A Necessary Evil

CHAPTER 21

Omaha, Nebraska

Nick smiled and waved, disguising his relief. Jill evidently didn't notice. She climbed back into the BMW packed with four of her old college girlfriends. Her high from the engagement party continued. He'd never seen her like this _ almost giddy. Maybe it was just being around her old friends. Whatever it was, Nick was quickly learning that he played a small role in this week's events.

"So I guess you're stuck with me tonight," Christine said, coming out onto the porch of their parents' farmhouse. She let the screen door slam behind her and handed him one of the two longneck beers in her hands.

He took her offering, moving over and making room for her next to him on the old wooden porch swing, setting it creaking and swinging. The beer was cold, the condensation wetting his fingers. It was just what he needed. He guzzled half the bottle before Christine's sudden laughter made him stop.

"Is the prospect of spending an evening with your big sister that bad?"

"It's been a helluva day," he told her, but now he rolled the bottle between his hands, watching the amber liquid swish against the inside of the bottle. "How 'bout I take you and Timmy out for pizza? Mom, too."

"You can ask, but I think Mom's pooped. And Timmy went with a couple of his friends to a movie."

"What movie?"

"I don't know. I don't even care. It's bad enough I had to bribe him to go. He's been spending way too much time alone in his room on his computer."

Nick glanced over at his sister, seeing her frustration. He knew it had to be tough raising a teenage boy all by herself. Christine complained about many things, but Timmy was rarely one of those. After her husband, Bruce, cheated on her a second time, Christine threw him out again, but this time with little of the fanfare or emotion of the first blowout. It was almost as if Christine had expected it, had prepared herself.

Sometimes Nick wondered if the emotion would catch up with her, sort of like an aftershock knocking her off her feet long after the initial impact. Christine had a way of reacting on impulse without thinking things through, without weighing the consequences. He hoped that wasn't the case with Bruce, especially where Timmy was concerned. But then, who was he to judge? He certainly was no expert on relationships. After all, here he was an engaged guy, sitting on his parents' front porch asking his sister to go get a pizza with him on a Saturday night.

"How did things go with Father Tony?"

"Are you asking as a friend of Tony's or as a reporter?"

"Give me a break," Christine said, but he recognized that faked, hurt look. Yet she diverted her eyes and was suddenly interested in the dust she brushed from the porch-swing arm. "I heard that Monsignor O' Sullivan may have been murdered, too much blood on the bathroom floor for a heart attack."

"How did you already hear that?"

Now she gave him her eyes, only to roll them at him. "I work for the largest newspaper in the state. How do you think I found out?"

"Which brings me back to my original question. Are you asking about Tony as a friend or a reporter?"

"As a friend, stupid. I have other ways of finding out about the case. Come on, give me a break. It's been almost four years."

Nick took another gulp, watching her out of the corner of his eye, letting her know it wasn't that easy to forget, to let bygones be bygones. Almost four years ago when he was sheriff of Platte City, she undermined a murder investigation __ his investigation __ using him to scoop her competition and to get front-page headlines and front-page bylines for herself.

"They just had some basic questions for Tony," he said, carefully leaving out any information.

"Basic questions like who would want O'Sullivan dead?"

"Yeah. Basic questions like that."

She shook her head at him and smiled, acknowledging that was all she was getting from him. Nick smiled back and I took another swallow of beer. They knew each other too well. When had everything become a game with them? Two steps forward, three steps back __ it was something his father always said, though Nick couldn't remember at the time what his dad meant by it. Antonio Morrelli was the power broker of mind games. Or rather, he had been. There weren't too many games the old man could play these days, lying in his bed, unable to move or speak, the massive stroke leaving him with eye movement his only communication tool.

"Actually I shouldn't be telling you this," Christine said, but paused, waiting for his attention. "We've been putting together a piece for the paper that involves the Omaha Archdiocese. It involves O'Sullivan."

She got his attention, just like she wanted. He couldn't help wondering if this was what Tony couldn't talk about.

"Involves the archdiocese in what exactly?" he asked, pretending it really didn't matter to him.

"What else? The same thing that's been plaguing the Catholic Church all over the country for the last several years."

"You're saying Monsignor O'Sullivan's been abusing boys?"

"Keep it down," Christine whispered, getting up from the porch swing to glance inside the house. "If Mom found out I was working on something that might go against the church, she'd be lighting candles for the salvation of my soul for weeks." Satisfied that their mother wasn't listening at the door, she leaned against the porch rail and took a sip of her beer before she continued. "A lot of what we have right now is considered speculation and rumor, because no one's willing to go on the record."

"Maybe no one's willing to go on the record because it is speculation and rumor." Nick wasn't good at hiding his disdain for the news media, despite his sister being a part of that crazy world. And right now, he hated that Christine seemed willing to point to O' Sullivan's death as proof of a bunch of rumors, some sort of way to validate a story she was trying to dig up. Hadn't she learned anything from four years ago?

"Sometimes even the most outrageous rumors have a grain of truth to them."

"And sometimes they're simply started by bitter, vengeful people," he added.

"Okay, then how about the rumor that O'Sullivan was taking secret documents with him to Rome and now all of a sudden they're missing."

Too late. The expression of surprise must have registered on his face, because she was nodding at him with that "I gotcha" look.

"What kind of documents?" he asked.

"So the police did ask about them?" Now Christine sat down next to him again on the swing, leaning in as if they were about to exchange secrets.

"They asked Tony if Monsignor O' Sullivan was delivering anything to the Vatican for Archbishop Armstrong. And they asked about a brown leather portfolio."

"Really? So the documents might be missing."

"What kind of documents, Christine?"

She hesitated as if she needed to think about what she could and couldn't tell him. Ordinarily he might have enjoyed having the tables turned for a change. She was concerned about divulging classified information to him instead of him trying to decide what pieces of an investigation or criminal indictment he could share with her.

"It hasn't just been rumors. There have been complaints registered against Monsignor O'Sullivan, but not with the police department. Only with the archbishop," she said in almost a whisper. Her eyes darted to the front door again as if she was still worried their mother might overhear. "Affidavits have been signed, money exchanged, promises made. But all in secret."

"If it's all so secret, how did you find out?"

"People feel less motivated to keep secrets when promises are broken. Let's just say Armstrong hasn't been holding up his end of the bargain."

"So why wouldn't he just shred any so-called documentation? Why even bother to hand deliver all of it to the Vatican?" Nick wasn't sure he was buying any of this. It sounded too sensational, too much like some conspiracy theory.

"Nicky, I'm surprised at you. Shredding such documents would be against the law," she said with a smile before she resumed her serious tone. "When the Boston Globe did its investigation on Cardinal Law and the Boston Archdiocese, they discovered that bishops were being told to send any documents in question to the Vatican to store. After all, the Vatican has diplomatic immunity."

"And that's what you think is happening here? In Omaha?"

She smiled again and shrugged, took another sip of her beer.

Maybe it wasn't so sensational after all, and it was exactly the kind of thing Tony would feel he couldn't talk about, couldn't tell anyone because of his loyalties to the church. Sometimes Tony could be loyal to a fault. But he also knew his friend wouldn't sit back and keep quiet if there was a chance the allegations might be true. No way would Tony allow a child abuser to get away with it even if the abuser was a priest and his boss.

"Do you think Tony knows about any of this?" Nick asked, hoping that might be the case, but from the look on his sister's face, he could tell she didn't think so.

"That's what I'd like to know," Christine said.