John Jordan05 - Blood Sacrifice (3 page)

“Do you believe in the devil?” Father Thomas asked.

While waiting for him, I had begun perusing the vast library in his study, and was flipping through one of the many texts on demon possession, exorcism, and Satan when he walked in.

The question caught me off guard and I hesitated before responding, trying to come up with something to say. “Looks like
you’re
the expert on that.”

“Evasive, but not untrue,” he said.

Father Thomas Scott was a thin man with receding gray hair, a neatly trimmed gray beard, and kind brown eyes that shone with intelligence. His body, like his voice, was soft without being effeminate, and his black suit and Roman collar hung loosely on his narrow frame.

Turning to see Sister Abigail in the corner when she cleared her throat, he said, “Why Sister, what’re you doing skulking about back there?”

“We need to talk to you, Tom,” she said, “and not about the devil.”

Suddenly, there was a chill in the overcrowded, musty room.

“Sister would have us believe that there’s no such thing as spirits,” he said to me. “That everything’s in our minds. All we have to do is get some counseling and we’ll all be fine.”

“And Father thinks the devil made us do it,” she said.

“What do you think?” Father Thomas asked me.

“That I don’t want to get in the middle of an argument between the two of you.”

“Evasive, but not unwise,” he said.

Though there was no visible sign of it, I knew Father Thomas was a pipe smoker. Beneath the musty smell of the dusty books and the mildew odor caused by Florida humidity, the sweet ripe-raisin aroma of pipe tobacco lingered in the still air.

“But she’s a nun.”

“But not a sixteenth-century one,” she said.

“So Christ performed exorcisms because he wasn’t as enlightened as you?”

“Can we not do this right now?” she said.

“I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news,” I said, stepping between them.

“What is it?”

“I’m very sorry, but—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, just give it to me,” he said. “No need to soften the blow for me.”

“Tommy Boy is dead,” Sister said.

“What?” he asked in shock. “No.”

He looked over at me and I nodded.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I just saw him.”

“We’re sure, Tom,” Sister said.

“When? Where did it happen? How?”

“We’re not sure yet,” I said. “His body was found in the bay this morning. I’m very sorry.”

We were all silent for a moment, and I watched as the realization seeped into his face.

“Do you have any idea what he was doing near the marina?” I asked.

“We didn’t come to ask questions,” Sister said.

“No,” Father Thomas said, ignoring her. “None.”

“Did he strike you as suicidal?”

He shook his head. “She’s the expert, but I don’t think so.”

“John,” Sister said, and I felt as if at any minute my knuckles were going to be rapped with a ruler.

“When’s the last time you saw him?” I asked.

“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to do this,” Sister said.

“I’ve got to…” Father Thomas began, as he made his way over behind his desk and dropped into the chair.

Sister Abigail walked over to a credenza in the corner, opened a cabinet, and withdrew a bottle of Irish whiskey and a tumbler. Walking over to his desk, she placed the glass before him and poured a couple of fingers of Jameson.

“Here,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“There’s no ice,” she said.

“Don’t need any,” he said, then turned up the tumbler and took a big gulp.

I was close enough to smell the whiskey, and I could almost taste it as it went down his throat. Seized with a sudden urge to grab the bottle and take a long pull on it, I took a step back.

As if reading my mind, Sister screwed the cap back on and said, “Sorry.”

Of course she didn’t have to read my mind to know what was on it. I had sat for hours letting her probe its dark corners with the bright penetrative light of her insight and intellect.

“That’s right, you Protestants don’t like alcohol, do you?” Father Thomas said.

I wasn’t sure I was any more a Protestant than anything else. In fact, I wasn’t sure they had a word for what I was, but it didn’t seem worth mentioning.

“Actually, this one likes it too much,” I said.

He nodded and gave a small appreciative smile.

“I realize this is difficult, but do you know of anyone who would want to hurt Tommy?”

He shook his head.

“John, I must insist you stop right now,” Sister said.

“Me too,” Steve Taylor said from the doorway.

We all turned to see him. He was shaking his head at me.

“Wasn’t it just a few minutes ago you almost got locked up for interfering in an official investigation?”

“You’d think one day I’d learn,” I said.

“Why should you be any different?” Sister asked.

“Don’t tell me people don’t learn from their mistakes, Sister,” Steve said. “That they don’t change. I couldn’t bear it.”

“Come on, John,” Sister said. “Let’s leave these two to their own devices.”

“I probably should stay for the questioning,” I said.

Steve and Sister objected simultaneously.

As Sister and I started to leave, I turned back to Father Thomas. “I’m very sorry for what’s happened.”

“But not enough not to come in here and start interrogating him first thing,” Steve said.

When I got back to my room, Tammy Taylor was waiting for me.

The dorm rooms at St. Ann’s didn’t have locks. They were constructed for young seminarians who supposedly had no need for privacy. Of course, I would think few people needed as much privacy as young, isolated, testosterone-teeming seminarians.

She was sitting on the edge of my bed, her feet spread apart on the floor, a too-thin cotton dress stretched across her lithe body. Since young seminarians were entering a life of suffering, there was no heating in the dorms, and the cold room revealed that the cotton-clad Miss Taylor wasn’t wearing a bra.

She gave me a sheepish smile.

The small room was just barely bigger than a six by nine prison cell, and there was no way for both of us to be in the room without being close to one another. Leaving the door open, I stepped across the bare cement floor and over to the dresser in the corner—the only other piece of furniture besides the twin bed—and began to gather some clean clothes.

When I was finished and she still hadn’t said anything, I said, “Are you lost?”

Running her fire-engine-red fingernails through her bottle-blond hair, she said, “Aren’t we all?” in a soft, airy voice. I was surprised to see the quality of her manicure and dye-job and wondered how and when someone like her went to the salon. “Isn’t that why we’re here?”

“Arguably,” I said—because she was probably right and I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Being lost can be fun, though, don’t you think?”

I didn’t say anything.

She wriggled her ass on the bed slightly. “Is it unsafe to be lost in your room?”

I shook my head. “Not for you.”

For a moment, she looked as if she wasn’t quite sure if what I had said was a compliment or a putdown, and her forehead furrowed as she tried to figure it out.

“Didn’t Jesus say you’ve got to get lost to get found?” she asked.

“Something like that, yeah.”

As if she were an actress reciting lines, her soft, airy voice, blank, wide-eyed stare, and slow, unsure movements didn’t match what she was saying.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well what?”

“You wanna get lost?”

I shook my head. “But you feel free to.”

“I meant
with
me, silly.”

It was as if I were dealing with two different people. One showed signs of intelligence, saying things that bordered on the sublime, the other so deficient, I wasn’t sure how she dressed herself.

She stood and closed the distance between us like a cat stalking its prey. Her skin was smooth and pale, and she wore colored contacts that made her eyes an unnatural too blue shade.

“You sure?” she asked, grabbing my arm with her hands.

I nodded.

“I’m a wild ride,” she said, a flash of what appeared to be intelligence momentarily replacing the shallow, unfocussed glaze of her pale blue eyes.

“Well, it was nice talking to you,” I said with no attempt to hide the insincerity or sarcasm, “but I really need to get back to fasting and praying.”

“Some only come out by fasting and prayer,” she said in a voice that didn’t seem to belong to her.

I recognized the quote from the Gospels. It was something Jesus said about certain demons possessing people. They wouldn’t come out except by prayer and fasting.

“What?” I asked.

“But I won’t come out even then,” she said in that same altered voice.

Suddenly, goose bumps were covering my body and a shiver ran the length of my spine.

“Down girl,” Kathryn Kennedy said from the doorway.

Without acknowledging Kathryn, Tammy said, “If you change your mind… I’m not hard to find.”

She then turned and strolled out of the room, forcing Kathryn to stand aside to let her through the doorway.

When she was gone, Kathryn stepped in and said, “Hey, Joe, thinking about giving it a go?”

I smiled and shook my head. “Negative.”

“Too easy?” she asked.

“Too a lot of things,” I said.

She smiled. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced. I’m Kathryn—”

“Kennedy, I know,” I said. “I read your books. I’m John Jordan.”

Unlike Tammy, Kathryn’s nails were unadorned, her long light blond hair didn’t come from a bottle, and if she wore any makeup at all I couldn’t detect it. In contrast to the boy-body-with-breasts so popular in our current culture, Kathryn was soft and curvaceous, a throwback to a generation or so ago when women looked and felt like women.

“Didn’t Sister Abigail tell me you’re a prison chaplain?”

I nodded.

“That must be exciting.”

“Sometimes,” I said. “And sometimes it’s like Tammy.”

She smiled. “
Too
exciting?”

“Too a lot of things,” I said.

“Speaking of which, sorry to have interrupted. I think you were almost in there.”

“You really think I had a shot?”

“I
am
sorry for just dropping in like this, but I heard about poor Tommy. Is he really dead?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“So many of the at-risk kids who come here have less than happy endings, but I really thought Tommy might defy the odds. He was so talented.”

“You knew him pretty well?”

“In addition to undergoing counseling with Father and Sister, the kids are offered lessons in the artistic discipline of their choice. Most don’t do anything. A few take a lesson or two and stop when it’s not fun anymore. But Tommy wanted to be a writer and he had real talent. I was working with him on a short story.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

She looked up and seemed to be thinking about it, which gave me a chance to study her face in more detail. She had smooth, pale skin, delicate features, and big brown eyes that brimmed with kindness. The overall effect was gentleness and purity, which, coupled with the softly rounding curves of her body, made her well-suited for nurturing a man or his children with equal ease.

“We had our session yesterday afternoon,” she said. “I saw him a few times after that, but not really to speak, just from a distance.”

“How did he seem during his lesson?”

“Distracted, now that I think about it, but not enough to make me really notice it much at the time. You know how kids are.”

“Limited attention span?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “And limited experiences. No frame of reference to process most things.”

“Did he ever mention having any problems with anyone in particular or being depressed or—”

“You think someone killed him?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea,” I said. “I’m just asking.”

“But did you see anything that would make you think he was murdered?”

I shook my head.

“That he killed himself?”

“Most drownings are accidental,” I said. “And when they’re not it’s extremely difficult to prove. I’m just asking.”

“Because you’re not just a prison chaplain, are you?”

“None of us are
just
anything.”

“Someone said you used to be a cop.”

“Do you think he was depressed?” I asked.

“Are you going to try to find out what happened to him?”

“Sister told me not to,” I said.

“And?”

“Was he depressed?”

She smiled. “No more than reason.”

I smiled. “Literate, aren’t you?”

“I
am
a professional,” she said. “What’s your excuse?”

“Was he having conflict with anyone here—or anywhere else—that you know of?”

“Sure, who doesn’t have conflict, but he never mentioned anything that would result in this.”

“The smallest, most trivial things can result in this,” I said.

“I guess you’re right,” she said. “The first one was over whose offering God liked the best, wasn’t it?”

“I’m not saying this was murder. Just wondering if it might be.”

She nodded. “I wasn’t jumping to conclusions as much as showing off my knowledge of the Bible for you.”

I smiled. “Impressive. The thing is, murder by drowning is very rare—so is suicide for that matter. So it’s likely we’ll never know.”

“But you’re gonna try to know,” she said.

Sister Abigail appeared at my door and tapped on her watch, indicating it was time for our session.

“No,” I said, “I’m not. I’m going to obey Sister and leave the investigating to those who are paid to do it.”

“Are you bent on self-destruction?” Sister Abigail asked me.

“Are you given to overstatement?” I shot back.

She smiled. “Perhaps that was a bit over the top, but not necessarily. Once you start sliding down certain slopes, you might not be able to claw your way back up again.”

We were in her office, which was much cleaner if no less cluttered than Father Thomas’s. I was seated on a muted floral-print love seat, she, in a well-worn cloth recliner across from me. As usual, she was not reclining, but sitting with her feet pulled back together on the floor, her hands folded in her lap.

“You think asking a few questions about Tommy is—”

“The same as taking a few drinks?” she asked.

My breath caught, my pulse quickened, and I suddenly felt very vulnerable.

Averting my eyes, I glanced around her office, which gave the illusion of extravagance but had obviously been decorated on the cheap. Pristine books—psychology and religion texts mainly—were neatly arranged on homemade shelves that sagged slightly. Holy cards of the handout variety hung in wood frames of the dollar store variety. On her walls, atop her shelves, and on her desk were a lifetime of gathered objects—gifts, mementos, collectibles—and joining her many religious icons were the framed photographs of Freud and Jung.

Seeing their pictures made me think of
The Talking Cure
, and it occurred to me that that’s exactly what I was here after.

“Is it ever just a few drinks?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Is it ever just a few questions?”

I thought back to the recent investigations I had conducted, wondering if all of them had become obsessions. Was I just a compulsive person? Merely trading one addiction for another? Maybe I lacked the objectivity and detachment needed to be an effective investigator.

“You came here because trying to be a chaplain
and
an investigator wasn’t working for you,” she said. “You said it had cost you your family, your serenity, and on occasion your sobriety.”

She shifted in her chair, and as she moved her hands, the sweet fragrance of rose-scented hand cream tinged the cool air of the drafty old office.

“Were you serious about wanting to look at why?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Has that changed?”

I told her it hadn’t, and she stared at me for a long moment, eyebrows arched, forehead furrowed, head cocked.

Though kind, her eyes were intense and penetrating, seeming to continually be searching for denial and deception, and I wondered how often she had found it in me.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Because it looks to me like what you really want to be doing is investigating Tommy Boy’s death.”

Through the window to my left, I could see Father Thomas walking toward the chapel. Head down in what appeared to be avoidance of interaction more than the cold wind, he walked briskly, hands jammed into his pants pockets. Before he reached the chapel, Tammy appeared in his path, forcing him to stop and acknowledge her.

“Don’t you want to know if he was—” I began.

“Yes, but I also know that we may never know, and I can accept that. Can you?”

I thought about it for a long moment before saying, “I don’t know. I’m not sure I can.”

“Even if it costs you your sobriety—or at a minimum your serenity?”

“I’m just not sure. I’d like to say I could, but I’m trying to be honest and I just don’t know.”

After what appeared to be an intense exchange, Tammy pressed her body against Father Thomas and attempted to kiss him. Grabbing her arms, he shook her angrily and shoved her backward. As she began to laugh at and taunt him, he stepped around her and all but ran for the sanctuary of the chapel.

“If it’s likely that you will drink if you continue to investigate and you continue to do it, would you agree you have a problem?”

“Yes,” I said, “but not in the way you think. I’ve got to. I can’t stop. Investigating is as much a part of who I am as ministering—maybe more. May even be a form of it.”

“But look what it’s cost you,” she said. “Was it worth losing your wife over?”

“It wasn’t investigating that cost me my marriage.”

“I thought it was.”

Mixed in the books surrounding us on all sides were several titles—both popular and academic—about marriage, but even if she had memorized them all, what could this aging celibate know about that most difficult of human relationships?

“It coincided with an investigation, but it can hardly be blamed on what I uncovered. If we had handled it differently…”

“Why did you come here?” she asked.

“To St. Ann’s?”

She nodded.

I thought about it. “In search of peace, perspective—I don’t know. I just wanted to slow down for a little while and give myself time to heal and to see if I could figure out why I keep repeating certain patterns.”

“Not to investigate what will probably turn out to be an accidental drowning?” she asked.

I laughed. “Point taken.”

“Is it possible that you want to do the latter so as to be distracted from the former—from the real reason you came?”

“Anything’s possible,” I said with a smile she did not return.

“Do you see yourself as a controlling person?”

I shook my head. “Not at all.”

“And yet you have to be the one to investigate?”

“Not always.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I mean a crime you’re aware of and in close proximity to.”

“So I’m controlling?
That’s
my problem?”

“I’m just asking questions,” she said. “
You
have to provide the answers.”

“You’re doing far more than just asking questions. You’re leading me where you want me to go.”

“Am I?”

“I don’t think I’m controlling,” I said. “If I were, I probably wouldn’t follow your leading questions, would I?”

“Well, at least you spent a lot of time thinking about it before you answered, and that’s what matters.”

I laughed. “I
have
spent a lot of time thinking about it. This isn’t my first experience with self-examination, you know. I know I have problems. I just don’t think being controlling is one of them.”

“Does it have to do with your ego?” she asked.

“Obviously.”

“Is it pride? The attention? The need to know—because there are some things we never will.”

“I know that,” I said.

“Well?”

“What about a gift and the need to use it? A desire for justice?”

“Sounds good, but couldn’t that be a way of justifying what you want to do? Giving it a sense of the sacred? And do we ever really have justice down here?”

“We approximate it sometimes.”

She was silent, thinking a moment.

Was I guilty of doing what I had criticized so many others for? Had I, like so many televangelists and terrorists, become an egocentric self-righteous idolater who had created God over in my image to justify my actions?

Finally, she said, “Is Steve Taylor a capable cop?”

I nodded.

She stared at me for a long moment. “So why not just let him handle it?”