“Like spending most of your waking hours with convicted felons,” I said.
“I can imagine that would be extremely difficult—especially on a man as sensitive and compassionate as I hear you are.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” I said.
“I don’t, but when it comes from a nun…”
“So much for confidentiality.”
“Oh, she would never violate that,” she said. “But it doesn’t cover her trying to set us up.”
“She working you too?”
“Since the moment you arrived. She lives certain things vicariously through me, which means lately she’s had a boring life.”
“Lately?”
She smiled. “Well, actually most of my life.”
“No wonder she’s so persistent,” I said.
“You have no idea.”
“Every man with a heartbeat that comes through the front gates?”
“Oh, no, I meant… She’s very particular. She’s just relentless about certain ex-cop, recovering alcoholic, wannabe detective prison chaplains.”
“Wannabe?”
A rustling in the branches above was followed by a squirrel as gray as the surroundings scampering down the cypress tree closest to us. As we watched, he bounced across the cypress knees between the trees like a Pentecostal preacher walking pews, and scurried up another tree farther down the bank.
“And she told you all that without breaking my confidences?”
“Actually, some of that I learned on my own. You’re not the only one here who can investigate. I have to hunt down information for every one of my books. Speaking of which, I want to help you investigate what happened to Tommy Boy. I’m curious, plus I might be able to use it in a story. I can be your Watson.”
“As fun as that sounds,” I said, “I’m going to take Sister’s advice and stay out of this one.”
Her deep brown eyes grew wide in surprise. “Really?”
“Really,” I said.
There would always be cases, always be distractions. I couldn’t keep allowing them to lure me from my path. They were becoming red herrings in my life, and like a young, untrained hound I kept losing the true scent—and my way. Since the only way to stop a destructive cycle was to stop, that’s what I had decided to do. I couldn’t continue to fail to live out my convictions and ideals and have any credibility as either a minister or investigator.
“Wow, so I’ve lived to see the day when Sister was wrong about someone,” she said. “I don’t know if she’ll be happy you took her advice or sad she was wrong to predict you wouldn’t.”
“You should turn over everything you have to the chief of police.”
“Steve?”
“You know him?”
She nodded. “We went out a few times.”
I felt myself pull back ever so slightly, and I wondered if she noticed.
“Then you know where to find him,” I said, surprised not only at my tone, but how much what she said had bothered me. It was irrational and immature, but there it was.
She nodded. “Shouldn’t be hard. He’ll be joining us for dinner tonight.”
Chapter Eight
The tension during dinner was palpable.
For the first part of the meal everyone ate in awkward silence. At one end of the long main table, Sister Abigail sat with Ralph Reid, a trim, rigid, early graying representative of the Gulf Coast Company who had come to look over the property. She was finding it difficult to be civil to him and she didn’t conceal it well.
He acted oblivious. He wasn’t much of an actor.
At the opposite end, Tammy Taylor, dressed modestly in jeans and a white button-down, was seated between Brad Harrison, Keith Richie, and across from Sister Chris King. Avoiding each other’s eye line, the three watched Tammy intently, but she just kept her head down, moving her food around on her plate with her fork. In fact, she was so subdued, such a different person, I found myself trying to guess if she was medicated or merely bipolar.
I was seated near the center of the table, Kathryn next to me, Steve next to her.
“Sister Abigail, where’s Father Thomas?” Steve asked.
Shrugging, she said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
“He’s fasting and praying,” Tammy said without looking up, her voice flat and so soft it was barely audible.
“Of course he is,” Sister Abigail said. “Limiting himself to only water and whiskey.”
Several people laughed, and didn’t hear Tammy say, “Getting ready.”
For what? I wondered, but didn’t pursue it.
Everyone grew quiet again, and only the sounds of silverware clinking, ice chinking, and the loud mechanical hum of the ice machine in the back corner by the kitchen remained.
In the absence of conversation, every sound was exaggerated as it bounced from the tile floor and ricocheted off the wooden walls. The large room was plain, but not rustic. A simple cypress table surrounded by uncomfortable cypress chairs sat at its center beneath a tilting old chandelier covered with dust. Oppressively heavy and gaudy drapes covered the many windows, their appearance altered by the sun on one side and dust on the other.
Leaning over to me, Kathryn whispered, “When’s the last time you had this much fun?”
“Last time I did step five.”
“Which is?”
“‘Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.’”
“That had to be better than this.”
“What’s going on? Hasn’t been this bad before.”
“Well, on one end you’ve got a lovers’ spat and on the other, a big bad corporation wanting to close us down.”
I glanced over at Tammy and her admirers.
Slumping in the uncomfortable seat made Brad Harrison’s thick body seem to gather around him and made him look dumpier than he was—which along with his dark skin and eyes accentuated his difference from the light-skinned, reddish-haired Keith Richie, whose tall body and erect posture caused him to tower over his competition for Tammy’s attention.
I said, “Did Tammy tell the other boys if she couldn’t have me, she didn’t want anyone?”
She smiled. “I think her exact words were if she couldn’t have you she didn’t want to live.”
“If I had a dollar for every time I heard that.”
I then panned to the opposite side to see the nervous Ralph Reid trying to talk to the stiff, pinched Sister.
“The Gulf Coast Company wants this land?”
“They want it back,” Kathryn said.
“Why?”
“Since the mill closed, they’re converting this area into resorts, golf courses, and retirement communities.”
I wondered why, with so much land, Gulf Coast wanted the abbey. It didn’t make sense. St. Ann’s was minuscule compared to Gulf Coast’s other holdings and it wasn’t close enough to the Gulf to be very valuable.
“Including the abbey?”
“Everything.”
“I need to say something,” Tammy said, pushing her chair back from the table and standing.
Everyone stopped eating and looked at her.
“I want to apologize for how I’ve behaved. I’ve done some pretty stupid and self-destructive things, and I’m sure I’ve hurt some of you. I’m very sorry. I take full responsibility for what I’ve done, but I want you to know that some things are out of my control. That’s not an excuse. It’s just the truth. Anyway, I’m gonna get help and I wanted y’all to know.”
She then sat down as abruptly as she had stood and began to fork through her food again.
“Well,” Sister Abigail said, “thank you, Tammy. We accept your apology and offer you our forgiveness and support on your efforts to have the life you want.”
“Yes,” Sister Chris said, and patted Tammy on the back affectionately.
“Hear hear,” Steve said.
“It wasn’t a toast,” I said.
Kathryn laughed.
Steve glared. Everyone grew silent again.
After a few minutes, Keith Richie rose and went into the kitchen, coming out a minute later with a large chocolate sheet cake. He placed the cake in the center of the table and began to cut it into sizable slices. As he did, I noticed the pale green prison tattoos on the underneath of his forearms, and wondered if everyone here was running or hiding from something.
Eating cake seemed to lighten everyone’s mood, and soon the silence was replaced by whispers and faint laughs. But not everyone had cake, and those who didn’t—Sister Chris and Tammy—remained sullen.
“This is very good, Keith,” Kathryn said.
“Thanks,” he said, his face turning a light shade of crimson.
“Since it seems to be a night for clearing the air,” Ralph Reid said, “I think I should set a few things straight.”
We all turned toward him, most of us continuing to eat.
“Regardless of what you may have heard, the Gulf Coast Company is not attempting to close St. Ann’s down. Obviously, things have changed since we made this generous donation to your ministry, and we have different needs now, but nothing we’re proposing would cause St. Ann’s to close.”
“What are you proposing?” Kathryn asked.
“Simply to relocate St. Ann’s to another parcel every bit as beautiful as this one,” he said. “Just one that would enable us to go forth with our plans to be a viable company for the future.”
“Simply relocate us,” Sister Abigail said. “Relocation is never simple, and this has been our home for nearly thirty-five years.”
“Anyway,” Reid said, “I just wanted to expel any rumors and explain what I was doing here. I’ll be staying in Daniel cabin tonight if any of you have any questions.”
“You’re spending the night?” Sister Abigail asked.
“Is that a problem?”
She hesitated, then said, “Absolutely not. Just unexpected.”
“Y’all still keep that cabin reserved for us, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Good,” he said. “I have a few more things to do out here in the morning and I’d like to get an early start.”
I leaned over and whispered to Kathryn, “The paper company has its own cabin?”
“Always has had. Not only did Floyd Taylor donate everything, but he set up a trust before he died that keeps St. Ann’s going. If he hadn’t, we’d’ve closed a long time ago.”
Before I could ask her anything else, Father Thomas appeared at the door. Without speaking to the rest of us, he looked at Tammy and said, “It’s time. Are you ready?”
She nodded and they left together.
“Time for what?” Steve asked.
“I have no idea,” Kathryn said.
“You don’t think he’s, ah—you know, with my little cousin, do you?”
“No,” she said. “Ew.”
“Just the same, maybe I should go see what they’re doing.”
As he stood, I said, “Did she tell you your little cousin was the last one to be seen with Tommy?”
“Was she?” he asked Kathryn without acknowledging me.
Kathryn nodded.
“Well,” he said. “Then I’ll ask her about that too.”
Chapter Nine
When the banging on my door began at just before two in the morning, I hadn’t been asleep long. I had returned to my room from an after-dinner walk around the lake restless and frustrated. I had hoped to run into Kathryn but she was nowhere around, and I wondered if she was with Steve.
I shouldn’t have even been thinking about her, but I was finding it difficult not to, and that made me agitated and unable to sleep.
The truth was Kathryn was just a distraction. The real reason I was agitated and unable to sleep was my mental state. I felt isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the world. I was homesick for a home I didn’t have and my loneliness opened up a hole inside me that felt as bad as anything I had ever experienced. I wanted to cry but couldn’t. I wanted to scream but didn’t. I needed to connect but felt as though I were the only lonely soul adrift in the cosmos.
I had paced around the small room, mind wandering, bumping into the furniture, before I finally laid down and courted that which eluded me nearly as much as equanimity.
I dreamt I was floating weightlessly in a world of clear, sky-blue water, arms and legs dangling beneath me. Hearing the sound at the door, like the knock of an oar against a boat, I rose to the top, cresting the surface into consciousness.
“Get dressed, I need your help,” Steve said.
In the split-second I saw his face before he spoke, I knew something was wrong, his words and tone only confirming it.
Suddenly, there was nothing between us—no competition, no unresolved conflict, no past at all, only the present, only the task at hand. Now he was just a cop, I, his best hope for help.
Without saying a word, I quickly put back on the jeans, shirt, jacket, and tennis shoes I had donned earlier to walk the lake, silently praying nothing had happened to Kathryn or Sister Abigail.
When I was dressed, he turned and began walking down the narrow corridor, his rubber-soled shoes nearly soundless on the dull tile floor. I followed a step behind him, waiting for him to tell me what had happened and what he needed from me.
“I need to know I can count on you to act like a cop and not a chaplain,” he said.
I nodded.
He turned and looked at me, slowing a step so I could walk beside him, which I had to do with my shoulders at a slight angle for us to fit.
I nodded again so he could see it.
“No matter how you might feel about these people, you’ve got to help me preserve evidence, protect the crime scene, secure statements.”
“Crime scene?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Where?”
“One of the cabins.”
My heart, racing since I first heard the banging on my door, seemed now to stop completely.
“Who’s the victim?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Don’t know yet.”
“What?”
“The cabin’s empty,” he said.
“Then how do you know it’s a crime scene?”
“All the blood.”
When we stepped out of the dorm and into the night, a cold gust of air slapped me in the face, tiny needles pricking my cheeks and nose, tears stinging my eyes, and I heard what sounded like a child screaming, but it was so faint and far away it could have been the howl of the wind.
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“What?”
With no clouds to diffuse it, the full moon lit up the night, its bright glow casting long, dark shadows on the dew-damp ground. Like the trees surrounding them, the buildings of St. Ann’s were silent, the only sound, the whistle of the wind through the woods.
The airy whine sounded lonely and eerie, and it made the abbey feel desolate, the dark woods around it disquieting, and I realized how different it seemed now from earlier in the evening when it had nurtured and inspired me.
Wordlessly, we walked past the chapel and down the hill toward the cabins and the moonlit lake beyond, our breaths visible the brief moment before we walked through them.
“Which cabin?” I asked.
“It’s not Kathryn,” he said.
Relief washed over me—followed immediately by gratitude, then guilt.
“How’d you discover the—what are you still doing here?”
“Fell asleep. Something woke me—a scream, I think. When I came out here, I saw the door to the last cabin open and the lights on inside. It’s supposed to be empty, so I walked over to check it out.”
“From where?”
“From where what?”
“You woke up and came out of where?”
“Kathryn’s cabin,” he said.
I nodded, but didn’t say anything. I was shivering now, feeling as cold within as without as I tried unsuccessfully to still my shaking bo
dy.
As he stopped in front of the last cabin on the right, I came up beside him and waited. The door was now closed, the lights off, no sign of violence visible.
“I turned off the lights to keep from attracting any attention while I went to get you,” he said.
“That was smart.”
“I’m a good cop.”
“I know.”
He nodded, his expression one of gratitude, though he didn’t say anything.
“You seen a crime scene lately?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Well, this is a bad one,” he said. “So be prepared.”
“I am.”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter Ten
The musty old cabin was cold, its damp boards smelling of mildew, its dormant fireplace of charred hardwood and ashes, but those weren’t the only odors. The dank air of the small room also carried on its currents the wet-copper aroma of blood, of life and death—and it was strong enough to let me know it was most likely the latter.
I didn’t need Steve to turn on the light for me to know I was witnessing—at least in an olfactory way—a scene of extreme violence and bloodletting. When the light came on my sense of sight only confirmed what my other senses had already told me, but there was something about actually seeing it that made it simultaneously more real and less believable.
The interior of the cabin was much as the exterior—simple, rustic, unvarnished—except now much of it was splattered with somebody’s blood.
Beneath a bare bulb on the ceiling, a blood-soaked bed with four wooden posts extended out from the right wall to the center of the room. Leather straps like dog collars were fastened to the bedposts. What looked to be arterial spray covered the headboard and the wall above it.
Trying to locate the source of the dripping sound, I turned to look for a kitchen or bathroom, but found neither in the one-room cabin, and I realized it was blood dripping from the bed.
Beside the fireplace on the back wall, a wooden rocking chair held some clothes and books. Candles lined the hearth and circled the bed.
Nodding toward the candles, Steve said, “Looks ritualistic.”
“Would make sense at a place like this.”
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