AHMM, June 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Probably correct,” Sister Carla said. “Everybody knows that a lot of mine maps got misplaced or destroyed. Good way to avoid responsibility once mines started to cave in from support pillars left too thin."

  As with most of the mines in eastern Pennsylvania, this mine had been leased and registered under so many different corporate names at so many different times, the state, without identifying maps, had not been able to track down exactly who owned the mines at what time.

  Delensa unwrapped a stick of gum and popped it into his mouth. “Like you said, wouldn't be unusual for mine maps to disappear, for any number of reasons. Probably why Herald wanted to know who the mine foremen were. They'd have some idea of where and how the mine tunnels run under the city. I couldn't help Herald either, so I told him to ask Father Kelski or some of the old diehards, seniors I guess we call them now, still living in town.” Delensa cracked his gum. “Do you know the names of any of the foremen?"

  Sister Carla tapped her fingers on the sheriff's desk. “I should, but I was pretty young when the fire started and the mine shut down. Do you think Herald found any names?"

  "If he did find any foremen around, he didn't tell me. I'll have to talk to some of the old guys."

  "So you're thinking maybe a foreman witnessed what happened?"

  "Witness, perp, accomplice. We'll see. Of course, we could be dealing with a completely unknown thief, though I saw no evidence even of attempted theft."

  Sister Carla tapped her fingers again. “As I said, I'm sure that the electric candle had been moved. I always leave it directly in front of the icon."

  Delensa reached for a second stick of gum. He held it up. “Better than cigarettes, my wife says. My dentist disagrees. Well, the church is locked until forensics finishes, likely in two or three days at the most, but once you get back to the church, you can check to see if anything is missing or disturbed. Then let me know.” Delensa grinned. “You get any inspirations about who did this, let me know that too."

  * * * *

  When she returned to the church, Sister Carla was shocked to see the yellow police tape, incongruous against the figures of Saints John and Matthew that were carved into the dark brown oak doors.

  She looked around, then bent down under the tape, her short veil gliding against it. She checked the door for herself. It was locked, just as the sheriff had told her it would be.

  She would come back tomorrow to get the church ready for the Sunday service, if as Sheriff Delensa had said the police work would be completed by the Wilkes-Barre detectives.

  For now, she did not want to go inside the church. The sheriff had checked the icon and chalice. They were still in the church. She'd take his word for that.

  She bent again under the tape, stood, and looked up at the sky. The sun, just glinting through the dissolving clouds, had dropped to the height of the pine trees on Jenkins Mountain. She had an hour of daylight left and two hours before she had to be back to the convent in Wilkes-Barre for supper.

  She returned to her car and pulled out clippers, a small shovel, and a small box from the back seat. Tucking them under her arm, she headed down the driveway to the stone steps that led to the cemetery on the hill behind the church.

  She walked with her head down, thinking about the mine engineer. She could think of several people who could have wanted him dead. Feeling blasphemous, she thought of Father Kelski, for one. He had served in Saint Casimir's for almost thirty years before Jenkinsville lost its population. He would not want the church condemned. But would he kill to prevent that? Sister Carla doubted it. The state would only send out another engineer to check the safety of the church's foundation and the progress of the mine fire toward it. A number of townspeople still in the area might have shot the engineer. Some of them, bitter over the loss of their town, might blame the state for the disaster. Moreover, the men were hunters and target shooters. They had rifles, surely, but seldom, if ever, pistols.

  She reached the top of the stone stairway and stopped.

  Ahead of her, a woman was kneeling at a gravesite, her head bowed, her coat a splotch of blue in the reddish brown landscape. The woman put a pot of pansies into place against the gravestone, opened her purse, and put a few things inside, then rose, bent forward, and put a hand on the gravestone. She kept it there, as if trying to reach the person buried beneath.

  Sister Carla recognized the woman.

  A light breeze swayed the pines and rustled through the few brown leaves left on the trees. Sister Carla coughed.

  The woman turned. Her face was pale and drawn against the black scarf wrapped around her head. Gray hair poked out over the deep-set eyes and high cheekbones.

  "Mrs. Rosczak,” Sister Carla said, “I'm sorry to disturb you."

  Mrs. Rosczak shook her head. “I was just ready to leave.” She clasped her purse to her chest, as if protecting it from an imaginary thief.

  "Have you been here long?"

  "No."

  "Then you don't know what happened in the church earlier?"

  Mrs. Rosczak turned her head to the gravestones, one weathered and one still polished and clear. “I came to tend my mother's and my daughter's graves. Before I no longer can. Before the fire swallows even their bones.” She looked toward the church. “I no longer visit the church. It cannot save us now.” She lifted her eyes to Sister Carla. “The mines were once life for us, for my husband, for my daughter, and now they are death. It would have been better if we had left long ago and not made this pact with the devil and this fire."

  Sister Carla nodded; she understood the bitterness. She explained what had happened.

  Mrs. Rosczak listened quietly. She did not gasp or ask questions.

  When Sister Carla finished, Mrs. Rosczak blessed herself. “We are all condemned here.” Still clutching her purse, she walked past Sister Carla to the stone stairway. There, she turned, paused, then turned back to the stairs and descended slowly, carefully.

  Sister Carla watched her go. She wondered but could not imagine Mrs. Rosczak shooting the engineer, though the woman had good reason. Her daughter had suffered terrible bouts of asthma from the fumes that had crept into the Rosczak house, as had others whose houses had sat on the very core of the fire before it was discovered. With medical help, the daughter had survived for some time, though with damaged lungs.

  Sister Carla shook her head. The capacity of humans for both good and evil never ceased to surprise her. Maybe that was why she loved teaching history. It was like poking into the gardens and bogs of human nature.

  She sighed, walked to the right, and stopped at a granite gravestone carved with roses and a rosary. The graves of her mother and father.

  All the graves around had been tidied, and chrysanthemums had been placed on several of them. Just up the hill, at the foot of a granite shrine to Saint Casimir, was a wooden box on which more chrysanthemums sat surrounding a candle, now burning low within its glass case.

  Sister Carla made a mental note to bring another candle to replace the nearly burnt-out one. She put down her box, took the clippers, and began to clip back the weeds, somewhat withered now, but still alive enough to creep over the gravestone. Then she shoveled a small hole, opened the box, and took out a plant. She placed the yellow chrysanthemum bush carefully into the ground. It would last almost until January, even in the heavy mountain snow. The fire would give off enough heat to melt the snow and keep the roots warm. Even now, as she knelt on the ground, Sister Carla could feel the warmth in her knees.

  She stood up, her knees warm, but the rest of her body aware of the growing chill in the air as the sun dipped lower toward the mountaintop.

  As she turned toward the driveway, she saw a black Lexus stopped on Church Road. She stepped behind a thick maple tree and pulled out the clippers from the box into which she had dropped them. Not much defense against a pistol, she thought, but the only weapon at hand.

  She peered from behind a branch with enough leaves to give her some cover, thanking God
for her brown frock and veil, hard to spot, no doubt, in the fast dimming light. The car moved forward slowly, drifting down the mountain road past the church. Then it sped up and moved out of sight around the curve toward what was left of Jenkinsville.

  "All the saints in Heaven,” Sister Carla muttered. Why hadn't she thought of getting a license number? But then, in the nascent twilight, she couldn't have seen the number anyway.

  She took a few steps forward, found she was a little shaky, and leaned against a wrought-iron fence, which surrounded a group of gravestones. She looked at them. The gravestones of the Fletcher family.

  Sister Carla looked at the gravestone in the center of the group. Lena Tamalski Fletcher. Carved into the granite gravestone was the figure of Saint Casimir.

  Sister Carla remembered. She'd been told by Father Kelski that Lena Tamalski had married a Fletcher. Unusual for a Pole to marry into a reasonably wealthy English family of mine owners, but not unheard of. Lena had not forgotten her Polish background. She had commissioned the sculpting of the icon and brought it over from Poland for the church.

  "Thank God, it is still here,” Sister Carla murmured. Then she thought of the black Lexus. She hastened to her own car and drove down to Pottsville to Sheriff Delensa's office. She had her inspiration now. After all, nobody left in Jenkinsville could afford a Lexus.

  Inside the office, she greeted the sheriff and nodded to the man seated in front of the sheriff's desk. She knew him. Chester Zamback's hair had turned silver, but it remained as thick as it had been when he was janitor and carpenter at Saint Casimir's School, where Carla had excelled in history but bungled her way through every math class except geometry. She'd always had a fine sense of form.

  Zamback nodded, then turned back to the sheriff. “I never talked to Father...” He shook his head as if to clear it. “No, I never talked to the engineer. Just to Father Kelski. I told him the names of some of the foremen. He said he'd pass them on to the state engineer. But Rosczak is the only one left.” He lifted his index finger. “One,” he said, reassuring himself.

  Sister Carla sat bolt upright.

  "Did Herald contact Rosczak?” Delensa asked.

  Zamback shrugged. “I don't know.” He frowned and dropped his faded blue eyes to the floor. The blue eyes flicked from the sheriff to Sister Carla and back. “This is all my fault. The engineer and now Rosczak. The Fletchers were always powerful. And dangerous. I knew that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I should not have said anything."

  "It's okay, Chester,” Delensa said. “We don't know who killed Herald yet, and we don't know if anything has happened to Rosczak. If it has, I'll want to talk to you again."

  Chester Zamback rose slowly, grasping the arms of the chair and rocking himself up. He stood still for a moment, then nodded to Sister Carla and left the office, walking as slowly as Mrs. Rosczak had.

  "Mrs. Rosczak was there,” Sister Carla said to Sheriff Delensa. “She was there."

  "At the church?"

  "At the cemetery. When I went back. But Mr. Rosczak wasn't there. At least, I didn't see him. Why does Mr. Zamback think something has happened to Mr. Rosczak."

  "Because Rosczak is not around. But far as I know, nothing's happened. Mrs. Rosczak tells me he's gone to visit a cousin somewhere."

  "You believe her?"

  Delensa shrugged. “Not sure. She was pretty vague. She's scared."

  Sister Carla nodded. “It appears that Chester Zamback is scared too. So am I.” She told Delensa about the black Lexus.

  * * * *

  FRIDAY

  Sister Carla waited outside Saint Casimir's in her locked car for Father Kelski to arrive. She did not intend to go back inside the church alone. She kept her car running, facing Church Road, planning to peel out of the driveway at top speed if she saw a black Lexus coming. She wasn't afraid of fast driving, and by the time the black car turned around, she'd be halfway down to Pottsville.

  She checked her watch. Father Kelski was not due for another fifteen minutes.

  She heard a car making the curve near the church. She poised her right foot above the gas pedal. Father Kelski's brown Ford Escort came round the bend. He was early. Sister Carla relaxed her foot and turned off the motor.

  She got out of the car and waited for him to pull into the driveway.

  Pushing himself up off the seat, he stepped out of the car and stared at the church.

  "I know,” Sister Carla said. “Yellow police tape. Seems, well, almost blasphemous. But Saint Casimir's is a crime scene, isn't it?"

  "Sweet Mother, yes, it is. How long will the tape be there?"

  "Sheriff Delensa says it will be gone by Sunday. But he wants us to go inside the church to check for anything amiss."

  Father Kelski nodded. He stepped away from his car, then reached back for a cane.

  Sister Carla watched. She thought Father's hand on the cane looked shakier than usual, but she resisted bounding forward to help.

  They climbed the steps to the door. There, she did insist on lifting the tape for Father. He was, after all, twenty or so years older than she. She pulled the police tape away from the door and opened it.

  As they entered the church, it occurred to her that, if the black Lexus showed up, she'd have to protect Father, and without her clippers. She wondered if it would be a sacrilege to wield one of the heavy altar candlesticks as a weapon. No doubt, she wouldn't get the chance. She and Father Kelski could be facing some very dangerous men.

  She locked the door behind them.

  The sun shone on Saint Casimir's today, and light poured through the stained glass in bright red, blue, and gold shafts.

  Sister Carla walked to the left, reached behind the confessional, and threw a switch. Light flooded the church. The sheriff had said that the police had found several bullet holes. The engineer had been shot only once; Delensa theorized that the engineer had dodged several shots before one got him.

  His theory didn't quite fit with Sister Carla's theory. Hit men, she figured, should be pretty accurate shots. At least, if she were paying good money for a hit man, she'd want some credentials to show that. But then, perhaps, the men had been shooting at someone else who was at the church. Rosczak? But, of course, she thought, hitting her forehead, then straightening her veil. If he had come to meet Herald, he would have witnessed the shooting. Perhaps that was why he had fled Jenkinsville.

  She looked round the church but could see no significant damage except for the marble holy water font near the door. The circular top looked slightly off center, as if it had taken a blow.

  She turned and glanced down the aisle. Nothing protruded from the pews. “It will take only half an hour or so to get the altar ready and the missals in place for Sunday,” she told Father Kelski.

  She bustled up the aisle, anxious to get the job done.

  Father Kelski wandered toward the chapel.

  Sister Carla went behind the altar into the sacristy and picked up a basket of missals. She dropped the basket when Father Kelski shouted, and the missals tumbled out.

  Sister grabbed a candlestick and ran out of the sacristy and toward Saint Casimir's chapel.

  Father Kelski pointed up. “Look."

  Sister Carla gasped. “But it was there yesterday.” She moved into the chapel, not willing to believe her eyes. The thick glass case protecting the Saint Casimir icon was gone. And so was the icon.

  Sister Carla looked down at glass, shattered and scattered on the floor. She bent to pick up a piece of the glass case, then looked at the smooth oak base on which the icon had sat, bare and empty. She looked from the glass shard to the frame and back, hardly comprehending what she was seeing.

  * * * *

  Within five minutes, she and Father Kelski, hanging on to the edge of his seat, were speeding down to the sheriff's office.

  "How did the thieves get in?” Sister Carla asked, as much of herself as of Father Kelski. “The door was locked. No windows were broken; I'm sure of that. I looked around. I would have
noticed."

  Father Kelski said nothing.

  "I have a key, of course. And the spare I gave to the mining engineer was in his pocket. The sheriff has it. Could the engineer have made a copy?"

  Still Father Kelski said nothing.

  "Only you have the other key,” Sister Carla said. The blasphemous suspicion came into her head once again. She shelved it quickly.

  Finally, Father spoke. “Saint Casimir's. Doomed. Burning. And our beloved icon. A treasure of our church and our town.” He shook his head. “Better to be dead than to see the icon gone. Better to be dead."

  He sounded hysterical. Sister Carla hoped she wouldn't have to slap him. But then, a doom did seem to hang over Jenkinsville, as Mrs. Rosczak had said, a doom like the smoke and fumes on a damp day.

  She shook herself. Those who had stayed in the town seemed trapped into a paralyzing fear of devils, fire, and death. She wanted to keep her own head clear. No devil had shot the engineer or stolen the Saint Casimir icon. A living, breathing human had done that.

  * * * *

  Sheriff Delensa, rather relieved that Sister Carla had come to report a theft rather than another murder, led the way back to the church. He examined the front door. “Like you said, it hasn't been jimmied or tampered with, at least as far as I can see. No windows broken, you say?"

  "None,” Sister Carla said.

  The sheriff unlocked the door and made his way to Saint Casimir's chapel, Sister Carla and Father Kelski behind him. Father Kelski stopped halfway down the aisle and sat in a pew. “I can't look again,” he said.

  Sister Carla went on, almost hoping the icon would have miraculously reappeared. It hadn't.

  "Any other entrance to the church?” the sheriff asked.

  "A back door to the left behind the sacristy. But we open it only during services. In case of emergency."

  "Show me."

  Sister Carla led the way.

  Sheriff Delensa turned to Sister Carla. “Maybe this is how the thief got in, and maybe the murderer too."