Intervention (40 page)

“Here’s where you will be staying,” Sana said, standing to the side, letting Luke step into the room dominated by a queen-size, four-poster bed. “Does it look like your room at the monastery?”

“Hardly,” Luke said, taking a peek into the bathroom the guest room shared with the second guest room on the floor. He then returned to the roll-on suitcase and unzipped its cover. The first thing he pulled out was a small plastic statue of the Virgin Mary, which he placed on the side table. The second thing was a small, doll-like statue of the infant Jesus, dressed in an elaborate robe and wearing a crown. With tender care he placed the doll next to the Blessed Virgin.

“What’s that?” Sana questioned.

“The Infant of Prague,” Luke explained. “It was one of my mother’s favorite possessions before she passed away.”

Next, Luke pulled out his black habit and hung it in the closet.

“Is that your usual attire?” Sana questioned.

“It is,” Luke answered, “but the cardinal thought it better that I wear more typical clothes that belong to his secretaries. Luckily, one of the men is close to my size.”

“You wear what you like,” Sana said. “We will be going out to dinner in a half-hour or so. You do have time to take a shower if you so please. I am about to do so. Otherwise, we’ll meet you downstairs in the living room.”

S
hawn, Sana, and Luke arrived back at the Daughtrys’ home in a taxi just before nine-thirty p.m. The dinner at Cipriani Downtown had gone pleasantly enough until Luke had tried to turn the conversation over to his mission. Shawn, with almost as much alcohol on board as he’d had the night before, had used the opportunity to inform Luke that he was facing an impossible task, and the sooner he faced the reality, the better for them all.

When Luke persisted, Shawn had gotten angry, and then the atmosphere had steadily disintegrated to where Shawn had refused to talk to Luke, whom he persisted on calling derogatorily “boy.”

“Are you retiring for the night?” Shawn asked Sana, avoiding talking with Luke.

“I think I’ll stay up for a little while with Luke,” Sana whispered. “I don’t want to have Luke report back to James that he’s not being received hospitably.”

“Good idea,” Shawn said, reaching out to steady himself with the banister leading up the front stairs. “What time do you want to leave here in the morning to get to the OCME

DNA building?”

“How about after nine?” Sana said. “That will give me time to make breakfast for our guest so we get a good report.”

“Another good idea,” Shawn said, slurring his words. “See you in the morning.”

As Shawn slowly rose and disappeared up the stairs, Sana turned toward Luke. “How about a fire in the fireplace?” she suggested.

Luke shrugged. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d experienced the pleasure of a fire. In some ways, he was nervous about enjoying himself too much after the disappointing evening, as he was depressed about his chances of overcoming Satan.

“Come on!” Sana said encouragingly. “Let’s build the fire together.”

Fifteen minutes later the two were sitting on the couch, mesmerized by the crackling fire that was beginning to spread upward from the kindling into the piled logs. Sana had a glass of wine, while Luke had a Coke. It was Sana who broke the silence. “The archbishop told us you’ve not had an easy life. Do you mind sharing with me your story?”

“Not at all,” Luke said. “It is not a secret. I share it with those who will listen, as it is a tribute to the Blessed Virgin.”

“We were told you had run away from home at age eighteen to join the monastery. Can I ask why?”

“The immediate cause was my mother’s death,” Luke explained, “but the long-term cause was a very difficult childhood dominated by a godless father. In sharp contrast with my father, who was an abuser of alcohol and a wife beater, my mother was a very religious person who sincerely believed that she was at fault for my father’s behavior and not he. She believed, like Eve, that she had turned away from God by marrying my father and was a sinner to the point that she had convinced me that I was a child born in sin. She was so convinced that she told me that if I expected to salvage my eternal soul, I had to pray to the Virgin and consecrate my life to her, Christ, and the Church.”

“My goodness,” Sana voiced, feeling strong compassion about Luke’s story. Although hardly the same, she had always felt she’d suffered from her father’s premature death when she was only eight, even to the point of now wondering if one of the reasons she’d married Shawn was because when she first met him he was, to a large degree, a father figure that she’d missed. “Did focusing on the Church help?” she asked.

Luke gave a short, contemptuous laugh. “Hardly,” he said. “One of the priests clearly perceived me as a troubled child and, being troubled himself, proceeded to take advantage of me for over a year.”

“Oh, good Lord, no!” Sana said, feeling even more compassion for Luke. She was so taken aback that she had to actively suppress a strong urge to envelope him in her arms for fear of what his reaction might be. He might misinterpret her gesture as being more than empathy. He was, after all, not a child but a man. Besides, there was something rote about Luke’s delivery.

“At first I thought it was relatively normal behavior,” Luke said wistfully, “as I thought I loved the individual. But as I grew older I came to recognize it was wrong. Not knowing what to do, since the priest was one of the more popular in the parish, I worked up the courage to tell my mother.”

“Was she sympathetic?” Sana asked, with concern about where the story was headed, considering what Luke had already said about his mother.

“Absolutely the opposite. Just like with her mixed-up belief she was at fault in regard to my father’s abuse, she was totally insistent that I had seduced the priest rather than vice versa, especially when she had asked me why it had lasted for so long and I had admitted that I had liked it, at least in the beginning. It’s been only in the last few years that the brothers at the monastery have finally gotten me to understand what really happened, and that I wasn’t responsible either for the inappropriate relationship with the priest or for my mother’s suicide.”

“Oh, good Lord in heaven!” Sana said, as overwhelming compassion lessened her restraint and dissolved any questions about Luke’s story being rote, as if a memorized script. Without forethought she enveloped Luke in a sympathetic embrace, at least until she perceived his stiff resistance, at which point she quickly let go. “What a tragic story,” she added, with deep sympathy. She gazed at him with tenderness, wishing somehow to help the burden she imagined he suffered in relation to his mother, no matter what he said about the brothers helping him. She also felt distinct anger at the Church for having abused him, which suddenly gave her a better understanding of Shawn’s current mind-set.

27

5:15 P.M., TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2008

NEW YORK CITY

M
onday and Tuesday had been good days for everyone, except James, who had to field a call from Luke on both mornings, neither of which provided encouraging news. After Shawn and Sana had left each day for work, Luke had informed the cardinal that the devil was being completely resistant to Luke’s attempt at changing Shawn’s mind.

Instead, Luke had had to report that Shawn was becoming resistant to even discussing the issue. James’s response had been to encourage him to pray harder and not to give up, and that James and the Church were counting on him to eventually succeed. He explained that persistence would be key.

“Have you explained to him how much his casting doubt on the Blessed Mother’s assumption will affect you?” James had asked, trying to be helpful and encouraging, as he had no plan C.

“As much as he’ll allow me,” Luke had responded, “although now he immediately changes the subject whenever I bring it up. He’s even threatened to ask me to leave.”

“How about his wife?”

“She’s been most hospitable,” Luke had said. “She has made up for him and then some.

I’m convinced that if I can change his mind, she will agree as well. She’s not nearly as committed as he.”

“Please keep trying,” James had said. “There’s still a good portion of the week left.”

Other than making the two calls to James and having little luck with Shawn, Luke had enjoyed himself immensely, despite the continued uneasiness of being out in the world and exposed to sin. Both mornings Sana had awakened early and prepared a sumptuous breakfast for Luke, explaining to him that she loved to cook and was continuously disappointed that Shawn didn’t care if they had fast food or gourmet food. Luke had confessed that in contrast to Shawn as well as his brothers, he loved to eat good food and had been rewarded with an outstanding dinner the night before and looked forward to the same that night.

Even more than the food, Luke had enjoyed Sana coming home early on Monday, the day before, saying that she’d made wonderful progress on her DNA studies and had gotten the pulp samples already into the PCR stage, which Luke had not understood at all. Not that it mattered, since Sana had used the free time to take Luke out to buy him clothes that fit instead of wearing Father Karlin’s, which didn’t.

For Luke shopping had turned out to be a delightful experience, as he had not shopped for clothes for as long as he could remember, and he appreciated Sana’s input as he tried things on and struggled over choices. He’d also enjoyed the festive holiday atmosphere with a mere fourteen shopping days left before Christmas. Then to cap the day, Sana and Luke had stayed up after dinner to enjoy another fire, while affording Sana a turn to tell her life story and even her current problems. Luke had been sympathetic when his impressions had been confirmed that Shawn was not treating her as Shawn did when they were first married, particularly in the intimacy realm, as Luke knew that Shawn slept in a guest room on the second floor while Sana slept in the master bedroom on the third floor. Although Luke did not pretend to understand everything Sana said, he had told her that he’d pray for her, and that he couldn’t understand why Shawn did not want to sleep with her, because he thought she was beautiful.

“Thank you for the reassurance and the prayers,” Sana had said. “But, to be truthful, at this point, I prefer not to sleep with him.”

Similar to Sana, Shawn had made real progress as well over the previous two days. He’d reached the stage he’d hoped for, where the unrolling of the first scroll was proceeding much more rapidly. Monday he’d finished only a single page, but that day, Tuesday, he’d done more than two. Taking the time to read the unrolled portion, he was also feeling better about Simon not being quite the ogre he was reputed to have been. Even though he recognized that Simon was writing about himself, Shawn thought the better he came off as a person, the better witness he would be to the identity of the bones.

“Luke!” Sana called up the stairs. She and Shawn had just arrived home. When she heard Luke answer in the distance, she assumed he was saying his afternoon prayers.

“We are home!” She then followed Shawn into the kitchen, where she unpacked the groceries they had just bought. While she was busy doing that, Shawn poured himself some scotch as his first cocktail of the evening. Just a few days previously, Sana had gotten disturbed at Shawn’s progressive drinking, but not that night. In fact, she wanted him to drink as much as he pleased, as it caused him to retire early. As had been the case the two previous evenings, she was looking forward to spending time with Luke without Shawn’s interference or Luke’s attempt to bring up the progressively incendiary Virgin Mary issue, which he’d been unflaggingly continuing to do, despite Shawn’s increasingly negative response.

I
t had been two good days for Jack as well, and mainly because it had been good for JJ

and Laurie. When Jack had returned home Monday evening, Laurie had reported that JJ

had had the best day he’d had in months, with no crying whatsoever. Jack expected a similar story that evening, because Laurie had called him about three p.m. to say things had been going similarly all day.

Taking the stairs by two or three steps at a time, Jack poked his head into the kitchen. As he assumed would be the case, Laurie was involved with dinner preparations, and JJ was contentedly playing in his playpen. Jack quickly went over to Laurie, gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and looked in on JJ. To Jack’s delight, the boy smiled.

“I believe he’s going to allow us to have a real dinner tonight,” Laurie said.

“Fabulous,” Jack replied. “Are you going to feed him and put him to bed beforehand?”

“That’s the plan.”

“With him as content as he is, I’d like to play basketball for an hour or so.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Laurie said. Then with a wink she added, “Just don’t get yourself too tired.”

Jack enjoyed thinking about what she had in mind for the evening as he wasted no time getting into his basketball gear and heading back down the stairs. With JJ apparently feeling as well as he was over the last two days, Jack tried to keep his excitement in check to avoid future even more serious disappointments, but everything was going so well that it was difficult. The previous morning he’d gone back to see Bingham yet again and asked for some time off, not to avoid coming into the office but just from autopsies. As he’d suggested he would, Bingham had agreed immediately, although he’d asked Jack, in return, to at least sign out the murder case where the on-call ME had forgotten to have the hands bagged, so the issue could be put to bed. Jack had been happy to inform him it had already been done.

Freed from additional autopsies, Jack had been able to spend more of both days with Shawn and Sana, where things were also going well as moving along at a rapid pace.

Sana expected to do the mitochondrial sequencing the next day, which Jack and James were hoping would tell them where the individual whose bones they were had originated. The question being whether they were from the Middle East, in which case they might still be the Virgin Mary’s, or from Rome, where they’d been ultimately buried, meaning they couldn’t be the Virgin Mary’s. As Jack ran across the street and entered the playground, he thought it ironic that just when he’d found the perfect distraction, JJ was doing better than he had for more than a month. Jack wondered if it would be appropriate with such a change to have JJ’s mouse antibody level tested in case they could again start his treatment.