Tue, 11 Mar 2025 23:53:53 -0500WeeblyFri, 31 Jan 2025 20:14:11 GMThttp://suspenseiskillingme.net/news/continuation-of-the-devils-heat   My scheduling more blog additions is slightly off! But as it's never too late to showcase more of The Devil's Heat thriller, included here is the remaining introduction of the villain priest I created by combining my own interpretation of the two horrible human beings from my past who called themselves priests. 
   Then I will add Chapter 2, which introduces Detective Nicholas Rasso of the Peoria County sheriff’s department and his temporary partner in solving missing children cases, City Detective Manuel “Skip” Montez.
   Thank you for your extreme patience!
   To briefly recap: Nine-year-old Joseph Mazzoni of Falerii, Italy is approaching the rectory office for another catechism lesson from Father Dini. 

   He walked down the long corridor and took the narrow stone staircase quietly up to the priest's antechamber. As he cautiously approached the closed door, he heard the man on the other side praying in Latin like God was hard of hearing. Joseph waited for a pause in the prayers before he rapped lightly three times.
   He heard the chair scrape the hardwood floor and then the scuffle of sandals bearing the stocky teen, such a young priest the elders said. Joseph swallowed in an attempt to moisten his dry throat. He was staring at his feet when the door opened, holding his breath until he felt the priest’s fingers fondle his throat and then tilt his chin upward.
   Joseph’s gaze rose up the blubber rolls and locked above rosy cheeks onto dark slits sparkling with evil. The urge to slam his eyelids and keep them closed nearly overpowered Joseph, but with gritted teeth, his stare did not waver from the priest’s eyes.
   "Good afternoon, little one." Father Dini used his low voice and not the one he used to talk to God. He gripped Joseph's shoulder with one soft, fat hand and firmly moved him into the room. Father Dini closed and locked the door behind them.
   Joseph hurried to the chair beside the monstrous old desk where he had sat the past several Wednesdays. He stared at the gray stone wall while Father Dini moved behind the desk and sat down.
   “How have you been, little one?”
   Joseph didn’t answer, but slowly turned his head to see Father Dini pour wine into two wooden goblets. The priest pushed one goblet toward Joseph.
   "Drink it, little one. This is a very special wine I make myself. Its recipe dates back to the Nineteenth Century and a Corsican, Signor Angelo Mariani. Pope Leo the Thirteenth would drink only this red wine fermented with coca during his long periods of fast."
   Joseph listened and obeyed, just as his mother ordered him to do. For some reason she liked this new guy. The priest liked to talk, especially about history, showing off his knowledge of things nobody cared to know, let alone remember. He heard his parents say as much. He lifted the goblet with both hands and took a sip. The wine tasted smooth and sweet. He gulped more. At home he drank goat’s milk and could only have wine on special occasions, though his parents drank it regularly with meals. So this must be a special occasion.
   The priest smiled. "Good, good. This wine will make your whole body warm inside. We will each drink two glasses, then begin your lessons."
   Father Dini had never offered wine to Joseph before, but he gave some to his brother Mikie because Mikie told him about it. Only Mikie, who was a year older and took his catechism lessons on Mondays, wouldn't say anything else about the times he drank wine with the priest because Father had threatened Mikie with Holy Hell.
   That's why today, when Joseph saw Father Dini naked except for his sandals, he had no idea what to expect. And now this wine. Whatever would come next, well, Mikie had survived it. Still, Joseph could not figure out how the priest would teach about not committing adultery and explain whatever lewd and unchaste meant. Joseph could only hope it would not again involve a rope.

(I lived in Peoria, IL until we moved to Decatur when I was 2 months from finishing Grade School at Kingman. As a child I rode up Grand View Drive on my bicycle with my brother and a friend. For this introduction chapter of two police officers my research took me to the now-former Peoria police station where I toured the building with the public relations officer.)  

TWO
 
July 4, 1986
Peoria, Illinois
 
   "You remembered we got a date tomorrow night." It wasn’t a question. The two cops were discussing easy women. Both of them were single. Natural assumption from Detective Nicholas Rasso of the Peoria County sheriff’s department to City Detective Montez.
   "Date? Shit. What date? It's Saturday. I already got a date. A hot one." Manuel “Skip” Montez smacked the unmarked car’s steering wheel, realizing it was this missing kid made him forget.
   "Well, this one’s probably gonna be hot too. I can’t believe you forgot we’re undercover out at the track. How can you forget the famous Clay Taggart is gonna drive in a charity race? Can you imagine the crowd? Tomorrow we gotta mingle with hopheads, put this kid disappearance case aside for one night.”
   “Taggart? Shit.”
   “You already said that, Montez. You let pussy make you forget.” Rasso got his butt more comfortable in the front passenger seat. “I'm kinda lookin’ forward to it. Taggart came in second behind Foyt in a Winston Cup race a couple months ago. Now he's gonna race right here in Peoria."
   "Yeah, well, shit. I had plans to celebrate the Fourth with my own kinda fireworks.”
Five and a half years with the Peoria Police department and Skip Montez had escaped dealing with a family whose kid just vanished. Now he was on his way with Rasso to do just that. Deal with it. A couple months back, he interviewed a little girl. Snatched off the street then dumped near her house after some bastards were done with her. Surely talking to these people with the missing kid couldn’t be any harder than that. His dry mouth longed for a cold Bud.
   Montez took the hairpin turns up Grand View Drive, leaving half of Grand View Park at the bottom. He watched for kids on bicycles who thought the steep downhill trip the next best thing to the Tidal Wave at Great America. Only the Drive was free and smack-dab in their backyards.
   Up on top the hill, he kept an eye to his left and inched the car along the narrow road where old money first built millionaires' homes. The scenic drive along here bordered his right with lush grass and a thickly wooded drop-off that flattened at the bottom with Route 29 and then plunged on down into a narrow neck of the Illinois River.
   Another small park nestled on the left and in a few yards the huge homes loomed on rolling manicured lawns. A half-mile or so along the drive architects had tested their abilities to the limit with mansions mounted on top of the downhill slope. Far as he knew, none had ever tumbled over.
Up on the drive the air felt cooler, the July humidity just a little less depressing, the smells more a nature's mossy green and not so much river fish. Up on the drive Skip and his temporary partner, Rasso, were on the lookout for twin stone pillars with no gates. The house that went with the pillars didn’t have an exposed address number.
   "That should be it up there.” Rasso pointed.
At the head of a curving asphalt driveway, gate hinges clung in orange rust to the pillars. Montez eased the car between them and stopped several yards from the gray stone mansion.
   Both of them looked to their right.
   "Four car garage, maid's quarters upstairs looks like."
   "Yeah. This place matches the description." Rasso pried debris from his broad nose and rolled it between thumb and middle finger. "This is where the money-grubbing Dr. Thomas Galena and family frolic and cavort." He cannoned the wad off his thumb out the opened window.
   "Frolic and cavort, huh. That’s a good one."
Skip Montez killed the engine and turned in the front seat toward Rasso. The county cop had been handling missing kid cases the past six months, looking at a possible ring. Here they were in rich folks’ territory. Neither was comfortable.
   On occasion, Montez would run into Rasso at the old downtown station. They got along okay, able to kid about being a wop and a spick without any of it sounding like they meant it. Montez liked to kid around, be loose on the job when he could, which was more often now that he had come off the south Adams Street beat. He was put on special duty last week. Rasso was a fifteen‑year veteran with Peoria County's finest, this past year in special investigations.
   Montez scratched under his chin where moisture burned like he had shaved with a lit match. A rope slowly tightened around his chest because another kid had vanished. He had seen the file cabinet at the station, so the sweat on his thick neck and high forehead were complements of two forces: Central Illinois' muggy summer and the pictures in his memory bank and in that squad room filing cabinet of things people did to kids who didn't belong to them. And sometimes to kids who did.
   "I look all right?" Montez tried to joke when he really didn’t feel it. He licked the fingers on his right hand and reestablished the part in his thick, dark hair while looking in the rearview mirror. Not at himself, but typical cop seeing the view beyond of grass and trees on the hill that dropped down to the fields and river below.
   "You bein' a smartass ‘cause you're scared what we might learn?" Rasso didn't smile.
   "Who me? Naw, just wondering what a person of Hispanic persuasion says to a couple of rich WASP snobs who wouldn't give me the time a day if I wasn't here supposed to help them out. What do I say? 'Don't worry folks, your kid'll be just fine. He's just away twenty-four hours now losing his cherry?’" Montez tried on a grin and it failed.
   "They ain't Protestant, you prick, they're Catholic like you and me. According to his ole lady, the kid's thirteen. Just because you Hispanic types lose yours soon as you’re weaned, don't mean rich kids downstate do it that young." Rasso grinned. He had a reputation for teasing the younger cops.
   All Montez could feel was grim, but he tried.
   "You're the old pro here, wise guy. Ain't you heard the shit going around. Might be ghost stories, but I got a kid sister filling out early. Scares the hell outta me."
   He picked the department issued dark navy summer mesh cap up off the seat between them and studied the silver eagle and his number. Nine-eight-two told who he was in case he got killed and couldn't tell anybody, or if his face got blown off between his ears and they couldn't recognize him. Montez opened the driver's door and stepped out into rich people’s sunshine.


 

]]>Wed, 28 Feb 2024 01:07:45 GMThttp://suspenseiskillingme.net/news/breaking-down-the-brain-processes-of-first-thriller-bad-catholics-the-devils-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.

​ ]]>Sun, 18 Feb 2024 19:39:22 GMThttp://suspenseiskillingme.net/news/upcoming     There will soon be a bi-weekly blog that will give you the skinny on how I came to write The Devil's Heat, my tempestuous thriller. BUT with those comments you will get pages of the book itself and then I hope you will freely comment on each post as the story is unveiled and maybe be tempted to purchase this lurid tale. 
      Beware, there's some nasty stuff goin' on with some of these characters! ]]>