by G. M. Ford
“Don’t all things come from God?” Agnes demanded, gesturing at Corso and Dougherty. “That’s what you always tell me, isn’t it?”
“Actually, we came from Wisconsin,” Corso said. Dougherty smiled and stepped on his foot.
Sister Veronica blinked first. She sighed and turned away. She walked to the sink. Poured the rest of the tea down the drain. Agnes stared at her sister’s back for a moment and then turned toward Corso and Dougherty.
“Why are you interested in that particular grave, Mr….”
“Falco.”
“We have over three thousand souls in our cemetery. Why that one?”
“I think someone may have stolen Sissy Marie Warwick’s identity.” He measured his words carefully. “I think someone may have used her identity for criminal purposes.”
“What criminal purposes might that be?” Agnes asked. It was as if the oxygen had been sucked from the room and replaced with the electric, anticipatory air that precedes a thunderstorm. Corso looked from one sister to another.
“Maybe murder,” Dougherty said.
A crash sounded from across the room. Veronica had dropped the teapot into the sink, where it had shattered. “Oh, look what I’ve done now,” she said. “I can’t believe how clumsy I’ve become.” She used the tips of her fingers to pick the shards from the sink. She began to blather about the ravages of age, but nobody was listening. Agnes stepped over and stood directly in front of Corso. “Perhaps you should tell me about it,” she said.
Corso laid it out for her. Everything he knew. Halfway through Corso’s story, Sister Veronica stopped puttering at the sink. She stood facing them now, tight-lipped, her hands steepled before her. “Had to be somebody just about the girl’s age,” Corso said finally. “That’s the only way it works out.”
“What year was that?” asked Sister Agnes.
“She showed up in Wisconsin in the summer of nineteen seventy-three.”
Agnes turned to her sister. “Well…that’s the capper, now isn’t it?” she said.
Veronica hesitated and then gave a grudging nod. “You were right,” she said in a low voice. “All of you were right.” She looked as if she was going to be sick.
Corso met Agnes’s gaze. “Sounds like you’re the one with the story to tell now.”
“Finally,” Agnes said. She took a deep breath and began to speak. Seems that back when the Sacred Heart School was in its prime, the good Sisters used to occasionally take in girls from the community who had been orphaned or abused or both. That was the way things were handled in those days, before the government got involved and screwed everything up. At least that’s how Sister Agnes saw it. She indulged herself in half a minute of politics before she caught herself rambling. Got right to the point. Just before Christmas, 1970, a young girl showed up on their doorstep, claiming to be an orphan. The girl said her name was Mary Anne Moody. Claimed to be fourteen and without any other place to go.
“Said her whole family had been burned up in a fire,” Veronica added.
Agnes shot her sister an annoyed look and went on. The girl’s arrival had created something of a tempest among the Sisters. Some had been inclined to turn her away. She was not, after all, a local girl. Nor was she even Catholic. Others had been more kindly disposed toward Miss Mary Anne Moody. After a rather spirited debate, it was decided to take the girl in.
“Charity cannot come with strings attached,” Veronica said. “It was our Christian duty.”
Agnes ignored the interruption. Mary Anne Moody had stayed with the Sisters, attending school and living on the premises, for nearly two years. She turned out to be a difficult, headstrong girl, often in conflict with both the Sisters and her fellow students. Occasionally violent. Often subject to discipline. From Agnes’s tone, it sounded as if many of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart had come to rue their decision to take the girl in.
“She was a constant problem,” Agnes said. “The most headstrong and willful child I ever met.” Veronica averted her gaze and offered no rebuttal.
Not only was the girl troublesome, she was also possessed of a number of habits that gave the good Sisters cause to wonder about their charity. The first came to light when a number of drawings were found in her room. The clipped way Sister Agnes dismissed them as “inappropriate” and the red spots that appeared on her cheeks spoke volumes.
“And that wasn’t the worst of it.” Agnes paused. “She had a positively morbid fascination with the graveyard. With death and dead people.”
Seemed that whenever Mary Anne Moody turned up missing, which was a fairly regular occurrence, all one had to do was take a walk out into the graveyard and there she’d be. Standing around. Talking to herself. Copying the information on the headstones into a small secretarial pad she carried.
“What for?” Dougherty asked.
The sisters shook their headpieces in wonder.
“What about the Warwick grave?” Corso prodded.
Veronica couldn’t stand it anymore. “Right before she left—”
“Disappeared,” Agnes corrected.
Seems that in the months immediately preceding her disappearance, Mary Anne Moody had become fixated on the grave of Sissy Warwick. Had been found standing by the graveside on at least a dozen occasions. Veronica and some of the Sisters believed that Mary Anne found the grave fascinating because she felt guilty, as survivors often do, about being the only member of her family to live through the tragedy and in some unhealthy way she identified with this girl of her own age who had found a peace that had to that point eluded her. That was the positive spin.
More worldly types, Agnes among them, had seen the girl’s actions as the precursors of a troubled and ungodly life and had demanded that the young woman be exposed to mental health professionals. At the mere mention of one Dr. William Harkens, a psychologist from County Mental Health, both sisters blushed.
“He was a young man and rather good-looking.” While Veronica said the words as if in apology, Agnes was shaking her head. “What he was, sister”—she paused for effect—“what he was…was without his trousers.”
Once again, the facts of the story depended almost entirely upon the disposition of the teller. Some believed that the young psychologist had attempted to sexually compromise the young woman. This theory was borne out by the fact that he had insisted on being alone with Mary Anne during their therapy sessions, and it was permanently compounded when Sister Ellen, hearing odd noises emanating from Father Jonathan’s office, burst in to find both Mary Anne Moody and her therapist in a state of what she later described as “a palpable sexual tension and partial undress.”
Dr. Harkens claimed to have been the victim of a determined sexual assault by the young woman, whom he reckoned to be both wickedly wanton and wise to the particulars of passion in a manner most unseemly for a girl her age. Needless to say, the doctor was summarily removed from his position and the therapy sessions brought to an abrupt end.
“And that was the end of it?” Dougherty asked.
“Events intervened,” Veronica said.
“Miss Mary Anne Moody was what intervened,” her sister corrected.
The way Sister Agnes told it, the story seemed cutand-dried. Back in those days they used to hold Friday night Bingo over in the basement of the Parish House. Used to pack the place to the rafters and turn a substantial profit. The cash was entrusted to one Sister Alice Ignatius, who at that time was well into her eighties and prone to caching the cash in her room until the bank opened on Monday. On several occasions, owing to her advanced age, Sister Alice failed to recall exactly where it was she had stashed the cash. As her room was small and offered limited concealment possibilities, a quick shuffle by younger Sisters always produced both the wayward bundle and tears of thanks from Sister Alice.
“I’m telling you all this,” Agnes said, “because I want you to understand why some of our number were opposed to calling the authorities.”
“She means me,” Veronica added.
“We found her dead,” Agnes said, “one Saturday morning. At the bottom of the basement stairs.” She swallowed heavily. “She broke her neck.”
Corso stiffened. “And the Bingo money?”
“Never found,” said Agnes.
“How much money are we talking about?”
“Fifty-three hundred dollars.”
The sisters passed a look.
“What else?” Corso asked.
Sister Agnes drew in a breath and steeled herself. “Sister Alice Ignatius was found in a very compromising position,” she said finally.
“She could have just landed that way,” Veronica said.
“Never in a million years,” her sister said.
“What did the authorities think about how she was found?”
“Oh…we didn’t leave her like that,” Agnes said. “We couldn’t. We—”
“And the girl?”
“Gone.”
Corso couldn’t help himself. He looked at Veronica. She had removed her glasses and was wiping the lenses with a paper towel.
“Sister Alice was well along in years,” she said. “We thought perhaps Mary Anne had found the body or perhaps had been present when Sister Alice fell. We thought”—she waved a hand—“having lost her family and all…she may have been so traumatized by the event that she ran.”
“My sister looks at the world through rose-colored glasses,” Agnes said.
“Is a little compassion so wrong?” Veronica asked.
“When it’s misplaced, it is…yes.”
Corso interrupted. “So…because the Sister was so old. Because she had a history of misplacing the money.” He hesitated. “Some of your number didn’t believe there was necessarily a connection between Sister Alice’s death, the missing cash, and the sudden disappearance of Mary Anne Moody.”
“Believe it or not,” Agnes said.
Sister Veronica settled the glasses back onto her face. “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, sister,” she said in a singsong voice. “It may sound silly now, but…” She couldn’t find the words.
“Did she leave anything behind?”
“Sister Alice?” Veronica asked.
Agnes rolled her eyes. “He means the girl, sister.”
Veronica shook her head sadly. “No,” she said.
“Yes,” said Agnes. “As a matter of fact, she did.”
15
Dougherty threw her bag onto the far bed. Looked around and sighed. “Am I crazy, or do all these damn hotel rooms look exactly alike?”
Corso shrugged. “I don’t even see them anymore,” he said. He unfolded the luggage stand and set his bag on top. “The Sisters sure were a trip,” he offered.
“No shit,” Dougherty said. “Kinda makes you wonder why people choose a life like that.”
Corso unzipped his bag. “I asked an old Shaker woman that once. Why she’d chosen a life of celibacy and religious devotion over a life in the regular world.”
“What’d she say?” Dougherty was stuffing clothes into the dresser drawers. Even if they were only staying for the night, she always unpacked and stowed her stuff. Corso, on the other hand, always lived out of his suitcase.
“She said she had the same desires as everybody else. Wanted kids and a family and all that happy horseshit.”
“Yeah?”
“Said she also had a desire to be closer to God. To live the life of the spirit rather than the life of the body. She told me she never really made up her mind. That all she was sure of was that she wouldn’t be able to do a good job of both. And that even when I was talking to her, sixty years later, she still wasn’t sure she’d made the right decision…only that she’d surely been forced to make the choice.”
“Sophie’s Choice, huh?”
Corso chuckled. “Something like that,” he said. From under his arm he retrieved a battered file folder. Legal sized, fastened by its own rubber tie. He tossed it on the bed before heading for the bathroom. “Don’t start without me,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Dougherty always got out of her outdoor clothes as soon as she arrived. Corso generally fell asleep wearing his boots. As she changed into a black sweatsuit, she heard the sound of water running in the bathroom and was reminded of how quickly Sister Veronica had begun to make busy work in the sink at the very mention of Mary Anne Moody’s drawings, and how, after Sister Agnes’s return from the basement, for the only time all evening the sisters had agreed on something, namely, that she and Corso should take the drawings with them, to better peruse at their leisure…elsewhere. Definitely elsewhere.
Corso emerged from the bathroom, wiping water from his face with a small white towel. He walked to Dougherty’s side. “Whatever’s in there, sure seemed like the good Sisters didn’t want to be around when we opened it,” he said.
“You want to do the honors?” Dougherty asked.
“Go ahead,” he said.
She moved slowly, sliding the rubber fastener off as if the folder might be wired to explode. Used only the tip of her finger to lift the lid. Corso peeked over her shoulder. Jammed inside were what appeared to be half a dozen sheets of rough paper, folded together in fourths. Dougherty slid them out, unfolded them, and smoothed the whole bundle out on the bedcover. Maybe two feet by two feet, the top drawing froze the breath in their throats. They stared open-mouthed until Dougherty broke the spell.
“This is too sick for words,” she said.
Some of it was very rudimentary, like the work of a much younger child. Stick figures. The lines dashed and violent. A house on fire. Engulfed in yellow and orange crayon. From one of the upstairs windows the letters read EEEEOOOOOW. In the foreground, a girl and a boy stick figure held hands, placidly watching the scene. Above them, a pair of angels rose into the sky.
The rest of the yard was taken up by graves and tombstones. Five of them. R.I.P. Their occupants lying atop the graves. Eyes x-ed out. Four men and a woman. It wasn’t hard to tell which was which because that’s where the drawings became much more realistically rendered, as even in death the male figures sported enormous red-tipped cocks, erect, rampant, and curving upward, their rendition so vibrant and alive they seemed nearly to tremble in their tumescence.
Dougherty peeled the top drawing from the pile. And then the next. And the next. Seven in all. Mostly the same as the first. Dead bodies, soaring angels, and huge cocks. Except for the last few. That’s where it really got ugly, as the male figures rose from the dead and used their enormous appendages on the female figure in a startling number of ways. Corso reached over and flipped the pages. At the top of the third drawing she had written in red crayon: “S’VILLE.” Along the right-hand margin of the final scene, a series of numbers were spaced out from top to bottom: 1 0 1 2 4.
Dougherty moved quickly now, refolding the pictures and fitting them back into the folder. Finished, she pulled her hands back as if the paper were hot to the touch.
“I don’t ever want to see those things again,” she said. She wrapped her hands around her middle. “That makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Hard to believe images like that didn’t give anybody a hint that there might be a problem brewing with this girl. Mighta saved that poor therapist his job.”
Dougherty’s tone sharpened. “That’s the Catholics for you,” she said. “Sweep it under the rug. Never admit to anything. Buy your way out of it if you have to. Just transfer pedophile priests from parish to parish where they can just keep on preying on kids year after year because everybody’s more worried about their damn image than they are about the kids.”
Corso checked the digital clock on the nightstand between the beds. Nine twenty-three. “You hungry?” he asked.
“No,” she snapped. Then changed her mind. “Yes,” she said.
Corso dialed twenty-two.
“Room service.”
Corso sat up with a start. For a long moment he had not the slightest inkling of where he was. Wasn’t until he heard the rustle of linens
and saw the outline of Meg Dougherty tossing in her sleep that he remembered. The Hilton. Allentown, Pennsylvania. He checked the clock: 1:01 A.M. He sat on the edge of the bed and whispered the time to himself as if reciting a litany. And then, out of the blue, he had it. A voice in his head asked: “What if it’s a zip code?” Confused for a moment, he lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. Next thing he knew, he was snapping on the light. Dougherty rolled over, scowling at the glare. He picked up the phone, dialed 0.
“Front desk.” Female voice. Under thirty. Slight accent.
“I need a favor.”
“What kind of favor, sir?”
“You guys have computers down there, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You on the Internet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have a zip code. I want to know what town it belongs to.”
He heard her sigh. “Sir…I’m not sure…at this time of night…”
“What’s your name?” Corso said.
He could feel her discomfort. “Denise,” she said finally.
“Tell you what, Denise. You find out where this zip code belongs, and I’ll give you a hundred bucks. How’s that sound?”
“What’s the number, sir?”
He told her. Took nine minutes before the knock on the door. Denise was a chubby little Hispanic woman in red hotel livery. She handed Corso a folded piece of paper; he handed her a crisp hundred-dollar bill. They managed a weak mutual smile before Corso moved his foot and the door swung shut.
Corso walked back into the room to find Dougherty awake, propped up on her elbow. “Had one of your brainstorms, huh?”
Corso nodded. “I was asleep. In my dream, I could hear the numbers being chanted by a bunch of kids. Like school. Like somebody was making them memorize the thing.” He shrugged. He knew better than to try to explain the Muse. People either thought he was losing his mind or expected him to be able to call her to task at will. Never occurred to them there was a reason why the Muse was always a woman.
“So…what’s the verdict?” Dougherty asked.