Chapter 15: The Consultant's Return
The LAPD bullpen hummed like a broken refrigerator, a constant low-grade buzz of fluorescent lights, muttered phone conversations, and the ghost of burnt coffee. Jennifer Wu’s desk was an island of focused chaos within it. She was hunched over a fresh murder file, her brow furrowed, one hand absently twisting a strand of dark hair.
The victim’s face stared up from the 8x10 glossies. Marcus Green, sixty-eight, a deacon at the Greater Victory Baptist Church in Leimert Park. Found in his office, slumped over his desk. A single, close-contact gunshot wound to the temple. The staging was off. Too clean. The scene photos showed a meticulously organized space, a bible open on the desk, a half-drunk mug of tea gone cold. But the angle of the body, the lack of defensive wounds, the missing shell casing—it all whispered ‘professional’ in a place that should have screamed chaos or passion.
James, the current medicial examiner since Sam had moved and they had mutually broken up, had done the preliminary exam. His notes, typed with characteristic dark efficiency, were clipped to the front. Cause: GSW to right temporal region. Manner: Homicide (no, really). Note: Entry wound shows slight abrasion ring from suppressor. Tea was chamomile. He died relaxed. Unusual.
“Wu.”
She didn’t look up, her finger tracing a line on the map of the deacon’s known affiliations. “Unless you’re bringing me aspirin that actually works, go away, James.”
“It’s not James.”
The voice was different. Softer. Familiar in a way that sent an unexpected current down her spine. She looked up.
He stood a few feet from her desk, looking like a stranger. Julian Campbell was dressed not in clerical black, but in a tailored charcoal suit that fit his lean frame with an authority his cassock never had. A crisp white shirt, open at the collar. His hair was shorter, neatly styled, and the shadow of beard she remembered was gone, leaving his jaw clean and defined. He looked sharper, older, and entirely out of place amidst the bullpen’s controlled squalor.
“Father Campbell,” she said, the title feeling oddly formal. She leaned back in her chair, the wheels creaking. “You’re a long way from St. Ignatius.”
“Captain Ruiz called me,” he said, his hands clasped loosely in front of him. A new watch glinted on his wrist. Something simple, steel. Not a priest’s watch. “He said you had a case involving a deacon. Marcus Green. The diocese is… concerned. And cooperative. I’ve been asked to consult, given my… recent experience with church-related incidents.”
He said it with a dry, almost imperceptible edge.Recent experience. A euphemism for being shot at, for hiding in a safehouse, for a kiss that broke like stained glass.
“Ruiz called you in,” she repeated, processing. It made bureaucratic sense. A liaison from the Archdiocese could smooth over access to records, to congregants who might distrust the police. It was smart. It also felt like a personal test, a live wire placed directly on her desk.
“He said you’re the lead. He said to talk to you.” Julian’s eyes, dark and perceptive, held hers. There was no lingering softness from their last fraught goodbye in the parish office. This was a different man. Tempered. “If that’s amenable.”
She gestured to the empty chair beside her desk. “Have a seat. Consultant.”
He sat, moving with a new kind of grace. The suit didn’t rustle; it whispered. He glanced at the photos of Deacon Green, his expression tightening for a fraction of a second before settling into a mask of professional detachment. “What do you need to know?”
“Everything Ruiz didn’t already pull from the Archbishop. Marcus Green’s role, his enemies within the church structure, any controversies. Money, power, sex. The holy trinity of motive.”
A faint, humorless smile touched his lips. “Direct as always.” He leaned forward slightly, and she caught a hint of his scent—sandalwood and soap, replacing the memory of incense and gunpowder. “Deacon Green was a traditionalist. Well-respected. He ran the church’s community outreach programs—the food bank, the shelter. He was also on the financial oversight committee for a major restoration project at the Cathedral. Millions of dollars.”
Jennifer’s detective instincts pricked up. “Oversight committee. That means he could say no to things.”
“He did say no,” Julian confirmed. “Recently. To a contract with a construction firm called ‘Sanctuary Builders.’ He cited inflated costs and a lack of proper bidding. It caused quite a stir. The firm is owned by a man named Elias Vance. A very generous, very connected donor.”
She scribbled the name on her notepad, circling it. “Connected how?”
“Politically.Socially. He’s at every fundraiser. His name is on a wing of the children’s hospital. He’s also,” Julian added, his voice dropping, “known to have associates who are less philanthropic. Rumors, mostly. But where there’s that much clean money, there’s often dirt underneath.”
She studied him. He spoke with a calm certainty he hadn’t possessed months ago. The idealistic priest had gotten a crash course in the mechanics of corruption, and the lesson had stuck. “You’ve done your homework.”
“I told you,” he said, meeting her gaze directly. A charge passed between them, acknowledgment of the unspoken history. “Someone had to step in. It’s what needs doing.”
The callback to his own words in the parish office was deliberate. He was showing her the steel that had been forged in the same fire that had terrified him. She felt that buried flutter in her chest, a stupid, persistent echo.
Her desk phone rang, shattering the moment. She snatched it up. “Wu.”
“Is the holy consultant there yet?” Jame’s voice was tinny through the receiver.
“He is.”
“Good. Tell him his deacon’s chamomile was spiked. Toxicology just came back. A significant dose of Lorazepam. Our man was drugged before he was shot. He was relaxed. He was practically in a coma. That’s not a hit; that’s an execution.”
Jennifer’s grip tightened on the phone. “Send the full report to my desk. And James? Dig up everything you can on a company called ‘Sanctuary Builders.’ Owner is Elias Vance.”
“On it. Try not to get into theological debates. You suck at nuance.” He hung up.
She put the phone down, turning the information over in her mind. Drugged, then shot. A quiet, clinical removal. She looked at Julian. “He was sedated. The tea.”
Julian’s face paled slightly. The professional mask slipped, revealing a flash of visceral revulsion. “He was a good man. He just… wanted the money to go to the right places.”
“That’s usually the most dangerous thing you can want,” Jennifer said softly. She stood, grabbing her jacket from the back of her chair. “Come on. You’re consulting. Let’s go consult at the crime scene. See what your diocese’s money bought.”
The Greater Victory Baptist Church was a sprawling, modern building of tan stone and blue-tinted glass, a world away from the Gothic shadows of St. Ignatius. Yellow police tape cordoned off the side office entrance, a vibrant slash of violation against the neutral stone. The air here smelled of cleaner and damp earth, the metallic scent of blood long since scrubbed away.
Jennifer lifted the tape for Julian, watching him duck underneath. His suit jacket stretched across his shoulders. He’d filled out since the safehouse. “The cleaning crew’s already been through,” she said, leading him down a bland, carpeted hall. “But the bones of the scene are still here. Try to see what they might have missed.”
Deacon Green’s office was a monument to orderly devotion. Textbooks filled floor-to-ceiling shelves. A framed diploma from a theological seminary hung perfectly level on the wall. The desk, now empty of the body, was a vast, polished oak plane marred only by the faint, dark stain Jennifer’s trained eye could still trace in the grain. The ghost of the tea mug sat on a coaster.
“James said the Lorazepam was in the tea,” Jennifer stated, leaning against the doorframe. She pointed to a small, utilitarian kitchenette in the corner of the office. “Kettle, mugs, honey. He made it here. So either the killer brought the drugged tea to him, or he drugged it himself while the killer was present.”
Julian walked slowly into the room, his hands not in his pockets but held loosely at his sides, as if afraid to touch. He wasn’t looking at the stain. He was looking at the books, the photos of family on the credenza, the well-worn leather chair. “He wouldn’t have made tea for just anyone,” Julian said, his voice soft. “This isn’t a social space. It’s a fortress of work. You’d need a reason to be in this room, and a reason for him to pause his work to play host.”
“Someone he trusted. Someone with a reason to be discussing church business.” Jennifer pushed off the doorframe and moved to the desk. She opened the top drawer, already inventoried by the forensics team. Pens, paper clips, a roll of mints. “Your generous donor, Elias Vance. Would Green have made tea for him?”
“If Vance came to discuss the Cathedral project, absolutely. It would be a courtesy.” Julian finally turned to face the desk, his gaze landing on the empty coaster. “A contentious meeting. Perhaps Vance came to apply pressure, to change Green’s mind. The deacon makes tea. It’s a pacifying gesture. He turns his back to fetch honey, or to pour boiling water…”
“And the pill gets crushed into his mug.” Jennifer completed the thought. She imagined it: the respectful donor, the principled deacon, the quiet plink of a sedative dissolving in chamomile. “Then they talk until the drug kicks in. No struggle. No mess. Just a patient wait.”
“It’s monstrous,” Julian whispered, the word hanging in the sterile air.
“It’s efficient.” Jennifer closed the drawer. “But it’s also intimate. It requires the killer to sit here, watching the life fade from a man’s eyes, waiting for the right moment to place the gun. That’s personal. It’s not just a financial obstruction being removed. It’s a grudge.”
She watched him absorb this. His jaw tightened. The man who had trembled amidst shattered glass was gone, replaced by someone calculating the depth of a different evil. “A grudge dressed as a business decision,” he said.
“The most dangerous kind.” She rounded the desk and knelt, examining the floor near the wastebasket. The forensics report noted it was empty except for a used tissue. But the carpet beneath the desk had a slight depression, a repeated pressure point from the chair. Her fingers traced the edge of the depression. “He was a creature of habit. Sat in the exact same position, day after day.”
“Most people are.” Julian crouched beside her, his shoulder inches from hers. She could feel the warmth of him, smell that clean, secular soap. He pointed to the desk’s modesty panel, a wooden skirt between the drawers. “There’s a scuff. New. White-ish.”
Jennifer leaned closer. A faint, half-moon scrape in the dark wood. She pulled a small flashlight from her pocket and shone it at an angle. The streak gleamed. “Plaster. Or drywall compound.” She looked from the scuff on the wood to the position of the chair, then swiveled to look at the blank wall behind the desk. It was bare except for the diploma.
She stood and walked to the wall, running her hand over the smooth, painted surface. “He didn’t kick his own desk. Someone else did. Someone who was maybe moving quickly, or shuffling in place while waiting for the drug to work.” She pressed on the wall. It felt solid. But her eyes traveled to the diploma.
It was hung with meticulous care. Too meticulous? She lifted the frame off its hook. Beneath it, the wall was unmarked. She let out a slow breath, feeling foolish for the hunch. As she went to rehang it, the flashlight beam caught the very edge of the frame’s backing paper, which was torn and peeling slightly.
“Give me a hand,” she said.
Julian was there instantly, steadying the heavy frame as she turned it over. She used her car key to slit the brittle brown paper on the back. Something fluttered out, landing on the carpet.
Not a photograph. A single, crisp sheet of folded printer paper.
Jennifer picked it up, her pulse a quiet drum in her ears. She unfolded it. It was a photocopy of a bank statement, dated three weeks prior. The account name was obscured, but the transactions were clear. A series of identical, large-dollar withdrawals. Each memo line contained not a name, but a single, typed word: TITHE.
The receiving institution’s code was listed at the bottom. It wasn’t a church. It was a numbered offshore entity.
“This wasn’t about saying no to a contract,” Jennifer said, her voice low and certain. She handed the paper to Julian. “This was about finding the real ledger. Green wasn’t just blocking Vance. He was tracing the money. And he found the drain pipe.”
Julian studied the paper, his face hardening into an expression she’d never seen on him before: cold, clerical fury. “The oversight committee he served on… it oversees all diocesan restoration funds. Not just the Cathedral.” He looked up, meeting her eyes. “This could be much bigger than one building. This could be a systemic bleed. And he was about to plug it.”
A sudden, sharp vibration made them both start. Jennifer’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She answered, keeping her eyes on Julian’s transformed face.
“Wu.”
“Hey.” It was James. His voice was backgrounded by the distinctive hum of the morgue’s ventilation. “Did you and the padre bless the crime scene?”
“We’re getting there. What’s up?”
“I ran that company, Sanctuary Builders, through some off-the-books channels. The ones I’m not supposed to have.” He paused, and she heard the click of a keyboard. “Elias Vance is a ghost. A very rich, very clean ghost. But the silent partner listed on the original incorporation documents isn’t. Name rings a bell. Father Francis Kerrigan. Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Office of Patrimony.”
Jennifer’s breath caught. Patrimony. The office that managed church property and assets. The office that would have supervised Deacon Green’s committee. “So the man who potentially killed Green,” she said slowly, “is in business with the man who was supposed to be overseeing him.”
“Looks like the choir has a new conductor,” James said flatly. “A clerical one. Be careful, Jenny. This just went from a dirty business deal to a holy war.”
She ended the call, the weight of the new information settling over the quiet office. Julian was watching her, the bank statement limp in his hand. “What?”
“The silent partner in Vance’s company is Father Francis Kerrigan. Office of Patrimony.”
All color drained from Julian’s face. The cold fury shattered into something akin to grief. “I know him,” he said, the words barely audible. “He’s the Vicar for Clergy. He’s the one who assigned me to St. Ignatius after… after everything. He’s the one who suggested I might be of use as a consultant on this case.”
The air in the room turned to ice. The trust required for the drugged tea, the intimate knowledge of Green’s habits, the ability to navigate church politics and silence—it all crystallized around a single, horrifying point.
Jennifer’s phone buzzed again, a text this time. From Ruiz. It read: Kerrigan just called my office. He wants a personal update on the investigation. He’s insisting.
She showed the screen to Julian. Their eyes locked, a current of raw understanding passing between them. The killer wasn’t circling the block in a black sedan anymore. He was in the system, picking up the phone, asking for a report on his own work.
The scuff on the desk, the hidden bank slip, the poisoned tea—they weren’t just discussing a crime scene anymore.
They were standing in the middle of a live wire, and it had just been plugged in.
Jennifer stared at the text from Ruiz, the pixels seeming to blur. Kerrigan. The name was a key turning in a lock she didn’t even know was there. “He’s not just asking,” she said, her voice low. “He’s checking. He wants to see how close we are, what we know. He sent you here.”
Julian’s hand tightened around the bank statement, the paper crackling in the silent office. “He didn’t send me. Ruiz called me.” But the certainty in his voice was fraying, replaced by a dawning, sickening doubt. “He just… approved it. Encouraged it.”
“He placed you. Right next to me.” Jennifer shoved her phone back into her pocket and took the statement from his trembling fingers. She folded it carefully, sealed it in an evidence bag from her jacket. “He gets a direct feed. Through you.”
“I would never—” Julian began, heat rising in his voice.
“You wouldn’t have to.” She cut him off, not unkindly. She met his eyes, seeing the betrayal etch itself into his features. “You’re transparent, Julian. You always have been. Your reactions, your insights… they’re genuine. He’d read you like a book. He’d know exactly what we found just by watching your face when you walked out of here.”
The truth of it landed between them, heavy and suffocating. He had been used as a sensor, a canary in a coal mine he didn’t know was poisoned. His shoulders slumped, the sharp lines of the suit suddenly seeming like a costume. “What do we do?”
“We do the job.” Jennifer’s mind was already clicking forward, past the personal sting, into tactical steps. “We walk out of here like we found nothing. You look troubled, but only about the death of a deacon. We go back to the precinct. We feed him exactly what he wants to hear through the proper, frustrating channels.”
“And then?”
“And then we find a way to trace that numbered account to him.” She gestured with the evidence bag. “This is a photocopy. Green hid it. The original is somewhere. In his house, a safety deposit box, with a lawyer. We find it. We connect Kerrigan to the money, and the money to Vance, and Vance to the trigger. We build it quiet, and we build it tight.”
They left the church office, the quiet hall feeling surveilled. Sunlight streamed through a high window, slicing across the carpet. Jennifer watched Julian from the corner of her eye as they stepped back into the humid afternoon. He walked beside her, his hands clenched at his sides, his profile set in a stern, unfamiliar line. The man who’d once trembled now vibrated with a different energy: rage.
The drive back to the precinct was conducted in a thick, productive silence. Jennifer navigated traffic, her mind running scenarios. Julian stared out the passenger window, watching the city blur past. He finally spoke as they neared the monolithic building. “He sat in my office. He asked me about the shooting at St. Ignatius. He called it a ‘trial by fire.’ He said it gave me a unique perspective for pastoral care.” Julian let out a short, sharp breath. “He was assessing damage. He was seeing if I was broken, or if I was a threat.”
“And what are you?” Jennifer asked, pulling into the parking structure.
He turned to look at her, his dark eyes utterly clear. “I’m not broken.”
The parking garage’s concrete dampness clung to them as they stepped from the car. The echo of his declaration—I’m not broken—hung between them, a challenge to the shadows. “Wait here,” Jennifer said, her voice clipped. “I need to see Ruiz. Alone.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Her heels tapped a sharp, angry rhythm on the concrete as she marched towards the elevator, the photocopied bank statement a burning rectangle in her jacket’s inner pocket. The bullpen’s noise hit her like a wall, but she tunneled through it, beelining for the corner office.
Ruiz’s door was open. He was on the phone, his back to her, staring out at the city skyline. “Understood,” he was saying, his voice a gravelly monotone. “I’ll ensure the liaison is fully integrated. Thank you, Father.”
He hung up and turned. His face, a landscape of old wrinkles and weary intelligence, didn’t change at the sight of her. “Wu. You’re back early. Where’s Campbell?”
“That’s what I want to know.” She stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind her. The scent of his cigar, unlit but forever in the fabric of things, filled the space. “Why is he here, Captain? Really.”
Ruiz lowered himself into his chair, the leather sighing. “He’s a consultant. The Archdiocese offered him as a resource. Given the victim’s profile, it streamlines access.”
“He’s a priest. And he’s your godson.” She leaned on his desk, her palms flat on the cool surface. “The last time he was ‘integrated’ into one of my cases, someone shot at him in a church. Now we have a deacon drugged and executed in another one. This isn’t streamlining. This is painting a target on his back in neon.”
“He knows the ways of the church best,” Ruiz said, his eyes holding hers, unblinking. “The politics, the hidden hierarchies. You know bureaucracy. He knows the Vatican’s version. And after what happened with Father Patrick, he knows firsthand how the department works. He understands the machine.”
“He’s not a part of the machine. He’s a person. He’s…” She faltered, searching for the right word. Vulnerable felt wrong. Complicated was an understatement.
“He asked to be useful,” Ruiz said, his voice dropping. “He came to me after the St. Ignatius glass was replaced. Said sitting behind a desk handing out bulletins felt like a betrayal of Patrick. Of his own instincts. I’m using the asset I have, Wu. The asset who wants to help.”
It was a cold calculus, but she recognized its truth. Julian had changed. The suit proved it. The steady gaze in the deacon’s office proved it. He wasn’t the trembling idealist anymore; he was a man seeking purpose in the wreckage, and Ruiz had given him a channel. Arguing felt suddenly pointless, even selfish.
“Fine,” she said, pushing off the desk. The reluctance was a bitter taste in her mouth. “But he’s my shadow. He doesn’t talk to Kerrigan without me. He doesn’t sneeze without me. Understood?”
“Understood.” Ruiz gave a single nod, a gesture of agreement that felt like a dismissal. “Now go. Do the job.”
She left, the door clicking with finality. Julian was where she’d left him, leaning against her car, staring at a stain of oil on the concrete. He straightened as she approached. “Well?”
“You’re in. Officially.” She hit the unlock button. “Get in. We’re going to the archives. I want everything on Greater Victory Baptist, its financials, its building permits, its communion wine supplier. If Green found a thread, it started in his own parish.”
The archives were in the basement, a fluorescent-lit purgatory of metal shelves and cardboard boxes that smelled of dust and decaying paper. It was a world away from the digital buzz upstairs. Jennifer pulled a rolling ladder over to a section labeled “CHURCH AFFILIATES / NON-CATHOLIC (1985-2010).” “Start there,” she said, pointing. “Look for anything with Greater Victory’s letterhead. Budget reports, correspondence with the city.”
For a while, there was only the sound of sliding boxes and rustling paper. The dusty air tickled her throat. She found a crate of annual picnic photos from a Lutheran congregation and shoved it aside. Her sleeve caught on another box, sending a cascade of manila envelopes spilling across the floor.
“Damn it.” She knelt, and he was there instantly, crouching to help. Their hands brushed as they gathered the scattered papers. His fingers were warm. A static jolt, faint but undeniable, passed between them. They both froze for a half-second too long.
He recovered first, stacking the envelopes neatly. “You seemed… frustrated. With Ruiz.”
“He’s playing chess with lives. It’s irritating.” She sat back on her heels, wiping dust on her slacks. “And he’s right, which is more irritating.”
Julian remained crouched, resting his forearms on his knees. The posture was oddly casual, dissolving the last of the suit’s formality. “You tried to protect me. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. It didn’t work.” She looked at him, really looked, in the grim basement light. The sharp suit couldn’t hide the fatigue around his eyes, the new tension in his jaw. “Why did you really ask for this? After everything that happened?”
He was quiet, his gaze drifting over the canyon of shelves. “After the safehouse, after things settled… the routine felt like a lie. Hearing confessions about marital spats when I knew what real sin looked like. It felt… hollow.” He picked at a loose thread on his pants. “And I thought, if I could help you, it would balance the scales. For Patrick.”
“It’s not your job to balance scales.”
“Isn’t it?” He finally met her eyes. “What about you? You’ve been quiet. Different. Ruiz mentioned… you and Sam. That it ended.”
The shift was so abrupt it left her mentally stumbling. She hadn’t discussed it with anyone at work. She let out a short breath. “Ruiz has a big mouth. Yeah.It ended. Months ago. Mutual. He took a job heading a forensic pathology lab in Seattle. It was a good offer. We both knew what my job is like. No dramatic finish. Just… logistics.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was adult. And predictable.” She stood, brushing off her knees, needing to move. “My track record is pretty much a public service announcement at this point. Cops, lawyers, that one guy who restored vintage motorcycles who turned out to be selling them as ‘authentic war relics’ on the black market. The apps since then have been a special kind of hell. Last week a guy’s profile said his passion was ‘competitive bird watching,’ which I’m pretty sure is a euphemism for something terrifying.”
Julian laughed, a genuine, surprised sound that softened the harsh lines of his face. It was a good sound. “Competitive bird watching. That’s… aggressively niche.”
“See? My life.” She smiled, despite herself. It felt strangely easy, talking to him here in the dusty quiet.
“I thought about you,” he said, the laughter fading but the softness remaining. “After you stopped coming by St. Ignatius. I’d see the plywood on the window from my office. I’d wonder how you were. If the weight of it all was… manageable.”
The air in the basement grew thick and still, the hum of the lights suddenly loud. His admission hung there, simple and devastating. It stripped away the pretense of the case, the consultant label, the years of his vocation. It was just a man telling a woman he’d thought of her.
She swallowed, her throat dry. The careful professionalism she’d armored herself with felt thin. “I thought about you too,” she heard herself say, the words leaving her before she could cage them. “More than I should have. Wondering if you were okay. If what happened… changed things too much.”
His eyes widened slightly, a flicker of surprise and something else—hope, sharp and naked. He opened his mouth to speak.
A box from the top shelf chose that moment to give way. It tumbled down, exploding in a percussive crash of paper and dust right between them. They both jumped back, hearts hammering.
“Jesus!” Jennifer gasped, her hand flying to her chest.
Julian stared at the wreckage, then at her startled face. A slow, nervous laugh bubbled out of him. She followed, the tension shattering into a shared, breathless relief. The spell was broken, the moment buried under a cascade of old church donation records.
“Well,” she said, catching her breath, pointing at the mess. “That’s a sign if I’ve ever seen one.”
“A sign to wear a hard hat down here,” he agreed, still smiling.
The easy banter returned, but the atmosphere had been permanently altered. The air felt charged, every look now carrying the ghost of the words they’d just spoken. More than I should have. She busied herself with the spilled papers, her mind reeling. He was a consultant. He was Ruiz’s godson. He was, technically, a priest. And she was single.
And she was supposed to be professional.
As they worked side-by-side to clean the mess, Jennifer silently repeated it like a mantra. Professional. Professional.Professional. The case was a live wire. Kerrigan was watching. This was not the time.
Across from her, Julian carefully stacked the scattered files, his movements deliberate. His internal world was a silent storm of recalibration. She was single. The barrier he had imagined, the one named Sam, was gone. The attraction he had felt in the church, in the safehouse dark, had not been a fragment of crisis. It had been real, and she had felt it too. More than she should have.
This case, this terrible, sacred duty, was also now something else. It was a chance. A terribly complicated, potentially dangerous chance. But as his hand brushed against hers again while handing her a file, and he saw the faint, answering flush on her neck, he knew he would take it.
The way the light hit her profile, the tense line of her mouth as she worked, the way her fingers paused over a stack of receipts—she was all coiled wire, dangerous and beautiful.
The archives were a dead end. They found nothing but outdated spreadsheets and weathered council minutes. Jennifer slammed a beige file shut with more force than necessary. “This is a waste of time. We should be talking to Green’s parishioners.”
Julian straightened, arching his back to relieve the stiffness from crouching between the shelves. His suit jacket pulled taut across his shoulders, the fabric whispering against the metal shelves. “I can make some calls.
The Archdiocese has outreach records—food banks, shelters, that kind of thing.” Julian pulled out his phone, his sleeve riding up to reveal the watch Ruiz had given him as a graduation gift. The steel band gleamed. “I know the coordinator for Greater Victory’s shelter program. She was on the board with Green.”
Jennifer watched him thumb through his contacts. Even in wrinkled, dust-streaked armor, he looked more priest than consultant. “That’s convenient. Whole lot of Catholic guilt in your phone.”
He glanced up, a ghost of a smirk playing on his lips. “It’s called networking. And I’m good at it.