"You're not convinced."
He exhaled. "No."
"It's the pen in the eye, isn't it?"
His eyebrows lifted in appreciation. She knew how his mind worked, which was a comfort. "In all my years I have never seen that. I've seen torture, I've seen infants raped, which is about the sickest goddamned thing I have ever seen, but I've never seen this. It's so simple."
"Yeah, how do you trace a ballpoint pen? Harry thinks it might have something to do with eyes. That's a message, the eyes."
He pursed his lips together. "The carton of cigarettes is a bribe. She's going to get stuck right in the middle of this. Incorrigible! The empty coffin, so to speak, must have sent her into the stratosphere."
"It was a jolt."
He swiveled to face her better but didn't move his legs much. "Damned queer."
"Harry is convinced this is linked to Nordy's murder. Linked to the Virgin Mary's bleeding eyes. In fact, she said, 'The eyes have it.'"
"These inspirations spare her the legwork, don't they?"
"She's not averse to legwork, boss, but she isn't a professional. She misses things. She gets to third base without touching first or second, but you have to admit, she gets a hit at bat."
He exhaled in a sort of agreement, "Well, I guess that's better than being born on third base and thinking you've hit a triple."
His first concern was protecting the public. His next concern was procedure. If he didn't touch each base on his way to home plate, a lawyer, not even a clever one, would blow all that hard work to smithereens. Harry worried him with her meddling because she endangered herself and others and because she could muck up a carefully built case.
They smoked in silence, then Cooper broke it. "How's Pete holding up?"
"Good. He's a strong man. The other on-air reporters are nervous. He's doing a lot of hand-holding and he's interviewing for a replacement. He said he feels ghoulish but it's necessary. The station is understaffed as it is. I can sure appreciate that problem."
"At least that's a profitable business."
"Yeah, right. We're public servants, and some days I really feel the servant part."
"Think there is any connection between Nordy's death and the statue, the monastery?"
"I can't disregard any possibility. Nordy was making a big name for himself with that story. Pete and I watched everything Nordy did up there, as well as the footage he didn't use. He didn't come out and say the tears were false, only that they were an unexplained phenomenon. He was respectful. I can't disregard the Virgin Mary angle, but for the life of me, I can't find one thing that computes."
"I can't, either. A man in his eighties dies while praying before a statue on a night so bitterly cold even Satan with his built-in heating unit wouldn't be walking around. Andrew, Mark, and Prescott thaw him out, wash the body, prepare him for burial. They put him in the coffin, nail down the lid—all this is testimony." She held up her small notebook that she kept in her purse. "He's afforded a simple service in keeping with the order. Susan and her family attend. They throw earth on the grave and that's that. I also talked with Brother Handle, the head honcho. He said Brother Thomas was well loved. 'So why would someone steal his body?' I asked." She drew in another long drag. "He did say that the body was possibly sold to a medical school. But who would do such a thing? Surely not one of the brothers. He didn't believe so, either, but selling to a medical school was his one idea. He's wound tighter than a piano wire, by the way, and the whole place is overrun by people crying, praying in front of the statue. You wouldn't believe it."
"Is she really crying blood?"
"I took a sample and sent it off to the lab. Shouldn't take long even with all they have to do."
Coop heard a rat-a-tat on the windowpanes outside Rick's office. She stood up to look. "Damn. It's going to be another long day."
He swung his legs down, got up, peered out his office window. "Where'd that come from? I watched the Weather Channel this morning as well as the weatherman on Channel Twenty-nine."
"Who knows." Her voice was mournful as the ice pellets struck the window harder.
He sat back down. "If we find Brother Thomas's body, that will tell us something."
"The dead tell all their secrets if you know how to ask."
26
Knowing that a woman in a position of authority might be disquieting to the Greyfriars, Rick briefly interviewed each brother.
Brother Handle agreed to this because Brothers Frank and Prescott impressed on him how bad it would look if he didn't cooperate. It would appear that the Greyfriars had something to hide.
Rick made the questions brief. He knew from many years of experience that he had to piece together this case, each bit of evidence, each person questioned, a tiny square of information in what would become an intelligible mosaic. He had queried Brother Mark about the last time he saw Thomas's body then switched gears, asking him about Nordy.
Brother Mark, head down, sat opposite him. "I loathed him. I tried to like him. I prayed. Still hated him."
"Even at Michigan State?"
"Especially. He swaggered, humiliated me in front of my dates. We were in the same fraternity but he was a year ahead of me."
"I see. What about printing and selling fake I.D.s?" Rick surprised him with this information.
Mark raised his head. "His idea. I was weak and went along with it."
"Made a lot of money?"
"Yes." He brightened, although wary of the Sheriff. He wondered just why Rick had dug so deep into his own past. "We made over fifteen thousand dollars in one semester. One semester!"
"And you got busted. He didn't."
"Nordy's father could pull strings. Mine could only pull on the bottle," he said with rancor.
"That's when you, uh, took a nosedive."
"Puree." Mark used an expression for a total loss.
"That's a good one. Puree is worse than toast?"
"Yeah."
"Tell me what happened next."
"Drugs. Couldn't hold a job. If I hadn't found God I'd be in jail or dead. I was this far"—he held up his thumb and forefinger close together—"from becoming a career criminal."
"What happened?"
"I woke up in the middle of Beverly Street in Staunton on a cold night. A doctor was dragging me out of the road and she said, 'Son, you can go into rehab or you can find God. I'll help you either way' "
"And she did?"
"I went to a clinic in North Carolina, not expensive or anything. I detoxed. I found God and I found the Greyfriars. But every day I have to work on myself."
"Could you have killed Nordy?"
Mark half-smiled. "The thought occurred to me. I suppose I could have, but even though I couldn't stand him, nah." He shrugged. "I pray harder."
Rick checked his watch. "You've been helpful. One last question. Do you fit in here? Is this the place for you?"
"Yeah. I'm surrounded by dinosaurs. I know they make fun of me behind my back, but," he shrugged again, "I ignore them. I miss Brother Thomas. He taught me stuff. I could talk to him, and even though he was eighty-two he could use the computer as easily as I can. He said if he made it to eighty-three he was going to build his own computer. He even knew he could specify what he wanted from ASUS, the company in California."
"You lost me." Rick closed his notebook.
"ASUS. They build motherboards. Brother Thomas really was going to build his own computer with a motherboard he helped design."
"I can see why you miss him."
"No one here even knows what a motherboard is."
"Bet Nordy did."
"Yeah, but he'd kind of have to know. Every now and then I'd use one of the computers here and fire him an e-mail." He cupped his chin in his hand. "Funny, he really pissed me off, but I'm going to miss him. I never thought someone my age would die, you know?"
"Well, Brother Mark, you've had the great good fortune not to be in a war. Your generation has been spared. If it were 1943 or 1970, a lot of your running buddies would be dead. You might be dead. When you say your prayers, pray for them, for those that went before."