by Jance, J. A.
Ali was struggling through her memory banks, trying to remember the proper term one should use when addressing a bishop. Was she supposed to call him Your Excellency, or Reverend Gillespie, or was there something else?
“Sit down, sit down,” he urged pleasantly, leading Ali to a chair.
“Sister Anselm is here now, in the ICU?”
Bishop Gillespie nodded. “Yes, they brought her up from the recovery room a few minutes ago. I spoke to the surgeon—an orthopedic guy. He says they set the leg and put in metal plates and screws to hold it in place. It was broken in more than one spot. They won’t be able to schedule the hip replacement until sometime next week. No visitors but relatives,” he added.
“I can’t see her, then?” Ali asked.
“No,” he said. “Sorry. They may let me in later, but then I have special dispensation.”
Having seen Sister Anselm’s damaged leg with her own eyes, Ali wasn’t surprised to learn that more than one surgical procedure would be necessary to repair it. As for the fact that Sister Anselm wouldn’t be allowed any visitors? That was fine with Ali.
“I’m sure you’re startled to find me here,” Bishop Gillespie continued, “but Sister Anselm is rather a special case. Considering the seriousness of the situation, it seemed to me that having a contingent of security guards on hand to keep an eye on her while she’s recovering would be a good idea.”
Ali agreed with that assessment completely. She also liked the fact that the security guards in question appeared to take their responsibilities seriously. They seemed more than capable of handling any unexpected contingency.
“The truth is,” the bishop went on, “if I had really listened to Sister’s concerns—if I had been paying attention—I would have sent one of my cars and a driver to take her to and from the hospital as needed. That’s what I should have done. Now we have to deal with the consequences of my negligence.”
“I’m sure Sister Anselm will forgive you,” Ali said.
“Yes,” Bishop Gillespie agreed. “She’s a very forgiving soul. But knowing she’s come to grievous harm, I’m not at all sure that I shall be able to forgive myself. Then, of course, there’s what happened to you today as well,” he added sadly. “I understand you, too, have sustained some injuries in the process of rescuing Sister Anselm.”
The man seemed so troubled that Ali didn’t want to add to his burden. “Nothing serious,” she said casually. “A few scrapes and bruises, but nothing’s broken.”
“I understand the man responsible for that dreadful attack is dead. It’s difficult to imagine that kind of evil loose in the world. What sort of depraved individual would leave one poor woman to burn to death in a fire and abandon another to die in the desert? Behavior like that is entirely beyond the pale.”
Ali realized that someone had been feeding Bishop Gillespie a whole lot of very accurate information that he wasn’t supposed to have. Despite Agent Donnelley’s embargo on information, Bishop Gillespie seemed to know almost as much about the day’s events as Ali did. Under the circumstances, her best tactic seemed to be changing the subject before she, too, ended up divulging unauthorized information.
“Have you and Sister Anselm been friends for a long time?” she asked.
He nodded. “A very long time,” he said. “Has she told you anything about her background?”
“Some. She told me about her mission and about how, when she’s dealing with badly injured people, she’s often as concerned about healing their broken relationships as she is their broken bodies.”
Bishop Gillespie nodded sagely. “That’s true,” he said. “She’s forever trying to do for others what other people once did for her.”
“The nuns in France, you mean,” Ali said. “Before she became Sister Anselm.”
Bishop Gillespie beamed. “So she did tell you some of it?”
“About losing her parents and being left alone after they died.”
Bishop Gillespie nodded. “Sister Celeste, Sister Anselm’s first mother superior, recognized her natural facility for languages and encouraged her to study as many of them as possible. The convent saw to it that Sister Anslem received a degree in nursing. Once she was able to return to the U.S., she also earned a doctorate in psychology.”
“She never said exactly how that happened,” Ali said. “How she came back home.”
“I’m proud to say a good deal of that was my doing,” Bishop Gillespie said. “She lived and worked in France, speaking all those languages, but she wasn’t French any more than she was German. By then she had given up all hope of reclaiming her birthright as an American citizen. Yes, her family had been badly treated during the war. For her parents and her sister, Crystal City was a prison, but not for little Judith. That was her name then. As a child she had loved the relative freedom of living in the camp. She loved Texas and being out of those cold midwest winters, and she wanted desperately to come back home.
“It was Sister Anne Marie, Sister Anselm’s next mother superior, who first brought her to my attention. That was during the sixties, when I went to Rome as a special envoy to Vatican Two. Sister Anselm was dispatched there to serve as a translator. By then she could speak several additional languages, including fluent Italian and, I’m told, credible Latin as well,” he added with a chuckle. “She made a big impression on me at the time, but it took another fifteen years before I was able to help negotiate her return to this country, first to California and now here. I was also able to help her regain her lost citizenship, so she is now free to travel wherever I need her to go on an American passport.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Ali asked.
“Because I want you to know what a treasure she is,” Bishop Gillespie said, “and because I want you to help me.”
“Help you do what?”
“You may have wondered what Sister Anselm was doing with the latest GPS/networking applications on her iPhone. Those are my doing as well, I’m afraid. When she’s at home, she stays in Jerome, in Saint Bernadette’s, a convent that specializes in treating troubled nuns, but when she’s on the road . . .”
Ali knew from reading Nadine Hazelett’s article that Sister Anselm’s home convent was in Jerome, but she knew nothing of Saint Bernadette’s.
“Wait a minute,” Ali interrupted. “What’s this about troubled nuns?”
“Back when Jerome was a busy mining community, there was a parochial school there. That shut down when the mines did, but the building itself was still in good shape, as was the convent. Since the diocese couldn’t find a suitable buyer at the time, we ended up keeping it. A few years ago we remodeled the place and turned it into a rehab facility.
“It turns out nuns have the same kinds of difficulties everyone else has—anger management issues, substance-abuse issues.” Bishop Gillespie smiled and shrugged. “You name it, we’ve got it. With a doctorate in psychology, Sister Anselm helps out there with the sessions when she’s home, but when she’s on the road, it’s important for me to be able to stay in touch with her, and with some of my other special emissaries as well.
“As I said earlier, over the past several days Sister Anselm had e-mailed me some of her concerns,” Bishop Gillespie continued. “She felt that even in a hospital setting, Mimi Cooper might still be in danger—that the people responsible for the attack on her life might attempt to strike again. She was also concerned that due to working so closely with Mimi, she, too, might be targeted. It turns out she was all too right about that,” he added regretfully. “What do you think?”
Bishop Gillespie’s direct question put Ali on the spot. “I was there,” she said finally. “I know that the man who died this afternoon, Thomas McGregor, is the person most directly responsible for what happened to Sister Anselm, but I don’t believe that he acted alone.”
“Why?” Bishop Gillespie asked. “Who else do you think might be involved?”
“I’ve been told there may have been two people in the vehicle that picked Sister Ansel
m up this morning, supposedly under the guise of giving her a lift to the hospital. The parking attendant at the hotel told me that vehicle was red. The vehicle McGregor was driving this afternoon, the one he abandoned in the desert, was green.”
Bishop Gillespie nodded thoughtfully. “All right,” he said. “That makes sense. Two vehicles; two people. It’s my understanding, Ms. Reynolds, that you were with Sister Anselm at the time she was rescued. Was she able to tell you anything about the identity of her attackers?”
Ali shook her head. “No, she was in bad shape by the time I found her, but if she recognized her attacker, she didn’t pass that information along to me. She wasn’t able to.”
“I’m quite confident she would have, had she been able,” Bishop Gillespie said, patting Ali’s hand. “She trusts you implicitly.”
“I’m not sure why,” Ali said.
“Sister Anselm is a very good judge of character,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons she’s good at her job.”
“What about her e-mails to you?” Ali asked. “Did she give you any theories about who might have been behind that initial attack on Mimi Cooper? And did you know Mimi Cooper died earlier this evening?” Ali added as an afterthought.
“Yes, I know,” Bishop Gillespie replied. “I was made aware of Mimi’s passing. As for Sister Anselm’s suspicions? She had several interesting takes on the situation. She was quite certain the victim’s spouse, Mr. Cooper, was in no way responsible.
“Sister Anselm found the son and the daughter to be quite contemptible, individually and collectively, but she also regarded them both as relatively ineffectual. She didn’t believe either of them would have the intestinal fortitude to plan or carry out this kind of horrific action. Still, she said there was something insidiously personal about the attack.”
“Yes,” Ali agreed. “Which brings us back to Thomas McGregor. I’m sure he holds the key to everything—to what happened to Sister Anselm today as well as to the attack on Mimi Cooper on Monday.”
“What is Sheriff Maxwell’s department doing to make those connections?” Bishop Gillespie asked, then held up a cautioning hand. “Please understand that I wouldn’t be at all offended if you’re not authorized to tell me. This is, after all, an ongoing investigation.”
Except it isn’t, Ali thought. Dave had already told her that Sheriff Maxwell was deferring to Agent in Charge Donnelley.
“As far as I know,” Ali said, “no one in Phoenix has initiated any kind of investigation into the matter of Sister Anselm’s abduction.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Bishop Gillespie said with a smile. “I reported it myself. Phoenix is the kidnap capital of the world at the moment, but most of the ones that happen here are drug-related and involve people being held for ransom. A non-drug-related kidnapping with no ransom demand, a recovered victim, and a dead perpetrator isn’t high on anyone’s list of priorities.”
That was Ali’s take on the situation as well, but she didn’t comment aloud.
“It’s unfortunate,” Bishop Gillespie continued, “but that’s the way it is. Yes, the person who tried to murder Sister Anselm earlier today, the trigger man as it were, may be dead, but the person or persons who set him on that evil path is not. My main concern and my main reason for becoming involved is to protect Sister Anselm from suffering any further harm. To do that may require some coloring outside the lines, as my mother used to say. That’s where you come in.”
“Me?” Ali echoed. “How?”
“I know from the online research we did on you that you’re acquainted with a certain young man up in Sedona, a very useful young man by the name of B. Simpson.”
Ali’s jaw literally dropped. She didn’t expect Bishop Gillespie to know about B., or Ali’s relationship to him, but clearly the bishop was a talented interrogator, and there was no reason to deny it.
“Yes,” she said.
“I suspect that a request for help coming directly from me might not rate high on Mr. Simpson’s to-do list. I believe you might have a better in with him.”
“Possibly,” Ali said. “What kind of help do you need?”
“I was informed that Mr. McGregor’s having a cell phone with him was something of an anomaly.”
Ali nodded. “That’s my understanding as well.”
“At the moment I happen to have two phone numbers in my possession,” he said. “One is the number of the phone Mr. McGregor was using, and the other is the number of the phone that was used to call him numerous times in the last week or so. I won’t mention how it is that I came to have access to those numbers. That would be indiscreet. I was told that since they’re from disposable phones, there is no way they can be traced, but I happen to know better. I believe that if someone as resourceful as Mr. Simpson were to apply himself to this problem, he might do a great deal to give us some answers, and we need answers, Ms. Reynolds. We need answers in the very worst way.”
With that, Bishop Gillespie reached into his vest pocket and extracted a single piece of paper. When he held it out to Ali, she hesitated, but only for a moment. It seemed clear to her that no one else was looking out for Sister Anselm right then. In that regard, Bishop Gillespie was the only game in town.
“Thank you,” he said when she took it. “I’ll only be here for another hour or so, but my people will be here twenty-four/seven. There are these two here in the waiting room, two in the lobby, one outside in the parking garage, and one roving about. That is to say that you needn’t trouble yourself about Sister Anselm’s safety so long as she’s here. I’m more concerned about her safety once she leaves the hospital.”
“Yes,” Ali said, slipping the paper into her own pocket.
“Don’t worry about getting in touch with me,” Bishop Gillespie added. “I’ve taken the liberty of writing my cell phone number on that slip of paper as well—down at the bottom of the page. Feel free to call me. Anytime.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” she managed.
“None of that,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “Just call me Father,” he said. “That works.”
Riding down in the elevator, Ali reflected on what she’d heard. With Bishop Gillespie’s support, Sister Anselm had devoted her life to repaying a long-ago act of Christian charity. Unfortunately, more than half a century later, that repayment effort had resulted in an unsuccessful attempt on Sister Anselm’s life.
It was after midnight when Ali stepped off the elevator in the hospital lobby. At first she thought the place was deserted, but before she could make it into the garage elevator, a man came hurrying after her, calling out, “Hey, Ali. Wait up.”
Wishing she had the red wig on her head instead of in her briefcase, Ali turned to face the man who trotted after her. He turned out to be none other than the ELF-specializing investigative reporter, Kelly Green.
“How is she?” he wanted to know.
“How is who?” she returned.
The garage elevator door opened. She stepped on. So did he.
“You know who I mean,” he said. “That nun they call the Angel of Death. I believe she had been looking after Mimi Cooper.”
Ali simply stared at him and said nothing while Kelly rushed on. “I understand that McGregor guy, the one who got killed earlier today and who allegedly started the fire in Camp Verde, is someone with long-term connections to ELF. What about this injured nun? What’s her connection? I’m working on a book on the Earth Liberation Front, you see,” he explained. “Anything you could tell me would be greatly appreciated.”
“I’m not authorized to talk about this, and neither is anybody else,” she said curtly. Stepping around him, she exited into the garage. She was grateful to see one of Bishop Gillespie’s security guards watching from the far side of the building.
“I could make it worth your while,” Kelly said with an ingratiating smile.
Ali was not impressed.
“Is that how it worked with Devon?” she asked. “You slipped him a little something now a
nd then as a bribe in exchange for his feeding you information that allowed you to scoop everyone else?”
Green’s smile faded. “That wasn’t what I meant,” he said.
It was exactly what he meant, and they both knew it.
“With Devon off on administrative leave, who’s your source inside the department these days?” Ali asked.
“I don’t have one,” Green said quickly. “The stuff about McGregor came from the media relations folks over at the ATF.”
“No,” Ali said, “it didn’t. No information on this afternoon’s incident has been released to anyone, not officially at any rate, and if it leaks out before Agent Donnelley is ready, I’m going to let him and anyone else who is interested know that you’re the most likely source.”
Green looked shocked. “If you do that, I’ll be locked out of the loop. I won’t be able to do my research—”
“Exactly,” Ali said. “So who told you about Sister Anselm and Thomas McGregor?”
“I never reveal my confidential sources,” he declared.
“Maybe so,” Ali returned, “but if you don’t tell me, I’ll see to it that you don’t have any sources left, confidential or otherwise. As for that book you’re supposedly working on? It won’t be much of a blockbuster if you no longer have access to any of the official information coming from inside the various investigative organizations.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” he said.
“Try me,” she said, pulling out her phone. “I happen to have Agent Robson’s phone number right here. If I let him know you’re leaking information about what went on this afternoon, you’ll be history.”
“But I didn’t,” he whined. “I haven’t told anybody.”
“You told me,” she said. “That counts as telling.”
For several long moments she waited while Kelly Green shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Once, when Chris was four, Ali had caught her son telling fibs. She remembered his doing the same thing, shifting guiltily back and forth from one foot to the other under his mother’s unflinching gaze. Eventually Chris had told the truth, and so did Kelly.