Precious Blood(40)
“Declan Boyd?” Peg frowned. “Why would he be hopping? He didn’t have anything to do with it. He wasn’t even living in the state at the time.”
“He’s living in the state now,” Judy said, “and in O’Bannion’s jurisdiction. And you know how O’Bannion feels about what happened in Black Rock Park.” “Yes, I do. But Father Boyd wasn’t—”
“Oh, Peg,” Judy said. “When Andy causes trouble, Dec gets creamed. You know that. Andy’s so damn good at disappearing during firefights.”
Peg looked back at the television. It was a little black-and-white set Joe had bought so that she could watch soap operas while the children were in the other room watching Alice in Wonderland. It was still tuned to WNVB, now showing a choir of green-robed women singing “Rock of Ages.” Peg got out of her chair and turned it off.
“Maybe,” she said, “what we ought to do is go to the Cardinal and explain it all.”
“No,” Judy said.
“Why not? We weren’t even there for whatever it was that happened at the end.”
“What happened at the end was that a lot of animals got their throats cut.”
“But we weren’t there. Kath and you and me. We—”
“We were there long enough,” Judy said. “We were there for the beginning.”
“And then we left.”
“Yes, we did. But we didn’t tell anybody. We didn’t do anything to stop it. Even though we knew what was going on.”
Peg flushed and looked away. “We were afraid to tell anybody then. And we were—”
“Stoned?” Judy said. “Why do you think that constitutes a defense? Can you imagine telling Cardinal O’Bannion that his favorite parochial school principal swallowed two hits of windowpane acid and most of a case of beer and then proceeded to make herself an accessory to the butchering of a lot of stray dogs and the gang bang of the school tramp?”
“You make it sound so deliberate,” Peg said. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
“I know it wasn’t, Peg.” Judy sighed. “The problem isn’t what it was. The problem is what it’s going to appear to be. To have been. I don’t know how to say it. Remember the fuss the papers made at the time?”
Peg smiled faintly. “They made it sound like Hiroshima. At least.”
“Yes, they did. And they still do, every year or two, when they decide to dredge it up again. Every time some teenage crack addict knifes his dealer in the boys’ room of some tenth-rate public school, they bring it up again. They love that story. It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened in Colchester in two hundred years.”
Peg looked back at the television set, blank now. “I watched the whole thing,” she said. “He didn’t give anything away. He really didn’t. It was like he’d forgotten he’d been involved in it at all and he was using it for something else. Like an innocent bystander with an eye for the main chance.”
“The main chance of what?”
“I don’t know.” Peg looked around her kitchen. She was feeling vague and unsettled, maybe even a little feverish. She had been feeling that way, off and on, since Cheryl showed up at her door. Cheryl. Dear God, she felt guilty about Cheryl. She always had, even in the days when dumping on Cheryl was de rigueur. “What I should have done,” she told Judy, “was ask her to stay.”
“Who?”
“Cheryl Cass. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I saw her picture in the paper, after she died.”
“What you should have done is kept your mouth shut,” Judy said. “If you hadn’t come forward, they never would have connected her to us. They never would have connected her to anybody.”
“They still don’t ‘connect’ her to us, the way you’re putting it. If I’d asked her to stay, she might never have committed suicide.”
“Is that what you think? Cheryl Cass committed suicide?”
“Of course. What else could possibly have happened?”
Judy Eagan snorted. Then she got up, put on her coat, and began to button buttons. “Never mind,” she said. “I’ve got to get back to the church and deal with that goat. I left him tied up in the vestibule and he’s probably—defecated all over the floor by now. You are coming to the ten o’clock?”
“Of course I am. I’m bringing that lot in there,” Peg gestured toward the television room, where the tape was jogging along to its finale, “and the rest will come over with the school. I wonder what Andy wants with the goat.”