“It’s horrible…” I heard an old woman say.
“God have mercy,” another whispered.
“This was by the gangs. He tried to help them but God knows they’d kill a man this way.”
Others hugged in circles, supporting each other just enough so they could walk away. The police and paramedics weren’t rushing though. They knew they were far too late now.
I’d never felt so truly lost. What was I supposed to do now? Where was I supposed to go? I fumbled to take my cell phone out of my pocket, thinking that I’d call Spud and ask him to come get me, but realized I had forgotten my phone back on my dresser.
I didn’t know if I needed to hide or if whoever had done this was still in the crowd, watching and waiting for me to pop up. I was almost certain that they’d found the priest by following me. Or was it the other way? Had they come to him demanding to know where I was, and he had refused to tell? So they killed him?
I drowned in the unanswered questions. Because of this I ran right into a police officer. He shoved me away and back into my senses.
“Look, kid, you need to go home,” he ordered me, pointing away. “I’m not gonna tell you again.”
I almost protested that I’d just seen Father Lonnie the night before, and that I knew who’d killed him. But all at once I remembered what the priest had told me: I couldn’t even trust the police.
I couldn’t trust anyone at all.
I mumbled an apology, turning to leave as quickly as I could. The loud engines of the fire truck rumbled, the ladder clicking as it extended high into the air toward the corpse. I reached the concrete and started back for my bike.
“Michael!” I heard someone hiss, making me jump. Over my shoulder, I saw someone else was now walking beside me. It was the monk, Brother James.
“Don’t look at me, look straight ahead,” he whispered, so I obeyed. Gray, unshaven stubble covered his chin and his eyes were bloodshot and terrified. His hands were folded in front of him, the long sleeves of his brown robe swishing against his shoes.
“Walk with me,” he said. “Around the side and to the back. Don’t look at anyone, all right? Just look ahead. Stay close to me.”
Maybe it was my fright that caused me to do what he said without question, or the urgency in his voice. I stayed at the same pace as him, stepping into the damp grass and crossing the lawn beside the church.
We passed through the shadow of the steeple and were out of view of most of the bystanders. The church had a side door with steps leading up to it and at first I thought that was where Brother James was leading me. But he passed it, going around the church. Behind the large building were some storage sheds and beyond that was a waist-high white fence surrounding a small, one-story house—the rectory, where the priest had lived.
He pushed the gate open. The walkway was made of large and carefully placed stones lined by yellow and white flowers. In the tiny yard there was a corner garden and a giant, ancient satellite dish the size of a car, now rusted and filled with rainwater like a dish. Bees darted in and out of the flowers and grass, unaware of the nightmare that’d happened nearby.
“Lonnie told me this would happen,” Brother James said under his breath, closing the gate behind me. “I knew when you showed up that there’d be trouble. And I tried to warn him but…”
“You saw who did it?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “But I know who. I don’t have a single doubt it was Guardians.” He sighed, rubbing his arms. “How’d you get a man all the way up to the steeple, eh? How’d you spear a man atop his own church? You’d got to fly him there.”
He pushed ahead of me toward the house. So he knew. I followed him quicker than before.
He pulled the screen open so I could pass through, then locked both doors behind us. The inside of the house was yet another piece of Arleta trying to prove we’d never left the 1980s: old orange carpeting, wood panel walls, pictures in old frames and wooden clocks covering almost every inch. It stank of air fresheners and cologne, rocking chairs and small tables and old upholstered couches stuffing the living room from the far wall to the linoleum-covered kitchen on the end.
The monk moved to the windows, glancing outside before he let the metal blinds fall. He darkened the room one window at a time.
“Am I safe?” I asked. It was odd for me to wonder it, when all other times I’d never been fearful of such things.
“Not anymore,” the monk said shakily. “But I don’t think anyone noticed you outside. Not anyone who’d be able to describe you, not with all the shock they’re in. Go close the blinds in the kitchen.”
In seconds there was nothing left but dim light peeking through the slits.
“This way,” he said, voice still low. He passed the kitchen, down the narrow hall and around the corner into a bedroom.
I knew immediately that this was where the attacker had found Father Lonnie. The furniture was in a knocked-over mess, wooden dresser with drawers and clothes spilling out, a smashed chair in the center of the room as the only remainder from a short-lived struggle. The bed frame itself was sliced up and down like the claws of some attacking beast… or the knife-like edges of claws I’d seen before.
But no blood. No sign of the dead man here besides the fight. That must have happened outside.
“It’s just…I knew this would happen. But I can’t believe it,” Brother James said painfully. “I just can’t. I thought Lonnie would never get caught, but then he was.”
He was coming close to sobbing but his hands continued to move, pulling open the closet door and shoving the clothes to the side. Beyond the clothes was a hidden, undersized door with two locks. He sniffled as he pulled keys from his pockets, undoing both and pushing inside. I had to bend over to step through the low doorway.
The room was musty, smelling of wood and dust like an old shed. It was long and thin, no windows or any other doors, a single air vent poking through the wall. Scattered around were desks, two giant safes in the corner, lamps and magnifying glasses and computers all around. There was a couch in the center with many of its buttons ripped out and some rugs covering the ugly concrete, the wooden support frames of the walls exposed with wires running in and out. A rickety, metal furnace sat in the corner with an exhaust pipe poking up to the ceiling, a fire going inside it though the room was much too warm already.
“What’s all this in here?” I asked. I heard Brother James lock both deadbolts behind us and the keys rattle back into his pocket.
“This is the home of the blog,” he told me. “Or at least it was. There won’t be any more of it now, I guess.”
Curiosity got the best of me, so I approached one of the desks. The computer was running a procedure, a green progress bar at 79% completion and files being listed below as they were erased one-by-one. All of the computers were doing the same thing. The desk was covered in papers and printouts, though I could see by following a trail of dropped notes that most of them had already been thrown into the furnace. Three empty document boxes sat beside the fire.
“I can’t believe I’m burning all of this,” Brother James said beside me. “This was Lonnie’s life. This was all he did: this and the Church. But it’s too dangerous to keep them now.”
“What is all of it?” I asked. He shrugged.
“Everything you could imagine,” he said. “Government emails. Memos between businesses. CIA, FBI, royal families, foreign officials. Leaks to online databases full of this stuff that no one’s even dreamed of being true.”
He breathed out despondently. “It’s all from Anon. Lots of truth no one gets to see.”