Ghost Country

by Sara Paretsky

  Mrs. Ephers, Rafe, and the other deacons went to the chancel. After Pastor Emerson pronounced the words of commemoration over the bread, the deacons carried it to the congregation. When they had offered bread to everyone, they returned to the chancel to serve each other, and finally, last of all—for the last shall be first—the pastor. Emerson next spoke the commemorative words over the grape juice. The deacons took the trays of little glasses and again began serving the congregation.

  Dr. Stonds drank, made a startled face and sniffed the empty glass. A ripple moved through the rows as each person swallowed. It was wine. Not juice, but wine. Whose idea was this, and on such a day, to insult them by substituting wine for the pure unfermented juice of the grape? Sylvia Lenore? Was that why she’d come to a service she disapproved of? The Jewish doctor? Had he put Harriet under his thrall and persuaded her to sacrilege?

  By the time the pastor and the deacons drank, the noise in the congregation had become the titillated hum of hornets. Emerson was aware of the uproar, but not until he drank—last of anyone in the church—did he understand the cause.

  “Who did this?” the pastor angrily demanded of his deacons.

  “Cynthia Lowrie was up here with the jugs when I came out to look for her right before the service,” Mrs. Ephers announced.

  No one in the congregation could hear what was said in the chancel, but they all saw Rafe’s face turn red. He seemed to swell like a balloon, Hector thought, wondering why the congregation was so upset. Don’t Christians use wine at their communion services? he whispered to Harriet. She tried to explain that some Protestant denominations, like this one, were governed by teetotalers, but Hector couldn’t hear her over the noise.

  Rafe went to the microphone in the middle of the chancel. “Cynthia Jane Lowrie, come forward.”

  The angry buzz died down as people craned their necks to watch. Cynthia didn’t move.

  “Cynthia Jane Lowrie, come forward to explain yourself,” Rafe repeated.

  Jared stood and yanked his sister out of the pew. He trampled on the feet of Mrs. Thirkell and Mr. Stith, who were sitting by the aisle. Some in the church, like Sylvia Lenore and her friends, stirred uneasily, but no one moved to help Cynthia. Jared shoved her up the walkway; when she tried to hold on to a pew back for support, the brother dragged her bodily up the shallow steps to the chancel.

  “Cynthia Lowrie,” Rafe said into the microphone when she reached his side. “What did you do to the communion juice?’

  Those close to the front could see the pleasure shining below the fierceness of Rafe’s voice. The noise in the pews died away as people leaned forward to watch.

  “Nothing,” Cynthia whispered, her answer inaudible to the rest of the congregation.

  “Don’t lie to me, not in this house of worship under the eyes of Almighty God, Cynthia Jane. Mrs. Ephers said just now that she found you alone in church with the communion jugs. What did you put into them? Tell us the truth.”

  “I didn’t,” she wailed as Rafe stuck the microphone under her nose. “I came in here and found Mara Stonds with that woman. They were drinking out of the jugs and I made them leave, I never thought they were doing something to the grape juice.”

  “Mara!” Mrs. Ephers hissed behind Cynthia. “You made her leave? I was standing right next to you and you didn’t tell me she was in the church? What was going through your mind, or does nothing ever go through that tapioca pudding you have between your ears?”

  Cynthia started to cry. Her gulping sobs were magnified by the PA system. Mr. Stith and Mrs. Thirkell watched greedily.

  Harriet had heard Mrs. Ephers say those words a hundred times, no, more like a thousand—every time Mara did something that was too impulsive for the tomblike calm at Graham Street. For the first time Harriet seemed to feel them, the blow to the heart that lay in the scornful words, as harsh as the blow to the face that would follow. She was on her feet, pushing past Hector into the aisle, knowing the second before the microphone amplified the smack of palm on flesh that Mrs. Ephers would slap Cynthia.

  “Don’t start sniveling to me, young lady.” Thwack. “Where did she go?”

  “You heard her, girl,” Rafe put in. “What were they doing, trying to put on a black mass? Where are they?”

  Harriet, with Hector on her heels, reached the chancel steps as Rafe’s fist was swinging reflexively toward his daughter’s face. Harriet tried to grab his arm, and ended up taking the blow herself. Hector caught her as she staggered under the impact.

  “They’re up there, they’re up there,” Cynthia wailed, pointing at the gallery. “Don’t hit me, Daddy.”

  Harriet and Hector, Rafe and Mrs. Ephers, the pastor, the whole congregation, twisted their necks, but could see nothing in the upper reaches of the nave. There was a brief silence—the electric quiet between the fork of lightning and the roaring sheet metal of thunder—and then Jared led a surge of men down the aisle to the rear. Their feet pounded up the stairs, along the stone floor of the gallery, a pack of elephant-sized hounds: the cries, the yelps of gladness as they found their prey and dragged it with them into the body of the church.

  Harriet gripped Hector’s hand so tightly that she left bruises on his palm. From the top of the chancel stairs she could see Mara wrapped tight in Jared’s arms, Starr and Luisa behind them with three other homeless women whom she recognized from her visits to the wall.

  Harriet longed to go to her sister, but the crowd between them was as impenetrable as a sea of boulders. “Oh, Mara, oh, Beebie.”

  The mike picked up the whispered words and carried them beneath the mob’s roar to Mara. She saw Harriet’s white strained face at the top of the stairs, heard her involuntary cry, smiled: Harriet didn’t hate her, after all.

  As soon as Rafe called Cynthia to him Mara knew they would be betrayed: Cynthia was too cowed, not so much by her nineteen years with him, as by her return to him after her brief night of freedom.

  Mara whispered to Jacqui that they should leave: there was only one way out of the gallery, down the stairs past the choir loft, but they could escape now, before Cynthia pointed them out; they’d have a head start, they might be able to run somewhere. But where? Jacqui whispered back: they were rabbits in an open field surrounded by hunters. And then the hounds were on them, they were seized, shamefully without landing as much as a kick on men who grabbed them, hit them, pinched their breasts as they wrapped thick arms about them. Even Starr seemed powerless against that pack.

  The men surged up the chancel steps with their bundles and stood panting in front of the pastor. In the congregation people climbed up on the pews to have a better view. So this was that creature. Mrs. Thirkell turned to comment to Mr. Stith, sitting on her left, and withdrew from him in disgust: his face glowed with avidity. He was leaning forward to stare more closely at Starr; a thin thread of drool bubbled from the corner of his mouth.

  Patsy Wanachs, sitting behind Mrs. Thirkell, tapped her on the shoulder: Look—those are some of the women we put up in the shelter. Mrs. Thirkell, turning around, glad to escape the sight of Mr. Stith: It just goes to show. Sylvia Lenore will be eating her words now. Give them an inch and they take total advantage. I never thought that shelter was a good idea.

  Sylvia was conferring worriedly with her own friends: This is looking really bad; we should try to stop this, but—stupid to call the cops to come to a church service—go to the front, try to reason with people? Shut off the sound system?

  Rafe tried to make the congregation attend to him. “We just heard a condemnation of the harlots and daughters of harlots who’ve defiled our city. Here they stand in front of us. What shall we do with them?” His hoarse voice made no impression on the uproar in the pews.

  Pastor Emerson grabbed the mike. “You women have desecrated the House of God. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

  His voice thundered through the congregation. As his parishioners grew quiet he repeated the question. Luisa Montcrief slipped from her captor’
s slackened clasp and moved to the microphone. To the fury of everyone in the chancel she began to sing.

  48

  Diva in Peril

  LUISA WONDERED WHY they were in a church, Had Mara engaged her to sing at communion without telling her? Was that what she and Jacqui were whispering about up in the gallery? Then the audience came to fetch her, wondering where she was, but no need to hold her so roughly.

  Well, if it was a church service, they no doubt wanted a religious aria. They were an ignorant rude bunch, probably only able to recognize Schubert’s cloying, overperformed “Ave Maria.” She listened for a pitch in her head, and began to sing.

  To her dismay, instead of the sweet B-flat of the Schubert, she produced Verdi’s somber E-flat. In her mind she heard the urgent violins produce the minor chord. Against her will, against all her efforts to banish the aria from her mind, she was singing Desde-mona’s “Ave Maria” from the last act of Otello.

  And then the angry tenor was standing over her, his face swollen, as it had been in her dreams since that dreadful night at the Met. You bitch, shut up. This is a church, not a carnival.

  She shut her eyes and let her voice rise to the high A. Yes, she had come down on the note, they were wrong, those fools who said she was a spent force, Now that red-faced cretin was shouting over the music, not trying to sing, not even saying the lines right, speaking English, not Italian. “Prostituta,” yes, he was calling her a whore, telling her to be quiet. Idiot; didn’t he know that came in previous scene? And then his hands were around her throat again and he was lifting her by her neck, her voice, her voice, he would destroy it forever. A babble from the chorus, they were trying to stop him. Her maid was screaming for help, but Luisa was falling down a hole that had no end. She was cold, colder even than Desdemona’s chastity: perhaps she, too, would be gathered into heaven.

  49

  Mother of Harlots

  RAFE’S RAGE was extreme. He was sick and tired of goddamn women totally out of control, snotty libbers like that frozen bitch Harriet Stonds taking jobs that men ought to be doing, his wife walking out on him, humiliating him, his daughter sneaking around behind his back, and now this—this field-bitch, preening herself in front of the congregation, smirking when he told her to shut up in church, closing her eyes on him, singing louder, until he had no choice, she forced him to act to preserve the sanctity of the sanctuary, He wasn’t trying to hurt her, just to make her behave. It was Harriet Stonds and that Jewish doctor grabbing his arm who did the damage. Rafe shoved them aside and flung Luisa away from the microphone.

  Her head struck the corner of the stone communion table and she fell backward, sprawling across the chancel steps. Her neck flopped to one side, like a sparrow that has broken itself against a plate glass window.

  Mara was screaming. “You killed her, you killed her.”

  Rafe wanted to take a swipe at Mara, too: couldn’t Abraham Stonds control his damned granddaughter, not let her howl like a fucking banshee in front of God and everyone?

  From his front-row pew, Dr. Stonds observed Mara with distaste. He had forgotten how ugly she was, and now, with her head shaved, her clothes filthy—the contrast between her and Harriet, so cool and clean nearby, had never been greater, only now Harriet was turning on him, too, flaunting herself in front of the congregation with that useless resident of Hanaper’s.

  And now the young man was kneeling over Luisa Montcrief. Clumsy oaf, shouldn’t be allowed to touch someone with a broken neck, although Stonds thought she probably was dead, judging from the strange angle at which she lay. Harry Minsky was lucky, really, his sister off his hands, even if it was a tragedy, well, a scandal, Luisa dying in church. Rafe Lowrie, no sympathy to waste there, Stonds would have to call it murder if the police asked him. Still, he was the best neurosurgeon in the city, perhaps in North America, maybe young Vitibsky at Stanford could give him a run for his money; he’d better stop young Tammuz from touching Luisa, see if the famous hands of Abraham Stonds could do anything for her.

  The congregation surged forward with him as Dr. Stonds made his way up the chancel steps. No one noticed the Channel 13 crew come in through the great entrance doors at the back. So intent was everyone on the drama in the chancel that the hot lights, the cameras, and Don Sandstrom with his ubiquitous mike climbing up to the gallery to get a good angle on a great story (mayhem in a rich city church unfolding live for you on your television screen) didn’t exist behind them.

  Jacqui and Nanette broke free from their captors and ran to Luisa’s side, chafing her hands, trying to feel her pulse. Harriet tried to go to Mara, but found herself unable to move or even think of what to do next.

  Rafe hovered over Luisa, wondering if he should help her to her feet. There wasn’t anything wrong with her, there couldn’t be, she was just playacting, as women liked to do, all those times his wife or Cynthia had howled the rafters down pretending they were hurt when there wasn’t anything the matter. He leaned down to pat her on the back and tell her what he always said to his daughter: sit up, stop making yourself important—I’ll get you some water; you go to bed for a while.

  “Don’t touch her again,” Hector snapped, shoving Rafe away. “You have hurt her very badly. Harriet! Find a phone and call the police, call an ambulance.”

  His voice, sharp, authoritative, doctor to staff, jolted Harriet into motion. Phone, Leave the church through the vestry, no way to fight through the crowded nave. She’d find a phone in the offices back there.

  “And you,” Hector said to the youth who’d been Luisa’s captor, “see that Lowrie doesn’t leave the church before the police get here,”

  Emerson was sputtering at Hector, demanding to know what right he had to give orders in such a place. Hector ignored him, and knelt next to Luisa on the chancel steps.

  In a gentler voice Hector also told Jacqui and Nanette not to touch Luisa. “If her neck is broken we don’t want to move her: let’s wait for an ambulance crew.”

  Dr. Stonds joined Hector on the stairs. “Young man, I doubt you know anything more about head and neck injuries than you do about mental disorders. Move to one side.”

  To his chagrin Hector found himself instinctively giving way to the neurosurgeon. Stonds took Hector’s place next to Luisa and laid two fingers on her throat. As he’d thought: no pulse.

  The accident was still so new that everyone around Stonds was jabbering, demanding information. Even his younger granddaughter had edged closer to him—to Luisa—and inquired, not of her grandfather, an authority on the brain and spinal cord, but of the insolent young doctor: Is she dead? Mara asked timidly, The question echoed by Sylvia Lenore, by Patsy Wanachs and Mrs. Thirkell, by a dozen others who were pushing in on Stonds and Luisa. Dr. Stonds angrily ordered them back: he was not having disorder in his operating sphere. Mrs. Ephers tried to enforce his command, but no one heeded her.

  Sex and death, Starr’s body, Luisa’s broken neck, a heady combination. Tom Caynard is going to be sorry he decided not to come, Jared said to his buddies, forgetting that he himself had tried to avoid the meeting.

  Above them Don Sandstrom greedily put it on tape, irritated with his cameraman for not being able to get a clear shot of Luisa through the crowd. But now what—oh, this was good, very good, Starr was coming into the foreground of the picture. Tight on her, he told his cameraman: she’s the center of the story.

  Starr grabbed Dr. Stonds’s shoulders and shoved him out of the way. “Dr. Tammuz, kindly remember—” he started to say, and then saw her face and fell silent.

  Starr’s expression was so fierce that Jared and his friends stopped their excited jokes. The cameraman flinched at the sight and moved the lens away. The Bulls T-shirt, torn by the men as they dragged her from the gallery, opened to show her breasts as she bent over Luisa. There was nothing erotic about them, Hector realized. They seemed instead to be boulders that might grind him to dust; he felt himself choking under their weight.

  Starr scooped up the diva as e
asily as if she were a kitten and laid her on the communion table. Hector tried to stop her: you mustn’t move someone with a broken neck. Pastor Emerson blurted out a rebuke for using the Lord’s table.

  Starr elbowed both men out of her way. She ran long fingers around Luisa’s neck and head, grunting softly. Starr leaned over Luisa and kissed her, deeply, on the mouth, and then the forehead. The diva stretched like a baby waking from a nap and opened her eyes.

  Those nearest heard Luisa laugh and say, “Starr. You didn’t forget me after all.”

  Jacqui clutched Nanette. “Praise Jesus, oh, praise, Him, she’s speaking.”

  Rafe turned scornfully to Hector. “See: she’s not dead after all, you damned busybody.”

  Starr turned to stare at him. Rafe tried to stare back, but the reflection in those flat black eyes was too appalling. He saw himself, not very big, trying always to make himself bigger by forcing everyone else to be small. He tried to blink and look away and found himself gasping for air. He wanted to cry for help, but his voice, his instrument of power in the cattle futures pit, had disappeared. Cynthia! Jared! Why didn’t they come to help him? Or that Jewish doctor, so sympathetic over the stupid homeless women … Dr. Stonds, couldn’t the high-and-mighty Dr. Stonds notice a man in genuine need? He’d come fast enough when that stupid cunt, mocking Rafe’s service, pretended to be hurt. Damned arrogant bastard.

  But Luisa’s recovery had unsettled Dr. Stonds. He’d been sure she was dead, no pulse, that angle of the head. He couldn’t be losing his judgment, not on something so basic. He looked at his hands. They could not have lied to him. It must have been Mara; the brat had staged the whole performance just to make a fool of him in public.

  Anger swelled within him, amplified by the mounting roar from the congregation. They were watching him, mocking him. It was Mara, and that creature she’d picked up, that Starr. She’d even turned his sweet Harriet on him, the things Harriet had said to him last night, she never would turn on him or her own, only under the influence of that damned goblin, that changeling. He’d show Mara who was boss, march her out of the church, into a straitjacket.