The Angel (The Original Sinners 2)

“Sure. Anything.”

“Can you see if a woman named Elizabeth Stearns from New Hampshire has any kind of criminal record?”

“Google won’t help much with that. Let me call my NYPD friend. He can look it up.”

Suzanne hung up and waited. But she didn’t have to wait long.

“So?” she said when she answered.

“Arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. Father fell to his death down several flights of stairs. He was notoriously healthy and virile for an old geezer, so no one believed that he’d just fallen.”

“No conviction?”

“Nope. No witnesses. Spotty evidence. The only really incriminating thing Elizabeth Stearns did the day after Daddy’s death was head straight for Wakefield to talk to her priest-brother.”

“The cops thought she confessed the crime to him.”

“They did. Tried to get him to talk. Wouldn’t say a word even though the sister’s not Catholic. Apparently only baptized Catholics are supposed to go to confession so they leaned on him pretty heavily to spill it. Even the diocese wanted him to spill it. He refused on theological grounds.”

“And on the grounds of covering his sister’s ass. Knowing what her bastard of a father did to her, I don’t blame him at all.”

Patrick exhaled and the phone buzzed in her ear from the force of his breath. She smiled. Patrick…what would she do without him?

“So you’re done, right? This is done? You’re coming home now, right? Right?”

Suzanne grinned into the dark.

“Got one more thing to do first.”

“Then you’re coming home, right?”

“Right. But don’t wait up. This might take a while.”

“I’ll wait up.”

The smile lingered on Suzanne’s face long after she’d hung up. At about ten o’clock she arrived in Wakefield and Sacred Heart. A few lights still burned in the church and set the stained-glass windows subtly glowing. How beautiful the church looked by night…how peaceful, how sacred. She still didn’t really believe in God. Nothing would ever convince her that some man in the sky was running the show down here on Earth. But for once she started to believe a little in one of His believers.

She entered the church and found it empty. But surely Søren would return before long to turn off the lights and lock up. Søren… She realized all of a sudden that he’d become Søren again in her mind. But although she knew his name, knew his secrets, she didn’t feel quite worthy to call him by the name only his most trusted intimates knew him by.

“Father Stearns…” she whispered aloud as she stared at the altar at the front of the church. She’d never call him Søren to his face or in her heart and mind again. Glancing around, Suzanne saw a small staircase that led to the choir loft. She climbed the stairs and stood at the edge of the balcony area and surveyed the entire sanctuary.

Sanctuary. In olden times she knew that criminals and runaways would seek real sanctuary inside the walls of churches. The church was holy ground, sanctified, and the authorities treated it as a place of real power not to be meddled with. For the first time since childhood, Suzanne felt safe in a church and safe with a priest. She used to think the only cure for the ailments of the Catholic Church was wholesale destruction. It gave her pleasure to quote Denis Diderot’s words, “Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” She’d met both a king and priest in her investigation and had to admit that while the world might not be better off with them in it, it certainly was more interesting.

Below her she heard the door open and Father Stearns strode down the center aisle toward the altar. She watched him a moment and smiled as he crossed himself, gave a quick, elegant bow next to a pew and sat down to pray. In his hands he held rosary beads, and she had to wonder for what special intention he prayed. She started to call out a greeting to him, but she heard the door below her open again.

“Søren!” A man’s angry voice echoed throughout the sanctuary. Suzanne took a step back from the edge of the railing and hid herself in the shadows. Father Stearns stood up and turned around.

“Griffin…how nice to see you in church.”

Suzanne’s inhaled in shock. She couldn’t see the man’s face, but from his muscular build and the photos that she’d seen, she recognized Griffin Fiske, the son of the chair of the New York Stock Exchange.

What the hell…

“None of that,” Griffin said, his voice flush with fury. “Don’t pull any of the bullshit mind-fuck stuff on me. You know why I’m here.”

“I don’t actually.” Father Stearns stood in the center of the aisle and gave Griffin a placid smile. “But tell me. We can discuss whatever you like.”

“Let’s discuss how my love life is none of your f**king business. Let’s discuss what an arrogant, pretentious ass**le you are for thinking you can tell me or anyone who they can or cannot be with.”

“Eleanor is very fond of you, Griffin. I’ve yet to discern why.”

Griffin took a menacing step forward.

“Maybe because unlike you, I don’t try to control her every move.”

“Yes, Eleanor is utterly oppressed, isn’t she?” Father Stearns’s voice dripped with mockery. “Eleanor acts like a child because she’s full of childlike joy. You simply are a child, Griffin. A spoiled child who has never had a real relationship in his life. I’ve watched you use people up and discard them over and over again. If you think for one moment I would allow you to use up and discard someone I love—”