The Drowning Man
Page 18
Then the other priest was running alongside him, the man’s hand grabbing at his shoulder. He veered away and ran onto the stoop in front of the guesthouse and drove his fist against the door.
“Take it easy,” Ian said. “You said yourself, it’s an accusation. Let’s hear what Father Lloyd has to say.”
Oh, that was sensible. Logical and sensible, Father John thought, and yet his heart was pounding in his ears. It could not be the truth—not here, not at his mission, among his people, his kids. There had to be some explanation. Lloyd Elsner would have to explain.
He knocked again on the door, aware that his assistant had crowded onto the narrow stoop beside him and was trying to shove him away. He pounded again and again. “Where is he?” Father John heard himself shouting.
“He’s around here someplace, John.” Ian’s grip was tight on his arm. “Priests have been falsely accused. It wouldn’t be the first time a false accusation has been made.”
“Where’d he go?” Father John stepped off the stoop and started running again along the path toward the river. He knew where the old priest had gone. On a walk to the river, through the trees, circling the mission, then emerging out of nowhere. Out of the shadow world?
Father Ian was still at his side, the man’s boots clomping in rhythm with his own, and Ian was out of breath; he could tell by the sounds of the man gasping for air as they ran, and that struck him as funny because, he was thinking, he could run forever. He could run and run until he found Lloyd Elsner.
And then the old priest was in front of them, winding through the brush, around the trunks of the cottonwoods, finally stepping out onto the narrow dirt path. The sun shone through his white hair like a halo. He stood still, surprise fixed in his expression.
Father John was struck by the odd sense of pity for the old man that started through his anger. He felt Ian’s hand gripping his shoulder and heard the other priest’s voice saying again, “We don’t know if it’s true.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Father John told his assistant, not taking his eyes away from the old priest.
“My, my,” Father Lloyd said as Father John shook off Ian’s grip and walked over. “What’s happened?”
Father John handed him the crumpled blue sheet of paper. “This happened,” he said.
The old priest took a long moment, flattening the sheet, peering down at it, lifting it closer to his face. And as he read, Father John had the sinking feeling that the words on the blue sheet were true. An old man needing a place to stay, somewhere out of the way, somewhere that David Caldwell didn’t know about.
Except that David Caldwell had found him.
Ian moved in closer. He might have been a bodyguard, ready to inject himself between the old priest and the pastor of St. Francis Mission. And yet that wasn’t necessary, Father John thought, watching the expressionless look on Lloyd’s face as he continued studying the flyer, the sagging jowls and the sallow, pockmarked skin, the brown liver spots on his hands. Not necessary at all. Lloyd Elsner was old and pitiful. Pitiful.
“He’s a lunatic.” Father Lloyd shoved the blue flyer back toward him. “A stalker. He follows me wherever I go.”
“Is he the reason you had to leave Denver?” Father John said.
“Flyers all over the neighborhood.” The old priest made a halfhearted attempt at a shrug. “Went to the Denver Post, told them a big story. Looking for his fifteen minutes of fame, I suppose. He’s really quite mad.”
“What happened?” Father John heard the tightness in his voice. He could feel his jaws clenching again. The man was lying, and he’d heard so many lies. Lies in the confessional, lies in counseling sessions, and after a while, they all had the same hollow sound. Nah, I never did that. It wasn’t me. Must’ve been somebody else, some misunderstanding. That’s not what happened at all.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Take it easy, John.” Ian again, moving closer to the old priest. “He says the man’s a stalker. Remember, other priests have been unjustly accused…”
“A lot of guilty priests have been accused.” Father John kept his gaze on the old priest. “Tell me the truth, Lloyd,” he said.
“The truth?” Father Lloyd gave a shiver of laughter. “The truth is that I have no memory of anyone named David Caldwell.”
“One of the students you counseled, Lloyd? How many others were there?”
“That’s unfair, John,” Ian said. “We don’t know the real story.”
“How many others, Lloyd? How many boys who came to talk to a counselor, the priest they trusted?” Father John could feel the heat of anger in his face. The office was almost ready. A drawer in the desk needed to be repaired, that was all. He’d already told a couple of parishioners that an experienced psychologist would be available to counsel their kids. He’d invited Father Lloyd to watch the Eagles practice. He’d planned on taking him to the game in Riverton this afternoon. Get the old priest out. Give him a change of scenery. God. God. God.
“I do not have to stand here and be badgered.”
Father Lloyd started to move past, and Father John blocked his way. “You will stay close to the guesthouse the rest of the time that you’re here.”
“Am I to be a prisoner?”
“You will have no contact with any of my parishioners.” My people, he thought. “You will not go near any child. Not the Eagles, not any child. Do you understand?”
“I have no choice but to leave this dreadful place.”
“That’s right,” Father John said, moving out of the old priest’s way. “You’ll leave as soon as I can arrange it with the provincial.”
Father Lloyd hesitated a moment, then started walking in the direction of the guesthouse, listing sideways a little, as if he were walking into the wind.
“Suppose he’s innocent,” Ian said, his gaze on the old man’s back. “What you just did is very unfair, unjust. At least you could have waited until you spoke with the provincial. Surely you don’t think he would have sent a pedophile here…”
“It’s exactly what I think.” Father John spun around and started after the priest. He passed him on the path and broke into a trot, retracing his route down the alley and across Circle Drive. The pickups and cars had vanished, leaving the mission empty, deserted, with nothing but the faint traces of footprints in the dirt and gravel around the drive. He bounded up the steps to the administration building, headed into his office, and grabbed the phone. Then he was punching in the provincial’s number and tracing out a circle from the desk to the side chair and the window, then around the circle again, barely conscious of the front door slamming and Ian’s footsteps in the corridor, his mind focused like a laser beam on the intermittent noise of a phone ringing thirteen hundred miles away.
A low, calm voice interrupted the buzzing noise: “Jesuit provincial’s office.”
“This is Father O’Malley,” he said, still circling, catching sight of Ian planted in the doorway. “Get me Bill Rutherford.”
“I’m sorry, Father, the provincial…”
“Get him on the phone now.”
“This isn’t the way, John.” Ian was a blur at the corner of his eye as he made another turn around the desk.
“Father, please be good enough to let me speak. Father Rutherford is not in the office.”
“Where is he?”
“I’m not at liberty…”
“John, for heaven’s sakes…”
“I want to talk to him now.”
“I can take a message and have him get back to you the moment he comes in.”
Father John stopped pacing. He locked eyes with his assistant a moment; then he said, “You do that. You have him get back to me right away.”
“What shall I tell him this is about?”
“He knows what it’s about,” Father John said before he slammed down the phone.
“John, do you really think…?” His assistant had a defeated look about him, shoulders sagging, blond head hanging forward.
The other priest ran the palm of his hand across his cheeks, then cupped his chin and stared at the floor. “I don’t want to believe it’s true.”
Father John walked over to the window. The Eagles would be arriving in another couple of hours, pickups and cars gathering in Circle Drive before everyone headed to the Riverton ballpark, a procession of vehicles moving from the mission to town. Would they come, these kids? His kids to protect. Walks-On came walking around the residence, crouched down on a shady patch of lawn, and surveyed the grounds, rolling his head between the entrance to the church and the museum, a sentinel on alert, and yet the harm was already here. It had arrived unannounced and hidden.
“Believe it,” he said.
20
THE WYOMING STATE Penitentiary sprawled in the west, a collection of squat, dun-colored buildings that shimmered on the brown plains like a mirage that could dissolve with the blink of an eye. To the north was Rawlins, a Western town of wide streets and sand blowing in the wind. The last remnants of the town—warehouses, gas stations, truck stops—had trickled down the highway and stopped a couple of miles back. Vicky exited the highway and took a left onto the paved two-lane road that shot like an arrow toward the penitentiary. Next to the road was a slab of pink concrete with gold lettering carved into the face, like the carved images on a petroglyph: Department of Corrections. Wyoming State Penitentiary.
The road dead-ended at a metal gate that extended from the administration building, a blocklike structure of beige stucco that crept out from the other buildings. Vicky could see the smudge of a corrections officer’s dark blue uniform moving behind the window next to the gate. She pulled into the visitors’ lot and walked back to the building through cones of heat lifting off the pavement. Her own reflection moved across the black-tinted glass on the double doors at the front.
The entry was small, with walls of white concrete blocks and closed doors on either end. There was an oblong window in the wall that divided the entry from an office area where a woman with a mass of blond hair sat hunched over a desk. Vicky bent toward the opening at the base of the window, gave her name, and said that she was there to see Travis Birdsong.
The blond head bobbed from the papers sprawled over the desk to a clipboard holding a sheet with a list of names. She ran an index finger down the list, then looked up and gave a little nod of acknowledgment. Leaning toward an invisible microphone, she said, “Vicky Holden here.”
A couple of seconds passed before an electronic whirring noise cut through the air. “You can go in there.” The woman nodded toward the door on Vicky’s right.
Vicky gripped the metal knob and pushed the door inward. It moved slowly on its hinges, like a slab of steel. She stepped into a large room with the same concrete-block walls, vinyl floor, and faint odor of antiseptic. Rows of lockers lined the wall on the left. Seated at a desk on the right was a security officer in a pressed navy blue uniform. He might be native, she thought, with dark complexion and black hair that shone under the fluorescent ceiling lights. He pushed an opened book across the desk, his face a mask. Columns of signatures and dates ran down the pages. “Sign there,” he said, handing her a ballpoint pen, then pointing to the first vacant line. His tone was as flat as his expression.
After she’d dashed off her signature and the date, the officer said he needed a picture ID. Vicky dug through her bag and handed him her driver’s license, which he stared at for several seconds—glancing up at her, then scrutinizing the postage-stamp photo. Finally he slipped the license into one of the slots on a board next to the desk and removed a badge with the number 365 in black letters. He wrote the number next to her name, then pushed the badge and a key across the desk. “Leave your bag in the locker,” he said, dipping his head in the direction of the wall behind her.
Vicky stuffed her purse into the locker and handed the key back to the officer as the door from the entry opened. Another blue-uniformed officer—a woman in her thirties, sandy hair pulled back from a scrubbed face with a band of freckles on her nose and cheeks—came toward her, right arm extended. “Officer Mary Connor,” she said. Her hand was slender, her grip firm. “I’ll be your escort. We go this way.” She ushered Vicky toward the X-ray screener across the room where the other officer had already stationed himself. The peeping noise startled her as she walked through the security frame.
The dark eyes in the masklike face rested on her for a moment before the man came around and picked up a wand. Vicky stood with her arms out—she knew the drill—while the officer ran the wand up and down about two inches from her body. “Belt buckle,” he announced. She unbuckled her belt and handed it to him. He nodded toward the door beyond the security station.
They were outside then, she and Officer Connor, standing on the hot pavement on the other side of the metal gate, the blue uniform still visible behind the window. A white van pulled up with another officer at the wheel and Vicky climbed inside. “Take any seat,” the woman said behind her. They were the only passengers.
The van made a U-turn and rumbled down the road toward a complex of buildings, moving farther and farther into the empty vastness of the plains, away from her Jeep and the highway she’d sped along, away from the town of Rawlins with sedans and pickups crawling through the streets and people going about their business, away from normalcy.
The van bumped to a stop in front of a smaller version of the administration building, and Vicky followed Officer Connor through the front door to another security checkpoint. A bulky officer with squared creases in his blue uniform shirt waited until she had cleared the security frame. Then he walked around and planted himself in front of the door beyond the checkpoint.
“Where’s she gonna see the inmate?” This was directed to Officer Connor.
“Interview booth,” Connor said.
“I’d like to talk to my client in a private room,” Vicky said.
“This the first time you’ve seen him?” The officer knew that was true; it was obvious in the tone of her voice.
“I know his grandfather.”
“We suggest you conduct the first interview in a booth with a partition between you. You can see your client through the Plexiglas. You’ll communicate by a telephone. It’s for your own safety.”
“I prefer a private room,” Vicky said again. There was so much you could tell about a person, so much you could sense, when you sat across from him without a glass barrier to smooth the impression.
“Your choice. You’ll wear a PMT.” The bulky officer with the creased shirt moved sideways toward a cabinet with rows of cubicles. He pulled out a black, rectangular object the size of a pack of cigarettes and handed it to Connor. It was the same as the objects clipped in both officers’ shirt pockets.
“Personal Monitor Transmitter,” Connor said. “You’ll keep this on you at all times. If you need assistance, you push the red button.” She held out the rectangle and pointed to the red button on top. “Any emergency, you pull this string,” she said, pointing now at the two-inch-long string that dangled from the bottom. “Responders will arrive within seconds.”
Vicky clipped the monitor to the waistband of her slacks and followed the officer outside and across a paved lot, surrounded by concrete walls and high metal fences topped with rolls of concertina wire. They stopped at the door to another building. There was a clicking noise. “They see us,” Connor said, glancing up at the small camera in the wall overhead. “The control room. Doors stay locked until they push a button.”
The officer opened the door and ushered Vicky into an empty, concrete-block room with a wide sweep of gray vinyl floor. They walked across the room to anoth
er door at the far end, waited for the clicking noise, then entered the visitors’ area. There was furniture here, round white tables and neon blue plastic chairs scattered about, a daytime drama flashing on the television that hung from a frame under the ceiling. Two men dressed in loose white shirts and baggy pants, like hospital scrubs, lounged on chairs, staring at the screen. Stacked against the wall on the right were boxes of toys and games and two infant seats. Connor must have been following her gaze, because she said, “This is where families come to visit.”
An officer seated at the desk just inside the door handed Vicky another book with columns of scribbled names and dates. Vicky added her name to the last column.
“Birdsong, your lawyer’s here.” The other officer shouted over the television noise.
A tall, angular man in white unfolded himself out of a chair, his eyes on the TV screen a moment before he swung around and worked his way past the tables toward them. Travis Birdsong was about thirty, she knew, but he seemed older, slightly stooped, with shadows of anger and defeat in the deep-set black eyes, a long face with a prominent nose and black hair that fell along the nape of his neck. He wore soft-soled white shoes that made a shushing noise on the vinyl.
“I’m Vicky Holden,” she said, holding out her hand.
The black eyes narrowed on her hand a moment, as if he were weighing the consequences of touching her. He glanced at Officer Connor before he finally shook Vicky’s hand. She was surprised at the cool smoothness of his palm.
“You can talk here.” Connor called over her shoulder. The officer had already started walking past the windows and doors that ran down the left side of the visitors’ rooms. “Number six,” she said, yanking open one of the doors.
Vicky started after the officer, conscious of the shush of Travis’s soft shoes on the floor behind her. She let Travis duck past, then followed him into a room the size of a large closet with chairs facing each other across a table that took up most of the space.