"You don't trust the police," I said. "Gotcha."

He grimaced. "It is only that there have been a number of associations between Chicago police and various underworld figures in the past."

"That's mostly movies now, padre. You may not have heard, but the whole Al Capone thing has been over for a while."

"Perhaps," he said. "Perhaps not. I simply seek to do everything within my power to recover the stolen article. That includes involving an independent and discreet investigator."

Aha. So he didn't trust the police and wanted me to work for him on the sly. That's why we were meeting at a cheap motel rather than wherever he was really staying. "What do you want me to find for you?"

"A relic," he said.

"A what?"

"An artifact, Mister Dresden. An antique possessed by the Church for several centuries."

"Oh, that," I said.

"Yes. The article is fragile and of great age, and we believe that it is not being adequately preserved. It is imperative that we recover it as quickly as possible."

"What happened to it?"

"It was stolen three days ago."

"From?"

"The Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in northern Italy ."

"Long ways off."

"We believe that the artifact was brought here, to Chicago , to be sold."

"Why?"

He took an eight-by-ten glossy black and white from the folder and passed it to me. It featured a fairly messy corpse lying on cobblestones. Blood had run into the spaces between the stones, as well as pooling a little on the ground around the body. I think it had been a man, but it was hard to tell for certain. Whoever it was had been slashed to almost literal ribbons across the face and neck-sharp, neat, straight cuts. Professional knife work. Yuck.

"This man is Gaston LaRouche. He is the ringleader of a group of organized thieves who call themselves the Church mice. They specialize in robbing sanctuaries and cathedrals. He was found dead the morning after the robbery near a small airfield. His briefcase contained several falsified pieces of American identification and plane tickets that would carry him here."

"But no whatsit."

"Ah. Exactly." Father Vincent removed another pair of photos. These were also black-and-white, but they looked rougher, as if they had been magnified several times. Both were of women of average height and build, dark hair, dark sunglasses.

"Surveillance photos?" I asked.

He nodded. "Interpol. Anna Valmont and Francisca Garcia. We believe they helped LaRouche with the theft, then murdered him and left the country. Interpol received a tip that Valmont had been seen at the airport here."

"Do you know who the buyer is?"

Vincent shook his head. "No. But this is the case. I want you to find the remaining Church mice and recover the artifact."

I frowned, looking at the photos. "Yeah. That's what they want you to do too."

Vincent blinked at me. "What do you mean?"