Every Wickedness

by Cathy Vasas-Brown

  The priest poured strong tea into two stoneware mugs, handed one to Beth, and sat in an oak armchair across from her. “I hope Earl Grey is all right? Miss Wells, how do you think I can help you?”

  Beth felt the flush of embarrassment warm her cheeks. “I’m not sure you can, Father Daniel. To be honest, the longer I sit here, the more I wonder why I came. I already feel guilty for taking up your time. You must have other business to attend to.”

  He dismissed this with a wave of his hand. “People are my business. Besides, guilt is good for the soul.”

  “Really?”

  “Nah. I just made it up.” He smiled. “But when a priest says something, people take it as gospel. Now Miss Wells, you haven’t come all this way on a whim. Anyone can see something is troubling you, and my guilt won’t allow me to send you away without at least your plane fare’s worth.” He smiled again. “On the phone you said you have some questions about a former student?” Father Daniel prompted. “Jordan Bailey, wasn’t it?”

  Beth nodded. “Father,” she began, then paused. “This is so awkward —”

  “I’ve been leafing through these old yearbooks and school records to jog my memory,” he cut in. “Jordan Bailey was a diligent student. Quite a few Bs and As on his report card. He was the kind of kid who threw himself full tilt into everything — schoolwork, athletics, the Church.”

  “Was he very religious?”

  “Not fanatically so, but he was a good altar boy. I think he found some kind of peace through his faith. He had a very grown-up understanding of the world. He realized how faith can be an anchor when the waters get choppy.”

  “He needed that anchor, Father?”

  “I think so, yes. Particularly during adolescence. While most begin to question their faith during those years, Jordan became a more devout Catholic.”

  “Why was that?”

  “He stopped going home for weekends. Stopped going home to see his mother completely, in fact. The Church became a kind of security, something he could count on.”

  “Did you discover why he wasn’t going home?”

  Daniel took a sip of tea and shook his head. “Jordan never confided in me. Though we had a good relationship, I suppose some things are just too painful to discuss.”

  “Something dreadful must have happened.”

  “For that information, you’ll just have to ask Jordan yourself.”

  “Did his mother care about him?”

  “In her way. Sometimes people have too much of their own baggage to be effective and loving parents. I think Jordan’s mother may have been one of those, but it doesn’t mean she didn’t want to see him grow up to be a fine man. She seemed quite concerned about him.”

  “Were you?”

  Father Daniel looked at her, almost through her. “What you’re really wondering is whether Jordan sustained some kind of damage, whether something in his past caused him to become … unhinged, is that it?”

  Beth was shocked. “I was going to put it more subtly.”

  “When you’ve come all this way and your time is limited, it’s more expedient to dispense with the b.s., don’t you think?”

  “I suppose you’re right. Father Daniel, what else can you tell me about Jordan?”

  “Miss Wells, all I can relate are some vague recollections about Jordan as a schoolboy. People change. Don’t you think you already know him better than I?”

  “But it’s his past I want to learn about, Father. Jordan won’t tell me much, and frankly, a few things have me climbing the walls.”

  “And until you have all the pieces, you think Jordan might be the killer the police are looking for?”

  Beth opened her mouth to speak, but the priest held up his hand.

  “I understand everyone is paranoid about this Spiderman I’ve been hearing about. In fact, you just missed Lieutenant Kearns. He was here this morning.”

  Naturally, Beth thought, relieved at least that she hadn’t run smack into Jim in the hallway. How would she have explained that?

  “Why don’t you tell me why you think Jordan fits the description?”

  Beth listed her suspicions. “And he won’t talk to me about his past —”

  “Haven’t you ever concealed information about yourself, something you felt was so awful or embarrassing that you thought no one would understand it?”

  Of course she had. “It’s just that the police cautioned us to watch who we know, saying someone may be unwittingly shielding the Spiderman, and I thought —”

  “You didn’t want to stick your head in the sand. Listen, Miss Wells, I’ve read what the police have put together about the Spiderman. Still pretty general. For all anyone knows, I could be the killer.”

  “But you didn’t date Anne Spalding, Father. You didn’t follow me for weeks.”

  “Look, all I can say is that I remember Jordan Bailey as a pretty good student. A few adolescent pranks, just like any other kid, in my opinion. Over the years, teachers learn a lot about the kids they teach. Any educator worth his paycheque can spot the ones who haven’t got a hope in hell of making it. If there’s a kid with a screw loose, we generally know who he is. I never placed Jordan in that pigeonhole, and I pretty much told Lieutenant Kearns the same thing,” he paused, then managed a sheepish grin, “though I’ve often been accused of being naïve.”

  “In other words, you can’t reassure me.”

  Father Daniel leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and gazed at her intently. “Let me ask you something. Your relationship with Jordan, is it serious?”

  “It was.”

  “Yet instead of staying in San Francisco trying to rebuild whatever has fallen apart, you’re here, talking to a complete stranger about someone he knew twenty-five years ago. I can’t give you some magic phrase that will make your suspicion of Jordan disappear.”

  “I don’t know why I thought it would be that simple.” Beth was about to thank the priest for seeing her, wanting nothing more than to exit gracefully, but Father Daniel was pouring more tea.

  “Listen, since I’ve gone to all this trouble to clean this office for your visit, why don’t you take a look at a younger version of the man you’ve been dating.”

  Father Daniel nudged three yearbooks across the coffee table toward Beth, the appropriate pages marked with yellow Post-it Notes. Beth smiled at Jordan’s seventies’ hairstyle, a heavy lock of dark brown hair swooping across his forehead. Even then, she would have considered him a hunk, would have followed him from class to class and scribbled his name on her binder. Another photo showed Jordan, third from the left in the back row, in basketball uniform with his teammates. There was Jordan the altar server, Jordan working in the library, Jordan boxing food for the poor.

  “Well, what do you think?” Father Daniel asked.

  “I don’t know. Father, you must think I’m crazy.”

  The priest smiled, his expression full of compassion. “These are difficult times. A little suspicion is understandable.”

  Beth closed the yearbook. On the front cover was a gold Chi Rho monogram. She traced the symbol with her finger. “The killer’s signature,” she said.

  “The Chi Rho is a commonly used symbol, Miss Wells,” the priest said, again sensing her concern. “Since Lieutenant Kearns made me aware of the killer’s mutilations, the Christogram angle has bothered me. While it’s not necessarily a link to the school, I understand why Kearns is pursuing the religious aspect of the murders. And hey, parochial schools are no different from any other with regard to the cross-section of kids we get. Like I said, every classroom has a requisite number of oddballs, and once in a while, a teacher comes across a student who exhibits all the signs of psychosis. Still, I could hardly give the lieutenant a list of those names. What a wild goose chase that would be.”

  “What about you, Father? Have you ever taught someone you thought was psychotic?”

  The priest leaned forward again, placed his mug on the table, and seemed to struggle with a memo
ry. Then he smiled again. “No,” he said, his voice hesitant. “No, of course not.”

  The question was on the tip of her tongue, but it went unasked. She looked at her watch and knew she’d have to hurry to make her plane.

  At that moment, Father Daniel was rising to his feet, and he appeared relieved to see she was doing the same. “Let me walk you to your car,” he said.

  36

  He couldn’t remember how long he’d been trapped in the stall, cowering in the wretched, mildewed place, being alternately burned and frozen. He decided he must have passed out, for when he looked up, the water was off, and he was alone. He tested his environment, rising tentatively to a crouch, then pushing up with his hands until he was semi-upright. There was a sudden jab of pain from the small of his back, and he knew what had happened. He could feel the watery centre of what must have been a huge broken blister oozing its way between his buttocks.

  He didn’t dare look at his body, certain the sight would cause him to faint again. Instead he focused on the tiles around him and forced himself to count to 500 before he peered around the partition to ensure that he was indeed alone.

  Cautiously, he ventured from the stall, catching himself as he began to slide, half-expecting the priests to jump out from the change room and brutalize him all over again. But the change room, too, was empty.

  They’d taken his clothes.

  The final humiliation was the journey across the gymnasium floor and up the stairs, naked, to his room. Racked with pain, he moved as quickly as he dared, hoping he wouldn’t be seen. On the second floor landing, he stopped. There was a sound of slippered feet in the hallway. A shadow passed in front of the window in the stairwell door.

  It must be Father Simon, sleepwalking again.

  When the shadow passed, the boy continued until he reached his own corridor. The doors were still closed, and the hall was chilly. Though the floorboards creaked with each agonizing step, he made it to his room undetected. The magazines and the vodka were gone.

  Once in his room, he couldn’t bear to lie down, though his body cried out for rest. The notion of anything touching his skin brought sour bile to his throat. He choked it down and remained standing, naked, in the centre of his room. In the darkness, he felt his left hand. Swollen. He wiggled his fingers. Nothing broken.

  He thought that at some point during the night, his skin would surrender the fight and split wide open, that somehow his fragile outside shell would crack and leave nothing but a humped mass of muscle and organs. He would wind up looking like one of those drawings he’d seen in a gruesome fantasy comic book.

  At last, he was ready to look at himself, to examine what the priests had done, but he didn’t dare turn on the light. Lights-out policy was strictly enforced, and he couldn’t risk waking one of the priests. He could wait until morning to assess the damage. Both knees were most certainly bruised, but he thought his face had probably survived any blistering or scraping. When dawn broke, he went to the window. The sun was rising, a brilliant orange ball peeking just above the silhouette of the Church of the Good Shepherd. In spite of his physical pain, he felt a curious peace, not in any way related to the glory of the sunrise or the venerable sight of the Spanish-style church. His peace came from the simple knowledge that he had survived. The ordeal by water, the agonizing prodding with the brooms, the priests’ incessant mumbo-jumbo were mere flirtations of what he could rise above. It was morning, and his skin hadn’t split. He was still in one piece, the same person as always. Hell, better. He’d shown what kind of cloth he was cut from.

  Now, sitting on the ground looking up at the campanario, he delighted in the knowledge that others, too, had since discovered the kind of person he was. Movement in the parking lot interrupted his reverie. She was getting into her car.

  One thing his childhood had taught him was the importance of discipline, that waiting could be so sweet. Comedians knew timing was everything. He knew it too, and this knowledge helped him through the periods when he would sink into a vortex of desolation so great that only a new project could relieve it.

  Maybe this time, he could come closer to perfection.

  He had big plans for Beth Wells. She would be the best yet. He knew it from the moment he’d met her. She was stunning, her shoulder-length hair the colour of rich sable, her eyes an intriguing blue-green, able to swallow him like the depths of the sea. Her perfume, a heady mixture of jasmine and musk, the full sensuous lips, all there to ensnare him. For him, time slowed to a crawl as he found himself lost in her. The force of their first touch jolted him. There had been no turning back.

  He had always been a planner and loved to imagine scene and sequel much as a writer would. The two priests had served as adequate opening acts, though both their deaths had not come about exactly as designed. Still, Francis did croak eventually, and so did Anthony.

  He hadn’t had the privilege of seeing Francis die, but Anthony had done him the courtesy of showing him exactly what it sounded like when a human head came into contact with pavement. That had been an unexpected bonus. Pretty much everything since had gone his way.

  Soon it would be time for his next project, and to keep the game from getting dull, he had given himself a little mental challenge. He recorded the series of medical symptoms of anticoagulant overdose as they occurred, then he would predict the time each victim would die. He had nailed down the jogger’s death to within five minutes.

  The women’s scripts were getting to be a drag, though. They were always saying the same things, begging him not to hurt them, offering him anything. Most annoying was when they told him why they wanted to live. They wanted to travel, get into movies, start their own business. He could yawn.

  They made feeble attempts to say what they thought he wanted to hear. They called him master, king, stud, god. When he heard all he could take, he cut them.

  Maybe this one would be different. He knew why she was here, of course, and her intrusion into the environment where he’d grown up evoked in him an irony that made him smile. He wondered what she knew, then realized it didn’t matter. He could have her any time.

  Following her had been easy. Since he had first seen her, he’d gotten to know her routine pretty well. Today though, she was less predictable. Today was an adventure. Tailing her to the airport, grabbing a last-minute flight to LAX, his taxi pursuing her rental car at a discreet distance, just added to the thrill of the quest. His wig, unshaven face and baggy clothing rendered him nearly unrecognizable. As an added precaution, he’d popped in tinted contact lenses and applied a different aftershave. In retrospect, he needn’t have bothered. On the plane, she was absorbed in some book or other and hadn’t even looked up as he sidled by.

  An image formed in his mind. The Peace Pagoda in Japantown. No, he thought, ashamed of himself. Too complicated. Even if he could successfully get his cargo to the top, he would be too far away to hear the force of the impact. Then there would be his escape from the top of the tower, an impossibility if curious onlookers began gathering below.

  The Golden Gate Bridge was a cliché; too many others had fallen from it. He thought a moment about Pier 39 and imagined a dozen fat, blubbery sea lions around her dead body. A possibility.

  The image that stayed with him, grew and festered until he actually saw it in colour, was the sight of her perfect body tumbling down Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the world. Would she ricochet off each concrete barrier when she rolled? Not likely. Regardless of the steep slope, the shape of the human body prevented it from gaining the necessary velocity. Still, the notion amused him.

  Bethany Wells. Human pinball.

  37

  “No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention.” Beneath the black silhouette that replaced his grad photo in the yearbook, the boy had quoted Somerset Maugham.

  Father Daniel hadn’t thought about him in years. Now, the boy was on his mind constantly. And in his prayers.

  Monday’s visit from Lie
utenant Kearns had stirred up memories, recollections that, over time and with steely discipline, Daniel had managed to bury. Still, he believed there was a reason for everything. Eventually, perhaps with a small mental nudge, he would learn why his stomach roiled relentlessly and why he hadn’t kept food down since Kearns had called.

  Beth Wells, too, with her particular brand of desperation, confusion, and nagging doubts, would contribute to Daniel’s sleepless nights, sweat-drenched hours of tossing and turning, flailing legs shackled by soaked sheets. With as much motivation and determination as he could muster, Daniel finished preparing the next day’s history lesson. He hoped the class wouldn’t rehash today’s discussion of the Spanish Inquisition. Young people were fascinated by the ghoulish nowadays, it seemed. Or had they always been?

  When he was young his family had vacationed one summer in Niagara Falls. They crossed the border into Canada, Daniel’s only visit to another country, and had scoured every souvenir shop and T-shirt place on Clifton Hill. A visit to Madame Tussaud’s wax museum was a required tourist attraction, but the chamber of horrors, with its instruments of torture, gave Daniel nightmares for weeks. He usually revelled in a good horror story, his collection of H.P. Lovecraft his most prized possession. But Lovecraft wrote fiction. The Inquisition and all the atrocities committed upon humans in the wars, before and since, were fact.

  So was the Spiderman.

  Daniel steadfastly ignored any news printed about the killer, his only information gleaned from the hallway chatter of his students. By avoiding immersing himself in suffering, he felt he could deliver a more positive gospel message. Now he wondered if all the years of guitar playing, basketball games, and zealous camaraderie meant not that he was a good priest, but instead one who skated across life because it was easier. He knew how to be a pal, but could he be a friend?

  Daniel was as guilty of abusing the boy as the priests who beat him and his mother who ignored him. He’d done nothing to show the boy right from wrong, his inaction sending yet another unclear signal about life and how it should be lived. Instead, he swept the boy’s illness into a corner and played one-on-one with the kid to work off all that energy.