by James A Ross
The man sitting on the bed with his back against the wall interrupted. He was the one Johnsen had identified as BARDA, and he looked like an ex-boxer whose only defeat had been to acne. “We had that guy you say you didn’t kill—Heller—under observation for over a year, hoping that he’d lead us up the food chain. Our Canadian friends had the other end covered. But their guy got dead last night.” He read from a blue spiral notebook. “Bonnefesse. The last they had from him is that this Hassad passed something to Heller just a week ago—a couple of trunks of something, not the usual collection of bottles and baggies.”
Tom tried not to react to the information about the gay sex shop owner. He spread his bandaged hands, palms up, but did not repeat his question.
“A Miss Susan Pearce will be out on bail by tomorrow. There’s no evidence against her that we’re willing to share at this point and it’s better if she thinks there isn’t any. What we want, is for you to stay close to her and let us know if and when this Dr. Hassad shows up.”
“You must have twenty guys at her house already,” Tom protested.
“On the outside,” Johnsen agreed. “But we’re told that you may be able to get… closer?”
They don’t miss much. Still… Susan might have accidentally poisoned her brother or even looked the other way while Frankie Heller took Billy on a one way boat ride. But Tom couldn’t believe she was involved in mass murder. “Look,” he said. “I don’t think that there’s a recent connection between Miss Pearce and whatever this guy’s name is now. With the brother, yes. But not her.”
The little man on the hardback chair took a folder from his briefcase and handed it to Tom. “NeuroGene is a Nevada corporation. It takes a bit of work to pierce the corporate veil out there. But you can see from the top document that the corporation is majority owned by a Canadian holding company. A few months ago, the same company purchased a small island on Coldwater Lake. A local real estate firm handled the transfer, using a general power of attorney. There’s a Federal Express receipt there for the closing documents, signed by an S. Pearce.”
Tom looked at the signature. Small, neat, precise. Like her. It was genuine. He pressed the back of a bandaged knuckle into his eye socket. His head ached. His hands throbbed. The wounds on his scalp and knees felt like piecrust. How long had it been since he slept?
“There is definitely a recent connection,” said Johnsen.
“But isn’t it dangerous for her if Hassad shows up? Assuming he killed Frankie Heller and Bonnefesse. If you’re right about a recent connection and he’s already dusting his trail, then he’ll go after her too, right? Even if she just thought she was helping an old friend with a real estate transaction?”
No one in the room took up the suggestion.
“You’re using her as bait,” he pressed. “Does she know that?”
“She might, if she’d talk to us,” said Johnsen. “But she’s lawyer-ed up already—which as far as I’m concerned speaks for itself.”
“You could tell her,” said the nameless man sitting on the edge of the bed. “Help us, and we might consider helping you with some of your other troubles.”
They don’t miss anything.
When Tom didn’t respond, the man turned to Johnsen. “Did we decide yet what to do about that Barney Fife who thinks he runs things around here? The one with the monster truck that costs more than my house. Have we decided whether he’s taken money from the rag-head, too, or just the locals?” He looked at Tom. “It’s that kind of town, I hear. That kind of family.”
Tom ignored the pugnacious stare, but the man wasn’t finished. “If a brother were helpful, maybe we wouldn’t have to waste time digging into any of that. Or let that state trooper, Grogan, do it. He seems to have a real hard on for your brother.”
“We do have more important things to do,” added Johnsen, “and precious little time to do them.”
CHAPTER 28
Gauss sat alone on a stone bench outside the St. Gabriel chapel, his hands folded in meditation. A small fountain bubbled nearby making sounds like a running toilet, though not loudly enough to cover the sound of footsteps echoing on cloister stone. He looked up. Bishop’s Mczynski’s gopher, Monsignor Marchetti, came to a halt and dropped an unsealed envelope into Gauss’ lap. “His Eminence has received another letter.”
“I would have thought he might be over the thrill of these by now.”
“And photographs.”
“Ah.” Gauss opened the envelope and retrieved a color print. The lighter-skinned of the two sunbathers wore shorts and a silver crucifix and sat upright facing the water. The darker one lay face down on a lounge chair and wore nothing.
“And the letter?”
“You have some explaining to do, Father.”
“Do I?”
“These are serious charges, Father. And this is damning evidence.”
“Evidence of what, Monsignor?”
“Is this a friend of yours?”
“An acquaintance.”
“What sort of acquaintance?”
“An intellectual acquaintance, for want of a better word.”
“I’m not interested in his IQ, Father. I want to know what the two of you were doing together in your birthday suits.”
Gauss glanced at the photo. “Actually, only one of us is in his birthday suit, Monsignor. I seem to be wearing the same pair of swim trunks that I’ve had since the seminary. Can’t afford new ones on the pittance His Eminence pays his vineyard labor.”
“That man is stark naked, Father! And that’s you sitting next to him. Or do you deny that?”
“Oh, no. That’s me alright.” He put the photo back in the envelope and returned it to the Bishop’s man. “Some of our summer residents like to swim in the nude, Monsignor. The European ones, anyway. Locals tend to keep their clothes on, as you can see. But we’re not so arrogant as to tell people how to dress in their own homes.”
“Please answer my question,” Marchetti demanded. “What’s your relationship with this man?”
“He’s the owner of an island on Coldwater Lake across from Our Lady of the Lake Church. The one with the Frank Lloyd Wright house on it. His name is Hassad.”
“Go on.”
“Dr. Hassad, bought the island last winter and put guard dogs on it. When I took the church row boat past there this spring after the ice out, the dogs lept into the water and practically chewed the boat to bits. Dr. Hassad saw it happening and called them off. Then he invited me for lunch so they could ‘get my smell’, as he put it, so they would leave me alone the next time I rowed past the island. He’s an interesting man. Claims to be from Afghanistan, though I don’t think that’s true, since he’d never heard of Ahmed Zahir. But it turns out we both like Merchant Ivory films.”
“I don’t understand,” said Marchetti.
“You would if you lived in a town where fishing rods outnumber library cards.”
“Arrogance!” Marchetti blustered.
“Is that what this mystery letter accuses me of? Arrogance?”
“It accuses you of being this man’s lover!” Marchetti snapped a fingernail against the envelope.
Gauss sighed. “I suppose that makes sense. Pearce might even have thought it true this time.”
“How… ? Are you admitting…?”
Gauss regarded his inquisitor from beneath raised eyebrows. “Don’t you do any homework before you take on these assignments?”
“Are you?” demanded Marchetti.
“What?”
“A homosexual.”
Gauss sighed again. “I’m a celibate, Monsignor. And if you’d bothered to read the files you gave to Sister Inquisitor, you’d know that Billy Pearce began writing this kind of drivel as soon as I put the kibosh on his first attempted romance with one of my altar boys. Hasn’t it occurred to anyone in the Chancery that all this so-called evidence may just be Pearce penning under different names?”
“I didn’t say who wrote the letter,” Marchetti proteste
d.
“You didn’t have to.” Gauss lifted a pair of bony shoulders. “Have you ever been to Stockholm, Monsignor?”
“I don’t see…”
Gauss talked over him. “I stopped there on my way back from the Vatican a few years ago. The friend I was there to see got tied up and suggested that I go to the park across the street to kill an hour. There I was sitting on a park bench, soaking up what passes for sunlight in those parts, and here and there on the grass and on the other benches I see these young office girls sunbathing—with their shirts off! It was quite a sight.”
Marchetti’s face turned scarlet, but Gauss continued. “When I met my friend later, he laughed and asked how I enjoyed my lunch. ‘Sometimes we get people visiting our little city for the first time who go to lunch and never make it back.’”
Marchetti folded his arms and rocked on his heels. “And the point of this scurrilous story?”
“That if somebody had taken my picture that afternoon in Stockholm, sitting on a park bench enjoying my holiday and sent it to the parish newspaper along with a nasty letter, what would that prove? Except that I didn’t go native there either.”
“So you’re denying the authenticity of this photograph and letter?”
“No, the photograph is real. It just doesn’t mean what you think it does. If Billy Pearce was on Pocket Island when that picture was taken, then I didn’t see him. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a regular. I understand Dr. Hassad’s mix of house guests is somewhat eclectic. As for the letter…, I haven’t seen it. But we’re talking about someone found trussed in a sleeping bag fished from the bottom of Coldwater Lake… not some cherub-cheeked seminarian. Someone whose parents died in a boating ‘accident’ that even his friends find unlikely.”
“What are you saying?” Marchetti demanded.
“That you’re taking at face value what common sense ought to tell you not to.”
“Arrogance.” The Bishop’s emissary turned the envelope over in his hands and frowned. “Your answers leave His Eminence little room for permitting you to resume Holy Office.”
“They don’t leave him anything, as far as I can see.”
“Just you in a pornographic photo taken by a murdered homosexual.”
“And a letter the bishop doesn’t want me to see?”
Marchetti glared at the priest and, with equal irritation, the running fountain. He no longer attempted to hide the anger in his voice. “I’ve spoken with your housekeeper.”
“What now?”
“She says that you knew this Billy Pearce better than you’ve let on.”
“Does she?”
“She listens in on your phone conversations, Father. And on your ‘counseling’ sessions. She also reads your email.”
“I’ll have to have her say a penance when I return.”
“You’re not returning anywhere, Father.”
“Really?”
“This housekeeper says that Pearce called you the evening before he was found murdered.”
Gauss clasped his fingers behind his head.
“That she heard you yelling into the phone and using foul language.”
Gauss closed his eyes.
“That you left the rectory in a hurry and didn’t come back before she’d left for the evening. But that when she returned in the morning there was a pair of wet trousers and a wet tee shirt in the laundry.”
“Coldwater’s own Miss Marple.”
“And she wants to know what to say to that persistent sheriff who’s been to the rectory twice now and who was on the phone with me this morning demanding that we produce you for questioning.”
“I didn’t ask to be hustled away in the night, Monsignor.”
“We’ll have to produce you sooner or later.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“And our attorneys advise that it would be better if you talk with Sister Dion first.”
“I have. But we seem to have run out of new material.”
“And that you undergo a general examination of conscience.”
“With you?”
“There are legal as well as spiritual advantages.”
“I’d rather have my tooth drilled.”
* * *
At Dr. Dwyer’s direction, the Coldwater Hospital put Joe through a vigorous gastric decontamination followed by several rounds of magnesium citrate cathartics. After two days of torture, there was nothing left to come out and nothing inside that wasn’t raw. The hospital doctors said he was ready to go home.
Mary came with her geriatric boy toy, Herbert to bring her son home. Joe thought she looked like hell. There was a weariness about her that had not arrived with her fall or in the days afterwards. She had lost weight. Her eyes were rheumy. When he kissed her cheek, it felt chilly and clammy. He reached his hand to her forehead.
“I’m not sick, Joey,” she snapped, pushing it away. “I’m worried sick. There’s a difference.”
He didn’t need to ask about what.
“It’s a good thing you’re getting out of here. Because your brother’s about to do something stupid, and you need to stop him.”
As the originator of several large and recent stupidities, Joe withheld condemnation. But she pressed. “You need to talk to him.”
“About what?”
“Don’t be thick. About the Pearce girl.”
“You’re a pyromaniac, Mom.”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “Your brother doesn’t know whether he’s coming, going or been there with that girl. That’s going to get him and you into serious trouble.”
Joe could think of nothing he might say or do to respond to his mother’s directions. He wasn’t even sure he understood them. He said so.
“Your confused older brother seems to think he’s a Pearce. That family didn’t adopt him, they used him. It’s time he understood that.”
“I’m not following you, mom.”
“Didn’t you and your father ever talk?”
“About the Pearces?”
“About what they were doing with your brother.”
“The only thing Dad ever said to me about Susan Pearce was that there was nothing wrong with Tommy’s eyesight.”
Mary snorted. “For a man who didn’t speak much, your father could pack a lot in a few words.” She turned to Herbert. “Be a dear and get me a lemonade from the cafeteria. I need to take my pills.”
“There’s some water in that pitcher, Mom.”
“I need lemonade,” she said firmly.
Herbert nodded. “Sure thing, Mary. Mind if I stop and chat with that pretty candy striper while I’m at it?”
“Knock yourself out.” When he had gone, she resumed, “There’s something I need to tell you. Then you need to talk to your brother.”
“Something you don’t want Herbert to hear?”
“Family business.” She took a breath. “The Pearces’ didn’t care for your brother. But they were happy to use him. The mother especially. The rich don’t like to be reminded of how they got that way, and Tommy was a walking road map: cop’s kid who doesn’t know which fork to use, but as smart as any of them, and a go-getter with it.”
He leaned back into the pillows. His mother was launched.
“Mrs. Pearce was from the South… some part where they don’t have Catholics. Having your brother mooning around her daughter—right after that foreign exchange student… it made the poor woman take to her bed with the vapors.” She paused. “Your father never told you any of this?”
Joe shook his head.
“Just before Tommy showed up, the family had the son of some foreign diplomat living with them for the school year. He went to Coldwater High at first, but some of the boys there gave him a rough time. Pushed him around. Shaved a swastika on his head. That sort of thing. He refused to go back to school, and he just hung around the house. I’m sure the Pearces didn’t know what to do with him.”
“I heard something about that,” said Joe, “at a parole
bash for one of the Hellers at the VFW. Maybe some of it was b.s.—my cousin’s a bigger bad ass than yours—and they were all drunk as skunks. But it was more than a haircut they were bragging about.”
She gave her son ‘The Look’. “Since when did Hellers start inviting Morgans to their parole parties?”
“It was a long time ago, Mom. When I was bouncing at the VFW. I remember it, though. Pretty rough stuff.”
“I’m told the young man was quite handsome. A little older than Susan. Well mannered… well-traveled… rich. You can imagine the rest for yourself. Your father stumbled across them a couple of times out on Pocket Island.”
Joe felt himself smiling for the first time in days.
“The parents sent the boy home, of course. He pitched a fit before they got him out—threatened to slit their throats. His father had to send some toughs from their embassy to collect him and ship him off to one of their religious schools. Dr. Pearce was going to send Susan away to boarding school. But she threw a fit, too, and the mother was scared she would hurt herself. Then along came your brother.”
Joe felt the release of long held breath. “Wow! How do you know all this?”
“Mrs. Ryan. She told anyone who’d listen after the Pearces let her go. She kept house for them, don’t you remember? She told me she heard the mother telling the father, ‘Better a Catholic than a…. Well… as I said… Mrs. Pearce was from Georgia, or someplace. She used the ‘n’ word.”
“That’s a juicy piece of ancient gossip, Mom. But what’s it got to do with me talking to Tommy about Susan Pearce?”
“I should think that would be obvious.”
He shrugged. “Not to me.”
She spelled it out. “She went back to him.”
