Maybe he could take an hour and sack out in his living room, so that he wouldn’t show up at the chancery so whacked-out he was walking into walls.
FOUR
1
Gregor Demarkian couldn’t decide if he liked fax machines or not. They were one of the few of the new machines he had no real trouble with—although lately, being around Bennis as much as he was, he had become far more relaxed on the computer. They also had the virtue of being able to get him large amounts of material in a very short time without the waste or expense of traveling through the city. Garry Mansfield and Lou Emiliani hadn’t bothered to make him get into a cab, or to make their department pay a messenger. They had both just got on their fax machines and sent him everything they had, reams and reams of it, so that, by late in the morning, he had found himself surrounded by flimsy paper: toxicology reports, search reports, interview transcripts, expert advice. What worried Gregor was that, having supplied him with all this information, Garry and Lou would now expect him to make something of it. It certainly seemed as if there ought to be enough to make something of something. At the very least, he ought to have a clue. Instead, he was just as bewildered as he had ever been, and the information that was now coming in about the death of Sister Harriet Garrity wasn’t making things any clearer. All three victims had eaten arsenic. None of them had eaten anything else in common, at least in the period for which the autopsy would be valid—although that wasn’t as sure as it could be. It didn’t take much arsenic to kill a person. If they had ingested it in something very small, like a gel-cap pill, the elements might not always show up in the autopsy reports. All of them had known the same people, more or less, or at least been in close proximity to them, and all of them had been connected, to one extent or the other, to the archdiocesan priest-pedophilia scandal. Beyond that, he had nothing. The police had nothing. Maybe there was nothing to be had. He was being asked to come to a logical solution to a series of crimes that amounted to ducks being shot off a conveyer belt at the marksmanship booth at a carnival.
The taxi pulled up in front of St. Anselm’s side gate. Gregor got out, paid the fare, dropped a better tip than he should have in the front seat, and looked around. He couldn’t see the main street from there, but St. Stephen’s looked calm enough, if a little busier than it had the first time he had been there. He went through the gate and around the back of the church to the parking lot and the convent. The offices were still sealed, and would be for three days, in case the police suddenly found they needed to investigate something they hadn’t thought of before. A uniformed policeman was standing on the convent steps, looking cold.
“Mr. Demarkian,” he said, when Gregor walked up. “They’re in there. In the front room. The, uh, the parlor.”
“Thank you,” Gregor said.
The patrolman looked uncomfortable. “You figure this is okay?” he asked. “With the Church, I mean. It’s okay to question the nuns?”
“Of course it’s okay to question the nuns,” Gregor said.
“I guess.” The patrolman stepped out of the way so that Gregor could get through to the door.
Gregor didn’t bother to ask if he were Catholic. Of course he was Catholic. Gregor let himself in the front door and headed for the parlor, easily visible a few steps to his left.
Garry and Lou were there, sitting uncomfortably at the edge of a couch. Lou, at least, was also Catholic. Sister Scholastica was there, too, which Gregor had not expected, and as he came in he raised his eyebrows at her.
“It’s the rule of the order,” she said, standing up to take his coat. Garry and Lou practically leaped to their feet. Gregor revised his estimate. Garry Mansfield, too, was probably Catholic. He looked at the other nun, the very young one, and nodded.
“This is Sister Peter Rose,” Scholastica said. “The order says none of us can be alone with a layman or even with a priest, except for Confession or spiritual counseling. And that’s man, not in the generic sense. If you know what I mean. Actually, if the police department insisted, we’d oblige. But they didn’t insist, so …”
“No, no, no,” Lou said. “It’s perfectly all right, Sister. We understand.”
Sister Scholastica put Gregor’s coat on a coat tree and sat down again. Lou Emiliani sat down, too. Garry remained standing. Sister Peter Rose looked up, and said, “We met, you know. In Colchester. When all that happened. I’d just taken tertiary vows. Sister thought I was a flake.”
“I never said you were a flake,” Scholastica said.