Precious Blood(39)

“Seen what, Father Walsh?”

“The reports about the animal sacrifices in Black Rock Park. From what I remember—we were both in high school at the time—it made every media outlet in the area.”

“Did you say animal sacrifices in Black Rock Park?” Barry Field said. “Well, Father, I remember some reports of something going on in Black Rock Park, but nothing about sacrifices. The way I heard it, what happened back there twenty years ago was some juvenile delinquents doing their evil work on some mangy dog.”

“Three mangy dogs,” Andy Walsh said. “And two cats.”

“Even so, Father Walsh, I don’t remember anything about worshiping the Devil in that case.”

“I don’t either,” Andy Walsh said. “That’s not the way the papers reported it. That doesn’t mean that wasn’t the way it was.”

“Do you have any reason to believe that that’s the way it was?”

“Of course,” Andy Walsh said. Gregor realized suddenly that the priest’s eyes were twinkling. He was having fun. “I have the best reasons in the world. I’ve made a thorough study of Devil worship, Mr. Field, and I can tell you here and now that that incident showed all the signs.”

Gregor felt a movement beside him, and turned to find Declan Boyd leaning so far forward he was nearly off the couch. The cherubic face was not so cherubic any more. It was shocked, confused and a little green.

“What is he doing?” Boyd demanded. “What in the name of God is he doing?”

Actually, Gregor wanted an answer to that question himself.





SIX


[1]


IT WAS 9:16 WHEN Judy Eagan ran up the walk to Peg Morrissey Monaghan’s front door, and 9:16:45 when she plowed into the foyer, slammed the front door behind her, and started chewing up Peg’s carpets on her way to the back of the house. Peg was in the kitchen, with a view of nothing more edifying than a television set still tuned to WNVB and the backyard, but she knew who it was. Judy’s heels were so high and so sharp, when she walked across carpet she always sounded like a sewing machine needle making progress through a thick length of cloth. Peg wished she’d make the same sound on her way out, right away. Either that, or that Joe would start remembering to lock the door. That was the problem with being married to a man who had grown up in a town too small to have crime. He never took the possibility of intrusion seriously.

Judy said a high, fluting, exasperated “hello” to the children as she came through the television room and then slammed into the kitchen. Her hair was wild, her coat was open, and she wasn’t carrying her pocketbook. Peg couldn’t imagine how she’d managed to leave it. Judy was as paranoid about her pocketbook as Richard Nixon had been about tapes.

Judy shrugged off her coat, threw it across the kitchen table, and said, “Did you see it? Did you hear about it? Have you any idea what—”

“Yes,” Peg said. “I did see it. I was flipping through the channels and I saw Andy, so I stopped to listen—”

“That goddamned two-faced son of a—”

“Judy.”

Judy shot a guilty look at the door to the television room, from which the sounds of the Sesame Street Learning about Letters videotape were coming clearly. “Sorry,” she said. “I keep forgetting the little brats are here.”

Peg picked up Judy’s coat—it had skidded into a basket of apples and overturned it—and folded it neatly over the back of a chair. “Believe it or not, I don’t think of my children as brats. In fact, I take a certain amount of pride in believing they’re well behaved.”

“How can you tell? God, the last good night’s sleep you had must have been in 1978.”

“I sleep fine.”

“For God’s sake. How can you live like this?”

“By choice,” Peg said. Then she mentally scolded herself for needling Judy—choice was one of Judy’s favorite words—and started putting apples back in the basket. The problem with Judy, Peg thought, was that she didn’t really believe in choice at all. She was absolutely sure she had found the one right way to live, and she was just as absolutely sure that any woman who didn’t want to live that way had been—well, brainwashed. To say the least. It was impossible for Judy Eagan to believe that Peg Morrissey Monaghan was actually happy.

Peg got the last of the apples into the basket and sat down. “How did you see it?” she asked. “I thought you were over at the church, dealing with the—”

“The goat,” Judy finished. “I was. I didn’t see it. Declan Boyd told me about it. He was absolutely hopping.”