Rating: PG-13

Characters: Ensemble, no ship as of now though future ships may sail

Timeline: After "Adam Raised a Cain." This bit and the next few will incorporate bits and pieces from "Born to Run." We'll call it cafeteria canon-ness. Also, I think I'll pull a T-verse and set the date for the date of posting. So this installment takes place on April 12, 2009.

Chapter Summary: Fr. Bonilla's visit revised.

April 12, 2009

"I'm here to see Sarah Connor."

James didn't even look up from the thick file he was reading. A whole slew of people had been appearing over the days since Sarah Connor's arrest. Some of them were former neighbors, formers lovers, former accomplices, or former friends of some woman with Sarah Different-Last-Name-Same-Face. Some were just crazies. It didn't matter, mocked her face as it stared up at him from its manila bindings, she wouldn't see any of them.

"Fr. Armando Bonilla?" Paul Auldridge said skeptically.

James had spoken to the priest on the phone and unless the accent was an affectation…. He turned around sharply and caught the eye of the dead man wearing a priest's collar and standing in the prison lobby. He had loosened this man's handcuffs in this very prison, knowing the man wasn't his serial killer but that he carried enough guilt like Cain, plain as day on his forehead, to fit the bill. He'd prayed over his body, asking forgiveness for both of them, moments before it had been lowered into the incinerator. No one had found it odd that James had paid his respects to the corpse who had once been his final case. The case had been devastating and he had a reputation as a religious man. But quite a few people might find it odd that he was in a room with that waking, talking corpse right now.

"Not Fr. Bonilla," He said before false priest could speak.

Agent Auldridge's neck jerked in a predatory gesture of suspicion.

"I'm Fr. Peter Tilden," said John Doe, Derek No-Last-Name-Given. "I…"

"I asked Fr. Tilden to come in to honor Sarah Connor's request for a priest," James lied before Derek could.

"She asked for a Fr. Armando Bonilla," Auldridge replied with the confidence of man who didn't need to write down a name to remember it.

James grimaced. "I talked to Fr. Bonilla. He and Sarah Connor have met before… he was reluctant to encounter her again. I asked Fr. Tilden to hear her Confession." The best lies were the bastard brothers of truth. Fr. Bonilla had been more than a little dismayed when he heard that the fugitive who'd invaded his church wanted to speak with him. But he'd agreed so long as he could take a little time first to pray.

"Her Confession?" Auldridge's eyebrows climbed for his hairline in mock surprise and genuine frustration. "I've spent a solid twenty-four hours with that woman. I don't think a priest is what it's going to take to get a confession out of her." He rounded on the priest in question. "Isn't part of what you guys do to hear the Confession of anyone who wants to get it off their chest?"

Derek's shoulders raised in perfect mimicry of martyrdom as if to say, "I wish I could bear the burden of responsibility for the unfeelingness of my fellowman." The gesture was quickly replaced by a pose of anxious concern. "I was under the impression that Ms. Connor had requested a priest." He drummed his fingers nervously against the small leather case he carried. Ellison recognized it as one of the cases priests carry to bring the Eucharist to shut-ins. "I cannot, in good conscience, hear a Confession that comes under coercion."

"There's been no coercion here, Father," Auldridge said, straightening the sleeves of his already crisp suit. Derek's act had snared him flawlessly. James wasn't surprised, the man was ghostly pale and sweat had beaded on his clean-shaven upper lip. He looked for all the world like a young priest who hadn't had much experience with prisons or inmates. But James would bet his salary that Fr. John Doe had some ink under that cassock that said different.

"We'll be happy to grant Ms. Connor's request for a priest but you're going to have to leave the luggage outside."

"It's the Sacrament…." Derek fumbled the case open revealing a neat row of hosts and stoppered bottles of wine and water.

"The liquid stays," Auldridge said.

Derek nodded. "The Body of Christ will be sufficient."

"I'll show you in." Auldridge said. "Sarah Connor's a paranoid schizophrenic. Don't expect much of a welcome…."

If Derek replied his voice was lost behind the thick pane of the door that shut behind the two men. James glanced at the security feed on the monitor behind the lobby's desk. Derek looked paler yet against the white linoleum of the floor like he'd never seen sunlight. The feed ended when they reached the interrogation room Sarah Connor had occupied for the better part of the afternoon. The video would continue on a monitor outside the room but with the sound feed absent. They'd keep an eye on Fr. Tilden, for his own safety, but ears were another matter.

James stepped out of the front doors of L.A. County Detention Center to make a call. It wouldn't do to have Fr. Bonilla regain his courage in the middle of another priest conducting the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

When he finished he took up a place in a chair in the lobby. The chair looked like it might have been rescued from a condemned bus station. It had certainly been designed before human beings had a thorough vision of the shape of the spine, much less how to keep it comfortable. He sat as one hour slipped by and paced through another. Fr. Tilden would need a ride back to the parsonage when he finished. Besides James had questions of a spiritual nature for the priest, specifically about the nature of good and evil and the resurrection of the dead.