‘Do you have it now?’
‘Yes, I do. It’s in a desk in my office at the rectory.’
‘Would you get it for us please, Father?’
The smile again. ‘You two look as excited as little boys.’
‘We’d really appreciate your help, Father.’
‘I’ll be right back, gentlemen. I just need a few minutes.’
We watched the priest make his slow way to the door and then disappear. Then he was only hollow footsteps on the bare concrete. The side door opened. That should have been followed by the thud of the heavy door closing.
But there was no thud.
Wade noticed it, too. ‘Did you hear the door close?’
‘No.’
Then came muffled voices. Two pairs of footsteps scraping on the concrete steps.
Showalter towered over Father Niles as he followed the old priest into the church. I wondered if the priest had noticed that Showalter held his Glock low against his leg.
‘This must be the night for visitors,’ Father Niles said in the tone he probably used when the parish had a party in the basement.
‘Father Niles has been nice enough to offer to get me the recorder,’ Showalter said. ‘But he wanted to make sure that it was all right with you two first. The Father here is a very careful man. But I told him you wouldn’t have any objections.’
‘I know you talked to Cindy, Mr Conrad. I just wanted to make sure you knew the chief was here.’ Again the party voice. ‘Can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be all right. Him being the chief and all.’
‘It’s fine, Father. Feel free to go get it.’
‘I’ll be right back then, Chief.’
Like most people, the priest was impressed with rank. Play to the one with the most stripes on his arm. Or the biggest badge.
The three of us stood about five feet apart, listening to Father Niles depart. Showalter showed no signs of drink now. He wore a comfortable, superior smile.
Wade said, ‘You followed me.’
‘You and Conrad looked too friendly when I pulled into River Cabins. I thought it was a good idea. And by the way, once I get the recorder, I’ll be expecting your resignation, Wade.’
‘Karen Foster resigned this afternoon. You going to take care of him the way you did her?’
‘You’re one aggravating son of a bitch, you know that, Conrad? You keep making accusations you can’t prove and I’m sick of it.’
‘If Karen regains consciousness you’re done, Showalter.’
‘A woman who created a fake identity for herself and then undermined the entire police force? That’ll be another tough sell.’
‘Real tough,’ Wade said. ‘You’ve got enemies who won’t believe anything you say.’
I was glad Wade had taken over the conversation because I needed to think through how I was going to attack Showalter if he gave me the chance. I knew better than to try to get to my Glock. He’d shoot me.
The only hope was to distract him. And right now there was only one way to do it that I knew of.
Wade said, ‘You’re smiling, Showalter, but you’re coming apart. You’ve got that stress tic in your right eye.’
The sociopathic smile. ‘It won’t work, Wade. I’m under stress and I can feel the tic but that hardly means I’m coming apart. I used to have a colonel who liked to play mind games like that. He always thought he was tougher than everybody else — superior — and he’d try and make you nervous by playing his games. You know what happened to him? He ate a .38 the night he caught his missus blowing a young lieutenant. I guess he wasn’t as tough as he thought. And you aren’t either, Wade, so you might as well knock off the bullshit.’
Then I heard the sound I’d been waiting for: Father Niles coming back into the church.
I shouted: ‘Don’t come in here, Father. Showalter’s going to kill both of us!’
‘What did you say?’ Father Niles tried to shout but his voice was weak.
‘Shut your fucking mouth!’
Now it was Wade’s turn. ‘He’s going to kill us, Father! Stay away! We don’t want you to get shot!’
His slow footsteps worked slowly up the concrete steps. ‘He’s going to kill you, you say?’
‘You bastard!’ Showalter lurched forward as he said this. We’d managed, as I’d hoped, to confuse him for a moment. Now he couldn’t afford to shoot us. We’d warned the priest. Showalter would have no way of defending our deaths with the priest as our witness.
‘I’m coming up there to see what’s going on,’ Father Niles said.
Showalter was close enough to try to slam his Glock into my skull, but I ducked under his move and brought my knee up between his legs.
There was a primordial shriek as the pain in his groin began to register. But even so he managed to twist the Glock back into the firing position. A shot fired in rage, it ripped into one of the Stations of the Cross across the nave.
That was when Wade ran three or four steps and launched himself onto Showalter’s back. He rode piggyback, using his hands to blind Showalter momentarily. I wrenched his gun hand until I simply slipped the Glock from his grasp. But then Showalter, carrying Wade, slammed into me and knocked the Glock I was carrying — Showalter’s Glock — to the floor.
Father Niles was in the doorway now. ‘Somebody fired a gun in church! This is terrible.’
That was when Showalter backed up and managed to ram Wade into me. It was an effective move. Both Wade and I staggered backward. I tried to stay on my feet but I stumbled as I moved forward, and took both of us to the floor.
That was when the shots came.
I can’t say that I actually saw it. The bullet probably entered the top of Showalter’s mouth just before I managed to put both my hands flat on the floor and start pushing myself up.
And then I heard moaning behind me. Wade was on the floor. He’d been shot in the shoulder.
Through gritted teeth, he said, ‘Check on Showalter. Get the recorder.’
Father Niles cried out, then began praying. They were just holy words and phrases. I think in that instant he was trying to exorcise all three of us who remained alive. And his church. After what had just happened the church itself needed to cast out its demons.
Showalter lay on his back, his right hand still holding the gun he’d used to take his own life. There was such a mixture of blood and bone and tissue on the floor behind him I wondered if it could ever be cleansed away.
The old priest knelt next to the body and prayed frantically, crossing himself numerous times as he did so.
I hoped he had a few prayers left over for the rest of us.
Forty-Three
If you’ve followed the career of one Richard M. Nixon, then the name Rose Mary Woods will be familiar to you. She was, of course, his secretary and she was, of course, the woman who ‘accidentally’ erased a section of tape. Conventional wisdom is that the tape contained things that would have damaged his presidency even more.
My father the political consultant loved telling Watergate tales. He told them right up to his death, several years after the fact. He especially loved the Rose Mary Woods story — how it was impossible to have ‘accidentally’ erased it the way she said she had and how she was loyal to the point of facing prison for the villainous Dick Nixon (who’d actually done a number of very good things for our country, damn his paranoid hide). I’m no different. I love Watergate stories. And no matter how old I get, Rose Mary Woods will always make me smile in that superior way.