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 didn't trust himself with this. He'd been drinking again, and a drunk man holding secrets like these was dangerous. So he called the one person he still trusted, the young deputy who used to be an altar boy. "Get down to the church," he said. "And bring an evidence bag."

The deputy came, but he wasn't alone. A second car pulled up, and a man in a long coat stepped out, smiling. "He's not here for the tapes," the deputy said quietly. "He's on one of them." Coyle realized too late that the altar boy he trusted had grown up working for the very people the sexton recorded. He held the box tight and ran for the dark church.