Step on a Crack (Michael Bennett 1)

Jack looked down at an elderly priest. Candlelight flickered in the dark pool of blood beneath his head. Shit.

Little John almost ran into him.

“No one in the gift shop,” he said. He looked down at the slain cleric and his still, saucer-sized eyes.

“Holy shit!” he said.

Jack crouched down on his heels next to the body and stared at the priest’s dead face. “Look what you made me do,” he said angrily.

Little John holstered his gun.

“What are we going to do now?” he asked.

At least the boys had his back, Jack thought, looking down at the innocent he’d just murdered. He had told them that killing might be a possibility, and still they’d all agreed.

At least he’d have company in hell.

“We use it,” he said. “Didn’t want to do this the hard way—but it’s looking like we don’t have a choice anymore.”

“Use it?” Little John said, looking down at the dead priest. “How?”

“Grab the good father’s arms and legs,” Jack said. “I’m tired of all this waiting anyway. Time to speed up the clock with a little pressure. It’s hardball time.”

Chapter 59

IT WAS JUST past nine when I arrived at the police do not cross barricade of the command center. Before I was tempted to construe that message as a standing order for me to return home to my family, I cut the Chevy’s engine and opened the door.

I shook my head at the ongoing life-and-death siege as I threaded my way through the growing media encampment, then was waved through each of three checkpoints.

Reflected in the graphlike black glass of the modern office building neighboring to the north, the spire of the cathedral looked like a stock that had spiked and was now plummeting. A couple of reporters were doing stand-ups for feeds into their stations. When there was news, the print reporters typed into their laptops, the TV folks did stand-ups, and the radio people filed—very loudly—over their phones.

I had just turned away from the media folks and their bullshit when I caught the movement of the cathedral doors across Fifth. The doors were opening again!

At first it seemed as if the figure that flew from the arched shadow was another person who had been released. When I noted how fast the black-suited man was moving, my pulse quickened. I thought maybe somebody was escaping.

Then I saw the body go facedown on the stone stairs without any attempt at breaking its fall, and I knew something was very wrong.

I didn’t allow myself to think too much as I skimmed the bumper of the dump-truck barricade and crossed the avenue at a run.

It was only as I was coming up the cathedral steps and kneeling beside the fallen figure when it occurred to me, coldly, that I wasn’t wearing my Kevlar vest.

The fallen body had plowed through a section of the street shrine that had been left for Caroline Hopkins the day before. The upended votive candles now looked more like tossed beer bottles than solemn offerings. A bouquet of wilted roses lay just beyond the downed man’s outstretched hand, as if he’d dropped it in his fall.

I couldn’t get a pulse out of him. A needle of ice spiked my heart when I turned the body over to perform CPR.

My eyes went from the priest’s white collar to the hole in his temple to his open, lifeless eyes.

I closed my own eyes and covered my face with one hand for a second. Then I turned and glared at the already closed bronze doors.

They’d murdered a priest!

ESU lieutenant Reno was at my side. “Mother of God,” he said quietly, his stone face faltering. “Now they’re murderers.”

“Let’s get him out of here, Steve,” I said.

Reno got the man’s legs, and I got his hands. The priest’s hands were soft and small, like a child’s. He hardly weighed anything. His scapular, hanging down from his lolling head, scraped the asphalt as we ran with the corpse to the police lines.

“How come all this job is anymore is pulling out bodies, Mike?” Reno said sadly as we rushed past the barricade.