True Believers

by Jane Haddam

  Out on Cavanaugh Street, Donna Moradanyan had outdone herself. Her own house—the new town house she and Russ had renovated last summer—looked like it had been turned to silk. Red and white silk ribbons covered every inch of the facade, dotted here and there with metallic glittered hearts. In fact, metallic glittered hearts seemed to be what she was most committed to, this particular holiday season. There were a dozen or more on the front of Holy Trinity Church, and even more than that around Lida Arkmanian’s front door. Gregor’s own house had been decorated weeks ago. Donna always did this one first, because it was where she had started to do them in the first place, all those years ago, when they had all just met.

  Bennis was not only out, she was at a local writers’ conference, teaching a seminar on How to Make Fantasy Reality. Her notes were taped all over her refrigerator, which seemed to exist for no other reason than to hold notes. Lord only knew there was never any food in it, and when there was it tended to have grown green mold and taken on a life of its own. They should do something about the apartments, like knock them together and put a staircase between them, but everything he could think of to do seemed to have implications that would lead to repercussions on Cavanaugh Street. Of course everybody knew that they were sleeping together, and most people were relieved, since they’d gone on for years in a kind of relationship limbo where neither of them knew what was happening between them. Still, unmarried people didn’t move into apartments together in neighborhoods like this, unless they wanted to spend most of their time explaining themselves to the Very Old Ladies.

  He was procrastinating. He hated going out to shop. He also hated being in Bennis’s apartment rather than his own, because he couldn’t get to any of his things, and she filled her life with bits and pieces that made no sense to him at all. She had sachet in her underwear drawers. She had silk flowers all over the windowsill in the living room. If he went down to his own apartment, the phone might ring, and it might be Garry or Lou, and then he would be stuck. He picked up his coat where he had left it on Bennis’s couch and went out instead and down the stairs.

  He couldn’t visit old George Tekemanian, because old George was having lunch in the city with his nephew Martin. Martin was always taking old George to restaurants where they set things on fire, and old George was always ready to order something that would be set on fire. Gregor went out on the street and looked up and down. Hannah Krekorian and Sheila Kashinian were standing together a few blocks up in front of Hannah’s house, looking at something in what seemed to be a magazine.

  Gregor went up a block and a half and turned in at Holy Trinity Church. He went down the alley at the side and around the back to Tibor’s apartment. The front door was unlocked. No matter how often or how loudly Gregor lectured people on Cavanaugh Street about the importance of keeping their doors locked, nobody listened to him.

  “Tibor?” he called out.

  “In the kitchen,” Tibor called back.

  Gregor went into the kitchen, where Tibor’s computer was set up at a small table set against one wall. There was also a big table in the middle of the room, with enough chairs to accommodate an old-fashioned family of eight. Tibor’s computer screen was the largest Gregor had ever seen, and the brightest. Bennis had bought it for him for Christmas.

  “What are you doing?” Gregor asked.

  “I am reading a newsgroup,” Tibor said. “I have become a subscriber to several newsgroups. Also to several e-mail discussion lists. The discussion lists are easier than the newsgroups, but the newsgroups have a more interesting mix of people.”

  “A newsgroup is what?” Gregor asked. “The same thing as a chat room?”

  “No, no,” Tibor said. “Krekor, you really have to learn the Internet. Your ignorance is embarrassing. Chat rooms are not worth the trouble. They’re full of people making bad sex jokes, and then it turns out that half of them are FBI agents looking for sexual predators. Back in Armenia, Krekor, I would not have believed that so many men could be pedophiles.”

  “Ah,” Gregor said.

  “Well, it makes no sense, Krekor. What does a man want with a child? By the time I was twenty-six, I couldn’t look at a woman much younger than thirty.”

  “You’re an unusual human being,” Gregor said. “What do you talk about on this newsgroup?”

  “It’s called alt.atheism. We are supposed to talk about atheism. Most of the time, there will be someone from a Christian church who comes to try to convert, and the atheists will swear at him. We have flame wars. Do you know about flame wars?”

  “No.”

  “They are fights, but silly fights. Everybody calls everybody else names. Everybody swears. Well, I do not, Krekor, but you understand what I mean.”

  “What do you do? Do you try to convert people?”

  “No. I discuss the historicity of the Bible with one or two people who are actually very knowledgeable.”

  “It seems like the whole street is having conversations with atheists these days,” Gregor said. “There’s Bennis with that woman, and some group she talked to. It seems odd to me, that atheists would join groups.”

  “Why are you so interested in atheism, Krekor? You’re not even interested in religion. You said to me the other day that nobody commits murder for religion, do you remember that? I thought it was silly.”

  “I meant that nobody commits these kinds of murders for religion,” Gregor said. “You know what I mean by these kinds. Poisoning. Hiding. When people commit murders for religion, they get a machine gun and raid somebody else’s church.”

  “Or the houses of doctors who do abortions, yes,” Tibor said. “So what are you doing here? Hiding from the Philadelphia Police Department? You seem distracted.”

  “Pedophiles,” Gregor said.

  “You have found more pedophiles?”

  “No. No, what you said about pedophiles reminded me. Do you know about that case, the scandal in the archdiocese? I don’t mean have you heard about it, I mean do you know about it, for real, with the details.”

  “I know some, Krekor, yes. You would know some, too, if you ever paid attention to the news. I don’t understand why you buy the newspaper. You never seem to read anything in it but the editorial page.”

  “It’s the only thing I can be sure is completely accurate. People usually know what their own opinions are. But seriously, that case. How many priests were involved? Were the victims all boys, or were there girls—”

  “Wait.” Tibor tapped at his computer. A second later, something came up that seemed to be a list. He tapped again. “Here it is, Krekor. They have a web site.”

  “Who has a web site?”

  “The victims. I ran into it the first week I was on the Internet. I was looking for religion in Philadelphia, and I found it. They were all boys, yes, Krekor, at least the ones who put up this site. And there were a lot of them. Maybe sixty or sixty-five.”

  “Sixty or sixty-five priests were molesting their altar boys in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in the 1960s?”

  “No, no,” Tibor said. “You don’t understand. There were not so many priests, maybe five. But one priest can go through many boys—here it is. See, Krekor, the pictures of the priests are here. Mug shots. One of them was already dead when the suit started, though.”

  Gregor looked at the screen. “THE SHAME OF CATHOLIC PHILADELPHIA,” the headline read, and underneath it there were what did indeed look like mug shots: five men in early to late middle age, wearing clerical collars. Gregor sat back.

  “One of them was dead,” he said. “What about the rest of them?”

  “Three are retired, Krekor, and live in retirement homes for priests. The last one was still in a parish when the scandal broke, and he was removed and has been sent to a psychiatric facility. This was a large matter for discussion in the religious community when it happened, Krekor, because there are implications that may not be immediately clear. It is very difficult to defend yourself against a charge that you committed a crime thirty
years ago. There are many possibilities for abuse.”

  “Do you think that happened here?” Gregor asked. “Do you think the priests may have been innocent, or that some of them were?”

  “No,” Tibor said. “In the case of Father Corrigan, the one who is dead, the one who was the most outrageous offender, there are diaries and other material. He kept very good records. The others have all admitted to the crimes. In this case, there are no implications, only mess.”

  “What about the one who was still in a parish when the scandal broke?” Gregor asked. “What parish was he in?”

  “That would be Father Murphy. He was at Our Lady of the Fields.”

  “Had he been there long? Had he been in other parishes?”

  “Yes, Krekor, of course he had been in other parishes. That was the practice in those days, when a priest had charges of this sort leveled against him by the parishioners, the archdiocese moved him to another parish. But you have to understand that people did not look on those things then the way we do now. They didn’t understand—”

  “No, no,” Gregor said. “I’m not trying to make out a case against the Catholic Church. I’m just trying to figure something out. Was Father Murphy ever at St. Anselm’s?”

  Tibor looked startled. “No, Krekor, he was never at St. Anselm’s. But Father Corrigan was. I’d forgotten that that was where you were looking into the murders.”

  Gregor peered at the computer screen again. “Father Corrigan was the biggest offender,” he said.

  Tibor nodded. “Yes, Krekor, the biggest and also the most determined. The other men, there are a few incidents, and then that seems to be all. With Father Murphy, there were three boys. With Father Roselli, there were two. You see? But with Father Corrigan—he was out of control, we would say now. There were dozens.”

  “All of them at St. Anselm’s?”

  “Most of them, yes. He was there for twenty-five years.” Tibor clicked at his keyboard again and brought up a page that seemed to be devoted to Father Corrigan alone. The mug shot was reproduced there, at three times the size it had been on the main page. Tibor scrolled down and pointed to a triple-column list of names. “There they are,” he said. “The men who have come forward to claim that Father Corrigan molested them when they were children.”

  “Good grief,” Gregor said.

  “Yes, Krekor, I know. A shameful thing. An evil man.”

  “But how could he have done all that without anybody realizing?” Gregor asked. “I mean, even in the sixties, after a while, wouldn’t the archdiocese have begun to suspect that the man had something psychologically wrong—”

  “But Krekor, Krekor. It is possible that they did not know there were so many. It is possible they didn’t know there was even one. The boys would not have been likely to tell anyone. And if they did, they would not necessarily have been believed. And the parents, even if they did believe their children, wouldn’t have wanted the incidents to become public. It was a time when children were blamed for causing these incidents, don’t you see?”

  “I worked for twenty years with serial killers,” Gregor said, “and I know something about patterning in behavior.”

  “Yes, Krekor, but the archbishop of the time was not a policeman, or even a psychiatrist. He did all the wrong things, yes, but he did them with the best of intentions. The man who came after him, now, that was panic. He wasn’t thinking at all. He was only trying to escape.”

  “This was the man who tried to effect the cover-up? The last archbishop before this one?”

  “That’s right, Krekor. But it’s all been taken care of now, you know. There has been a settlement.” Tibor clicked at his keyboard again. A window came up that said “WE WON!!!!” “The men were triumphant, but that is to be expected. Some of them had been trying for years to be taken seriously. One of their mothers, too, who had done the unusual thing at the time and told the archdiocese about Father Murphy, she felt vindicated. She has her own web page. Would you like to see it?”

  “No,” Gregor said, and then, “thank you,” so as not to be rude.

  Tibor looked at him oddly, then clicked the keyboard again. The mug shot disappeared. In its place was a small rectangular billboard that said “Read My Newsgroups!”

  “You are all right, Krekor? Does this have something to do with your murder that you are investigating?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh. Well, there is much information if you want it. There are many articles in the local papers and there is an organization, the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Well, you can imagine. But if there is something you want to know, and you do not feel you can ask the Cardinal about it—” Tibor shrugged.

  “I’m going to go buy Bennis a Valentine’s Day heart,” Gregor said. “Thank you for all the information. It probably means nothing, but you know how that is. I’m going to see Anne Marie this afternoon, did I tell you that? Henry Lord set it up. She wants to talk to me.”

  “It would be of more moment if she wanted to talk to Bennis,” Tibor said. “Or to Christopher, who is coming from California. They will not witness the execution, but they want to be together when it happens. I think it was very wrong of Howard Kashinian to suggest they make popcorn.”

  “I think Howard Kashinian is going to be a murder victim one of these days if he keeps it up,” Gregor said. “Okay, Tibor. I’ll talk to you later. I have to get something that glows in the dark. Literally.”

  “Try Martindale’s,” Tibor said solemnly. “They have them the size of blackboards that play music. It is even very bad music.”

  2

  Gregor went to Martindale’s first, because it was on the way to the station, and then, coming out with the box under his arm, wondered why he wanted to be saddled with the thing halfway across the state. He was going up to the state penitentiary in Henry Lord’s car. He could leave the box in the backseat if he wanted to, instead of carrying it with him through the prison. It still seemed odd to him to be carrying a box of chocolates for one sister while going to visit the other on death row. At any rate, the boxes in Martindale’s were as big as Tibor had said they were, and covered over with so many ribbons and so much glitter they might as well have been wired for neon. They played music, too: “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby” and “Making Whoopie” being the two favorites. Gregor chose “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby.” All euphemisms for sex embarrassed him, as if there was nothing wrong with committing the act, but something wrong about pretending not to.

  He was coming out of Martindale’s when he saw the copy of the Inquirer in a vending machine, with Dan Burdock’s picture on the cover, dressed in ceremonial robes and doing something at an altar. Usually, Gregor got the paper either going to or coming from breakfast, but this morning he had been distracted, and he hadn’t even seen it. Now he put his money in the slot and got a paper out to give it a better look. Once he had it unfolded he could see that there was another picture, of the outside of St. Stephen’s Church, where Roy Phipps and his parishioners were picketing. Roy Phipps looked, Gregor thought, entirely unscathed. No police truncheon had come down on his head during the riot, and he had found clothes in his closet that were cleanly and carefully pressed. Gregor scanned the story. It said nothing much he didn’t already know. Dan Burdock and the parishioners of St. Stephen’s were giving a private prayer service for the victims of the riot. A public, more elaborate service was scheduled for later in the week. Roy Phipps and his people were protesting the “normalizing” of “perversion,” and intended to be back when the formal service was in session, “to bring a little sanity to these times in this place.” Sanity seemed to include more parishioners dressed in bedsheets and crowned with angel’s halos, but that wasn’t the kind of thing Gregor thought he could safely go into.

  He looked the story over one more time. He folded the paper up and put it under his arm. He went back into Martindale’s foyer and headed for the pay phones. Here was a reason to have a cell phone. You could call anyone anytime from
the middle of the sidewalk and not have to waste time at a telephone booth.

  Except that there were no telephone booths anymore.

  Gregor called Henry Lord, and asked, “You’ve got to go right by St. Stephen’s, don’t you, to get out of the city from where you are? Could you pick me up there?”

  Henry had been willing to pick up Gregor on Cavanaugh Street, which was considerably farther out of the way. He would be more than happy to pick up Gregor at St. Stephen’s, even if it meant pulling into the parking lot and searching through the church to find him. Gregor said thank you and took off, turning first left and then right, conscious all the time that neighborhoods changed quickly and—worse, and more annoying—so did the infrastructure. Whoever it was who had decided, sometime in the 1950s, that it made sense to put concrete highway overpasses over ordinary city streets must have been on drugs.

  He got to St. Stephen’s without incident, although he found himself counting homeless people along the way. There always seemed to be more of them instead of fewer, even in good economies. There was something he had never been called on to deal with. He had never been that kind of policeman, and he was glad he hadn’t been. Alcohol and mental illness were beyond his understanding. Drug abuse seemed to him so monumentally stupid he couldn’t imagine what it was people were thinking of when they took their first joint or their first shot of heroin. It was like hanging out a twenty-story window screaming: kill me! kill me!

  When he got to St. Stephen’s, the street was quiet. The doors to both St. Stephen’s and St. Anselm’s were propped open, but Gregor had the impression that they always were. There was no sign of Roy Phipps or any of his angels, although if Gregor tilted his head the right way he could see the tall white cross on Phipps’s town house’s front door.