open and led into bare rooms. Two or three were closed. Biehn took a deep breath to calm his pounding heart. He knocked on the first door.
No answer.
He moved down and knocked on the second closed door. It opened, and a startled man appeared. He was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, holding a book the title of which Biehn could not see.
“Yes, who—?” the man said gently. “You know, the rectory is off-limits.”
Biehn nodded apologetically. “I’m sorry. I’m looking for Father Frank. He’s expecting me.”
The man looked down the hall at the last closed door. “Are you sure he didn’t say to meet him in the chapel? This is the priests’ private residence.”
The detective stepped back as though shocked. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,” he feigned. “I just thought it would be here. I’ll go back and wait there.”
The priest nodded, said good evening, and closed his door. Biehn walked back toward the stairs for a few steps in case the priest was listening. After a few minutes, he padded quietly back up the hall toward the door the priest had glanced at. He knocked very gently.
No answer.
He knocked a little louder. The door opened, and
Father Frank appeared. Biehn didn’t know him well, but he’d picked his son up from church functions often enough to recognize the priest.
Father Frank looked as puzzled as the other priest had. “Yes, what is it?” he asked.
Biehn punched him in the throat.
Father Frank didn’t know what had happened. One minute he was staring at a stranger on the rectory floor; the next he had smashed into the back wall of his cell, having tripped backward over his narrow bed. His throat throbbed, and he was coughing and gagging uncontrollably. Something hit him in the nose, and his eyes began to water.
By the time he had blinked his vision clear, he was lying facedown on the floor. A hand was in his hair, pushing his face into the tile floor, and there was a heavy, sharp pressure on his back. He didn’t know where his own hands were.
“Listen,” said a voice that might have belonged to the devil himself. “Listen and don’t make a sound. You are not to make a single sound or I’ll kill you. Painfully. Nod if you understand.”
To nod, Frank had to drag his face up and down on the tiles, but he did it.
“I’m going to sit you up. You are going to keep your mouth shut or I’ll ram your own dick down your throat. Nod again.”
Frank did so. He was utterly terrified.
Strong hands grabbed his shoulders and pulled him up to a sitting position, his back resting against his bed. He realized that his hands were fettered behind his back with something metal. Handcuffs.
The man who had done this to him crouched in front of him, sitting on Frank’s straightened legs. He studied Frank for a minute calmly. It was almost as though he was giving Frank a moment to calm down himself.
The terror didn’t go away. He knew, in the way of all predators, when a bigger and stronger predator had caught him in its grip. But his fear slid into the background for a moment as other survival instincts kicked in: cunning, acquiescence, obedience. Anything that might remove him from the grip of this obviously ruthless man.
As his higher functions took over from his reptile brain, Frank realized that he recognized this man. He wasn’t sure from where, but he’d seen the face before. He was a parishioner. A parent. A father.
And the minute he realized that his captor was a father, Father Frank’s terror rushed back to the forefront of his brain, and all the pleasures he had enjoyed, all the moments of thrilling power and sexual release and sweet, sweet fulfillment of desire — all of them seemed ephemeral compared to the cost that was surely about to be rendered.
The intruder read his face and nodded as though Frank had said something. “I’m Aaron Biehn’s father.”
And there it was, like a shirt ripped off his body, revealing the ugly, naked body beneath; like a story told so often it seems true suddenly revealed to be a lie by the simplest honest statement. Like an object of beauty suddenly, obviously discovered to be a cheap and ugly bauble.
The truth of himself flowed into Frank’s veins like a poison finding its home.
Then the man, the father of Aaron Biehn, was standing on his ankle. The pain turned him back to the world outside.
“Aaron tried to kill himself tonight,” the father said. Frank started to speak, but remembered his vow.
“Do it quietly,” the father said. He could read
Frank’s thoughts through his body language.
Frank spoke. “Tried to kill himself?”
“Don’t you dare ask why,” Don Biehn hissed.
“You know why. Because of what you did to him. Because you… violated him.” He slapped Frank. Hard. For no purpose other than because the rage in him needed some expression more than words.
Don watched the priest’s eyes roll back in his head. If he were an iota less enraged, he’d have enjoyed it. But he was too far gone, too bound inside his anger, to feel anything. However, he waited until the rapist’s head cleared.
“He tried to tell me about it. I didn’t know what he was talking about. He gave up.” Don spoke in simple declarative sentences. He did not feel able to do more. He felt focused. Lucid. His thoughts demanded declaratives the way a knife required a sharp edge.
“I read his journal afterward. It told me everything.” He pressed his foot down on Frank’s ankle again. The priest sobbed.
“Father Frank,” Don said in a voice dripping with irony. “I am the father here, Frank.” He crouched down and grabbed Frank’s hair, forcing him to look directly into Don’s eyes. They burned too brightly for Frank to bear them.
“You can’t have any idea what that word really means,” Don said, his voice half a whisper, half a sob. “Father. Father is a job, Frank. Father is a duty. Do you know what that duty is?”
“Please,” Frank pleaded quietly.
“It was my job to protect that boy, Frank. To. Keep. Him. From. Harm.” He jerked Frank’s head up and down with each syllable. “But I didn’t do that, did I? I guess I drove him right up to harm’s front door. And you. You fucking raped him.”
Frank felt hands clasp his throat. All his air went away as his windpipe closed. He struggled, but the man was straddling him, pinning him. Terrifying urgency built up in his chest; he needed to breathe, breathe, but he couldn’t. He thrashed, but didn’t really thrash because he couldn’t. He was going to die.
Then the man let go of his throat and he could breathe again. He gasped, coughed, and sucked in oxygen. Again, Don waited until the priest could focus.
“That’s what he said it was like,” he explained.
“He said it was like suffocating. Like being choked. Strangled. Every time you—” He couldn’t say it this time.
Frank was crying now. “I’m sor—”
Biehn slapped him again, hard enough to draw blood from his lip. “Don’t apologize. There’s no meaning in it. There’s no value in it. There are two things you’re going to do that have value, though.”
Biehn reached into his pocket and pulled out a notepad and a pen. “You’re going to give me the names of other children you’ve destroyed. And you’re going to tell me what other monsters there are in this place so I can kill them, too.”
Pain. Pain in his testicles. He tried to scream but Biehn was covering his mouth, muffling the sound of agony. Don had stabbed the pen into his groin as hard as he could.
“We aren’t negotiating,” Biehn said firmly. He pulled the pen out of the priest’s groin and wiped it on the
