“I thought she was strapped to the bed?” Steve said.
“All but one hand,” he said. “She couldn’t do it. She asked me to, but I told her one hand was enough.”
“So her hand was free to do sexual stuff to herself?”
If talking about sexual matters embarrassed Father Thomas, he gave no indication. On the contrary, he seemed quite comfortable with the subject. He didn’t blush or grow tentative, nor did he become aggressive in an attempt to overcompensate. I was reminded how much I disliked people making assumptions about me in general or my sexuality in particular because I was a minister, and realized I had done the same thing to him—though in my defense he had taken a vow of celibacy.
“And violence—to herself and to me,” he said. “I should have strapped her free hand down, but by the time I knew what was going on, I couldn’t.”
“Whatta you mean you couldn’t?”
“It was too strong. I tried, but with both my hands and all my weight I couldn’t hold it down.”
As tired and frayed as the rest of us looked, Father Thomas looked worse—and it wasn’t just fatigue or the result of enduring an event as obviously traumatic as he had. It was how frail and feeble he was. Maybe what Sister Abigail had said about his condition was more than an attempt at making him seem innocent. Maybe he really was physically incapable of the brutality done to Tammy.
“Which hand?”
Father Thomas thought about it for a moment, looking up in the other direction this time.
“Her left,” he said.
“Father, Tammy was right-handed.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It wasn’t her strength I was dealing with anyway.”
“No, if she really strapped herself to the bed like you said, wouldn’t she have used her right hand to do it?”
He nodded. “I would think she would.”
“Sure you don’t want to change your story now? Before it’s too late?”
“I’m telling the truth, Steve. I’m sure the medical examiner can tell you which of her wrists was bound.”
I wasn’t sure if Father Thomas was telling the truth—I was inclined to doubt it—but the longer we talked, the more thoroughly convinced I became that he was telling what he believed to be the truth.
“I’m sure she’ll be telling us a lot of things,” Steve said.
“And every one of them will confirm what I’m saying’s the truth,” Father said.
“We’ll talk about that some more when I get the autopsy report back,” Steve said, “but for now I need you to explain to me why you carried her outside.”
“I didn’t.”
“You carried her down the path to the clearing close to the Intracoastal Waterway. Don’t tell me you don’t remember. We found both of you in the clearing.”
“I didn’t carry her. I followed her. She ran out of the cabin. I thought she was going to hurt herself so I ran after her.”
“Was the exorcism over?”
“No.”
“Why did you unstrap her?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why’d you let her do it?”
“I didn’t let her do anything. Besides, she didn’t unstrap herself.”
“Father,” Steve said in a weary, incredulous voice, “if you didn’t unstrap her and she didn’t unstrap herself, who—wait, let me guess.”
“Be careful, Steve. Don’t play around and poke fun at evil. All I did was underestimate it, and look what’s happened. Take it too lightly and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
Steve let out a heavy sigh. “How did Tammy get out of the straps?”
“All throughout the rite, her body contorted into a variety of forms,” he said. “Things would appear on her skin, her face would change into someone else’s, her skin would rip and tear, and this time, her body elongated. She became taller and thinner and just pulled her hand and feet through the straps.”
Suddenly, Steve’s eye’s widened and he sat up. “I get it,” he said. “Now I see what you’re doing.” Turning to Reid, he added, “Did you put him up to this?”
“What?” Reid asked.
“You guys are trying to set up an insanity plea, aren’t you?”
“Steve,” Father Thomas said sternly, “I know how all this sounds. Believe me, I wouldn’t be saying it if I hadn’t experienced it. You may think it’s crazy or I am, but I do not, and I will not plead insanity or anything else except not guilty, even if I face the chair.”
“Sorry,” Steve said, though it hardly sounded sincere. “So she got free and ran down the path and you followed her. Then what?”
“Before she ran from the cabin she flung me across the room, so I wasn’t right behind her. In fact, I never saw her again. Not really. When I ran out of the cabin, she was gone. And the truth is, I can’t run. I was barely walking fast.”
“How’d you know to follow her down the path?” Steve asked. “Wasn’t it far more likely that she would run up to the chapel or to the dorms?”
“I followed the blood.”
“You followed the blood,” Steve said patronizingly.
“It led me to the right, away from the lake and down toward the clearing. When I reached the edge of the clearing, I could hear her breathing, but I couldn’t see her. While I was looking around, I heard a rustling in the leaves behind me and I turned to see what it was. That’s when someone grabbed my head and bashed it into the tree.”
“Someone?” Steve asked.
“The person’s hand was covering my eyes where he grabbed my head,” Father Thomas said, “so I couldn’t see who it was. At the time I thought it was Tammy.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know,” he said. “Mr. Reid thinks it might not have been.”
“Please enlighten us, Mr. Reid,” Steve said.
“My client was unconscious when Ms. Taylor was murdered. Obviously, his first assumption was she was killed by whatever was inside her that had caused her to do all the things to herself she had already done—be it drugs, mental illness, or demons—and maybe it was. Honestly, we don’t know, and frankly, the burden’s not ours to prove, but we now also believe it’s just as likely that Tammy was murdered and that the person who did it is the same person who knocked Father Thomas out.”
“So this discriminating murderer kills Tammy, but just knocks him out?” Steve said.
“Maybe,” Reid said. “Maybe he or she couldn’t kill a priest or only wanted to kill Tammy or maybe they thought they had killed him. That was a powerful blow. Whatever the case, the implication is clear.”
“Not to me,” Steve said. “So maybe you’ll be kind enough to break it down for me.”
“Not only could my unconscious client not have killed Ms. Taylor,” he said, “but his very injury provides the possible evidence of the real murderer’s presence—be it the demon or disease that made Ms. Taylor strong enough to deliver the blow or an as yet unknown assailant. And in the likelihood that it’s the latter and it’s the same person who killed Tommy, I suggest you begin interviewing the other residents at St. Ann’s.”
16
“It’s dismissive and dangerous to call the incarnation of all that’s evil mere mental illness,” Father Thomas said.
I glanced over at him in the passenger seat, then into the rearview mirror at Ralph Reid in the back. Both men looked like I felt. Beyond tired. Bone-weary.
I was driving us back to St. Ann’s in the seemingly sourceless soft light just before dawn, feeling fatigue in every stiff joint, every sore muscle.
“Mental illness can’t do what was done last night,” he added.
Breaking our long stretch of silence, Father Thomas seemed to be talking to no one in particular, but Ralph Reid responded.
“You’re right, Father,” Reid said. “I’m sorry. I was just making it clear to them that we could offer more than one case for reasonable doubt.”
“It’s the truth I’m concerned about. Not reasonable doubt.”
“I do.”
We were riding along the coast, the Gulf to our left, pale in the low light, the horizon closer than usual, beyond which appeared to be nothingness. The scenic road was mostly empty, only the occasional serious fishermen easing by, their beer-loaded boats bouncing along behind their rusted pickups. No one else was out. What few tourists there were and the numerous snowbirds who had flocked here were fast asleep in their warm rented beds.
“Well, the rest of us are trying to figure it out,” Reid said.
“We weren’t there. And the truth is, neither were you when Tammy was killed.”
“I was there,” he said, his voice flat, detached.
“But unconscious.”
“I know in my heart she was killed by what was possessing her.”
“All I’m saying is it could’ve been someone who—”
“No. No one at St. Ann’s could do something like that.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Reid asked. “Trying to protect the rest of us?”
He shook his head, but didn’t say anything.
Neither he nor Reid had looked at each other during their entire conversation. Father Thomas was looking out his window, though it was opposite the Gulf and offered only a dim view of beach cottages, and Ralph Reid, who had insisted on sitting on the small jump seat in the back, was talking to the center of the truck he was forced to face.
“Someone could have come from the outside,” Reid said. “Not easily, but it’s at least a possibility.”
“Without being seen? And at exactly the right moment?”
“It’s possible,” Reid said.
“The gate was locked.”
“It was open when we left this morning,” I said.
“Only because Brad had opened it for the police and ambulance earlier,” Father said.
I wondered how, being unconscious at the time, he could know that, but decided not to pursue it at the moment.
“The murderer could have walked in,” Reid said. “It’d be a good hike, but it could be done.”
Father Thomas shook his head and let out a long sigh.
Glancing at him again, I wondered if I was looking at the murderer. Could this kindly old man kill? It didn’t seem likely—at least in one sense. In another, it fit—acting out on repressed sexual frustration, fear of discovery, escalating violence, a final fatal blow he couldn’t take back.
“Father, his job is just to think in terms of possible defenses,” I said. “Scenarios that will raise a reasonable doubt.”
“If you’re going to continue to represent me,” he said to Reid, “know that I would rather go to jail than deny the truth or have the finger of suspicion pointed at innocent people.”
“You’re going to represent him?” I said, looking into the rearview mirror.
Reid nodded.
Father Thomas said, “If he does what I tell him and doesn’t profane sacred things.”
“You don’t think I should?” Reid asked me.
“Are you a criminal attorney?”
“I’ve done criminal work,” he said.
“I’m not talking about your job with Gulf Paper.”
He didn’t respond.
“Don’t you think Father needs someone who specializes in it?” I said. “Someone who’s not one of a very few possible suspects?”
“Being a possible suspect isn’t going to keep you or Steve from investigating, but if Father wants another attorney, I’ll help him find one.”
“I can’t afford another attorney.”
“How can you afford him?”
“Apparently I’m charity,” he said.
“I’d never dream of charging Father a penny. He’s been as much a priest to me as anyone ever has. We’ve been friends for many years now.”
“You could be called as a witness,” I said.
“So could Steve,” he said.
“Steve shouldn’t be working this case.”
“But it’s okay for you?”
“I’m not going to do much,” I said, “but no matter what I do, it’s not official.”
“You really don’t think he should represent me, John?” Father asked.
“I don’t. I think it’d be better for both of you if he didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Reid said, rushing to say what I was thinking before I did, “if I committed the murder, I won’t try very hard to keep you from being convicted for it.”
17
“Whatta you think really happened?” Kathryn asked.
Before going to my room and attempting to fall asleep—something that probably wouldn’t be as difficult as it usually was—I wanted to have one more look at the crime scene in the light of day.
I was standing at the edge of the clearing when she walked up behind me.
“I have no idea,” I said, turning toward her. “But I have a really hard time believing the devil did it.”
She looked out at the circle of trees in a kind of childlike wonderment.
“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy,’” she said.
Her eyes were red, their lids heavy, purplish half-moon shapes beneath them. Otherwise her face had very little color.
“Well, whether his father’s ghost was real or imagined,” I said, “it didn’t turn out too well for the Prince of Denmark, did it?”
“No, it didn’t. Still, one must play the part one’s assigned.”
The early morning sun had yet to climb above the treetops, but there was more than enough light to see the violent scene.
“Pretty fatalistic,” I said.
She shrugged, continuing to look around. “Still can’t believe she’s dead.”
I nodded.
She opened her mouth wide and yawned, slowly lifting her hand to cover it—a gesture that seemed an afterthought, a nod to a social nicety she really didn’t have the energy or the conviction for.
After a moment, she looked directly at me for the first time. “Are you closed to the solution to this mystery being a supernatural one?”
I thought about it. “I try not to be closed to anything, but I must confess that to even consider it requires a willing suspension of disbelief on my part.”
“But you’re willing?”
I gave a half shrug and a small nod, but I wasn’t even that sure I really was.
“You think he did it, don’t you?” she asked.
“I think it the most likely scenario so far, but the investigation is just beginning.”
“Like you, I’m not sure if I believe in demons or if it’s even possible for one to inhabit a human being or if they can, if it’s possible for them to kill the person. In fact, I find the whole notion highly unlikely, if not out and out impossible, but I can tell you this—the devil’s more likely to have done it than Father Thomas.”
“How long you known him?”
“My whole life,” she said. “He and Sister Abigail raised me.”
“You grew up here?”
She nodded. “My mother dumped me on their doorstep when I was just a few days old,” she said. “They raised me like their own.”
“Which could cloud your objectivity.”
“There’s no such thing. Surely you know that.”
I nodded. “You’re right. But there are degrees of subjectivity.”
“Sure. I admit to little or no objectivity, but I’m telling you after a lifetime of living with the man that he could no more murder a person than you could.”
“Bad example,” I said. “You just proved my point.”
“I stick by what I said. I’m not saying you’ve never been capable of murder, just that you aren’t now, but even if I’m wrong about you, which I’m not, I’ve just met you. I’ve known Father for over three decades.”
I nodded.
As if oblivious to the blood-covered leaves and broken branches, the b
irds in the trees whistled and sang enthusiastically, creating the background music of the forest soundtrack, their sweet songs soothing on a nearly subconscious level.
“And I meant what I said earlier,” she added. “There are a lot of things we don’t understand—about both good and evil. Living in a place like this teaches you that.”
“How?”
She sighed and gave me a wide-eyed expression. “That’s a long conversation for another time, but trust me. It’s true.”
“Give me the short version,” I said.
“There’s something so safe and artificial about civilization. It insulates you from nature, from Goddess, and from evil. Everything is so domesticated and homogenized. Most people live apart from reality. Being out here, living this kind of wild lifestyle, we’re close enough to the raw, natural universe to know how little we understand, how little we know, how little control we have over very ancient powers—including evils.”
“That’s an interesting perspective, and one I share. I don’t exactly live in a city.”
“Even a rural area like Pottersville is not the same as being here.”
I nodded.
We were quiet a moment, then she said, “Well, I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.”
She turned to leave, but I stopped her. “One question before you go.”
“Sure.”
“Steve said the two of you spent the night together last night, what time did—”
“We most certainly did not,” she said.
My eyebrows shot up. “He wasn’t with you just prior to discovering the crime scene in the cabin?”
“Well, yeah,” she said, hesitantly, her brow furrowing, “he was in my cabin, but only because he fell asleep. He asked if he could talk to me after dinner last night. He seemed lonely, so I let him. We talked for a while. He didn’t seem to have much to say, which confirmed my suspicion that he just needed company. After we ran out of things to say, we sat there in silence a while, until we both drifted off.”
“Did either of you leave the cabin while you were together?”
She shook her head.
Six John Jordan Mysteries Page 96