Sacred

Manny screamed and bucked against his ropes.

“This is getting good,” one of the Twoomey brothers said.

“No!” Manny shrieked. “No! No! No! Desiree Stone came to the Therapeutic Center on November nineteenth. She, she, she was depressed because, because, because—”

“Slow down, Manny,” Angie said. “Slow down.”

Manny closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his face drenched in sweat.

Bubba sat on the floor and fondled his acetylene torch.

“Okay, Manny,” Angie said. “From the top.” She placed a tape recorder on the floor in front of him and turned it on.

“Desiree was depressed because her father had cancer, her mother had just died, and a guy she’d known in college had drowned.”

“We know that part,” I said.

“So, she came to us and—”

“How’d she come to you?” Angie said. “Did she just walk in off the street?”

“Yes.” Manny blinked.

Angie looked at Bubba. “He’s lying.”

Bubba shook his head slowly and turned on the torch.

“Okay,” Manny said. “Okay. She was recruited.”

Bubba said, “I turn this on again, I’m using it, Ange. Whether you like it or not.”

She nodded.

“Jeff Price,” Manny said. “He was the recruiter.”

“Jeff?” I said. “I thought his name was Sean.”

Manny shook his head. “That was his middle name. He used it as an alias sometimes.”

“Tell us about him.”

“He was the treatment supervisor at Grief Release and a member of the Church Council.”

“Which is?”

“The Church Council is like the board of directors. It’s made up of people who’ve been with the Church since its days in Chicago.”

“So, this Jeff Price,” Angie said, “where’s he now?”

“Gone,” John said.

We looked at him. Even Bubba seemed to be getting interested. Maybe he was taking mental notes for the day he’d start his own Church. The Temple Defective.

“Jeff Price stole two million dollars from the Church and disappeared.”

“How long ago?” I said.

“Little over six weeks ago,” Manny said.

“Which is when Desiree Stone disappeared.”

Manny nodded. “They were lovers.”

“So you think she’s with him?” Angie said.

Manny looked at John. John looked at the floor.

“What?” Angie said.

“I think she’s dead,” Manny said. “Jeff, you gotta understand, he’s—”

“A first-class bastard,” John said. “Coldest prick you’ll ever meet.”

Manny nodded. “He’d trade his mother to the alligators for a pair of fucking shoes, if you know what I mean.”

“But Desiree could be with him,” Angie said.

“I suppose. But Jeff’s traveling light. You know? He knows we’re looking for him. And he knows a girl as good-looking as Desiree kind of stands out in a crowd. I’m not saying she might not have left Massachusetts with him, but he would have cut her loose at some point. Probably as soon as she found out about the money he stole. And I don’t mean cut her loose like leave her behind at a Denny’s or something. He would have buried her deep.”

He looked down and his body sagged against the ropes.

“You liked her,” Angie said.

He looked up and you could see it in his eyes. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Look, I scam people? Yes. Right. I do. But most of these assholes? They come in bitching about malaise or chronic fatigue syndrome, how they’ll never get over having wet the bed as a child. I say, fuck ’em. They obviously have too much time and too much money on their hands, and if some of that money can help the Church, all the better.” He stared up at Angie with a cold defiance that gradually warmed or weakened into something else. “Desiree Stone wasn’t like that. She came to us for help. Her whole fucking world caved in on her in a period of, like, two weeks and she was afraid she was going to crack up. You might not believe this, but the Church could have helped her. I really think that.”

Angie shook her head slowly and turned her back to him. “Save us some time, here, Manny. Jeff Price’s story about his family getting killed by carbon monoxide poisoning?”

“Bullshit.”

I said, “Someone infiltrated Grief Release recently. Someone like us. You know who I’m talking about?”

He was genuinely confused. “No.”

“John?”

John shook his head.

“Any leads on Price’s whereabouts?” Angie said.

“How do you mean?”

“Come on,” I said. “Manny. You can wipe out my credit and bank account, at night, in less than twelve hours, I’d say it’d be pretty hard to hide from you people.”

“But that was Price’s specialty. He came up with the whole concept of counter-ops.”

“Counter-ops,” I said.

“Yeah. Get to your opponent before they can get to you. Silence dissent. Do what the CIA does. All the information gathering, the sessions, the PIN test, that was all Price’s idea. He started that back in Chicago. If anyone can hide from us, he’s the guy.”

“There was that time in Tampa,” John said.

Manny glared at him.

“I’m not getting burned,” John said. “I’m not.”

“What time in Tampa?” I said.

“He used a credit card. His own. He must have been drunk,” John said. “That’s his weakness. He’s a drinker. We have a guy, all he does, day in day out, is sit by a computer linked up to all the banks and credit companies Price has accounts with. Three weeks ago, this guy, he’s staring at the computer screen one night and it starts making noise. Price used his credit card at a motel in Tampa, the Courtyard Marriott.”

“And?”

“And,” Manny said, “we had guys there in four hours. But he was gone. We don’t even know if it was him. The desk clerk told us it was a chick used the card.”

“Desiree maybe,” I said.

“No. This chick was blond, had a big scar on her neck. The desk clerk said he was sure she was a hooker. Claimed the card was her daddy’s. I think Price probably sold his credit cards or threw them out a window, let the vagrants find them. Just to screw with us.”