by Nancy Geary
“I’m so sorry.”
Ruth half smiled. “Ginny was a wonderful person. She should still be with us. And she is in spirit. No court proceeding can take that away.”
As they said good-bye in the driveway, Frances embraced the elderly woman. It was an awkward gesture, made more so because Ruth initially stepped backward, startled by the affection, but after a moment the gentle lady put her arms around Frances’s waist and held tight. She could hear the sobs.
“I needed to understand what it was about Ginny’s life and death that made my cousin feel connected to her,” she whispered in Ruth’s ear. “You’ve explained that. And I can’t thank you enough.”
33
Frances stood just inside the sacristy, trying to settle her nerves. Her heart pounded and her palms were clammy; she’d tossed and turned, trying to piece together the fragments of information she’d gathered over the last week. But as the sun came up and the night’s restless exhaustion dissipated, one thing was clear The betrayal Hope had experienced from Bill’s abuse had shaped her life long after the physical wounds had healed. She’d identified with Virginia Bailey because they’d both been hurt by people they trusted—the father Bill and Father Burgess. The paternal bond turned out to be fraught with peril.
She wished her mere presence in the church now could provide some sense of tranquillity. Instead it increased her agitation. All the baptisms, weddings, and joyful celebrations of so many holidays that had transpired within the walls of the Church of the Holy Spirit did nothing to negate the pain and cruelty of human interaction in the outside world. Or even the failings of people within.
Elvis joined her. “Come on,” he advised. “He’s in his office.”
She’d considered coming to speak to Father Whitney unaccompanied. In many respects it made more sense. The questions she needed to ask about what had happened in Barnstable didn’t require Elvis’s presence, and he might be more inclined to open up without a policeman present. But something had made her reconsider.
She followed Elvis through a back door into the church office. The adjacent door to Reverend Whitney’s private office was ajar. He stood behind his expansive desk as they entered and extended his hand in greeting. He wore street clothes, dark pants, a white button-down shirt, and a crimson cardigan. She could see the dark circles under his eyes.
“I didn’t realize you were here with Detective Mallory,” he said.
“Call me Elvis,” she heard behind her as she took a seat across from the minister.
“What can I do for you?”
Elvis looked over at Frances. Earlier, over coffee and a stale sweet roll from Dunkin’ Donuts, she’d explained what she knew about Virginia Bailey. They’d speculated on Father Whitney’s involvement, how much he might have known, and his potential reaction to being questioned so many years later; but now that the moment had arrived, they both seemed apprehensive. Reverend Whitney selected a cashew from a bowl of trail mix and chewed slowly.
“What do you make here? Your salary, I mean?” Elvis asked offhandedly as he picked up a copy of the church newsletter and seemed to skim through it.
“Sixty-five thousand,” Father Whitney replied.
“Plus housing?”
“Yes.”
“And a car?”
“Yes. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“And the parish gives you something for food and utilities, too, doesn’t it? Isn’t that part of the church budget?”
“What is your point?”
“It’s a good deal here,” he said, replacing the stapled papers. “Pre-tty sw-eet.”
“I am more than compensated for my work with the Lord, if that’s what you mean. But I have never asked for a raise, never asked for more than what I’ve been offered.”
“Can’t imagine you would,” Elvis said. Then he smiled, a big grin. He was the cat ready to bat at the vole caught between his paws.
“We need to ask you about Virginia Bailey,” Frances said. She knew Elvis had wanted to warm him up and then make him feel uneasy. Elvis at his best.
Father Whitney cleared his throat. “Why have you been looking into my past?” His voice sounded calm, but he spoke with forcefulness.
Neither of them responded.
“If you’re asking, I suspect you know the answers then as well. Ginny Bailey was a very kind, very devoted girl, whose death was a tragedy. I testified at the civil trial brought by her mother against the church and its clergy, which included me, after she killed herself. I was under oath, and I took that oath seriously. In retrospect, Father Burgess and I might well have tried to offer her more help, more counseling, more compassion, but her physical involvement with him was consensual. If anything, he was more frightened of it than she. He should have exercised better judgment, more control, but she was a passionate girl and hard to resist. We are mortals. We all yield to temptation at various times. Or are you free of sin?” He leaned toward Elvis. “Fortunately, the Lord forgives.”
“But it’s against the canons. And you didn’t report it to anyone at the diocese. You let it continue. Didn’t you feel any obligation to come forward?”
“Adultery is against the law. Does that mean no one commits the sin? People know about their friends’ extramarital affairs and do nothing. For a policeman, you’re naive. The relationship between Father Burgess and Ginny appeared to hurt no one. It was not my place to expose it.”
“When did Hope find out about what happened at Christ Church?”
The minister was silent. He reached for another nut and split it down the middle with his front teeth. Frances watched him chew for a moment before speaking. “Several months ago.”
“How?”
“She’d been gathering some materials to send into the diocese. I can’t remember what it was she couldn’t find, but she’d been looking for something and discovered a box of documents I have about the case.”
“What was her reaction?”
He spoke slowly as he gazed out the window into the garden beyond. “She came into my office, obviously disturbed. Anyone would be upset. I knew that. But we discussed it, talked at length about what happened, what I knew and didn’t know, and what I could and couldn’t have done. Even if she didn’t agree, I believe she understood.”
Elvis glanced at Frances, who opened one of the leather diaries at a page she had tabbed and began to read.
I asked Father Whitney about Ginny. Why? Why did he do nothing to protect her? Why did he sit idly by? Why wasn’t this his business? I could tell my questions angered him. “I did my best,” he replied. “And there hasn’t been a day since Ginny’s death when I haven’t repented.” That’s not good enough! I want to yell out. My mother’s said the same thing, and it’s not good enough.
Father Whitney set his jaw. “Whatever impression you may have, you’re mistaken. Hope and I were very close. I understood she was upset. She thought I should have reported my superior and ended the affair. She thought I could have saved Ginny. But she was wrong.”
“Did Hope threaten to report you to the diocese?” Frances asked.
“Never.”
“What does the Bible say about liars, Father?” Elvis asked. “I’m no acolyte, but I seem to recall something about blistering tongues.”
Frances felt a jolt from Elvis’s words. She hadn’t expected him to be so confrontational. “Can you help us to understand this? It’s an entry from Hope’s diary, one we found aboard Carl’s boat.” She flipped several pages in the diary and read aloud.
I cannot live with myself if I do nothing. This parish trusts Father Whitney. He has heard our confessions. We turn to him for help, for guidance, for safety. He has betrayed us. Nobody here knows what happened on the Cape. He’s never told the congregation what he allowed to transpire. Now that I know, I refuse to be like the others. I won’t be silent.
Father Whitney stood up. The color had drained from his face. “You don’t understand. Hope hated her father for what he did, and she
hated her mother even more for letting it happen. She’d turned to this church; she’d relied on her faith to help her to heal. Quite understandably, she was upset with me. But her mother’s conduct and mine weren’t equivalent. I tried to explain that to her.” He held on to the back of his chair, seemingly for balance, although Frances saw the whites of his knuckles as he gripped. “God is my judge,” he mumbled.
“How did you feel about her threat to expose you?” Elvis asked.
He took a step back as a look of alarm passed over his face. “You can indict me any way you want, but I will not confess to what I haven’t done. I have served this parish to the best of my ability. I have done everything in my power to help this community through good times and bad. I have reached out to our parishioners. You can ask anyone about me and hear the same thing. I am proud of my work.”
“A good minister. Was it to make up for the bad?” he persisted.
“This is satanic. Why have you come here?”
“Hope wasn’t wrong to blame you. You were as critical of yourself as she was,” Frances said.
“I am critical of myself. You’re right about that. Ginny Bailey’s death nearly destroyed me. I was ashamed. I questioned my faith. I questioned what sort of God would allow a minister to treat a vulnerable young girl in such a way. You can’t tell me I haven’t suffered over that whole affair.”
“But you thought you’d suffered enough. You didn’t think you should be punished anymore.”
“Punishment is for God to do. It is not our place to dispense it.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. And Hope was going to do just that.” Frances felt her breath coming quickly as she realized the truth. “Hope wasn’t going to leave you in God’s hands. She was going to break the special bond, the trust, between you and turn you in to the vestry, the parish, whatever. And you feared that if they knew, the members of this congregation wouldn’t want you anymore. You may have underestimated the tolerance of this community, but perhaps not. That’s hardly the point. You weren’t willing to accept the consequences of your own actions, to accept responsibility for your past.”
“I didn’t hurt her.”
Frances refused to listen. Her rage felt uncontrollable. “Did you expect that simply because you’d repented that you’d be redeemed? Did you honestly think that anything you could do would make up for the loss of a life?”
“Why are you persecuting me?”
“Persecuting you? Is that what you think?” She swallowed hard and found that the sensation of her own saliva passing along her throat gave her strength. This was real, now; she had to confront evil standing before her. An evil that wasn’t metaphysical or metaphoric, that had nothing to do with the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, or anything about faith. There stood a selfish man, one who had inflicted harm to protect his own interests. This crime was no different from any other. That the passion was spiritual instead of physical didn’t change the intent to kill.
“Why, Father? Why didn’t you take the risk that your parishioners would accept your follies, your failings, and accept you anyway? How could you preach acceptance of oneself if you didn’t believe it?”
“I have spent my life in toil, in service to God,” he interrupted. “He will protect me from your baseless allegations. If anything, I helped her. I helped her as I helped others come to terms with the horrors and injustice in this world. She found solace in the church, in our prayers together, in the Bible. Nothing I did contributed to her death.”
“You killed her!” Frances screamed. She refused to let him hide behind his cloak of piety any longer. Just as Hope apparently had, she wanted to punish him for the pain he had inflicted. Now was the time for God’s wrath, His fury, and she found herself praying for it.
“Stop! Enough, I say.” He walked around to the front of his desk and put his hand against one of her shoulders, seeming to hold her off. They stood frozen, staring into each other’s eyes as she felt the pressure he exerted. She held her ground. Now she understood. He’d seen a suicide before, the suicide of a confused girl, one not too dissimilar to Hope, and he knew that no one suffered consequences because of it. Father Burgess hadn’t been held responsible; with suicide, only the deceased was to blame. So he’d gone to every effort to make Hope’s death appear to be self-inflicted. He wanted to preach to the congregation and sing with the choir every Sunday. He too wanted to escape responsibility. He thought he could deviate from pious conduct because the state wouldn’t catch him and the Lord would forgive him. Apparently, anything could be forgiven with adequate repentance. What kind of moral code was that?
She recalled his image appearing at the dock the night they’d discovered Carl’s body, and the false sense of security she’d felt when she’d seen his face in the light. He’d already been to the boat; he’d already killed the lobsterman. No doubt as soon as the minister could be fingerprinted, there would be a match on the handle of the sledgehammer recovered from the Dumpster.
And then she remembered. The conversation came rushing back, making her dizzy in a sea of words. She’d been the one to tell him what Carl knew about Hope’s past. She’d been the one to tell him of the existence of other diaries. That information must have led him to believe Carl knew much more than he did. Her willingness to believe in the piety of a man of the cloth, her need to confess to someone whose trappings made him seem trustworthy, had led to Carl’s execution. How could she have been so stupid? Carl’s face as he’d been pulled from the black sea, his vacant stare, burned in her memory. It was her fault, and she would have to live with that responsibility. Only Carl could dispense forgiveness, but her very conduct had deprived him of that ability.
Father Whitney knelt down, clasped his hands, bowed his head, and seemed to pray.
“Edgar Whitney, you are under arrest for the murders of Hope Lawrence and Carl LeFleur,” Elvis said as he stood and removed a pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket. He walked around the desk as Father Whitney rose, put his hands behind his back, and hung his head. “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney…”
The words blurred as Frances stared at this priest. He was supposed to serve God, to execute as best as possible God’s will on earth. She’d seen many criminals led away, heard many tales of abuse and greed, but his crimes seemed worse. Perhaps he shouldn’t be held to a higher standard—he was human like everyone else and shared the same ugly characteristics—but she wanted him to be better, more moral, more selfless. Isn’t that why people went to church? To find something and someone to guide them in their everyday lives, to help them find answers to the struggles they faced, to teach them to walk in Jesus’ shoes. He was certainly no better, and probably worse, for abusing the trust he’d been given. Now two people—one who had turned to him for guidance and the other the man who had loved her and kept her secrets—were dead. He was responsible.
She closed her eyes for a moment and thought of Sam, remembering his voice during their last conversation. His words, his tone, gave her strength. Then, clutching Hope’s diary tight to her chest, she followed Elvis and his defendant out of the church.
September
34
Frances rested her elbows on the railing and stared overboard, feeling the salty wind on her face. As the Cross Sound Ferry churned its way through Long Island Sound, white tidal pools lightened the blackish green water. The noise of the engine blurred all other sounds, and she watched the pull of the current under the boat. The last seagull leaving port out of New London had turned back, the shoreline had disappeared, and the huge ship carrying dozens of cars and passengers seemed alone in the vast ocean.
Sam returned from the galley with two Styrofoam cups of coffee and handed one to Frances. “The line was endless,” he said.
She took a sip and felt a burn in the back of her throat. The liquid was bitter, a taste she remembered well from the previous day as she’d sat with Elvis in Mark O’Connor’s office, reviewing all the evidence agains
t Father Whitney that had been compiled over the last two weeks. Forensics had found two fibers in Carl’s ransacked apartment that matched a jacket from the minister’s office closet. With a fingerprint match off the sledgehammer, the case against him for the lobsterman’s murder was strong.
Whether he’d be tried for Hope’s murder too was now up to the grand jury. Mark had presented the case as best he could: Police had found the most recent volume of Hope’s diary in his apartment—the one he’d taken in order to create a forgery. One of the final entries had been read into the record:
I turned for help so many times, but ultimately no one was there, and now I understand why. Even when the hurt is right before us, even when Father Whitney witnessed Ginny’s pain, silence prevailed. Now he’s angry with me for wanting justice, for wanting those who turn to him to know how quickly he will betray them. He told me yesterday that he would force me to keep quiet if I wouldn’t make that choice on my own. “There’s nothing I could do. Why do you want me punished now?” If I hear that refrain one more time, I will scream.
My insides have been destroyed, and even my dreams aren’t my own. I want to be held, rocked in gentle arms, protected from the hurt, but my nightmares, my memories, forced me to give up the one person who might have saved me. I’ll become Jack’s wife, but nothing will change. I’ll be free from this family, but not this community. I’ll remain immersed in a world of facades.
Why don’t we stand up for the people we love? Why isn’t that worth the fight? But I too am guilty. I’ve let Carl go because I no longer have the strength, because I’m plagued by my fears. Maybe I do understand my mother better than I thought.
Upon hearing the words, two grand jurors had cried.
