Everyone Pays (12 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

MICHAEL

At night, I walked with my jacket pulled close, heading north and away from the junkies and Tenderloin dregs. I pulled up my jacket to shield my face, wondered how long would it be before my face was posted across the city or hit the front of a newspaper. If they still did that. I bent to the wind, tried to put these thoughts out of my mind. In the movies I’d seen suspects’ faces hit newspapers, but never in real life.
Not ever.

I would not let these ideas affect how I acted.

Given Father Kevin’s ties to the bishop, he would find out about the police coming to St. Boniface. Word would pass along, even to city hall. Someone would get upset. Since it wasn’t in the church’s best interest for this story to get too big, someone would tamp it down. Where He doesn’t provide, city hall will.

I put my head down, just walked, listening to my feet hit the ground. The sound reassured me I was here, moving on His earth. Soon I was beyond the Tenderloin, away from those who would disturb me, and as I made my way up and down the city’s hills, I slipped into a peace that one cannot find in the grime. This was the peace of the privileged, the fondness for life that came from beautiful surroundings. Not something I usually knew.

I didn’t know where I would sleep, a fact that made me like many of the city’s destitute, but I had more than they did: my list from the pimp and a name in Russian Hill.

David Heyes.

These men were all listed in the phone book—yes, we still had one—and this pervert lived at an address off of Broadway. His name was what guided my path.

I pushed the buzzer for apartment two and used my deepest voice.
“It’s Dub.”

“What?”

“Got to see you.”

There was a pause. I stood at the intercom, watching clean young people on the street. Some parts of this city seemed as though no one under thirty-five lived in them. I buzzed again.

“Piss off.”

I buzzed again, a long one, channeling how a pimp would respond to being brushed off.

“Dub’s dead,” he said. “I’m calling the cops.”

A jolt rushed through me: panic. A change in my plan; he knew about Dub. Then my rational side restored order and calm. But in this case, calm meant action, aggression, pushing through the outer door of the apartment building to the locked inner door, which I kicked at the point of its lock. It released inward, opening onto the hall, and I dashed up the stairs to the second floor, found apartment two, and banged on the door with my fist. But if Heyes felt he was in danger, he might follow through with his threat, even call faster.

I stepped back and kicked his door at its lock. It sprang open, slammed against the inside wall.

“What the hell?”

I shouted back, a nothing sound, more exhilaration than insult. I stomped in to find David Heyes standing in his living room wearing a white shirt and underwear, one hand holding a baseball bat and the other holding a cell phone.

“Put the phone down.”

He looked at the phone, trying to figure out his next move. No one was on the other end. His status as a heathen made me sure.

“The cops are on their way.” He said it like he wasn’t even sure if he believed it himself.

I stepped toward him. He held the phone away, pushed the bat toward my face like he would jab at me, not swing. So I grabbed it out of his hands, then swung it at the hand with the phone.

I connected with his hand, sent the phone smacking off a wall and his fingers to his mouth. “What?”

As I swung again, he flinched. The sound of the wood hitting him was a dull, hollow thud.

He glanced down at a second phone, this one corded: an old push-button model like we had in the church. He was judging how fast he could pick it up now, if I would hit him before he could. I had to laugh; I could swing the bat before he picked up the phone, even bring it around to connect with his head when he bent down. If I wanted to, I could beat the life out of him before he could ever dial and get anyone at the police to hear him.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Pick it up.”

He faked with his hand, jabbing but not reaching, wanting to see what I would do. I stood still. Heyes had to be very high. I didn’t smell anything, but with the prevalence of pot cards and clubs across the city, there were edibles all around. I kicked the phone, knocking it off the handset.

“Make my day.”

He said, “If you call the police from a cell phone, it goes straight to highway patrol. If you call with a corded phone, you get a real cop. It’s fast.”

“What?”

“That’s why I keep it. For if there’s a major emergency.”

“Next time, call then.” I swung away, brought the bat down hard on the phone and broke its faceplate in half. I smashed the bat down on the handset.

He tried to block the bat with his arms—a mistake—and screamed when it hit his fingers.

He collapsed onto a recliner covered by an afghan, probably where he’d been sitting before I arrived. A pipe and an overflowing ashtray sat on a table beside it, unwrapped lozenges and jelly lollipops as well.

I stepped back and turned off his TV. In the absence of its sound, I could hear him whimper.

“Tell me about Emily,” I said. “You remember her, right? You had a party and did something to her you never should have.”

He winced, eyes closed like he was reviewing it and couldn’t stomach what he’d done. At least there was that then: some level of remorse. This man wasn’t all bad. Still, I was there to do God’s will.

Heyes hadn’t planned it. There was always a leader, someone who pushed the others beyond the pale. He was the one I wanted last.

Heyes was no leader. Within ten minutes he told me everything he knew about Emily, the group of them. In some places I had to get him to shut up.

At times, it got to be too much.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

DONNER

The girl was awake when we walked into her room, sitting up in bed. She watched us with those eyes: small, dark, and receded, hardly blinking. She picked up the pad and pencil, wrote one word, and showed it to us:
Police.

I reached out and touched her hand. She didn’t offer to shake or move at all, so I just rested my fingers on hers, finally offering what I thought was a reassuring squeeze. “I’m Inspector Donner and this is Inspector Hendricks. You can call me Clara.”

Her eyes showed what I thought was recognition.

She sat upright in the bed, blankets drawn tight around her legs. Her hair looked cleaner now, brushed back to reveal more of her face. The face told a story of where she’d been, what she’d endured. I looked into it to offer her my sympathies. I wanted her to feel I could relate.

Instead, her eyes were cold. Maybe she knew what we were doing there. Maybe she didn’t care.

I pulled a chair over from the wall and sat down next to her bed.

She wrote on the pad and showed us again:

Where is he?

“Who?”

Father Michael.

“Did he hurt you?” I had to ask it, even if she didn’t seem scared or worried that he might come find her. No, that wasn’t why she was asking about him. In the same way that she hadn’t shown any relief when we took her out of his room.

She hugged her arms to her thin chest, tucking her fingers into her armpits as if she were cold. I would have tucked the blankets around her legs, but she was already well sealed in.

“Who is he to you?”

She glared at me, searching my face for something. For what? Then she looked at Hendricks and did the same. I could hear her breathing, a hollow sound with a small whistle to it. She could be thinking of her answer, or just sizing us up, deciding if we were worth trusting.

After a time, she held up the pad again, pointed to her first question:
Where is he?

“We don’t know. I was hoping you could tell us.”

She pursed her lips, shook her head.

Hendricks said, “Got a plan here?”

“Let me try for a minute. Just us girls.”

“I’ll be outside.”

When he left, he shut the door behind him with a click.

“Can you hear me?”

She nodded.

“The priest, do you know why we’re looking for him?”

No response.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

Shook her head.

“Okay.” I touched her forearm, squeezed lightly. She pulled her arms in closer, a message I read loud and clear.

“Who is he to you? What is your relationship? Or how’d he get you into that church? How did you wind up with him? Find yourself in the rectory?”

She scribbled on the pad.

He saved me. Found me after they beat me up. Beat me bad.

“Who beat you up?”

She shrugged, mouthed the word
men
.

“And now he wants to hurt them back, is that right?”

She shook her head, stared me cold.

Her look was determined. When she finally picked up the pencil, she wrote one word on her pad. In capital letters:

SAVIOR.

“I don’t understand.”

S
he wrote:

Him

She pointed to the word and then
SAVIOR
.

“He saved you? How?”

She took the pad back and underlined the same word, twice, showed it to me again.

“Your savior,” I said. “The priest? What’s he doing now? To these men?”

She made a noise in the back of her throat and showed me her tongue. More noises. Then, on the pad,

He found me. Took me in.

“He took care of you?”

She nodded.

“And now what?” I asked.

She wrote in small letters,

Alone. Afraid.

“You’re okay now. This is a safe place.” I put my hand on her arm, and she recoiled, made a kind of closed-mouth scream.

I had no idea what to do with that, so when she started that mewling in the back of her throat again, put the pad down on her bedside table and closed her eyes, I stood up. The mewling got louder. She waved her hands at the door and at me, shooing me away. Grumpy, irritated noises came from her throat.

“Okay,” I said, taking a step back.

Hendricks opened the door and poked his head in. “Everything okay in here?”

“Seems like she doesn’t want to talk.”

“Doesn’t like you?” He chuckled. “Who can blame her?” He came inside. “Want me to try?”

I offered him a clear path to the bed. “Be my guest.”

“Hi there. Hi, Emily.” He crouched low as he moved toward her, doing his best not to be threatening. “Hi.”

When he reached out toward her bed, she screamed. He pulled his hand back, pointed at the chair.

“Can I sit?”

She shook her head. She was quiet now, eyes open.

“Tell us, did he cut you?” Hendricks asked. “Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head—no.

“Do you know what he does when he goes out at night? When he’s not with you?”

She glared at Hendricks hard, squinting. She turned to me with the same gaze. She ripped off the top page from her pad and crumpled it into a ball, dropped it to the floor. When she took up the pencil, she wrote fast, angrily.

She showed Hendricks the page where she’d written:
He saves their souls.
Then she wrote the word
Savior
and underlined it.

She threw the pad at his face. Screamed at us even louder now, mouth open, and Dr. Matal came running in with a large male nurse in tow.

“What did you do?” Dr. Matal asked, pushing us out of the way. She and the orderly held Emily down in the bed. Still she screamed, thrashing her head. The orderly pinned her, and Dr. Matal produced straps that she started fastening to the bed.

More screaming.

I stood watching this girl’s anger, her sense of being wronged by us for taking her away from a killer. Her mouth wide open, I could see her scarred and shortened tongue in the back of her throat. It shook with her screams, and the sound took the air out of the room, made it hard to breathe. Hendricks was pulling me back, but I stayed put.

“Come on, Donner.” Hendricks took hold of my arm, pulled me back toward the door.

The doctor told us to leave. “Haven’t you done enough to her already?”

She had a syringe in her hands and was tapping it with her finger. “Hold her,” she said to the nurse.

I watched as she put the needle to Emily’s arm, punched down the plunger.

Emily glared but calmed right away. Suddenly the room went quiet. Hendricks had me in the doorway, almost to the hall.

I saw anger in Emily’s little eyes and spittle on her mouth. She had come alive with her passion, and now it was passing back away into a daze, as if she had blinked and all her emotion was gone like someone wiping a blackboard clean.

“Come on, Donner,” Hendricks said, standing in the hall, his hand still on my arm. He showed me the pad as he ripped off the top page for us to take with us. He had the page she’d crumpled up too. “There’s nothing for us here now. And I don’t want to be around when that doctor comes out.”

CHAPTER FORTY

In the car with Hendricks, I studied both sheets of Emily’s writing. The words stared me in the face, challenging me to figure out more of their meaning.

He saved me. Found me after they beat me up. Beat me bad.

SAVIOR.

He found me. Took me in.

Alone. Afraid.

He saves their souls.

Father Michael.

That’s what we had. I smoothed out the pages against the dash.

“What do you think?” I asked.

Hendricks snickered. “That doctor’s not gonna let us back in to see her. That’s what I think.”

“We’ll get a court order. See how she handles that.” I pointed at the pages. “What do you make of this? Anything?”

“I don’t know what more we could’ve gotten from her. She’s hardly a willing witness.”

“Not willing, not coherent.”

“Amen.” He turned to me and winked. All this religion business was still funny to him. He liked my discomfort.

“What’s going to happen to your soul? You believe in saving it?”

“No. Huh-uh. I been saved since my baptism as a kid. Now I’m just living on borrowed time, doing my best not to mess things up before I go back to Him.” He crossed himself over his chest, pointed to the sky.

“Yeah, that,” I said. “What’s this really mean to her?”

“You want to really talk about this?” He pulled the car over to the side, got into the far right lane, and put on our blinkers. Then he stared me square in the face. “Let’s figure this all out,” he said.

“What do you make of this? Her words?” I pointed at the pages again.

He looked them over, taking his time. “I think we blew it, Donner. She was pissed. We might not get that chance again.”

“What more could we have gotten? She’s on his side. What’s that tell us?”

“This,” he said, tapping the dash. “She lived with him in there. Whatever he was doing, she knows. And those johns?” He waved his arm in no particular direction. “He wasn’t about saving their souls.”

“But he
was
every bit about sending them on to the next world. To damnation or wherever he believes they wind up.”

“And not without some pain first.”

“He’s getting back at them. Back at them for her and all the other girls out there they’ve hurt.” I didn’t want to admit it, but this was the part I kept coming back to, the part I didn’t want to admire.

“So what’s his next move, partner? More of the same?”

I wasn’t sure, so I thought it over. Watching the city outside—a homeless man with plastic bags for shoes. Then I gave him the best of what I could come up with. “Debbie Shine said she heard him getting names from Dub. That’s what she thought, anyway.”

“Who then? More guys who roughed her up? More johns? Who do we get them from? Dub’s dead.”

“Emily?” I asked. “Should we go back at her? Try to get her to tell us who beat her up last?”

He shook his head. “Even if we get past the doctor, she’ll protect the priest.”

“What’s she have for him?”

“Love. Loyalty. She’ll never give him up.”

He was right, but I didn’t want to admit it. What else did we have but her? And maybe we’d just lost that.

Hendricks went on, “Who knows what two people have for each other. Maybe he gave her God. That’s what being a savior means to me.”

“Maybe he saved her from Dub. Gave her a place to sleep. Helped her get clean. Tended her wounds.”

He didn’t say anything to that. We both thought it through. Then he put the car into drive and started us moving.

I thought about the girl, wondered what Father Michael meant to her. A lot, I was guessing. In his little room, she’d been so calm on the bed, seemingly at peace, not wanting for anything. Her bruises and cuts were healing.

How many times had she felt peace in her life? In the last year? Maybe he helped her kick the habit.

He was her savior, she had said. Wasn’t that something we all wanted? To be saved.

Some got saved by God or work, living in the moment, meditation, whatever it took. Some were saved by the bottle or their relationships—for a time. It always came back to the same problems, eventually. At least, I thought so.

The scumbags of San Francisco kept me busy. Ridding the world of them was as noble a goal as any.

Exercise was supposed to save me. Exercise and physical activity. Basketball, running, a cardio boxing class. Hitting the heavy bag. Getting outside or going to the gym, moving my body, working up a sweat. Endorphins, adrenaline. Holding all the world at bay with a focus on something else. That was my freedom.

Still, I missed something and had known that for a while. It wasn’t just a guy to cuddle up to either. Though Alan was kicking through my head enough that I knew there was something there I wanted. And I definitely spent more than enough time on the dating sites.

The girl, Emily, had a family somewhere, her people. She’d come to the big, bad city and wound up on the wrong side of, well, everything: hooking, drugs, tracks. She’d gone through the bad, met her priest, and he brought her into his church, took care of her without asking for anything in return. Who among us didn’t need that sometimes? She definitely wasn’t in any rush to leave.

Now we’d taken her away.

“Sooner or later,” I said, “he’s going to find out where she is. When that happens, he’ll come for her.”

“You know that?”

“I’m betting on it.” I pounded my hand on the dash.

“Then we need to find him first. That and get a patrol watching her room.”