“I’m taking you home, Mal. Back to the rectory.”
The priest considered this, and while he thought, his eyes began to drift closed.
“Come on, Mal.” Cork slid his arm under the priest’s shoulders and hauled him to a sitting position.
“Oh, Jesus,” Mal mumbled.
“Let me help,” Rose said.
They swung his feet off the bed and together helped him up.
“I don’t feel good,” Mal said, swaying.
“Hold on to us.” Rose positioned herself to one side; Cork took the other. Between them they managed to get him downstairs and out the door.
“My car,” Mal said as he slumped onto the passenger side of the Bronco’s front seat.
“We’ll take care of that tomorrow,” Cork said.
For a brief moment Mal worked on focusing, and he put out his hands to cup Rose’s face through the open window. “I didn’t want…,” he began, but seemed to lose the thought. “I’m sorry.”
“Go home, get some rest, and we’ll talk,” she replied.
Cork backed down the drive, his headlights holding on Rose and Jo, stark and worried in the glare. No sooner did the Bronco hit the street than Mal leaned out the window and threw up.
“Sorry,” he managed as he settled back. He closed his eyes and within a minute was breathing heavily.
Cork had wanted to question him, but that was plainly hopeless. He settled on getting him to the rectory and, with the help of Ellie Gruber, into his room and to bed.
As he headed back to Gooseberry Lane, he considered what Jo had said about believing in the people you cared about even when it appeared crazy to do so. Jo believed in Mal. Rose believed in Mal. So why didn’t he?
45
Next morning, Cork woke to a gentle knocking at the bedroom door.
“Dad? Mom?”
“What is it, Jenny?”
“Can I talk to you guys?”
“Just a minute.” Cork looked at the bedside clock. 7:30 A.M. He’d overslept, but not by much.
Jo stirred. “What is it?”
“Jenny wants to talk to us.”
“What time is it?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“Oh, my.” She was awake. “I have to get ready for work.”
“Come on in, Jen,” Cork called.
Jenny stepped in. She was still in her sleepwear, a long Goo-Goo Dolls T-shirt that reached to her thighs. She stayed at the door.
“What is it?” Cork said.
“It’s Aunt Rose. She’s in the kitchen, crying.”
“Rose?” Jo sat up.
“She won’t talk to me,” Jenny said. “She just cries.”
“I’ll be right there.” Jo threw off the covers.
Downstairs, Stevie lay on the floor in front of the television, watching Nickelodeon.
In the kitchen, Rose sat alone. On the table in front of her was a cup of coffee and an envelope. In her hand, she held a piece of light blue stationery. She was sobbing quietly.
“Rose?” Jo knelt beside her.
“He’s gone.”
“Mal?”
“I heard his car this morning. When I looked out my window, he was driving away. I came downstairs and found this taped to the back door.” She picked up the envelope from the table. Her name had been written on the front. “He left a note.” She looked down at the stationery in her hand.
“Rose, would it be all right if I read the note? And Cork?”
Rose hesitated. “Please,” Cork said. “It’s important.”
Rose handed it to her sister. Over Jo’s shoulder, Cork read Mal Thorne’s handwriting.
Dear Rose,
Forgive me. I looked to you wrongly for a redemption that was not yours to give. This burden I carry, this gluttony for sin, is mine alone. I don’t know if I’ve abandoned God, or God has abandoned me, or if we’re mutually disgusted and have simply turned our backs on one another. I do know that I feel lost and need to find my way again. I’m afraid it may be a very long road ahead. But I will always treasure the lasting memory of the one true beauty I have known in my life, the one perfect thing. A flower called Rose.
With the greatest affection,
Mal
“Gluttony for sin?” Cork said, his voice rock hard.
“What is it?” Rose said.
“It’s nothing. Oh, Rose. I’m so sorry.” Jo put her arms around her sister.
“He’s leaving Aurora,” Rose said. “He’s talked about it, now he’s going to do it.”
“Leaving for where?” Cork said.
“I don’t know. That’s never been clear.”
“I’m getting dressed.” Cork started out of the kitchen.
He hadn’t gone far when Jo grabbed his arm.
“I need to get some answers,” he told her. “Before the chance is gone. You know I do.”
He could see the struggle reflected in her face. Finally she released her grip.
The morning outside was deathly still, but high up, an unseen wind pushed scattered clouds relentlessly across the hard blue sky. The sun intermittently splattered the Bronco’s windshield with blinding light, and Cork squinted to see his way. There seemed to be a restlessness in the atmosphere, but he chalked it up to his own unsettled mind.
He was surprised to see the Nova still in the drive at the rectory. He jumped from the Bronco as a huge cloud swept across the sun, and he waded through deep, blue shadow toward the rectory door. Ellie Gruber answered his pounding.
“I need to see Mal,” Cork said.
Ellie wrung her hands and didn’t answer.
“I know he’s here, Ellie.”
“He’s in a state, Cork. I don’t know.” She looked behind her in a frightened way.
Cork put his hands firmly on her shoulders and urged her aside. “It’ll be all right, Ellie.”
He entered without her uttering an objection.
The door to Mal Thorne’s bedroom was open, and Cork found him packing. A big suitcase lay open on the bed, and beside it a pile of clothing. The priest stood carelessly folding a pair of pants.
“Leaving Mal?”
The priest looked up, startled. “Cork?”
“Taking off without saying good-bye?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“Where are you going?”
“Not sure.” Mal went to the dresser and opened a drawer.
“Leaving the parish high and dry, aren’t you?”
“There’s always Father Kelsey.”
“Right.”
“The diocese will send somebody. Somebody better than me.”
“You sound like you’ve lost your faith in yourself.”
“You could say that.”
“A gluttony for sin?”
The priest swung around. For a moment, he seemed upset, then it was as if he simply shrugged it off. He resumed his packing.
Cork stepped nearer to the bed. “Mal, you told Annie a story a while back. Something about a sin eater.”
Mal Thorne stuffed a handful of assorted socks into the suitcase. “It’s something I tell all the kids I work with. I use it as an example of how the substance of Christianity is sometimes warped by church doctrine. It’s a little on the ghoulish side, but it gets their attention.”
“You don’t believe in sin eating?”
Mal glanced up. “This day and age you’d have to be a little crazy to believe something like that.”
“I see. But it’s perfectly sane to believe in, for example, a virgin birth?”
“Why are we having a theological discussion?” The priest squeezed his temples, as if pressing against a headache. He reached into the suitcase, pulled out a fifth of Southern Comfort, and unscrewed the cap. As he brought it to his lips, he said, “Hair of the dog and all that.”
“Sure. Got a lot on your mind, I imagine.”
“Glad you understand.”
“Are Fletcher Kane and Solemn part of it?”
The priest took a long swallow. He looked at the bottle and shook his head. “Big help there, wasn’t I?”
“The night they died, where were you?”
Mal Thorne hesitated. He glanced at Cork, then away. “I was here.”
“At the rectory?”
“Yes.” He bent to his packing.
“The whole evening?”
“I may have stepped out for a minute.”
“Try an hour and a half.”
The priest shot him a killing look.
“Where were you in those ninety minutes, Mal?”
“With all due respect, that’s none of your damn business.”
“Ellie told me you got a call about nine o’clock and hurried out. Was it Fletcher Kane calling? Did he call to tell you what he’d done? What he was going to do? Did you rush over there and find out you were too late? And did you sit down at the table that had been set for a meal and consume the sins of the two men you couldn’t save?”
Mal Thorne stared as if he thought Cork had gone stark raving mad. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? The two men who tried to rob you in Chicago, they were murdered after the attack. And whoever killed them ate their sins afterward.” Cork leaned across the bed, pressing tight the space between him and the priest. “Tell me about Yvonne Doolittle, Mal.”
The priest froze. His eyes went cold, his tone icy. “That’s why you’re here? You know, you’re a real son of a bitch.”
“That I am, Mal. In the pursuit of truth right now, I’d spit in the eye of God.”
“Truth.” The priest spoke the word as if he were cursing. “You’ve assembled a lot of facts, but you haven’t come anywhere near the truth.”
“Then enlighten me, Mal. I’m all ears.”
The priest almost laughed. “Fine. Yvonne Doolittle. That poor, confused girl. She’d been sexually abused at home and in foster care. She saw me as a father figure. Unfortunately for both of us, to her a father also meant sex. When I wouldn’t respond, she threatened me, and finally made those allegations. You see? I was no more help to her than I was to Fletcher Kane or Solemn Winter Moon. Or Charlotte.” The priest seemed to go limp, as if he might fall, and he steadied himself by putting his hands on the bed. “Liar. The writing on the wall? That was directed at me.”
“Why?”
“Charlotte came to me one day. It must have been November. She was so confused, so convinced that she was the most awful human being. All she wanted was to die, she said, because she loved someone who didn’t love her back. You know how many teenagers I’ve heard that from? So what did I tell her? That time would take care of it. That she should put her trust in God, her father. That He loved her. That she was one of His treasures. She went absolutely crazy. Called me a liar. Said the church was a lie because fathers didn’t love their children. They fucked them. She left and never came back. Not just to talk but even to worship. Gone from the church altogether until the night she broke in with Solemn.”
From the dark forest of his own self-loathing, he stared at Cork.
“The whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. Isn’t that how it goes? All right then. While Fletcher Kane, in all his suffering, took his own life and the life of that remarkable young man, do you know where I was? I was with Rose.” He looked up, his face screwed into a mask of pain. “With Rose, trying my damnedest to convince her to help me shatter my priestly vow of celibacy, a thing she would not do. How’s that for pathetic? You don’t believe me? Ask Rose. She won’t lie to you. She’s the finest person I’ve ever known.”
Mal Thorne reached into his suitcase for the bottle of Southern Comfort.
“A gluttony for sin? Try pride, for example, so cocksure I could make a difference somehow. And to everything else, you can now add lust.” He raised the bottle. Before he drank, he said, “I’m tired, Cork. I just want to be left alone.”
A knock on the door frame brought Cork around, though the priest seemed not to hear. Ellie Gruber stood timidly in the hallway. She held a cordless phone in her hand.
“A call for you, Cork,” she said. “It’s Jo.”
“Thanks, Ellie.”
Cork took the phone. Ellie retreated.
“Hey,” Cork said.
“Before you go crazy over there, there’s something you should know. The night Fletcher Kane and Solemn died, Rose was with Father Mal. She swears it.”
“I already went crazy. And Mal told me the truth.”
“Oh.” She was quiet a moment. “How’s he doing?”
“Less than fair, I’d say.”
“Is he still leaving Aurora?”
“I don’t know.”
“What a mess. You got a call from Boomer Grabowski. He asked me to pass along some information you wanted. He said the other murder victims in Chicago were a young, engaged couple. The case was never solved. He said it was interesting that the young man was a former priest and his fiancee was a former nun.”
“Any names?”
“Yes. His name was James Trowbridge and hers was Nina van Zoot.”
“Say that again.”
“His name-”
“No, hers.”
“Nina van Zoot.” She waited. “Cork? Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” he said when he was able to breathe again. “A nun, Boomer said? You’re sure? Not a prostitute?”
“Definitely a nun. Boomer says to call him anytime. And he doesn’t believe you’ve actually given up being a cop.”
“Right.”
After Cork hung up, he looked at Mal Thorne. The look alone seemed to sober the priest dramatically.
“Are you all right, Cork?”
“Randy Gooding?” Cork said.
“What?”
Cork took some time to rearrange his thinking, put things in place. “It sounds crazy, Mal, but Gooding may be our sin eater.”
“Why would you say that?”
“He told me once about a woman he knew in Chicago. He lied about her in some respects and didn’t tell me the important part, that she was murdered, and someone ate her sins.”
“Gooding? I don’t believe it. He’s such a righteous young man.”
Cork rubbed his forehead and thought out loud, “If it is Gooding, why would he kill the two men who attacked you?”
“You don’t know that he did.”
“You think all of this is just coincidence? When the murders occurred, he was working the FBI’s Milwaukee field office, just a hop, skip, and a jump from Chicago. He was involved with one of the victims. Did you have any contact with Gooding in Chicago?”
“No.”
Cork tried to put it all together, but there were gaps. Still, the direction of his thinking felt right. “I’m willing to bet he knew you somehow. I think he followed you here, and the sin eater killings continued.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but there’s got to be a connection. We just haven’t found it yet.”
Cork started out the door.
“Where are you going?” Mal Thorne asked.
“To have a talk with our acting sheriff.” He paused before he left the room. “What about you? Still taking off?”
The priest looked down at the bottle in his hand. He put the booze in the suitcase and closed the lid. “There’s no way in hell I’m leaving town right now.”