The Devil's Own Crayons

by Theresa Monsour

  “They’ve got to have websites,” she said.

  Khoury shrugged. “Give it a try.”

  “Some names. Some monasteries.”

  “There aren’t that many here,” said Khoury. “A colleague of mine in the states did a study. Out of...I don’t know...sixty thousand or so sisters, fourteen hundred are cloistered.”

  “Names,” she said impatiently, fingers poised over the keys.

  “The Poor Clare sisters in New Mexico...”

  “East. Which ones are east?”

  “The order of the Cistercian Abbey of Mount Saint Mary’s. That’s in Massachusetts. Don’t ask me where exactly. A friend of mine has a daughter who’s chosen the monastic life. The Dominican Nuns have a monastery in Virginia. I believe the missionary Maryknoll sisters have cloistered counterparts.”

  “Out east?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She started typing. “Keep them coming, Ryan.”

  He came up behind her and looked over her shoulder. “I know of at least one monastery in the Washington, D.C., area.”

  “That might be the one.”

  “How are we going to get there?” asked MacLeod.

  “Fly,” she said, and pecked at the computer.

  Her partners glanced toward the empty television screen.

  “What’s wrong?” When it came to her, she sat back in the chair. “Shit.”

  “If that child senses we’re in the air,” said MacLeod, “she could take down every plane in the sky.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  After picking up breakfast, Petit extended his furlough by taking a roundabout way back to the motel. Sitting in the back seat sucking down ice mochas, Adeline and Cecelia seemed happy enough.

  He braked at a stoplight and turned on the radio. As he searched for music, he came across the morning news. He stayed on the station in case there was anything more on the dreaded AMBER Alert. What he heard was more jarring:

  “...speculated that the satellites could have been disabled by a missile strike or an electronic satellite jamming system. He said that doesn’t explain why televisions that don’t depend upon satellites – even those wired to just DVD players – won’t operate. While no group has come forward to claim responsibility, sources within Homeland Security confirmed that a terrorist attack is the most likely cause of the national television blackout. The president has called an emergency meeting of his top...”

  The set in the motel room wasn’t the only one that had gone haywire; every single television was out. Petit felt as if his entire body had been plunged into an ice mocha.

  He turned up the volume on the report.

  “...is being compared to the massive power outage of 2003 that darkened parts of northeastern United States and eastern Canada. That blackout affected a total fifty million people, but involved multiple systems, not just television, Representatives of the major network and cable companies said the longer televisions are blacked out across the country, the more difficult it will be for them to recover from the financial...”

  The car behind Petit honked. The light had turned green. He rolled through the intersection, but was barely able to pay attention to what he was doing. He couldn’t see through the windshield. He could only hear what was on the radio.

  “...a young girl appeared on televisions shortly after the blackout began and sang a nursery rhyme. The child bore some resemblance to a girl reported kidnapped from a northern Illinois orphanage, but authorities won’t confirm her identity. The transmission lasted fifteen seconds, and then televisions again lost reception. Experts say if satellites have been sabotaged, such a transmission would have been...”

  Babette had not only come back from the dead, she’d made every television go dead. Then she’d come on the TV. For what? How did she do it? What had he gotten himself into?

  A horn blasted and Petit slammed on the brakes. A pickup crossed in front of him, the driver flipping him the bird and yelling through the window. Petit had run a stop sign and narrowly missed broad siding the truck. He turned off the radio and tried to concentrate on the road. He heard paper crumpling in the backseat. “Wait until we get to the motel to eat, Missy.”

  “I’m not eating,” said one.

  “They gave us crayons,” said the other.

  Petit’s heart lodged itself in his throat. “What...What are you drawing?”

  “The bag,” said one.

  “There’s a coloring book on the bag.”

  When his eyes went to the rearview mirror to check on the girls, he spotted a police car behind the Buick. Suddenly getting arrested wasn’t such a bad idea. He slowed so the cop could get a good, long look at the plate. In his mind, he screamed to be caught.

  Over here! It’s me, the kidnapper! Pull me over and lock me up! Take me to jail, where there are thick walls and bars and guards. I’d be safe there. I’d be away from this crayon hell.

  The squad hung a right and turned off the road.

  Was the cop blind? Didn’t he see what was in front of him? The abbess said someone was watching out for them, but who? Couldn’t be the good guys. He contemplated taking a right and circling around. Trying to find the cop. Petit would throw open the door and throw up his hands and...

  He was kidding himself. Crayon hell would chase him down.

  He braked at a light and took his left hand off the steering wheel. Flexed his fingers. They were tingling again. He wrapped them around the wheel and squeezed hard, until the numbness subsided. With his other hand he tipped the rearview mirror down to check on his backseat passengers. They’d given up coloring the bags and were staring out their windows. The weapons of mass destruction were scattered on the seat between them.

  The light turned green and he accelerated. He decided he’d better return Rosemary’s babies to the one person who had a chance at taming them.

  When Petit got back to the motel with breakfast, however, all hell broke loose -not in a Satanic way so much as a spoiled brat way.

  None of them wanted cheese on their McMuffins. Babette was mad she didn’t get an ice mocha and her sisters were pissed the television was busted.

  Cecelia stomped up to Babette and grabbed a fistful of curls. “Turn it back on, Fatty!”

  Babette screamed and clawed at her sister’s hand. “You’re hurting me!”

  Cecelia tugged hard. “You’re always making trouble! I hate you! Fatty!”

  “Stop calling me names!”

  As Petit untangled the pair, Adeline went around to the back of the set and reached for the cord. “Don’t touch that, Missy.”

  “Barney is on.”

  “Barney,” Petit muttered, and went up to the bathroom. Banged on the door and begged the abbess to referee.

  The door popped open and the mother superior came out. “We need to leave,” she said, checking her watch.

  Petit stared at her head. “What’d you do?”

  Rather than answer him, the nun went over to Babette, who was sitting on the bed picking the cheese off her sandwich. The abbess tossed a braid on the child’s lap. The girl looked down at the hair and went back to her McMuffin.

  Petit’s attention ricocheted between the thing on the bed and the mess on the nun’s head. “What’s this about?”

  Avoiding his eyes, the woman busied herself with packing their bags. She dropped her suitcase and one of the girls’ on the empty bed. “I don’t know what you have in the bathroom, Trey, but you’d better start...”

  “Give me the scissors and let me straighten it out.”

  “There’s no time.”

  Short in the back and a jagged shoulder length on the sides, her hair could have been trimmed with garden shears. “You go out like that, you’re going to get looks. We don’t need looks.”

  She folded something pink. “I did the best I could. I’m not a hairdresser.”

  “Why’d you do it?”

  She shot a nervous look at the girl on the bed and went back to folding clothes.


  Petit’s mouth hardened. Babette made her do it. Some sort of test or a new torture. Despite everything she’d dragged him through, he felt sorry for Mother Magdalen. She was being taken down one peg at a time. “Come on,” he said, nodding toward the bathroom.

  She closed one of the suitcases and zipped it up. Went ahead of him into the bathroom. “We’ve got to make it quick.”

  He followed her inside and closed the door after them. While she sat on the toilet lid, he worked on her hair, trying to straighten out the cut job on the sides so the ends were even. After he was finished with her, she looked like an aging punk rocker with long, somewhat even sides and a short back.

  Smiling weakly, she checked it out in the mirror and ran her hands through it. “Thank you. It’s much better.”

  As he stood next to her looking in the mirror, he reached behind his head and hacked off his own braid. “Cut’s a good idea. A disguise.”

  “Let me even it out,” she said.

  He sat on the edge of the tub and she sat on the lid. While she snipped, he whispered. “You can’t let her treat you like dirt.”

  She stopped cutting for a few seconds and resumed without responding.

  “You’re the one who keeps her in line. If you lose control...”

  “Everything is fine,” she snapped.

  “Who are they?” he whispered. “What are they?”

  “What kind of question is that? They’re little girls, that’s all. Just...little girls with a behavior problem.”

  “Little girls who blow up houses and set fire to cop cars. I’d call that more than a behavior problem.”

  “You didn’t complain when they healed you. Healed your friend’s leg.”

  “It’s gone way beyond that stuff.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  As she clipped, he felt the sharp edge scrape against the back of his neck and it made him nervous. Still, he needed to tell her what he’d learned. “Our TV isn’t the only one she fried.”

  “She didn’t do it. That old set shocked her. She nearly died. She...”

  “Listen to me,” he said hoarsely. “Please.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “When I was in the car, I turned on the radio. The news said every television in the country is out. Every...single...one.”

  She stopped working.

  “They’re blaming terrorists or some such bullshit,” Petit continued. “They said after the TVs went out, a girl came on and sang a song and then the TVs blacked out again. The girl...they’re saying she’s one of the AMBER Alert kids.”

  A knock at the door made them both start.

  Petit slapped a hand over the back of his neck. “You nicked me.”

  “We want to go,” said a small voice on the other side of the door.

  “One minute,” said the abbess.

  “What’re we going to do?” Petit whispered to the bathtub wall.

  The woman behind him didn’t say a word.

  “We can’t keep running,” he said.

  She resumed her cut job. “What’re you saying?”

  “We should turn ourselves in. Let someone else deal with them.”

  She froze again. “Never.”

  As he felt the cold steel resting against his skin, he regretted what he’d said. No longer a reluctant member of her side, he’d firmly planted his ass in the enemy camp. He held his breath until he felt the blade lift off his skin. As he stood up and turned around, he saw her slip the scissors into the pocket of her habit.

  “We’re leaving,” she said, and threw open the bathroom door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Khoury at the wheel, Rossi riding shotgun so she could take calls and MacLeod in the backseat, complaining in between sips of coffee.

  “This swill is rank.” He emptied the cup and dropped it on the floor.

  They’d traded the Jeep that they’d driven from Wormwood for an unmarked bureau car from the Chicago office. They’d been riding in the car for less than five hours, but it looked and smelled as if they’d lived in it for five days. Fast-food sacks and empty water bottles littered the floor and the odor of ketchup and fried onions scented the air. The stink didn’t cover up the tension, which hung even thicker. Staccato chatter, most of it minor and meaningless, peppered the space between the long pauses.

  “How about a cup of tea?”

  “No more stops,” said Rossi.

  “So when do I get to drive, mates?”

  “You were knocked out.”

  “I’m fine, sweetheart.”

  “You had a concussion.”

  “We should have flown,” said MacLeod.

  “You’re the one who pointed out the risk,” said Khoury.

  “After seeing how you drive, your holiness, I’d rather take my chances at thirty thousand feet.”

  The black Crown Victoria was fitted with interior and grill lights that could be activated to clear the road, but they had yet to use the flashers. Khoury was weaving in and out of traffic like a maniac.

  After getting out of Chicago, they’d made good time and had quickly put Illinois and Indiana in their rearview mirror. Now they were in northern Ohio, where Interstate 80 would hook up with Interstate 76 and take them to the Pennsylvania border.

  Rossi’s cell rang and she answered it. As she listened, her mouth stretched into a wide smile. “Tommy, you bastard. How’d you get my cell? I left specific instructions you were never to get my number.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. Khoury and MacLeod looked at her curiously. Her voice had suddenly gotten throaty. Husky.

  “What did you tell Camp?” She switched the phone to her other ear. “I hope that’s all you said, Babe...Well, if he starts getting weird on me, I’ll know who to blame, you bastard.”

  After a few more minutes of conversation with Tommy, the Babe/Bastard, she ended the call with: “You too, Tom. I will...bye.”

  As soon as she closed the cell, MacLeod started in. “Another ex-husband, sweetheart?”

  Before she could answer, her phone rang again. The caller wasn’t Babe/Bastard. “Yes sir...Good...That’s good. ” She took the phone away from her mouth to tell her partners: “They’re moving on the monastery right now.”

  “About bloody time,” MacLeod grumbled.

  It had taken that long for Rossi to convince her boss that Xavier was headed to her former convent, and for Camp to pull together the massive operation.

  “Yes, sir,” she said into the cell. “Uh...me, too.”

  He hung up. Rossi stared at the phone for a minute and closed it.

  “The boss?” asked MacLeod.

  “He hopes my gut is like the pope,” said Rossi.

  “How’s that, lass?”

  “Infallible?” asked Khoury.

  “Exactly.”

  She couldn’t fault Camp for his caution. If the grounds were invaded and nothing turned up, it would be a waste of valuable time. Plus how would they explain a federal raid on a convent? Hell, even if she was right, they couldn’t explain it.

  She also didn’t blame him for how long it took to pull it all together, even after she had him convinced.

  Camp had to cook up a good excuse for the operation, which was being done in deep secret but was bound to leak out. They’d already put out the fiction about the nun and handyman running a kiddie sex ring. Rossi didn’t want to try to imagine what kind of paperwork her boss fabricated to justify a raid on a monastery. Was there a judge in the loop who had signed off on the search warrant, or had Camp lied to one?

  While on the road, she’d gotten the lay of the monastery land from Camp and had passed it on to her partners.

  He said the multi-acre campus was tucked into a residential area in northeast Washington, D.C. Woods surrounded it. Once through the trees, a tall wrought-iron fence enclosed a checkerboard of gardens and stone buildings. Entrance to the grounds was through an electronic gate. An intercom mounted to one side of it allowed visitors to
buzz and identify themselves. Agents in unmarked cars were being posted throughout the surrounding neighborhood, and were being stationed at intervals in the woods. A bureau helicopter – in the guise of an air ambulance – would watch from the sky. No one would move inside until the team arrived. Then Rossi, MacLeod and Khoury would get into the monastery. Camp told her he didn’t want to send others over the fence until her assignment was complete. He’d again repeated his instructions:

  “Finish the job.”

  Again, she’d decided to keep that order to herself.

  Twenty minutes after telling Rossi they were moving on the monastery, Camp called Rossi back: The bureau helicopter had spotted the blue Buick on Interstate 495.

  “Good,” Rossi said, and told her teammates. “The nun mobile is on the Capital Beltway, heading for D.C.”

  “You called it right, lass.”

  She went back to talking with Camp. “Our guys see anything going on inside the compound?”

  Khoury frowned. “Compound?”

  She shot the priest a dirty look.

  “It’s a convent, not a compound,” he muttered.

  “Okay. Keep me apprised.” She snapped her cell shut.

  “Undercover helicopters, armed men in the woods...”

  “You going to have a problem with this, Ryan?” she asked. “If you are, let me know now.”

  “You’re talking about the nuns as if they’re...”

  “Criminals?”

  “Yes.”

  “If they harbor two fugitives, they will be criminals.”

  Khoury slowed behind a mini van and then steered around it. “That story you put out...”

  “They don’t know it’s a story. For all those nuns know, Xavier and that janitor are kidnappers.”

  “They may not own a television,” said Khoury. “They probably never answer the phone. Only listen to messages. And as far as the Internet is concerned...”

  “I don’t care if they communicate with the outside world using tin cans and string. You don’t have one of your own charged with something as sleazy as kid trafficking and not hear about it.”