Breaking down the brain processes of first thriller: (Bad Catholics) The Devil's Heat

    Have you ever had something bug you? Like really irritate you because you felt helplessly unable to bring justice down on the head of the matter when justice definitely should have been dealt? Well, I had such an irritation roil in me for 20+ years before I exposed (which is a big deal to me) and punished two Catholic priests who, each in their own way, made it impossible for me to see them as representatives of Jesus on Earth. 
   I was a church council member at the largest Catholic church in Decatur, IL. The new priest, a man in his 50s, stopped allowing the council to hold monthly meetings in the rectory and sent us to a grade school classroom on the church's property. It was an old building with an ancient sound system that crackled when turned on. That's how we knew the priest listened in, rather than joining us in person. 
    One meeting, speaking softly, a distinguished community businessman and council member told us how his youngest son told his older brother what the priest was doing to him during private lessons on the Ten Commandments. As a group, we wrote a letter to the Bishop, reporting the molestation.
    Our beseechment to have the priest removed was ignored. Most of us on the council became members of a different Catholic church. This is how I introduced that priest in the 1st chapter. I'll give you half of the chapter now and the other half next week. 
The Devil's Heat, J. D. Knauer
1
May,1928
Falerii, Italy
    Last week Father Dini’s catechism lesson caused Joseph to pee his pants. Joseph wanted to scream and run when that rope in the priest’s hands tightened around his neck. The Commandment lesson was thou shalt not kill. Joseph got the message all right, and for the first time wondered if the priest was screwed up in his head. It was also the first time Father Dini warned not to tell his parents what happened during his lessons or Joseph would face excruciating hell and damnation.
    Nine-year-old Joseph Mazzoni spent one day a week with Father Antonius Bellardinini, or Father Dini, as all the kids in the village called him. For the past few weeks Joseph listened for two hours Wednesday afternoons on the reasoning behind each of the Ten Commandments. For his older brother Mikie and the other pre-teen boys of Falerii, these lessons were as mandatory as regular school. If he could choose, Joseph would take the nun’s ruler any day over that rope.
    Thought of that rope today added extra weight to the heavy rectory door. As it groaned shut behind him, Joseph swallowed air into his parched throat, and he coughed. He felt a hot, sissy weakness flow from his face on down to his toes. What would Father Dini do to him this week?
    The ancient stone rectory’s eerie silence had been broken. Joseph moved through dank shadows and the cool mustiness of God’s house where he used to feel safe. He was this close to turning and running back out into the afternoon sun that beat down on Italy's Arno River Valley, but the consequences of a hard spanking from his mother put an end to that idea.
    He scraped the scruffy cap from his head and clutched it with hands that trembled. He didn't know why his mother made him wear the cap to these private catechism sessions when, as soon as he stepped inside church, the cap had to come off.
    Joseph moved across the marble floor, concentrating on the soft placement of each sandal-clad heel. It was essential to be quiet.
    And on time.
    If you were a minute early or a second late, Father Dini would stand over you and just glare with those black eyes, and his bald head would turn scalding red. Joseph would do anything to please the new priest–and his mother–but how could you be on time when you didn't own a watch? If he did have a watch, everybody in Falerii would say he stole it. How else could a peasant boy like himself, own a watch?
    He did not steal a watch. Joseph trusted his instincts...and his mother’s sharp tongue. He knew he was on time.

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