Precious Blood(23)

“Rosary House,” Boyd told the driver as he climbed in himself. Then he turned to Gregor and said, “You’re going to love Rosary House. It was one of the Cardinal’s best ideas. It’s run by this lovely nun from the Sisters of Divine Grace, Sister Mary Martha, and it’s right on the grounds of St. Agnes’s—”

“St. Agnes’s?”

“Well, of course,” Declan Boyd said. “You’ll be right on the spot. St. Agnes’s is why you are here.”

Gregor might have corrected this impression, but at that moment the cabdriver found an opening in the traffic and shot into it. Gregor was knocked against the back of his seat, and Declan Boyd winced at the squeal of tires.

“These cabdrivers are awful,” he told Gregor. “I think they watch Edward G. Robinson movies in their spare time.”

Gregor thought Declan Boyd listened to Firesign Theater in his, but he didn’t say so.





[4]


As it turned out, Gregor never had a chance to ask Declan Boyd about Cheryl Cass that night. Even with the rush-hour traffic and the strange illogic of Colchester’s streets, the ride was too short. Gregor had to wonder why he’d thought it wouldn’t be. He’d never been in Colchester, but he’d heard enough about it, from Cardinal O’Bannion and Father Tom Dolan and even the men in Colchester Homicide. If there was a sign with an arrow pointing to the Cathedral in the train station, then the Cathedral had to be near the train station. St. Agnes’s, everyone had said, was the closest regular parish to the Cathedral’s own. He supposed he hadn’t realized how close that would be.

It was 5:25 when they left the train station. It was only 5:37 when they pulled up in front of a low wrought-iron gate with a cross sticking up from the center of its swing panel. The world had gone from darkening to dark and from cold to nearly freezing. The wind was strong and stiff and the sidewalks capped with ice. In the time they’d been together, Declan Boyd had said exactly one thing about Cheryl Cass, and that at the last minute.

“I met her, you know,” he’d told Gregor as the cab came screeching to the curb. “Twice. Both times on Ash Wednesday. She came to the rectory to see Father Walsh, once in the morning and once at nearly five. That’s what makes this whole thing so creepy. She was such a nice, sad woman.”

Gregor tried desperately to remember what had brought this up. In the meantime, Declan Boyd vaulted out of the cab, skidded on the sidewalk, and came to a stop at the wrought-iron gate.

“Oh, no,” he said.

“What’s the matter?” Gregor struggled with his suitcase and the cab fare—he’d been ready with the cab fare, priests never had enough money to pay for anything—until he reached Declan Boyd’s side. The cherubic priest looked so dismayed, Gregor thought the rectory must have burned down.

“Look at that,” Father Boyd said, pointing to the smallest of the three small brick buildings at the left side of the back of the lot. The church was at the left side of the front of the lot and was big by anyone’s standards. “The Cardinal Archbishop is going to have a cat.”

“About what?”

“Look,” Declan Boyd insisted.

Gregor looked and saw a window filled with stuffed bunnies, marshmallow chicks, chocolate rabbits, and pink plastic eggs oozing jelly beans.

“The Cardinal,” Declan Boyd said, “hates this sort of thing. And Andy knows it.”

“Do you mean Father Walsh?”

“Of course I mean Father Walsh. He’s always pulling stunts like this. Always. He knows the Cardinal’s going to be here tomorrow—”

“Why would the Cardinal be here tomorrow? I thought you said he was busy on Holy Thursday.”

“He is. But he’s going to be here for the ten o’clock Mass. I think they’re all going to be here. Father Dolan, too, and that nun secretary of the Cardinal’s. There have been rumors.”

“Of what?”

“Liturgical silliness,” Declan Boyd said solemnly. “Father Walsh is addicted to it. So you see, he must have put all that stuff in the window on purpose, and it’s Lent, and—oh, here’s Sister.”

Here, indeed, was Sister, an enormously tall woman in a modernized habit and no coat, striding through the door of the largest of the three brick buildings with her arms wrapped around her body to protect herself against the cold. She passed under one of the sidewalk lamps just as the wind battered against her veil, and Gregor saw that her hair was a bright, nearly orange, red.

“Dec,” she said when she got to them, “what are you thinking of? It’s ten below out here.”