TWO

Special Agent Dane Carver said to his unit chief, Dillon Savich, “I’ve got a problem, Savich. I’ve got to go home. My brother died last night.”

It was early, only seven-thirty on a very cold Monday morning, two weeks into the new year. Savich rose slowly from his chair, his eyes on Dane’s face. Dane looked bad-pale as a sheet, his eyes shadowed so deeply he looked like he’d been on the losing end of a fight. There was pain radiating from his eyes, and shock. “What happened, Dane?”

“My brother-” For a moment Dane couldn’t speak, and just stood in the open doorway. He felt in his gut that if he actually said the word aloud, it would make it real and true and so unbearable he’d just fold up and die. He swallowed, wishing it were last night again, before four o’clock in the morning, before he’d gotten the call from Inspector Vincent Delion of the SFPD.

“It’s all right,” Savich said, walking to him, gently taking his arm. “Come in, Dane. That’s right. Let’s close the door.”

Dane shoved the door shut with his foot, turned back to Savich, and said, his voice steady and remote, “He was murdered. My brother was murdered.”

Savich was shaken. Losing a brother to a natural death was bad enough, but this? Savich said, “I’m very sorry about this. I know you and your brother were close. I want you to sit down, Dane.”

Dane shook his head, but Savich just led him to the chair, pushed it back, and gently shoved him down. He held himself as rigid as the chair back, looking straight ahead, out the window that looked out at the Justice Building.

Savich said, “Your brother was a priest?”

“Yes, he is-was. You know, I’ve got to go see to things, Savich.”

Dillon Savich, chief of the Criminal Apprehension Unit at FBI headquarters, was sitting on the edge of his desk, close to Dane. He leaned forward, squeezed Dane’s shoulder, and said, “Yes, I know. This is a terrible thing, Dane. Of course you have to go take care of it. You’ll have paid leave, no problem. He was your twin, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, an identical twin. He was my mirror image. But inside, as different as we were from each other, we were still so much alike.”

Savich couldn’t imagine the pain he must be feeling, losing a brother, a twin. Dane had been in the unit for five months now, transferred in from the Seattle field office, by his request, and strongly recommended by Jimmy Maitland, Savich’s boss, who told Savich that he’d had his eye on Dane Carver for a while. A good man, he’d said, very smart, hard-nosed, tough, sometimes a hot dog, which wasn’t good, but reliable as they come. If Dane Carver gave his word on something, you could consider it done.

His birthday, Savich knew, was December 26, two hours after midnight. He’d gotten lots of silly Christmas/birthday presents at the office party on the twenty-third. He’d just turned thirty-three.

Savich said, “Do the local cops know what went down? No, back up a moment, I don’t even know where your brother lived.”

“In San Francisco. I got two calls, the first just before four a.m. last night, from an Inspector Vincent Delion of the SFPD, then ten minutes later, a call from my sister, Eloise, who lives down in San Jose. Delion said he was killed in the confessional, really late, nearly midnight. Can you believe that, Savich?” Dane finally looked at him straight on, and in that instant there was such rage in Dane’s eyes that it blurred into madness. He slammed his fist on the chair arm. “Can you actually believe that some asshole killed him in the confessional? At midnight? What was he doing hearing a confession at midnight?”

Savich thought Dane would break then. His breath was sharp and too fast, his eyes dilated, his hands fisted hard and tight. But he didn’t. His breathing hitched, suspended for a moment, and then he made himself breathe deeply, and held himself together. Savich said, “No, it doesn’t make sense to us, just to the person who killed him, and we’ll find out who and we’ll find out why. No, stay seated for a minute, Dane, and we’ll make some plans. Your brother’s name was Michael, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, he was Father Michael Joseph Carver. I need to go to San Francisco. I know the reputation of the department out there. They’re good, but they didn’t know my brother. Not even my sister really knew him. Only I really knew him. Oh God, I thought I’d never say this, but it’s probably better that my mom died last year. She’d wanted Michael to become a priest, prayed for it all her life, at least that’s what she always said. This would have destroyed her soul, you know?”

“Yes, I know, Dane. When did you last speak to him?”

“Two nights ago. He-he was really pleased because he’d managed to catch a teenager who’d been spraying graffiti on the church walls. He told me he was going to make the boy a Catholic. Once he was a Catholic, he’d never do that again because he wouldn’t be able to bear the guilt.” Dane smiled, just for an instant, then fell silent.

“So you didn’t sense anything wrong?”

Dane shook his head, then frowned. “I would have said no, that my brother was always upbeat, even when a local journalist tried to come on to him.”

“Good grief, what was her name?”

“Oh no, it wasn’t a woman. It was a man.”

Savich just smiled.

“It happened quite a bit, but you’re right, usually it was women. Michael was always kind, it didn’t matter if it was a man or a woman doing the coming on.” Dane frowned, fell silent again.

“Now that you think back, there is something, isn’t there?”

“Well, I’m just not sure. He said something recently about feeling helpless, and he hated that. Said he was going to do something about it.”

“Do you have any idea what he meant by that?”

“No, he wouldn’t say any more. Maybe a confession that curled his toes, maybe a parishioner he couldn’t help. But there was nothing at all that unusual about that. Michael dealt with lots of problems, lots of nutcases over the years.” Dane curled his fist over the chair arm. “Maybe there was something there, something that frightened him, I don’t know. I could have called him back and talked to him some more about it, pushed him when he clammed up. Why the hell didn’t I?”

“Shut up, Dane. You’re a cop. Don’t freeze your brain up with guilt.”

“It’s hard not to. I’m Catholic.”

A meager bit of humor, but a start. Savich said, “None of this was your fault. You need to find out who killed him, that animal is the only one to blame here, the only one. Now, I’ll have Millie make the reservations for you. Tell me again, who’s the lead inspector on this?”

“Vincent Delion. Like I said, he called me right before Eloise did last night, said he knew I was FBI, knew I’d want to hear everything they had. It isn’t much as of yet. He died instantly, a shot through the forehead, clean in the front, you know, it looked like an innocent tilak, the red spot Hindus wear on their foreheads?”

“I know.”

“But it wasn’t just a red dot on the back of his head. Jesus, not on the back.” His eyes went blank.

Savich knew he couldn’t let Dane get sucked down into the reality of it, couldn’t let him dwell on the hideous mess a bullet made of the head at the exit wound. It would just bury him in pain. He said very precisely, using his hands while he spoke to force eye contact, “I don’t suppose the killer left the gun there?”

Dane shook his head. “No. The autopsy’s today.”

Savich said, “I know Chief Kreider. He was back here last year to appear in front of Congress on commonsense approaches to avoid racial profiling in the Bay Area. I met him down at Quantico on the rifle range. The man’s a good distance shooter. And my father-in-law’s a Federal judge out in San Francisco. He knows lots of people. What do you want me to do?”