The Confession - 2

“You are a priest forever," Darrell's voice boomed, his voice echoing in the cell, the big man's eyes wet with tears.

Father Tom nodded his head silently, before whispering, "We'll see."

A moment later the public defender entered the cell and Darrell ushered me out after Father Tom passed the envelope to me.

That evening, I got a full dose of Northern hospitality before I finally turned in for the night in a room at Darrell's place. Reclining on the bed, I opened the envelope and pulled out the yellow pages with trembling hands.

I skimmed it until I got to that terrible line: I kidnapped a little girl, but only you can save her, priest. A life for a life. Your life for hers.

Father Tom wrote, I didn't even think about it, I simply agreed, "My life for hers."

"Sure you don't want to think about it, Priest?" The Collector replied with quiet menace.

"There's nothing to think about."

"Don't wimp out and call the cops, or you know what will happen."

"Wouldn't even consider it."

Father Tom continued, If there is one thing I am certain of, it's that you can't trust a psychopath to keep his word. I was willing to trade my life for the little girl, that much was certain. I was tested and wounded in combat in Afghanistan. I had a pretty good sense of what I was capable of.

But did the Collector?

Sun Zhu wrote - If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

I knew his modus operandi. Would he change it? If he stuck to it, I had a small chance of success.

But if he didn't....

One of my parishioners visited me later in the afternoon to see if I knew the Olsen's little girl had disappeared. I shared as much as I dared about the situation and asked for his help - I rather not say his name. I told him what I needed and he agreed.

At the end of the day I went to the parsonage where I lived and made what little preparation I could before the Collector's visit. I mixed corn syrup with blackberry and strawberry jelly and poured the mixture into a pair of sandwich baggies and carefully taped them to a pair of garden knee protectors before putting them on under my baggiest pair of pants.

I knew they would not stop the bullets, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances.

Then I picked a book off the shelf that a couple of battle buddies had given me as a gag gift and took the dust cover off my New American and used it to make it look like a Bible. I sat down with the book on my lap. Save for prayer there was nothing else for me to do.

He made me wait for three full hours before he slipped into my house wearing black gloves and carrying a briefcase.

He opened the briefcase on my desk and deployed his scalpels and other assorted sharp instruments across its surface. I opened the book and pretended to read its blank pages.

"So Father," he said breezily, let's see what your made of." He pulled a silenced pistol suddenly from his jacket and shot me in the left knee.

The pain shrieked from my shattered knee up my trembling torso, my surroundings achieving an elevated focus, everything hard and delineated as the edge of a sharp blade. I heard my voice cry out as if uttered from someone separate and distinct from me before looking down in surprise at the book still held in my hands.

"My, my," he murmured in what seemed like a mixture of surprise and admiration. His face in those terrible seconds that followed seemed a grotesque caricature of the man who had entered my home only a few minutes before. If not for the image of the little Olsen girl fixed in my mind, I surely would have begun to beg for his mercy then and there.

But I had envisioned her features as I prayed during the endless hours before he arrived with his toys and his malice. I had prayed for so long and so fervently that I saw a vision of her standing at my door, her spirit present in the room with me like a tiny angel.

"Let's try this again, shall we?"

Something snapped within me as the second bullet penetrated my right knee cap as if a beast had awakened within me. And still I held the book in my hands, but they trembled no more. In that brief moment I envisioned our dance of death as if made real before the music even had a chance to begin.

"You're a brave man, I have to hand it to you, braver than most. But they all beg for mercy in the end." Setting down his pistol he picked up a scalpel with his right hand.

"Left ear or right?"

"Right," I answered hoarsely.

As he approached me, I knew I could not stand. Could he see my pupils dilating as my adrenaline surged? He was surely close enough as he pulled my right ear taut with his left hand.

But as he reached toward the ear with the scalpel, I proved my left hand could move more swiftly than his right. Catching his wrist I twisted it and pulled his arm from his body far enough to bury my Marine fighting knife that was hidden within the book into his armpit. The scalpel clattered to the floor as he yanked my ear so hard I thought it might pop off.

A second later I stabbed him in the other armpit, his body shuddering as he helplessly released my ear. Still tightly gripping his right wrist, I thrust the knife a third time into the soft flesh beneath his chin, his eyes now wide with terror.

Guiding him to my left, his wrist still held in a death grip, I had him sit and then turn and lay across my lap, his head coming to a rest on a throw pillow to my right. The knife now pulled from beneath his jaw, the blood had already turned the top half of his starched white shirt a wet crimson that stuck to his heaving chest.

"Where's the girl," I whispered.

It was difficult for him to speak, but he managed to squeak "This wasn't the deal ... I kill you first, remember?"

"We didn't discuss the timing. Tell me where the girl is and then you can kill me."

"How the Hell am I going to do that?"

"Where's the girl," I said, much louder the second time.

He shook his head. "Which ear did we agree upon?" I asked him as his eyes widened a second time. When he struggled and wrenched to get off me, I plunged the knife into the fat of his left thigh and then his right with two swift strokes.

"I not asking again," I warned him, "Where's the girl?"

When he shook his head again, I released his right wrist and jammed my fore and middle fingers as deep into his nostrils as they would go and yanked his head to the side to fully expose his right ear and then began to saw it off. That's when he finally told me.

"Did you get that," I said loudly. And the man listening to the mobile in my pocket, yelled "Got it!

This is a true and faithful recounting of what happened. - Father Tom

..............

Father Tom's trial lasted four days and the jury deliberations lasted barely an hour. They found him not guilty. Of course, the talking heads had a field day with that.

But given the ruling, the Archdiocese reinstated Father Tom. Since every single parishioner, even the children, wrote letters demanding his return, it was a no-brainer, really. Father Tom showed me the letter from the archbishop. Just above his signature, the bishop had handwritten:

For it is testified: "You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek."