The Judas Child

by Carol O'Connell

  But surely Sadie must already know what a fraud her best friend was, for she could add sums, couldn’t she? She could figure the length of two sheets torn into halves, how far the bedsheet rope would dangle, how close to the ground. But she never asked why Gwen had not gone out the bathroom window. Gallant Sadie was such a good friend, she was capable of keeping this nasty secret even from herself.

  The man was going to be so mad when he found them.

  Gwen stared at the container of pills. How many would it take to kill the panic? The bottle was slapped out of her hand as she was opening it. “What did you do that for?”

  Did Sadie look a little frightened? Yes. And now Gwen remembered that she had already taken three pills. Ah, well. She was calmer now, and the pain was gone again. Nothing else mattered.

  In Rouge’s estimation, Dr. Lorimer looked more like a well-to-do undertaker. The heart specialist was dressed in dark and expensive materials, and when he stepped back from Mortimer Cray’s bedside, his somber eyes took in the entire patient, as though wondering if body and coffin would be a good fit.

  Lorimer’s funereal attire was quite a contrast to Myles Penny’s wrinkled white coat, mismatched socks and baggy pants. Dr. Penny stood at the foot of the bed, staring at sheets of ragged lines scrolling from the mouth of a machine. The general practitioner spoke to his patient with a dismissive tone, suggesting that Mortimer Cray was wasting his time. “Your old pump isn’t any worse off than the last time William examined you. I guess we don’t have to crack your chest open today.” He pointed to the heart specialist. “See? Dr. Lorimer’s packing up his bag and going home.”

  And now Dr. Penny turned to Captain Costello and Rouge Kendall. “I’m forgetting my manners, boys. This here is Ed Lorimer. He’s covering my brother’s end of the practice this week.”

  Lorimer only nodded to the two police officers as he closed his gladstone bag and reached for the door. When the best-dressed doctor had left the room, Captain Costello turned to Myles Penny. “I’d like to do the interview in private, if you—”

  “Not a shot in hell,” said the doctor, frowning. “I’m staying. Mortimer doesn’t need surgery, but he’s not quite out of the woods. Find his niece yet?”

  “Yeah,” said Costello. “One of the FBI men tracked her down. He’s bringing her over now.”

  The patient never stirred in his bed, but he followed the conversation with his eyes. His thin face was nearly as white as the bedding, and Rouge thought the old man looked badly frightened. A heart attack could do that. Or maybe the psychiatrist had another reason to be fearful. Captain Costello’s presence here would not be a comfort. The last time they met, the captain had all but accused him of conspiracy to murder a child.

  “I promise you,” said Costello, “we’ll be brief, but I think he’d be more inclined to—”

  “Nope.” Myles Penny settled himself into a chair near the door. He waved his hand at Costello, “Now you just get on with your business. Don’t mind me.” The doctor opened his magazine; the discussion was over.

  Rouge leaned back against the wall as Captain Costello pulled the remaining chair close to the patient’s bed. Mortimer Cray was staring at the ceiling, not showing any sign of awareness anymore.

  “Dr. Cray, we believe you can give us helpful information.”

  No response. The room was silent, except for the mechanical noises of the equipment by the bed and the rustle of Dr. Penny’s magazine pages.

  Costello waited a moment more, and then he edged his chair closer, scratching and screeching the legs across the floor. He could not be ignored unless the patient was stone-deaf, and judging by the old man’s pained expression, he was not.

  “Dr. Cray, was the priest ever one of your patients?”

  Mortimer Cray turned his head to look at the man for the first time. “I can’t answer that. Surely you can understand why.”

  “No, I can’t understand a damn thing anymore, Dr. Cray.” Costello was too loud this time, showing too much emotion, and too quickly. Rouge had to wonder if the case was getting to the captain, or was this acting? Costello lowered his voice, more reasonable this time. “Help me understand. Why won’t you give me this lousy little shred of information?”

  Rouge understood the psychiatrist’s code of ethics. Dr. Cray wouldn’t allow the police to close in on a patient by process of elimination, not even to the extent of eliminating a man with a prisoner’s alibi. He would do nothing to help them.

  “If this is a matter of patient confidentiality,” said Costello, “we can compel you to assist us.”

  A small burst of air escaped Dr. Cray’s cracked lips. A weak attempt at a laugh? Perhaps the old man felt he was beyond the law, closer to death, not believing in the good news of medical science and heart monitors.

  The captain reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He opened it to display pictures of two little boys.

  Mortimer Cray glanced at the photos and looked away.

  “My grandchildren,” said Costello. “I used to show their baby pictures to everyone.” He put the wallet back in his pocket. “But I don’t do that anymore. None of my investigators do. You see, we’re all beginning to think like perverts. Your niece says a lot of little kids died because some freak fell in love with their photographs in a magazine or a newspaper.”

  Dr. Cray was staring at some dot on the ceiling. He had the look of a trapped animal—too much white in his eyes.

  “Gwen Hubble’s pictures never appeared in public,” said Costello. “And I can’t see the parents flashing wallet snapshots to strangers. The mother doesn’t even have the kid’s picture on her desk. Of course, Mrs. Hubble lives in the public eye. And I think she realizes that some of the eyes are insane—and the mouths drool. But the pervert didn’t need to see a photograph. He lives right here in town, doesn’t he, Dr. Cray?”

  Mortimer Cray was looking at Myles Penny, but the general practitioner was involved in the pages of the New England Journal of Medicine. There was no help coming from that quarter.

  The door opened, and Ali Cray entered the room. When she looked down at the old man in the bed, she seemed relieved. Agent Arnie Pyle walked in behind her, sporting a black eye, his souvenir from Marsha Hubble’s interrogation.

  Costello gave no sign that he was even aware of the new visitors. He was totally focused on Mortimer Cray. “We’ve taken statements from Paul Marie and the prison guard. The priest was really angry, wasn’t he, sir? I know what set him off. It would be better if you made a statement in your own words.”

  Mortimer Cray stared at the ceiling. Costello was at his ear, only inches away. “It’s Christmas Eve. If your niece is right—and she’s been right about a lot of things—one of those kids is alive. She’ll die on Christmas morning. Isn’t that the way it works?”

  Ali Cray’s reaction was not what Rouge had expected. After the silence had dragged out for a few more seconds, she walked over to the bed. “Tell him.” When she looked down at the old man, her face displayed no emotion whatever. “I know this pervert is one of your patients.”

  The psychiatrist turned his eyes toward his doctor again. And now Myles Penny closed his medical journal and set it down on a low table. “Ali, if that’s the case, you’re wasting your time. He’ll never tell you anything about a patient. You know that.”

  The general practitioner stood up and moved Ali to one side, as though she were a piece of furniture. He leaned down and held a penlight to each of Mortimer Cray’s eyes. “Ethical conduct is Mortimer’s religion. Isn’t that right, you old bastard?” The insult was almost endearing. “He’ll never give up the name of that patient. Am I right, Mortimer?”

  The old man nodded his head. And then his eyes widened, for he had just confirmed Ali’s charge; he had been duped by his own physician. The patient’s head pressed deep into the pillows, and judging from his expression, Rouge guessed the unspoken sentiment was some genteel variation on Oh, shit.

  Myles Penny seemed rather pleas
ed by the success of this gambit. Costello certainly was. Rouge had more difficulty assessing Ali’s state of mind. She was so utterly without emotion. And then he understood this as extreme control, and she was about to lose it. The stress was showing in her eyes.

  She leaned over the bed. “Give it up, Uncle Mortimer. A name, a place—something.” Ali’s face was close to her uncle’s. She was the only woman in Rouge’s experience who could scream with a whisper. “I know Gwen Hubble is alive. That’s the pattern. There’s still hope for one child.”

  Myles Penny shook his head to say, No use, as he moved down to the foot of the bed and picked up a chart chained to the iron frame. “Damn waste of time, Ali. A hundred little girls could die before he ever told you a thing.”

  Ali Cray was nodding as she glared at her uncle. Rouge sensed a line of tension strung out between these two people; it was taut and tightening. Mortimer Cray appeared to be anticipating something, drawing in his frail shoulders, bracing. The room was so quiet. One gnarly finger tapped the blanket, perhaps keeping to the beat of some inner clock, ticking off the passing seconds. And now the old man closed his eyes against whatever might happen to him; some act was impending.

  Agent Pyle had been quiet through all of this. He was looking at Ali with something approaching tenderness, even as she raised her hand to strike the utterly helpless old man on the bed.

  “Ali!” Myles Penny dropped the chart, and it swung by its chain.

  Rouge read a mix of sorrow and frustration in the simple motion of Ali Cray’s arm slowly dropping to her side.

  Costello abruptly stood up and moved his chair to the wall, making a great show of preparing to leave. He turned back to the man on the bed. “Just one more thing, sir. Why did you visit the priest today? Just tell me if Paul Marie was ever a patient.”

  Mortimer Cray opened his eyes, but said nothing.

  “No, he wasn’t my uncle’s patient,” said Ali. “Father Marie was never in therapy of any kind.”

  “Not even as a prisoner?” Costello seemed dubious. “I thought the therapy program was mandatory for the perverts.”

  “No, it’s voluntary,” she said. “According to the warden, Father Marie never participated.”

  The captain was unconvinced. “That’s odd, isn’t it, Ali? I know a therapy program carries weight with the parole board.”

  “I know. That’s the reason most prisoners go along with it. But not Father Marie.” Ali looked down at Mortimer again. “I interviewed the priest. He has a dim view of psychiatrists—takes them for prancing con artists, all smoke and mirrors.” She turned back to Costello. “So he would never have sought out my uncle. Don’t you see? It had to be the other way around.”

  And now they had a brand-new game. Costello moved back to the bedside. “The priest said you knew who the perp was. So we can—”

  “He never told you anything.” Mortimer Cray looked up at the captain, with a brief, bitter flicker of a smile.

  “You don’t think so?” Costello was incredulous. “Why? Because he used to be a priest?”

  “He is a priest.” Mortimer Cray said this quietly, but with unmistakable conviction. “You called him that yourself, Captain. The priest never said anything.”

  “You’re right,” said Costello. “It was the guard. He said you could tell us where the kids were.”

  Ali Cray stepped back to the bedside and bent low over her uncle. “Was Father Marie your confessor?”

  The old man looked away, refusing to meet her eyes.

  With one hand, she turned his face to hers, and she was not gentle. “Am I right, Uncle Mortimer? You wanted the priest to break his oath because you wouldn’t break yours?” Rouge could see the deep indents Ali’s fingers were making in the crepe flesh of her uncle’s face. “You weren’t there for religious reasons—not you, the professional atheist. Talk to me!”

  “That’s enough!” Myles Penny was standing close behind her. “Ali, don’t press your luck with me, or I’ll push you right out the door.”

  Ali didn’t seem to hear him, though she moved her hand to rest on the pillow beside Mortimer Cray’s head. “Did you confess to the priest? Did you tell Father Marie who it was?” Her hand drifted to her uncle’s chest, a none too subtle threat to an old man with a heart condition.

  “Uncle Mortimer, what kind of trophy did the killer take from Gwen Hubble? Has he told you yet? Or does he always wait until the child is dead?” She gripped him by the shoulders, as if she intended to shake the answer out of him. “Gwen is only ten years old!”

  Mortimer Cray’s eyes were wide and staring in disbelief, full of horror. His head shook from side to side, and he began to thrash under her hands.

  Myles Penny was true to his promise, grabbing Ali by the shoulders and roughly pulling her back from the bed. She didn’t resist him while he ungently propelled her to the door and pushed her into the corridor. Now he silently motioned the others to follow suit.

  Rouge was the last visitor to quit the room, closing the door behind him as Dr. Penny was filling a syringe from a bottle. The last thing he heard was the doctor saying, “This anxiety is going to kill you, Mortimer.” And then he heard a soft moan from the patient, which he took for affirmation.

  “Don’t even try to bullshit me. I know all about the boys with the gun.” Investigator Sorrel was holding the local police report over the head of the medical examiner. “Doc, I gotta wonder who leaned on you.”

  “What? Buddy, will you talk sense?” Dr. Howard Chainy pushed his chair away from the desk and adjusted his glasses, as if this would help him to see the BCI man’s logic more clearly.

  “The local police chief says you told him to leave the kids and the gun out of his incident report.”

  “The gun? Oh, Jesus Christ, Buddy, it was only a damn pellet gun. A kid’s toy. The boys broke a window and found a dead body—three days dead. Now that’s all there was to it.” He turned back to the mass of paperwork on his desk.

  “Then why go out of your way to withhold—”

  “The people in this town just love their rumors about St. Ursula’s,” said Dr. Chainy. “If you stir this thing up, that silly toy will turn into a full blown tank gun before the week is out.”

  “You could save me a trip out to the house, if I could just nail down the loose ends.”

  Chainy shook his head in disbelief. “You’re not really going to waste any more of my time with this nonsense, are you?”

  Investigator Sorrel was planning to do just that, for he was one neat ex-marine. His wife always deferred to him in the chore of making the bed in the morning, for he could bounce a marble off the blankets when he was done. How he hated the sight of wrinkles in the fabric, loose threads on a bedspread, and loose ends in a police report. Unanswered questions made him totally crazy and a very good policeman. He would go to the freaking moon to nail down one inconsistency.

  Yes, he was a damn tidy man and royally pissed off. The incident on the lake might have nothing to do with the case at hand. According to the report, every room of the house had been thoroughly searched by the chief and two local cops. But there were loose ends. “Whose idea was it to amend the report? Yours or that school dir—”

  “Mine. Satisfied?”

  No, he wasn’t.

  Howard Chainy smiled, almost evil for a moment, then raised his voice. “So, how goes the great truffle hunt, Buddy?”

  The doctor’s assistant looked up from his work at the next table. Chainy had promised to keep the truffle angle quiet, but he was bordering on blackmail. The pathologist spun around on his stool to face the young man in the lab coat. “Hastings? You ever hear of doing an autopsy on a damn fungus?” And this was a blatant threat.

  Sorrel pushed through the swinging doors of the autopsy room and stormed down the hall leading to the parking lot. He passed through another set of doors that closed behind him with maddening slowness. Finally, outside in the parking lot, his car door made the satisfying slam that his angry exit from the b
uilding had denied him.

  It had been a long morning of irritations. Another BCI investigator had been assigned to oversee the daily logs of the local police department, and the man had not cared that the bones of this particular incident report were suspiciously bare. The local chief of police had been entirely too blasé about filling in the missing pieces, as he had not yet finished collecting them. More irritation. And now the damned medical examiner, supposedly on the same side of the law—that old bastard was holding out on him, threatening him.

  Driving back to the station house, Sorrel was not any calmer as he moved on to the next loose end. The deceased householder had a cleaning lady, but no one had questioned this woman. A village cop, Phil Chapel, had been on that search party, and according to Chief Croft, this officer had been in charge of tracking down the hired woman to find out why she never reported the death of her employer. “Closest neighbor says she’s on vacation,” read the badly typed line of the report—not even a name for the woman. And the cop had made three typos in a single sentence; this alone was cause to despise the little weasel, sight unseen.

  Sorrel used his car phone to call the state trooper manning the front desk at the station house. The trooper assured him the local police patrol was due to check in, and Officer Chapel would not be allowed to escape until the senior BCI investigator arrived to take a shot at him.

  Fifteen minutes later, Sorrel was seated at his desk in the second-floor makeshift squad room. The place was deserted. Everyone else was out on assignment, and the civilian secretary was not at her post.

  Officer Phil Chapel was standing at attention. He was very young and had the look of a guilty child; he knew he had done something wrong, but hadn’t a clue as to what that might be.