Cork returned the sketch pad to the closet and picked up the top pad from the other stack.
“What are we going to do?” the priest asked.
Cork didn’t answer. The sketches in the other pad froze his blood.
Mal saw the look on his face. “What is it?”
Cork held out a drawing toward the priest.
Mal Thorne’s mouth formed a stupefied O. “My God,” he said.
It was Annie. Annie naked on a bed, her face done in heavy makeup, her hands cupping her young breasts, offering them lasciviously.
Cork’s thinking went rapidly over the events of the last week or so, and he locked on the tall figure who’d kept to the shadows, stalking Annie, and the fact that only the night before Gooding had just happened to bump into her. He dropped the pad into Mal’s hands, went quickly to the phone in Gooding’s living room, and called home.
Jenny answered.
“Is Annie there?” Cork said.
“Upstairs, I think.”
“Check.”
“Dad-”
“Go check. Now.”
Silence. The static long and grating. Then Annie.
“What is it, Dad?”
“Are you okay?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Listen to me. Stay there in the house. Don’t open the door to anyone, especially Randy Gooding. I’ll be home in a minute.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Just do what I say. I’ll explain when I get there. All right?”
“Okay.”
Cork hung up.
“What now?” Mal said.
“We put everything back just as we found it. I don’t want Gooding to know we’re onto him. Then I talk to Cy Borkmann, who gets a search warrant, and we put an end to this.”
Outside, the whole sky had been overtaken by storm clouds, and a wind was rising. Mal Thorne glanced back at the house.
“Think Mrs. Torkelson had any idea what was going on above her?”
“None of us knew about Gooding.”
The priest rubbed a hand over his forehead and closed his eyes. “Jimmy Crockett. I never would have guessed. God, if only I’d…” The priest stopped there.
What was the use of trying to grab onto the past, hoping to change what no human could. The best thing to do was simply to let it go, but Cork knew that was easier said than done.
“I’m going to pick up Annie and then hit the sheriff’s office. Want to come?”
“No.” The priest looked toward St. Agnes. “I’ll be at the church if anybody wants to talk to me.”
“Rose is there.”
“Really?”
“She got a call from the office this morning. I guess they needed her.”
“From the office? I don’t think so. Hattie’s on vacation, and Celia couldn’t come in this morning. Dental appointment. Nobody’s been there all day as far as I know.”
“Somebody called.”
“I can’t imagine who it would have been.”
Cork looked at Gooding’s Tracker parked on the street. He glanced toward St. Agnes, visible only a block away. And he remembered something.
“Gooding knows about you and Rose. Annie told him last night.”
The priest squinted at Cork. “You don’t think…”
Cork was already on the street, making for St. Agnes at a dead run.
47
Cork flew up the front steps of the church, the priest at his heels. The door was locked.
“The office,” Mal shouted, and they veered across the grass to the office/classroom wing.
Cork grabbed the handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. Mal pushed Cork aside, jammed his key into the lock. As soon as the door was open, Cork rushed inside, the priest a split second behind him.
The desk of the reception area was empty, the hallway dark, the wing dead silent but for the heavy breathing of the two men.
“Maybe he’s not-” the priest began.
“He’s here. They’re both here,” Cork said. “There’s no other way to play it. Get on the phone to the sheriff’s office. Get people here. Do it now, Mal.”
Without waiting for a response, Cork headed down the short end of the hall, away from the sanctuary, toward the offices. He checked each room, found them all empty. When he came back to the reception area, the priest had disappeared. Cork had no idea where Mal had gone, but he hoped he’d made the call. He moved down the hall in the other direction, making sure each classroom was clear as he passed. Just before he reached the open door that led from the office wing into the church itself, he came to the stairway that led to the basement. He paused, considering whether to check the lower level first.
Then he heard Mal Thorne’s voice coming from the church beyond the door.
The clouds that had blotted out the sun cast a darkness over the sanctuary, as if a blanket had been dropped on the church. The priest stood at the back, beyond the last pew. He faced the entry to a tiny chapel that was used for small weddings or other intimate ceremonies or services. Cork could see a candle burning in the chapel, but nothing else. From the way the priest spoke, Cork figured Gooding was in there. Probably Rose, too.
“Just listen to me for a minute, Jimmy.”
“Jimmy?” The voice from the dark chapel. “Then you know?”
“I do. About Yvonne and Nina and Charlotte. About the rest.”
“Do you understand?”
“I don’t. This isn’t the way of our Lord.” The priest opened his hands, as he did when offering a benediction.
“Not our Lord, Father. Of His soldiers. Those who wage His wars, who protect His Church.”
“You?”
“We are born damned, those like me, damned to kill in the name of the church.”
Cork kept low, sliding along the front pew to the far wall where Gooding could not possibly see him. Silently, he made his way toward the chapel. He was clearly visible to the priest, but Mal Thorne gave no sign he’d seen. Cork took up a position at the end of the last pew. If Gooding could be drawn out, his back would be to Cork. Only once, Mal’s eyes flicked in Cork’s direction, acknowledging his presence. Cork held his. 38 ready in a two-handed grip.
“No one is born to kill, Jimmy.”
“Not true, Father. I was double born, raised from the dead for this purpose. Understand, though, that I’m not without compassion. Those that die don’t die stained with sin. I can’t pardon their transgressions, but I can take them away.”
“By consuming them?”
“You showed me the way a long time ago at St. Chris. The story of the sin eater, that was a blessing to me.”
“You don’t want this sin on you.”
“I’m not afraid to die, because when I stand in the light of God, all the sins committed in His service will be forgiven.”
“Jimmy, Jimmy, this isn’t the way. Not with this woman.”
“I know how tempting they can be, Father. The handmaids of Satan.”
“Because of Charlotte?”
“It was so easy for me to imagine having her. She tempted me to take my eyes off God. She played on the weakness of the flesh, Father. This harlot, too. She was sent to seduce you from your true bride, the church.”
“You’re wrong. This good woman would have nothing to do with me. The church has no better heart serving it than hers, I swear to you.”
“You’re too good, Father. You don’t see the true abomination, but I do.”
“You were always a good boy, Jimmy. You don’t want to do this.”
“Want? What I want is meaningless. I have been called.”
Cork knew that reasoning with Gooding now was out of the question. He was a man whose holy mission, at that moment, was to send Rose McKenzie to hell, and if he had to give his own life in the effort, that concerned him not at all. He’d concocted a theology that covered all the bases, that left him righteous and fearless. A man not afraid to die was the most dangerous kind.