The Third Revelation

by Ralph McInerny

  Laura ran off to tell Purcell, and the detective sent out the bulletin through headquarters. Everyone assumed that Traeger had stolen her car.

  It was Ray Sinclair who asked how Traeger had gotten to Empedocles in the first place. But Purcell’s interest now lay in finding the car in which Traeger had left Empedocles. Traeger’s departure was now seen as clearly implicating him in what had happened to Father Crowe.

  “Take my car,” Laura said to Heather.

  “But how will you get home?”

  “Ray will take me. The parish is Saint Cyril’s, do you know it?”

  “Father Krucek.”

  “It’s your parish?”

  “Yes.”

  But there were hours yet before Purcell allowed them to leave. The sun had gone down, but it was not yet evening, and the grounds of Empedocles seemed filled with the competing songs of birds.

  “What is Father Krucek like?” Father Burke asked Heather when they finally got under way.

  “He gave me instruction.”

  “You’re a convert?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Ignatius Hannan has a great influence on you?”

  She smiled. Her conversion had nothing to do with Mr. Hannan’s excited enthusiasm. Not that she criticized him, but he acted as if he had picked the winning team and had to cheer it on to victory. Nor did she dwell on what she knew of Laura and Ray Sinclair. Almost every prayer she knew was a plea of the sinner, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Memorare, maybe all of them, and “sinner” wasn’t a pious misdescription of presumably good people. Pray for us sinners meant literally that.

  If Laura and Ray were sinners, that did not distinguish them from anyone else. The point was to feel sorrow and resolve to act otherwise.

  “How long have you been at Empedocles?” Father Burke seemed to be searching for a conversational opening, but then people often found her difficult to talk to.

  “Not as long as Laura.”

  “What would Hannan do without her?”

  “What would any of us do without her?” Heather said.

  When they arrived at the Saint Cyril rectory, he wondered if she would introduce him to Father Krucek.

  “Good heavens, that isn’t necessary. Laura said he’s expecting you.”

  He thanked her and hopped out, perhaps glad that she had not accepted his offer. But how on earth would she have described him to Father Krucek? Laura’s brother? The friend of a murdered priest? She wondered if he would tell Father Krucek what had happened to Brendan Crowe.

  He might just as well. She turned on the radio and heard of the search for a material witness to a slaying at Empedocles Inc., one of the largest local employers. Heather heard her car described. They gave the license plate number, too, but of course she didn’t recognize that. Do people actually remember such things?

  When she turned in the drive and started through the wooded lot to her house, she felt that she had been away for ages. The drive dipped before it went behind the house to the garage.

  Her car was parked before the closed garage door.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I

  “They didn’t ask.”

  Traeger heard the car come along the unpaved drive, its running lights flitting through the trees like lightning bugs. Only one car. He watched from a window in the darkened house. He knew that a bulletin had gone out in search of Heather’s car. That he had gotten here at all was thanks to the GPS on her dashboard, the main reason he had traded that old Chevy in for it. He fed the address on the registration in the glove compartment into the navigation system and then just followed its directions.

  Heather’s house seemed the place to go because it did not seem the place to go. If her car was being sought, she had probably told the police who had gone off in it. On the news he was simply an unnamed material witness.

  The car stopped behind the house. He was in the kitchen now. The woman at the wheel was Heather Adams. She must have been puzzling over what her car was doing, parked there. If she started to use a cell phone, Traeger would be out the front door and on his way he knew not where.

  She got out of the car and stood looking at her house. How unthreatening she looked. Traeger pushed open the door and came outside.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “I can see you.”

  “Maybe you want to put your car in the garage.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Not every question has a sensible answer. The remote control on her sun visor opened the door. Traeger had pressed it and watched the door roll up, but driving into the cavernous garage would have seemed like entering a cul-de-sac. He lowered the door and left the car outside. He realized he had been counting on the serene compliance this woman had shown when he asked for the keys of her car.

  “Did you tell them I took it?” he asked her.

  “They didn’t ask.”

  They stood looking at one another for a moment, and then she turned to the house. “We’d better go in.”

  When she flicked on the kitchen light, Traeger pulled the cords of the venetian blinds. But suddenly he felt safer than he had for hours.

  “I usually have a simple supper,” she said. “After I say my prayers.”

  Traeger had been through the house, wanting to know the various ways to get out quickly if that became necessary, and he had seen the oratory downstairs.

  “Go ahead.”

  “You’ve been downstairs?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Nothing seemed to bother or surprise her. Maybe the sight of Crowe’s body had traumatized her, but somehow that didn’t seem the explanation.

  “You could join me.”

  From any other beautiful young woman it might have seemed a provocative remark. “Maybe you should first tell me what went on after I left.”

  “The police seem to think you were responsible for Father Crowe’s death.”

  “You know that isn’t true,” he said.

  She nodded. “But you were concerned about him, weren’t you? You thought something had happened to him?”

  “Yes.”

  She waited. When he said nothing, she said, “I’ll go downstairs now. You don’t mind waiting?”

  “Of course not. Are you some kind of nun or what?”

  She laughed. “How many kinds are there?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I’m not a nun.”

  Just a woman who prayed.

  He sat in the living room while she was downstairs. It was odd thinking of her down there, praying. Dortmund had surprised him with the information that he was Catholic. Surely there had been some point in their long association when he might have mentioned that. Dortmund must have assumed that Traeger, too, was Catholic, given the Notre Dame degree. Once, on assignment in Australia, the subject had come up and the man he was working with, having learned where Traeger had been to college, said that he was also Catholic. “A retired Catholic,” he added with a rueful grin. Traeger was not so much retired as out of practice. The work he had been engaged in did not seem anything God would approve of, however righteous the cause. How long had it been since he had prayed, prayed in the sense that Heather used the term? Oh, there were always quick pleas for help, addressed he supposed to God, most recently when he was getting out of that hotel in Cambridge. Now that he had the police on his track as well as whoever the hell it was that followed him to that hotel, he could use a few real prayers.

  Followed him to the hotel. He repeated that thought. Whoever it had been, the person might have seen him in Heather’s car, no matter the razzle-dazzle with the Chevy. He did not like the thought that he might have drawn his pursuer to Heather’s house. But he was certain, as certain as one could be, that no one could have kept with him on the circuitous route he had taken. It was only when he was out of Boston that he had checked her address and entered it in the GPS.

  Traeger got out his phone and called Dortmund again.

  “Is that you t
hey’re looking for?” Dortmund asked, his tone one of mild rebuke.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I won’t ask where you are.”

  Traeger said nothing.

  “Unless you have a fax. I could send you what turned up on Anatoly. That seems to be his real name, by the way. We also knew him as George Brandes and by several other names.”

  “There’s no fax here. What did you find?”

  “He’s KGB. Or was. He seems to be one of the disgruntled ones. If not gruntled.” Dortmund chuckled. “Do you read P. G. Wodehouse?”

  Dortmund was full of surprises. It was a rhetorical question.

  “You say you ran into Anatoly in Rome?” Dortmund asked.

  “We had a nice chat. He was tailing me. I think he still is.”

  Silence on the line. “Be careful.”

  “I may be coming to see you.”

  “Is that wise?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “You say Anatoly’s in the country?” Dortmund said.

  “I think so.”

  “I could put someone on him.”

  Traeger thought about it. “I don’t think so. But thanks.”

  He put his phone back in his pocket.

  She had come up, and he could hear her in the kitchen. Soon, pleasant smells came from there. Traeger rose and joined her.

  “Can I help?” he asked.

  “Do you know how to make a salad?”

  “No.”

  She smiled. She prepared a risotto with peas mixed with the rice, and little onions, too, made the salad herself, then set the table.

  “Is ice water all right?”

  “Of course.”

  When they were seated, she bowed her head briefly, then looked across the table at him.

  “What will you do? Where will you go?”

  He didn’t answer, because he was eating. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. The risotto was delicious. When he had finished, she got up and gave him more.

  “It’s good,” he told her.

  “Because you’re hungry.” But her pleased smile did not go away.

  After they were finished, she suggested tea. Traeger hated tea. “Sounds good.”

  They stayed in the kitchen, at the table. Traeger had been thinking of his next move.

  “Whose car did you come in?” he asked her.

  “Laura’s.”

  If he left in that car and then abandoned it, it would be obvious, to Laura at least, that he had taken the car from Heather’s. Having exchanged it for her car. For whatever reason, Heather had not volunteered the fact that she had given him the keys to her car and knew that he had driven away in it from Empedocles. She could hardly be expected to say she had no idea what had happened, if her car showed up at her house and the one she had borrowed from Laura was gone. Heather might not volunteer information, but Traeger doubted that she would ever lie. Now he regretted having come here, not only because it was no solution for him, but also because it implicated her.

  “I could drive you to where you want to go.” She might have been following his thoughts.

  He looked at her. She sat up straight in her chair and did not slump. She looked him directly in the eye, and her gaze was as sexless as a child’s, but wonderfully benevolent.

  “You’d do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know you’re not the one they’re after.”

  “And your car?”

  “I’ll put it in the garage. I can discover it there in a day or two. Will that be enough?”

  “Do you trust everyone?”

  “No. There’s something I should tell you. Before you sent me back to tell the others, I saw the briefcase on the floor.”

  “It was empty.”

  “I think I know what they were after.”

  The day before, Brendan Crowe had told her he wanted to entrust a file to her, some papers, to be put in the company safe. The papers were in a cardboard envelope; it had a flap and was tied with a ribbon.

  “He showed it to you?”

  “He gave it to me.”

  Traeger stared at her. So what kind of game had Crowe been playing when he went off to his room to get something he had already given to Heather?

  Traeger said, “Is it in the company safe?”

  “It’s downstairs.”

  He leapt to his feet and went rapidly down to Heather’s oratory. There were vigil lights flickering that she must have lit earlier. And then the room was illumined as Heather entered, flipping the light switch. She went to the altar and moved the picture hanging behind it.

  “A safe?”

  “A tabernacle. I hope that eventually perhaps I can have the Blessed Sacrament reserved here.”

  But Traeger was interested in the folder she had taken from the recess’s repository. She brought it to him.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You didn’t look inside?”

  “It’s in a language I can’t read.”

  Traeger undid the strings, widened the opening, and without taking papers from the file, saw that it was what Crowe had brought from Rome. What he and others had been killed for.

  “It’s Portuguese.”

  “Portuguese?”

  “Do you know anything of Fatima, Heather?”

  “Of course.”

  “Sister Lucia?”

  Her lips parted. She put out her hand and laid it on the file. Traeger had closed it. She picked up the strings and tied them, showing more emotion than Traeger had seen since they came upon the body of Brendan Crowe.

  “Why did you bring it here, Heather?”

  “Too many people have access to the safe at work.”

  She drove him to a mall not far from her house. The great sea of parked cars was what he was looking for. He had her pull in and then drive slowly between rows of cars.

  “This is fine. Thank you, Heather.”

  “God bless you.”

  When had anyone said that to him without his having sneezed first? The words had meaning as she said them. He got out, stooped, smiled, shut the door, and then turned and went shopping for a car.

  II

  “Ain’t love grand?”

  Laura had never had such a day. And never before had she seen Nate Hannan nearly come unglued.

  First, there had been the suggestion that they somehow spirit the body of Father Crowe away from Empedocles. As an initial impulsive reaction, okay, but he had to be argued out of it. Nate simply had no recent experience of situations in which he was not in complete control. Second, there had been Nate’s insistence that that stranger Vincent Traeger had murdered Brendan Crowe. There was no point in spelling out for him, as Ray had, the difficulties with the explanation. It was an explanation that promised to direct the investigation away from Empedocles, and that was Nate’s major concern.

  Well, he seemed to have succeeded. Purcell’s questioning turned to what any of them knew of Traeger and when Zelda made the extraordinary revelation—revelations, really, first, that her husband, her first husband she had clarified while clinging to the enigmatic Gabriel Faust, had been with the CIA and, second, that he had worked with Vincent Traeger—Purcell pursued this eagerly. Perhaps he saw a way of getting the problem off his plate. Laura made a note to herself to avoid meeting a violent death, if it affected the survivors this way.

  Eventually, after hours of being questioned, the three of them were alone in Nate’s office where something like calm returned.

  “I can’t believe this happened here,” Nate said. “Who would want to kill a priest?”

  “Diocletian,” Ray suggested, then had to explain it to Nate. The gaps in the great man’s knowledge still surprised Laura.

  “We’re going to have to tighten security around here,” Nate said.

  “I’ll get at it,” Laura said. As long as this could be turned into a soluble problem, Nate would relax. And of course soluble meant that Laura would take care of
it.

  “Where’s your brother, Laura?”

  “Heather took him to a rectory in town.”

  “Good. Good. I wish we’d thought of that earlier.” Earlier, of course, he had opposed John’s going.

  “Could Brendan Crowe have been killed off the premises?” Nate asked. This was a side of Nate’s single-mindedness that was less than attractive.

  Finally, they broke up. They got Nate into his car—he still drove the most modest of Fords, Henry being one of his heroes—and Laura got into the passenger seat of Ray’s car and heaved a sigh of relief.

  “We need a drink,” he said.

  “At least.”

  He leaned toward her as he turned the ignition key, and they bumped foreheads.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she urged.

  “My place or yours?”

  “Mine.”

  “Sed tantum dic verbo.”

  And off they went, down the road to the gate. His place, her place, when would it be theirs?

  “What’s that mean?”

  “What?”

  “What you said in Latin. It sounded familiar.”

  “ ‘Just say the word.’ ”

  “Where’s it from?”

  “It’s from the Mass. I thought you were Catholic.”

  She moved toward him on the seat, wanting her shoulder against his. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could just be Catholics together again, no longer half ashamed of their relationship? John had seemed unsurprised when she told him that Ray had asked her to marry him.

  “John could preside,” she said softly.

  “If you like.”

  She loved him for knowing immediately what she meant.

  At her apartment, she got out the single malt scotch for Ray, who liked it neat, without ice, to sip as much as to drink. Laura made a martini for herself. The night had grown surprisingly cool, so she lit the fireplace and they sat with just a single light on. A lovely domestic scene.

  “Do you want some nibbles?”

  “Later.” He puckered his lips and made kissing sounds.

  Nate’s question earlier was the obvious one. Why would anyone want to kill a priest, specifically Brendan Crowe?