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have any paperwork to catch up on.”
    â€œThen catch up on mine—fitting, given that most of it is about you. Department of Public Safety wanted your head on a platter this time, but they ended up settling for your ass in a chair.”
    â€œHow nice of them.”
    â€œDon’t worry. You can keep your gun. Just in case the office gets attacked by somebody likely gunning for you anyway.”
    â€œShould I keep another weapon of mass destruction at the ready, too?”
    â€œLong as it doesn’t stink up the place.”
    *   *   *
    Downstairs, Caitlin was still staring at the empty desk, which was chipped and sticky with undried varnish and set in a darkened corner of the first floor, when her cell phone rang. She leaned against the desk chair, listening to it squeak, as she answered the call.
    â€œHello.”
    â€œCaitlin Strong?” a muffled male voice greeted her.
    â€œWho is this?”
    â€œJust thought you’d want to know a friend of yours is about to get himself in some trouble.”
    â€œAnd who might that be?”
    â€œOldest son of Cort Wesley Masters. Named Dylan, I believe. I’d hurry if I were you.”

 
    7
    B OERNE, T EXAS
    â€œNew game,” Guillermo Paz said into the microphone, from the table set atop a small portable stage at the front of the dining room in Morningstar Ministries at Menger Springs Senior Living Community.
    At seven feet tall, Paz hardly needed to be standing on even a meager platform. But the placement was easier on the fading eyesight of the elderly residents, who sat with varying numbers of bingo cards assembled before them, patiently waiting for him to call each number.
    After all, Paz reasoned, they weren’t going anywhere except back to their rooms in the assisted living portion of the facility. The priest he’d been visiting at San Antonio’s historic San Fernando Cathedral for more than seven years was now living in the nursing center section, after suffering a stroke. Paz had been the one who found him, the man’s body canted outside the confessional, blood dribbling out one of his ears and staining his white hair red on that side. Paz had wanted to pray for him while he waited for the paramedics to arrive, but he wasn’t much for prayer. He figured God’s tolerance for his murderous actions hardly entitled him to heavenly favors. Although Paz had long ago lost track of the number of people he’d killed, the Almighty certainly hadn’t.
    â€œFirst number,” Paz said into the microphone. “Under the B , seven. That’s B seven. B for Boylston . That’s the name of my priest. He lives in this place now but isn’t in shape to play bingo. Want to hear something? I didn’t even know his name until I came to visit him here for the first time. The receptionist asked who I came here to see and all I could tell her was, ‘My priest.’ She nodded and said, ‘You must mean Father Boylston.’ And that’s how I learned his name.”
    The residents of Menger Springs’s Boerne campus continued to look up at him, seeming to hang on Paz’s every word, eagerly awaiting his call of the next number, bingo dabbers held like guns. Visiting his priest almost every day had left Paz with a fondness for the entire facility, for its peace and pleasantness, in spite of the stale fart smell in the hallways and the general hopelessness that characterized the nursing center section. He thought Father Boylston would be proud of him for volunteering, playing a role, making a difference. Each number he called was a small homage to the priest who’d helped him define his ongoing transformational period.
    â€œSee, a man is more than the measure of his name,” Paz continued. “Aristotle is Father Boylston’s favorite philosopher. Personally, I prefer the Germans, but since my priest cottons to Aristotle, I’ll tell you that Aristotle