Harlot's Moon

by Edward Gorman

  A round wall safe lay flat against the wall.

  From his shirt pocket, he took a pair of glasses, slipped them over his ears, and then proceeded to open the safe.

  Given his condition, I thought that the procedure would take a while. It didn't. Two times to the left, one time to the right.

  He reached inside.

  He said, "There's something in here that doesn't belong. Something — leather. I'm used to how everything feels."

  "I'd like to see it, if you don't mind."

  "Sure."

  He brought it out and looked at it and then showed it to me.

  A leather-covered journal about the size of a hardbound book. I opened it and looked inside.

  There was a name written in the upper right-hand corner. "Is that why Bernice was killed?" he said.

  "Yes," I said, scanning some of the writing. "Yes, I'm afraid it is."

  And my profile had been on the money.

  Now I knew where I had to go. I couldn't wait around for the police.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The rain stopped minutes later, then started again almost immediately — a silver slashing, and cold like most spring rains.

  On the drive over to the rectory, I called the number Information had given me for Mike Timmins, with whom Bob Wilson had allegedly been playing poker the night his wife nearly got pushed down a flight of stairs outside Father Daly's office. According to Timmins, who seemed to be a bright, very forthcoming guy, Wilson had indeed played cards at his house that night, but had left early, by eight-thirty. Wilson would've had time to drive to the school and push his wife down the stairs.

  I thanked him. That was the answer I had expected.

  After parking at an angle in the darkened alley, I ran up the path between the rectory and church. I knocked hard on the side door of the rectory, huddled beneath the slight roof above the door, trying to keep from getting drenched by the rain.

  No response at first. Then I saw a sleepy Jenny, yawning and stretching, coming up the basement stairs and squinting to see who was pounding. She looked young and vulnerable in her jammies and robe. It was Friday night, and not quite nine o'clock.

  With the door open, I smelled the remnants of the night's meal.

  Jenny covered her mouth for a final yawn. "I'm sorry."

  "Is Father Ryan here, Jenny?"

  She shrugged. "I'm having a real hard period. I've been sacked out for the past couple of hours. Let me see who's here. You want to come inside?"

  "No, I'll wait here."

  She pushed her face forward for a better look at me. "You all right?"

  "Yeah."

  "You don't look all right. You look kind of upset."

  "I'm fine. Really."

  She nodded, still trying to read my expression. "I'll be right back"

  While I waited, I walked down the sloping sidewalk, back toward the alley and the large school that sat on the other side of it.

  The windows, some bright with moonlight, others dark as secrets, peered down at me ominously. In one upstairs window I saw a dark shadow move quickly away from sight.

  "Nobody's here," Jenny said when she got back, this time with a pair of jeans and a sweater hastily pulled on. "But I just remembered. Father Ryan hears confessions on Friday night, usually till nine-thirty or so. I've decided to attend. Sorry — I don't know where the Monsignor is."

  "No matter. Thanks, Jenny. Say, you couldn't lay hands on a key to Father Daly's office, could you?"

  "His office? In the school?"

  "I've never really checked it out. I'm hoping I'll find something there."

  "Like what?"

  I smiled. "That's the part I'm not sure about."

  "The key's right inside. I'll run and get it."

  Which she did. She handed it to me and said, "If we hurry, I can walk to the school with you. I want to go to Confession before Father Ryan leaves the confessional. He makes me feel good."

  "No need for you to go with me," I said. "I'll be fine."

  We walked across to the church. I left Jenny there and went back across the alley to the school. One of the back doors was unlocked. I opened it and stood in the doorframe, shining my penlight inside.

  The back door shouldn't have been unlocked. Not at this hour.

  A long narrow hall faced me, lined with metal lockers. Classrooms lay on either side, very near this back door.

  Familiar and poignant smells came at me: sweeping compound, chalk, wax on the wooden floors . . . For a moment, I was a boy again, sitting in class and hiding a Ray Bradbury paperback inside my math book.

  I stepped inside. Listened.

  Furnace and blower were suddenly noisy on the still, warm air. I remembered Bernice saying that Father Daly had his office upstairs in the far west corner.

  I started walking down the corridor, the penlight in my left hand, my right hand very near the Luger in my jacket pocket.

  The lockers had been dented down the years. Above them were group graduation photographs dating back to the twenties. I saw several decades' worth of hair and makeup styles flash by as I walked past the photos. It was like being in the deepest, darkest depths of a pyramid.

  The stairs were around the first corner. I played my light up them. No untoward signs. The steps rose steeply and then turned sharply into another flight.

  I kept playing my penlight on the steps as I climbed them, looking out for signs — blood, I suppose, the way I'd found it out at the Wilsons' tonight.

  But I found nothing. Just dust and darkness.

  The floor above was even darker. Jagged blue-white lightning glowed in the windows, casting the hall in an eerie blinding light, then vanished. Rain slanted coldly against the windows.

  The lightning continued intermittently as I walked down towards the west end of the building. More photographs of long-dead people peered at me from above the lockers, their eyes seeming to follow me.

  Father Daly's office door was ajar. It was an old-fashioned, pebbled-glass door with his name written neatly in black Magic Marker on a sheet of white typing paper: FATHER DALY.

  Lightning again, this time illuminating an open-door classroom to my right. In the blue-white glow, I saw several rows of desks, the teacher's desk raised on a platform, and an American flag standing in a corner.

  I walked up to Father Daly's door and peered around it, into the office itself.

  This time there was no lightning to help me see. This time I had to rely on the thin beam of my penlight.

  The priest's room was small and square. It contained two six-foot bookcases, a lumpy old couch, an easy chair, a desk, filing cabinet, and phone. Sparse and spartan. No doubt furnished with donations from parishioners wanting to unload some old furniture.

  Then there was just the silent eeriness of the lightning again, and the shaking fury of the thunder.

  I'd spent fifteen minutes reading through Father Daly's journal. Bernice must have taken it from Father Ryan's room earlier in the day, and when he found it gone, he knew exactly where to find it. He probably felt he hadn't any choice but to kill her.

  The rain sounded loud and lonely as it beat coldly against the windows.

  I didn't hear him come up to the doorway, didn't hear him take a few more steps into the office.

  He was carrying a revolver but it was pointed at the floor.

  "You found the journal, didn't you, Robert? Father Daly told Father Ryan that he'd written everything down in his journal how Father Ryan was killing the confessors he couldn't prevent from doing evil. And that now he was going to turn the journal over to the police. That's why Father Ryan killed him."

  I watched my old friend in the doorway. He seemed slightly stooped now . . . and fragile. I felt sorry for him. And I felt scared for him, too.

  "You know, I'm in the journal, too. I didn't do any of the killing myself, I want you to know that, Robert. But I covered it up. I knew what Father Ryan was doing, but I was afraid it would destroy the parish after our sex scan
dal a couple of years ago. He promised me he'd stop, but he didn't. And, God forgive me, Robert, I let it go on!" My old friend hung his head in contrition.

  I thought of what Steve had said that morning in Father Daly's motel room. "There are some things we can forgive as priests that we can't forgive as men." Father Ryan had repeated this during our conversation about forgiveness in the cafeteria. Now it all made grim sense.

  "The people Father Ryan killed would've gone on doing the same things over and over and over," Steve said calmly, "and there wasn't anything anyone could do. Father Ryan felt he had to stop them."

  "You were the one Father Daly was arguing with out at the cabin," I said.

  "I'm sorry about this, Robert. I really am." His smile was brief and grim. "That's why I hired you — so I could see if Father Ryan had killed somebody else I didn't know about. I wanted to know everything."

  Then from the darkness of the hall, another voice: "You didn't need to tell him anything." It was Father Ryan.

  I could see him outlined in the flickers of lightning that painted the walls silver every few minutes.

  He held a gun on Steve.

  "It's over, Father," Steve said sadly. "I should've turned you in long before now."

  "They deserved to die," said Father Ryan. "A pedophile, a wife-beater, a bully, a racist, a hooker who was spreading AIDS — how could I let them live? They'd just go right on doing it."

  "Give me the gun, Father," Steve said gently. "I'll see that you're treated well. I think hearing all those Confessions for so many years did something to you. Part of this is my fault, I'm sure."

  As he spoke, Steve moved closer and closer to him. And when he was very close, he said, "Give me the gun now, Father."

  "No. I'm going to handle this my own way."

  Lightning flashed again just as Father Ryan made to move away and walk back down the hall.

  Steve reached over and grabbed the priest's gun. And then spun him around, so that the two men were facing each other.

  I don't think Father Ryan actually meant to do it, but that is irrelevant now. As soon as he was facing Steve, the priest tried to jerk out of Steve's grasp. And that's when the gun went off.

  The explosion was loud and terrible in the rain-hissing night.

  Father Ryan cried out something I couldn't understand. And then I heard him running away, his footsteps echoing in the darkness.

  I didn't give a damn about Ryan any more. Not at the moment, anyway.

  I went over and knelt down next to Steve. I could see that the wound was high in his chest, very near the heart. The pain was so bad, he was crying.

  "Oh man, I should be a lot braver than this," he said, obviously embarrassed that he was letting the pain get the best of him.

  "I'm going to get an ambulance."

  Steve said, "You always had more guts than I did, Robert. You would've turned him in a long time ago."

  "You were trying to protect the parish."

  "Or my own ego," he said. Then he moaned again. "I let everybody down, Robert. I really did."

  There was nothing dramatic about his passing. He stopped talking and his eyes closed. He smelled pretty bad suddenly. His bowels had given out.

  I squatted on my haunches and looked at him for a long time. I'd always envisioned him as the contemporary version of the country priest. I think that's how Steve wanted to see himself, too. But I'd been wrong. He was a lot more complicated than that. He'd been a good man, but by no means a perfect one.

  I was sure as hell going to miss him.

  I stumbled over to the phone and called Detective Holloway on her cell phone. She was, she said, already on her way.

  The church was empty, echoing with the night. The smell of incense and the play of the votive candles lent the nave the feeling of a large cold cave.

  I walked quickly down the center of the church, pew past empty pew. I saw nobody, heard nothing.

  I raised my eyes and looked up at the choir loft. Shadow upon shadow darkened the loft until it was impossible to see anything but empty blackness.

  She cried out then.

  The sound was muffled, but I recognized it for what it was. And who it was. Jenny. She was just ahead of me, clutched in the iron grip of the murdering priest.

  Father Ryan had hit her, temporarily knocked her unconscious presumably, giving him time to come over to the school and track me down. I could just see the upper part of her face — it was black and blue. Now Jenny was coming in handy. He had himself a hostage.

  Then Jenny and Father Ryan had disappeared into the gloom of the vestibule.

  A voice in the darkness. "I'm taking her up there with me, Mr. Payne. She needs to die just as the rest of them did. I used to think there was hope for her, but there isn't. I saw her with you. She's a whore. A whore!" Then: "Stay back, Mr. Payne. Or I'll shoot her right here."

  I stopped.

  A door opened.

  Shuffling, scuffling feet . . .

  Another muffled cry.

  A long moment of shadows and silence. I wanted to help her, but I had no doubt that the priest would kill her if I tried. Sirens then, in the rain and gloom of fog. Coming closer, closer.

  When I heard their feet scuffling on the bell-tower steps, I followed them, walking silently, carefully towards the tower door.

  He was going to take her up to the very top of his beloved eyrie . . .

  I tried not to think about what he might do when he got her up there. In my time, I've seen a lot of human bodies that have fallen against the unforgiving pavement below. I once saw the sad, shattered remains of a four-year-old girl smashed against the ground — twelve stories down from the window she'd fallen out of.

  I glanced behind me. Through the stained glass on either side of the double doors of St. Mallory's I could see the bleak lights of police cars and other emergency vehicles.

  I eased open the door to the tower. Stepped on the bottom stair. Listened.

  A chilly draft swept down from the tower.

  I heard them then, far far above me. He must be very close to the bell itself by now, I thought.

  She whimpered.

  The sharp, slashing noise of a slap.

  Another whimper.

  The double doors were thrown back. There stood Detective Holloway surrounded by half a dozen cops in rain-drenched jackets. They each held a shotgun.

  Detective Holloway walked over to me and said, "Where's Father Ryan?"

  I nodded at the bell-tower stairs. "He's got himself a hostage. A girl who works at the rectory."

  "Great. Just what we need."

  "He may listen to me."

  "No offense, Payne, but why would he listen to you?"

  "Because maybe I understand him a little bit."

  "You do?"

  I shook my head. "I didn't say I approved of him. I just said I understood him a little."

  The scream stopped both Holloway and me from saying any more.

  I ducked my head into the stairwell and looked up the long, cold shadowy steps.

  "Let's see if he'll let me go up there," I said.

  I started up the crazily winding stairs. Every few steps, I heard the wooden staircase make small, but very clear noises. I assumed Father Ryan could hear them, too.

  I moved one very self-conscious step at a time.

  The shaft got colder the higher I went. I smelled wood and dust and the cold rain. I was climbing half-blind. The only light was a pale luminescence from the tower itself, though by now I assumed Detective Holloway was probably blasting all sorts of emergency light up from the vehicles surrounding the church.

  Another moan of pain.

  Then Detective Holloway on a speaker system. "Father Ryan, we don't want to make this situation any worse than it is. Please let the girl go and then turn yourself over to the police. We're not going to hurt you, Father. We have only the best of intentions."

  A strangled cry. I pictured him with his hand clamped over Jenny's pale, bruised face.
r />   Inch by chilly, shadowy inch, I made my way around the final twist of the tower stairs.

  The moment I rounded the bend, I saw the rectangle cut of the tower floor, where the stairs ended.

  There was no sign of either of them. I imagined that he was holding her very near one of the openings in the tower, threatening to push her to the pavement far, far below should anybody try to rush in and save her.

  I had to be careful. I could very easily get Jenny killed.

  I climbed four of the last six steps and eased my head up a few inches above the floor.

  The priest had shoved Jenny into one of the openings in the tower. A simple push would send her crashing to her death. I took one more step.

  Rain in the form of a cold spray splashed across my face. I took the final step.

  I stood on the floor of the tower, the bell huge and imposing.

  "We want you to understand," Detective Holloway said through her horn. "You won't be harmed, Father. You have a lot of friends here tonight."

  In a few minutes, she'd probably turn it all over to a negotiator trained in dealing with these situations.

  He heard me then.

  I'd made no noise whatsoever, but suddenly — as if he'd become aware of me telepathically — he turned toward me, Jenny still in his grip.

  He looked crazed, his face a mask of frenzy and despair. His free hand held the cold blue steel of a .38 service revolver.

  "I'm sorry I killed the Monsignor," he said. "He was a decent man."

  "Yes, he was. And Jenny's a decent woman. Why don't you let her go down the stairs?"

  "Oh, that'd be real smart, wouldn't it? Then what, Payne? I just wait for them to come up here and get me?"

  "They're going to get you anyway," I said gently. "Why not let Jenny go before she gets hurt, too?"

  "They deserved to die, Payne."

  "I think they probably did."

  I took a step forward.

  "What're you doing?" he asked.

  "I just don't want to fall down the opening there."

  "Stay right where you are, Payne."

  As he said that, Jenny's gaze traveled to the hand holding the gun. While he had his hand gripped tight on her mouth, he wasn't paying attention to the right hand, which was dangling free. I assumed she was going to make a grab for the gun. This was a great risk, but right now there didn't seem to be any other opportunity,