Free Ghost Dance by Mark T. Sullivan Page A

whisper. ‘Isn’t it the pits about Father D’Angelo?’
    ‘The pits?’
    She gestured at a hole in the painting the size of a tea bag on the priest’s left hip.
    ‘We had a burglar back a couple of months and he knocked the portrait off the hook,’ she explained in a low, conspiratorial voice that made Gallagher want to smile. ‘Monsignor McColl went totally ape, let me tell you. A burglar in the rectory! Monsignor McColl has his bouts of irritation, but I’ve never seen him so ticked.’
    ‘I can imagine.’
    ‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’
    Libby Curtin hurried down the hall toward an imposing set of carved double doors, knocked, men disappeared inside. Gallagher looked up at the painting, half wondering whether D’Angelo’s story would be compelling enough to serve as one of the narrative vehicles of an hour-long documentary. The other part of him wondered whether D’Angelo’s story would be compelling enough to make him stop thinking about Potter, Nightingale and a killer who thought of himself as Charun. Gallagher took a notebook from the pocket of his oilskin jacket and grudgingly made a note that with the right lighting, the painting, even damaged, would make a dramatic image on film.
    The carved doors opened. Libby Curtin poked her head out and waved him in.
    Gallagher sidled through the door into the room and stopped short. Monsignor Timothy McColl dwarfed the heavy oak desk he stood behind. He was a grizzly bear of a man in his late forties, six feet six inches tall, with a broom of mahogany hair, a close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard and a florid bull neck that threatened to pop his clerical collar. He wore his black sleeves rolled to the elbows to reveal the kind of forearms and hands you’d expect of an aging stonemason, not a priest.
    Monsignor McColl’s massive paw literally swallowed Gallagher’s. He squeezed just enough to let Gallagher know that his physical power was real, then released and sank back into his tufted swivel chair. The priest grimaced as he gestured Gallagher toward a Gothic-style seat in front of the desk. He rubbed his belly sourly. ‘Excuse me a second, will you?’ he asked. ‘My stomach’s been acting up lately.’
    Monsignor McColl went into a small bathroom and shut the door.
    Gallagher took a quick inventory of the artifacts in the office for clues to the priest’s personality. Behind the desk were several wooden file cabinets and the obligatory crucifix. Off to the right hung three photographs. In one, the monsignor stood emotionless before a whitewashed church amid palm trees surrounded by somber children in white uniforms. In an older, black-and-white photograph, a much younger McColl stood in the snow with a group of equally solemn young boys in front of an aging brick building. One of the boys, a gangly towheaded kid with a remote expression on his face, strangely reminded Gallagher of himself as a child. In the third photograph, McColl sat atop a mountain peak wearing glacier sunglasses and a backpack laden down with ropes and climbing equipment. Beside the photographs, mounted on wooden pegs were several brightly painted baskets, a bolo knife in a sheath decorated with ornate and brightly colored beadwork and a necklace made of bleached shells. The office was bathed in soft light from a leaded-glass window overlooking the garden. A hermit thrush splashed in a birdbath at the center of which stood three tiny stone horses. The same birdbath depicted in the damaged painting in the hallway.
    ‘Sorry to make you wait,’ Monsignor McColl rumbled as he emerged from the bathroom. ‘So, Mr Gallagher, are you Catholic or lapsed?’
    ‘Neither,’ he replied. ‘I’m an atheist.’
    The priest’s right eyebrow arched. ‘I thought Mrs. Curtin said you were interested in Father D’Angelo.’
    ‘I am.’
    ‘Why would an atheist be interested in a priest?’
    Gallagher explained his background and gave McColl examples of his other film projects.
    ‘You