Play with Fire

chapter Four





LEBRON JAMES FAKED left, went right, then seemed to defy gravity as he blew past the defender and went for the basket. He made the emphatic jam, and managed to get himself fouled in the process.

Father Joe Middleton shook his head in disgust and wondered if it would be blasphemous to ask the Lord to grant the Knicks something that resembled a defense. Although his vocation had brought him to Minnesota, he was a New Yorker born and bred, and had been a Knicks fan most of his life, heartbreaking though such devotion could often be. After a moment, Father Joe concluded that God probably had better things to do than get involved in a basketball game, even though players and fans of every sport seemed to call upon His intervention with great regularity.

Then the doorbell rang. Father Joe was alone in the rectory tonight, which meant it was up to him to both answer the door and minister to the needs of whoever was on the other side. He assumed ministering of some sort would be called for – it was too late for deliveries to the church, and Father Joe hadn’t ordered a pizza. He clicked the TV off and gave a small sigh. Well, at least he would be spared the aggravation of watching the Knicks go down in defeat yet again.

Opening the door revealed a fresh-faced young man in his twenties who was plainly agitated about something.

“Father, you gotta come,” he said rapidly. “Please Father, it looks bad.”

“Take a deep breath,” Father Joe told the young man. “I mean it – a deep, deep breath.”

The visitor complied, perhaps tamping down his adrenaline a bit in the process.

“Now tell me what’s happened,” Father Joe said.

“Guy’s been hit by a car, just two blocks from here. I saw it happen. The son of a bitch that hit him didn’t even slow down – just kept on truckin’.”

“Come in,” Father Joe said. He quickly opened a nearby closet, put on his black overcoat, then picked up the small leather satchel that contained everything he would need to perform the Anointing of the Sick sacrament at the accident site. “Did anybody call 911?”

“Yeah, my buddy did. He said he’d stay with the guy while I ran over here. We better hurry, Father – the guy that got hit, he was bleedin’ real bad.”

Father Joe grabbed a set of keys from a hook near the kitchen door. “Come on. My car’s out back.” A few seconds later, as he was fumbling to get the black Oldsmobile’s door open, two thoughts skittered across the back of his mind, like errant leaves in the wind. One was the absence of sirens. Duluth Emergency Services was very efficient – there should have been sirens wailing by now. The second thought was that the young man who had followed him out to the driveway hadn’t gone around to the passenger side, waiting for Father Joe to unlock the door. Which meant he must be standing right behind ...?

That was the last coherent thought Father Joe had for quite a while. He heard rather than felt the sound of something hard impacting the back of his skull, briefly filling his brain with a brilliant fireworks show, before everything went to black.