Curran At the Hour of Our Death

The Mysteries of San Siddinus
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4835-7273-4
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 270 Seiten

Micah Connaught is a jaded priest confronted with a crisis of faith: Is there any reason to believe in people? After discovering a girl was murdered near his church and a police department that could care less, 'Father Mick' embarks on a dangerous quest to find her killer in a city that likes being dirty. Inspired by noir mysteries, 'At the Hour of Our Death' explores what happens when a cynical society gives up hope, and maybe welcomes death.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Curran, James

Leseproben

Chapter 1

New street lamps didn’t take affect well on Alito Drive, the fault line of a turbulent city. In an attempt to make Old Siddinus look gentrification-ready, the council replaced the street lights with low-hanging lamps that looked like they should be burning gas. The glow left the streets a faded-newspaper yellow at night. There was a slight chill in the air. It graced Lake Dionne, condensed and spilled a bank of mist that carried over the street.

Alito could have used a new blacktop instead, but the street could look quaint if you twisted your imagination dial to denial. After confession, I needed a few moments of self-delusion. I returned to the rectory for a moment to remove my collar and change shirts first. I also grabbed a sweater and scarf.

I couldn’t tell you why I felt safe walking on Alito. It cut a straight line through the heart of San Siddinus, two blocks away from the lake – which was popular with fishermen and college students, so long as fish that have suffocated from an algae bloom didn’t float to the surface. If I continued west, Alito would crest up a foothill to the vacant San Siddinus International Airport. The airport – with nary a plane in a hangar since the naval air base that preceded it closed decades before – had become a flashpoint in the city. Should it eventually open, everybody would want to take ownership of Alito Drive. A black civil rights group wanted to name it for Martin Luther King. Latinos wanted it for Julio Cesar Chavez. The City Council suggested Phoenix Boulevard – you know, rising from the ashes. Too white, civil rights leaders complained.

Eastbound from the airport, you would pass the business district, The Dugout and other bars. Terra Vista Parkway then split Alito perpendicularly. Terra Vista was the border for how much trouble people wanted to get into. Students and young adults turned north on Terra Vista and continued partying back at the college. Well-to-do families headed south toward pricier homes on the lakefront. Continue east past Terra Vista, Alito became government housing, abandoned storefronts and eventually, a bike path, an outlet channel to the lake, attractive street lamps and St. Maria De Pazzi Catholic Church. At night, traffic this way vanished unless you’re looking for trouble. When I moved here four years ago, it took me two months before I understood the skinny girls who loitered in sweats were prostitutes. Working girls were supposed to dress provocatively, flaunting cleavage and short skirts, fishnets, and actually walking the streets, like on television crime dramas my dad loved to watch. These girls were dressed for a Laundromat. One asked me if I date. She was about eight years younger than I. Her eyes seemed to be losing a struggle to remain inside their lids. One of her lower front teeth was gone. It was only the second time in my life a woman had expressed interest in me. I didn’t know how to react other than to let her down easy. I told her I was committed. I had no idea dating took on a different meaning this side of town.

Innocent thoughts made me smirk. I celebrated naiveté by jamming the vape pen in my mouth and sparking up. If I still smoked cigarettes, maybe I would look pretty cool. Tasting the “smoke” of watermelon with the blend of hazel nut? Maybe not.

And then I thought of tomorrow. Blessed Advent, Christianity’s original celebration of the four weeks prior to Christmas. Immigrants to North America changed it slightly with Thanksgiving and later, corporate America overwhelmed us with Black Friday. Whichever way people looked at it, this was still a weekend for joy, as sweet as the artificially flavored steam dancing through my turbinates. Parishioners often tell me they look out for others as they do themselves. We’ll have a barrel for toys for the needy tomorrow. Black Friday is a time to walk the talk. It has been filled before. Once, we even found video game consoles.

My smile lifted with ease. I haven’t walked far, my stride slowing and shoulders easing down. The burdens of confession replaced with joy. Holy, wonderful, fleeting joy.

I had written pages of notes that won’t make the homily tomorrow. Little wishes. But calls to action make me feel like I was ordering people around. I can’t resist dissecting Bible readings in my homily. Philosophy is an essential part of many college curriculums, and I would put the intellectual abilities of the apostles with the Greeks, Descartes and so on. Aquinas often referred to Aristotle in his thinking. If the wisdom of men is the foolishness of God, I’m a happy court jester.

Vape pen at my hip, I inhaled fish genocide from Lake Dionne deep through my nostrils.

The moon was swollen and beaming like a young lady who remained physically fit during the third trimester of her pregnancy, when her belly was a perfect, firm globe and her face gleamed with bliss. So much attention toward her and the baby. So little attention to dilapidated Section 8 housing down the street. I admit I ignored looking that way. I like to think my faith saved me every time I walked through the angriest neighborhood in a city with chronic double-digit unemployment and more than one-third desperately needing the table scraps of government assistance.

Lake Dionne opened off to the right, trimmed by trees. It didn’t shimmer from this angle. Not tonight. I needed to head back to the outlet channel for that.

A horizontal steel pole, chained and latched, closed off the bike trail adjacent to the channel. It stopped fitness seekers from making a bad choice, riding the backwoods of San Siddinus after the sun went down. St. Maria De Pazzi bordered the opposite side of the channel. A chain-link fence followed the bike path down the channel. On our side, we erected decorative fencing, topped with doves carrying olive branches. We did that to stop students from climbing the fence and falling 30 feet into the current. The doves and branches were thin layers of forged steel. Not sharp enough to cut, but narrow enough to sting. So be it. I was struck on the hand by a ruler from the nuns who led Sunday School when I was a child.

The clockworks of my mind recycled thoughts about the symbolic importance of water and faith when my eyes embraced Lake Dionne. Like a comforting checklist, I leaned against the railing of the bridge that crossed over the channel. Running water and the calming effects in Eastern religion. The great flood in Genesis. A God that can part the Red Sea. Amazing. John the Baptist. I imagined him along the shores of Lake Dionne as my eyes headed up the channel. I thought of Jesus walking on troubled waters when I saw the exposed nude behind of the skinny black girl floating in the debris.

When my knee gave out, my right wrist smacked against the railing. Gasps aren’t supposed to sound like the one I gurgled. I could see the body sway in the water through the gaps in the fence. Her red hoodie had caught on something. The flowing water had pulled her pants down, exposing an ashy bottom. Neither one of us so much as twitched for seconds.

Eventually, my eyes hurt and I blinked. Then my hands broke free from shock-freeze and fumbled for my smart phone. My mind screamed at the rest of my body. Help that girl. You don’t know.

Only I did know. I hadn’t seen the body plunge into the shallow current. No splash interrupted my contemplation. I lifted my legs over the closed pipe barrier to the bike trail. I heard nothing other than running water. A low billboard with scraps of faded ads faced west, screening anyone there from a clear view of what happened. No lights hovered over the bike trail.

The 911 voice system asked my name, then if I wanted police or fire.

“It’s a dead girl!” I yelled over the rushing water. “I don’t know if … I don’t see any flames.”

I babbled while the dispatcher – detached and focused – asked questions that I don’t really remember answering. I told her I was going to put her on speakerphone so that I could try to save the girl. The dispatcher instructed me not to. She was right. I took a first aid class. The instructor told us many people attempting to rescue a victim die because they rush in without checking to make sure the area is safe.

I clutched the chain-link fence. I can climb this. The fall into the water would break my bones. And she still was not moving. I squeezed cold metal, started to pull myself up. Fencing wasn’t made for dress shoes. I drop and flick them away, heel to heel. Back up. Pulling. Metal pinching my feet through the socks.

Through the speaker, the dispatcher called out to me: “Back away from the fence! The first responders are the professionals.”

Then I made it to the top, my torso clearing the bar like a paunchy gymnast.

I looked straight down at the girl. The back of her head bobbed slightly in the light current. There was a dent, somewhat round, in the back of her balding skull. Wispy trails of blood floated free off the body and coagulated before the water flow can whisk it away to Lake Dionne. No bubbles rose from escaping breath. Off in the distance, sirens blared. Different squeals and rhythms. A brigade of first responders was near.

There’s just no way she’s alive.

“Micah!”

I dropped back to the ground, leaned against the fencing and ground my face into the palms of my hands.

“Micah! Are you still there?”

“I didn’t go over the fence,” I said, looking off in the distance. My right hand glanced my forehead to start the sign of the cross.

There’s a crack on my wristwatch. It wasn’t there before.

* * *

The EMTs and fire department arrived simultaneously. Every profession has its tricks of the trade. For...