Page 4 of Deadly Confessions
He enters the confessional on the penitent's side. The door closes.
I hear the screen slide open.
My heart rate is steady. Sixty-two beats per minute. I know because I've trained myself to count during these moments, to use the pulse in my wrist as a metronome against which I measure my own stillness.
I can hear them.
The confessional in Santa Maria della Sanità is old. Eighteenth century. The wood is thick but the joints have loosened over two hundred years of humidity and heat and bodies pressing against the frame. In the back of the church, you hear nothing. In the third pew, if the nave is empty and Naples is quiet outside, you hear everything.
"Mi benedica, Padre, perché ho peccato."
(Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.)
His voice is steady. Practiced. He has done this before. Maybe not here, maybe not with Father Domenico, but he knows the words the way a man knows a script he's rehearsed.
Father Domenico responds with the blessing. The ritual words. The invitation to confess.
The man begins.
He starts with the small sins. Vanity. A lie told to a business partner. Taking the Lord's name in vain. These are appetizers. Throat-clearing. He is working his way toward the thing that brought him here on a Tuesday evening by appointment rather than Saturday afternoon with the regular penitents.
Then.
He tells Father Domenico about his wife.
He uses her name. I won't repeat it. The name doesn't matter. What matters is that he says it with no inflection. Flat. The way you say a word you've emptied of meaning through repetition.
He describes what he did to her. Specific. Clinical. The locations on her body. The instruments. The duration. He speaks for three minutes without stopping and in those three minutes I learn that this man beat his wife with a methodical patience that makes my stomach fold in half. Not rage. Not drunken outbursts. Scheduled. Planned. He chose Tuesdays, he says, because the housekeeper had Tuesdays off.
My hands are in my lap. Still.
He tells Father Domenico about the child.
A daughter. Seven years old.
He does not use the word "abuse." He uses descriptions. Actions. He narrates what he does to his seven-year-old daughter the way a man describes a routine. A Tuesday routine. After the wife, before dinner. He says the child has learned not to cry because crying extends it.
My fingernails press into my palms. That is the only movement I allow.
He describes killing them. Both of them. Last month. He staged it as a home invasion. The police investigated for two weeks, found nothing, closed the case. He tells Father Domenico that he feels relief. That the burden of managing them was becoming inconvenient. That he wants absolution so he can move forward with his life.
The confessional is silent for four seconds. I count them.
Then the screen slides. I hear Father Domenico's voice, low and pastoral, offering the penance. Three Hail Marys. An Act of Contrition. The formula of absolution.
"Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti."("I absolve you of sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”)
And the candles light up.
One:Killer.Two:Abuser.Three:Children.Four:Sexual.
All four. The flames appear in the alcove to my left, the small niche between the second and third stations of the cross that holds four votive candles in brass holders. To anyone walking in off the street, they are decorative. Part of the church'scenturies-old collection of sacred objects. Nothing special. Nothing to notice.
I notice.
Four candles. All four lit.
I haven't seen all four since the second year.
