Even after a half dozen strokes, Brother Jerome had said that his mind could very well be “as sharp as a scalpel.” Only his body had failed him. Sebastian would give his next three days’ worth of meals to know for sure. What percolated inside Brother Augustine’s head?
Sebastian rotated his shoulders and probed the monk’s wizened face, creased with deep crevices and marred with liver spots and moles, some protected with thin adhesive strips. His silver-coated eyes popped open. Feebly, he tried to raise his left hand, but failed. Was there a way to reach him, to get him to respond?
The brother struggled to shift his head and gaze at the tray of food. Sebastian scurried to assist him. He fed him until his head again drooped to the side and his eyes closed. Sebastian noticed grime in the wheelchair’s nooks and crannies. They focused so much on the brother’s personal hygiene, Brother George and the others had neglected cleaning his wheelchair.
A stain on the aluminum hand rim looked odd to Sebastian—and eerily familiar. He rubbed his fingertip over it. There was no denying what he suspected. Dried blood. But whose? Of course, the brother might have bled a number of times. Cut while being shaved or while having his nails and what was left of his white hair trimmed. Anything might explain it. If only they housed an onsite lab. Maybe Brother Jerome’s magnifying glass might show a similarity between the blood on Brother Augustine’s chair and JC’s. Ridiculous notion, he knew.
He suppressed a sigh, remembering some of the odd banter from the brothers. “The Dalakis Curse.” The devil had made someone do it. Brothers Giles and Micah both insisted a force nearly as powerful as God had possessed the killer. Might a demon have seized the frail Brother Augustine, turning him into a coldhearted killer with the strength of a twenty-five-year-old wrestler? The sardonic laughter in Sebastian’s mind sent a chill along his spine. He forced a smile and shook his head.
“Would you like to look outside?” Sebastian kept his voice airy and light. “There’s not much to see through the storm, but you can just make out the trees and the barn. Imagine it all in spring, not too far away, with everything in bloom.”
He eased Brother Augustine to the window. The squeak of his wheels, the sole sound rising from Brother Augustine, connected the two. Dark shadows matted the snowy landscape. The brother appeared mesmerized by the storm. His gray eyes widened.
“I’m unsure if you can hear or understand me,” Sebastian said, squinting out the window alongside Brother Augustine. “Bad things have taken place here the past few weeks. Brother George might’ve told you while he’s cared for you. I respect the sagacity you’ve acquired over the years.” He glimpsed at the brother in the windowpane, as if he were an old friend Sebastian’s age. “I’ll spare you the details. We had a guest, a young man about twenty. We don’t know how he came here or why or where he came from. Perhaps you saw him push through the snowstorm some weeks back. Well, now he’s dead. Yes, someone murdered him. Right here inside Mt. Ouray.”
He observed the brother. Had his irises shrunk when Sebastian had mentioned murder? Was that a tear poised in the corner of his eye? One of sadness or of knowledge, or merely the watering of a diseased eye? The sides of his mouth twitched. Sebastian gazed back out the window.
“Father Paolo insisted I investigate,” he continued with his mock conversation. “Now I suspect he wants me to ignore what’s happened, thinking maybe I’ve failed. I cannot do that. It’s in my blood to find answers until there are no more clues left to decipher. I used to be a homicide detective with the Philadelphia Police Department. You might already know. Rumors travel fast inside the abbey. If you can hear, you’d know that I came here to escape big city corruption and crime. And now, it’s right back at my feet. Almost funny, in a way.”
A minor grunt emanated from Brother Augustine’s dry throat. Sebastian turned to him, leaned in closer at eye level, expecting to witness a spark of life.
“Can you hear me, Brother Augustine?” He watched him. Desperate for an answer, knowing one could never come. Yet he persisted. “Is there anything you can tell me about JC’s murder? Please, move something. Bat an eye, wiggle a finger. Anything to give me a clue that you understand me.”
Sebastian’s face soured, and he turned away his nose. The brother had comprehended not a single word. His guttural moan hadn’t come in response to Sebastian’s pleading. Sebastian sighed, rolled up his tunic sleeves, and wheeled the venerable monk out the door toward the bathroom, where he hoped to run into Brother George to help him change his diaper.
The sound of Brother Augustine’s squeaking wheels echoed in the corridors like a scream into oblivion.
Chapter Fifteen
WET towels steamed on the hearth for when Father Paolo and Lucien finished. They were naked, tucked under each other before the hissing fire, embraced in a sixty-nine knot.
Father Paolo rested his throbbing lips, looked aside while Lucien engulfed him on top. The father lifted his pelvis to meet Lucien’s mouth. He wanted him to take him deeper. Lucien obliged. He never resisted the father. Even when he emitted a soft gag—the gurgle of a drowning lamb—Lucien pleased him unwaveringly.
The father came while staring into the dying fire. Lucien sat upright, wiped his mouth.
He reached for a hot towel and swabbed the father, moistening the towel in the large ceramic bowl between one or two wipes. The father wanted to take Lucien again, this time forcing him on his back. But he knew he lacked the stamina to finish. Best to lie still, allow his underling to fuss over him with the warm towel bath, which felt so soothing on his aging muscles and left a delightful scent of eucalyptus as the steam rose off his glistening flesh.
When he finished, Lucien set the towel aside and fed the fire more of the old New Yorkers Father Paolo kept stacked in his closet, some dating back as far as two decades. Blue flames curled from the glossy pages. Lucien stepped back. Father Paolo laid a hand on his bare shoulder.
“It’s time for you to dress and retire to your cell, dear Lucien.”
“If you say so, Father.” Lucien dressed in his tunic and scapular and cinched the leather belt around his waist. Father Paolo dressed also, but left his tunic uncinched and the scapular balled against the round table, where he’d tossed it when he’d grabbed for the already disrobed Lucien.
“Can I get you anything else before I leave?” Lucien asked after slipping on his sandals.
Father Paolo, lifting his eyeglasses from the table and situating them over his nose, shook his head. “I’ll be heading for my own cell shortly. Careful you don’t wake the others. They aren’t sleeping as soundly as they used to.”
“Should I carry the towels to the laundry for Brother Hubert?”
“Leave them for now. Good night, Lucien.”
“Good night, Father.”
He realized he’d hurt Lucien by not kissing him on his cheek the way he often did before he’d leave. He did not feel like it that night. He’d already spent a half hour locked against his body. Though he enjoyed the physical contact, he needed a break from him. They’d been spending too much time together. Once Lucien had satisfied him, Father Paolo longed for solitude. To think.
He paced his office, letting his fingertips brush the top of his mahogany desk with each passing. The cello in the corner by the fireplace appeared in his eyes with every sharp spin of his heels. The same cello avô had given him for his fourteenth birthday. His grandfather had saved for years to purchase it from the owner of Vila de Seda’s sole fado bar, where lonely peasant women sang in exchange for companionship.
Whenever he needed to relax, he’d play it—or whenever he wanted to relax someone else. He had massaged the strings for JC. The strange young man had no interest in Bach or Dvorak. He’d stared at the cello as if it were an alien creature without legs. Never even heard of the great Portuguese cellist Guilhermina Suggia. No musical appreciation. No taste for fine vinho.
No understanding for the elegance of lovemaking.
JC had rejected him. Flat out. He had a b
ad track record the past few postulants. Was he losing his touch? Perhaps he needed to update his repertoire. Youth of today lacked any admiration for the finer things in life. Perhaps that’s why the older Brother Lucien had been an easier procurement.
But, like Father Paolo, Lucien had come from Europe. Europeans understood life’s nuances. They appreciated the subtle tuft of a newly lit candle, whereas Americans delighted in the roaring of engines. The thirst for the big and physical had soared them into outer space, yes. Did they value the feel of fine leather under their bones, sitting before a blaze that came from a stone fireplace rather than the backside of a rocket ship?
That demand for the tangible, to dissect and explore, had led Brother Sebastian to insist on a reexamination of JC’s body. To their surprise, the father had allowed it. He’d had a long day on the phone with superiors in Denver and hadn’t wanted to deal with “Detective Harkin’s” hankerings. Little difference it had made. The second autopsy had proved futile. Something about scant evidence showing up under a magnifying glass. All the better.
Then Brother Micah had badgered him to have the body kept out of the walk-in freezer.
“I don’t want it returned there,” he’d cried, standing before Father Paolo’s desk while Brothers Sebastian and Jerome conducted the autopsy in the infirmary. “Please, Father, you must have it stored somewhere else.”
“We have nowhere else to put it,” the father had said, shocked at the brother’s bold insistence. “The body must be kept preserved and hidden. Where else but the freezer?”
“Every time I go in there to get something to prepare for a meal, I see it in the corner, the trash bags covered in frost. It’s horrible for me to be in the kitchen each day, and for the other brothers who help me from time to time. I’ve prayed for strength, but I don’t think I’ve gotten any. I don’t want it put back there. Please, Father, once they are done with it, have them take it away for good.”
“But where, my dear brother? I can’t think of any other solutions.”
Brother Micah had seemed to ponder. His eyes, red and moist, had burned holes into the carpet. “Can’t we store it in the barn?” he’d finally said, looking beseechingly at the abbot. “It’s freezing outside. Out there, it’ll preserve just as well as in the walk-in freezer.”
Brother Micah had sparked a wondrous idea. Splendid, indeed.
And so the father had made it happen.
Mid-March had already arrived. The snowstorms continued, but spring reared around the corner along with the first signs of snowmelt. The warmer days of April brought out the forest service workers to clear the road, trailed by the villagers below, eager to see if the monks had fared well during the harsh winter. They were already calling two, sometimes three times a day to reserve rooms in the cottage house. Denver’s bishop had already expressed eagerness to visit along with his entourage. They’d descend upon the abbey like locusts.
In the past he’d greeted them with open arms, his wide tunic sleeves flapping in the spring breezes. He’d looked forward to the slew of new summer retreatants coming for their discernments. Fresh men, young and old, arriving at Mt. Ouray. He had a growing list of interested postulants who’d e-mailed the abbey wanting information.
In a few months, a choice flock of new pickings would stand before him. He always knew which new arrivals to handpick too, and encourage them to come back in the autumn as postulants. Strength of character was important, of course. They needed to preserve. But a youthful man with an uncertain glint in his eyes charmed Father Paolo. One requiring guidance and understanding. New blood for their world.
Casey Galvan had been one such retreatant. Father Paolo had persuaded him to return to the abbey after his first visit. He’d been a tough nut to crack. No doubting his sexuality. But from the first day, Father Paolo had detected the burning fire in his belly for only one of them—Brother Sebastian.
The father’s envy had faded to shrugs. He could live without Brother Casey’s big brown eyes gazing upon him, or the subtle feel of his smooth flesh stretched over taut muscles. He had his beloved Lucien, and on rarer occasions, Brother Micah. But how much time had sprinted past since their last tryst? Two years? When he, Lucien, and Brother Micah had enjoyed each other’s combined bodies by the fire. Brother Micah, constantly anguishing over trifling matters, had aged far quicker than any of the other monks.
And there was young Brother Rodel. Always cowering behind his scapular hood. At first, Father Paolo believed he wouldn’t preserve. When he requested to take his final vows after only a year, the father had been stunned indeed. Thus far he seemed a perfect fit for Mt. Ouray. Little doubt he’d remain at the abbey for the remainder of his life.
But the body of JC left a schism between him and his new challenges wider than the Red Sea. Word of a murder might keep them away in droves. Scandals had a way of repelling even the most insensitive of people. He’d seen it happen to monasteries before, both in the United States and Europe. The Church ushered in new abbots or priors and monks, shuffling them around to keep the protracted claws of the media and law off their backs. The FBI had only last year sealed the doors to a monastery in Louisiana.
He could not have that happen to him. Not after his dedication and effort to achieve this position. And he was so close to reaching the title of Dom. Besides, the Church and the community looked up to him. A scandal would disillusion them.
He lit a cone of incense, as if to mask the anticipated stink of a rotting corpse. He stood still and watched the smoke coil toward the ceiling. The incense eased his anxiety. He could lose himself in the subtlety of the wisp of smoke and the scent of juniper. He paced again.
Night after night, he’d lost sleep over what might befall him and his abbey should the world discover their awful secret. While the others had tossed and turned away the dark hours, he’d paced the cold floor of his cell barefoot, or returned to his spacious office with its opulence and sat snug at his desk to think.
Brother Casey had already dallied on the “off limits” computer, most likely on Brother Sebastian’s request. Those two were more entwined than English ivy and oak. Brother Hubert had been lax in letting his passwords lie around for easy viewing. Luckily, he’d caught it in time and cleaned the cache and created new passwords, hidden away from nosy brothers.
The chance that Brother Casey had uncovered the porn sites little concerned the father. With everything going on at the abbey, his occasional venture into Internet porn—and most likely Brother Hubert’s and Lucien’s—was a minor infraction.
Someone in Pennsylvania had already reported a man missing matching JC’s description. The family had traced his travels to Denver on a Greyhound and another bus line to Telluride, where his cell phone and credit card trail had reached a dead end. Where those two items were now, Father Paolo had no idea. Certainly it would not take the family long to find them and track his movements to Monfrere, where someone might have recalled seeing him. Maybe a villager had picked up JC hitchhiking in the snow. There was no mention of why he’d left home.
He stopped pacing in midthought and clutched his desk to balance himself. The fire smoldered. Their winter wood supply had dwindled and they had resorted to using old magazines and rolled-up paper bags. March, the season of Lent, was always like that. A time for austerity and waiting.
He pulled back the velour drapes and gazed out the darkened windowpane. Outside, windswept snowdrifts piled higher and higher. God’s fortress kept them safe for now. But spring’s warmth and brightness perched beyond Mt. Ouray’s lofty peak. What would the world find on their abbey grounds once the days lengthened and the snows melted?
April in the San Juan Mountains often arrived fiercer than January. But it also could land gentler than a bunny’s hop. They needed to work fast. He must square away the matter of JC’s body before the eager feet of outsiders came faster and in larger numbers, their nosiness awakening with the butterflies and wild roses. He fretted that forest rangers might come by once the storms c
eased, as they sometimes did, to check on them.
The father had overheard the gossip in the corridors that grew with verve each day.
“Didn’t you hear Brother Jerome? He said it was a blunt force trauma. That means someone hit him.”
“Do you think so, Brother George?”
“The minute I saw that boy lying in the infirmary, I knew he’d be trouble.”
“We all feel that way now, Brother Giles.”
“Brother Eusebius did it.”
“Oh, but Brother Lucien, why would you say such a thing?”
“He’s not even a real Catholic.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s a convert. Didn’t you know?”
“I think I remember Brother Hubert telling me that once. But that doesn’t mean anything. I think it makes him more pious, in a way. Isn’t Brother Hubert a convert too?”
Father Paolo’s sneaking up on them would scatter them like mice. He’d stand his ground, grinning over his power. Certainly he must insist they keep their mouths shut, even among each other, and maintain focus on Opus Dei.
Their predicament demanded great care and shrewdness.
If he must, he’d place them all in solitary confinement indefinitely. Accuse them of guilt. Use threats to get them to comply with his wishes.
He let the curtain dangle back in place, strode to his desk. He leaned back in his chair, brought his hands under his chin with his elbows resting on the armrests. Inhaling the perfume of incense, he closed his eyes. The gears of his mind churned and ground.
A homicide had taken place inside their abbey. Yet it wasn’t as bad as one might think. Brother Jerome had concluded the point-blank blow to JC’s head hadn’t killed him. The rash decision to wrap his body in plastic bags and conceal him inside the freezer had caused his death. Brother Sebastian had said authorities would charge the culprit with either manslaughter or “criminal negligence.” He had googled both terms and found Colorado law rather sensible on the matter. “Manslaughter,” a class four felony. Many cases had resulted in the defendants spared from serving any jail time. “Criminal negligence,” a class five felony, mandated even lesser consequences.
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