Precious Blood(29)

“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?” he asked. “Barry Field? I’m afraid I’m not holding up very well—”

“No, no,” the Cardinal said. “It’s wasn’t about Barry Field. I was just—digressing. That’s all.”

“That’s all right. What was on your mind?”

“Gregor Demarkian.”

Tom Dolan smiled. “What’s the matter, Your Eminence? Having second thoughts now that you finally got him here? I told you at the time—”

“I know, I know. And no, I’m not having second thoughts. Even if Andy Walsh wasn’t responsible for that poor woman’s dying, I’m sure somebody was. It may not have seemed like it, but I was paying attention when that Lieutenant John Smith talked. And when Demarkian talked, too, come to think of it. They’re right about one thing. If she really had committed suicide, she wouldn’t have been in that alley.”

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “Your Eminence, you didn’t know Cheryl Cass. I did. At one time, I knew her very well. She wasn’t—like other people.”

“There isn’t a human being on Earth who wants to die in an alley instead of a nice soft bed, except maybe some saint looking to get martyred for the Faith. I don’t suppose you think your Cheryl Cass was a saint.”

“No, Your Eminence. Anything but.”

“The more I think of it, the more I’m sure we were a little hasty at the time.”

“Why? Your Eminence, the entire police department of Colchester is convinced it was suicide, except Lieutenant Smith. I listened to all the arguments, too, you know. I understand Smith’s position. But—”

“Sister Scholastica says there wasn’t any of that plant stuff missing from the convent.”

“Sister Scholastica says Sister Peter Rose says there wasn’t any of it missing. And you know Sister Peter Rose, Your Eminence. She’s a holy woman, but she’s got a brain like an drained honeycomb.”

“Maybe.” The Cardinal looked mulish. “I still don’t think it could hurt to get Demarkian and Smith together for a talk. Demarkian is supposed to be good. Maybe he could clear this up.”

“It is cleared up.”

“Cleared up for me,” the Cardinal said. “Then I could stop worrying about it. You don’t know how I’d like to be able to stop worrying about it.”

“I have a fair idea, Your Eminence. But you know, Mr. Demarkian might clear this matter up in a way you wouldn’t like at all. You could be stuck with a scandal and Andy Walsh at the same time.”

“That’s what I like about you, Tom. You’re full of faith, hope, and charity—but always in moderation.”

“Right now I’m full of coffee and close to dying of it.” Tom drained his paper cup and tossed it in the trash. “If that’s all, Your Eminence, I think I’d better get out of here. I’m close to collapse.”

“What about Demarkian and Smith?”

“Well, Your Eminence, I suppose you’ll do what you want. You usually do.”

The Cardinal laughed. “All right,” he said. “All right. Get out of here. Only make a couple of notes to yourself for tomorrow. I want you to call Father Walsh first thing in the morning and remind him we’re coming.”

“Do you think he’ll need a reminder?”

“He tends to get amnesia in sticky situations. I don’t know what he intends to pull at Mass tomorrow, but I have no interest in putting up with selective memory loss as well.”

“What else?”

“After you call Father Walsh, call Gregor Demarkian and make an appointment with him at the Chancery for morning. Maybe the three of us can have a long talk.”

“I’m going to go to bed, Your Eminence.”

“Go,” the Cardinal said.

“I’m gone.”

Tom stumbled across the Cardinal’s office, through the reception lounge, into the hall. He got as far as the door that connected the Chancery offices to the residence wing without knowing anything at all about what he was doing. Then he got a little puff of second wind, and found himself standing stock-still at the bottom of the dark stairway. He was holding on to the bulb at the bottom of the banister, only seconds away from a dead faint.

Dear God, he thought. I’m tired. I don’t think I’ve been this tired in my entire life.

But that, he knew, wasn’t true. He had been just this tired once before, and it had been at the start of the worst year of his existence.





FOUR


[1]


GREGOR DEMARKIAN HAD NEVER paid much attention to the day-to-day workings of a Roman Catholic church, or to any other kind of church. In spite of the popularity of clerical mysteries in fiction and the frenzied fuss the media made whenever any religious person was involved in any kind of crime, there was actually very little of that in real life. Bigtime evangelists had their problems with the IRS. The more radical orders of nuns sank themselves in the bewildering politics of Latin America. Every once in a while, a priest or minister or rabbi got himself involved in a sexual scandal. On the whole, the clergy and religious were a group remarkable for its ability to stay within the law. The real market in religious crime was in the fringe cults, and in that small set of psychopaths who found religion a convenient excuse for the mayhem they would have committed anyway. That same set of psychopaths also found religion a handy handle on which to hang an insanity defense. In his ten years as head of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Department, Gregor had had exactly one set of serial killings with a “religious” motive: a man named Gunnar Manz had tried to convince the law enforcement arms of fourteen states that his dedication to the murder and decapitation of forty-year-old housewives was a charge laid on him directly by God, speaking through the Archangel Raphael. Manz had not been a particularly interesting psychopath—unlike Gary Gilmore, who fascinated Gregor to this day—but Gregor had put in his time watching the tapes and reading the transcripts of interviews. In Gregor’s opinion, Manz had had as much contact with the Archangel Raphael, in fact or fancy, as Gregor himself had had with Siberian fishing villages. Meaning none. Manz was neither schizophrenic nor hallucinatory. He was a con artist. He conned every state but Florida, and Florida had executed him.