Thin Black Line

by Frederick Gero Heimbach


The beat priest, Fr. Vincent by name, was waiting for them on the fourth floor. The room was shabby, all faded wallpaper and frayed electrical. The Embassy Hotel’s repute was, if not full-on ill, certainly under the weather. Fr. Ciaran’s senses woke to scents of sulfur and blood among the dust motes. His partner, Fr. Bill, gave Fr. Vincent a bored nod, gave a bored reply of “It’s not going anywhere,” to the question “How’s the prostate?” All this while standing ten feet from the corpse on the bed.

Fr. Bill clapped Ciaran’s shoulder. “Vince: meet my partner, Ciaran. Ciaran’s Joe Callagan’s, what? Second cousin?”

Fr. Ciaran extended his hand. “First cousin once removed.”

“Once removed.” Fr. Bill rolled his eyes. “I was never good at numbers.”

Fr. Vincent, sturdy in his Roman collar and creaky wingtips, shook warmly. “You some kind of math whiz?”

“You wouldn’t believe,” said Fr. Bill. “Top of his class. Seminary and academy. Ain’t that right, kid?”

Ciaran shrugged.

“And they tell me he showed up for his shift three hours early. Kid’s gonna conquer the world.”

Fr. Ciaran flashed a grin. “I was checking on you.

“Better check on yourself!” Fr. Bill redirected to Fr. Vincent. “Yeah, kid’s wet as a newborn kitten. Let’s make his first case an easy one.”

“Oh, not sure about that.” Fr. Vincent lifted his badged hat to rub a sweaty brow. “Not sure I can accommodate.

Fr. Vincent used two minimal fingers to push aside, slightly, the lady’s pajama top, thereby revealing the fatal wound. As if four inches of hilt straight as a flagpole couldn’t tell the story. Blood had soaked the sheets and ruined the mattress.

Fr. Ciaran, feeling woozy, suppressed the urge to slip off his suit coat. “A knife. Is that usual?”

“Demons are opportunistic,” said Fr. Bill. “They’ll use whatever’s handy.”

“The blood’s not spread around. Could she have been flung onto the bed?”

Fr. Bill held up a judicious hand. “Best if we let Vincent tell us what he’s seen.”

“Kid’s rarin’ to go!” laughed Fr. Vincent. “I like that.”

Fr. Ciaran felt his face heat up. He resolved to zip his lip.

Fr. Vincent pulled out his notepad. “Cleaning lady found the body at 10:30. Landlord says she signed in as Lila Malone. Thirty, maybe. Paid for a week two days ago. Kept to herself. Weapon’s a cheap paring knife, the kind you’d find in half the kitchens in the city.”

Fr. Bill nodded. “How’re you seeing the manifestation play out?”

Fr. Vincent stood by the foot of the bed, his back almost against the wall. “Brimstone marks on the floor—” He pointed down. “—and the wall—” His thumb jerked back. “—tell me the demon appeared right here. He picked up the broad—the victim—flung her on the bed, levitated the knife from somewhere, maybe the nightstand, and plunged it in while she struggled. Then the demon bugged out, Hell in a handbasket. Five seconds, maybe, from beginning to end.”

“So she struggled, twisted the sheets into knots. But it was quick.” Fr. Bill raised one eyebrow.

“Talk to the neighbors. You’ll see.”

As Fr. Vincent got the neighbors lined up in the hall, Fr. Ciaran sniffed the sooty patches. They were the source of the sulfur odor all right. Based on his training, he would have expected a lot more soot and smell. Fr. Vincent was right to conclude the demon didn’t linger. Which was odd; demons loved to toy with their victims and to gloat afterwards.

The people in the hallway gave their testimonies. “I didn’t hear nuthun!” was the common refrain, sung in various pitches and accents. The only entertainment in this dreary display of humanity was the man caught on the fire escape. The woman sharing his room was patently not marriage material. “We don’t care about your little adulteries,” Fr. Vincent growled, addressing the crowd. “We’re not your parish priests. So, tell the truth and go on your way and everybody forgets what they heard.”

Only demons committed felonies, but that didn’t stop people from finding perfectly sordid sins to commit. People were clever that way.

The three priest cops interviewed the landlord. Turned out, the hotel was a perfectly respectable place despite all the evidence. Turned out, demons never came there. “Two burglaries and another homicide in the past year,” Fr. Vincent muttered, but there was no point in calling out the landlord’s lies; they didn’t, couldn’t rise to the level of perjury.

Fr. Vincent began filling out paperwork. Back in the apartment, Fr. Bill said, “Okay, kid, tell me what you see.”

“No pentagrams or sigils on the walls. No writing in blood—shoot; no writing of any kind.”

“Check the floor under the bed?”

“I was just going to do that.”

And so Fr. Ciaran got down and looked. Nothing but dust. He checked the pillowcase, a favorite place for demons to stash dead animals or talismans, but came up empty. He pulled the blankets back. “What a mess.”

“A hellish mess.”

“If the demon were extracting her blood, he botched it. And look at her face: no distress. Despite what Fr. Vincent said, I got to believe she was killed in her sleep. Slow and stealthy, not fast and violent. Which is so strange.”

“Really? Is it strange?”

“Well, you tell me.”

Fr. Bill shrugged, forcing the rookie to commit to his theory.

“Why would a demon forego an opportunity to torture its victim before death? Why didn’t this haunting wake the neighbors? No, I’m right.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know! I just know—this is not your typical demon we’re up against.”

“After thirty years I can’t say I ever met a ‘typical’ demon.”

“I know what to expect. My forensics teacher was Fr. O’Brien.”

Instantly, Fr. Ciaran knew how that must have sounded.

Fr. Bill smiled. “Mack O’Brien was my partner before the bishop kicked him upstairs. Yeah, if you studied under him, you must be pretty smart.”

Fr. Ciaran felt radiant with embarrassment.

Fr. Bill clapped him on the shoulder. “Right. Let’s sanitize the room and see what pops up.”

The two priests circled the room, spattering holy water on every object and surface. They listened for stirrings of a lingering demonic presence. They heard no moans or cackles. They escalated to blessed salt, which they sprinkled on the corpse and the perimeter of the floor. The room was dead silent. The temperature remained stable. Even the whiff of sulfur faded.

A floorboard creaked. Fr. Ciaran froze.

Fr. Bill sighed. “Where did that noise come from?”

Triangulating with pointing fingers, the two priests identified a spot of bare floor near the threadbare throw rug.

They cooled their heels as the landlord slow-walked a claw hammer up from the basement. They got the board pried up. “I gotta pay for that,” the man whined. Fr. Bill, and then Fr. Ciaran, shone a light into the dusty space. They found nothing: no dead animal, no jars of urine, no amulets or charms.

“I gotta take a leak.”

Fr. Bill sauntered off to the bathroom at the end of the hall. Fr. Ciaran’s eyes darted about, hungry for clues. He lifted the little throw rug at the foot of the bed. He looked behind the curtains. He picked a bit of black thread off a protruding nail in the window trim, but that was just to satisfy his fastidiousness. He did more rounds of holy water until the aspergillum was empty. He didn’t use his sidearm; that was for emergencies.

He circled the room, saying all the prayers of rebuke they had taught him at the academy.

Fr. Bill returned. “You know, kid, shouting won’t conjure a demon that ain’t there.”

They packed up. Down at street level, in the Nova, Fr. Ciaran radioed the station, letting them know they were heading back.

Fr. Bill hunched over the wheel. “Actually, I’m coming around to your way of thinking. This is an unusual demon. I’ve been seeing these cases, where the evidence is… scanty. I think we’ve got an especially crafty one. A stealthy one.”

“You think, maybe, high up the chain? A seraph?”

Fr. Bill shook the suggestion off.

As he turned onto a narrow street, he grunted and pointed. Halfway down the block a beat priest was pounding the uneven sidewalk, munching on a bag of salted peanuts, his black shirt and slacks, everything on him but the square of white at his throat, soaking up the sun.

“Here’s what you’re gonna do,” said Fr. Bill, lowering his voice for no reason. “I’ll pull up behind Larry there, you’ll get out real quiet-like and go up to him and whisper, “Animod sutev tema tis tu.

Animod sutev…

… tema tis tu.

… tema tis tu.

“You got it.”

“Why would I do that?” said Fr. Ciaran. “What does that even mean?”

“You’re the genius. Figure it out.”

“I mean, it sounds like backwards Latin—”

“Exactly.”

“—but it’s not scripture. Not any of the phrases they taught us to expect.”

“It’s an inside joke. It’s perfectly harmless. Larry’s an old friend; he’ll know the joke.” Fr. Bill glided to a stop, avoiding the squeaky brakes. “Go on! Do it!”

Fr. Ciaran knew it wasn’t right, but he didn’t know why. He eased the door open and gumshoed his way up behind the old cop.

He hissed, “Animod sutev tema—

“Mother of—!” roared Fr. Larry. He spun, sending his peanuts flying. He drew his sidearm—his right hand sidearm—and fired.

Instantly, Fr. Ciaran was drenched: holy water from a high-pressure cartridge in Fr. Larry’s revolver.

Fr. Bill’s laugh rang out like a hyena’s—but it caught in his throat as Fr. Ciaran, gasping, utterly surprised, drew his own sidearm.

He drew the sidearm with his left hand.

Left hand: dry side. Right hand: wet side. Big difference.

“Shit! No!” Fr. Bill screamed.

Fr. Larry threw up his hands, useless. Fr. Ciaran, heart booming like a thunderhead, halted, his finger almost ready to pull the trigger.

“Dammit, kid!” hollered Fr. Larry.

“Oh, God, sorry,” said Ciaran, fumbling to put his gunpowder revolver away. “I am so sorry.”

Fr. Bill was out of the vehicle, moving faster than a man his age had any right to. He spun Fr. Ciaran around. “You drew with your left hand? Your left hand? What the Hell were you thinking?”

“What the Hell weren’t you thinking?” echoed Fr. Larry, shaking with rage.

“I wasn’t… I didn’t…” Fr. Ciaran held up his hand. “I’m a lefty. It’s just instinct.”

“A lefty? They stuck me with a lefty?”

“Your partner’s a lefty?” said Fr. Larry. “And you pull this old stunt?”

“I didn’t know.” Fr. Bill smote his forehead.

“Look,” said Fr. Ciaran, desperate to close the wound, “we’ll go down to the station. We’ll file a report. I’ll admit to everything. It’s all my—”

Fr. Larry’s fist silenced Fr. Ciaran’s mouth and knocked the kid back on his rear.

“File a report—like Hell.” The beat priest bent down to jab a finger in Fr. Ciaran’s soaked lapel. “A report’ll be dismissal for you and days of hearings for us. No! You keep your damn mouth shut and you learn the difference between left and right.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Fr. Bill, yanking Fr. Ciaran up off the sidewalk. “I owe you a drink, Larry. Hell, ten drinks.”

“How about you owe me never pulling one of your idiot pranks again?” spat Fr. Larry.

They drove away. Fr. Ciaran’s jaw throbbed but he didn’t touch it.

The five-minute silence was finally broken by Fr. Bill. “Good Lord, kid, they give you the gunpowder revolver, but you never use it. That’s why you wear it on your left hip. You know how many times in my thirty I’ve fired the gunpowder?”

Even Fr. Ciaran could tell the question wasn’t for answering.

“A couple of rabid dogs. Three maybe. And one time, I was a rookie, just as stupid as you, a baby had crawled out onto a fire escape, was gonna fall and break its neck. I tried to shoot the rope that was holding the bottom level up off the ground so I could climb up and save him. Emptied the chambers and never hit a thing. Spilled an ocean of ink on that paperwork.”

They arrived at the station. Fr. Bill turned into the parking structure.

“I mean, Hell. Who they got running that academy? I thought they still trained people.”

They did still train people, hours and hours, placards popping up depicting dogs or coyotes or demons, and even demoniacs. Right hand, left hand, right hand, right hand, right hand. Hiss, bang, hiss, hiss, hiss. Supposed to be second nature. Supposed to know: “reach right first, think about it second.”

Fr. Ciaran had lied his way into the academy. Not completely lied; he was sort of ambi. He batted right-handed as easily as left, didn’t he? They didn’t typically let lefties work the streets. Those guys, if they got into the academy, were funneled to forensics. Or simply told that God was calling them to parish work and shown the door.

As they passed through the front door of the station, the wrath fell off Fr. Bill like a mask from a tragedian. Beat priests looked up, saw the soggy rookie, and chuckled. Fr. Bill laughed along with them as they slapped his back. That old trick! An oldie but goodie! Haw haw!

Criminy.

Fr. Ciaran took the physical evidence to Fr. Gaetano in forensics.

“Have a seat. Call me Nino.” He glanced at Fr. Ciaran’s wet shirt but didn’t comment. The man had a softness to him: some people just weren’t cut out for street work. He did have a reputation for brains, though.

When he was at the academy, advisors had asked Ciaran if he wanted forensics. Comfortable desk job, sane hours, maybe end up a tenured professor. “Working the street’s a tough life. Detectives get chewed up and spit out,” they said. Ciaran had declined forensics, just as, in the seminary, he had declined canon law and administration. Monsignor had been his nickname in high school. Nuts to all that.

“We gotta go,” said Fr. Bill, joining them, but Fr. Nino was pulling up a chair for him and Fr. Ciaran was curious. The veteran reluctantly sat down.

“These burns are sulphureous, no question,” said Fr. Nino, once he had a sliver under a microscope, “but they’re unusual. Not typical demonsign.”

“Not this again,” muttered Fr. Bill. “I gotta take a leak.” He stood and shuffled off.

Fr. Ciaran said, “Unusual how?”

“The scorches are deeper than usual. See?” He stepped back and gestured. Fr. Ciaran peered into the microscope, saw the sliver big as the Spear of Destiny.

“It looks… black.”

“It’s burned. Not just scorched. You know the image on the Holy Shroud?”

“The Shroud of Turin? They say it’s a scorch. Like this?”

Not like this. Like—” Fr. Nino reached for a sample on a high shelf. “—this. Look.”

Fr. Ciaran looked at the new sample. He could clearly see the different zones of dark and light.

“Whether it’s theophantic glory or the blaze of Hellspawn, the flash of the supernatural has two characteristics: extreme energy and extreme brevity. We’re talking nanoseconds.”

Fr. Ciaran didn’t recognize the term, but he let Fr. Nino keep talking.

“Quick as a blink. So, why is this burn so deep? Was there evidence of Legion?”

“No.”

“No earthquake? Nothing volcanic—”

“No, the opposite. The neighbors didn’t wake.”

“Incredible.”

“It makes me wonder. I mean, did a demon even—”

The forensic priest’s mouth puckered. Fr. Ciaran wondered, idly, just how many times a rookie could embarrass himself in one day. Still, he pressed on.

“—could this burn have come from—something other than a demon? I mean, you read−”

“Didn’t they cover this at the—”

“I mean, I know, I get it, they tell you never to jump—but, I mean, you said it yourself, this is unusual, I mean, I can tell you guys are baffled, so, I’m just wondering, shouldn’t we consider the possibility—”

“If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, then stop thinking it. The last case ever reported, the last case confirmed, was back in ’59—”

“I’m just saying—”

“This is the classic rookie mistake. Listen to your partner. He has a theory.”

“Really? What is it?”

Fr. Nino looked up. “Say, Bill—”

Fr. Bill rejoined them and slumped in his chair. Clearly his prostate was having a bad day.

“—I think we got another one of your—”

“Look.” Fr. Bill held up his hand. “This has been fun, but Fr. Mike just told me we’re wanted down at the cathedral.” Fr. Mike was the precinct captain.

“The cathedral? The bishop—?”

“The bishop wants you and me, Ciaran. And when the bishop says jump—”

Fr. Nino gathered the evidence bags. “Go. I’ll let you know my conclusions.”

They drove until the milky white dome of the cathedral loomed over them. They left their car with the valet and entered the rather unpretentious diocesan offices next door. “Let me do the talking,” Fr. Bill warned.

A pretty secretary ushered them past the bishop’s office and into his private apartments without delay. She opened the door but didn’t look in. They found themselves in what was, apparently, a bathroom. At least it had a bath, a galvanized tub in the center of the room. In it, up to his nipples in steamy water, was the liver-spotted bishop, looking crafty as an old crow.

“Bill! How’s it going? How’s the prostate?”

“It’s not going anywhere, Your Grace.”

“Good. An underappreciated hunk of meat, a prostate. And who’s this? Ciaran Callagan?” The bishop’s mouth opened into a gap-toothed smile. “Your nanna still makes her famous lamb stew?”

“Yes, your grace, ninety and she’s tough as ever. Drinks a pint of Guiness a day and swears by it.”

“Tough isn’t the word. My God, you got that Callagan hairline. Let me feel.” The bishop reached out his hand. Ciaran, profoundly uncomfortable, bowed before the prelate. “Yep,” the bishop muttered as he ran his wet hand through Ciaran’s ginger top, “thick as Sicilians at a shootout. You’ll never go bald. Marge!”

Ciaran straightened, the bishop’s shout ringing in his ear.

The secretary appeared in the doorway, looking bored.

“Don’t worry.” The bishop had read Ciaran’s face. “My bath water’s too filthy for her to see. Marge! I heard you on the phone. Who the Hell was it?”

Marge sighed. “Cardinal Martineau wants to know why his nephew hasn’t been promoted.”

“You tell His Eminence his no-good nephew’s not going anywhere until he learns to keep his cassock zipped. Got that?”

“Your Grace, you can’t expect me to tell—”

“I expect you to tell the cardinal exactly that. Understood?”

Marge faltered.

“I said, understood?”

“Understood, Your Grace.” Marge left.

“That moron’s caught, and passed on, every venereal disease known to man. A real piece of work, that nephew. So I put him to cleaning the grease traps at the Billings Street Soup Kitchen.” The bishop massaged his temples. “Oh, don’t worry,” he added, once again reacting to Fr. Ciaran’s look of horror. “Marge’ll never use those words. She’ll be diplomatic. I mean, she’s not stupid.” He threw back his head and laughed.

Fr. Bill stood there the whole time, his mouth shut, his eyes fixed on a corner of the floor.

“I imagine you two are wondering why I dragged you downtown.”

Fr. Bill looked up. “I’m sure Your Grace will tell us in good time.”

“Yeah, well, good time is now. I been hearin’ things. My old friend Mike Viscotti tells me he’s got some unsolved homicides in his precinct. You know what else he tells me?”

Fr. Bill waited.

“He tells me that most of them are assigned to you!” Water dripped off of the bishop’s forefinger as he shook it at Fr. Bill.

“I’m on top of it.”

“Really. They’re unsolved, but you’re on top of it. How does that work?”

“This is… all the work of the same demon. One with… unusual motivations. It’s a little tricky, but—” Fr. Bill held up thumb and forefinger. “—I’m this close to cracking it.”

Ciaran had tried to become invisible, but the bishop turned on him. “Alright, Mr. Know-It-All: you got a theory?”

“Your Grace, I only started—”

“Ciaran doesn’t—”

The bishop silenced them both with an imperious palm. “This kid here, they say he’s a genius. What’d you score on the detective exam, huh?”

“It was… pretty high, Your Grace.”

“How high is pretty high?”

“It was… pretty high.”

“You aced it, you little brat. Ha! The ones who don’t give you a number, they’re always the ones who aced it. Insufferable, every one of them. And to make it even more insufferable, they’re usually humble.” The bishop was chuckling, but there was an edge.

Fr. Bill remained poker-faced; whether he was holding four aces or a pair of twos, who could say?

“So, spit it out: what’s your theory of the case?”

“It’s not a theory, Your Grace, more of a—” Fr. Ciaran caught himself almost using the pretentious word hypothesis. “—more of a guess, a wild guess, but I was just wondering: human beings have been known to commit felonies. Even violent crimes. There was a case, back in—”

He had to stop. The bishop was laughing too hard. And Fr. Bill was relaxing, joining in. The sound of the two of them, two old men, laughing their heads off—

The bishop’s heaving laughs turned to coughs, and just like that: he was bent over, gasping for air. Fr. Bill got very quiet, and Marge was at the door. The bishop waved her over and she smacked His Grace violently on the back. Then he was waving her impatiently away as he spat a sprawling jellyfish of phlegm, dark and glossy, into his bath water. Marge snatched up a towel, handed it to the bishop, and backed out of the room.

The bishop got his breathing under control as he wiped his chin. Above him, on the plaster wall, a Greek-style icon of the Mother and Child hovered, radiating compassion.

“Brothers,” he said. The change in the man’s voice raised the hairs on Fr. Ciaran’s arms.

“Brothers, pray for me. Pray the rosary, every day. Remember me to Our Lady. Ah! I had plans. I was going to retire, find a nice, wooded monastery, live out my last years in prayer and contemplation, kneeling before the Blessed Host, simple meals, preaching to the birds, the whole damn St. Francis act. Now, I’m not so sure. I’m not so sure.”

The bishop shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Fr. Ciaran glanced over at Fr. Bill. The veteran was looking on with horror. Or maybe a pity sharp as horror.

“Well,” the bishop said, shaking off his funk and addressing Fr. Bill, “looks like the mustang here needs some breaking in. But, hey—” The bishop suddenly grabbed Ciaran’s hand with an unnerving passion. “—you come from a good family. A long line of quality people. Just listen to your partner! He’ll show you what’s up and what’s down. Bill? This kid, he’s quality people: you keep him out of trouble, he’ll make chief someday. Mark my words, we got a future chief of police right here.”

The bishop half-rose out of the water to baptize Ciaran with one final, uncomfortable, swipe of his hair. He rattled off a blessing.

“And, Bill?” the bishop was back down on his rear again, sounding menacing. “You solve those cases. Hear me? You solve ’em. There are no unsolved murders. Not in my city!

Out in the hall, the air was cool and dry. The two detectives had to step aside before a queue of nuns coming on like a two-tone locomotive, unstoppable as God’s will. They heard the bishop behind them, one last time: “Marge! Where’s my cigarettes?”

They were back in the car with the dome of the cathedral receding in the rearview mirrors when Fr. Bill exploded.

“What the Hell was that? What did I say? What did I say?

“The bishop asked—”

“I told you to let me do the talking. You got some crazy theory, you bring it to me.”

“You didn’t seem to want—”

“The bishop is an old man. He’s dying. He’s got the power to make our lives miserable.”

“He’s dy—”

“You saw how he reacted? To your ‘theory’?”

“I didn’t call it a—”

Shut up! You talk like that, we lose all credibility. The captain’ll be riding our asses from here ‘til the Second Coming. You do not want that.

They passed by five stoplights in silence.

“You were saying,” Fr. Ciaran said at last, “the bishop is dying?”

“Lung cancer. They’re giving him three months.”

“You’re sure—”

“The person who told me has correctly predicted the deaths of the last two bishops. I’m sure.”

“Ah.”

“You know the story? How he became bishop?”

“No.”

“He turned it down. Twice. His family put on the pressure. Turns out they had lined up all these chess pieces to get him in, were mad as hornets when he said he didn’t want it. That business of becoming St. Francis? That’s more real than you think. They threatened to make his kid brother bishop if he didn’t take the job. Who was a piece of work, let me tell you, makes the cardinal’s nephew look like a saint.”

“Oh.”

“The job grinds people down. A lot of jobs do that. So cut the bishop some slack. Don’t give him trouble. And, in a few months, he’ll be out of our hair.”

“Right.”

“Then we’ll have a new boss, twice the devil as this one. Hey: maybe it’ll be you!”

“Very little danger of that.”

They passed two more lights in silence.

“Okay,” Fr. Ciaran said, “you don’t want to hear my theories, but consider this: what about demon possession? What if the murders were committed by a demon, but acting through a human?”

Fr. Bill sighed. “You don’t give up, do you, kid?” Fr. Ciaran didn’t reply. “That’s even rarer than human homicide. You know that, right? Smart kid like you, you know these things.”

“I know… something else.” Fr. Ciaran kept his eyes straight ahead. “I know you’ve talked to some, um, consultants. In the past.”

“What the Hell you—”

“Back in ’74. Payments were made to an individual for certain services. In connection to a case. I think I know—”

“Oh, you think—”

“I think you had a case, and you suspected you had a human murderer. And you hired a private detective.”

“Kid—”

“Am I wrong?”

Fr. Bill slammed on the brakes at a red light. He uttered an obscenity under his breath.

“Think you’re pretty smart, sitting there, early hours, nobody there but a night shift half-asleep, going though everybody’s laundry?”

“Am I wrong?”

“Yeah. No. I guess. I guess, once or twice, I talked to somebody.”

“Alright then. So you, too, have had your suspicions. About human homicide. About, maybe, certain people who are capable, in rare cases, of… killing.”

The person behind them honked. The light had turned green.

“See?” said Fr. Bill, stepping on the gas. “That right there: the advantage of being a humble beat priest. Nobody honks at a squad car.” He swore again. “The difference between you and me? I know how to be discreet. I know when I’m making a fool of myself. Those payments—people didn’t know what they were for. Or if they did, they trusted me to give them a, a…”

“Plausible deniability?”

“Deniable. Yeah. Exactly. Deniable.”

“So, those cases—how did they, you know—”

“Nothing was ever proved. So we forgot about it. Despite what the bishop says, there are plenty of unsolved murders in this town. A cost of living in a fallen world.”

“So, why’s he so interested in your cases? Our cases?”

“No idea.”

“So, you’ll have no objection if I make some… inquiries? Discreet inquiries?”

“You’re really gonna do it? Go find a private eye? Like, how are you gonna even do that? They ain’t in the yellow pages, my young friend.”

“You found one.”

“And you ain’t gonna find one.”

“I can try.”

“Look. Just drop it.”

“No.”

“You little son of a bitch.”

“I’ll do it off hours. Heck, I’ll do it off books. You can’t tell me how to spend my own time or my own money.”

“This is bullshit.”

“That may be. I’m going to do it anyway.”

Fr. Bill pulled into the parking structure, parked the Nova, and turned off the engine.

“All right, smart guy. Yeah. I know somebody. He still takes cases, once in a blue moon. We’ll go talk to him. We’ll go talk to him right now. If you insist.”

Fr. Ciaran didn’t not insist.

Fifteen minutes later, they were knocking on the door of a one-story in a neighborhood with threadbare lawns and porches just big enough for their welcome mats. The door swung open.

“Bill! What’re you—”

The door stopped as the owner’s eyes lit on Fr. Ciaran.

“Roger, my new partner. Ciaran, this is Roger. Wanna step outside?”

Roger’s eyes darted back and forth between his two visitors. He grunted and squeezed out the door. If Fr. Ciaran had been the suspicious type, he might have thought Roger was trying to prevent him from seeing inside.

Their conversation took place under a rusting basketball hoop that looked to be the handiwork of the previous owner. Roger had a seventyish face, but he chain-smoked, so maybe he was sixty. His Hawaiian shirt and cracked wristwatch did not inspire awe.

“We got a job for you,” said Fr. Bill, waving away the proffered cigarette. “If you’re interested.”

“What kind of job?”

“No need to be coy. Fr. Ciaran here knows your sideline. Heck, he’s the open-minded one.”

“Oh?”

The two older men spent five seconds regarding one another. Fr. Ciaran would have liked to have heard the unspoken.

“No, really,” continued Fr. Bill, “Ciaran’s good. He’ll take whatever advice you got.”

Roger shrugged and turned back to the house, but it was only to fetch his wallet and “evidence kit.” He got in the front seat of the Nova, demoting Fr. Ciaran to the back. As they traveled, Fr. Bill brought him up to speed: the passive victim, the scorch marks that looked wrong.

“What did you say the name of the victim was?”

“Lila Malone.”

Roger grunted.

Hearing the name gave Fr. Ciaran an idea. When they arrived at the hotel, he said, “You two head on up. I’ll be with you in a second.”

Fr. Bill and Roger paused, considered this, then continued into the building. “Don’t you dick around on me,” Fr. Bill said over his shoulder.

A moment later, Roger had come back. “Don’t let Bill give you the what-for,” he said with an avuncular grin. “Take your time. Grab a donut. A nice bakery’s just down the street.”

He pointed helpfully and then disappeared into the hotel lobby.

Fr. Ciaran slid into the front seat. He radioed into the station, asking for Fr. Nino. “Yeah, it’s urgent,” he said in the face of resistance.

At last, he heard, “Yes, Father?”

“Anything more you can tell me about that homicide victim?”

“Still waiting for the coroner’s report. But the victim’s history—that’s something.”

“What something?”

“She’s a member at St. Oswald’s up in Maysville. I called the priest there. She wasn’t particularly devout. Christmas and Easter.”

“Okay, but—”

“There’s more. She’s been married, twice, each time to older men. And both husbands were murdered.”

“Murdered? Strange. You say they were older—”

“Not that older. Just, you know, middle age.”

“The demons really had it in for these guys.”

“Must be. I’m guessing—”

“A poltergeist?”

“Yeah. Or a familial—although if it were that, it’d have to be attached to her family. Which is possible. But it’s just odd, the demon going after two husbands first and then her.”

“Assuming it was all the same demon.”

“You’ll want to follow up on those other murders. See if the evidence tracks with what we’re seeing here.”

“On it.”

Had those two cases been closed? Had those two murders been solved? Those were two questions that didn’t necessarily come with the same answer. Fr. Bill’s experience would be critical. Fr. Ciaran ran up the four flights two steps at a time.

He paused to quiet his breathing, then walked into the room.

“Hey, kid, looks like you missed something.” Roger was standing there, holding up a corner of the throw rug. Exposed in the rug-sized patch of pale flooring was an oval streak of soot. Behind Roger, on the floor, sat his open evidence kit, a black leather bag like a doctor’s.

“Go easy on him, Roger,” said Fr. Bill. “I missed it too.” He held up a plastic bag. “I shaved off a sample. We’ll see if forensics likes this one better.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking they will,” said Roger. He positioned himself on the rug melodramatically and adopted a wide stance. “We figure the rug was pushed out of place and the demon manifested itself here. It was quick and silent, which explains why the woman didn’t wake.

Fr. Ciaran nodded. “Makes sense…”

“And these other scorch marks,” added Fr. Bill, talking fast, “they must have been put there in an unrelated incident. They may be days old. Weeks. Completely a coincidence.”

“Possible, I guess,” said Fr. Ciaran. “We could ask the cleaning lady.”

“No,” said Fr. Bill. “I mean, sure, ask her, for completeness sake. But those girls, minimum wage, they don’t pay ’em to think.” He tapped his head.

“Okay,” said Fr. Ciaran.

“So, yeah, we’ve got demonsign. And then, there’s no countervailing evidence. Nothing a human perpetrator might leave. No sign the door lock was forced. No bit of clothing, no threads on the windowsill indicating someone climbed in.”

Fr. Ciaran nodded, just to let them know he was following their argument. Fr. Bill nodded back.

Roger joined the nodding chorus. “So we go with the preponderance of evidence. No evidence of a human, some evidence of a demon. A strange demon, but a demon. You brought me down here for nothing.” He lit up a cigarette and took a long drag.

Fr. Bill winked at Fr. Ciaran. “I’ll bet he cashes the check, though.”

“Hey, my time is my time.” The two old men laughed.

“Well, pack it up, then,” said Fr. Bill. “I gotta take another leak.”

Fr. Ciaran watched the old priest’s stiff legged gait until he was gone. Roger bent over his bag to drop a magnifying glass into it.

Fr. Ciaran peered around him. “That a fingerprint kit you got in there?”

“What would you know about fingerprints?”

“Only what I read in Dick Endeavor.” Dick Endeavor was the crime-solving hero of a popular line of horror comics.

“An Endeavor fan, then?”

Fr. Ciaran grinned. “I read every one they printed, back when I was twelve.”

“That’s all fantasy. You know that, right?”

“Sure. And yet, I’d bet a hundred bucks that brush and powder set you got there is a fingerprint kit.”

“And if it is?”

“The door and the windowsill. I want to see what turns up.”

“Kid, you and me and Bill’s been through that door a dozen times today.”

Fr. Ciaran shrugged. “Try the window, then.”

He stared down the private eye. Sighing, Roger bent down and opened up the fingerprint kit. He loaded his soft brush with powder and swirled it gently along the window’s side trim.

“Looks like a mess of smears.”

“Do the sill. That’s where an intruder would have put his hands.”

Roger gave him the side eye, then looked the other way, toward the door.

“Fr. Bill’s prostate’s a mess.” Fr. Ciaran suppressed a smirk. “He’ll be in the can for a long time.”

With all due deliberation, Roger dragged his brush back and forth across the sill.

Was he using more pressure than before? Was he deliberately smearing the prints?

Roger finished sweeping away the excess powder. He shined a penlight obliquely on the sill. “Looks like more smears…” he muttered.

“Wait. Move the light back. Look! Those prints: they’re aimed—”

“They’re smeared, like the rest.”

“But, look! They’re arranged—” Fr. Ciaran rotated one hand, lined it up like someone coming in from the fire escape. “Those are prints of an intruder. I mean, tell me I’m wrong.”

Roger’s mouth clenched its cigarette as he stared at the sill. The man was an incompetent liar.

Fr. Ciaran leaned in to speak directly into Roger’s ear. “What do you know about this you’re not telling me?”

Roger’s mouth released an almost audible word.

Fr. Ciaran cocked his ear.

Roger repeated the word. It was clear this time. An obscenity.

More foulness escaped his lips as his volume increased. Filthy, perverted words, spoken with a vehemence that sent the cigarette flying. The detective priest stepped back.

Profanity joined the obscenity. The string of words escalated into full-on blasphemy, getting louder. Moments later the private eye was shouting the worst imaginable things about Our Lord and his Blessed Mother.

Fr. Ciaran drew his weapon, his right-side weapon. The private eye, or rather the demon animating him, looked down the barrel of the shooter and laughed. Fr. Ciaran shouted, “The Lord rebuke you!” In this, his first demonic encounter, he was ashamed to hear the quaver in his voice.

The demon inside Roger screamed one final, mindless expletive. Roger’s body floated clear off the floor. He was levitating! Six inches off—his toes, dangling—a blasphemous parody of a miracle—

Fr. Ciaran made his decision.

Fr. Bill, gasping for air, holding up his unbuttoned pants, burst through the door.

“No!” he shouted. At the same moment, Fr. Ciaran pulled the trigger.

A spray of holy water doused Roger. The demon screamed in rage and pain. Still levitating, Roger’s body retreated, back against the wall.

Fr. Bill, gasping, drew his gun. His left-hand gun.

Fr. Ciaran, having heard stories of exhausting, interminable exorcisms, war stories from the academy’s teachers, began to shout, “The power of Christ compels you—”

Fr. Bill’s pants puddled around his hairy ankles.

The demon roared like a lion. Someone, a woman, two or three doors down the hall, screamed in sympathy—a chorus of horror.

Fr. Bill pulled the trigger. The gun exploded. Roger’s whole body jerked. The reek of gunpowder smoke filled the room.

Some woman, maybe the same one, screamed again. Other guests in other rooms shouted prayers or took the Lord’s name in vain.

Roger fell to the floor. His brush went flying and his jar rolled under the bed, leaving a trail of powder. A spreading plume of blood stained the whimsical palm trees on his shirt.

Roger expelled his last breath violently through his nose. Bloody snot came with it—the sign of dispossession.

Fr. Bill pulled up his pants and holstered his weapon. He got to the corpse before Fr. Ciaran.

Fr. Bill put his fingers at the corpse’s throat. “He’s dead,” he confirmed. “A demoniac,” he added, standing, getting a bird’s eye view of the disaster. “A damned demoniac!” he repeated, his voice rising unnaturally. “And right under my nose!”

Fr. Ciaran ground out the smoldering cigarette. “What do we do now?” He looked hard at his own weapon, then holstered it.

“Radio this in. They’ll dispatch an ambulance. We’ll take pictures, collect evidence. Then a mountain of paperwork. Don’t worry; they’ll rule it a clean shooting. I’ll do the explaining. But they’ll have to be thorough; crap like this doesn’t happen every day.”

“Your hand.”

“Oh.” Fr. Bill was brushing the windowsill. He pulled his powder-coated hand away and looked at it. “What is this mess?”

“Father?”

Fr. Bill returned Fr. Ciaran’s stare, eye to eye. Then he glanced downward, where Fr. Ciaran’s hand was now resting on the butt of his weapon. His left hand.

Fr. Ciaran kept his voice neutral. “We found fingerprints on the sill. Whose fingerprints do you suppose—”

“Fingerprints? What is this fingerprints?”

“Fingerprints, on the sill. Whose do you suppose they were?”

Fr. Bill stared at Fr. Ciaran. He swallowed. “Well, I mean—” He waved a hand. “—it’s obvious. Roger was demon-possessed. You saw that.”

Fr. Ciaran gave him one nod. And waited.

“And, I mean, he must have been, the demon must have been, you know, using me. Right under my nose. Killing people—yeah, I admit it, this isn’t, probably isn’t, the only case like this—but he was disguising the evidence, forcing me to bring him in, as a consultant—there have been several cases like this, I, I, I can document each one, over the last few years—”

“The scorch. Under the rug.”

“The scorch?” Fr. Bill was having a hard time deciding whether to be embarrassed or pissed.

“Yeah, the scorch. Do you know anything about that?

Fr. Bill scowled.

“See, what bothers me is, earlier today, I looked under the rug. While you were in the can. That scorch wasn’t there. So, somebody put it there before we came back. Correction—before I came back.”

“What the Hell, Ciaran. What are you implying?”

“Please, just answer the question. Do you know anything about that scorch?”

“No! Look, when Roger and I got here, I had to take a leak. My damned prostate! He must have put it there while I was doing that.”

“And then, did you smell anything burnt?”

“No. I wasn’t expecting it. Hell, did you?”

“No,” Fr. Ciaran conceded. “But, Father? Taking a leak twice in the space of fifteen minutes? From what I’ve seen today, your prostate isn’t that bad.”

Fr. Bill simply glared at Fr. Ciaran.

“And something else bothers me. You came into the room just now. You saw me exorcising Roger. You saw the demonic manifestation. He was levitating six inches in the air. And what did you do? Which weapon did you pull?”

Fr. Bill, visibly sweating, glanced at his sinister hand.

“You shot Roger. Not the demon! Roger! You killed him, when his soul was in, very likely in, a state of mortal sin. You murdered him, Father. You sent him straight to Hell. If you had exorcised him, if you had thought him innocent—Hell, an experienced exorcist—how many demons have you bested? How many years—”

“I—look. In the heat of the moment—” Fr. Bill held up his hands, put them side to side as if to say, who could tell them apart?

Don’t! Don’t tell me that was a mistake. And I’ll bet, if you hadn’t smeared those prints on the sill, I’d find your prints there. You and Roger. Both of you, working together, coming into the room. Maybe Roger did the killing, and you planted the evidence? Makes sense, you being the detective priest—”

“Stop!”

No! No. I want to know: who decided who your victims were going to be? Was it Roger who picked Mrs. Malone? Or you? And why her? Did you find out about the dead husbands? You suspected her of murder, you figured she’d never see justice, so you, you and Roger, you decide you’re going to play God’s avenging angel?”

Fr. Bill was grinning now, fiercely grinning and shaking his head. “What’s your plan, Ciaran? What’s ya gonna do? Are you and me gonna take a little walk down to the station, and you’ll step up to the Captain and tell him, ‘Please, Fr. Mike, please take Fr. Bill into custody, he’s a murderer, it’s my word against his and today’s my first day on the force, but you gotta believe me, not him’—Is that how it’s gonna play out?”

“The bishop. What did he say? He said he wanted these cases solved. He wouldn’t sweep this under the rug, even if the Captain would.”

“Oh, Ciaran, you child. You baby. What do you think the bishop was saying, when he said, ‘I want these cases solved?’ Do you think there’s anything that happens in this city he doesn’t know about? He was telling me it’s time to cut the crap. I told you he’s dying; he’s worried the new guy’ll start poking around. He’s worried my sideline’ll blow up in our faces. That’s how he runs things. That’s how it works around here.

Fr. Ciaran noted the implied confession. And he had no reason to doubt anything Fr. Bill said about the bishop.

He went to the bed. The sheets had been removed but the extra pillow was untouched. He tore a strip of cloth, three by eighteen inches, off the pillowcase.

“What the Hell you doing?”

Fr. Ciaran turned. He looked at Fr. Bill intently. “Say the words: ‘Jesus is Lord.’”

“What the Hell? I’m not possessed, if that’s what—oh fine. I’ll say it. Jesus is Lord.”

“Just making sure.”

“Your career is over if you do this. You won’t last a week on the force. The bishop’ll have you hearing confessions in Fishtown. Is that what you want? Scolding wife-beaters for the rest of your life? You’ll be cleaning grease traps alongside the cardinal’s pervy nephew. Think, kid.”

“I serve wherever I’m sent.”

He was quoting a speech. The academy graduation. The commencement address, the capital city’s retired chief of police, a hero, a blinded veteran of the worst exorcism imaginable, a legend. “We serve wherever we’re sent.” “Unsung heroes.” “Thin Black Line.” All the bywords.

Human homicide. People, flesh and blood people, killing other people. Thrusting the knife, pulling the trigger: just like that, snuffing out a life.

A man who kills his fellow man. That rarest of things. Although, apparently, not quite as rare as everybody said.

On Ciaran’s first day. And probably last.

“I’m taking you in, Father. I’m—what’s the word?—arresting you.”

He went around Fr. Bill’s back. As the old man cursed, Fr. Ciaran tied his hands with the cloth. The rookie took hold of the veteran by the elbows and prepared to push him out. It felt like there ought to be something to say, something legal maybe, some little ritual. But Fr. Ciaran didn’t know the words. They didn’t teach them at the academy.

Fr. Bill shook his elbows free. “You fool.”

“You may as well come along quietly.”



Frederick Gero Heimbach lives a pulp fiction life and takes notes. His family lives with him, warily, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is the author of six novels. Find him on Twitter as @Fredosphere and on his much neglected website.

Author’s note: In this story I used the well-used (hopefully not overused) device of taking a trope and doing the opposite. The trope in this case coming from the horror genre where a cop must override his skepticism and consider that the crime he is investigating was the work of a demon. And then, if he’s living in the gritty 1970s, he must ask himself: “So, where do I find a good exorcist? In the yellow pages?”


“Thin Black Line” by Frederick Gero Heimbach. Copyright © 2025 by Frederick Gero Heimbach.
  
Support Mysterion on Patreon!

Comments