Precious Blood(34)
“If you were thinking about Cheryl Cass, I don’t blame you. There is something wrong with that verdict, isn’t there? And the Cardinal knows it.”
Gregor shook his head. “The Cardinal didn’t say anything about being unsatisfied with the verdict.” As far as Gregor could tell, the Cardinal had been in love with the verdict, although it was possible he’d changed his mind since the day before yesterday. O’Bannion had a habit of that. “As for me, Sister, all I can say is that I really don’t know yet what happened. I’ve talked to people, but always on the phone, and always for relatively short periods of time. I haven’t seen any of the physical evidence. I haven’t even laid eyes on most of the people who saw Cheryl Cass on Ash Wednesday. I know nothing about Colchester. I couldn’t give you anything at all like an informed opinion.”
“But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To find out all those things and come to an informed opinion?”
“I’m here to oblige a friend of mine, an Armenian priest named Father Tibor Kasparian. He’s a friend of your Cardinal’s.”
“Everybody’s a friend of the Cardinal’s, Mr. Demarkian. Even Andy Walsh. Although neither of them wants to admit it.” She tapped her fingers against the tablecloth. Then she seemed to come to some decision, and nodded. “I think what you ought to do,” she said, “is go out and talk to Lieutenant John Smith. I know that sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. It’s his name.”
“I’m sure it is. But what am I supposed to find out from this Lieutenant John Smith?”
“Everything,” Scholastica said simply.
She stood up, shook out the skirt of her habit, and straightened her veil. “Have a good day, Mr. Demarkian.” She held out her hand. “It’s getting on to eight, and I’ve got to get over to the school. It is Holy Thursday.”
Gregor was about to hold out his own hand—and tell her he knew how busy she was, for that matter—but before he got around to either, she was gone.
FIVE
[1]
AT FIRST, WHAT GREGOR wanted to do with the rest of his morning was a little exploring: off the grounds of St. Agnes’s, onto the streets of Colchester, and through the doors of the nearest first-rate diner. If he’d known where the nearest first-rate diner was—or where any diner was—he might have gone. Armenian Lent had finally laid him low. His craving for meat was so strong, he kept imagining himself ripping into great raw dinosaur thighs, like a caveman in a badly researched movie. He wanted to go somewhere where they would serve him a steak and potatoes fried in cholesterol at eight o’clock in the morning—and then stay there, for hours, maybe right through lunch.
Instead, he left the convent and stood for a while in the courtyard, looking around. The streets immediately surrounding St. Agnes’s seemed to be purely residential. Sturdy wood-frame houses with tiny neat front yards and carefully shoveled walks, all three stories tall, marched east and west and north and south without interruption. Some of them had plaster statues of the Blessed Virgin next to their stoops. More had stained glass hangings on their doors, of crosses or doves or roses of life. When he looked up and north, he could see the spires of the Cathedral. In fact, he could see nearly half of the Cathedral’s south side. He was surprised to find it so close, even though he’d been told it was. He’d forgotten how little space Catholic parishes in heavily Catholic cities needed to take up. He let his eyes travel to the cross that was the Cathedral’s highest point and sighed. The mere sight of the place was annoying to him. The situation as it now stood was nearly intolerable. Why had O’Bannion been in such a rush to get him here, when he must have known Gregor would be left hanging most of Holy Thursday? As far as Gregor could tell, he was going to be left hanging all of Holy Thursday. Every time he talked to someone new, he heard something else about the activities for the Easter Tridium. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that the dark hours of Holy Thursday night were to be occupied by an Archdiocesanwide rosary, with all the parishioners down on their knees mumbling Hail, Marys to the exclusion of any other form of speech until Good Friday morning.
He could have gone back to Rosary House, but he didn’t want to do that. His room was small and cold, and he had forgotten to bring along a book to read—even one of Bennis’s. He could have gone looking for Colchester Homicide, but he didn’t want to do that, either. Barging in on an insanely busy squadroom with a lot of not immediately relevant questions first thing in the morning was not his idea of tact. Besides, he wanted to talk to O’Bannion before he talked to the police, to get a better idea of what was really going on. He considered St. Agnes’s Church, and decided against it. It was much too busy. Both the front doors and the one at the side were propped open and people were hurrying in and out—including, he noticed with interest, both the women he’d seen talking to Scholastica earlier—but they were all too busy to pay any attention to him. Preparations for Mass this morning at St. Agnes’s Church looked more like preparations for a theatrical extravaganza. At one point, he actually saw the expensive-looking woman in the red coat come trotting into the courtyard from the direction of Carver Street, leading a goat.