Broken Saint, The by Mike Markel Page A

him?”
    “Absolutely not. I swear it.”
    Ryan said, “We’re not here to bust you. All we’re
interested in is learning what we can about Mark Gerson. Long as you’re helping
us with that, we’re not going to go looking around for roaches.”
    Williams exhaled deeply.
    “So, Richard,” I said, “why’d you call the cops?”
    “Mark seems to be kind of freaking out.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Well, I’m out here with customers, and I hear a
chair crash against the wall. Or he’s shouting. Then it gets real quiet. I go
look in the room, he’s sitting at the computer. Keeps saying this name, sounds
like Moroney. Something about angels.”
    “All right, Richard, we’ll take it from here. You
go about your business.” He drifted away.
    I turned to Ryan. “This make any sense to you?”
    He nodded. “Moroni’s an angel in my Church. He
wrote part of the Book of Mormon, appeared to Joseph Smith. Told him where he
had buried the plates.” He paused. “Mind if I lead on the interview?”
    “Because he’s a guy who’s scared of women?”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised. But no, because he’s
LDS, and I might be able to understand him better than you can.”
    “Absolutely. Let’s see what we can get from him
about Maricel before we call the ambulance.”
    The back room was hazy with cigarette and
marijuana smoke. It had a few scruffy couches around the perimeter, with three
widescreens hanging from the walls, their cords dangling down to a tangle of
surge protectors and extension cords along the baseboard. In the middle of the
room were four wooden tables with computers set up on them.
    Mark was sitting at one of the tables, typing away.
He had a pale face full of baby fat and acne, his brown hair oily and matted.
He had a scraggly goatee which you had to look at real hard to see. From ten
feet away I could smell him.
    He didn’t seem to hear us open the door. We walked
over to him, slow so as not to freak him out. But he seemed calm. He was just
concentrating on the screen.
    “Hey, Mark. My name is Karen Seagate; this is my
partner, Ryan Miner. We’re police officers.”
    He lifted his head and turned to me, then to Ryan.
“They send you here to arrest me?”
    Ryan stepped in. “Who would have sent us, Mark?”
    I pulled back a little.
    “The angels. Moroni.” He said it matter-of-fact,
like he’d just gotten an email heads-up.
    Ryan said, “Why would the angels have sent us?”
    “I have sinned. Beyond redemption. I have killed our
Heavenly Mother.”
    Ryan nodded his head and said, “When did you do
that, Mark?”
    Mark gazed off into the distance. “I sinned with our
Heavenly Mother and then I killed her. Moroni is here to kill me.”
    “Who was our Heavenly Mother, Mark? Did she have a
name?”
    “She’s spirit now.”
    Ryan said, “What was her name, Mark?”
    “She’s not dead, she’s spirit now.”
    I could hear some sounds from the store on the
other side of the door. A car or small truck was heading down the alley beyond
the wall in this horrible room.
    “I understand that, Mark,” Ryan said. “Do you know
how she died?”
    “She’s spirit now.”
    The room fell silent for a moment. Ryan tried
another approach. “How did you learn that she’s spirit?”
    “Moroni told me.”
    “Does Moroni talk to you a lot?”
    “Moroni talks to me all the time.”
    “Do you see Moroni now?”
    “Moroni is standing next to you.”
    Ryan turned to his side, then nodded. “Did you
kill Maricel, Mark?”
    “I killed our Heavenly Mother, and the Lord has
sent Moroni to kill me.”
    “We need to talk with you about Maricel. Do you
think Moroni will mind?”
    “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” He turned his
attention back to his computer screen.
    “Mark, we need to talk. It’s important. It’s about
someone hurting Maricel.”
    “Nobody can hurt Maricel now.” He smiled. “She is
spirit, and she is going to the Celestial Kingdom.”
    “Listen, Mark,” Ryan said, “I