All these actions, thoughts, took scant seconds, as they always do in a crisis.
The guide nudged the client’s rifle barrel a shade to the left, lifting it a trifle too.
Paint-by-numbers shooting.
The panther, panting, eyed the two men, perhaps hoping for food or water, not death.
Max gritted his teeth, not knowing whether to lift his video camera or binoculars or gun.
Suddenly the crouching panther backed up, snarling, staring to the side as if stung.
A small black banshee came screeching out of the bushes, charging the big cat’s face, swiping at the long, thick muzzle whiskers.
The panther, more shocked than angered, backed up farther, growling.
The small animal leaped to harry its rear, dashing in, then away, spitting and screeching, sparring at the creature’s huge haunches.
Before Max could blink, the tiny spitfire had herded the panther back into the shack like a lion tamer maneuvering the king of the jungle onto a one-foot-diameter circus pedestal.
Max glanced at hunter and guide. Their rifle barrels drooped toward the ground in their slack grasps like agape jaws.
Before the impotency image could harden, the guide rallied, lifted his rifle, and shot into the shack. Wood splintered from a Big Bang that reverberated across the desert and drilled into Max’s ears.
Apparently the staff of Rancho Exotica aimed to please.
The guide stalked toward the shack, ratcheting another bullet into the chamber, determined to drive the animals from their shelter.
He came right up to the shack, rifle raised and pointed, ready to fire again.
This time the black banshee fell from the sky…fell from the branches of a palo verde tree leaning over what was left of the shack’s roof. The plunge knocked the guide’s jaunty bush hat to the ground, exposing his face to a whirlwind attack of slugging claws. The man went down on one knee, but the rifle hit the ground and discharged….
Directly into the shack, at just-above-ground level.
A roar seemed to explode the rotten wood structure, then the black panther itself exploded snarling into the sunlight, muzzle drawn back to expose stalactites and stalagmites of teeth gleaming ice white in the sunshine.
Thirty feet away, the hunter lifted his rifle again, walking toward his distracted target, who was posed like a ’50s porcelain panther, muscular and frozen, a sitting duck….
The protesters, seeing the inevitable, wailed as one and lurched up from the cover of the wash, charging and climbing the fence until it broke under their weight.
To Max in his observation post, it was like watching diverse blips on a radar screen converging for a spectacular, fatal meeting in the middle.
There was no humanly possible way he could intervene. Disaster on a converging course. The determined hunter with his rifle bearing down on the panther, the guide rolling and screaming and nursing his blood-blinded face, the bloody-fool protesters surging to put themselves between hunter and prey…good God, Max thought in slow motion, this was not just a showdown between hunter and prey but between murderer and…and witness!
He gathered himself for the most spectacular athletic vault of his career, down into the middle of it all he would plunge…
And was beaten to the punch by the same black banshee that had corralled the panther and savaged the guide.
The black cat ran out from the shadows in which he had circled behind the hunter. He leaped up to land on his neck like a vampire leech, a nightmare even Edgar Allen Poe couldn’t have dreamed of in his most fevered hallucinations.
The man dropped to the ground just as Max landed in front of him—knees bent to absorb the punishing shock, hands out to wrest the rifle barrel from his grasp and smash the butt into the man’s suddenly exposed jaw, the bush hat and sunglasses flying away to reveal…
Max had no time to linger.
He looked around. The guide’s face was a road map of claw marks. He was out of it.
The protesters had circled the still-crouching, growling panther, singing “We Shall Overcome” off-key.
Max spotted an oncoming flash of red through the palo verdes. He grabbed the hunter by the khaki lapels, looked into the dazed face.
“Why?” Max asked.
The bleary eyes focused on his, then went AWOL.
Max looked up. Temple was almost here. He would have to get the answer to that question later.
Best he be gone now.
He looked around for the black cat.
Midnight Louie had made the same, split-second decision.
Great minds and all that…
He was thinking of Louie, of course.
Chapter 49
Bless Me, Mother
There was no way Matt was going to join three nuns in attending 5:00 P.M. mass without committing to 6:00 P.M. supper afterward.
Or so Sister Seraphina had told him on the phone.
“We’re used to six A.M. mass, you know, Matt, dear. But we understand that with your late-night radio show that’s early for you. So let’s make an occasion of it. It will be such a treat to see you.”
“Can we make it supper at seven? I want to visit with Father Hernandez after mass.” How many Hail Marys, Matt wondered, did it take to wash away lying to a nun? To an old nun. That was worse than taking candy from a kindergartener.
Kitty the Cutter was pushing him down the slippery slope to deception and sin already.
But Sister Seraphina had accepted the lie as only logical, and Matt prepared to put in twenty-four hours of fretting before his meeting with Molina.
He had almost been tempted to poll callers on his radio show on whether he was doing the right thing to involve Molina, but people stressed out by their own problems made impenetrable Wailing Walls for the woes of others.
He got through the day by rote, avoiding everyone, seeing phantoms everywhere. Now he understood the power of paranoia.
The poetic justice of it all hung over him like a looming guillotine of conscience. Once he had tracked Cliff Effinger. Now he was tracked.
Except Effinger had probably been too mean, and too dumb, to worry about a stalker as Matt did.
And Kathleen O’Connor was a lot more demonstrably dangerous than Matt ever had been.
At four-thirty Saturday night, Matt’s new old Probe joined the streams of cars heading somewhere to have fun in Las Vegas.
He headed south, away from the city, then circled back toward North Las Vegas. He watched his rearview mirror as if some hood had hidden in the backseat to hold a knife on him. A stalker was only a rear-seat hood, one car-length removed.
No vehicle seemed to stay near him long.
When he finally pulled into the old-fashioned alley behind Our Lady of Guadalupe convent, not a car was in sight. He parked in the deep shade of an ancient pine tree anyway. Pine and palm trees, only one more signpost of how schizophrenic a city Las Vegas was, an oasis in the desert, a theme-park town with a variegated bouquet of socially acceptable sin and churches of every sect known to religion.
A knock at the convent’s back door produced Sister Mary Monica, beaming like a frail apple-faced doll. She swept him into the large, spare kitchen like a prodigal son.
“How wonderful to see you!” Sister Seraphina O’Donnell just swept him into a wholehearted hug. “We know you’re so busy nowadays, but we do miss your visits.”
“Busy is no excuse,” Matt said, seeing that they had already set out the supper plates in the plain dining room with its cluster of small, separate tables. He felt like a worm for using them as a cover.
The six nuns chatted happily as they all walked to the nearby church in the warm afternoon sun. Las Vegas didn’t offer the tree-shaded streets of the Midwest, but the climate’s sun-scoured, healthy openness was always an upper. Our Lady of Guadalupe’s spire, capped with red tile, simmered in the last blaze of undiluted afternoon sunlight.
The nuns’ short black veils seemed more like linen mantillas than a last vesti
ge of more formal habits. Matt almost felt himself transported back to the heyday of California’s Hispanic-Catholic culture. Young and middle-aged people were also converging on the old-fashioned adobe church. Their half-Latino, half-Anglo greetings and banter gave the forthcoming ritual a preface of celebration.
Matt could literally feel and see a community assembling, and for a moment he was homesick for his past at the center of so much goodwill.
But when his party passed into the shade inside the church and dipped their fingertips in the tepid holy water of the entrance fonts, when the sign of the cross replaced chatter and the only sounds in the interior stillness were the scrape of soles on floor tile and the thump of kneelers being lowered to the floor, he felt he was back a hundred years, or maybe only thirty, and about to hear a Latin mass.
Illusion, of course. The nuns led the way to a pew near the front and bracketed him in their midst. He managed to study the confessionals as they entered.
Darn! They were on both sides of the church. He’d forgotten to tell Molina which side to meet at.
The choice was simple: on one side St. Joseph ruled at the tiny side altar. On the other, Mary. There was an assignment for the amateur operative: which would Molina choose?
It was bad enough to arrange to slink into one of the unused little rooms; playing musical confessional would attract certain attention.
He glanced around as the congregation stood for the entrance of the celebrant and two altar boys…one altar boy and one altar girl, what do you know? Molina was about as tall as he was, and he didn’t spot her anywhere in this traditionally short crowd.
So even as the familiar prayers and responses of the mass settled on him like a warm, familiar blanket of sound and motion, Matt found himself fidgeting, fretting. Turning slightly to check out the pews. Studying the confessionals: three doors with a tiny arched window covered with pleated white linen.
At communion time, he was so distracted that he was mostly thinking about how he’d have such a good view of both confessionals on the way back to his seat. Then was the time to spot Molina, or make a choice. And he should also be on the lookout for Miss Kitty. It’d be just like her to show up where least expected. Imagine sliding behind one wooden door and finding her in the confessor’s seat!
Worry, Matt realized, was a great distraction from prayer, so he settled down and asked God to help him find the right confessional, please.
Not a very noble request, but all he could muster.
Someone tugged at his sleeve. He had stood automatically with everyone else for Father Hernandez’s exit. “We’ll see you back at the convent later,” Sister Seraphina whispered.
Matt nodded, kneeling again quickly and burying his face in his hands as if in private prayer. Why had he decided to go with the nuns? They had chosen a pew far too close to the altar. There was no way to turn around discreetly to figure out if everyone had left, or Molina had arrived. If she would come. Maybe something had come up, an emergency.
The church was still and growing dark except for the eternal red light near the altar, signifying the presence of the Eucharist. Maybe this meeting mocked the place and its purpose. What had he been thinking of? Desperately consulting Molina, that’s what. Kinsella was not much help. Matt needed comfort as well as aid, and Molina was the only person besides Kinsella he figured was strong enough to go near and not risk her life.
So she might aid him. Comfort? That was a foolish, reflexive need. Nobody got comfort anymore, except the dying in a hospice.
He sat on the pew and bent to lift the kneeler out of the way. The sound of it resting against the pew back ahead echoed like a single knock on a big wooden door.
Matt stood, tossed a mental coin, and opted for St. Joseph. A lot of women reared Catholic had overdosed on the Virgin Mary by age twenty. Molina would choose Joseph, because he was a missing person as far as the Scriptures went. He was a mystery and she was a cop.
Matt opened the nearest confessional door and slid in, checking the church. Utterly vacant, except for the Eucharist.
He had forgotten how dark these old confessionals were, although St. Stanislaus in Chicago had kept sinners lined up for confessionals long after the ritual, renamed and repositioned as the sacrament of reconciliation and practiced face-to-face in well-lit rooms, had become commonplace.
He felt his way to the vague white square of pleated linen, the priest’s porthole, so to speak, on the ocean of self-proclaimed sinners that would come in wave after wave on both sides of his claustrophic box. Matt had been there.
Matt knelt. This kneeler wasn’t even padded—ouch! Nothing like the Spanish for blending religion and pain. Guess sinners didn’t merit padding.
He heard a wooden panel sliding open, a soft stiletto of sound, like honing a knife. Or a razor. For a moment he imagined Kitty the Cutter lying in wait, a gray silhouette seen through a linen curtain pleated thickly.
“This is the kinkiest meet with a snitch I’ve ever had,” Molina’s voice whispered through the material instead. “I used to have to go with my grandmother to these guilt boxes when I was a very young kid. She took forever too! What took those old people so long in confession?”
Matt smiled. That one he could answer. “What children and the old confess is remarkably similar. In both cases, innumerable venial sins. Many of those old people were overscrupulous to the point of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Many priests committed sins of impatience listening to them; it was usually a double absolution in those cases.”
“Hmmm. Actually, I kind of like sitting here in the control booth. Sin Central. No women allowed.”
“I thought you would.”
“How’d you know which side I’d be in.”
“I figured you’d pick the St. Joseph side. He’s a mystery.”
“Right pick, wrong reason. The other side has that gruesome twelfth station of the cross with Christ crucified on the wall next to it. I see enough gore in my day job.”
“Which station is outside these confessionals?”
“Jesus before Pilate.”
“Always the cop, wanting everybody in custody.”
“Not everybody. So what’s the crisis? I can only take feeling silly so much longer.”
Matt gathered himself. “I wish I could just feel silly. In fact, I probably should, but I’m too scared to.”
“Scared?”
He was flattered that she was surprised. “That woman I told you about? The one who—”
“The razor-wielding priest hater. That’s what this is about?”
“She’s stalking me. More than me. Anybody I associate with.”
“I told you back then it was a hate crime. You should have let me have a real go at her then.”
“How? She appears when she wants to.” His knees were starting to kill him and he shifted position.
“What’s she done? Specifics.”
“She confronted me again. Made demands. She sent me an object. Made demands. She, uh, she was at TitaniCon, and I think she attacked Temple, and Sheila, a friend of mine from my ConTact hotline days. And…Mariah.”
“What!”
He had her attention now. “Mariah’s the one who noticed the pattern. They were all silly mishaps, but there was malice behind them. Then, as I was leaving, someone jabbed me in the kidneys when I was going down an escalator. Felt like a gun. Felt like a warning that she could do anything she liked to me, anywhere, anytime.”
“And? Did you confront her?”
“Couldn’t. It was a mob scene. She vanished into the crowd. But she left her ‘weapon’ behind. Dropped it. Mariah retrieved it.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I know. It could have been an explosive. But it was an aspergillum.”
Silence held inside the confessional rooms as well as outside them.
“Father, forgive me,” Molina intoned laconically at last. “You were right to be so cautious.”
“An aspergillum is—”
“I know w
hat it is. I’ve had my catechism lessons. I’ve seen it used at my grandmother’s funeral. Little metal implement for the dispensing of holy water. Scary thing, she could have had it wired into a bomb. An instrument of blessing made into an instrument of death. So. What does she want?”
Matt took a deep breath.
“No one toys with anyone,” Molina prodded, “including the police, unless he or she wants something: publicity, fear, revenge.”
“She wants souls. Specifically mine.”
“A soul is an immaterial thing.”
“She wants my soul in a very material form. She’s…demonic is the word I’d use.”
“We’ve run into religious nuts,” Molina mused, thinking as a police officer. “Usually they’re men. I don’t get this woman. I don’t get her nuisance attacks on these innocent bystanders at TitaniCon.”
“Not all nuisance attacks. When Temple, Mariah, and I were seeing Sheila to her car in the parking garage, a vehicle came right at us, followed us across the bridge to the hotel and crashed right through the glass doors.”
“I heard about that! Stolen car. It was pursuing you? And Mariah?”
“And Temple.”
“I am furious that no one told me about this. I’m the child’s mother. I have a right to know.”
“We weren’t sure what that was about, some nutso driver who couldn’t find a parking place, or a drunk gambler with a gripe against the hotel…I hadn’t put it together yet. I wasn’t really sure until she approached me a few days ago and told me what the price of peace and quiet for all involved was.”
“A soul? That’s demented.”
“You still don’t understand.”
“Maybe I’m a little more concerned about my daughter’s life and limb than I am about your soul. So what was this woman doing at TitaniCon anyway?”
“Stalking me is all I can figure out.”
“Oh, I doubt you’re that intriguing. There’s got to be another reason.”
She was right, but Matt wasn’t ready to tell her that. Kinsella’s past was his to keep, and Temple would feel betrayed if Matt gave it away to Molina, even if it put some of Max’s actions in a better light.
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