"Purge the Evil" - a novel

by Bill Dunn

(Note: this is a work-in-progress attempt at writing a novel. Feedback, critiques, plot suggestions are more than welcomed.)
 

CHAPTER 37

Monday, November 29th, 8:40 p.m.

            “OK, OK, I’m coming! Hold your horses!” Fr. Dan Cavanaugh yelled as he dried off his hands. He walked out of the bathroom in the St. Lawrence church rectory and headed for the front door, shoving his shirttails into his pants as he walked. The door bell rang again. “I said I’m coming,” he yelled not quite as loudly this time.

            Since the door bell had rung at least five times since he first heard it while in the bathroom, Fr. Dan knew the visitor had been waiting on the front porch for at least a few minutes, so he did not bother to look through the peep hole as usual. He grabbed the doorknob and swung the door open while saying, “Sorry to keep you waiting. You caught me at a bad—”

            The priest stopped in mid-sentence and stared at Anna Rivera. The gorgeous woman smiled and asked, “May I come in?”

            “Oh, oh sure,” he replied. He stepped aside and let her enter. “What a nice surprise,” he said with a smile, remembering the enjoyable Thanksgiving afternoon they had shared the previous week, but completely forgetting his conclusion that they never should be together alone.

            “Can I get you anything?” Fr. Dan asked as he took her coat. “Coffee? Tea?”

            “That’s so kind of you,” she said. “But no thanks, I’m fine.”

            “Well, then what can I do for you, Anna?” Fr. Dan said.

            “I just want to talk, if that’s OK,” she said.

            “Oh sure, that’s fine. Do you want to sit down?” he asked. He pointed toward the living room, and Anna smiled and nodded. She sat on a high-backed cushioned chair. When she was seated, he sat on the couch directly across from her. As soon as Fr. Dan had settled down on the couch, Anna got up, walked over, and sat down next to him. The priest shifted to his right a bit, trying to create some space between them, but he bumped into the arm of the couch.

            “Umm,” Fr. Dan said nervously, “So what would you like to talk about?”

            Anna sighed and said, “Oh Dan, I’ve been so lonely. Whether I’m home, or at work, or even in church…although I’m surrounded by other people, I feel so alone.”

            “Well, um, that’s understandable,” he said. “You’ve gone through a traumatic experience and it’s going to take time for things to get back to normal. But I promise, Anna, you will be happy again. It just takes time.”

            She turned her head and looked directly into Fr. Dan’s eyes and smiled. After a few seconds she said softly, “I’m happy when I’m with you.” Then she gently placed her right hand onto his left knee. Fr. Dan’s entire body immediately tingled. Part of him wanted to jump up from the couch and scream, “What are you doing?!” while another part of him wanted to lunge to his left and embrace the beautiful woman. Following neither urge, he sat frozen in place.

            She sighed again and slowly tilted her upper body toward him, so her head rested against his shoulder. “When my husband died,” she began, “I told myself that my main duty now was to raise my kids. I had my chance at romance, but that was over. In the years since I’ve been a widow, I haven’t been attracted to another man. Until I met you.”

            Fr. Dan gulped. “That’s, uh, that’s very nice,” he stammered, “but I, uh, I think…”

            In one quick but gently move, Anna shifted in place and slid her right arm between Fr. Dan’s lower back and the back of the couch, leaned forward and rested her head against his chest, and reached out with her left arm and cradled him around the waist. She had him in a sitting hug, and the priest was at once both horrified and delighted by the sensation.

            After a few silent minutes, Anna lifted her head and looked at Fr. Dan. He looked down, his face no more than six inches away from the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

            “Danny,” she whispered, “I want to be with you. I mean…I want to spend the night with you.” She squeezed him ever so slightly when she said the word “night.” Blood coursed through every vein in his body and his head began to swim.

            “Oh Lord,” he mumbled weakly. The internal battle which had been raging inside the priest was coming to an end. It was a rout. All his defenses crumbled. Logic and wisdom and duty and discipline and vows of celibacy melted away like snowflakes hitting a warm sidewalk. Nothing was real anymore. The past never happened. The future would never arrive. The only moment that ever existed was the present moment. He no longer knew who he was, and he no longer cared. His mind and his will were gone. His passions and his desires engulfed him like a tidal wave.

            Craving only one thing now, as a drowning man craves only air, Fr. Dan twisted to his left and wrapped his arms around Anna. He moved his face toward hers, his mouth inches away from her luscious lips.

            Just as their lips were about to touch, the phone rang.

            They both were startled by the unexpected noise, and opened their eyes and pulled their heads away from each other slightly. For a moment they tried to pretend they hadn’t heard anything. As they moved toward each other again, the phone rang again. Fr. Dan shook his head slightly and chuckled. He rested his forehead on her shoulder, exhaled loudly, and waited for the phone to ring again. It did.

            “I, uh, I have to get that,” he said.

            The priest got up slowly from the couch and walked to the other side of the room. He glanced over at Anna and eyed her lustfully as he picked up the phone. “Hello, this is Father Cavanaugh,” he said.

            Inside his head, his mind and will were not quite gone after all, and he winced at the word he had just spoken: “Father.” Father, huh? he heard his mind say. How dare you use a title of reverence and holiness and sacrifice? You selfish creep.

            He looked over toward Anna again, not so lustfully this time. A small wave of shame and guilt started to build up from within him. On the other end of the phone a voice said, “Do you recognize my voice?”

            Fr. Dan noticed that Anna was unbuttoning her blouse. “What?” he said into the phone, flustered and distracted. “Wha, what did you say?”

            “I said,” the voice answered slowly, “do you recognize my voice?”

            He did. After making a point of listening to the radio every morning for the past couple of weeks, he definitely recognized the voice. “Yes, I do,” Fr. Dan said. “It’s Mr. Pit Bull, correct?”

            “Yeah, that’s right,” Pit Bull said. “I wanna ask you a question, Father. Can we consider this phone call a confessional?”

            Fr. Dan was taken aback by the odd question. He paused then said, “Um, yeah, I guess so. Sure.”

            “OK, good. I have a confession to make. I might shoot someone tonight.”

            “Might? What do you mean ‘might’?” Fr. Dan asked.

            “Well, I might not. I hope I don’t. Or I might have to,” Pit Bull said. The whiskey made him speak freely but not entirely coherently. “Then again, I might be the one who gets shot—I sure hope that doesn’t happen—or we both might end up dead. You never know. Anyway, I want to confess to you now just in case, you know?”

            “No, I don’t know,” Fr. Dan said in frustration. “All I know is, if you haven’t done anything yet, you can still choose not to do it.”

            “Nah, you don’t understand,” Pit Bull said. “I’m in too deep. I’ve gotta do something one way or the other, and it’s gonna be tonight.”

            “Listen, uh…hey, can I call you Pit Bull?” Fr. Dan asked.

            “Yeah, sure.”

            “OK, listen, Pit Bull,” the priest began. “I honestly don’t know what’s going on here, but I know that you can minimize your problems by stopping right now. Do not do anything tonight you’re going to regret. You and your accomplice have to stop doing what you’ve been doing.”

            “My accomplice?” Pit Bull said with a laugh. “That’s who I might shoot—or who might shoot me. Actually, one of my accomplices.”

            “There’s more than one?” Fr. Dan asked.

            “Oh Father, you don’t know the half of it.” Pit Bull sat back in the front seat of his car, still parked behind the Spigot Café. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and shifted his cell phone from his right to his left hand. “This is still a confessional, right?”

            “Uh huh.”

            “So you have to keep all this a secret, right?”

            “Well, yes,” Fr. Dan said.

            “I guess I might as well tell you then,” Pit Bull said. For the next five minutes he described the entire history of the secret vigilante group to the stunned priest, from its inception to its planning stages and then every detail of each mission. A couple of times during Pit Bull’s rambling monologue, Anna stood up and whispered, “Danny?” but the priest shook his head and waved her away. He listened to the story coming through the phone with horrified fascination.

            When Pit Bull finished, Fr. Dan’s head was spinning again, but his insides felt ice cold rather than flaming hot, as they had ten minutes earlier. He wasn’t sure how to respond.

            “That, that’s incredible,” he finally said after a long pause. “Rev. Morton and a, a police captain? They’re really involved in all this?”

            “Fraid so, Padre,” Pit Bull answered.

            The name Pit Bull had mentioned, Bradford, sounded familiar to Fr. Dan, but he couldn’t quite place it. Then it hit him. Captain Psycho! Mikey’s boss! he thought.

            “Listen, Pit Pull, this is really important. Where are you going to be tonight? Where are you going to meet the others? I have to meet with you before you go through with this.”

            Anna walked over and put her arm on Fr. Dan’s shoulder. The priest turned and grimaced, then shook his head “no” at the bewildered woman as he strained to listen to the phone. Anna looked down toward the floor sadly and then walked back to the couch. She buttoned up her blouse as she walked.

            “Wait, wait! Don’t hang up!” Fr. Dan shouted into the phone. “Are you still there?! Pit Bull?” He slammed the phone down and mumbled, “Dammit, I’ve got to tell Mike!”

            “Danny, what’s the matter?” Anna said softly.

            “Oh God, I don’t know,” he exclaimed. “Listen, I have to go—right now. I’m sorry.” He swung open the door to the hall closet and grabbed his coat. “Anna, um, um,” he stammered, “I, uh, let yourself out and lock the door behind you. Sorry.” Then he raced out the front door.

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