They 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.