Chapter 9 - The Bell Tower

Saint Agnes Church sat two miles outside town, abandoned behind a chain-link fence and a field of dead grass.

Mateo cut through a gap in the fence.

Elena followed.

“You are seventy-one,” he whispered. “You don’t have to climb a bell tower.”

“You are thirty-one,” she whispered back. “You don’t get to tell me what I have to do.”

Despite everything, he almost smiled.

The side door had been forced open years earlier. Inside, dust covered the pews. Sunlight fell through cracked stained glass in red and blue strips.

They climbed a narrow staircase behind the choir loft.

At the top, the old bronze bell hung above them.

Mateo searched the beams.

Nothing.

Elena touched the wooden frame. “Rafael repaired this after the storm in 2002.”

Mateo looked where she pointed.

One support beam had newer bolts than the others.

He removed a metal plate.

Behind it was a plastic tube wrapped in electrical tape.

Inside were photocopies of bank records.

Transfers.

Shell companies.

County land purchases.

And one page listing monthly payments to initials: C.S.

Calvin Shaw.

Elena whispered, “Oh, Calvin.”

Mateo kept reading.

The payments went back eleven years.

Then he saw another name.

H. PIKE.

Attorney Harold Pike.

And below that, a third.

M. VALE.

“Who’s Vale?” Mateo asked.

Elena went still.

“The county judge.”

Footsteps echoed below.

Mateo killed his flashlight.

A door slammed.

Someone had entered the church.

Elena’s breathing changed.

Mateo slipped the documents inside his shirt.

The footsteps started up the stairs.

Slow.

Deliberate.

A man’s voice drifted upward.

“Mateo?”

Deputy Shaw.

Elena closed her eyes.

“Don’t make me come up there,” Shaw called.

Mateo whispered, “He knows.”

Elena nodded.

The stairs creaked.

Closer.

Mateo looked around the bell tower.

There was only one other exit.

A maintenance hatch opening onto the roof.

Twenty feet above the ground.

Shaw’s shadow appeared on the wall.

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And then he said something Mateo did not expect.

“Wade followed you. If you stay here, he’ll kill all three of us.”