Coldwater Revenge by James Ross (e novels to read online TXT) 📗

and introduced himself as Francis Dolan, Special Counsel for the Diocese. Gauss wondered if “special” was a euphemism for “junior”, as the young lawyer seemed hardly old enough to vote. “Has your attorney arrived yet?” he asked.

“My what?” Gauss blurted for the second time.

Dolan allowed the question to speak for itself.

“Monsignor Marchetti didn’t say anything about bringing an attorney,” Gauss grumbled. “He didn’t say anything about a meeting with one, either.”

The lawyer folded pencil arms over a narrow torso made gaunt by the vertical piping of his shirt and suit jacket. “The Diocese is investigating allegations of priest misconduct,” he said. “You’ve been asked to appear here today to respond to several that concern you.”

“Christ!” Gauss muttered.

“Would you like to have an attorney present to represent you?”

“No.”

“Would you like to speak with Monsignor Marchetti before we start?”

“About what?”

The lawyer shrugged and turned to the girl in black. “We’ll start then, Miss Kelly.”

The Goth flexed her lacquered nails over the keys of the steno-machine. The lawyer removed a thick accordion folder from the briefcase at his feet. “I’m going to start with some background questions,” he began. “Your education, parish postings and so on.”

Gauss looked toward the open window and caught a whiff of burning leaves. He wondered what would happen if he got up and lit a cigarette. Offer it up for the souls in Purgatory, if there is such a place.

While the young attorney cross-checked dates and degrees, Gauss stifled a mounting urge to get up and walk out. He understood why they had to do it, but there was a miasma of witch-hunt about the whole procedure that made the remains of his breakfast churn.

When the legal inquisitor had finished with the brown folder, he picked up a yellow one. Gauss wondered whether the distant smell of burning leaves had anything to do with the cigarette he’d flicked out the window earlier.

“I’d like to take you back to the time you were at St. Agnes,” Dolan said.

“My first parish,” said Gauss. “I taught Philosophy at the Seminary before that.”

“Do you remember a parishioner there named Francis Anderson?”

“No.”

“He would have been about eleven years old back then.”

“What year was that?”

“Nineteen sixty-eight.”

“That was a busy year. I did a lot of draft counseling back then. Miraculous how pious some of my parishioners became once they turned eighteen and got their draft numbers.”

“Mr. Anderson says that you touched him in the sacristy.”

Gauss rolled his eyes. “My anatomy is a little rusty, Counselor. Is that above or below the belt?”

The Goth giggled.

Dolan snapped, “This isn’t a joke, Mr. Gauss.”

“Father Gauss,” Gauss snapped back. He lifted his chin toward the handwritten document beneath the lawyer’s folded hands. “Is that a letter from Mr. Anderson?”

“It is.”

“Looks like it was painted by Van Gogh. It’s recent, I take it.”

The lawyer ignored the probe.

“Thought so,” said Gauss. “With a psychiatric hospital for a return address?”

“The protocol here, is that I ask the questions,” said Dolan, “and that you answer them.” He turned a page in the yellow folder and squared another document. “Do you recall a Kevin Burke? St. Bartholomew’s, nineteen seventy-one.”

“No.”

“He says you molested him on a camping trip.”

“I’m a city boy, Counselor. I’ve never been camping in my life. Perhaps Mr. Burke’s troubled mind has confused me with a scout master.”

Dolan turned another document. “Timothy Ruark. St. Francis, nineteen seventy-nine.”

“Him, I remember. But it was the father who was the wacko.”

“He says you molested him, too.”

“Says?”

“Yes.”

“Then someone’s pulling your leg. Timothy Ruark took his own life twenty-five years ago. I said the funeral service. The father pitched a fit that it wasn’t a High Mass.”

The attorney fumbled the next few papers but continued doggedly. “Kevin McCarthy? Saint Francis, nineteen eighty-two?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Patrick O’Hara, Saint Agnes, nineteen sixty-nine?”

“Another wacko. Mr. O’Hara asked me to go with him to his draft board hearing. When the board didn’t buy his cockamamie pacifist act, he seemed to think it was my fault.”

“He says you molested him, too.”

“A prison letter I suppose.”

“You know that?”

“Mr. O’Hara’s habit of fabricating grievances didn’t stop when he got drafted. Unless the army has started paroling pacifists who shoot their officers, I assume he’s still there.”

“And if he is?” Dolan pressed. “Does incarceration mean his accusations are unreliable? Is that what you’re saying?”

“It means he reads the newspapers. And that he keeps bad company.”

Dolan continued to turn pages and documents, but Gauss’ answers were all of a piece.? Either he didn’t recall, the evidence was suspect or the accuser nuts. But it took nearly an hour for the diocesan lawyer to work through the entire file, and Gauss could sense that the young man found it unlikely that they could all be making it up. But he waited until the session was over and the lawyer had begun to pack away his files before launching his counter.

“Are you a criminal lawyer?” he asked when Dolan paused in his packing.

“Insurance defense.”

“Ah, yes. I can see how the church must be needing your services these days. But you’re a member of the bar, are you not?”

“All practicing attorneys are required to be.”

“And there’s an attorney disciplinary body that hears complaints from disgruntled clients?”

“There is.”

“And would you happen to know if that disciplinary body receives more complaints, say, from clients of criminal defense attorneys, than it does from clients of insurance lawyers?”

“No I wouldn’t.”

“Any guess?”

“No.”

“But you see the point.”

Dolan snapped his briefcase closed. “I didn’t know you were making one.”

Gauss’s gray-flecked brows compressed into one. “Then let me make it clear for you, Counselor. Specialist practices attract special clients and troubles. You with me so far?”

The church attorney moved his head from side to side like a bobble-head doll.

“Your friend, Bishop Mczynski, has what you might call a fund-raising practice. His clients are well-heeled contributors and their troubles, if any, are financial. They don’t become his. Your colleagues in criminal defense, on the other hand, have clients that are not only morally challenged, but emotionally damaged as well. My point is that the criminal defense lawyers