Festival of Deaths(91)

“Excuse me,” he said, lifting her off.

“Mr. Demarkian!” someone in the crowd yelled. “Have you caught the murderer? Are you going to make an arrest?”

“I can’t make an arrest,” Gregor said. “I’m not a police officer.”

“Get out of the way,” John Jackman said. “Get out of the way. If you don’t get out of the way, I’m going to fire this thing.”

“Get a picture of the cop with his gun in the air!” somebody else yelled.

“Mr. Demarkian,” the first someone yelled. “Is it true that Lotte was on the scene when the attack on Carmencita Boaz occurred?”

“As far as I know, Lotte Goldman was visiting relatives on the Main Line when the attack on Carmencita Boaz occurred. Will you please get out of my way?”

“Get a picture of Demarkian going up the stairs,” somebody else yelled.

It was like swimming in molasses, except that molasses wouldn’t have been hostile, and Gregor definitely felt some hostility in this crowd. They kept pulling at him. People grabbed at his suit jacket tugging and crushing. Somebody tore his jacket pocket on the left side. Somebody else got hold of his tie and nearly strangled him. It suddenly struck Gregor that he was extremely glad that none of these people were liquored up.

“Hey Mr. Demarkian,” somebody yelled. “Look this way and glower.”

Glower. He was at St. Elizabeth’s front doors. He pushed on one and couldn’t make it budge. He pushed on the other and couldn’t make it budge either. He looked through the glass and saw that there were a set of keys in the lock on the other side.

“Knock,” John Jackman said, coming up behind him.

Gregor knocked. An older woman in an abbreviated nun’s habit—full-body white apron over a pale blue dress; tucked-back white veil starched into immobility and falling just below her shoulders—came to the door and shook her head. John Jackman leaned past Gregor and held out his badge.

The nun hesitated, looked worriedly at the crowd, and then nodded.

“They can’t lock a hospital,” Gregor said. “What will happen to the sick people?”

“The ones who want to get in will just have to go down to Quaker General. Here we go. Be fast.”

Gregor was fast. The door opened a very tiny crack. John Jackman pushed him from behind. Gregor stumbled through the doors and past the nun into a large blue-carpeted lobby. In fact, from what he could see, everything at St. Elizabeth’s was blue. Then he remembered. Blue was the color of the Virgin Mary. St. Elizabeth was supposed to have been Mary’s cousin and John the Baptist’s mother. Catholics didn’t make any more sense to him than television people did. The nun was locking the doors behind them with a series of sharp clicks that seemed to give her limitless satisfaction. She turned around to them when she was done and said, “You two gentlemen will want the fifth floor, north wing. That’s where we put her. And enough police officers to start our own department.”

“They’re no better than reporters sometimes,” John said.

“You’re Mr. Gregor Demarkian, aren’t you?” the nun said. “I’m Sister Mary Vincent. Sister Scholastica Burke is my second cousin.”

“Oh,” Gregor said.

“I’ve heard a great deal about you,” Sister Mary Vincent said. “I think you must be quite an unusual man.”

“He is,” John Jackman snickered.

Sister Mary Vincent didn’t seem to have heard the snicker. She was marching to the elevators. She was pushing the call button to get them a car. Gregor looked across the lobby at the desk and saw a crèche on the counter there, with the manger empty. Catholics always left the manger empty until Christmas day.

“You may hear differently when you get upstairs,” Sister Mary Vincent said, “but the reports that have come down to me have all been very encouraging. She seems to have arrived here in time and mendable. Good luck.”

“Wish Carmencita Boaz good luck,” John Jackman said.

Sister Mary Vincent sniffed. “I am praying for Carmencita Boaz,” she said.

Then the elevator doors popped open, and Gregor and John Jackman stepped inside. When the elevator doors closed again, Gregor realized that the elevator walls were hung with the story of Hanukkah in words and pictures. Mattathias of Modin and his five sons were painted in earth tones and beards, the way characters from the Bible were always painted these days—except that Gregor couldn’t remember if this story was in the Bible. Mattathias of Modin was the man who had led the uprising against Antiochus Epiphanes when Antiochus had attempted to prevent the Jews from practicing their religion. It was at the successful conclusion of this uprising that the Jews had been left with oil enough only for one day when they needed much more to keep the light lit in front of the Torah, and God had sent along a miracle to let that one day’s oil burn for eight. Gregor didn’t know if he believed in miracles or not, but as miracles went, this was one of his favorites. He wasn’t surprised to see it on the walls of an elevator in a Catholic hospital, either. He had heard stories about the intolerances of nuns, but he’d never actually met a nun who was religiously intolerant. He was fairly sure he would find a nun up on the fifth floor somewhere, searching diligently for something to replace Itzaak’s yarmulke.