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O’Day, it is indeed a lovely spring day, and when I was chatting with the archbishop in the garden at the basilica before I came here, he expressed his full support for our efforts to root out this sin.”
    â€œThat’s right, it’s a sacrilege,” said Miss Kleinschmidt, getting a pack of Benson and Hedges 100s from her purse, “and whoever did it should not be allowed to breeze into some Catholic high school. You mind if I smoke?”
    Monsignor O’Day nodded his permission and shuffled the deck of cards from hand to hand. “Did the archbishop really say all that stuff?”
    â€œYes, Monsignor,” Father Ernst assured him.
    â€œLet’s look at this from a police standpoint,” Detective Kurtz said. He pushed back his chair on the rectory floor, still sticky from trivia night beer spillage, and stood up. “This zip code has seen a wave of unsolved juvenile delinquency for years—kids opening fire hydrants, throwing tomatoes and peaches at buses, letting the air out of police tires, naked pool hopping.”
    â€œI used to go skinny dipping myself years ago,” Monsignor O’Day said, smiling.
    â€œWe can’t make light of this,” Detective Kurtz continued. “If they get away with this crime against the church, what will they try to do in fifteen years when they’re running the world? Steal from some company? Steal from the church? We have to send a message that the law is the law. And I think whoever stole this snow globe will be able to provide police with a wealth of information about all these other crimes that could one day blossom into something that could really threaten public safety. We have to teach them alesson they’ll never forget.” Kurtz sat down. Everyone looked at Monsignor O’Day for his ruling.
    â€œOkay, but tell me one thing. Does your mother still go thirty-five in a thirty?”
    Monsignor O’Day thought he had him, but Detective Kurtz had an answer. “No, she lost her license. She hit a child and lost her license.”
    The table fell silent. This admission was news to everyone at the table, and it gave them all a sense of holy urgency for the investigation. Monsignor O’Day put away his playing cards and listened. Father Ernst and Detective Kurtz outlined their plans to interrogate each student from Miss Kleinschmidt’s class individually. Before they could start, they requested a file on each student with their academic and disciplinary records for the year, along with photos of each child to examine for hints of rebellion. The investigation was now officially sanctioned and underway. Everyone shook hands with Monsignor O’Day and left him alone in the rectory basement. He sat back down to pick at his waffles and think about his mother.

CHAPTER 15
    A SLOW FREIGHT MOANED AND CREAKED its way along the track, and Patrick ran up the embankment to have a look. It was a gentle train of big, rusty boxcars with wide open doors. The kind of train that wants to be hopped. But he had to go to school, so he stood in the middle of the two sets of tracks, about two feet from the train watching it. His spied a ladder with hand grips passing by and looked at a footrest where it would be so easy to land a shoe on the chipped paint and head off someplace else.
    When he was younger, he and his friends would catch a freight train down into the business district to go to the Ben Franklin or the Velvet Freeze. But everyone had good bikes now and they had all cast train hopping aside as immature. All but Patrick. He still had thoughts about it, mostly at night. Or in the day, when he walked to school. Or when he walked home from school along the tracks.
    Lying in bed, he’d hear a passing freight and think about his unmet calling. The tracks knew what he wanted. The tracks knew that if he ever got really bored, or in bad trouble, he could go there and grab a boxcar and see where it might take him. His