For I Have Sinned a Cate Harlow Private Investigation Read online

  I make my face look concerned and sad. “What happened, Bette?”

  She bites into the pastry and shakes her head. “It was so sad. A young teenage boy went missing. He was one of monsignor’s altar boys; starting at the age of eight he served all monsignor’s Masses. Such a nice family he came from! Every Sunday at eleven o’clock Mass you’d see the McElroy family there, the mother, the father, and his sister; that was the Mass Joshua McElroy served with monsignor back when monsignor was still Father Moore. They were together a lot, those two. Father took a special interest in him; Joshua was a quiet, timid boy.

  “No one knows what happened to him. He just disappeared one spring afternoon when he was, oh about fifteen, yes fifteen years old. Monsignor was so distraught over it that he simply had to leave here. He took it very hard, that disappearance.”

  “I’m not from around here so I never heard the story. Does the family still live in the area?”

  “The sister does, lives in the same house where she grew up. The parents, oh that was so sad! First the mother died three years after the tragedy then the father followed about a year later. That poor girl! The Lord has given her so much to bear. I see her at the nine o’clock Mass almost every Sunday. Very pretty, always lighting candles at the Virgin's altar.”

  “Do you think that this Joshua was kidnapped?” I ask.

  “You know something? That’s funny that you should ask that.” She shakes her head. “Most people did assume that that was what happened to him. The police never found a body so murder was ruled out I guess. But … I don’t think he was kidnapped and neither did the monsignor.”

  “No? What did he think happened?” I lean forward towards her.

  “It was the only time I ever saw him angry. He said he thought that Joshua ran away and then he said that what that young boy did was one of the most selfish things anyone can do.”

  “Why selfish?” I ask.

  “Monsignor said that the boy was selfish because he was hurting someone who cared about him very much. Monsignor Moore loved that boy like a son.” Or like a pedophile “loves” his victim. Bingo Bette.

  ****

  “Where are we going my son? Is the restaurant far?”

  “We’ll be there soon, Father.”

  Chapter 21

  Walking to my car my cell rings and it is Will. He’s returning from Paterson after a friendly little talk with a Father Mulcahy and associates.

  “Nice work Private Investigator Cate Harlow,” he says with a grim laugh. “This Mulcahy was very co-operative after I told him that he could either talk with me of his own accord and show me any and all files on the dead priest, or I could get a subpoena that would allow my people and me to make a holy-shit mess of his filing system which would include confiscating all the computers in the place. Funny how he was more than willing to talk to us.”

  “You’re the man,” I say.

  “And he asked, but I didn’t tell, how I got the info. I keep my promises Cate; no source revealed.”

  “Thanks, Will. Much appreciated.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Queens, at St. Matthew’s Rectory. And speaking about people willing to talk, I got a great deal of information from the housekeeper about the priests who live there and about a certain Monsignor Moore who seemed to have had a close and personal relationship with Joshua McElroy. She said that the monsignor was very distraught over Joshua’s disappearance, loved him, and I quote, like a son.”

  “The sick reasoning of the child molester,” I hear Will sigh and curse.

  “Yes, and get this, it seems that he was at two other parishes, very briefly before coming to St. Matthew.”

  “Could be he was moved for a reason. The Church hierarchy has been known to do that if they receive a complaint of sexual abuse.”

  “True. Listen, I’m heading back to the city soon. Keep me updated on your case, okay?”

  “Yeah, I’ll keep you in the loop. What are you going to do with the information you received today?”

  “Well this Monsignor Moore, who I am pretty certain is the abuser Joshua documented in his journal, is now ensconced in the archbishop’s office directing youth activities there and mentoring young boys who think they want to be priests. Great opportunity for a pedophile. I’d like to talk to him about Joshua McElroy; who knows what info he might be hiding that could lead me to Joshua. But I have to figure a way in without him becoming suspicious of my reason to see him. I’ll work it out while I’m driving back. It’s a long drive and that’s good for thinking.”

  “Alright. If I can help in any way, just ask.”

  “You know I will. Thanks Will.”

  After the conversation I lean on the fence surrounding the church proper and watch the kids running around the play area. I know what Myrtle means about that age being so innocent and vulnerable. I see smiling faces, hear goofy laughter, and watch innocence at play. Damn all people who harm children! Destroying innocence and trust.

  “Ms. Harlow? Cate!” I hear my name called and see Bette waving at me. She comes walking over to where I am, a bit out of breath. “You had a phone call. I think it was your office trying to contact you. They asked if you were still here and I said that you'd just left. Then I came outside and saw you standing here. You should probably call them.”

  No one knew I was coming to St. Matthew’s except Myrtle, and she would have called my cell. Someone is checking up on my whereabouts; the question is who. I smile at Bette and say, “I’ll call my office. Thank you for telling me.”

  “No problem,” she says, “It was a pleasure talking with you. I’m glad I met you.”

  She goes back into the rectory and I walk towards my car conscious of every person I pass and of any cars parked near mine. Who would call looking for me at St. Matthew’s rectory and more importantly, who would know that I came here? Myrtle is scrupulous about never letting anyone, with the exception of Will or Giles, know where I am when it involves a case. Am I being followed? By whom and for what reason?

  I scout the area. The cars in the surrounding lots look like they are parked for the day. There’s no one near where I’m parked, but to be on the safe side I remove my gun from my bag and stick it into the front of my jeans as I approach my car.

  I check my car carefully keeping my hand on the gun. Nothing. I open the car door quickly pointing my gun into the back seat. No one hiding there. I walk around to the front of my car and pop the hood. Nothing suspicious. Then, just to be absolutely certain that there’s no danger, I get down on the ground and look under the car for an explosive triggering device. With the work I do, you never know what nutcase might crack and want revenge. The underside of the Edge is clean and I get in, starting the motor with just a bit of trepidation. Dialing my office the phone rings three times before I hear, “Catherine Harlow, Private Investigations. May I help you?”

  “Hi Myrtle. Just checking in to see if there are any calls. Anyone looking for me?”

  I don’t want to alarm her so I don’t mention the call at the rectory.

  “Let’s see, the call I forwarded to you earlier from Father Boyd, Giles called and said something about pizza and Bo’s friend, that’s a mystery to me but he said you’d know and he’ll call you back later. Marie McElroy left a message while I was out of the office getting a carton of half-and-half saying she’d call later. Then a credit card company called saying that they want your business back, seems they don't like you getting out of debt, and Harry called to tell me he’s making peach strudel. That’s it honey.”

  “Anyone come to the office for me?”

  “No, I would have told you. Oh, by the way, the couch smelled rather funny, sort of sour, when I walked in this morning so I called a cleaning service to come in to clean it.”

  “Thank you Myrtle. Must be mildew from the humidity or something,” I say thinking about Bo’s friend and his urine-wet pants.

  “Possibly. You never want the air conditioner on so it could very well be mildew.
Anyway, are you coming back soon? I can get us lunch if you're back within an hour or so.”

  “Sure thing. Something light, maybe a grilled chicken salad from Enzo’s? They do deliver.”

  “You got it, honey. See you in a bit.”

  ****

  My mother once told me that, “A secret is only a secret as long as you don’t tell anyone.” Good advice when you’re a child and pretty handy when you’re a private investigator.

  When you’re dealing with a cold case that involves a missing person who might very well still be alive, you have to tread very carefully. Any knowledge that you have in hand needs to be used with discretion. That means that even though the client who hired you has the absolute right to know everything that is happening in the case, it isn’t always in their best interest to know it immediately. Sometimes their knowing crucial information can actually impede your work and put an end to the solution of the case.

  Then too if a missing person is alive, you don’t want to tip your hand. If they’ve been kidnapped, which was more than likely not the case with Joshua McElroy, the person holding them can move their victim out of your reach. This was shown in the case of a Utah girl whose captor knew the police were on to him and moved his hiding place and the girl several times.

  But if a person has chosen to leave and hide like Joshua, you also don’t want him to know that he is about to be found. To prevent any of this from happening, you keep what you know a secret. If you have to share information and details, you do it sparingly and only with someone you trust implicitly. For me that person is Will Benigni. He takes law enforcement seriously and holds anything said in confidence as sacred.

  These are my thoughts as I sit in my office and have lunch with Myrtle. The grilled chicken salad from Enzo’s is delicious and as I eat I think about what I’ve learned. I know that Marie can know absolutely nothing right now about what I’ve found in the box hidden in the eaves or about my visit to St. Matthew’s. I’ll give her the box with only the few drawings that were in there. The rest, the journal, the newspaper clippings and historical copies of atrocities, I’ll keep for a later date.

  “You’re certainly quiet today, Cate. How did it go at the church office?”

  I know Myrtle can keep a confidence, but I feel it’s probably better not to tell her too much. There’s a lot riding on the bit of info given to me by the church housekeeper and I need to work it for all it’s worth if I want to find Joshua and also bring a pedophile to justice.

  “I did find out a few things but I need to work on it by myself for a while. A lot is at stake right now. And Myrtle, while we’re on this topic, I’m not telling Marie what I found in the box her brother hid. I think it’s traumatic to tell her before I am able to act on what the contents reveal. The time will come when she has to be told but not right now.”

  Myrtle gives me her favorite stern teacher look then smiles. “Have you ever once known me to reveal anything about a case unless you okayed it? Look up the word discretion in the dictionary and you’ll find my picture.”

  “I know; I’m just edgy about how this will all play out. Still love me?”

  “You’re hard not to love.”

  “Tell that to the men I know.”

  She just shakes her head and mutters, “Hmm.”

  ****

  For the rest of the day I work at my desk. On the archdiocese website I find phone numbers and email addresses from the archbishop’s office and scroll the listing. There he is, a Monsignor Bernard Moore complete with picture, phone number and extension followed by his email address. I look at his smiling face for a long few minutes. Dressed in the majesty of his office, the monsignor looks at the camera with a smug smile. His eyes have a staring, hungry look. A look that is eerily similar to the stalking yellow-eyed hyena in Joshua’s drawings. I try hard not to think about what he has done to Joshua McElroy. Monsignor Moore looks as if he thinks he’s untouchable and as if he is unstoppable in what he is doing. Let him think that all he wants; he hasn’t met me yet.

  I call Marie back knowing that I have to lie which is difficult for me. It isn’t that I feel guilty about lying; for me that’s easy if it gets me what I need. But Marie is the one who sat in my office and asked me to be completely honest with her about what I found out. “Promise you won’t hold anything back. No matter how bad the information is, I have to know everything.”

  She believes the lie I tell her about the contents in the box. “The box only contains a few drawings; I can drop off the box when I get a chance.” Marie sighs. “Imagine, Joshua hiding something in the eaves! That line from Peter Pan must have given him the idea.” Then she hesitantly asks me if she can come to get the box at my office.

  “I’d rather drop it off, Marie. Right now I’ve got someone checking it for prints to make sure that it is indeed your brother’s so it’s not in my office anyway. I’ll get it back to you as soon as I can.”

  “Thank you Cate. I...I trust you.”

  Trust me. Thank God.

  ****

  At ten to five Myrtle calls Harry for her ride home. She can drive but she’s told me more than a few times that having Harry bring her to work and pick her up after work gets him out of his little world. Harry’s a retired accountant who only works during tax season. The rest of the year he occasionally golfs, but mostly experiments with baking recipes he finds on the internet or on cooking shows.

  “The cleaners are coming tomorrow around eleven, Cate, but I don’t think they will disturb you. I’ll be in at nine with coffee and Harry’s strudel.”

  “I’ll see you then but I’ll get the coffee at Timothy’s. It’s my turn anyway and it’s right near the place where I'm picking up my new Smartphone. You just bring the strudel.”

  “Alright. Have a good night and don't forget to lock up.”

  ****

  After Myrtle leaves, I put everything away and power-down my PC to sleep mode. Then I open a window about five inches just to get the stale smell out of the room. The nest with the doves is still active. The babies are snuggled in and I see the parents across the street on a telephone wire. The dim light I leave on gives off a nice glow and I sit and stand by the window and watch the rush-hour traffic. There’s something irrationally calming about city noise. It allows me to think. Bo’s friend; maybe he is the one Bo said hates priests. Who knows? If he is then, with luck, tonight I’ll find out why.

  Five-thirty on the dot I hear a timid knocking on the front door downstairs and run down to open it. Pizza time is coming up. Bo is there with his friend who won’t make eye contact with me.

  “Why’d you hit him?” Bo begins as soon as he sees me. “I told him you wouldn’t hurt him. I said you would give him pizza. Why’d you hit him, huh?”

  Bo hasn’t said this much to me so fast in all the time I’ve known him. Usually he parcels out what he says in simple sentences very sparingly.

  I explain that I thought his friend was a mugger or a rapist. “It was late Bo. He grabbed the door handle of my car and tried to open it. How would I know he was your friend? I’m sorry I hurt him.” Turning to his friend, I emphasize my words with, “Really sorry.”

  Bo still looks upset as we climb the stairs and I tell him that as soon as my friend Giles gets here, we’re walking the few blocks to get pizza. Then I ask him what his friend's name is. “I can’t keep calling him Bo's friend, can I? He has a name.”

  He looks at his friend who is staring intently at the wooden doorframe outside my office. “He don’t have a name.”

  “What do you call him?”

  “Nothin’. I just say ‘Hey’.”

  “Do you have a name?” I ask Bo's friend.

  He looks at me for a minute before going back to examining the door frame again and shakes his head yes but says nothing. His jaw is bruised and swollen where I punched him and I don’t want to think about his ribs. I decide not to push it; maybe Giles can get a name out of him.

  Thankfully Giles arrives fifteen minutes lat
er carrying his medical bag so I only have to sit in silence with Bo and his friend for a short period of time. My few attempts at getting the conversational ball rolling fall flat so I haul out the pastries we always seem to have in our office, courtesy of Myrtle’s Harry, and let them eat.

  “Hi, Cate. How’re we doing here?” Giles walks in the door of my office and takes in the scene of the two men and me sitting there. He walks over to Bo’s friend and asks him how he’s feeling. “You need to take off your shirt so I can check you before we go for pizza. How did you sleep?”

  Bo’s friend takes his shirt off a bit unwillingly. I turn away so he won’t be embarrassed. Giles gently unwraps the binding he put on him last night. Taking a quick glance back at Bo’s friend I wince when I see his side.

  “Sleepin’ okay. It was warm. On my back like you said.” He looks at Giles with trust and something bordering on idol worship as Giles gently touches the rib area.

  “How is your breathing? Any pain when you breathe?”

  “No, I can breathe. It don’t hurt too much now.”

  “Well, I’m going to re-tape your rib area. You can remove it in two days and I’ll come back here to check on you next week. I think you’ll be fine.”

  Giles takes some sterile pads out of his bag, saturates them with a liquid disinfectant and gently swabs the bruised area. I know he does pretty much the same procedure on the bodies at the morgue. He finishes up by putting Bacitracin on the healing cuts.

  Giles is kind, compassionate, and confident. This is a man with whom my parents would have encouraged me to have a solid relationship. A man most people would say I was lucky to have with me. And truthfully, I care a great deal about him. He’s as different from my ex-husband as can be. Not that Will isn’t kind, but Giles is more open in his compassion and shows his genuine concern for Bo’s friend. Maybe it is the doctor in him.