Ghost Dance

by Mark T Sullivan

  Cook dinner, she told herself. She turned on a boom-box CD player to Sade and heard the singer’s smoky voice fill the room. Nightingale sang along for a minute before her voice trailed off.

  She focused on her breathing as she filled a four-quart pot with water and set it on the six-burner stove. From a drawer next to the stove she got out a two-quart pan and put it on a second burner. She poured spaghetti sauce from a Tupperware container she’d laid out to defrost much earlier in the day, then tugged open a cabinet door above the counter to find some garlic powder for garlic bread, since there were no fresh cloves.

  Nightingale moved aside vanilla, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, looking for the correct canister. Her hand reached deeper into the cabinet, pulling down colored sprinkles for cakes and a can of baking powder. She halted, transfixed at the sight of a long-forgotten bottle of cooking sherry.

  She stood there for almost five minutes, blinking the way Paula Potter had blinked when she had learned of her husband’s murder. Her breath came shallow and staccato before she noticed the garlic powder next to the sherry. She grabbed it, slammed shut the cabinet door and spun in her tracks to face the room.

  ‘I’m going to be all right,’ she said out loud in a wavering voice.

  But in the rain-streaked glass of the bay window across the kitchen, she caught her reflection. Nightingale’s skin was colorless. Her hands shook with fear.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MONDAY, MAY 11

  THE RAIN FINALLY PETERED after midnight. The wind stilled, the river settled and the sky turned the shattering blue of a freak, late-season Alberta high-pressure system. By 7.30 a.m., the temperature hovered in the high thirties.

  But inside the state medical examiner’s office in Burlington, Chief Mike Kerris was not grousing about the weather. ‘I want to know why I wasn’t told about this letter thirty-six hours ago.’

  Lieutenant Bowman, Andie Nightingale and Mel Allen, the state’s assistant medical examiner, sat around a simple conference table. Kerris stood. His gray Lawton sweatshirt looked slept in. His stainless-steel eyes were bloodshot and watery. He had guzzled coffee nonstop during the entire autopsy, which had just concluded.

  ‘We wanted to make sure the finger paint was Potter’s blood so you didn’t get upset without reason,’ Lieutenant Bowman said. She wore a suit of the palest yellow. ‘Now we’ve confirmed it and told you.’

  Beyond a match of Potter’s blood type with that on the note and the bridge, the state’s medical examiner had found little of import during the course of the autopsy.

  A careful examination of the wounds about the dentist’s head and upper back had given no distinct picture of the type of weapon they were looking for. This much was clear, however: given Potter’s height and physical stature, as well as the angle and penetration of the blows, the killer stood over six feet tall and was extremely powerful. He had struck from behind, possibly during or after the rape. Allen felt that despite the dilution of evidence caused by the body’s dunking in the river, he had gathered enough seminal fluid for DNA matches should a prime suspect emerge.

  At the same time, the evidence technicians had found no strange fingerprints inside Potter’s hunting locker, on or in the ammunition cabinet or on the bridge. The blood had been painted on the illustration with a gloved finger. The drawing ink and the sketch paper were of the highest quality, but the sort available in any reputable arts-supply store.

  Nightingale had sent her report to the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Virginia, but the profilers were carrying a heavy caseload already. A psychological description of the killer was at least a week or two away. The only other strong physical evidence the crime technicians had discovered was the faint outline of size-thirteen boot tracks in the dirt under the eaves of Potter’s chicken coop.

  ‘Let’s not bicker here,’ Allen said. He had licked his finger and was trying to plaster down a wayward eyebrow bristle. ‘Focus on the evidence. He’s a big man. Big as you, Mike.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about his shoes,’ Kerris grumbled. He slid his sweatshirt up his sinewy forearms before crossing them. ‘I’m being cut out of the investigation of the most brutal murder in Lawton’s history.’ The chief snapped his fingers and tossed his chin in Nightingale’s direction. ‘Now I get it. You’re trying to do this yourself so people forget—’

  Bowman cut him off. ‘That has nothing to do with it, Chief.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Kerris replied. ‘And let me tell you something: Mayor Powell’s gonna be pissed when he finds out about this drawing. He’s in the middle of delicate negotiations and he needs to stay on top of this.’

  Nightingale snorted. ‘Mike, it doesn’t matter to me whether some developer from New Jersey who’s looking to build a hundred-million-dollar hotel on the mountain continues to think Lawton is a perfect Vermont community. It isn’t. Never has been. And you’d know better than most, wouldn’t you?’

  The look Kerris shot Nightingale could have killed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TWO HOURS LATER PATRICK Gallagher refolded the Rutland Herald and pushed back his plate at the Miss Lawton Diner, a restored club-car hash joint downtown between the Hard Cider Gifts building and a Ralph Lauren outlet. The booths and the red swivel counter seats were filled with locals: dairy delivery men sat beside lawyers who brushed shoulders with crunchy-granola environmental activists who nodded to country-music singers and bleary-eyed turkey hunters. All of them were either talking in hushed, concerned tones about the murder or reading the coverage in the paper.

  The Herald’s front page carried a twenty-inch follow-up to Sunday’s story and a piece about the ecological ramifications of the proposed massive hotel-and-condominium development to be built at the base of the small ski area up on Lawton Mountain. Gallagher read the latter article until Mayor Powell was quoted spouting a platitude about the development taking Lawton into the twenty-first century.

  The follow-up to the Potter killing was much more interesting and he went over it a second time. The story described the state police evidence team descending on the dentist’s home and property. The article went on to identify a bridge over the Bluekill as the likely site of the killing, but made no mention of the note or the drawing Gallagher had seen two nights before.

  Lieutenant Bowman, not Nightingale, had fielded questions about the case. Both she and Chief Kerris had made statements on Sunday about state and local agencies cooperating fully in the investigation. By the second day of the story Gallagher had become an afterthought, referred to as ‘a vacationing New York City angler who had discovered Potter’s body in the Bluekill.’

  Gallagher had refused to talk with the young reporter who’d called Sunday afternoon. He knew if he leaked the secret of the note, the police would leave him out of the loop. Ever since he’d seen the drawing, he’d been obsessing about the case. The tenor of his questions had shifted from the philosophical to the practical. Had Hank Potter known his killer? From the tone of the note, revenge did seem part of the killer’s motivation. Revenge on the dentist? Or revenge on Lawton? Or both?

  For Gallagher, thinking about the murder was like finally awakening after a long humid sleep in the hot summer sun. He had always been energized by the exploration of new customs and mores. A murder investigation struck Gallagher as a perfect culture in which to nose around. And, he had to admit, a perfect way to avoid nosing around inside himself.

  There was also Andie Nightingale. She had been on his mind as often as the details of the murder probe, a fact that he was trying to cast in a positive light. Since Emily left, Gallagher had had little interest in female companionship of any kind. Several times on Sunday, however, he had tried to call Nightingale, as much to hear her voice as to inquire about the course of the investigation. But there was no answer at her house and the dispatcher at the Bethel Barracks of the Vermont State Police said she was in the field.

  Gallagher had considered calling Jerry Matthews to try to convince him that a d
ocumentary about the effects of homicide on a small New England town was infinitely more interesting than one on an early-twentieth-century priest and the Catholic rites of sainthood.

  But he decided not to push his luck. Gallagher had abandoned work on three projects already in the past year in favor of extended fly-fishing expeditions. Announcing that he was quitting the research on Father D’Angelo would likely send Jerry packing and their partnership into bankruptcy and oblivion.

  So Gallagher came up with an alternate plan. He would research both.

  Gallagher drained his coffee cup, paid the waitress, then exited the diner onto Lawton’s Main Street. As he prepared to enter the crosswalk toward the village green, Chief Mike Kerris’ dark blue Chevy Suburban pulled up and blocked his path. Deputy Gavrilis sat in the passenger seat, his straight-cut bangs making it appear as if a bowl had been the template for his haircut. Kerris sucked his lollipop and pressed his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose as the electric window rolled down.

  ‘Still around, Mr Gallagher?’ Kerris said in a mocking tone. ‘I figured finding a body in the Bluekill might have spoiled your taste for the local fishing holes.’

  ‘I’m not here just to fish,’ Gallagher said. ‘Like I said the other day, I’m researching a film on Father D’Angelo.’

  ‘That is what you said, isn’t it?’ Kerris replied. Then he folded his right hand into a gun shape and pointed the barrel at Gallagher. ‘I saw that note, Pat,’ Kerris said. ‘I’m watching you. Everyone who counts in Lawton is watching you.’

  The tires screeched as he pulled away. Five years before, Gallagher spent a great deal of time in Tokyo putting together a film on the intertwining of the martial arts, religion and Japanese culture. Most of his time was spent in an aikido dojo. The sensei there taught a particularly vicious joint-lock technique called kote gaeshi, the purpose of which was to bend your attacker’s wrist until he either submitted or experienced the spiral snapping of three bones in the lower arm and hand.

  Right then Gallagher had the overwhelming desire to perform the move on Chief Kerris.

  It was nearly ten o’clock by the time Gallagher crossed the green and walked three blocks east to where Newton Street met Whelton Lane. St Edward’s Catholic Church was a white clapboard affair with a single steeple rising amid hundred-year-old maples whose branches were tinged with the first red buds of spring. The adjoining rectory was stone-faced and in desperate need of repointing. There was a high brick wall around a garden to the rear. Rising above the walls, like a constant shadow on the town, was Lawton Mountain. Up there the trees stood bare and pewter-colored, offering no hope yet that they might soon embrace spring.

  He opened the iron gate, mounted the front porch and knocked. Being the pushy type, Gallagher did not wait for a response, but twisted the doorknob and entered immediately. The rectory’s interior was all dark wood and rich red Oriental carpets. The walls of the narrow hallway off the foyer were flush with paintings and photographs of the various priests who had served Lawton’s Catholic community.

  One in particular cried out for attention—an oil portrait of a cranelike priest with a pained expression plastered across his lips. He was bald but for a fringe of white hair around his pate. He stood with his hands clasped around a Bible in a garden containing an ornate birdbath in the center of which were three small stone horses.

  Just then a woman poked her head out of a room to his right.

  ‘I thought I heard a knock but I was chitchatting on the phone,’ bubbled Libby Curtin, the parish secretary. She was in her mid-twenties with a chestnut braid that reached her waist. A simple wooden cross dangled from her neck over a maroon tunic whose neckline was embroidered with daisies. She wore granny-style glasses, baggy, blue drawstring pants and Birkenstock sandals with rag wool socks.

  ‘You’re the moviemaker, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You’re going to do a film on Father D’Angelo?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘The Lord be praised!’ she cried, clapping her hands and bending over at the waist, all the while beaming. Then she glanced up at the painting and her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Isn’t it the pits about Father D’Angelo?’

  ‘The pits?’

  She gestured at a hole in the painting the size of a tea bag on the priest’s left hip.

  ‘We had a burglar back a couple of months and he knocked the portrait off the hook,’ she explained in a low, conspiratorial voice that made Gallagher want to smile. ‘Monsignor McColl went totally ape, let me tell you. A burglar in the rectory! Monsignor McColl has his bouts of irritation, but I’ve never seen him so ticked.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’

  Libby Curtin hurried down the hall toward an imposing set of carved double doors, knocked, men disappeared inside. Gallagher looked up at the painting, half wondering whether D’Angelo’s story would be compelling enough to serve as one of the narrative vehicles of an hour-long documentary. The other part of him wondered whether D’Angelo’s story would be compelling enough to make him stop thinking about Potter, Nightingale and a killer who thought of himself as Charun. Gallagher took a notebook from the pocket of his oilskin jacket and grudgingly made a note that with the right lighting, the painting, even damaged, would make a dramatic image on film.

  The carved doors opened. Libby Curtin poked her head out and waved him in.

  Gallagher sidled through the door into the room and stopped short. Monsignor Timothy McColl dwarfed the heavy oak desk he stood behind. He was a grizzly bear of a man in his late forties, six feet six inches tall, with a broom of mahogany hair, a close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard and a florid bull neck that threatened to pop his clerical collar. He wore his black sleeves rolled to the elbows to reveal the kind of forearms and hands you’d expect of an aging stonemason, not a priest.

  Monsignor McColl’s massive paw literally swallowed Gallagher’s. He squeezed just enough to let Gallagher know that his physical power was real, then released and sank back into his tufted swivel chair. The priest grimaced as he gestured Gallagher toward a Gothic-style seat in front of the desk. He rubbed his belly sourly. ‘Excuse me a second, will you?’ he asked. ‘My stomach’s been acting up lately.’

  Monsignor McColl went into a small bathroom and shut the door.

  Gallagher took a quick inventory of the artifacts in the office for clues to the priest’s personality. Behind the desk were several wooden file cabinets and the obligatory crucifix. Off to the right hung three photographs. In one, the monsignor stood emotionless before a whitewashed church amid palm trees surrounded by somber children in white uniforms. In an older, black-and-white photograph, a much younger McColl stood in the snow with a group of equally solemn young boys in front of an aging brick building. One of the boys, a gangly towheaded kid with a remote expression on his face, strangely reminded Gallagher of himself as a child. In the third photograph, McColl sat atop a mountain peak wearing glacier sunglasses and a backpack laden down with ropes and climbing equipment. Beside the photographs, mounted on wooden pegs were several brightly painted baskets, a bolo knife in a sheath decorated with ornate and brightly colored beadwork and a necklace made of bleached shells. The office was bathed in soft light from a leaded-glass window overlooking the garden. A hermit thrush splashed in a birdbath at the center of which stood three tiny stone horses. The same birdbath depicted in the damaged painting in the hallway.

  ‘Sorry to make you wait,’ Monsignor McColl rumbled as he emerged from the bathroom. ‘So, Mr Gallagher, are you Catholic or lapsed?’

  ‘Neither,’ he replied. ‘I’m an atheist.’

  The priest’s right eyebrow arched. ‘I thought Mrs. Curtin said you were interested in Father D’Angelo.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Why would an atheist be interested in a priest?’

  Gallagher explained his background and gave McColl examples of his other film projects.

  ‘You make films about religion
and yet you’re not a believer?’ Monsignor McColl said.

  Gallagher dodged that question by telling him how Jerry Matthews and he had become interested in Father D’Angelo and the process of canonization during a trip to China two years ago, when they had learned about the recent elevation to sainthood of a priest who’d been a missionary there in the 1840s.

  ‘John Gabriel Perboyre,’ the priest grunted in recognition. ‘Tortured, hung off a beam and strangled by the emperor’s soldiers during a persecution. I spent eight years as a missionary myself. Yucatan Peninsula. All missionaries know about Father Perboyre.’

  Gallagher nodded, then explained his wish to use Perboyre’s story and others to explain the Catholic tradition of sainthood to a lay audience. Jerry had found a brief mention of Father D’Angelo in a Catholic News Service story about canonization. Gallagher had decided to come to Lawton to fly-fish and do the basic research for the film.

  Monsignor McColl came up alert when he mentioned he was in Lawton to fly-fish. ‘Are you the one who found Hank Potter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll say his funeral mass Wednesday morning,’ the priest said. He toyed with his beard and watched Gallagher. ‘What are the police telling you?’

  ‘Not much,’ Gallagher lied. ‘I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  The monsignor drummed his fingers on the desktop and stared off at the birdbath in the garden for several moments. He cleared his throat. ‘As far as a film about Father D’Angelo is concerned, come back in twenty years. Takes a long time to make a saint.’

  Gallagher shifted in his seat, realizing he was in for a fight. ‘I don’t have twenty years and, besides, we are interested in Father D’Angelo precisely because his cause is in the early stages of consideration.’