Shadows of the Night

The Devil You Know-3

Again, the priest trembled bodily, his lips quivering as he spoke, “And the burnt offering that the prince shall offer unto the Lord in the sabbath day shall be six lambs without blemish, and a ram without blemish”.

And the burnt offering that the prince shall offer unto the Lord in the sabbath day shall be six lambs without blemish, and a ram without blemish”.“Old Testament,” Bishop was thinking. “Yes, that"s it! Ezekiel, chapter 46, I"m not sure of the verse.”

I smiled a little.

“Shame on you, Bishop Entierro, I thought you knew the good book inside out”.

“Must be my age”, he smiled back at me. “But what does he mean, Juan? Why all these references to the Bible. Why can"t he communicate with us properly?”

“I don"t know, your grace. Something in his brain has shut down, and the only thing that seems to be functioning is his knowledge of the book by which he has always tried to live his life.”

At that moment, my brain seemed to click into a new gear, as though someone had flicked a switch on in the deepest recesses of my though processes. I suddenly became aware of something, previously hidden behind the mask of Biblical quotes, but now very evident to me. Yes, I was certain of it! Rodrigo was attempting to tell us something. Seeing my sudden agitate state, Bishop Entierro looked at me, and c****d his head to one side, quizzically, as though waiting for me to enlighten him on my personal revelation. I spoke excitedly.

was“Your grace, listen, six lambs without blemish, six missing boys, all presumably virgins, a ram without blemish, a catholic priest, PURE AND CELIBATE! He"s trying to tell us it"s all connected. I"m sure of it. But, how? Why would someone want to kill or abduct six choirboys or altar boys or whatever, and kill, or at least attempt to kill a priest? If they have been killed, where are the bodies? Lieutenant Merced and his team never found any evidence of foul play when they investigated the missing boys, and if someone wanted to kill Rodrigo, why didn"t they make sure they"d succeeded when he fell from the tower? There were no witnesses so I assume they would have had the time to make sure they"d finished the job.”

six missing boys,a catholic priest,“And if it was Satan himself, I can assure you he would not have failed if that was his intent,” the bishop added.

Doctor Guerrero chose that moment to enter the room, sternly informing us that his patient had been bothered enough for the morning and that we must let him rest and return later. The bishop and I said our farewells on the steps of the hospital and I returned to headquarters to further study the notes on the missing boys. They had all gone missing shortly after choir practices or after mass, each boy having completed his duties at the church, but never arriving home. Father Rodrigo had been interviewed by Merced on each occasion and had confirmed that all the boys had been in church, had left and he had never seen them again. They were all clean living, drug free, fine upstanding catholic boys and, strangely perhaps, they all shared one common ambition. All six boys wanted to become priests! Merced and his team had undertaken a painstaking search of the town and its environs, without success. The investigation, sadly, like many in small-town Mexico, had lead to a dead end. As a police force we had dedicated personnel, fairly modern firearms and vehicles, but we lacked the major logistical resources of the big city forces in Mexico City or Guadalajara. We did our best, always, and we usually succeeded, but this case seemed to be going nowhere.

At five o"clock that afternoon, I returned to the hospital, having first telephoned ahead to make sure that I could speak with Father Rodrigo. Doctor Guerrero was off duty but a Doctor Juărez assured me it would be fine for me to visit with him.

Father Rodrigo lay immobile, still staring at the ceiling as he"d been during my previous visit. He seemed almost to be in a trance, though he was, I felt sure, aware of my presence.

“Rodrigo, it"s me, Juan, do you know me? Can you hear me?” No answer. “Father Rodrigo, what happened to the boys? What happened to you? Tell me, please, I"m trying to help you. If you know anything at all it may help me find the boys, and whoever did this to you. Tell me about the Devil, tell me about Satan.”

Father Rodrigo shook, and spoke,

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:”

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:”Being a good catholic boy (!), even without the bishop"s presence, I knew he was quoting Mark"s gospel, but what did it mean? I felt certain that, despite his mental state, Rodrigo was trying to answer me, to tell me the truth. As a priest after all, it would not be in his nature to lie. Somehow, these biblical references were pointing somewhere. I just had to attempt to follow his directions in order to discover just where that somewhere might be.

“I"m asking, Rodrigo, I"m asking, please tell me. I"m seeking, seeking the missing boys from your church. Where are they, Rodrigo? What happened to them? Tell me where I should be knocking to find the answers.”

I thought that by following his quotations at least semi-literally, I could maybe enter into a kind of logical dialect with him. Rodrigo twitched, trembled, then spoke again, his voice suddenly stronger.

“And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.”

And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.”Suddenly, horribly, I thought I was beginning to make some sense of Father Rodrigo"s biblical ramblings.

“Father Rodrigo, in the name of God, tell me who placed the stone over the tomb.”

“El Diablo, The Devil.”

“Where is the tomb, Father?”

“The garden of Christ.”

“Where is the Devil, Father?

“Here.”

“Where was he when the boys died, Father?”

“In my church, he was in my church. El Diablo, The Devil, he is here now.”

Father Rodrigo suddenly collapsed, his head falling to one side on the pillow. I pressed the emergency button beside his bed, and Doctor Juárez and two nurses were in attendance in less than a minute. I found myself being suitably impressed! No mañana culture in this facility! Unsurprisingly, the doctor requested that I leave, as I had intended on doing anyway. I needed to speak to Merced. Outside the hospital I quickly dialled his home number using my cell phone. I felt thankful he"d given me his number, in case I ever needed him urgently, when I"d taken over the investigation from him. He answered on the third ring.

“Santiago,” I spoke in a hurry. “It"s Juan Morales. Tell me quickly, no recriminations, did you at any time search Father Rodrigo"s for any traces or signs of the missing boys?”

“Of course,” replied Merced. “We found nothing. It was just a routine search. We had no reason to suspect….” He stopped in mid sentence. “You don"t mean there"s some connection to Father Rodrigo, do you?”

My mind raced. I didn"t like to think as I was doing at that moment, but I had to follow it through.

“Maybe, Santiago, just maybe. Did you search the crypt?”

“Of course,” he replied, “We found nothing. Captain, what are you thinking?”

“What about the graveyard? Did you search the graveyard?”

“We looked there, sure, but we found zilch, nada, nothing.”

“Lieutenant Merced, I want you to meet me at the graveyard in half an hour. Bring a team with you. Make sure they have picks and shovels, and I don"t care what you have to do or where you have to go to get them. Just get them and be here in thirty minutes. I hope I"m wrong, but I have a horrible feeling you missed something. Don"t worry; it"s not your fault. You just didn"t know what to look for, or where to look for it.”

I hung up without waiting for Merced to answer. I knew he"d be there. My heart was racing on the way to the graveyard . I didn"t want to be right, but somehow I knew that the answer would be waiting for me in the grounds of El Templo de la Virgen del Rayo.

Much to his credit, Merced and his team were waiting for me when I arrived. He"d brought the tools I"d requested.

“What are we looking for, Captain?” he asked, as I exited my car.

“An entrance.” I replied. “A large, heavy stone perhaps, something that could be used as a door, or a wedge.”

” Get those flashlights working,” Merced called to the men. In seconds the graveyard turned into a hive of activity as the officers began their search, the beams of their torches performing a grotesque dance as they bounced off headstones and funerary statues in the dark. After ten minutes of searching Merced himself called to me.

“Sir, I think there"s something here.”

Below a statue of the virgin, raised as a monument to the departed wife of one of the town"s founders, Merced had discovered a large spherical stone, that looked decidedly out of place, being neither a headstone, a statue or any form of useful adornment to anyone"s last resting place. It took ten men fifteen minutes to move the stone, which eventually gave way to their combined strength, rolling to one side and revealing an entrance to an underground passageway. Maybe there was a private crypt below the statue? We were about to find out!

Two hours later, I emerged from that dark terrible place, visibly shaking. We had at last found the six missing boys. They were all there, in that cold, dank underground depository, wrapped in linen shrouds, each one with a dagger protruding grotesquely from his chest. They had been laid out in reverent fashion, almost lovingly. Each boy had a rosary in his hand and a crucifix placed on the chest adjacent to the knife that had brought about his deaths. Six boys, six knives.

The sickness I experienced that night was nothing compared to the trauma that awaited me on completion of the forensic examination of the scene, painstakingly carried out over the following three days. Apart from confirming the identity of each dead boy, fingerprint evidence soon led us to our chief suspect and two days later I found myself sitting in the chief"s office at headquarters in the company of the chief of police himself, Bishop Entierro, and Cardinal Salvador Negrette, head of the Catholic Church in this region of the country. The meeting was short, much shorter than I expected.

“It"s agreed then,” the Cardinal said. “As soon as he is fit to be moved, Father Rodrigo will enter the sanatorium in the grounds of the seminary at San Vicente. He will be well cared for. It is doubtful he will ever recover fully, if at all. He will be remembered by the people of Parral as a man who cared for the poor, the weak, and the oppressed, and who loved children.