A bullet whined and smashed into the altarpiece, and I smelled smoke. I ran behind the altarpiece. Lemour fired again, this time in front of me. Light flooded the building, and I was blinded. Lemour, running toward me, was blinded as well. He tripped across the open trapdoor and fell headlong down the spiral stairs. Glass splintered as he crashed to the bottom.

I braced myself, waiting for the henchman to come after me, when a fireman appeared behind the altar. I thought at first I was hallucinating, or that Baladine had dragooned the fire department along with the police, and lifted my gun.

“No need to shoot, young lady,” the man said. “I’m here to put out the fire.”

Chapter 47: For Those Who Also Serve

47 For Those Who Also Serve

“The gunshots woke me and I saw the door to the church was open, so I snuck in. I heard everything but I didn’t know what to do, because BB was saying he had a cop to cover up for him. Then I thought, well, if the church was burning, the fire department would come, so I set fire to a newspaper in the kitchen and called 911 and told them the church was on fire. Then I was afraid I was really going to burn down the building. Is Mitch going to be okay? What did they say at the vet?”

We were sitting in the rectory kitchen, drinking more cambric tea as Father Lou and I tried to clean up the sodden mess the firemen had left behind.

“Robbie, you’re a hero. It was a brilliant idea, but next time you don’t have to set fire to the kitchen—they can’t tell downtown if the place is really burning up or not.” I laughed shakily. “Mitch is going to be okay. The vet said he took the bullet in his shoulder, not the heart, and even though he lost a lot of blood he should make it through.”

Peppy had stayed at the emergency vet to be a blood donor for her son. After the firemen finished putting out the kitchen fire, they’d gotten an ambulance for the wounded. Mr. Contreras and Baladine had both been carted off to County Hospital, although Mr. Contreras was protesting it was only a head injury, he’d survived worse than that at Anzio.

Detective Lemour was in the morgue. He’d broken his neck when he landed on the reliquary at the bottom of the stairs. The remaining two men from Carnifice Security had been carried off by a squadrol that the firemen had summoned. One of the officers driving the squadrol had been a student at St. Remigio’s six years ago. He was horrified at seeing his priest in handcuffs and was happy to accept Father Lou’s version of events: that Baladine had broken in with his two thugs, and that Lemour had died trying to rescue the priest.