THE NEWS OF JOHN’S arrest for Katherine Shepp’s murder made the evening news that night and was front page of the Baltimore paper the next day. I was sitting in Anna’s kitchen reading the story on my phone, eating pancakes that she had made for me. I had just wiped a mix of butter and syrup from my mouth when my phone rang.
“Good morning, Archbishop,” I answered.
“Father Tom,” came his Excellency’s bass voice over the phone. He sounded a lot more jovial than the last time we spoke.
“I assume you saw the news.”
“Yes, yes, I did. Do you know him, this Archman?”
“He was the best man in my wedding.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, I am sorry. Sounds like a crime of passion.”
I didn’t blurt out that he didn’t do it, that the police had made a mistake, everything I really thought.
“Tragic for h
