“The moon is out now, and the woods look all golden from the fire, and there’s this big plume of smoke you could see for miles. And as we’re walking up the hill, I hear it. I hear this . . . howling. This shrieking sound, echoing through the valley, just howling and howling . . .
“And I knew it was the boy.”
The snow was coming down heavier now, and Andy Slater turned on the windshield wipers. The light from the high beams seemed almost solid, given mass by the rushing snowflakes.
Don Slater squinted into the snow, trying to recognize the landscape.
“About ten more minutes to Snowden. He lived on the other side of the town.”
His expression seemed to have softened, and he was sitting less stiffly in his seat.
“Anyway, we got out of there quick. I guess I made some mistakes. I didn’t report it to anyone—there really wasn’t anyone to report it to, unless I wanted to drag in Clearfield PD. I didn’t make them take him to a doctor. I did check at the school: his teacher said he was a poor student, prone to daydreaming, but nothing irregular. And he occasionally had bruises, but boys play rough.”
He paused, looking out over the fields.
“Really, it was a different time back then.”
He looked at Jenner again.
“But I’m starting to think I made my biggest mistake that night when I got home: I told my wife.
“I know you know how it is, Doctor—you can’t help but talk about the things you see with the people who care about you, particularly the bad things, the really bad things you Precious Blood
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need to get off your chest. And my wife was a good listener, and a good person.
“The next day, she took it on herself to contact the priest in Snowden. She was a Methodist, like many folks around here, but Barretsburg County is the exception that proves the rule. Welsh Catholics originally settled it back in the early eighteen hundreds, and the church in Snowden was pretty much the only Catholic one for maybe twenty miles.
“You see, she thought the boy might have a religious problem, and if he wasn’t going to go to a hospital, maybe the family would let him see their priest.
“Now, I don’t pretend to be an expert on the Catholic Church, but I’ve been thinking that for a priest to be sent to a church in the middle of nowhere where you have a population of maybe three hundred and fifty people in the entire county is not what might be called a reward.
“I knew the priest was pretty new to Snowden, maybe three or four years out of Pittsburgh or Philly, I don’t remember which. Everyone knew he’d taken in a couple of orphans from Barretsburg. At the time, I didn’t think anything about it, you know, just good deeds and all. There was some whispering, but I just figured it was Protestants gossiping about the Catholics.
“Anyway, my wife calls up the rectory and tells the priest the story, asks him to go check on the Farrars. So he does.
“The next week, the boy goes to live with the priest, staying in the rectory like the orphans. And, you know, I was actually kind of relieved when I heard that—I was pretty sure Bobby was no stranger to his daddy’s belt.
“And for a while, I think he did okay. But then, middle of winter, I get a call from the hospital ER up in Clearfield. Someone driving on the Psalter Brook road has found Bobby Farrar walking along in the snow without shoes, no coat. They pick him up and they see he’s bleeding from his groin area, so they take him to the hospital. In the ER, they find that he’s got a huge gash in his scrotum, and one of his 348
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testicles is missing. The bleeding has pretty much stopped by itself, so the surgeons clean up the wound and sew in a fake testicle and patch up the other one. He won’t say a word about what happened. Actually, he won’t say a word about anything—doesn’t say who did it, doesn’t say it hurts, doesn’t say, ‘Where’s my mommy?’ He just sits there, lets them examine him.”
Andy Slater tapped his hands on the wheel.
“Up ahead there, Doctor, at the far end of the valley.”
Through the snow, where the dark sky sank into the shadow of the valley, Jenner could barely make out the silhouette of a steeple.
“Snowden.”
Don Slater leaned forward.
“Can you see it? I can’t make it out, myself. But it’s the Church of St. Stephen. The rectory where Bobby Farrar was living when it happened is right next door.
“I went there straight from the hospital. I knew the kid was mentally disturbed, and figured he’d done it to himself, but I needed to document the circumstances as best I could.
“This road we’re on, the snow was so deep I almost couldn’t get through. That night, driving into Snowden, inching down this damn road, taking every curve at less than five miles per hour, sure I was going to run off the road and roll my truck down the hill, what really struck me was that when I finally got down into the town, I didn’t relax at all. Not a bit.
“There’s only maybe fifty houses, if that. I could see people were in them—there were parked cars, and lights in some of the windows, and smoke coming from some of the chimneys. But all of the blinds were shut, all of the curtains drawn.
“There was something about that town that felt . . . sick.
Diseased. And later on, I figured they had to know. Some of them, definitely. All of them, maybe. They knew, and they just didn’t want to get involved.”
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the head of the valley. The road dropped down toward the town in a long sequence of hairpins and cutbacks. Andy Slater slowed the truck to take the first turn.
“Anyway, I pulled up to the rectory, and Father Martin was waiting at the door. Tall, thin man, looked like he’d never experienced an emotion in his life. What’s the word—
gaunt. He was gaunt, like some monk starving himself in a cave or something. But there’s something else to him, some smugness, some satisfaction, some weird, dark pleasure.
“He says he isn’t even aware that the boy is missing. No, he hasn’t heard the phone ringing. Doesn’t ask why the kid was in the hospital thirty miles away. Takes me to the dormi-tory. Turns out there are four other little boys living there.
It’s barely six p.m., but the other boys are already in bed, and the lights are off.
“Around Bobby’s bed there are pages covered with callig-raphy, even with little paintings for the first letter, like from medieval times. No books, no toys—Father Martin says he doesn’t have any toys, and they never asked him for toys, and that Bobby likes to copy old documents, that it calms him down. He says Bobby is working on a copy of the Magna Carta. He asks the other boys where Bobby is, and one of the kids says they saw him praying in the room where they get dressed before the mass.
“So we go down to this small room that gives out onto the back of the altar in the church. And in one corner, there are spatters of blood, and a pair of boy’s underpants soaked with blood, and there’s one of those hooked knives carpet layers use. The walls are white wainscoting, and I can see spatters of blood flicked up onto them, all at a pretty low level. I figure he pretty much had to have done it himself, kneeling.
Hooked the knife under, and—”
“C’mon, Dad. Enough.”
“Just watch the damn road, Andy. I’m going to tell Dr.
Jenner everything I saw. And I’m going to tell him everything I’ve thought about or suspected since then, because I 350
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don’t know what’s important and what’s not. And if I don’t know, you sure as shit don’t. So shut up and drive.”
Andy was driving a little fast, the wheels slipping occasionally in the snow.
“Take it easy, Andy. Concentrate.”
He leaned back in his seat again.
“The priest said he had no idea what this was about, that Bobby had never been anything other than polite and well behaved. He’d been applying h
imself in his studies, and putting on weight. He let me question the other boys, who were maybe nine to twelve, something like that, and they all said they didn’t know anything and Bobby hadn’t said anything.
“And he never did. His parents didn’t utter a peep. After a couple of days in Clearfield, the hospital staff found a bed for him up north, at Warren State Hospital, a mental facility.
I think he was there for a couple of months, supposedly the youngest patient ever there. They turn him out, and he goes back to live with his folks again, carrying a big paper sack full of tranquilizers.
“After that he doesn’t speak with anyone, doesn’t say a word, except to Father Martin. After that, all I know is gossip, and not even direct from Snowden people, who still don’t talk about it. But supposedly Bobby’s dad gets really pissed off about how close he is to the priest. And it soon gets back to him that everyone in the county knows about his son and what happened. He starts drinking even more, and he’s a mean drunk; there was a story that one time Bobby’s dad made him walk into town in one of his mother’s dresses to buy salt and sugar—don’t know if it was true, but it sure stuck.
“I get a couple of calls out there, have to calm his dad down. I take away his shotgun, figure it’d be safer like that.
I see Bobby in the house, or in the fields, or near the woods, but whenever he sees me, he turns and walks away. And I let him walk.
“Then one day, maybe a month after I hear the story about Precious Blood
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the dress, I get called to a fire in Snowden, and I respond to find that it’s the Farrar farm. Bobby and some of the people from the village are standing outside, and there’s obviously no way to do anything—place went up like it was made out of kerosene-soaked kindling. And then, when the house is engulfed in flames, I see Mr. Farrar through the window, completely on fire, this screaming ball of fire banging around inside. It’s too hot to get near the building, and I try to pull Bobby away, turn him so he can’t look, but he breaks free and runs down by the paddock and stands there, kind of hopping from one leg to the other, watching his dad burn until I physically catch him and drag him off.
“Someone from the coroner’s office comes in from Barretsburg, looks the place over the next day, decides it was a heating oil explosion. I’m with him, and I see there are large nails in a row near the front doorjamb, and when I ask him about them, he says that sometimes heat in a fire makes the wood shrink and forces the nails up, that this is just because of the fire. I got the sense that he doesn’t want to make an issue of it. No one did, really—afterward, I find out no one ever called the fire department on it.”
He paused. “You ever see or hear anything like that? The nails coming up because of a fire.”
Jenner shook his head. “It doesn’t sound right to me.”
“Anyway, Bobby went back to live with Father Martin. It was kind of a community decision—I think people actually felt he was better off without his mom and dad. And the kid wanted to go to the rectory. I didn’t fight it. I mean, how much worse could it be than with a father and mother like Bobby’s?”
The road leveled off as they entered the valley floor. The road ahead to Snowden was hidden under a couple of inches of snow, untrammeled by foot or tire.
“After that, things were pretty quiet. Bobby seemed to settle down after his parents were gone. I know Father Martin kept a pretty tight leash on him—he never went out 352
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to the parties, didn’t go to his own prom. They sent him to a special school, but he didn’t really make friends, just hung out with the other boys in the rectory.
“None of them mixed with the other kids, really. They were a little pack, playing only with each other, walking through town as a little group, all dressing alike. At the time I thought they just wanted to keep to themselves, that maybe the other kids were mean to them. Later I found out that the other Snowden kids weren’t allowed to go to the rectory, or play with the boys that lived there. There were never any allegations of abuse at the time, although I had my suspicions.”
He looked out into the onrushing darkness, silent.
“After a while, I move on, and lose track of Bobby Farrar.
Then, about five years back, I get a call from the Philadel-phia PD about a murdered male prostitute they’d traced back to Clearfield; they wanted me to help make notifications.
Turned out it was one of the rectory kids from Snowden. It happened after Father Martin’s first stroke, so I took it on myself to make the ID. I went to the rectory, got photos of the kid, then drove up to Philly.
“I hadn’t seen the boy in more than ten years, so I go to the place where he’d been living, see if I could find more recent photos. Crummy apartment in the worst part of North Philly.
“He was living with another of the rectory boys. The other kid’s home when I get there, but he doesn’t want to see his friend dead like that, so I get some photos of the guy with and without makeup to take to the morgue.
“Just as I’m about to leave, I see a framed document on the wall, with Egyptian writing, and he sees me looking at it, and he says that Bobby Farrar made it. I ask what ever happened to Bobby Farrar, and he says Bobby was the only one of them who made good. Says he went to Deene’s College, then got rich from computers. I was kind of surprised, but the kid said it was all Father Martin, that Father Martin had really made Bobby work hard, made him the man he was supposed to be.
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“Then he gives this kind of smirk and says, ‘Like he did for me and Olive’—his friend’s name. I didn’t ask what he meant, I just wanted to take care of things and get back home. I felt bad for him—it looked like they were living on soup—so I gave him twenty bucks and told him to take care of himself, and then I left.”
He fell silent.
The truck purred slowly through the dark village.
Andy Slater pointed up ahead.
“That’s it.”
The black stone of the church and steeple glistened in the truck’s headlights, the roof sheathed in an envelope of snow.
Next door to the church was a house made of the same black stone, with a carefully lettered sign that read “Rectory of St.
Stephen’s Church, 1824.”
Slater pulled the truck over and let the engine idle for a few seconds, watching the snowflakes twisting through the beams. Then he shut it off and turned to Jenner.
“We’re here. This is where Father Martin lives.”
The snow crunched softly under their feet as Jenner and Don Slater made their way to the heavy oak door. The rectory was on the edge of the cemetery, and Jenner could make out the white silhouettes of row after row of curved and flat-topped headstones, an occasional cement cross looming among them.
Slater used the old bronze doorknocker, and a few seconds later, the lights in the entrance hall lit up. The door opened, and standing in front of them was a young priest with freckles and unruly red hair, the sleeves of his cas-sock pushed up to the elbow, wiping his wet hands with a towel.
“Good evening,” he said, his expression neutral and sin-cere, ready for whatever type of crisis into which he was about to be thrust.
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Slater introduced himself and explained that he and Dr.
Jenner, an investigator from New York City, would like to speak with Father Martin.
The priest, who introduced himself as Father Dominic, ushered them into a living room and said apologetically,
“You mustn’t have heard. Last month Father had another stroke; the poor man has lost his speech. We have a board and some magnetic letters so he can communicate, but even that is hard for him.”
He sighed and sat in an armchair opposite them, his voice quieter.
“In truth, he’s doing very poorly, and isn’t expected to live much longer. Weeks, maybe days, the doctor said. On top of it all, he’s developed a very painful ey
e infection, and so we’ve been giving him painkillers to keep him comfortable.
I’m afraid he won’t be able to help you. But perhaps I might be of some service. I’ve been here more than a year now, so . . .”
Jenner said, “Father, we’re trying to gather information about Bobby Farrar. I think he was a little before your time.”
“The lad who painted the rectory sign? We have some of his artwork here—he was a calligrapher, you know? We have a wonderful copy of the Magna Carta he did when he was young, and some Egyptian papyruses, and even one of his paintings.”
“Have you seen him recently?”
“No, I’ve never met him. In fact, I know he hasn’t been here for years. Until two or three years ago, Father Martin told me, he would send postcards and paintings every month.
Then they just stopped. It was sad—Father had so enjoyed hearing from Bobby.”
Jenner asked, “Do you have any of the paintings or the letters? Do you know where they were sent from? I’d really like to see them.”
“Oh, I’d need the envelopes for a return address, and Precious Blood
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they’re long gone. New York City, though. The paintings were of New York City—skylines, parks, river views, and the like. I’m no expert, but I thought they were rather well done.”
He gestured to the closed door across the room.
“Father has one of the larger ones framed in his bedroom across the way. I put the rest in storage in the garden shed. It won’t be easy to reach—the drifts are about four feet against that door.”
He paused, then continued slowly, “If you would be as quiet as possible, you could look at the painting on Father’s bedroom wall. You could stand at the doorway—I’d rather you didn’t actually go inside. But we should wait a little. I’ve just given him his new Fentanyl patch, and that usually puts him out.
“Let’s give the man some time to drift off. Some coffee? I was heating up some dinner when you rang—just soup, but if you’d care for some, you’re welcome to join me.”
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