His fist banged down on the table as if he could force her to listen to reason. “To hell with those. Think of the families. And more than that,” he added, “we owe it to the victims.”
She began crying openly, then turned away toward the counter. “Dead people. Dead people are more important … shit, they’re more alive to you than the rest of us. Don’t you see that?”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Rachel says it makes perfect sense,” she blurted out. “Someone would get killed, and the rest of us just disappeared for you. You tell me to think of the families. What about this family, your own family?”
“Allyson, it’s my job.”
“No, no. It’s more than that. Our crime is that we were still living. We aren’t dead, so oh, no, we don’t count!” she sobbed. “We’re just like your partner. You can’t be bothered with anybody but your victims. Maybe, maybe you taught us to think it would be better to be ….” She turned and ran from the room.
Worthy sat in his old kitchen and pondered this new reality—his daughter, and apparently his whole family, saw him as a glory hound. He crushed the empty can in his hand. That view was disturbingly close to how Sherrod saw him.
Chapter Fourteen
Entering the sanctuary of St. Cosmas the next morning, Worthy was surprised to find Mrs. Nichols already waiting. She stood before an icon of the Virgin Mary, her head bowed until she heard his footsteps. She walked toward him amid the sunlight streaming through the stained-glass icons, her arms crossed in front of her as if she were cold.
As he extended his hand, he offered a smile. “Thanks again for coming, Mrs. Nichols. Your husband couldn’t make it, I see.”
Her grip was weak, and she quickly re-crossed her arms. “No, he’s home with Andy. I suppose Bill should have come, but well, he said no.”
Worthy pointed to a pew and glanced at his watch. Nine sharp, and where was Nick? All they’d need this morning to wrap up the case was ten minutes.
Mrs. Nichols broke the silence. “As I remember, you have children. Is that right, Lieutenant?”
“Huh? Yes, I do. Two daughters. I’d guess you’d say the older one is pretty much grown.”
“All grown up. Wow. People tell me to enjoy these years, but I’m just so tired. It’s hard to believe Andy will ever get out of diapers, much less be grown up.”
“My older one, Allyson … well, I’m not sure I remember the diapers, but it doesn’t seem that long ago that I taught her to swim and ice skate.” He thought of the weekend at the cabin, which might have been months ago, not days. “I guess it’s like they say: the years fly by.”
He wished Allyson could be sitting next to him for the next fifteen minutes. She’d hear Mrs. Nichols confirm what he already knew, what he figured out by doing his job the only way he could. He wanted Allyson to understand that the pieces in an investigation didn’t just fall into place on their own. The discovery of the Jewish book, the interviews with Rabbi Milkin and Mrs. Siametes, Henderson’s unearthing of the diary, the coming forth of Mrs. Nichols, the gentle prodding until the name of the Hagarty woman surfaced, and finally the insight into Father Spiro’s faltering in the liturgy—none of those pieces came connected. Someone had to drop everything else, everything, and put piece with piece until a face emerged. He’d also like Allyson to see that Henderson wasn’t there this morning. He’d called Worthy at home to say his wife needed him to help out with something. Typically vague and all too predictable.
Father Fortis entered the sanctuary in a rush, his robe trailing in his wake. “Sorry, sorry,” he began, “with Father Spiro’s forty-day memorial this Sunday, there couldn’t be a worse time for the copy machine to go on the fritz. Thank God for Mrs. Hazelton.”
Mrs. Nichols rose quickly to kiss his hand. “Good morning, Father.”
Worthy noticed the woman shiver as Father Fortis motioned her to the pew. We better get this over before she backs out, he thought.
But Father Fortis interrupted his thoughts. “Are we still waiting for Sergeant Henderson?”
Worthy looked past him toward the narthex, irritated by the question. “Henderson couldn’t make it. Working on something else.”
Father Fortis gave him a puzzled look. Don’t ask, Worthy thought. In a few minutes it won’t matter.
He turned his attention to Mrs. Nichols. “Father Fortis probably told you why we asked you to come back today. We’d like to recreate what happened that last Sunday morning. You and I are going to sit where you did that morning, and Father Fortis is going to take Father Spiro’s place. I don’t think it will require more than a few minutes. Any questions?”
He liked the sound of that. In ten minutes he’d have an answer for Betts, Sherrod, and even Allyson. This is the way I do it. This is the only way I know how.
Mrs. Nichols walked to a pew near the back door.
“Are you sure this is the place?” he asked.
She offered a weak smile. “Yes, we always sit here. People seem to sit where they usually do in church, don’t they?”
Father Fortis had moved to the altar, facing it, his arms raised. Make it a short prayer, Nick, he thought. As soon as his friend crossed himself and turned back toward them, Worthy called out, “Okay, Nick. Walk us through the service.”
“Of course. Ah, let’s see. I begin with prayers for the first fifteen or twenty minutes with my back to the people. Those who are here on time, that is,” he added.
Worthy turned to Mrs. Nichols. “How long was it before you took your son to the cry room?”
“Hmm, let me think. I think it was pretty soon. I know it was before the first procession. Andy started fussing, throwing the Cheerios, and people turned around to glare at me.”
Worthy called up to Father Fortis. “When’s this first procession?”
“Right after the prayers. The altar boys and I process the book of the gospels.”
We’re close now, Worthy thought. His head felt suddenly clear, like the first day of summer vacation at the cabin. He’d taught Allyson to swim on this kind of day. And this feeling, he would like to tell her, is why I do this job. Maybe, he thought, it was what anyone felt who did something of value. But that feeling had a price, he would have told her. It doesn’t come on its own. You have to put everything and sometimes everyone aside to get to it. It didn’t mean he cared any less about his family. What his daughter didn’t understand was that whenever he solved a case, he came home totally different. He would look at his family—his wife, Susan, Allyson and Amy, in fact, his whole life—as if for the first time. He felt like a man who’d been released from solitary confinement, a necessary solitary confinement. And everything he saw was beautiful.
He rose from the pew. “Give us a minute to get into the cry room, Nick, then start the procession.”
They walked through the narthex and down a hallway to the tiny cry room. The room was thickly carpeted, smelling a bit of disinfectant, and sprinkled with a few toys. Through the one-way window, he could see the sanctuary and altar as if on a giant TV screen. He brought Mrs. Nichols toward it as Father Fortis approached them slowly down the side aisle. As he neared the corner, Father Fortis intoned something in Greek.
“What’s he saying?” Worthy asked.
“Sorry, my Greek isn’t very good. My dad didn’t teach us much.”
When Father Fortis turned the corner and came to the place directly in front of them, Worthy knocked on the window. “Can you see us?” he called out.
“What?”
“It makes sense that his place is pretty sound-proof,” he said to Mrs. Nichols. He repeated his question, nearly shouting.
Father Fortis squinted in from the other side, his nose only inches away from them. “I think I see Mrs. Nichols right about here,” he said, knocking in return.
At exactly the right spot, Worthy noted with satisfaction. “Are you sure you can recognize her?”
Father Fortis drew even closer to the window and peered in. “If I
stand here, I can make out her face. Yes, I’m sure of it.”
And there it was, what he needed to start his investigation of Peggy Hagarty in earnest. He felt the relief of the moment but also the odd feeling that he’d missed something.
He knocked on the window again. “Nick, come in here and we’ll finish things up.”
Mrs. Nichols sat down in a padded chair, one leg bobbing. As soon as Father Fortis entered the room, she blurted out, “I think I know what this means.” There was a slight tremor in her voice. “Father Spiro saw me go into the cry room and thought of my husband’s problem—our problem.” The words were coming out in a rush. “Then Father decided to do something about it, and that got him … got him killed.”
“We don’t know that yet,” Worthy said, “but we think it’s possible.” But he did know. He saw the worried look in the young mother’s eyes and heard himself uttering all the right phrases about witnesses often feeling guilty, even though their part in a crime was completely innocent. He closed off with the line he loved most, because it was always the last one. “The police department wishes to thank you, Mrs. Nichols, for coming forward and—”
“Excuse me, Christopher,” Father Fortis broke in. “May I ask Mrs. Nichols a question?”
Worthy frowned. “Why?”
“It’s a small thing, probably nothing. Mrs. Nichols, I can’t help thinking that you must have been closer to Father Spiro in that moment than anyone else. What was the expression on his face when he suddenly stopped?”
What a pointless question, Worthy thought.
Mrs. Nichols wore an oddly puzzled expression as she looked from one of them to the other. “But we weren’t in here then,” she said. “Andy had calmed down, and we’d gone back into the sanctuary, back to our seat.”
“What? No!” Worthy’s words echoed through the tiny room. Mrs. Nichols stared at him from the chair.
Father Fortis took a seat next to her and glanced up at Worthy. “Be patient, my friend. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation. Let’s all remember that Father Spiro didn’t stop on the first procession, but the second one. That’s when we process the communion elements. That comes thirty minutes later.”
Father Fortis patted the woman’s arm. “My dear, was that what happened? Were you in here for the second procession?”
The woman shook her head. “No, Father. How can I ever forget something like that? Andy was asleep on the pew, and I can still see the look on Father Spiro’s face. He wasn’t looking into the cry room at all, but up there on the wall.” She motioned toward the wall above the stained-glass icons. “I know I’m right, because I looked down at his feet. I remember wondering who could pick up the communion elements if they fell on the carpet.”
With both hands on the window rail, Worthy stared out toward the altar. “You’re sure about this?” he asked without turning around.
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
Worthy found it odd that he could think of nothing to say. It was as if he was looking at himself as he stood foolishly in the cry room, so close to crying himself. A minute before he’d had the answer for them all—Betts and Sherrod, McCarty and Allyson.
“Then that’s that,” he said. He hardly recognized his own voice as he repeated, “On behalf of the police department, I want to thank you for coming forward.”
Behind him, he heard Father Fortis whisper to Mrs. Nichols, “I’ll walk you to your car.”
As Father Fortis passed by, Worthy could feel a hand on his shoulder. “Wait here a minute, Christopher.”
Worthy nodded. Why not? he thought. Where else do I have to go?
As he waved goodbye in the parking lot, Father Fortis couldn’t help but notice how Mrs. Nichols gunned her car. He couldn’t blame her. The poor woman’s life had been destroyed by the Hagarty woman, but she had nevertheless agreed, because of his invitation in the church newsletter, to put herself through the pain all over again. And what had they discovered? That none of what she said mattered in the end.
He walked slowly back toward the church, his robes blowing in a sudden breeze. It was building up for a snowstorm, he thought, as he looked up at the darker clouds. And there was a storm waiting for him in the sanctuary. Where was the investigation now?
He found Worthy back in the pew where he’d first sat with Mrs. Nichols. To his surprise, his friend was sitting with a Bible open.
“This is the only book that makes sense anymore, Nick. Ecclesiastes. I’m sure you know it.”
“Vanity, all is vanity. Yes, I know it.”
“ ‘Nothing new under the sun.’ The writer must have been a cop.” Worthy closed the Bible and returned it to the pew rack.
He wanted to ask Worthy the question that had occurred to him in the parking lot, but the way his friend’s jaw was clenched, he knew he had no answer.
“The old man left us a trail of breadcrumbs, but they lead nowhere,” Worthy said, not looking up. “Sherrod chased the altarpiece, and I chased the diary.”
“Maybe this is just a slight redirection, my friend,” Father Fortis said. He was talking as much to himself as to Worthy, praying that what he was saying wouldn’t make matters worse. “Maybe Father Spiro noticed Mrs. Nichols when she came back in from the cry room. Perhaps he had a kind of delayed reaction, deciding what he would do when he reached the cry room on the second procession.”
“Let it go, Nick. You’re just grasping at straws.”
“But what about what she said, about Father Spiro coming around the corner and looking up there?” he asked, turning toward the side wall.
Worthy glanced up at the icons on the wall. “It’s more likely that his faltering was simply what most people have been trying to tell us. Some kind of blackout. Why would a blank wall and stained-glass pictures stop him?”
Father Fortis pulled on his beard for a moment.
“Look, Nick, I know what you’re trying to do, but let’s face it. We’re at a dead end.”
Father Fortis held up his hand. “Hold on a second, Christopher. Do you remember the first clue you found? It wasn’t the diary. It was the way the vestment lay straight on Father Spiro’s body.”
“So?”
“That led you to think it was someone who knew Father Spiro, or at least respected the priesthood. Right?”
Worthy’s eyes lifted to the altar area where the body was found. “Right. I almost forgot about that.”
“I remember how you scared me with that detail—it still scares me,” Father Fortis said. “The thought that the killer is one of my parishioners, perhaps someone I’ve given communion to. That was truly a nightmare for me.”
“And that doesn’t describe Peggy Hagarty. And not Carl Bales, for that matter,” Worthy added.
“But I suppose it does bring Lloyd Hartunian back into the picture.”
Worthy shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Father Fortis sighed. “Then it could be someone else from this parish.”
“Maybe,” Worthy said, lowering his head again before adding, “maybe. But maybe not. We’re here because I pushed too fast, Nick. It’s just what I’ve always hated about Sherrod.”
His friend’s dejected slump in the pew, his hopeless tone—where had he seen this before? Of course. It was like Worthy was making his confession.
“I just thought it was the excitement of everything coming together,” Father Fortis said.
“It’s like I had to have the case solved today.”
“Why? Was it pressure from your captain?”
Worthy shook his head. “At bottom, I guess my motivation is pretty stupid. It doesn’t have anything to do with the case—except that she’d say it does.”
“She? Are you talking about that reporter?”
“No, Allyson. It was something she laid on me.”
“Allyson? Do you mean at the cabin?”
“No, last night. She said I used murders to run away from my family.”
The two men had been friends for nearly four years. They
’d worked together on two cases. Worthy had even saved Father Fortis’ life. But this was the first time Worthy had let down his guard about this part of his life. “She was the one who ran away,” Father Fortis reminded him.
“In her view, she only did what I’d been doing for years. She said the only people I really care about are my dead victims.”
Father Fortis could feel the weight of Allyson’s accusation upon his friend. “What did you say?”
“I tried to tell her how I do my job, how knowing the victim is the only way to find the killer.” He offered a feeble laugh. “God, it’s like she’s accusing me of digging up the dead.”
“ ‘Let the dead bury the dead.’ ”
“Huh?”
“It’s something Jesus said, something that’s always bothered me, my friend. Even though our Lord wept at Lazarus’ grave, he said to let the dead bury the dead.”
Worthy turned toward Father Fortis, his jaw clenched again. “That sounds like something Allyson would say. But the dead don’t bury the dead, and they don’t find their own killers. People like me find them.”
Father Fortis noticed his friend’s balled-up fist. “I know, I know.”
“And before that, Allyson was all hot and bothered about Henderson.”
“Your partner?”
“I told her that he’s been having problems, but somehow in the way that I said it, she got the idea that because I’ve kept my focus on the case, I don’t really care about Henderson.”
“What does she want you to do?”
Worthy shook his head. “I have no idea. Does she really expect me to drop everything and help him?”
“Help him or help her?” Father Fortis asked.
Worthy squinted toward the front. “Maybe that’s it. No, probably that’s it.”
“If that’s really what this is about, do you know what she wants help with?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Father Fortis knew better than to rush his friend. After a moment, he asked, “You said that Henderson was having problems. What are they?”
Let the Dead Bury the Dead Page 18
