The Thunder Keeper(3)

He let himself in the front door, nearly colliding with Father Don. Obviously on his way out: long black raincoat, safari-type hat tilted slightly on his head. The new assistant was still in his thirties, a Jesuit for only a few years. A good-looking guy, Father John supposed, with sandy-colored hair, pale gray eyes lit with amusement and curiosity, a quick smile. He was about six feet tall—a few inches shorter than Father John—with a lanky, athletic frame and relaxed posture that seemed permanent, as if the man couldn’t imagine a situation in which he wouldn’t be at ease.

Two months ago he’d been teaching mathematics in a Jesuit prep school in Milwaukee. After the last assistant, Father Kevin McBride, had returned to Marquette University to teach anthropology, and after Father John had called the Provincial three, four, six times, pleading for help, and the Provincial had gotten good and tired of taking his calls, Father Don Ryan had arrived.

“Have a minute?” Father John said, hanging his jacket over the coattree. The smell of wet wool mingled with the odor of chilis, onions, and seared meat that drifted down the hallway from the kitchen. A cabinet door slammed shut, and there was the noise of water gushing into the sink. Elena, the housekeeper, was still here. And Walks-On, the golden retriever he’d found in the ditch a couple of years ago, padded down the hall on his three legs and stuck a cold nose into the palm of his hand.

“Well, I’m on my way out . . .” The other priest made an exaggerated motion of pulling back the sleeve of his raincoat and peering at his watch. “A minute.” He seemed to consider this. “Sure, why not.”

Father John patted the dog’s head, then walked into the study, flipping on the wall switch as he went. A white light flooded over the twin wingback chairs that he kept for visitors, the bookcases along the walls, the desk with papers spilling over the top. He dropped onto the leather chair behind the desk. His shirt felt cold and clammy against his back.

Father Don was standing just inside the door, leaning against the frame, arms folded across the front of his raincoat. “Shoot,” he said.

“Confessions today . . .” Father John began.

The other priest walked over and sat down in the chair across from the desk. He leaned forward. “Somebody came to the confessional and told you something that you don’t want to know. Am I right?” Concern worked through his voice.

Father John nodded.

“That’s tough, John, but you can’t repeat what you heard.” The man’s pale eyes darkened like the thunderclouds outside. “We’re bound by the seal of the confessional, two thousand years old. You can’t break it.”

“Suppose someone were to die.”

Father Don took a few moments. Then, as if he’d come to a decision, he said, “We’re speaking hypothetically, right? Did the penitent give you any details? Did he say someone in particular was in danger? Is there anything a hypothetical priest could do to prevent a death?”

Father John shook his head.

The other priest shrugged and pushed to his feet. “Well, there you are. You can’t be blamed for keeping the information to yourself. If you knew somebody was in danger, you might have to find some way to warn him. Fact is, you don’t know.” He started moving to the entry, rechecking his watch. “I really have to go. I’d like to invite you along, but”—he jammed both hands into his coat pockets—“I’m having dinner with a friend.”

Father John waved away the explanation, and the other priest disappeared into the entry. The sound of the front door shutting was like a clap of thunder that rippled through the floorboards of the old house.

His assistant was right, Father John thought. Every instinct, every sense of logic, told him so, and yet. . . There’s gonna be more murders. The words kept running through his mind.

He got up and walked over to the stack of Gazettes on the table beneath the window and began scanning today’s paper for an article on a body found in the mountains. He’d glanced through the paper this morning; he hadn’t seen anything, but there could have been a small article, easy to miss. There was nothing. He thumbed through yesterday’s paper, the previous day’s, working his way back through the week. He was halfway through the stack when he felt another presence in the room, a pair of eyes boring into his back.

He glanced around. Elena, the housekeeper, stood in the doorway, hands on her waist in a perfect imitation of his own mother at the end of her wits with the redheaded, stubborn, analytical kid who was her son. The image made him smile. Elena was probably seventy, although she claimed to have lost track of her age years ago. Old enough, she would say, for eight kids, seventeen grandkids, four great-grandkids. She knew all the names and birth dates and there were times when she insisted upon listing them for him. The family was half-Arapaho, half-Cheyenne, or Shyela, as the Arapahos called the tribe they had lived with on the plains in the Old Time, and she’d managed them all as well as the succession of priests at St. Francis Mission for years now—exactly how many years was also a figure she claimed to have forgotten.