Precious Blood(110)

That a living-room exposure scene with all the suspects present was exactly what he had set up did not occur to Gregor until he walked into it—maybe because he didn’t intend to use it as a stage on which to rehash his investigation of the case. He simply wanted to prove a point with as many witnesses present as possible. He had called the Cardinal and asked him to gather Judy Eagan, Declan Boyd, Barry Field, Tom Dolan, and Sister Mary Scholastica for reasons so mundane as to be embarrassing: it was Saturday, these were the people intimately involved with the case, and he didn’t see why he should interfere with the weekend plans of innocent bystanders. It was after noon when he finally called the Cardinal, after six when he wanted the meeting held. He was in a hurry to get the mess cleared up and the murderer put away. He was not, he knew, dealing with a psychopath, but he was dealing with a volatile human being who might still be dangerous to the people around him. God only knew what might happen in the next week or two to set off another murderous attack.

In the hours between his call to the Cardinal and the time when he would have to leave for the Chancery, Gregor was kept busy at Colchester Homicide. Leroy Merrick had had not only a slow day to work in, but a lucky one. The records of the town Gregor had asked him to check had been computerized almost five years before. Leroy had been able to ascertain the existence of the document in question, drive up, get it, and fax it to Colchester in almost no time at all. Gregor had read the facsimile through more than once and then folded it into his wallet. He wanted to bring it with him to the Chancery.

John Smith had also been having a good day. There were only a few things Gregor needed to know after talking to Judy Eagan and Barry Field, and all of them concerned Peg Morrissey Monaghan. There was a good chance they were unobtainable on the day after her death. Smith, however, had managed to convince Joe Monaghan to let him look through Peg’s high-school yearbooks, and found Peg’s sister taking care of the children when he got to Peg’s house. It was, as he told Gregor later, as if for once there really was a God, and that God was on his side.

“She kept all her souvenirs in an old quilted Whitman’s Sampler box,” he said, taking the list Gregor had asked him to make out of his pocket. “You wouldn’t have believed this stuff. That woman kept everything. And organized. If I could get the clerical staff around here to be that organized, we’d solve everything left open for the last century.”

“Let me have the list,” Gregor told him. Smith handed it over, and Gregor put it down on the conference table where it was easier to read. That was where he was, again, in the conference room on headquarter’s fifth floor. It had turned out to be the only quiet place in the building.

“Lavaliere for the Girls’ High senior prom,” Gregor read. “Lavaliere for the Boys’ High senior prom, lavaliere for the Boys’ High Junior Prom, queen’s crown from the Girls’ High Junior Prom—she was actually queen of that prom?”

“Yep. I thought of it, too. I looked it up in her yearbook. She kept all her yearbooks.”

“Wonderful.”

“The lavaliere for the Girls’ High junior prom is missing,” Smith said. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Yes.” Gregor shook his head. “It’s not going to be any use to anybody, to be sure. I just wanted to know. It corroborates a story I heard.”

“I’ll let it pass,” Smith said blandly. “Like I said, I’m not looking to get myself messed up in a twenty-year-old case from Black Rock Park. Do you want to know what Peg’s sister told me?”

“Yes.”

“Yesterday was Peg’s regular day out. They each had one,

Peg and the sister. Fridays, the sister took Peg’s kids. Mondays, Peg took the sister’s. According to the sister, neither of them actually went out much. They mostly just stayed at home and enjoyed the quiet.”

“I don’t blame them. I’m glad you talked to her, John. It was bothering me, why nobody knew anything about what Peg was doing at St. Agnes’s. With all the people she had around her, if she got a telephone call—”

“She must have.”

“I agree. But if she did, on an ordinary day, somebody must have heard about it. She would have had to arrange for baby-sitting if she was going to get over to the church without the children. There should have been a million people who should have known where she was going and why and who had asked her, and there was nobody.”

“Well,” Smith said, “this explains it. What I don’t get is how our friend knew it was Peg’s day off.”