Khoury returned while the deputies were questioning his partners, and got sucked into the interview. From what the officers said, it seemed the convent had discovered the nun missing that morning and reported it. The deputies wanted to know what the three of them were doing on the country road and how they’d discovered the well-hidden accident scene. The men let Rossi do all the talking. She played down her FBI role and said they were friends on vacation together, got lost driving around the countryside and stopped the car so MacLeod could step off into the woods to relieve himself. That was when he’d spotted the rear of the station wagon through the bushes.
Compared to what they were seeing at the bottom of the ravine, the story was completely believable.
“Could be the sisters were using the wagon for flower deliveries,” one of the deputies speculated.
“My cousin had rose petals at her wedding,” offered another.
“The nuns are into bread, not flowers,” said a third.
While the locals hovered around the station wagon, the trio stood near their own vehicle plotting their next move. Rossi and MacLeod would take the Suburban and follow the body to the morgue, located in the basement of the hospital. While Rossi talked the county coroner into letting her observe Sister Rose’s autopsy out of curiosity, MacLeod would see a hospital physician about his wound.
Flashing his own identification – and his priestly collar - Khoury would arrange to hitch a ride to the convent with a deputy. He’d volunteer to help deliver the sad news about Sister Rose, and stay behind to offer prayers and help them sort out their feelings about their loss.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Standing in the girls’ bedroom with the sheet of paper between her hands, Mother Superior was feeling a mixture of guilt, fear and excitement.
She was guilty over what she’d had the girls do, and feared the consequences – from the law and her Lord. She reassured herself that Sister Rose was a danger to the girls and God would understand. As far as the police were concerned, what cop would actually believe a picture had power?
The exciting part: She could manipulate the children and their gift. No longer a mere link in the chain, she was now a controlling force, and the others – especially Jehu - would have to acknowledge her. Give her real authority. She deserved it. She’d played this so well.
After checking Sister Rose’s room the night before and finding her gone, she’d waited until morning to put on her carefully orchestrated show. She’d roused the other women from their beds early. Sister Jane revealed the elder nun had stormed out of the convent the night before with the keys to the station wagon.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” the abbess had asked, putting the responsibility on the young nun’s shoulders.
“I don’t know,” was all the young woman could whimper.
The abbess had tried to reassure them, telling them the only place Sister Rose could have gone at that hour was to her brother’s. The elder nun sometimes spent the night at his residence; she’d simply been remiss in calling.
Next the abbess had phoned the bishop and asked to speak with Sister Rose. When he’d said she hadn’t been there, Mother Magdalen had let loose such an emotional outburst, the bishop was forced to console her. Weeping, she’d told him that she needed to get off the line to notify the sheriff. She’d made that call with equal hysterics.
Finally she’d gone up to the girls’ room while they were downstairs. If the picture were too graphic, if it too closely matched how the old nun had died, she might have to destroy it - and she wasn’t sure Babette would let her do that. Of the trio, Babette was the one the abbess had to work hard to manage. The child was strong-willed and more stubborn than her siblings.
When the abbess saw the drawing, she didn’t think she’d have to worry.
Taped to the wall was a picture of a black-robed figure with a large, leering grin. Drawn inside the mouth and all over the rest of the paper were pink scribbles. Butterflies? Worms? Mother Magdalen was certain Sister Rose was gone, but how pink scribbles had accomplished this was a mystery. Obviously a lot of hate had been released with the drawing. The abbess could see the anger in the jagged lines of color. A bottom corner of the paper was actually wrinkled from the ferocity of the strokes.
Hearing footsteps, she snapped her head around. Petit was standing in the doorway. The abbess was relieved it was he and not the other sisters. “What is it, Trey?”
He stepped inside and closed the door after him. “We got a situation.”
She didn’t care about clogged sinks and faulty light fixtures. “I’m too busy to deal with...”
“The girls did it again.” His eyes traveled to a particular drawing displayed on the bedroom wall.
She followed his gaze.
Immersed in studying Sister Rose’s portrait, she’d missed it. The figure had flesh-colored hands and face. A halo of brown hair went around an oval head. Special care had been taken to completely fill in the man’s pants and shoes. “What happened?” the abbess asked the picture.
“His leg grew back. Last night.” A long pause. “While he was in the hospital.”
So much for controlling the triplets. “Doctors saw?”
“That ain’t the half of it. His wife’s telling everyone. While I was in the kitchen this morning, a blind gal called the convent to ask for a new set of eyes. Someone else wants his daddy cured of cancer. Sister Jane hung up on them.”
“Who is this man? How did the girls know about him?”
As Petit nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his attention went to the sheet of paper in her hand. “Hell no! I heard she was missing. I didn’t think...”
The door behind him opened and the three girls walked in. Babette saw the picture in Mother Magdalen’s fist and smiled. Did a little hop of excitement. “That’s mine. I did it. Isn’t it good?”
The abbess had to put on her game face for Petit. She dropped the drawing on the floor and bent over the girl, grabbing her by the shoulders. “What did you do to Sister Rose?”
The girl squirmed. “You told me to!”
Petit looked at the abbess with wide eyes.
“I told you no such thing,” said Mother Magdalen. “What did you do to her?”
“Let go!”
The abbess shook her. “Where is she? Tell me, Babette!”
The child wiggled out of the nun’s grasp. “I don’t know where she is.”
Mother Magdalen pulled the girl back to her and bent over her. Whispered in her ear. The child suddenly stopped fighting her and listened. Nodded.
Out in the hallway, someone cleared her throat. The abbess turned to see one of the younger nuns standing in the hallway. “Uh...Someone’s at the door, Mother.”
“Who?”
“A bunch of people. I don’t know them.”
The abbess hurried out of the room. The young nun followed her superior down the hall.
Petit started to go after the two women.
“Stop,” ordered Babette. “Give me your lighter.”
“What do you want that for?”
She came up to him with her palm out. “Give it, Mister P.”
“I don’t have it on me.”
“Yes you do. I can see it.” She closed and opened her hand. “Give it.”
Reaching into the front pocket of his jeans, Petit pulled out a disposable lighter. He held it in his palm, as if weighing it. Measuring the consequences.
“Please,” she said sweetly, and smiled.
After hearing Mother Magdalen question the girl, Petit was scared. All he wanted to do was get away from the girls. He dropped the lighter in Baab’s small hand. “What’re you gonna do with it?”
Babette’s tiny fingers curled around the tube. “Nothing.”
Right. One second after he exited their bedroom, the door slammed behind him. He heard a key turn in the lock. On wobbly legs, he made his way down the hall. He had to hang onto the banister as he descended the stairs. Had they really done
away with Sister Rose?
When he landed on the main floor, he saw Sister Jane holding back a knot of people at the front door. Whatever it was, he didn’t need any of it. Petit ducked into the basement.
The abbess joined Sister Jane at the front door. “What’s going on? Who are these people?”
“Are they in there?” asked a big man in a barn coat, trying to see past the nuns.
“We want to touch them!” shouted a woman trying to push inside. “Let us touch them!”
The abbess looked over the heads of the two intruders and saw the porch was packed with bodies.
The younger nun whispered to her superior: “Sister Theresa called the sheriff.”
Mother Magdalen wished the law had been left out of it. The convent had already attracted too much attention. She put her hands out in front of her and gently eased the man and woman outside. “Sir...ma’am...please...outside...we aren’t prepared for visitors.”
“I’m dying,” said the big man.
“I’m very sorry.” Behind her back, the abbess pulled the door closed.
“Sister!” a man yelled. “Over here!”
Mother Magdalen turned toward him and a camera flashed repeatedly in her face. She put her hand up in front of her face. “Stop that!”
Sister Jane came outside and the two nuns herded people into the yard.
“Please,” said the abbess. “Everyone please. This is our home.”
Once the porch was cleared, the nuns could take in the entire circus. Cars and pickups were lined down the driveway to the road, and were parked all over the grass. People were jammed into the yard, sitting atop the cars and standing in the truck beds. They saw a couple of men wedged in the branches of the big oak, each with a bottle of beer in his hand. Cross-legged on the hood of a sedan, four teenagers sipped sodas and pulled French fries out of a MacDonald’s sack while keeping their eyes glued to the house, waiting for the movie to begin. The noise was deafening as peopled talked to each other and yelled to the women on the porch.
“Let us see them!”
“I got cancer!”
“Send them out!”
Tears in his eyes, a young boy pushed a woman in a wheelchair to the bottom of the steps. “My mom wants to walk, nuns. Tell them girls to help her walk.”
The abbess put a hand to her forehead. “Where did they all come from? They can’t all be from Wormwood.”
Sister Jane pointed into the throng. “A television camera.”
“This is insane.”
“Maybe we should let the girls...”
“No,” the abbess snapped. “They’d get trampled.”
Someone near the front held up a cell phone and started snapping photos of the two women.
“Mother, you need to say something. Tell them.”
“Tell them what?”
“Lie,” Sister Jane whispered. “Tell them it didn’t happen. That someone made it up. As long as we keep Trey inside, they’ve got no proof that ...”
“It’s me!” A middle-aged man in jeans and a plaid shirt pushed his way up to the front.
The nuns looked down in confusion.
“It’s me!” he said excitedly, and slapped himself on the chest. “I’m your guy!”
The abbess leaned toward the younger nun. “Do we know him?”
“Must be a nut,” Sister Jane whispered, and smiled down at the man. “Hello.”
He jogged up the steps and wedged himself between the two nuns. Raised his arms in the air like a candidate campaigning for a political office. “People! People! Listen up!”
“Show us the leg, Jimbo!” shouted one of the tree men, taking a swig of beer.
“Jimbo. That’s got to be Trey’s friend,” whispered the abbess.
“Someone called this morning and started talking about it. A new leg.” Sister Jane ran her eyes up and down the man’s figure. “I thought it was a joke. Fingers are one thing, but a whole leg...”
As Jimbo was hiking up the right leg of his jeans to show the crowd, the abbess hooked her elbow around his and towed him toward the door. “That’s enough.”
“They want to see,” he said.
“No they don’t.” The nun dragged him inside with her.
Sister Jane followed them, slamming and locking the door behind them. “It’s getting ugly out there.”
“Give them what they want,” said Jimbo. “Send out the miracle workers.”
“They’re little girls,” said the abbess. “That crowd would overwhelm them.”
A rotund nun came down the hall and thumbed over her shoulder toward the kitchen. “There’re people at the back door.”
“What did you tell them?” asked the abbess.
“Tossed them some bread. It’ll keep them happy for a while.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Cops should be here any second.”
Something thumped against the front door and everyone in the hallway turned to look. A second and third thump.
“Dear God,” said Mother Magdalen.
A rock crashed through a window to the right of the front door, and Sister Jane shrieked. From the convent garden, the stone was engraved with the word PEACE.
Through the broken glass, they could hear the crowd. The mix of yells evolved into a chant, each shouted word accompanied by a clap:
“BRING!...THEM!...OUT! BRING!...THEM!...OUT!”
Petit materialized in the hall. “What the hell is going on?”
The other sisters started funneling into the hallway until it was filled with frightened women.
“This is all my fault,” said Schultz. He marched up to the front door and put his hand on the knob.
“Don’t!” shouted Sister Jane.
The girls appeared at the top of the stairs, two of the three bawling. “What’s going on?” screamed the one who wasn’t crying. “Tell them to go away!”
“Is that them?” asked Schultz.
“Trey,” said the abbess. “Take them back to their rooms. They’re safer on the second story.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Petit ran up the steps and herded the three children away from the top of the stairs.
Sirens sounded outside. Through a bullhorn, someone bellowed orders to the crowd.
“This is private property...Leave the premises immediately, or you’ll be arrested...Get back in your vehicles...”
“Thank Jesus,” said the apron nun.
Through the broken window sailed another rock, this one engraved with LOVE.
It took forty minutes and four squads for the deputies to disperse the mob. Two teenagers were arrested for heaving rocks through the window, and the tree men were hauled away for public intoxication. Mother Magdalen told Jim Schultz that unless he kept his mouth shut about his leg, she’d tell authorities that he’d broken into the convent during the riot and physically threatened the nuns.
“You made me come inside!” he protested.
“It was a home invasion,” said the abbess. “The other sisters will back me up.”
He quietly melted into the retreating crowd.
Standing in front of a local newspaper reporter and a television cameraman from nearby Stockton, the abbess claimed no knowledge of miraculous healings and blamed the rumor on anti-Catholics who resented having a group of religious women living in their community, making money for Christian mission work. From the follow-up questions posed by the journalists, it was clear the nun-bashing angle was the one they were taking. The story was more believable than the restoration of an amputated limb.
One squad stayed in the yard after the others had left. The abbess noticed it had pulled in late, and that there was a priest with them. She knew why they were there, and wondered why the reporters hadn’t brought it up. Perhaps they hadn’t found out about Sister Rose. Officially, even she didn’t yet know.
“Sister,” said one deputy, removing his hat and coming up on the porch.
“We need to speak with you in private,” said the other officer, also removing his hat.
Khoury had caught the tail end of the riot and press interview. He had the framework of what had happened, but lots of additional questions.
Stepping around nuns who were sweeping up broken glass in the hallway, the abbess took Khoury and the two deputies into her office. As the mother superior closed the door after the group, the priest noticed her square shoulders and calm demeanor. During her face-off with journalists on the lawn, she’d been equally cool. A tough woman.
One of the deputies nodded toward the couch. “You might want to sit for this, Mother Magdalen.”
She went behind her desk and lowered herself into the chair, propping her hands on top. “You found Sister Rose.”
Khoury stood off to the side while the two deputies stationed themselves in front of her desk, hands folded in front of them. Schoolboys facing the principal. The older deputy did all the talking. “I’m sorry to inform you, ma’am, that she died in a car accident.”
“How?”
“Went off the road. Hit a tree.”
Khoury studied the nun’s face. The only movement within the pale oval was a slight flattening of the lips. A very tough woman.
The younger deputy took out a notebook while his partner continued talking. “I’m sorry to put you through this, especially after the goofiness in the yard, but we’ve got to ask you a few questions to straighten things out. Get a timeline.”
The pale oval bobbed up and down.
“When did Sister Rose leave the house last night?”
“Sometime after eleven. I didn’t see her go. One of the other sisters was in the kitchen when she took the car keys and left. I didn’t know she’d gone out so late. I wasn’t told about it until this morning.”
The younger deputy scribbled.
“Where was she headed?”
“Her brother’s house, I think. He’s a bishop. Lives near Stockton.”
The Devil's Own Crayons Page 18