Reilly made his eyes lazy and went slack-jawed.
“Absolutely.”
“Kevin, stop it. The only person in the station that does a worse impression of Rocky Balboa is Ernie.”
Gomez overheard and responded.
“Ay, Adriana!”
“Nice. Can we go, please?”
The other eight members of the UJ alibied out. Five of them were at the Iron Wall all night, according to the bartender. Two were at work, and the last was playing Black Ops with her cousins.
It all pointed toward Samuel being their man. They just had to find him. No one who looked at the sketch had seen him since he disappeared the previous March. The APB was put out, along with the sketch, but optimism waned as the wee hours of the morning ticked away. They didn’t even have a last name for the guy.
It had been an extremely long night.
THE BASTARD WITH THE TAMBOURINE
Sunday
1. The Condo
Ugh…Sunday!
…was the second thing to go through Lynch’s head as his eyes sprang open. The first was the earth-shattering sound of church bells. It was 10:00 in the morning, less than 5 hours after his face hit the pillow. As far as he knew, he didn’t have to be anywhere for a few hours, but the odor of freshly brewed coffee and the pleasant shine of the sun through his bedroom window made him feel obligated to get up. He rolled over and stared at the ceiling for a minute as he worked his way into total consciousness. He became aware of a Fleetwood Mac song wafting softly elsewhere in his condo, mixed with the faint clickety-clack of a computer keyboard. Julie was working.
Maybe she got bagels.
…got him to sit up.
Maybe she’s working naked again.
…got him on his feet.
Donned in his standard t-shirt and boxer-briefs, he walked to his living room. Julie was on the couch with her laptop set up on the coffee table. No nudity.
They’d been together for two and a half years. His place was her place now and had been since the previous summer. They’d discussed marriage a time or two, but, for many reasons, neither of them was ready, at least not yet. She was a food critic for Philly Neighbor Magazine and had a weekly spot on Fox 13.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning, sunshine. Sorry I’m not naked. Did I wake you?”
“The Lutherans woke me.”
He kissed her.
“I got bagels.”
“I knew it! From Anna Maria’s?”
“From Anna Maria’s.”
He kissed her again.
“You rock Ms. Calbraith.”
“I know.”
The day was kicking off nicely. Lynch went to the kitchen and got the fixins’ out for his favorite Sunday breakfast. Julie talked and typed.
“I didn’t hear you come in last night.”
“This morning.”
“Ouch. What happened?”
“Do you know who I mean if I say, ‘Bishop Ryan’?”
“I do.”
“Got killed last night.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope.”
Julie reached for the newspaper. She had brought it in but hadn’t taken it out of the plastic yet. She saw Ryan’s photo on the front page before the paper was fully unfurled.
“There aren’t any pictures of the crime scene.”
“Yeah. We actually got in front of the media on this one. I’m sure the feeding frenzy has started by now.”
Lynch didn’t count the woman he loved among the Cyclopes who wrote for the local papers, and she knew it. She’d gotten used to sideways comments about her fellow journalists, and generally let them slide.
“When I got up, I saw you silenced the ringer on the land line. Now I get it.”
Bagel toasting was underway. The kitchen was little more than a sectioned-off corner of the living room, so he didn’t have to shout back.
“Clark will want me to make a public statement later today I’m guessing.”
She put the paper down and resumed typing.
“You’re the lead, then?”
“Oh, I’m sure the Staties or the Feds will take it.”
She glanced back at the article.
“Your name isn’t in here anywhere.”
“It will be.”
“I’m surprised Reilly didn’t lunge for it.”
Julie hadn’t met anyone at the station apart from Ernie, but Lynch kept her up to speed. One of her favorite things about their relationship was the pulp-filled pillow talk.
“He wasn’t around. Ernie and I didn’t even know what we were getting into until we got to the Marriot.”
“The Marriot…they’ve got good tilapia there.”
“Really? Cool. Anyway, Reilly wound up with his hands full later on.”
Lynch told Julie about what happened at the barn. By the time he was finished, his bagel was toasted, schmeared, plated, and on its way to the couch.
“The Unjudged? That sounds familiar to me.”
“Familiar? How? Are they well-known in restaurant circles?”
She ignored him.
“Where the hell have I heard of them? Here…proofread this.”
Julie turned her laptop to face Lynch. She got up and went for the stairs. Their place was a two-story condo. The second floor was more of a loft than a story, but it was big enough for a desk, a Bow-Flex, and small filing cabinet. The filing cabinet was Julie’s and contained every issue of Philly Neighbor magazine since its inception in 2002. Lynch started to give Julie’s article on restaurants with vegan options a read when the inevitable happened. Five hours ago, he’d draped his jacket across the nearby love seat. The inside breast pocket started to vibrate.
“Here we go.”
He dumped out his phone and answered it.
“Hi Chief…Like a baby. What’s up? Seriously? Why? I suppose it doesn’t matter that I…Didn’t think so…I’ll be there in a half an hour.”
He hung up and spun his phone like a Frisbee across the coffee table.
“Hey babe. I’m gonna shower. Gotta get to City Hall. The Staties and Feds are bailing. Looks like I’m the lead after all.”
Julie was digging through the filing cabinet and replied without looking up. She was nothing, if not focused, when she was on task.
“Okay, hon’. Enjoy.”
She was still digging when he left.
2. The Rectory
Leo Pascucci’s meeting with the other parish priests had dispersed the previous evening, not long after the unexpected knock on the rectory’s front door. With a head full of unprocessed thoughts, the good priest went to his room. His next cognitive sensation was sitting at his desk
