A moment later, Cork went in after him.
Like many of the homes in that area, the house had been built in the early 1900s, in a time of prosperity in Aurora, when the iron mines were operating day and night and the supply of timber seemed inexhaustible. The trim was all oak, stained and polished to show the beautiful, fluid grain. The window construction included leaded glass in most frames. The floors had been recently sanded and refinished to a mirrorlike gloss. Gooding had furnished the living room and dining room modestly. Everything seemed surprisingly clean for the home of a bachelor.
Mal stood across the room at a built-in hutch with a mantel. In the middle of the mantel sat a domed Seth Thomas clock, and flanking it on either side were a number of photographs in frames. Mal picked one up. “Take a look at this,” he said.
Cork walked over and looked at the photo. The shot showed a group of seven adolescents, boys and girls, standing in a line on green grass in bright sunshine in front of a white clapboard building. The kids had their arms linked as if they were great friends. Standing behind them was a much younger Mal Thorne.
“Yvonne Doolittle is the girl in the middle.”
She was taller than the others, and from the development of her body, appeared to be older. She was blonde, squinting into the sun, and very pretty.
“This was taken at the orphanage?”
“At St. Chris. St. Christopher’s Children’s Home. Outside Holland, Michigan. The kid on the end, far left. Does he look familiar?”
“Not really.”
“He was only thirteen and small for his age. His name back then was Jimmy Crockett. He wanted desperately to become a priest someday. I’d never known a kid with a more profound sense, in his own mind, of what was right and what was wrong according to church canon, and he wasn’t reluctant to tell you so. He made it his business to keep everyone on the straight and narrow. The kids started calling him Jiminy Cricket. You know, Pinocchio’s conscience.”
The bells of St. Agnes rang the hour, eleven o’clock. Because they were so near, the sound was beautiful and pure.
“Cork, his middle name was Randall. Imagine him a foot taller, a hundred thirty pounds heavier, and with a beard.”
“Randy? But his name’s Gooding.”
“After the fire, the publicity generated a sympathetic response. I heard that many of the kids were adopted, even ones like Jimmy who were considered to have little chance.”
“Why little chance?”
“His age for one thing. Teenagers aren’t often adopted. His background for another.”
“What about his background?”
“When he was little, Jimmy was in and out of foster homes. His mother was psychotic, frequently institutionalized. During her psychotic episodes, she believed she was the Virgin Mary. When Jimmy was six, she drove off a bridge with him in the car.”
“Suicide? Not an accident?”
“No accident.”
“Did Gooding know that?”
“Yes. Much of the time he was at St. Chris he was seeing a therapist.” Mal put a fist to his forehead. “He was an artist even then. How could I not have recognized him?”
“He’s entirely changed, grown into a man, a very big, very disturbed man. Did you ever see him after the fire?”
Mal shook his head. “The church snatched me out of there, and forbid me to have contact with any of the kids.”
“What kind of relationship did you have with Jimmy Crockett?”
“He never knew his father. I think he saw me as a surrogate. A lot of the children did.”
“Could he have been responsible for the fire that killed Yvonne?”
“Why would he?”
“Maybe he believed he was protecting you.”
Mal’s look turned dark as the possibility settled into his thinking.
Cork said, “The two punks who attacked you in Chicago. If Gooding killed them, it might have been for the same sort of reason. Maybe revenge in your name. But if that’s true, why Nina van Zoot?”
“Nina van Zoot?”
“Another sin eater killing in Chicago. She and her fiance.”
Mal nodded toward the photograph. “Bottom row, middle. The thin girl, smiling. Nina and Jimmy were good friends. She became a nun, I heard.”
“She left her order to get married, Mal. Her fiance was a former priest.”
“Why would Jimmy kill them?”
Cork thought a moment. “When he told me about Nina, he called her a prostitute and the man she fell for a pimp. He may have killed them because they broke their vows to the church, and he considered them criminals. I’m beginning to think he sees himself as some sort of policeman of God. If that’s true, then maybe he followed you here to protect you.”
“How did he find me?”
“When you were attacked by those two punks, was the story in the newspaper?”
“You kidding? A priest attacked? It was front page for a while.”
“If he was a good agent, Gooding was reading everything in the news. Maybe that’s when he became aware you were in Chicago.”
“When he came here, why did he kill Charlotte?”
“I don’t know. He was in charge of the investigation of the vandalism at St. Agnes. Maybe he figured out she was responsible and he interpreted it as an attack against the church. Maybe that’s why he framed Solemn, too. His thinking is not exactly rational.”
“There’s more you should see.”
Mal led him to a door that stood slightly ajar, and pushed it open wide.
What hit Cork first was the smell, sweet and smoky. Familiar. Cork realized it was the scent of the frankincense used during the services at St. Agnes.
The room was large, probably designed as a master bedroom when the house had been a single-family dwelling, but it was almost bare now. There was a cot with a thin mattress that looked handmade from a brown sheet. From the bits of straw that protruded at the open end of the mattress, the nature of the bedding on which Gooding slept was quite clear. Except for a crucifix above the head of the cot, the walls were empty. Next to the cot stood a small stand with a Bible and a candle. The candle had been burned to a nub. At the foot of the cot was a tiny table that held a white, enamel wash basin, a bar of soap in a small dish, and a clean, folded towel.
“Looks like a monk’s cell,” Cork said.
“One from the Middle Ages, maybe. Believe me, they don’t look like this today.” Mal walked to the closet and beckoned to Cork. “Have a look.”
Inside, hung on wire hangers, were all manner of priestly garb. A number of thin rope fingers fell over the edge of the closet shelf above.
Cork reached up and took down a whip. It was a homemade device, a sawed-off broom handle twenty inches long, with four lengths of thin, jute rope tied through a hole near the end. Each length of rope was about three feet long and knotted every three inches along its length. The end of each lash was glued to prevent unraveling.
“A discipline,” Mal said. “That’s what I’ve heard it called. It’s a scourge for self-flagellation. I’ve never actually seen one before.” He looked around him at the spartan room and then back at the whip. “My God. This man sings in our choir. He’s in charge of our youth program. How could we not have known?”
“Who he is, he’s hidden well from everyone.”
Cork put the whip back on the shelf.
Far back, in a corner too dark to be seen clearly, were two stacks of large sketch pads. The top pad on one stack looked as if it had been slashed with a knife. Cork picked up the pad and took it into the light of the room.
They were pencil drawings and charcoal sketches. Nude studies mostly. All of them of Charlotte Kane, and all of them cut in some way. Cork went through the sketchbook slowly, page after page.
“Did she pose for these, do you think?” the priest asked.
“No. I think he imagined her. According to Glory, Charlotte had a birthmark on her hip. It’s not in any of these drawings. This is pretty obsessive stuff.”
“He saw her in church every Sunday. My God, did it begin there?”
“Or maybe during his investigation of the vandalism at St. Agnes. I suppose it’s possible Charlotte tried to play him then, came on to him. Whatever, it’s clear she touched something in him that he didn’t know how to control, maybe didn’t even want to acknowledge.” Cork flipped through the slashed pages. “If we’re right about him, he’s killed several times. I don’t suppose he’d have any difficulty at all justifying in his own twisted thinking one more. What I don’t understand is the sin eating.”