Precious Blood (The Gregor Demarkian Holiday Mysteries)

by Jane Haddam

  “Black Rock Park,” Stuart repeated, and Judy was annoyed. There was still nothing, no panic, no fear, no worry, nothing.

  “He asked me,” she said, “who was going out with Cheryl Cass that year before—before the animal thing happened. And I told him. Andy went out with her. And Barry Field went out with her. And half the football team probably went out with her, because she was that kind of person.”

  “Who is Cheryl Cass?”

  “She was the woman who was supposed to have committed suicide in an alley out near the cathedral Ash Wednesday week. I’m sure you saw her on television.”

  “Maybe. What does she have to do with you?”

  A drag on the cigarette, a sip of the drink: delaying tactics. She had to fight down the impulse to tell him everything, all about the LSD and the Black Mass and Black Rock Park—not because she wanted sympathy from him, she’d never get it, but because she wanted to believe him capable of some strong emotion, any strong emotion. She wanted to convince herself he was alive.

  She tried a roundabout route. “There is,” she told him, “the simple fact that I was going out with Andy Walsh my junior year in high school, and Andy Walsh dumped me good and proper for a shot at Cheryl Cass. Cheryl Cass died of nicotine poisoning, Stuart. Maybe they’re beginning to think it wasn’t suicide at all.”

  Stuart considered this gravely, slowly, deliberately, wearing his best Hard Issues, Hard Questions, Hard Answers face. Then he smiled and said happily,

  “That’s nonsense. It all happened twenty years ago. They’d never prove you murdered somebody for a motive like that.”

  [2]

  When Declan Boyd rang the doorbell at St. Agnes’s Convent, Sister Scholastica was still on the phone to Barry Field, making sympathetic noises and soothing clucks, trying to pay attention to what he was saying and having no luck at all. He had had a visit from Gregor Demarkian and John Smith, and it had frightened him. They’d asked him a lot of questions about Cheryl Cass. They’d asked him more about what he had and had not seen from his pew at Holy Thursday Mass. They’d questioned him—“forever” as he put it—about his movements on this day. Scholastica was not surprised at that. She had been asked to write down the names of everybody she knew to have been at the convent or anywhere else in the courtyard all day. Barry Field’s had been one of the names she had written down.

  “Gregor Demarkian,” Barry said, “kept going on and on about my being up at the altar. I’m sorry, I don’t mean that. He isn’t the kind to go on and on. But he kept asking me about it.”

  “You were at the altar during Holy Thursday Mass?”

  “Not during, before.”

  “Why?”

  “It was just for a second. I just went up there and looked around.”

  “But Barry, what for?”

  “I don’t know,” Barry said. He sighed. “I’ve been back, you know. Not to St. Agnes’s. They still have the church sealed. I checked. But I was at the cathedral today for Stations. And I—I went to Mass again. To the Good Friday Mass.”

  Scholastica found herself wondering if the service on Good Friday was technically a Mass. It was long and involved, and the priests distributed Communion, but there was no consecration. The Hosts distributed on Good Friday were the extras consecrated deliberately on Holy Thursday evening. She thought she had to be very tired. None of this mattered. In the face of what had happened to Peg, Scholastica wondered if anything mattered. She looked at the clock on the wall above her head and saw that it was after nine.

  “They wanted to know if I’d touched the chalice,” Barry said. “Both of them asked me that. Both of them asked me that twice.”

  “Did you?”

  “I might have.”

  Was she imagining it, or was there a note of caution in his voice? She thought: He’s going to start lying to me now, maybe not outright, but shaving pieces off the truth.

  “You must know what you did,” she told him. “Going up in front of all those people. You couldn’t have got to the church until it was practically full.”

  “It was full.” More caution. More hesitation. “I was sitting in a pew on the center aisle, in the middle sort of, right behind a lot of children who weren’t in uniforms.”

  “From the public schools, yes.”

  “Well, I just kept looking at it. At the altar. At the things on the altar. I hadn’t seen any of it in years. I left the altar servers, you know, senior year. After—everything happened.”

  “After the six of us made everything happen,” Scholastica said.

  “No.” Barry’s stronger voice was back. No lies, this time. “You can’t blame yourself for that. You and Judy and Peg. You left. It wasn’t your idea.”

  We didn’t do anything to stop it, either, Scholastica thought. But she didn’t want to go into all that. She and Peg had discussed it, eternally. She said, “Did you tell them all this? That you might have touched the chalice?”

  “Yes.” Caution returned. “I even told them all about senior year. Leaving the altar boys. Leaving the Church. Leaving home, too. Did you know I’d done that? Run away from home for three months?”

  “No. How could you have, Barry? You graduated with us.”

  “O’Bannion let me make up the work weekends and holidays. I went back to school and I—I didn’t want any part of it. Mass. Being Catholic. O’Bannion always after me, wanting me to go to the seminary. I stuck it out for about two months and then I took off to my grandmother’s house in Cleveland.”

  “What brought you back?”

  “My grandparents were even more Catholic than my parents. They thought I was going through a struggle of vocation, getting all the indecision out of the way before I became a priest. I asked them not to tell my parents where I was, and I thought they’d listened to me—”

  “How could you believe they would?”

  “I told them if they didn’t, I’d run away again and sleep in garbage cans. I thought I’d frightened them. They’d called my parents anyway, of course. They went along with it. You know my Mom. Anything, anything, as long as they have a priest in the family.”

  “It must have killed them when you left the Church.”

  “It would have, but my brother Chris went into the Jesuits and my sister Bonnie is a Daughter of Saint Paul. It’s so strange having to tell you all this. All the things you would have known, if things had been different.”

  “I did know them, Barry. The Archdiocesan newspaper always has little items about order priests and nuns who grew up in Colchester.”

  “That’s right. I forgot about that. Kath, what am I going to do?”

  “About what?”

  “About the questions they’re asking. About everything. I’ve been sitting in my living room all night, thinking it through, thinking about this cable system deal I’ve got going, and we’re due to go on line in another week or two—”

  “Anti-Catholicism coast to coast?”

  “I didn’t kill Andy, Kath. I really didn’t. And you know how I feel about abortion. I’ve made it clear over the air often enough. I couldn’t have killed Peg.”

  Scholastica closed her eyes. Caution had become false sincerity, and about what? Abortion? He’d always been perfectly sincere about abortion. She’d heard him speak, and she knew. What was he hiding?

  She reached into the pocket of her habit, found Judy’s pack of cigarettes, realized it was empty. It was probably a good thing. She only got five dollars a week for her own personal use. She couldn’t afford to be a nicotine junkie. And smoking did look tacky when you were in habit.

  Nicotine.

  She heard a thudding, pounding knock on the front door and then Peter Rose, answering it. The deep voice that echoed through the foyer and down the hall belonged to Father Declan Boyd.

  “Barry,” she said, “I’ve got to go. It’s Father Boyd at the door. He wants something.”

  “You mean you want to get off the phone.”

  “I’ve got to go, Barry.”


  “I’ve heard Andy Walsh was threatening to make Boyd find other quarters. Didn’t like sharing the rectory with him.”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Scholastica said.

  Barry started to say, “I’m sorry,” and she put the receiver down in the middle of it. Barry has always been like this, she thought. Truth and falsehood, generosity and malice, all jumbled up together, popping out at you when you least expected it.

  She got up, went out into the hall, walked down to the foyer. Peter Rose was there with Father Boyd, listening politely while Dec rambled his way through one of his incoherent monologues.

  Dec saw her before she got within three yards of him. His face lit up. He’d spied fresh meat and better reactions, within reach.

  “Sister,” he shouted, “guess what. Guess what’s going on at the church?”

  “I don’t know, Father,” Scholastica said, “what is going on at the church?”

  “That Demarkian man is there,” Declan Boyd said, “with that police lieutenant and everybody else, the uniformed man and the priest guarding the chalice, everybody. He got permission from the Cardinal and he’s looking at the chalice.”

  “What do you mean, looking?”

  “He’s got white cotton gloves on like a lady and he’s picking the chalice up and swishing it around and looking inside it and pointing. He’s done it three or four times and he was doing it again right before I came over here. And when he points the police lieutenant looks and nods his head. You know what I think? I think he’s figured out how the poison got in the chalice.”

  For Declan Boyd, it could have been the scene before the climactic close of an episode of Murder, She Wrote. For Scholastica, it was something else. The bottom had just dropped out of her stomach.

  [3]

  I am finally, Tom Dolan thought, having a nervous breakdown. I have gone through all the stages, panic and paralysis, exhilaration and exhaustion, euphoria and despair. I am standing in the middle of a hospital corridor, surrounded by nurses, talking to myself. I may be talking to myself out loud, but I can’t be sure. My senses have become inoperative.

  Tom Dolan sighed. He wished it were true. He could have used a nervous breakdown, right at this moment. It would have been a handy explanation for what he had just done. Or not done, to be precise. He would have liked his senses to be inoperative, too, instead of what they were, which was on red alert. Joe Monaghan had just come out of little Peggy Monaghan’s room. He was naming his surviving infant daughter Margaret Mary after his wife. The Cardinal was behind him, in the toned-down robes he had worn to perform an emergency baptism on Good Friday night. It was the baptism Tom Dolan had not done. He had stood there with the vials of Holy Water and Holy Chrism in his hands, and at the last minute he had not been able to go on with it. The baby had been lying in a clear plastic hospital bassinet, stuck through with tubes and looking miserable. He looked at her and thought of Peg, stiffening the way Andy had, falling the way Andy had, dying on the convent’s living room carpet just in time for Kath to find her. His ethics teacher in the seminary had told him that there was no such thing as a painless death. The souls of the dying are always in agony even if their bodies are dulled by drugs or coma. He couldn’t remember it all. It filled up his head, but it didn’t make any sense to him. There was so much pain and so much confusion and so little time to pray.

  The Cardinal and Joe Monaghan had stopped to talk. Now they shook hands, nodded to each other, and went off in opposite directions. Joe was headed for the elevators, and home. There would be nothing he could do here tonight, and he had nine more children who needed taking care of. The Cardinal was headed for the pediatrics lounge, which was where Tom was supposed to be. The corridor Tom was standing in was on the way to it. Tom couldn’t remember why he hadn’t taken the last few steps and done what the Cardinal had told him to do.

  The Cardinal came up to him, took his arm, and began pushing him farther along the corridor. “Let’s go to the lounge,” he said, “you need to sit down. You need to sleep.”

  “I blew it,” Tom said. “I was standing there, ready to baptize, and I blew it. I looked at the baby and I couldn’t—”

  “Never mind, Father. Joe was just as glad to have me do it. More than glad. The Cardinal himself for his Margaret Mary.”

  “She’s the wrong Margaret Mary, Your Eminence. And she may die, too.”

  “I baptized the other one, after a fashion. Enough after a fashion so Joe didn’t notice the differences there had to be. Joe wanted to name her Margaret Rose.”

  They had reached the lounge, a large square room lined with plastic-cushioned chairs. Tom lowered himself into one and put his head in his hands.

  “We ought to get back to the Chancery,” he said. “There’s work to do still. I’ve got to check the requisitions for the Easter dinners at the shelters. I’ve got to check the—”

  “No,” the Cardinal said.

  Tom looked up. There was something wrong with his vision. He seemed to be looking at the Cardinal through water. “It won’t do any good for me not to work, Your Eminence. I’ll just sit in my room thinking about Peg. And Margaret Mary and Margaret Rose. And about the work, for that matter.”

  “I’ve called Dr. Markham. He’s going to give you a sedative. You’re going to sleep from now to the vigil Mass.”

  “I can’t do that, Your Eminence. There’s work—”

  “Scholastica can do it. She’s offered.”

  “—and there’s Gregor Demarkian. I was talking to him earlier, at the cathedral, after Stations of the Cross.”

  “I know. He told you about Peg. Was that why you didn’t hear Confessions?”

  “No.” Tom flushed. “I’m sorry, Your Eminence. I know you won’t believe this, but I just forgot. Kath—Scholastica—called asking for Judy Eagan, and I went out and found Judy, I’d gone back to the office to find an extra prayer book, I’d forgotten mine—”

  “I told you you needed sleep.”

  “I know I need sleep, Your Eminence. Anyway, I was in the office looking for a book when the phone rang, and I went out and got Judy. Scholastica must have been calling to tell her about Peg. She didn’t tell me. I don’t know why not. Maybe after all this time she thought I wouldn’t be interested.”

  “She probably wasn’t thinking straight. That must have been some scene at the convent.”

  “Yes. Yes, it must have. I told Judy and then I went outside, to go around to the rectory wing door. I think I was on my way to get a book from my room. There wasn’t one in the office. Just as I was going down the steps, Demarkian showed up with that police lieutenant.”

  “What happened?”

  Tom Dolan shrugged. “We talked.”

  “About what?”

  “Things. The way I fixed the cameras, the day Andy died. The Vaseline. Why I didn’t graduate with my class at Cathedral Boys’ High. If I’d noticed Barry Field near the altar—”

  “Field?”

  “He was in the church, Your Eminence. You saw him there.”

  “I didn’t see him near the altar.”

  “I didn’t, either. That’s what I told Demarkian. When he started asking questions about Black Rock Park I—”

  “Panicked?” The Cardinal smiled.

  “I’m sorry, Your Eminence. I didn’t know what to do. I made an excuse and got out of there. I went back to the rectory wing. I forgot all about hearing Confessions.”

  “That’s all right. Don’t worry about it. I’ve been putting you under much too much pressure lately. And as for Black Rock Park—”

  “Yes?”

  “You did the right thing nineteen years ago. You told me all about it. You don’t know how often I’ve blessed you for that, since this craziness with the poisonings started.”

  “It may all come out anyway, Your Eminence.”

  “I doubt it. If it does, it won’t hurt me and it won’t hurt you. Let’s go back to the rectory, Father. You’re tired. I’m tired. It’s been a very long day
.”

  “Yes.”

  Tom stood up. Sitting down had helped, a little. His vision was better. He wasn’t seeing things underwater any more. The Cardinal went out of the lounge into the corridor and Tom followed him.

  “Funny,” the Cardinal said, “twenty years ago, I looked at a lot of police photographs of slaughtered animals and thought I was looking at the worst thing that would ever happen to me in my life. It just goes to show you how we get spoiled.”

  The Cardinal turned and walked away. Tom watched him go, swishing in his robes, ponderous and overfed.

  I have never, Tom thought, been spoiled.

  THREE

  [1]

  FOR GREGOR DEMARKIAN, THE worst thing about the murder of Peg Morrissey Monaghan—aside from the obvious, which was a matter of emotion and not what he was getting at; if he let himself get trapped by emotion now he’d never see his way to the end of this—was how almost all wrong it was. For a while, he even thought there was no “almost” about it. The idea that any of the people connected to this case would poison Peg while she was still pregnant was close to unthinkable. They were all, to one extent or another, religious people. With one exception, they were all staunchly opposed to abortion even in the earliest months, which meant they’d see what had just happened as a double murder. Approaching it, they would have had to make up” their minds to commit triple murder, at least in possibility. The press had been justified in calling the rescue of Margaret Mary Monaghan a “medical miracle.” As for the one exception, that was Judy Eagan, whose pro-choice sympathies Gregor had assumed from her two-line minibiography at the back of the St. Agnes Parish Bulletin. Aside from being president of the Parish Council, the holder of an MBA from Columbia University, and the owner of “Judy, Judy, Judy—Caterers,” she was described as “president of the Colchester chapter of Catholic Women for Equality.” Gregor knew about Catholic Women for Equality. The activities of their Philadelphia chapter regularly made The Inquirer. They were one of those liberal Catholic organizations that operated under the belief, held against all evidence, that the Catholic Church could be made to change Her mind about sex.