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guy’s a priest.”
    Broker inclined his head. “There’s kinda a lot of that going around this season.”
    “Yeah. It’s getting to be—say five Hail Mary’s and give kindly old father Murphy a hand job. The media . . .” John raised his hands and pawed at something distasteful in the air. He pronounced “the media” as if he were raising Satan.
    “I get the picture. What do you want?” Broker said.
    “I want you to check around to see what’s in Moros’s background. See if the shoe fits.”
    “C’mon, you got people who can do that,” Broker said directly.
    John met Broker’s squint with tired but very steady blue eyes. “I need a certain touch on this, just for a few days,” he said.
    “Uh-huh. Where’s Harry fit in?”
    John nodded. “Okay, I’m getting to that. This priest transferred into St. Martin’s two months ago from Albuquerque. So last week the secretary—the one who found him—gets this anonymous call from his old parish. The caller insists Moros got chased out of Albuquerque for molesting little girls. One of those hush-hush geographic cures the Church is not supposed to be doing anymore.
    “So the secretary’s no dummy; she watches the news about the current priest hysteria. So she called it in. Since the Dolman case, Harry has this proprietary interest in anything that sounds like child abuse, so the call was routed to him. He made some inquiries and cleared it. We checked his computer last night, and his notes said, basically: this priest just transferred into a defunct church where the average age of the dozen remaining parishioners is seventy-two, with no kids. In his opinion, just another bullshit anonymous tip,” John said.
    “Sounds pretty straightforward,” Broker said. “So what’s the deal?”
    “I just want you to check out where Harry was last night. To eliminate him from the git-go.”
    Suddenly on edge, Broker came forward in his chair. “He’s your sergeant. Goddammit, John; Harry and I barely say hello to each other anymore.”
    John’s eyes did not waver. “Harry fell off the wagon just about the time he took the complaint call last week. Looks like he drank all weekend. He came in shit-faced Monday morning and pulled a horror show in the unit. I took his badge and gun and suspended him for fifteen days. And I got it in writing from the union, he has to go into chemical dependency treatment, in-patient. We’ve reserved a bed for him at St. Joe’s in St. Paul.”
    Broker rubbed his forehead, amazed. “Jesus,” he said.
    “He isn’t answering his phone. So I want you to find him and put him in that bed. In the process, you push him hard about this case and the Saint’s case. He’s on the ropes, he just may come apart and tell us something,” John said.
    “I dunno, John, sounds like he’s a sick man,” Broker said.
    “Fuck sick, I want you to lean on him.” John put special emphasis on the you .
    Broker exhaled and looked past John at the solid wall of heat rising over Wisconsin. “Harry always has trouble with the first half of July,” he said.

Chapter Four
    John got up to use the bathroom. Alone, Broker reviewed the Saint’s case that had created a sensation in the St. Croix River valley and throughout the state last summer.
    “The Saint” was the nickname the media attached to a vigilante killer who, in the popular mind, stepped up to dispense punishment to Ronald Dolman. Dolman had taught first grade at Timberry Trails Elementary School. Timberry was a sprawl of housing, malls, and cul-de-sacs that had popped up like pricey toadstools on the farmland south of Stillwater.
    After a thorough investigation, Dolman had been charged with molesting six-year-old Tommy Horrigan. Washington County assistant prosecutor Gloria Russell had gone after Dolman with great energy. Her method of eliciting testimony from Tommy was earnest but carefully orchestrated to avoid the appearance of leading or coaching.
    But the defense attorney had skillfully