Enter by the Narrow Gate

by David Carlson

  Abbot Timothy stepped forward to intervene, but was pushed aside and nearly fell in the process. Another monk, a burly one with a nimbus of wild gray hair, stepped into the fray and pushed the photographer back with a mighty shove. The photographer went down in a heap, his camera flying. More dust. Abbot Timothy teetered for a moment, his hand covering his mouth, before turning on his heels and scurrying away.

  What a zoo, Father Fortis had thought at the time.

  Father Fortis inserted the key and turned the doorknob of his room. “Well, Brother Bartholomew, we know what we must do. We must all pray for the abbot,” he whispered.

  “And we must all help him where we can,” the novice added cryptically. He nodded and continued down the hall.

  Entering the room, Father Fortis placed his research on the bedside table. Staring up at him was the newspaper that he’d bought the day before when last in town. He sat on the bed and reread the account of how one of the novices had discovered Sister Anna’s body in a remote retreat house owned by St. Mary’s. He wondered if the novice had been Brother Bartholomew or the poor boy who’d been harassed by the photographer.

  Next he reviewed the coroner’s brief public statement. Sister Anna had been stabbed twice in the back, with either wound capable of being fatal. But the evidence pointed to something quite strange that had occurred later. Dead or dying, Sister Anna had been stabbed repeatedly in and between her breasts. Father Fortis pulled on his beard and pondered the odd detail. Was the attack sexual? He couldn’t deny that St. Mary’s tragedy intrigued him. Why had a nun stayed in an all-male community in the first place? That had to be irregular, even in post-Vatican II days. From an oblique comment in the paper by one of St. Mary’s leaders, a Father Bernard, he gleaned that Abbot Timothy had rescued Sister Anna from some crisis at her convent in Oklahoma. What had that been?

  The newspaper account reported that the nun had stayed at St. Mary’s for nearly two months, time enough for the tight community of monks to learn all about her. Had they all accepted her? He couldn’t imagine Brother Elias had embraced her warmly, but Brother Bartholomew had clearly been fond of her. Had someone in the community loved her too much? From the picture in the newspaper, Father Fortis found the prospect believable. The woman had been truly beautiful—a curse for a nun.

  Father Fortis looked up to the crucifix above the bed. He thought of the novice’s comment—“and we must all help him where we can.”

  “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, you know me better than I know myself,” he said. “So if you’ve brought me halfway across the country to a place where a terrible murder has been committed, does that mean I’m supposed to do something?” He paced the room, keyed up by the thought. His mind gradually quieted as he considered the trauma that St. Mary’s would now undergo. Monasteries had been honed over their seventeen-hundred-year history to withstand a wide variety of storms such as low vocations, poor leadership, shortages of funds, disgruntled monks, and petty jealousies. But the murder of a nun in a community of monks wasn’t the kind of storm the ancient monastic founders had in mind when they penned their early rules.

  Add to this the fact that neither the media nor police had any experience separating what constituted normal from abnormal life in a monastery, and any monk would admit that a monastery could be as fragile as an orchid.

  Father Fortis gazed up again at the crucifix for a moment before returning to the newspaper. Yes, he thought, a murder with the spice of sex could destroy St. Mary’s in a matter of weeks.

  On Saturday, after his meager evening meal of rice, refried beans, and Jell-O, Father Fortis retraced his steps of three days before to the abbot’s office and knocked on the heavy door. A tired voice bade him enter.

  Father Fortis stood in front of the desk and looked across to St. Mary’s spiritual leader. Bread crumbs peppered the abbot’s white beard.

  “Abbot Timothy, I’m sorry to bother you again, but I’m wondering if I might have a brief word.”

  The abbot looked up from a ledger of figures and squinted through half glasses. For a moment, Father Fortis thought he would have to reintroduce himself.

  “Father Nicholas, our Orthodox guest, isn’t it? My, my, you are a big man, aren’t you? You’d give Father Bernard a fight, I’d imagine. Oh, where are my manners? Yes, yes, please sit down.” The abbot began to rise from his chair, but Father Fortis waved him to stay seated. Behind the abbot and through a massive window that looked out on a canyon wall, a hawk ascended on an updraft past the ancient cliffs of brown and red and pink.

  Hoping the abbot hadn’t heard about the incident in the library, Father Fortis launched into his offer. “I believe I might be able to help you, Abbot Timothy.”

  The old man glanced down at the figures and then back up at his guest. A puzzled expression crossed his face. “Help me?”

  A new realization crossed Father Fortis’s mind. Given that he’d brought the nun to St. Mary’s, the abbot would be the most distraught of anyone by her death. But of all the members of the community, he was the only one who had to balance his grief with worries about the financial difficulties that the tragedy would bring to the community.

  “Abbot Timothy, I think we both know that the police, and certainly the press, will have difficulty understanding life at St. Mary’s. They’ll assume from the rules that all kinds of secrets are being hidden, just because our way of life is so foreign to them.”

  Abbot Timothy placed his glasses down on the papers and stared at Father Fortis. Knuckle joints tortured by arthritis bulged beneath a thin layer of flesh.

  “I suppose that’s true,” he muttered in a tired voice. “Yes, of course it is, but I don’t see how that can be avoided.”

  Father Fortis sat forward in the chair. “I believe there’s something I can do to help. I’d like to invite a friend of mine to stay here at St. Mary’s. Just for a few weeks, you understand.”

  The abbot rubbed his forehead for a moment. “Requests for guests must go to Father Cornelius. He’s our guestmaster, you see. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  “No, Abbot Timothy, I don’t think you understand. My friend is a policeman, a detective from Detroit.”

  The abbot seemed confused by the new information. “Why would a policeman come all the way from Detroit?”

  “Actually, I have word this morning that he’s arriving today on another case. He’ll be in Santa Fe searching for a missing college student.”

  Abbot Timothy rose slowly from his chair. He moved behind it, and folding his arms, hid his hands up his sleeves as if to warm them. “Father Nicholas, I don’t know if we’ve ever had a policeman here on retreat. At least not one from Detroit.”

  Brother Bartholomew was right, Father Fortis thought. The abbot was more than a bit eccentric. “No, Abbot Timothy, my friend wouldn’t be at St. Mary’s on retreat. If Lieutenant Worthy could simply stay here, he’d bring a set of trained eyes to your problem. And of course, I’d help him understand things here.” Father Fortis sat ever further forward in his chair and pulled on his beard. “What I’m trying to say is that Lieutenant Worthy is an exceptionally talented man, very intuitive. And a highly decorated police officer, I might add. I’m honored to say that he’s confided in me on several occasions.”

  Technically true, Father Fortis thought, although it would be more truthful to admit that I’m the one who usually pumps Worthy for details of his cases.

  Abbot Timothy resumed his seat and rested his hands on the desk. His eyes wandered down to the figures before him, but after a moment he looked up. “But aren’t you from Ohio, Father Nicholas? How do you know a policeman from Detroit? I’m sure I wouldn’t know a policeman from Detroit if I were a monk in Ohio.”

  He has the attention span of a child, Father Fortis thought.

  “Our acquaintance is a bit odd, Abbot Timothy,” he began, speaking slowly. “You see, we got to know each other when a tragedy struck my monastery of St. Simeon several years ago.”

  “Oh? I
guess I didn’t hear about that,” the abbot said.

  Father Fortis sensed that if he went into the details of that case with Abbot Timothy, he might never get the conversation back on track. But Father Fortis had to admit that the case had certainly changed his own life. As the monastery’s novice master, he had found himself working closely with Christopher Worthy, a homicide detective from Detroit, where the murdered novice had been from. Together, they had uncovered how and why a novice of St. Simeon’s had died in an Ohio cornfield. Their friendship, now in its fourth year, had eventually led to Worthy telling him how his older daughter Allyson had run away, only to walk back into the house five months later, offering no explanation. Not at the time, and not since.

  He paused for another moment as he remembered Worthy’s confession that although he could solve complicated murders, he hadn’t found the first clue about Allyson’s whereabouts in those months.

  Well, that’s one on me, he mused. Why didn’t I think of that before? Worthy’s here to find the missing girl because of Allyson.

  The abbot pulled down on an earlobe.

  “Perhaps we should discuss this another time, Father Nicholas.”

  “Reverend Father, I know it’s a bit hard to follow, but what I’m requesting boils down to this. Lieutenant Worthy could stay here at St. Mary’s—with your permission, of course. Most of the time he’ll be in Santa Fe, busy with his missing person’s case, but when he is here, the two of us would do what we can … to help St. Mary’s, I mean.”

  Abbot Timothy’s jaw sagged, and for several moments he was silent. Father Fortis studied the furrows rising and falling across the abbot’s brow and tried to predict the question forming in the old man’s mind. He was prepared to deal with any concern about Worthy’s discretion. He was also prepared to explain what he’d meant by saying that he’d assist Worthy. He was even ready to suggest how Worthy’s presence at St. Mary’s could be sensitively explained to the local police.

  “I do have one concern, Father Nicholas.”

  “Yes, Reverend Father?”

  The abbot leaned forward and trained a bloodshot eye on Father Fortis. “He’ll pay?”

  “What?”

  “For room and food. Your friend can pay for them?” the abbot asked.

  Father Fortis laughed nervously. “Of course, of course. I’m sure he’ll be happy to pay.”

  “Hmm. He won’t be shooting off his gun, will he? I won’t allow target practice. You can understand that, can’t you, Father?”

  “Indeed I can,” Father Fortis said. With a straight face he added, “I’ve known Lieutenant Worthy for several years, and I can vouch for the fact that he’s very careful about target practice.”

  “Hmm.” The abbot repositioned his glasses on his nose and returned to his figures.

  Father Fortis sat silently, waiting for a decision. After a moment, he coughed. “So, it’s all right if my friend stays here for a few weeks, Reverend Father?”

  The abbot looked up again as if he’d forgotten he had a guest. “The policeman? Yes, yes, of course. I’m sure I said that. But remind him about the target practice.”

  Having never traveled out west before, Lieutenant Christopher Worthy had bought a travel guide to New Mexico at the Detroit airport. In flight, he studied photos of desert landscapes, petroglyphs, snowy mountains with ski lodges, dried riverbeds, dancing Native Americans, Hispanic markets, and cowboys herding cattle. In short, he found the images confusing. To his Michigan eyes, New Mexico did not seem so much a state as a country, and a foreign country at that. As his plane descended into Albuquerque, he looked down with curiosity on a snowcapped mountain range that suddenly gave way to an arid valley peppered with buildings, homes, and roads that stretched to the western horizon.

  Nothing looked like home to him, but then again it felt good to be away from Detroit and his assignment at the police academy.

  Christopher Worthy now rested his foot on the baggage carousel, his arch still throbbing where the stewardess’s cart had run over it. His new chukka boot was definitely scuffed.

  He glanced around the Albuquerque airport with its cactus plants and wondered if anyone had been sent to meet him. He guessed not. Local law enforcement must have taken the fax about his arrival as an insult. Who wanted an outsider butting in on a simple missing person’s case?

  Other passengers from his flight mingled along the edge of the carousel. Some, judging by the logos on their jackets and their odd metal suitcases, were bowlers in from Detroit and Lansing for a tournament. In a row of chairs nearby sat a lone woman, absorbed in a Women’s Health magazine. He lingered a few seconds on the shiny dark hair that framed the stunning face, then exhaled slowly.

  As he watched the luggage roll like boulders down the chute, he remembered his vague promise to call Susan upon arrival. Funny what practices survived the end of a marriage. He looked around for the familiar bank of telephones, but saw only the dreaded cell phone variety plastered to the ears of five or six fellow travelers. How anyone could talk into one of those devices when others, perfect strangers, could overhear every word was a mystery to him. And those phones tended to ring at the oddest moments. At a funeral he’d attended a year ago, one pallbearer’s phone chimed out, “Oh say, can you see” just as the casket was being lowered into the ground. Worthy had been the last in his precinct to relinquish his pager for the new technology, and after managing to lose three cell phones, his captain had let him return to the pager. His daughter Allyson called him a Luddite, which once she’d defined it struck him as a compliment. As long as he promised to keep his captain informed of developments, he was free to conduct his investigations without that dreaded beeping interrupting everything.

  He lifted his two bags—neatly pressed shirts and trousers in the one and legal pads and gear in the other—and meandered toward the car rental desks. Ordinarily, he’d have followed procedure and rented the economy model, but the father of the missing girl from Detroit was the city’s third largest car dealer. One of his last sights in Detroit had been Arrol VanBruskman’s face smiling down at him from a billboard. “Are You Ready to Step Up to a Lexus?”

  Maybe I am, Worthy thought. He passed the woman with the Women’s Health and noticed her turquoise necklace, shaped like a string of teardrops. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her close the magazine. Was she checking him out? He tried to imagine how he would look to a beautiful woman as he listened for trailing footsteps but heard none. She probably saw him as tall, given his height of six feet, two inches, and lanky. He hoped she couldn’t see the gray strands that were still outnumbered by his fair, blond hair. Perhaps I look a bit better than the bowlers from Michigan, he thought, but then again, why do I think she’s looking for any man?

  He chose the line for Hertz, set down his bags, and was glancing around again for the telephones when he realized the dark-haired woman was standing directly behind him.

  “Excuse me, but I saw you come in on the Detroit flight,” she said, her eyes, nearly as dark as her hair, holding his gaze. “Are you Lieutenant Worthy?”

  He reached into his sports coat, fumbling for his identification. The woman glanced at his offered picture, then again at his face.

  “I guess you’re you, all right,” she said with a smile as she offered her hand. “I’m Lieutenant Lacey, Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Nice of you to come. I was wondering if you were looking me over.”

  She dropped his hand.

  “I meant it as a compliment, about your skills,” he blurted out. “You could have been anyone, reading a magazine, waiting for your husband … anyone.”

  “Except you knew right away I’m a cop,” she corrected him.

  Excellent beginning, he chided himself.

  Looking past his shoulder, the policewoman asked, “By the way, could there be a priest with a ponytail looking for you?”

  Worthy turned to see Father Fortis, looking like a Sumo wrestler on a rampage, lumbering through the door, hi
s beard flying in the breeze. The priest’s huge smile gave way to a boisterous laugh as he lifted Worthy off the ground in a bear hug. Worthy detected the telltale smell of a spearmint on Father Fortis’s breath. Others in line for a rental car turned to take in the odd sight before quickly looking away.

  “How wonderful it is to see your pale, anemic face, Christopher,” Father Fortis exclaimed, stepping back to look Worthy over. “You need some sun, my friend, and you’ve come to the right place.”

  Father Fortis removed his black cap and bowed toward the policewoman. “My apologies, my dear. You must be Susan. Christopher wrote me the good news, but that was months ago! How beautiful you are, my dear, and how marvelous that you’re back together!”

  He punched Worthy’s arm playfully before taking a step toward the policewoman.

  This is my fault, Worthy thought, his face reddening. Sent two months ago, his letter to the priest must have exaggerated his renewed hope for the marriage.

  “I’m Lieutenant Lacey, Father,” she said, offering her hand.

  “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. How very stupid of me. Yes, quite thoughtless,” he said, pumping her hand.

  After an awkward silence, Father Fortis grabbed Worthy’s arm, pulling him out of line. “Well, here we all are. But what are you doing in this line, Christopher? You’re staying with me at St. Mary’s.”

  Worthy’s brain snapped to attention. Four days before, in the middle of another long week with police academy recruits, he’d read about the murder of the nun at a remote monastery in New Mexico. When would he be given a shot at another homicide? His last case had improved his status in the department, not to mention returning him to the media limelight. That moment of favor, however, brought an immediate reassignment to the academy, as if the department were protecting him from another setback.

  Then, the day before yesterday, Worthy had been handed a missing person’s case, a rich girl from Detroit who’d walked away from her college spring break trip in New Mexico. Instantly, the memory of the nun’s murder had returned. But it wasn’t until he’d found Father Fortis’s last letter, informing him of the sabbatical at a Trappist monastery in New Mexico, that he wondered if his friend could be staying at that monastery.