The Priest Hunter by Jeff Spence

Author:Jeff Spence [Spence, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silver Sabre
Published: 2018-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

Wolfe’s rage had cooled to a grim determination by the time he reached Saint Mary of the Sea. He pulled on the side door. It was locked and latched. He pounded on it and it was almost immediately opened by a young Hispanic man, muscled and tattooed, wearing all of the local gang paraphernalia but looking less than deadly there, in that setting. Behind him was the reason why. His mother had, apparently, brought him in to speak to Father Gonzales. They had just arrived and were waiting for the clergyman to greet them.

Wolfe didn’t wait.

He opened the door to Gonzales’s office and stepped in, startling the old man as he tore open bills and letters on his big desk.

“Father Wolfe. It is customary to knock before entering another’s office, or does your appointment to the Vatican exempt you from common courtesy as well as vowed obedience?” The older priest stopped tearing at the envelope and slowly set the papers down on his desk, mustering all of the solemn authority he felt his office afforded. His impetuous visitor did not seem to notice. Wolfe stepped straight over to the desk and stood in front of the old man, staring him down with his own sense of authority and watching the colour drain from the older man’s face.

“What is it you could want, Father Wolfe, ‘Priest-Hunter’?”

“I want to know what it is you’re hiding.”

“Why would I have anything to hide?”

“I’ve had enough, Gonzales.”

“Father Gonzales… You forget yourself.”

“I don’t care what title you cling to, I know there’s something going on that insults that collar you wear more than the omission of your honorific. What is it?”

Wolfe couldn’t be sure, but it seemed some colour drained from the old man’s face. Then he reddened.

“You honestly come in here thinking that this kind of badgering will get you somewhere? How dare you? How naïve you are to believe such a thing! If I did have something to hide, do you think I’d reveal it to you, a man who is known throughout the priesthood as a betrayer of confidences, a defiler of the confessional and a persecutor of his brethren? Come now, you insult me with your simple thinking.”

“I insult you with much more and feel less guilt than I suspect you live with every day. Isn’t it time to show loyalty to something more worthy of it? You’re a priest. If your duty meant as much to you as your title does then you’d know that.”

“Out with it then! What do you imply?!” His voice was raised now, his anger stirred.

Wolfe raised his own voice, appeared to lose his composure. If he could amp up the emotion in the room, Gonzales might slip, a momentary loss of control and a brief revelation of whatever it was the old man was hiding. And Wolfe knew, knew it in his bones, that there was something in there.

“My brother is dead, killed not twenty feet from here by someone trying to cover something up. What

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