The Confession Booth Recordings
mystery◐ MatureThey took Father Coyle's collar two winters ago, but no one ever took back his key. The old church sat dark and empty now. He let himself in the side door, looking for the leftover wine. Instead he heard a rattle behind the confessional wall. He pried off a strip of rotten wood and found a reel-to-reel recorder hidden inside, the tape labeled in the dead sexton's shaky hand: 1971 to last March. Coyle pressed play. A woman's voice filled the booth: "I killed him, Father. And no one ever knew."
Coyle slammed the recorder off. Hiding a microphone in a confessional was a sin and a crime. The dead sexton had been taping confessions for fifty years. Someone had to answer for it. Coyle drove straight to the home of the one man who might have known: the retired bishop.
What happens next?
2 ways forwardThe bishop's hands shook as he reached for the phone. "Give me the tapes, Father, for the good of the church." But Coyle had heard that tone before, from guilty men in his booth. He backed out the door, tapes under his arm, and drove straight to the police instead. Some secrets, he decided, belonged to the people they were taken from.