?” Garcia listened to the priest’s answer and laughed. “Maybe we can squeeze in a few frames.”

Bernadette followed Garcia in her truck. He’d wanted her to ride with him in the fleet car he’d driven over from Minneapolis, but she despised the Crown Vic. With its no-frills government interior and dark “pretend we’re not really here” exterior, the Vicky looked like a G-man with tires. Might as well slap lights on the hood and get it over with, she thought.

She had no trouble keeping up as Garcia inched through downtown St. Paul’s stop-and-go traffic. They turned onto Rice Street and took it north for less than two miles, ending up in a working-class neighborhood called the North End.

She was a little surprised when they pulled up in front of a Catholic-school gymnasium, but she didn’t say anything while she followed Garcia into the blocky building. As they jogged down the stairs to the basement, she heard the distinctive clatter of balls knocking down pins. Garcia pushed the stairwell door open, and the two of them stepped into a tiny bowling alley.

She unzipped her jacket and ran her eyes around the place, a dimly lit rectangle with a low ceiling and wood-paneled walls. She counted eight lanes, half of them being used by gray-haired league bowlers. A snack bar with an abbreviated menu—pizza, hot dogs, nachos, candy bars, beer, and pop—was tucked into one back corner. Parked on stools in front of the bar were two old men, each nursing a cup of coffee. In the other back corner—the one closest to the door—was an unmanned counter with an old-fashioned cash register on top of it and shelves filled with bowling shoes behind it. The wood floors and countertops were spotless, but the place nevertheless smelled like burned cheese and the insides of old shoes.

Bernadette felt a hand on her shoulder and pivoted around to face a man dressed in black slacks, a black short-sleeved shirt with a white Roman collar, and bowling shoes. Garcia’s contact.

“Agent Saint Clare?” The priest was a skinny sixty-something guy who stood even shorter than Bernadette. A halo of white hair hovered around his pink, damp face. Behind his wire-rimmed bifocals were milky eyes that looked overdue for cataract surgery.

He extended his bony hand, and she took it in her gloved one. “Thank you for taking the time, Father.”

The priest released her hand and went over to her boss. The smaller man threw his arms around Garcia’s shoulders. Father Pete looked like a kid hugging his dad and sounded like a grandfather chastising his neglectful grandson. “How are you, Anthony? Why haven’t you come by to see me? I haven’t seen you in church for a month.”

“Sorry,” said Garcia, his face flushing. “Busy.”

Father Pete released Garcia and pointed to a lone dining table planted between the snack bar and the lanes. “I ordered a pizza and some pops for us.”

Bernadette and Garcia stepped next to the table, a square of Formica surrounded by four metal folding chairs. They waited until Father Pete sat down. Garcia took a seat to the priest’s right, and Bernadette sat to the clergyman’s left. A few yards away, the sounds of the alley continued: Balls hitting the lanes and rolling. Pins tumbling. Bowlers hollering. The racket of pins being reset.

“How’s your game?” asked Bernadette, peeling off her gloves and stuffing them in her jacket pockets.

“Not bad,” said Father Pete, a grin turning up his thin lips. “I’ve been consistently scoring two hundred plus.”

“I could use some lessons,” said Garcia, unbuttoning his trench coat.

“How did you happen to end up with a bowling alley under your school gym?” asked Bernadette.

“Fifty years ago, we had a priest who liked to bowl,” said the priest. “The schoolchildren love it. We’ve got a phys-ed unit on bowling for the junior high.”

A busty, freckled waitress materialized next to the table with a greasy circle of cheese in her hands. She set the pizza down in the middle of the square. “Sprite okay, Fadder?”

“Wonderful, Elizabeth,” said the priest. The young woman turned and went back to the bar. “And napkins and plates, please,” he said after her.

Elizabeth returned with three cans of pop and a stack of napkins, but forgot the plates.

Bernadette and Garcia reached for pizza, but sheepishly pulled their hands away when the priest said: “Let us offer thanks.”

All three made the sign of the cross and bowed their heads, but the two agents let the priest say the prayer. “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“Amen,” echoed both agents, again crossing themselves.

“Let’s eat,” said Father Pete. He picked up a wedge of pizza, folded it in half, and tucked it into his mouth.

Bernadette eyed the snack-bar clock—an oversized one that probably came from the school gym. She had to move this along. She took a sip of Sprite, set down the can, and charged ahead. “From listening to Tony’s end—Anthony’s end—of the phone conversation, sounds like you only know this Father Quaid from reputation. You never sat down and had a conversation with him.”

Father Pete chewed and swallowed. “We never talked, but I did catch his show twice. First time, as a visitor to his church. I remember it vividly. I happened to be in street clothes, so I doubt he knew another priest was in attendance. Had he known, he might have toned it down.”

Garcia: “Toned it down?”

The priest nodded and reached for another slice of pizza. “The homily. I have to give him credit for brevity. Short and to the point. No gray in his message. The Ten Commandments are not a suggestion. Break the rules and the punishment should fit the crime. The Bible is the last word. ‘If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe…I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings.’ And so forth.”

Garcia and Bernadette looked across the table at each other. “Sounds familiar,” said Bernadette.

Father Pete chomped off the point of his pizza slice, took a sip of pop, and continued. “Then he repeated the official catechism of the church: the death penalty is justified under certain narrow circumstances—if it is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against an unjust aggressor—but those circumstances are rare or nonexistent, since the state has ways to deal with criminals.”

Garcia: “I take it he didn’t stop there.”

The priest shook his head. “Then he laid out
the facts
to his congregation: modern society has created animals who can be stopped one way and one way only, and that is through the use of the death penalty.”

Bernadette: “I assume church leadership didn’t like that part of his homily.”

“Not at all. He even earned himself a nasty little nickname.” Father Pete took another bite of pizza, chewed, and swallowed. “Death Penalty Padre.”

“Nice,” said Bernadette.

“To their credit, the bishops tried working with him,” said the priest, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “They made him e-mail his homilies to them before he delivered them, so they could edit if necessary. After a few weeks of that, they were under the assumption Quaid was back on track. They discovered he’d been sending them bogus sermons. He was still delivering his brimstone blather from the pulpit.”

“Stubborn,” said Garcia.

“Angry,” said Father Pete. “But what really got his fanny in hot water was his lobbying.”

Bernadette: “Lobbying?”

“Up on the Hill. That’s where I suffered through his routine again, during a legislative hearing.”

Garcia picked up a wedge of pizza and set it down on a napkin. “What was the hearing about?”

Father Pete took a drink of pop. “Every few years, one legislator or another tries to get the death penalty reinstated in Minnesota. An exercise in futility, of course. It will never happen here.”

Bernadette: “Father Quaid was up there speaking?”

“In favor of the measure,” said the priest.

Garcia: “And you were sitting on the opposite side of the room.”

“With the archbishop himself.”

Bernadette’s brows went up. “What was the gist of Father Quaid’s testimony?”

“If I had to characterize it…” The priest took another drink, set down the can, and covered his mouth for a moment while he stifled a burp. “I would describe his presentation as heavy on the Old Testament, just like his homilies.”

Bernadette: “Back up for a minute. I don’t get it. The Bible is the Bible is the Bible. Right? Old Testament, New Testament—isn’t the message the same regarding the death penalty?”

Garcia jumped in. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Father Pete…”

“I always do, son.”

“One school of thought says capital punishment is allowed in the Old Testament but not in the New Testament. There’s another camp that says it’s allowed in both books.”

“Not
allowed,
” said the priest. “
Mandated.
Mandated in both books. That’s the position Damian Quaid took, running counter to the position of his own church. He was, in a word, a heretic.”

Bernadette: “Did Father Quaid nominate any candidates for death row? Did he name any names? Get personal in any way?”

“I know he had some sort of tragedy in his life that inspired this quest of his, but I was late for the hearing and only caught the second half of his act—the part where he waves the Good Book around and rants about biblical justice.” Father Pete tipped back his Sprite and emptied it. He set it down, but kept the can between his hands as he continued. “And, by the way, it isn’t
Father
Quaid. Not any longer.”