The Penitent One (Boston Crime Thriller Book 3) Brian Shea (good book club books .txt) 📖

other end didn't seem pleased to hear from Kelly. "Mike, why are you calling me on a Sunday morning?"

Kelly assumed Sutherland already had gotten word through the universal message system, which notified when a body dropped just in case someone was out having a good time.

"Hey, Sarge, sorry to bother you, but I'm on the scene of a homicide, and I just wanted your take on things."

He heard the man sigh loudly. "What are you doing, Mike?"

Kelly distanced himself from Acevedo so he could privately converse with the sergeant of his squad. "Look, Sarge, you’ve got to back me on this one. You owe me."

Kelly didn't like using that as leverage, but Sutherland knew it was true. He hadn't backed Kelly previously when he needed him to, and Kelly was playing the trump card now.

"You can't give it to these two clowns. Sarge, this is going to be a big one. We’ve got a dead priest inside this church right now with a gunshot wound to his head. And whoever did it ghosted. I'm not sure what we're looking at—a robbery gone bad, something personal, a hit. Who knows? Regardless, it's going to be a media circus within the next fifteen minutes. And do you really want the face of this case to be Anthony Acevedo?"

Kelly waited. The other end of the line was silent. He knew his boss was probably rubbing his thick, stubby fingers against his hair and rolling his eyes. But deep down the pause was because he knew the truth. To let those two handle a major case would be a detriment to the case itself and potentially result in a black eye for the PD. And in an image-conscious world, the department couldn't afford another one of those.

Sutherland exhaled loudly, as if he’d been holding his breath for the past several seconds. "Fine, Mike, I'll make the call and talk to their sergeant. The case is yours. Send them packing."

Kelly clicked the phone off and walked back to the two men.

"And?" Acevedo folded his arms. He was shorter than Kelly, wire-thin and not in a good way, similar to the twigs of a willow branch. He was neither physically imposing nor mentally domineering. And watching him try to intimidate Kelly, his superior on both counts, was almost comical.

Kelly, not one for cockiness, ignored the gesture. "I'll be seeing you guys. Have a good Sunday."

"That's what we thought," Acevedo said with a smug look, nodding toward McGarrity.

"Happy trails," McGarrity added, his sarcastic overtone apparent for all within earshot.

A split-second later, Acevedo’s phone began to vibrate and chirp, and he looked down at the incoming call. Kelly knew it would be their direct supervisor, Sergeant Chad Williams. When Acevedo put the phone to his ear, Kelly watched the color fade from the man's tan face.

Kelly heard Acevedo’s side of the brief conversation as he muttered, "Okay," in a barely audible voice. "You know, I think this is... "

The phone call must've ended abruptly because Acevedo never finished his complaint. He pulled the phone from his ear but didn't pocket it as he turned to look at Kelly with indignation.

"Have fun, you smug son of a bitch." Acevedo accented each word, almost spitting them at Kelly's face before turning and storming down the steps.

McGarrity followed, the two making their way back toward their car.

Donny said to Kelly, "What was that all about?"

"I pissed in somebody's cornflakes."

"Do you ever have a day where you don't do that?" Donny offered, the softball joke the first indication that he was going to be okay.

"Not lately."

Kelly’s eyes were still tracking the pair of disgruntled detectives when he saw a familiar face working her way through the crowd. Kristen Barnes brushed past Acevedo.

4

Standing outside the church, Kelly and his cohorts made their plan of attack; dividing and conquering the work was required to process a scene as potentially large as this one.

"Why don't we divide into three?” Kelly said. “Kris and I will take the center aisle, work our way down. We'll do the preliminary walk-through without photographs. Take mental notes of potential areas of interest. Then we’ll come back through and do a full evidentiary layout with photos. I’d like to get a feel for what we're up against.”

“I’m good with it,” Barnes said.

Kelly continued, “This goes without saying, but mind your movements in there.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Mainelli said with a sardonic overtone.

Kelly dismissed the comment. “Maybe we’ll be able to identify a tighter area for our evidence collection. It’s a big church. Hopefully we can pick apart our doer's path, figure out his probable entry and egress point, get an idea of where we need to start searching for any potential trace evidence."

"Sounds like you've gotten the hang of this thing," Ray Charles said with a rare smile, only big enough to let Kelly know his approval.

Kelly took the compliment in stride and looked over at Mainelli. "Jimmy, why don't you take the right side? Ray, if you don't mind, work your way down the left?"

"As you command, my fearless leader," Mainelli jested, following his comment with a slight head bow.

Kristen Barnes had remained relatively quiet since arriving on scene. Something was obviously bothering her about standing at the threshold of a church where a dead priest was lying. Kelly wished he could read her mind, and not just because of the current circumstances. There was a deep complexity to her, and he wasn’t sure of her feelings about a lot of things…in particular, their relationship.

Working Homicide had its challenges. In Kelly’s opinion, the hardest part of beginning a murder investigation was knowing that every step taken into a scene had the potential of contaminating it, of ruining evidence that might otherwise break the case open. Especially one like this, which would undoubtedly be under the scrutiny of both his supervisors and the media.

It wasn't every day that a priest wound up dead in Boston, though the Church was not without its enemies. The fallout of negative press the Catholic Church