it comes down to, I think, is that those guys generally are pretty serious about an obligation like this. If a pastor was pretty sure things would be taken care of one way or another, then if it would be a serious inconvenience for him to show up, he might skip it.” She thought for a moment. “Wait a minute … did you say ‘missing’ priest?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Who says?”
“Who says what?”
“That he’s missing.” Pat mentally computed the elapsed time. “You said it was Friday when he was last seen in his parish?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Friday to Saturday, twenty-four hours. Saturday to Sunday, forty-eight hours. It won’t be seventy-two hours until sometime today. If memory serves, the cops don’t begin looking for someone as ‘missing’ until seventy-two hours have gone by. If the cops aren’t looking for him, why should you be?”
“But the cops
“How come?”
“Ever hear of Eric Dunstable?”
Lennon whistled softly.
“He’s the one,” Pringle explained, “who got the cops going on it.”
“Eric Dunstable! Wait a sec: What parish are we talking about?”
“St. Waldo of the Hills, Bloomfield Hills.”
Pat’s chuckle was low and throaty. “St. Waldo of the Wheels. This thing is beginning to come together.”
“The Wheels? Does somebody call it Waldo of the Wheels?”
“I’ve heard it called that now and again. Couldn’t tell you exactly why. I suppose it’s because the people who live out there are some of the better-known wheelers and dealers in this territory-like Eric Dunstable. Or maybe because they’re auto execs who put the world on wheels-like Eric Dunstable. That makes sense … I can easily imagine Dunstable getting the Bloomfield cops to bend the rules.”
“Not just the Bloomfield Hills police.”
“Huh?”
“The Detroit cops too.”
“Detroit? Just because he said he was going to Detroit?”
“That’s not all,” Pringle added. “Not just Detroit Missing Persons; Homicide is investigating too.”
“Homicide! My God! That’s overkill.” Lennon giggled. “Please forgive; I didn’t intend the pun.”
“That’s the part that’s got me worried.” And indeed, Pringle’s face was clouded.
“What’s got you worried?” Pat asked supportively.
“Homicide. The fact that Detroit Homicide is in on this. It scares me. I haven’t worked on a story that involved homicide since …” She did not need to elaborate.
Pat slid her chair closer and touched Pringle’s arm. “Don’t give it a thought. There aren’t that many people with enough clout to get two major police departments involved in a missing persons search-a good twenty-four hours early at that. But if anybody could pull it off, Eric Dunstable certainly qualifies. I can just see him calling in some of his markers from Mayor Cobb. Don’t worry: Homicide’s there just for show. Just to flaunt Dunstable’s belief that he’s got pull and the balls to use it.”
Pringle smiled. “You think so?”
“Sure. You’re gonna have a ball with this story-oops, another involuntary pun.” She shook her headand grimaced. “I’ve got to cut this out before I start work today.
“But you’ll see: You’ll be fine. Go find the missing priest.” She grinned. “By the time you get done, you’ll probably be able to give me a refresher course in Catholicism.”
6
It was late Monday afternoon and Lieutenant Alonzo Tully had not gotten his wish.
Periodically during the day he had imagined the elusive Father Keating simply showing up at St. Waldo’s. Those occupying the parish buildings-housekeeper, secretary, janitor, religious education coordinator, teachers and the like-had been forcefully instructed to call either the Bloomfield Hills or Detroit police should anyone spot the priest.
At no point in this so-far brief search had Tully given a damn where Keating had been or what he’d done. As long as the priest stepped forth or somebody located him, all would be well that ended.
Those members of Tully’s squad whom he’d called in yesterday afternoon had greeted their new assignment with a variety of reactions. As for Tully’s two closest collaborators, Sergeants Angie Moore and Phil Mangiapane, they were poles apart.
Moore greeted the task in much the same spirit as her leader. To both her and Tully, this was a necessary evil brought on by arich bastard who would settle for nothing less than what he demanded-and by the mayor, a political animal who would exchange his consent for future favors.
Mangiapane, a very practicing Catholic, never could get enough of his religion and its mysteries. And one of those great mysteries, stemming from the sergeant’s youth, involved priests-priests and nuns. As a boy, young Philip had wondered: Are they human? Do nuns have legs? Hair? Do any of them ever go to the bathroom?
Fortunately, these sorts of questions seldom concerned him any longer. Still, mysteries did abound. The power that priests had to absolve, to consecrate, to bury, to marry, all these had to be taken on faith-another mystery. Mangiapane did not at all mind taking time from Homicide-even though it was his first love-to search for a lost priest and, along the way, to learn more about these still-mysterious creatures.
Partly to free himself to supervise the investigation as well as to follow his own instincts and leads, pardy because they were closest to him on the squad, and pardy because they differed in their attitude toward this case, Tully had appointed Moore and Mangiapane coordinators. They now had brought him the results of all efforts to date. To simplify, they had consolidated and summarized the various reports.
“Both our guys and the Bloomfield people have been checking with all the relatives and friends we can find,” Moore reported.
“And?” Tully prompted.
“For one thing, there aren’t many relatives. Parents, dead. No brothers or sisters. Some distant cousins, and that’s about it. And with a couple of them, we had to explain who John Keating was, and then they remembered he was a relative. Those were mostly out-of-towners. The few living in this area at least knew they had a priest relative, but we couldn’t find any who saw him on anywhere near a regular basis. We haven’t uncovered a relative who would be a reasonable lead. Deadendsville.”
“Zoo” — nearly everyone used the nickname from the abbreviated Alonzo-“the thing of it is that priests don’t usually end up having many relatives,” Mangiapane said. “Especially if they don’t have brothers or sisters. They don’t get married, so they got no in-laws. So it’s not strange that we come up dry.”
“Okay, Manj.” Tully may not have known much about any of the organized religions, but he was aware that priests had no in-laws unless they had married brothers or sisters, and so they’d have fewer relatives than most. But experience taught that it did not pay to come down too hard on Mangiapane. Criticism tended to inhibit him. And that was not productive.
“There are lots of friends, though, or at least acquaintances,” Mangiapane continued. “Funny thing, they’re mostly among the elite-the silk stocking crowd.”
“Why would that be funny, Manj? That’s the neighborhood he operates in, isn’t it-Bloomfield Hills? Not too many panhandlers out there.”
“Yeah,” Mangiapane responded, “but Keating wasn’t always out there.”
“Oh?”
“We went over his assignments with the secretary. He’s been all over the place in a little more than twenty years. Downtown, the core city-before it was ‘the core city’-all around the town, some of the suburbs. But he’s been in Bloomfield Hills for the past almost ten years.
“The thing is, we can’t come up with anyone who could be described as a friend, especially a close friend,
