He didn’t like the setup. It felt wrong, threatening. He reached down and thumbed back the safety strap on his holster, then started walking cautiously up the walk toward the house. Mamie Torkelson was nearly deaf. As Cork approached the porch, he heard her television blaring from the first floor, a commercial for Wendy’s. He realized that he hadn’t eaten yet and he was hungry. Suddenly all he could think about was eating. It was an odd thing, but he remembered it was like that sometimes in a tight spot. You thought of a thing and once your mind got hooked on it, you couldn’t let it go. Even as you were telling yourself to focus, to concentrate because your life might depend on it, you were thinking about the other thing that had nothing to do with your immediate survival. As he mounted the steps toward the deep shade of the porch, he was sure he could smell hamburger grilling, and his mouth watered, and as he reached for the doorknob, he wanted the taste of a burger in the worst way.
Before Cork touched it, the door swung open. He stumbled back and his right hand dropped toward his holster.
Mal Thorne stepped out. When he saw where Cork’s hand was headed, he brought his own hands up in surrender.
“Don’t shoot.”
“You shouldn’t be here, Mal.”
“I wanted to talk to Randy.”
“That was not a good idea.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’s not here.”
Cork glanced back at the Tracker parked on the street. “What did you want to show me?”
“Upstairs.” He waved Cork to follow him inside.
The stairway was dark, lit only from the light that slipped through a small window on the upper landing. Mal went ahead, mounting rapidly. Cork followed more slowly, eyeing the closed door at the top.
“You’ve been inside?” Cork said.
Mal nodded.
“How?”
“He didn’t answer when I knocked, so I went downstairs and told Mrs. Torkelson that I was supposed to wait for him inside. She was reluctant. She told me she believes in giving her tenants complete privacy. But I was insistent and sincere and she opened it up.” Mal reached for the door. “Nobody ever believes a priest would lie.”
He slipped out of sight inside.
A moment later, Cork went in after him.
Like many of the homes in that area, the house had been built in the early 1900s, in a time of prosperity in Aurora, when the iron mines were operating day and night and the supply of timber seemed inexhaustible. The trim was all oak, stained and polished to show the beautiful, fluid grain. The window construction included leaded glass in most frames. The floors had been recently sanded and refinished to a mirrorlike gloss. Gooding had furnished the living room and dining room modestly. Everything seemed surprisingly clean for the home of a bachelor.
Mal stood across the room at a built-in hutch with a mantel. In the middle of the mantel sat a domed Seth Thomas clock, and flanking it on either side were a number of photographs in frames. Mal picked one up. “Take a look at this,” he said.
Cork walked over and looked at the photo. The shot showed a group of seven adolescents, boys and girls, standing in a line on green grass in bright sunshine in front of a white clapboard building. The kids had their arms linked as if they were great friends. Standing behind them was a much younger Mal Thorne.
“Yvonne Doolittle is the girl in the middle.”
She was taller than the others, and from the development of her body, appeared to be older. She was blonde, squinting into the sun, and very pretty.
“This was taken at the orphanage?”
“At St. Chris. St. Christopher’s Children’s Home. Outside Holland, Michigan. The kid on the end, far left. Does he look familiar?”
“Not really.”
“He was only thirteen and small for his age. His name back then was Jimmy Crockett. He wanted desperately to become a priest someday. I’d never known a kid with a more profound sense, in his own mind, of what was right and what was wrong according to church canon, and he wasn’t reluctant to tell you so. He made it his business to keep everyone on the straight and narrow. The kids started calling him Jiminy Cricket. You know, Pinocchio’s conscience.”
The bells of St. Agnes rang the hour, eleven o’clock. Because they were so near, the sound was beautiful and pure.
“Cork, his middle name was Randall. Imagine him a foot taller, a hundred thirty pounds heavier, and with a beard.”
“Randy? But his name’s Gooding.”
“After the fire, the publicity generated a sympathetic response. I heard that many of the kids were adopted, even ones like Jimmy who were considered to have little chance.”
“Why little chance?”
“His age for one thing. Teenagers aren’t often adopted. His background for another.”
“What about his background?”
“When he was little, Jimmy was in and out of foster homes. His mother was psychotic, frequently institutionalized. During her psychotic episodes, she believed she was the Virgin Mary. When Jimmy was six, she drove off a bridge with him in the car.”
“Suicide? Not an accident?”
“No accident.”
“Did Gooding know that?”
“Yes. Much of the time he was at St. Chris he was seeing a therapist.” Mal put a fist to his forehead. “He was an artist even then. How could I not have recognized him?”
“He’s entirely changed, grown into a man, a very big, very disturbed man. Did you ever see him after the fire?”
Mal shook his head. “The church snatched me out of there, and forbid me to have contact with any of the kids.”
“What kind of relationship did you have with Jimmy Crockett?”
“He never knew his father. I think he saw me as a surrogate. A lot of the children did.”
“Could he have been responsible for the fire that killed Yvonne?”
“Why would he?”
“Maybe he believed he was protecting you.”
Mal’s look turned dark as the possibility settled into his thinking.
Cork said, “The two punks who attacked you in Chicago. If Gooding killed them, it might have been for the same sort of reason. Maybe revenge in your name. But if that’s true, why Nina van Zoot?”
“Nina van Zoot?”
“Another sin eater killing in Chicago. She and her fiancé.”
Mal nodded toward the photograph. “Bottom row, middle. The thin girl, smiling. Nina and Jimmy were good friends. She became a nun, I heard.”
“She left her order to get married, Mal. Her fiancé was a former priest.”
“Why would Jimmy kill them?”
Cork thought a moment. “When he told me about Nina, he called her a prostitute and the man she fell for a pimp. He may have killed them because they broke their vows to the church, and he considered them criminals. I’m beginning to think he sees himself as some sort of policeman of God. If that’s true, then maybe he followed you here to protect you.”
“How did he find me?”
“When you were attacked by those two punks, was the story in the newspaper?”
“You kidding? A priest attacked? It was front page for a while.”
“If he was a good agent, Gooding was reading everything in the news. Maybe that’s when he became aware you were in Chicago.”
“When he came here, why did he kill Charlotte?”
“I don’t know. He was in charge of the investigation of the vandalism at St. Agnes. Maybe he figured out she was responsible and he interpreted it as an attack against the church. Maybe that’s why he framed Solemn, too. His thinking is not exactly rational.”
“There’s more you should see.”
Mal led him to a door that stood slightly ajar, and pushed it open wide.
What hit Cork first was the smell, sweet and smoky. Familiar. Cork realized it was the scent of the frankincense used during the services at St. Agnes.
The room was large, probably designed as a master bedroom when the house had been a single-family dwelling, but
it was almost bare now. There was a cot with a thin mattress that looked handmade from a brown sheet. From the bits of straw that protruded at the open end of the mattress, the nature of the bedding on which Gooding slept was quite clear. Except for a crucifix above the head of the cot, the walls were empty. Next to the cot stood a small stand with a Bible and a candle. The candle had been burned to a nub. At the foot of the cot was a tiny table that held a white, enamel wash basin, a bar of soap in a small dish, and a clean, folded towel.
“Looks like a monk’s cell,” Cork said.
“One from the Middle Ages, maybe. Believe me, they don’t look like this today.” Mal walked to the closet and beckoned to Cork. “Have a look.”
Inside, hung on wire hangers, were all manner of priestly garb. A number of thin rope fingers fell over the edge of the closet shelf above.
Cork reached up and took down a whip. It was a homemade device, a sawed-off broom handle twenty inches long, with four lengths of thin, jute rope tied through a hole near the end. Each length of rope was about three feet long and knotted every three inches along its length. The end of each lash was glued to prevent unraveling.
“A discipline,” Mal said. “That’s what I’ve heard it called. It’s a scourge for self-flagellation. I’ve never actually seen one before.” He looked around him at the spartan room and then back at the whip. “My God. This man sings in our choir. He’s in charge of our youth program. How could we not have known?”
“Who he is, he’s hidden well from everyone.”
Cork put the whip back on the shelf.
Far back, in a corner too dark to be seen clearly, were two stacks of large sketch pads. The top pad on one stack looked as if it had been slashed with a knife. Cork picked up the pad and took it into the light of the room.
They were pencil drawings and charcoal sketches. Nude studies mostly. All of them of Charlotte Kane, and all of them cut in some way. Cork went through the sketchbook slowly, page after page.
“Did she pose for these, do you think?” the priest asked.
“No. I think he imagined her. According to Glory, Charlotte had a birthmark on her hip. It’s not in any of these drawings. This is pretty obsessive stuff.”
“He saw her in church every Sunday. My God, did it begin there?”
“Or maybe during his investigation of the vandalism at St. Agnes. I suppose it’s possible Charlotte tried to play him then, came on to him. Whatever, it’s clear she touched something in him that he didn’t know how to control, maybe didn’t even want to acknowledge.” Cork flipped through the slashed pages. “If we’re right about him, he’s killed several times. I don’t suppose he’d have any difficulty at all justifying in his own twisted thinking one more. What I don’t understand is the sin eating.”
Cork returned the sketch pad to the closet and picked up the top pad from the other stack.
“What are we going to do?” the priest asked.
Cork didn’t answer. The sketches in the other pad froze his blood.
Mal saw the look on his face. “What is it?”
Cork held out a drawing toward the priest.
Mal Thorne’s mouth formed a stupefied O. “My God,” he said.
It was Annie. Annie naked on a bed, her face done in heavy makeup, her hands cupping her young breasts, offering them lasciviously.
Cork’s thinking went rapidly over the events of the last week or so, and he locked on the tall figure who’d kept to the shadows, stalking Annie, and the fact that only the night before Gooding had just happened to bump into her. He dropped the pad into Mal’s hands, went quickly to the phone in Gooding’s living room, and called home.
Jenny answered.
“Is Annie there?” Cork said.
“Upstairs, I think.”
“Check.”
“Dad—”
“Go check. Now.”
Silence. The static long and grating. Then Annie.
“What is it, Dad?”
“Are you okay?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Listen to me. Stay there in the house. Don’t open the door to anyone, especially Randy Gooding. I’ll be home in a minute.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Just do what I say. I’ll explain when I get there. All right?”
“Okay.”
Cork hung up.
“What now?” Mal said.
“We put everything back just as we found it. I don’t want Gooding to know we’re onto him. Then I talk to Cy Borkmann, who gets a search warrant, and we put an end to this.”
Outside, the whole sky had been overtaken by storm clouds, and a wind was rising. Mal Thorne glanced back at the house.
“Think Mrs. Torkelson had any idea what was going on above her?”
“None of us knew about Gooding.”
The priest rubbed a hand over his forehead and closed his eyes. “Jimmy Crockett. I never would have guessed. God, if only I’d …” The priest stopped there.
What was the use of trying to grab onto the past, hoping to change what no human could. The best thing to do was simply to let it go, but Cork knew that was easier said than done.
“I’m going to pick up Annie and then hit the sheriff’s office. Want to come?”
“No.” The priest looked toward St. Agnes. “I’ll be at the church if anybody wants to talk to me.”
“Rose is there.”
“Really?”
“She got a call from the office this morning. I guess they needed her.”
“From the office? I don’t think so. Hattie’s on vacation, and Celia couldn’t come in this morning. Dental appointment. Nobody’s been there all day as far as I know.”
“Somebody called.”
“I can’t imagine who it would have been.”
Cork looked at Gooding’s Tracker parked on the street. He glanced toward St. Agnes, visible only a block away. And he remembered something.
“Gooding knows about you and Rose. Annie told him last night.”
The priest squinted at Cork. “You don’t think …”
Cork was already on the street, making for St. Agnes at a dead run.
47
CORK FLEW UP the front steps of the church, the priest at his heels. The door was locked.
“The office,” Mal shouted, and they veered across the grass to the office/classroom wing.
Cork grabbed the handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. Mal pushed Cork aside, jammed his key into the lock. As soon as the door was open, Cork rushed inside, the priest a split second behind him.
The desk of the reception area was empty, the hallway dark, the wing dead silent but for the heavy breathing of the two men.
“Maybe he’s not—” the priest began.
“He’s here. They’re both here,” Cork said. “There’s no other way to play it. Get on the phone to the sheriff’s office. Get people here. Do it now, Mal.”
Without waiting for a response, Cork headed down the short end of the hall, away from the sanctuary, toward the offices. He checked each room, found them all empty. When he came back to the reception area, the priest had disappeared. Cork had no idea where Mal had gone, but he hoped he’d made the call. He moved down the hall in the other direction, making sure each classroom was clear as he passed. Just before he reached the open door that led from the office wing into the church itself, he came to the stairway that led to the basement. He paused, considering whether to check the lower level first.
Then he heard Mal Thorne’s voice coming from the church beyond the door.
The clouds that had blotted out the sun cast a darkness over the sanctuary, as if a blanket had been dropped on the church. The priest stood at the back, beyond the last pew. He faced the entry to a tiny chapel that was used for small weddings or other intimate ceremonies or services. Cork could see a candle burning in the chapel, but nothing else. From the way the priest spoke, Cork figured Gooding was in there. Probably Rose, too.
“Just listen to me for a minute, Jimmy.”
>
“Jimmy?” The voice from the dark chapel. “Then you know?”
“I do. About Yvonne and Nina and Charlotte. About the rest.”
“Do you understand?”
“I don’t. This isn’t the way of our Lord.” The priest opened his hands, as he did when offering a benediction.
“Not our Lord, Father. Of His soldiers. Those who wage His wars, who protect His Church.”
“You?”
“We are born damned, those like me, damned to kill in the name of the church.”
Cork kept low, sliding along the front pew to the far wall where Gooding could not possibly see him. Silently, he made his way toward the chapel. He was clearly visible to the priest, but Mal Thorne gave no sign he’d seen. Cork took up a position at the end of the last pew. If Gooding could be drawn out, his back would be to Cork. Only once, Mal’s eyes flicked in Cork’s direction, acknowledging his presence. Cork held his .38 ready in a two-handed grip.
“No one is born to kill, Jimmy.”
“Not true, Father. I was double born, raised from the dead for this purpose. Understand, though, that I’m not without compassion. Those that die don’t die stained with sin. I can’t pardon their transgressions, but I can take them away.”
“By consuming them?”
“You showed me the way a long time ago at St. Chris. The story of the sin eater, that was a blessing to me.”
“You don’t want this sin on you.”
“I’m not afraid to die, because when I stand in the light of God, all the sins committed in His service will be forgiven.”
“Jimmy, Jimmy, this isn’t the way. Not with this woman.”
“I know how tempting they can be, Father. The handmaids of Satan.”
“Because of Charlotte?”
“It was so easy for me to imagine having her. She tempted me to take my eyes off God. She played on the weakness of the flesh, Father. This harlot, too. She was sent to seduce you from your true bride, the church.”
“You’re wrong. This good woman would have nothing to do with me. The church has no better heart serving it than hers, I swear to you.”
“You’re too good, Father. You don’t see the true abomination, but I do.”
Blood Hollow Page 33