It was the Philadelphia Star, and the biggest picture on the front page was not of the riot, but of Roy himself, in a studio shot taken for publicity purposes maybe five years ago. The headline read: Controversial Pastor Chief Suspect In Church Poisonings Case.
Roy handed the paper back. “This is interesting,” he said.
“It’s all over everywhere,” Fred said. “It’s on the television. They’re all saying you killed that woman at the church yesterday. And the other two. You know.”
“And then what?” Roy asked. “I started a riot to cover it all up?”
“Something like that.”
“It isn’t true, you know,” Roy said. “The police aren’t interested in this angle. The papers are making it up.”
“How do you know?”
Roy looked over his shoulder in the direction of the police station and the holding tank. “Because they didn’t ask me about it. They didn’t make me get a lawyer. They didn’t demand that I come in for questioning. If I were really their chief suspect, they would have done all those things. Do we know how this woman died?”
“It was poison,” Fred said, surprised. “We knew that last night.”
“Do we know what kind of poison. Are they sure that it was arsenic yet?”
“Oh,” Fred said. “I guess they are. I mean, I assumed they are.”
“But nobody has said so.”
“No,” Fred agreed.
They reached the corner, and Roy stopped, waiting for the light. “This woman who died,” he said. “She was a nun. But not one of the usual nuns. She was the one who didn’t wear a habit. The one who was—” Roy tried to think of a word for it, but there wasn’t one. “The one who was in favor of abortion,” he said finally, but he didn’t like that. From what he remembered, the woman had never said anything in favor of abortion. It was just her … general demeanor. “The feminist one,” he said finally.
“Oh,” Fred said. “Well, yeah. It’s like I told you yesterday. She was the one who wore the suit who went on television that time and said that we were un-Christian. You remember. She sort of—”
“I remember. So she was a liberal at least, and maybe a radical. She had a lot to do with the gay people at St. Stephen’s.”
“Well, yeah,” Fred said. “You said that last night.”
The light changed. They crossed the street. Roy sighed. “I know what I said last night,” he said patiently. “What I’m trying to get at is what the papers have confirmed. What have they said about her? That she was a liberal? That she was a radical? That she knew a lot of the gay men at St. Stephen’s?”
“Oh,” Fred said. “I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you read the papers this morning? You brought me one. Didn’t you watch the news?”
“Well, yeah,” Fred said. “But I wasn’t thinking about her. I was thinking about us. You know. The people in the church. There’s a lot of bad stuff out there about us.”
“There will be. They’ll hate us. It doesn’t matter,” Roy said. “Tell me what you did notice. What about the murder itself? Where was she found? What was she doing?”
“Oh, she was found in somebody’s office at St. Anselm’s. I don’t think she was doing anything. I think she was dead.”
Yes, Roy thought. Of course she was dead. Of course she was. His head hurt. Surely there had to be a better way than this to do what he had been put on earth to do. If God had to choose him as an instrument, why couldn’t He choose a few secondary instruments with the brains He gave to chickens? They were coming up on another light and another crosswalk. Roy stopped again.
“All right,” he said finally. “Here it is. We’ve got to get hold of a certain amount of information. For one thing, I want to know who it is the police really are treating as their prime suspect. For another thing, I want the autopsy report before it hits the street. Don’t we have somebody in the medical examiner’s office?”
“Jeb Brandish,” Fred said. “He sweeps up.”
“That’s all he has to do, that and listen. The other thing I need is some information on this Gregor Demarkian. Where he lives. How he lives. Who he lives with. Is he gay, do you think?”
“I don’t know.’
The light changed again. They moved again. “I’ve read a few things about him in the papers, but I don’t know either. I never paid much attention. On the other hand, I do seem to remember some woman. Send somebody to check that out. Maybe they’re living in sin.”