“Of course Tibor is a very religious person. He’s a priest.”
“I don’t think that necessarily follows,” Gregor said. “What about Lida? Would you say she’s a religious person?”
“I guess. Why?”
“I would say she was a religious person,” Gregor said. “She believes in God. She goes to church every week. She really does think somebody is watching over her. What about Hannah Krekorian?”
“All those women are religious,” Bennis said. “At least in the way you’ve defined it. And the older women, too. But I wouldn’t count on Howard Kashinian.”
“I never do,” Gregor said. He looked the building over one more time. He could remember being very young and being brought here by his parents, at a time when the church was shabby and in desperate need of repairs. Later there would be a boom or two and the work everyone had done for so long would begin to pay off, but then there was still no money. He would sit in his pew at the long service and count the holes in the plaster walls and the chips in the gold paint in the molding that sat hip high on the iconostasis. He remembered looking at those pictures and wondering what they meant, because in spite of all the Sunday school he’d attended, nobody had ever told him. He still didn’t know what most of them meant. He only knew that they represented the saints of the Church, and that a great many of them seemed to have died violent and agonizing deaths.
“Gregor?”
“I’m going inside. Do you want to go inside with me?”
“At least it’s got heat,” Bennis said. “Do you want to pray? I didn’t think you did that.”
Gregor led the way up the walk and in the front doors. Unlike St. Stephen’s and St. Anselm’s, there were no high ceilings, except in the vault of the church itself. Nor was there much of anything in the foyer. The Armenian Church in America was not large enough or rich enough to put out dozens of pamphlets on the spiritual life. Gregor went through into the church itself, which was dark. In Catholic churches, the altar was exposed to the people, and often, just behind it, the Host was displayed for adoration. In Armenian churches, as in most churches in the Eastern tradition, the altar was hidden behind the iconostasis, whatever the priest did was supposed to be a mystery.
Gregor sat down in the very last pew on the left. Bennis sat down next to him, let her clogs drop to the floor, and tucked her legs up under her. With anybody else, Gregor might have protested. He had begun to think this was the only way Bennis was comfortable sitting down.
“So,” Bennis said. “What is this? You’re getting religion in your old age?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten it or not gotten it,” Gregor said. “I don’t think about religion much. Do you?”
“Um, no. Why would I?”
“Well, Bennis, people do. The people I’ve met in the last twenty-four hours think about religion a lot. Not just Roy Phipps. The Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia. Your old friend Sister Scholastica.”
“It’s what they do,” Bennis said reasonably. “I mean, it’s their profession. They’ve got to think about it a lot.”
“You don’t think ordinary people do that?”
“Oh,” Bennis said. “Well, yes. Of course they do. Some of them.”
“Exactly,” Gregor said. “And I can’t really figure out why. I’ve got three dead bodies, all in churches. Four, if you count Marty Kelly, and I’d think you’d have to. Yes, he committed suicide, but he committed suicide because his wife died and his wife is one of the three bodies in churches. If you see what I mean.”
“I thought it was pretty clear that Bernadette Kelly had died somewhere else,” Bennis said. “I mean, I thought that was the whole point of the press conference.”
“The whole point of the press conference was to get the information out in a way that the media wouldn’t be able to understand its importance. It failed. But back to Bernadette. She was killed elsewhere, too. But something about her death had to have something to do with a church. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have ended up in one.”
“Maybe she only ended up in one because her husband was religious.”
“She was the one who was religious,” Gregor said. “I got that much out of Sister Scholastica. She was religious. She brought him along with her. Scholastica thinks he brought her to the church because he thought he was bringing her where she would want to be.”
“All right.”
“No,” Gregor said. “Not all right. The most important thing, in any of these cases, is to be able to think your way into the mind of the killer. It’s not that it ever works perfectly. It doesn’t. And it’s a good thing. Sociopathic murderers are bad enough. We don’t need sociopathic policemen. But in this case I just don’t get it. Do you ever look at that thing up there?”