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in the palm of his hand. One day soon, when he could bear the taste of the
barrel in his mouth, he was going to use it on himself.
As he pulled on the old raincoat liner he used as a robe and jammed his feet
into his aged and corn-cut
Adidas, he struggled for some sort of inner stability. Gun or no
gun, he was terrified. The Tituses did horrible things over there.
He hurried past empty bedrooms (it had once taken six priests just
to administer this parish) and descended the back stairs to the kitchen.
There was a folding umbrella in the bottom of his briefcase. He fished around
for it, opening it as he went out the kitchen door.
Curtains of rain swept the muddy parking lot. As Harry crossed it he was
reminded by the sucking of his shoes that he could not afford reasphalting. He
opened the side door to the sacristy. Inside, the Spirit was inky black. As he
care-fully pulled the door shut behind him he twisted the little pistol's
safety to the off position.
All he heard was the din of rain on the roof. Just as he was beginning to
think he had dreamed the human sound he heard another one a long sigh.
At first he was frightened, fumbling for the lights. Then he
realized the sound was coming from the altar and a flash of anger
mixed with his fear. How dare they leave him to clean up one of their
desecrations.
In the dancing, vanishing light of the votive candles he could just
make out a dense shadow splayed across the altar. Harry stared hard.
Wasn't that a large animal? He raised his gun but he could not take aim in the
dimness. Then he realized that the shape was not a crouching animal but a
prone human body.
His fingers found the right switches and he flipped them all at once. Light
flooded the church.
There was a woman on the altar, lying on her back. Her blood flowed down to
the sacristy floor in thin streams like bars. Harry had only a moment for
astonishment. The girl moaned again, horribly.
He approached the altar. The poor child lay in a dark pool of her own blood,
her legs spread, her arms akimbo, her hair tangled about her face.
The fact that he knew this woman so well pulled the first sound from his
throat. His own scream was more real to him and more frightening than even
the horror before him. In his urgency to get to the phone in the sacristy he
dropped his pistol, which went clattering into the dark behind the high altar
at the back of the nave.
This was incredible. This could not be condoned. And yet ... he had to deal
very carefully with the whole affair. His own life, his very soul, was
teetering on a knife edge.
Turning away from the horror he dashed on his long legs to the phone, grabbed
it, dialed 911. The Tituses would be furious with him for calling the police,
but what else did they expect him to do? They had just gone off and
left him with this tragedy and not one word of instruction.
There were voices outside. Neighbors. Of course the girl's screams had roused
the neighborhood. The
Tituses must never have intended to leave her behind. Circum-stances had
forced them. Perhaps they even wanted her saved.
In any case, she would be saved. He might not be much of a priest anymore, but
Harry Goodwin was still a human being.
He heard the first siren start not long after he had hung up the
phone. The New York City Police
Department was more than half Catholic, and it protected the Church almost as
carefully as it did itself.
Harry knew one of the two patrol-men who came sprinting up the aisle, their
guns in their hands. Timothy
Reilly was his name. Impossible that such a scrawny, mischievous altar
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boy could have grown into this enormous, competent-looking man in blue.
Reilly took in the scene at once.
"He still in the church, you think, Father?"
Harry told the first of what he realized miserably would be many lies. "I
thought perhaps I heard him. I'm not quite sure. It could have been the echo
of a door closing." Trick the cops into searching the church.
Give the Tituses and their congregation a little more time to get well away. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]