Authors: Christopher Valen
“Certainly not. I feel the priesthood is a special calling. I was very fortunate to be chosen to proclaim the gospel of salvation.”
He spoke without conviction, like he had merely committed the words to memory.
“I think my being a detective is a calling of sorts, too,” Santana said.
“Well, if I may disagree, being a detective is quite different than being a priest.”
“Really?”
Hidalgo nodded his head vigorously.
“We both deal with death, Father. And people confess all sorts of terrible things to me. Just like they confess terrible things to you.”
Hidalgo chewed on his bottom lip and gave it some thought before replying.
The air held a breath of ammonia. A grandfather clock on the opposite wall ticked another second off eternity.
“I was given unique powers at ordination to administer the sacraments and to reconcile a sinful people with their God, Detective Santana. I take that very seriously.”
“I’m sure you do. And my badge and my gun give me unique powers. Even the power of life and death. Believe me, I take that very seriously as well.”
Dark eyes focused inward, Hidalgo seemed at a loss for words.
“Tell me what you knew about Julio Pérez,” Santana said.
Hidalgo gazed at Santana again and cleared his throat. “He was one of the founders of this parish. Served as an usher for more than twenty years. There is a story that the parish’s first Mass was held in a renovated bingo parlor. The only people in attendance were Julio Pérez, his wife and young daughter and the priest. The collection that day amounted to seventy-five cents.”
He smiled a little at the memory.
“How about Rubén Córdova?”
“He attended church infrequently, so I didn’t know him well.”
The scornful tone of Hidalgo’s voice suggested that perhaps if Córdova had attended church regularly he might be alive now and not the prime suspect in a double murder.
“You believe Córdova killed Julio Pérez?”
“It is difficult to believe anyone could take the life of another.”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Córdova’s innocence, Santana thought.
“What can you tell me about Angelina Torres?”
“A caring person,” Hidalgo said. “Willing to give of her time. She’s helped many of the Mexican immigrants.”
“Have a lot of Mexican immigrants in the church?”
“More all the time.”
“Most of them illegal?”
Hidalgo hesitated. “Many are, yes.”
“How about you?”
His complexion darkened. “My parents came here legally, Detective.”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“What I learned as a child, I’ve mostly forgotten.”
“Might be helpful with all the immigrants in your congregation.”
His posture appeared to stiffen. “There are those in the church who are bilingual. But English is the language of this country. The country Mexicans chose to come to. They should learn to speak it. I certainly did.”
Hidalgo apparently thought his heritage was a disease from which he had fortunately recovered.
Santana took out his notebook and flipped a few pages until he found what he was looking for.
“When you and Angelina Torres came to my office the day after Rafael Mendoza’s death, you told me you didn’t know him very well. Yet, according to Angelina Torres, Mendoza got work visas for many of the Mexican immigrants your church helped support.”
Hidalgo’s white complexion burned red. His dark eyes darted back and forth, apparently searching for a response that could explain the discrepancy.
“Just because we worked with many of the same people, doesn’t mean that I knew him well. You must’ve misunderstood what I said, Detective Santana.”
“I don’t think so. I have your exact words written here.”
“Perhaps, then, you misunderstood what I meant.”
“Perhaps,” Santana said.
He flipped a few pages until he found a clean sheet in his notebook. Took out a pen. Looked at Hidalgo again. “How do you know the archbishop?”
Hidalgo’s eyes brightened in the gray of the room. “After I graduated from the University of St. Thomas, I entered the St. Paul Seminary and was ordained. I then went to divinity school at the Catholic University of America. Father Scanlon was teaching there.”
“Then you’ve known him for some time.”
“Yes.”
“Think he’ll make a good archbishop?”
Hidalgo’s lips tightened. “Of course.”
Santana wandered over to an end table, picked up a framed 5 x 7 photo. Hidalgo was standing next to Scanlon in front of a log cabin. The color of the leaves and their heavy jackets indicated the picture had been taken sometime in late fall. Hidalgo’s dark hair was longer than he wore it now, and it curled over his forehead in the same way Christopher Reeve’s did in the Superman movies. He had his right arm around Scanlon’s shoulder and a cast on his left arm. Santana could see that the cast had quite a few signatures written on it though he couldn’t make out any of the names. Someone standing just out of the frame of focus cast a long shadow that fell on Scanlon, partially obscuring his face.
“How’s your arm, Father?”
Hidalgo appeared surprised.
“I noticed you had a broken arm in this picture.”
“Oh. Well, that was taken awhile ago. I had fallen on some stairs and chipped a bone in my forearm. It healed fine.”
“So you didn’t need surgery?”
“No.”
“Ever have any surgery?”
“Never. My health is fine. Why do you ask?”
“Guess it must be the unfulfilled doctor part of me coming out,” Santana said with a smile.
“Yes, I suppose it could be.”
Hidalgo sounded as convinced as he would be if Santana had claimed he was the Second Coming of Christ.
“So, Father, what else do you know about Archbishop Scanlon?”
“What do you mean?”
Hidalgo tried to match Santana’s hard stare but gave it up after a few seconds and peered down at his Hush Puppies instead.
“I’m not sure why you’ve come here, Detective Santana. I thought we were going to talk about Julio Pérez or Rubén Córdova. Not the archbishop.”
From where Santana was standing he could see into the small dining room. On one wall was a print of the Creation of Adam and on the opposite a copy of Da Vinci’s, The Last Supper.
“You’re very close to Father Scanlon.”
Hidalgo looked up at Santana again. His left eye twitched. He glanced at the framed picture Santana was holding and then looked away. As he did so, his chest appeared to shrink inward, as if his ribcage had suddenly collapsed from a weight he was carrying.
“Once,” he said, softly.
Santana set the frame down and came around the coffee table. “I want to show you another photo, Father.”
He sat down on the couch close to Hidalgo, took the photo Gamboni had found in Mendoza’s loft out of his coat pocket and offered it to the priest. Getting him to identify Scanlon as one of the men in the photo was a long shot, but Santana figured he had nothing to lose.
“Recognize anyone?” Santana asked calmly.
The priest took the photo reluctantly, not looking at it at first. When he did, he seemed to recoil from it. He let out a muted cry and dropped the photo on the floor as though he had touched a burning cross. Standing abruptly, he stumbled toward the fireplace and reached out to the mantel for support.
Santana looked down at the photo at his feet and then at Hidalgo.
The priest stood facing the fireplace, both hands gripping the mantel tightly. Peering down at the floor. Gagging like he was about to be sick.
Santana had hoped for a reaction, but this was more extreme than he had expected. He looked down at the photo once more, then at Hidalgo again. Suddenly, he felt as if he had jumped into an icy stream.
“That’s you, isn’t it?” Santana said. “The one on your knees.”
Hidalgo was shaking his head and trying to speak, but the words were unintelligible.
“Is it Scanlon you’re with?”
“Get out,” Hidalgo said in a weak, hoarse voice.
“You can tell me.”
“Go,” Hidalgo said.
Santana picked up the photo and stood up. “If you need to talk, Father.”
“Please. Go.”
He spoke like a man without hope.
Santana pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket, set it on the coffee table. “Do the right thing. Give me a call, Father. I’ll be waiting.”
Hidalgo’s shoulders shook as if he were crying, though there was no sound.
Santana turned and walked out the door.
Chapter 22
S
ANTANA DROVE DOWN A BLOCK
from the Church of The Guardian Angels where he sat in the Crown Vic watching the rectory and listening to a female dispatcher calmly directing radio patrol cars in pursuit of a burglar running down an alley. It reminded him of his early years as a police officer; the nights he spent driving through the streets and alleys of St. Paul. Most of the chatter between RPCs and dispatch was like background music, something he tuned out unless it was in his patrol area or he heard his call number. While those on the wrong side of the law often found cover in darkness, Santana found solace, knowing that as the pimps, pushers, gangbangers and thieves moved along their predictably dark paths, he would be waiting — as he waited now for Thomas Hidalgo.
It was evident that the young priest was one of the two men in the photo. While Hidalgo had committed no crime, the act itself put him at odds with the teachings of the Catholic Church. If Scanlon was the other man in the photo, was Mendoza blackmailing him? Was Mendoza seeking revenge for the abuse he suffered as a child years ago in Valladolid? Santana had sensed that Hidalgo was torn between the desire to please his mother and the need to acknowledge his homosexuality. Could this fear of exposure have led him to commit murder? It had been Santana’s experience that when confronted with damaging evidence against them, criminals often sought reassurance from their accomplices. Santana was hoping that Hidalgo would react in a similar manner and contact the other man in the photo. Then he would follow.
Gusts of whistling wind rocked the car and handfuls of snow blew off the tops of the hard snowbanks that lined the street like ocean spray bursting off the bow of a sailboat.
An hour passed. Then a green Toyota RAV pulled into the parish lot, and a young man in a purple St. Thomas letter jacket got out and went into the house.
Santana started the Crown Vic, let the heater cut the chill inside the car, and punched the Toyota’s license number into the Mobile Data Terminal in the console between the front seats. In a moment the MDT computer listed the car’s owner as Daniel McCutcheon. His address was the same as the rectory. He had no wants or warrants, but he had received a speeding ticket a year ago. No doubt McCutcheon was the seminary student who lived with Hidalgo.
A few minutes later, when the female dispatcher reported a Code 3, it took a moment for Santana to recognize the address and another to wonder why dispatch would be reporting an emergency at the rectory requiring squads to use their red lights and sirens. Then he shoved the Crown Vic in gear. Stepped on the gas and was in the church parking lot and out of the car, running toward the rectory as sirens wailed in the distance.
What Santana saw as he rushed through the doorway hit him like a blast of Arctic air. Thomas Hidalgo had tied one end of an electrical cord around the stair railing on the second floor landing and the other end around his neck and then jumped, fracturing his windpipe and severing his spinal cord. His body hung limply about three feet off the floor like a side of beef in cold storage.
Santana looked away, but it was too late. Memories of his mother’s death had already been unleashed, and the demons of the past were free once again to prowl his mind and haunt his soul.
“I
was sorry to hear about your mother’s death,” the Colombian official from
EL DAS
said. “I had the pleasure of meeting her on more than one occasion. There was not a better woman in the city of Manizales. She did much to help the poor.”
Santana stared at the tiny hairs that sprouted from the official’s large ears as the man loosened his red tie and unbuttoned his shirt collar. Smoke from the Cuban cigar in the ashtray on his desk curled upward, forming a thin cloud that hovered over the room.
The official’s gaze shifted to the office window, then to the plaque on the wall with the Department Administration of Security lettering on it, and finally to the papers scattered on his desk. His eyes were the color of burnt almonds, and they had a hard time settling on Santana for any length of time.
“And my sister?”
“She is with the nuns now.”
The official brushed at his thick, gray mustache with the back of his pudgy fingers. Tears of sweat forming at the edge of his sideburns slid down his haggard cheeks and into the stained shirt collar around his flabby neck.
“What are you going to do?” Santana asked.
“What can one do in the case of suicide but mourn?” He shrugged his heavy, round shoulders, as if that explained everything.
“Suicide!”
“I am afraid that is what it appears to be.”
“My mother’s hands were tied behind her back!”
In his mind’s eye Santana saw his mother hanging naked from a beam in the ceiling in their home, her swollen tongue protruding from her mouth, her dark eyes bulging out of her head as though she were wearing a bloated, blue death mask.
“How old are you, Juan?”
“Sixteen.”
“Well, you are too young to understand these matters. Let us handle the investigation. When it is complete, if we find that your mother’s unfortunate death was not a suicide, we will arrest the perpetrator, of course. Once we find out who he is.”
He gave Santana a thin smile.
“Of course you will,” Santana said.
T
hrough the French doors Santana could see the moon, a pale horse rising in the sky. A sheet of albescent light lay on the patio, and the leaves on the rubber trees hung motionless in the cool stillness of the night. He sat motionless on a chair inside the house that was as dark as his heart, letting a flame of anger burn what was left of life out of his soul.