Eleventh Hour

sported four diamond rings. Dane felt a man’s instant distaste. Hey, maybe four different wives had given them to him, one never knew, here in LA.
    They sat in the small darkened theater and watched the second episode of The Consultant. The city was Chicago, the church, St. John’s, the priest, Father Paul. Dane watched Father Paul as he listened to a man telling him about the murder he’d just committed—an old woman he’d bludgeoned to death, no sport in that, was there? But hey, she was another soul lost from Father Paul’s parish, wasn’t she? Two nights later, a black activist was garroted in front of a club, ah, yes, yet another soul lost from Father Paul’s parish, and what was the priest going to do about it? The murderer mocks the priest’s beliefs, claims the Church is the perfect calling for men who can’t face life, that the priest is nothing but a coward who can’t even tell a soul, because he’s bound by rules that really don’t make a whole lot of sense, now do they?
    In the fourth and final meeting, after two more murders, the priest loses it. He sobs, pleading with the murderer, raging against God for allowing this monster to exist, raging against his own deeply held beliefs, hating his own helplessness. The murderer laughs, tells him you live like a coward, you die like a coward, and shoots the priest in the forehead.
    Dane leaned forward and shut off the projector. He said to Pauley, “Your writers made a mistake here. A priest is bound to silence only when it is a real confession, that is, when the penitent truly means to repent. In a case like this, where the man is mocking the sacrament itself, the priest isn’t bound to silence.”
    Pauley stared at him. “But I thought—”
    “I know,” Dane said. “Everybody believes that. But the Church makes that exception. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be out in the hall.”
    The truth was, he couldn’t bear the show another minute. He leaned against the wall, his eyes closed, trying to get a grip on himself. But he kept seeing the man firing that gun, shooting the priest in the forehead.
    He felt her hand on his arm. They stood still, saying nothing, for a very long time. Finally, Dane drew several deep breaths and raised his head. “Thank you,” he said.
    She only nodded.
    Delion came out of the small theater. “You didn’t miss much. We have this big-shot consultant dude with some mythical agency in Washington, D.C., come riding into town—the guy’s real sensitive, feels people’s pain, all that crapola—he cleans the whole mess up because the local cops are stupid and don’t have any extrasensory abilities, and he can ‘see’ things, ‘intuit’ things that they can’t. It ended good except for five dead people.”
    Dane said, “He killed two more people in the show than he did in San Francisco.”
    “Yes. And maybe that means then that your brother didn’t stick to the script and that’s why the guy shot him after the two murders. Remember, your brother told Father Binney that he was going to make a decision that would change his life forever. There’s only one threat your brother could have made to shut this guy down.”
    “Yes,” Dane said. “Michael told the killer that he was going to tell the police about what this man had done.”
    Nick said, “And the guy had no choice but to shoot him. Father Michael Joseph wrecked the guy’s script. He stopped him.”
    “Your brother must have told him what he was planning to do on Sunday night and the guy had no choice but to kill him. The other two people in the show were a guy who owned a bakery and a prominent businessman. If it hadn’t been for Father Michael Joseph, there might be two more dead people in San Francisco.”
    “The guy kept saying that this Father Paul had lost another soul from his parish,” Dane said. “Do we know if the two victims in San Francisco attended Saint Bartholomew’s?”
    “They’re not on the membership list,” Delion said. “But if the guy was following the script, the chances are good that they did attend mass occasionally. That would tie it all up with a pretty bow, wouldn’t it?”
    “Yes,” Dane said, “it would. Not that it’s any help.”
    Delion just shook his head. “I don’t believe this. A damned script. The guy’s copycatting a damned TV script.”
    “Not copycatting,” Dane said. “Don’t forget, the murders took place before the show aired. Look, at least we know for sure the guy has to be