Twist of Faith

by Ellen J Green

  “Your boss left a message for you on the machine. He wanted to know a firm day for your return to work. I’m guessing he tried your cell first.” She took the end of her belt and studied it. “So maybe you should tell me all about this supposed case you’ve been working on. All the time you’ve spent running around. Not coming home.” She gave him a closed-mouth smile but her eyes were ice. “Because at this point I really think I need to know.”

  He turned and put his feet on the floor. “Look, I’ve been helping a friend—”

  “Really, Russell? That’s cool. In fact, so cool that I think you should invite your friend over for dinner tonight. Or maybe we can all meet out. You choose the restaurant.”

  He imagined Joanne and Juliette sitting across from one another at a dinner table. He couldn’t help but suppress a smile. “Not a good idea. I’m going to get a shower.” He stood up and started for the stairs when the doorbell rang. He opened the door to see Joanne there, bundled in her dark-green bubble coat, her face eager and anxious.

  “Really sorry to barge, Russell, but I need to talk to you right now.” He saw Juliette craning her neck to see past him, to get a look at the female that was standing on their doorstep.

  “Not good timing.” He said it low, hoping she’d take a hint, but she was oblivious. She pushed past him into the living room.

  The two women stood facing each other. Juliette was five inches taller and thirty pounds lighter, but she still let her eyes dance over the woman, sizing her up, desperate to figure out the connection between her and Russell. Finally she decided she was the victor in all categories and relaxed. “Be nice, Russell, invite your guest in for coffee.” She smiled at Joanne. “Please?” She motioned for Joanne to have a seat.

  Russell shot Juliette a look and then obligingly sat. “What’s up?”

  “I went to the church this morning and talked to Father Ryan. I had this hunch. There’s more than was in the paper, Russell. Wait’ll you hear.”

  “You went to Philly this morning?”

  “Mm-hmm. Father Callahan was killed that night right in the chapel with a woman, like the paper said. The two of them were found naked, or sorta naked, together. But”—she half turned in her seat—“he seemed by all rumors to prefer the company of little boys. So it’s odd, huh?”

  “The priest told you that?”

  “Yeah, but there’s more. The woman was never identified. Early twenties. Caucasian. That’s it. And in that paper we saw, there was no picture of her, right? No name, no picture.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Father Ryan said the only photograph was an autopsy picture and maybe an artist’s drawing of her. So I was thinking you could get a friend in Philly to send you those pictures. And anything on her person when she died.”

  “Wait here.” He jumped up and went into the kitchen with his cell phone.

  Juliette was still standing in the living room where she’d been, pulling the belt on her robe even tighter, if that was possible. There was a sea of silence between them, neither woman saying a word for minutes.

  “So, how do you know Russell?” she asked.

  “I work at the courthouse. He’s—”

  Russell came back with his laptop and flipped it open. “I made a call. John’s going to send me what he has. Lucky he was in the office. It might be a while.” He looked at their faces and then back at his computer. “Juliette, can you do me a favor? Get me another cup of coffee?”

  Juliette looked caught between telling him to screw off and doing as he asked. In the end she chose the latter. She grabbed his mug and disappeared from the room.

  When the last glimpse of her blue robe vanished around the corner, Joanne leaned over to him. “She’s really pissed I’m here. Let’s go to my house? I’m so uncomfortable.” She was still wrapped in her green bubble coat, and no one had offered her any of the promised coffee.

  “So the priest is killed with a woman? But he likes little boys? That’s more than odd, I’d say. How’d he know her, I wonder. She wasn’t a congregant. Maybe a nun from another parish? From a convent in another country?”

  “Maybe he likes little boys, little girls, young women, or whatever moves and is vulnerable. Maybe he was a scumbag predator. We’ve seen enough of them in jail, Russell.”

  Russell nodded. “True. But those sorts usually end up on the radar. Especially if he’s targeting adults too. We need to know more about him—wait, here’s the report. That was fast.” His fingers flew over the keys. The attachments came up. He clicked on one and made it bigger.

  The two huddled closer, staring at the screen. “Oh my God,” Joanne whispered. She glanced up at him, but he was staring at the crime-scene photographs. She turned her head. “This is so wrong. He was wearing his collar.” The bodies were both on their sides, facing one another. The priest was naked from the waist up. His shirt and collar were visible to the side. His pants were unzipped, open, but not down. The woman was naked. Her clothes were cast in a ball, the sleeve of a shirt draped over one of her legs. Everything was covered in blood.

  Juliette came back in and circled around to look at the screen. Her face was scrunched in concentration. “They’re doing so much more with DNA now, it’s surprising they haven’t figured out who she was,” Juliette offered. She placed the mug next to Russell and sat down at the table.

  “It fell off the grid, maybe. I’m sure they’ve checked it against missing persons, but we’re talking twenty years now,” Russell said. “She has a nondescript face.” He pointed at the artist’s drawing. Long medium-brown hair. Brown eyes. He clicked on another attachment and then printed it. “A list of items found at the scene. Come.” He walked to the printer and pulled the pages. “Let’s go over them.” He picked up his coffee cup. “Did you want some?”

  “I have a great coffeepot at my house, Russell. I think I’ll take a copy of that report and go there.”

  “Please?” He handed her the list.

  Her curiosity won, and she was immersed in the report within seconds. “Woman killed by blunt-force trauma to her head—no purse. Nothing. Multiple prints at the scene—matched the whole congregation, practically.”

  “I want to go to Claire’s house.” His voice brought her back into focus.

  “You mean you want to break in?” Joanne asked.

  “It might not be that complicated. Maybe the back door is open?”

  “Isn’t that still against the law, Russell?” Juliette asked.

  Russell shrugged. “No worse than not reporting bodies or missing persons.”

  “Why? What’s there?” Joanne lowered her papers and stared at him. “What’s worth breaking in for?”

  “A candlestick.”

  Joanne dropped her papers onto the table. “Is this Clue or something? The dirty perv priest was killed in the chapel with a candlestick? What?”

  He smiled. “That’s exactly it. The priest was punched and kicked to death, but the woman was hit with something.”

  “So why do you think it was with a candlestick?”

  “Because I saw one that I think looks a lot like this one”—he pointed to the crime-scene photo with a candlestick visible in the background. “It was in the boxes of Claire’s and Ross’s things in the closet.”

  “But don’t you think the church or the police would have noticed it missing?”

  “We haven’t finished reading the reports. Maybe they did,” he said.

  “But why wouldn’t they get rid of it? Clean it, give it to Goodwill? Take a nice drive out of the city, throw it in a dumpster?”

  “Reason unknown. Somehow it ended up with Claire. Maybe she kept it as blackmail or to keep someone in line? Guessing here. Not even sure it’s a match.”

  “This is kind of exciting. Can I come?” At that moment Juliette was filled with childlike enthusiasm.

  Joanne and Russell looked at one another. “Three breaking into a house might be a bit much. But maybe we can tackle this separately. Juliette, concentrate on
ways to identify the woman. Make a list, from medical to outlandish. Joanne, see if you can find a camera shop or an expert on film and photography. Take those Polaroids and get a date on the camera used. And the kind of film too. I’ll go to the house. I know where the candlestick is,” Russell said.

  “Who made you boss?” Joanne blurted. Juliette smiled.

  “I’ve always been boss, since you and Ava dragged me into this.” He started walking her to the door. He opened it and waited for her to walk through.

  She whipped around to face him. “Fine, Russell. I’ll go track down the camera and film. Call me later.” She heaved her purse back up onto her shoulder and marched down the walkway to her car.

  Juliette came up behind him and put her arms around his waist. “I wish you’d introduced us earlier, Russell. I really like her.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Marie arrived at the convent and parked across the street. She checked her watch—6:35 p.m. Dinner and prayer. The conclusions she’d come to during the two-hour drive in slow-crawling traffic from the Bayside Inn were that, number one, she needed to get her things together, leave the church, and lie low for a while. Hide out and wait. The family complications were becoming overwhelming. Then she wouldn’t be available to supply money, get rid of dead bodies, or involve herself in issues that weren’t her concern. And two, she needed to find Anais.

  Marie snuck quietly into her room and shut the door behind her. Once inside, she rushed to the closet, yanked an overnight bag from the top shelf, and stripped down to her underthings, her pants crumpling around her ankles. No more dowdy clothes for me. She pulled on the jeans and white turtleneck that she’d taken from Claire’s closet weeks ago. They weren’t a perfect fit, but close enough. She slid small hoop earrings into her ears and gloss across her lips. She didn’t own any foundation, mascara, or blush, but she’d remedy that soon.

  She slipped on a brown leather jacket, expensive yet casual, and then a pair of tall boots, more borrows from Claire. When they were girls, people often thought they were twins—they were the same height, same basic shape, had the same hair color, with faces that bore only slight differences. Marie’s eyes were larger, the color tinged with green, while Claire’s were smaller and darker. And Marie had a mole near her temple. But the younger girl made the confusion worse by stealing her sister’s clothes and her sense of style. That all changed when Marie joined the convent at twenty-two. They were never confused with each other again.

  She stared into the only mirror she had—one that sat on her dresser, just large enough to see her face in. Her hair was still a rich coffee-bean brown with no hint of gray, thick and wavy, the ends resting just at her chin. She ran a comb through it and tucked strands behind her ears. She’d hidden her features behind her religion for too long.

  Seeing the angles of her jawline, the high cheekbones, the enormous eyes, the straight nose, she realized she’d barely paid attention to her looks for over twenty years. Tiny lines had formed at the corners of her eyes. She pulled at them with her fingers. “I’ve given the best years of my life to a psychiatric hospital and then a church,” she muttered. “Pull it together, old girl.”

  She picked up the mirror and ran it down her body, catching glimpses as she went, trying to assess the whole. “Claire would just kill me if she saw me wearing this getup.” Then her face flattened at the irony of that statement. She fished through her drawers and pulled out the hunting knife she’d bought at the country store in Chatsworth and stuffed it into her plain black purse. “It’s the one thing I forgot to steal from my sister. A nice purse.”

  She glanced into the closet one last time and pushed aside the scarves and gloves. The old tan Polaroid case was where she’d left it. She reached for it, hesitating. It was empty, she knew. The biggest mistake—letting the camera out of her sight—would come back to haunt her. It was only a matter of time.

  She thought back to when she and Claire were children, just moved to France with their mother. No notice, no discussion. They’d just packed and left. Everything in France was different and new. Even the language. The two girls were sad, crying, asking constantly when they could go home. Marie thought she’d never see her father again. Claire discovered the old camera in the closet and fell in love with it. The heaviness of it, the bellowed pop-out lens. Anais gave them boxes of roll film and sent them on their way.

  It took some practice to use, as it was manual and the shutter speed had to be adjusted in between takes. Antiquated was what it was. Anais had offered to buy them a newer camera that produced color prints, but they’d refused. The two girls loved that old relic. It’d occupied them for months—she and Claire running around snapping pictures of each other while Anais sat in her chair, sipping wine or reading magazines.

  When Claire returned to the States, Anais sent the camera to her as a gift. The roll film was no longer manufactured and was difficult to find, so Anais had taken the camera to a little hobby shop in town and found someone who could alter it to accept the new instant film. It was a sentimental joke. But the alterations to the camera rendered it even more difficult to use, and the resulting prints were of terrible quality, grainy and monochrome. It didn’t matter to Claire. She’d loved it. If you’re homesick, take some pictures, Anais’s note had said. Who would have guessed that heavy metal box would be connected to a string of murders decades later?

  Where was the camera now? Marie felt some measure of panic rising inside her. She dropped the box of film into her bag and slipped out of the building without anyone noticing, glancing back only once at the place she’d called home for the past five years.

  CHAPTER 54

  The house was dark, with a vacant, abandoned feel. The small things that screamed occupied were absent. There was no decoration on the porch, no welcome mat. A fall wreath still hung from the front door, faded and beaten from the winter cold and wind. No porch light snapped on to illuminate the path. The mailbox was stuffed to the brim. The postage-sized front lawn was strewn with debris, leaves, and sticks, and the bushes were growing odd horns, desperately in need of being trimmed. Joanne stared at it. If anyone wanted to pick a house to rob, this would be a good bet, except for the silver Honda Accord parked neatly in the driveway.

  Joanne had fumed for hours after leaving Russell’s house. Everything had been set for her and Russell to break in and look for the candlestick. It was going to be fun, exciting. But then his little miss with the upswept hair had to horn in and ruin it. Joanne had gone home, pacing and ruminating until the sun went down, and then decided in a moment fraught with impulse that she’d do it herself. She knew the layout of the house, and she had a better excuse if she got caught. Ava was missing. Her car was in the driveway and Joanne was afraid she was inside, hurt or worse. So she broke in. She knew the cops would not only buy it but help her search the house if it came to that.

  She’d pulled on dark sweat leggings and a black hoodie, perfect cat-burglar wear, she thought, and headed to the house alone as the sun was dipping in the sky. She figured she’d have time to search the boxes, get home, make some calls about the camera, and then present everything to Russell while she was cursing him for sidelining her in the first place. But when she got to the house and was faced with the prospect of actually breaking a window or crawling on her hands and knees, she got a case of the second thoughts.

  The front door was locked, and after testing the front windows, she’d determined she couldn’t open them either. The path along the side of the house ended at a wooden gate. She pressed the latch lock and squeezed her eyes tight. It clicked open. She breathed a sigh of relief. One step at a time, Joanne. She looked at the patio and remembered sitting there with Ava, drinking coffee or wine. Laughing. Over the summer, when the humidity made it hard to breathe, they’d bought packages of premade frozen margaritas and a kiddy pool and spent a Saturday afternoon sitting in it, dipping their feet and drinking. The yard was still the same, but those comfortable, normal days seemed forever ago.

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nbsp; The drape was only partially drawn across the sliding-glass doors, so she could see the dining room, part of the kitchen. It was sort of the same as she remembered. Not cleaned out, but minus Ava’s clutter, it shouted Staged for an open house. She pondered her options. There was a back door into the garage. She could try that and then hope the door to the house was open. Or, as a last option, she could force the basement window, the width of which was slightly smaller than her waist. It didn’t occur to her that the sliding-glass doors might be open until she pulled on one and it slid on its casters. Very sloppy, Marie.

  She locked the door behind her and surveyed the room. The house had been peeled down to the basics. Her mind was urging her to get to the closet, search the boxes for anything resembling a candlestick, and get the heck out. But she couldn’t. She’d spent time in this house with Ava and needed to see something of her presence. A trace. A small empty vodka bottle in the corner; the ever-present hair bands she’d wrap around her wrist and use to pull her hair off her face when she was tired of it; her sunglasses, large, that covered half her face for a reason. When she wore them, red bleary eyes always emerged from underneath. Joanne couldn’t leave without a memento.

  She walked into the kitchen and ran a hand over the granite countertops. At first glance the room was empty, just waiting for new tenants, but Joanne noticed something was off. A coffee cup was in the sink, the remnants of the drink still in the bottom. She pulled open the refrigerator. A quart of milk, half-empty. A sandwich from Wawa half-eaten, the rest saved for a later meal. On the windowsill was an ashtray with two smoked-to-the-filter Marlboro Lights, as if perched there so someone could crack the window to blow the smoke into the outside air. The real-estate woman, maybe? Joanne picked up a butt and then dropped it. Disgusting.

  She scanned the living room and then took the stairs and went immediately to Ava’s bedroom. The door was open. The bed was made and covered in a pale-blue duvet. The floor was cleaned of clutter; the stack of boxes, never unpacked when Ava’d arrived back from college, was gone. She’s wiped away all traces of you. Joanne ran her hand over the bed and pulled open the closet. Ava’s clothes hung from plastic hangers. Neat, obviously sorted through. Enough was here to convince anyone Marie thought she was coming back—just staying with friends for a week.