Herb's unfocused eyes stared past Bill's shoulder. Bill shoved him back into the chair that flipped backward with Herb in it. He landed in a twisted sprawl on the floor and stayed there.
Bill ransacked the kitchen, found the door to the cellar, and ran down the steps, fearing all the while that somewhere along the way he'd trip over Sara's remains. He was sure she was dead. He found a toolbox sitting on a dusty workbench. He grabbed it and raced back up to the second floor.
Danny was still screaming. Bill took the biggest set of pliers he could find and began working on the nails, removing the ones from his feet first, then moving up to the hands. As his ghastly white little body slumped to the floor, Danny's eyes closed and he stopped his hoarse, breathy, barely audible screams. Bill thought he was dead but he couldn't stop now. He pulled the spread from the double bed and wrapped the boy in it. Then he headed for the street, carrying Danny in his arms, racking his brain for the whereabouts of the nearest hospital.
Halfway to the car Danny opened his eyes and looked up at him and asked a question that shredded Bill's heart.
"Why didn't you come, Father Bill?" he said in a voice that was almost gone. "You said you'd come if I called. Why didn't you come?"
* * *
The next few hours were a blur, a montage of white streets seen through a fogged windshield, of battling skidding tires and locking wheels, of bouncing off curbs and near misses with other cars, all to the accompaniment of Danny's nearly voiceless screaming… arriving at the hospital, one of the emergency room nurses fainting when Bill unfolded the bedspread to reveal Danny's mutilated body, the ER doctor's blanching face as he said there was no way his little hospital could give this boy the care he needed… the wild ride in the rear of the ambulance, racing into Brooklyn with lights flashing and sirens howling, skidding to a stop before Down-state Medical Center, the police waiting for them there, all their grim-faced questions as soon as they wheeled Danny away to surgery.
And then came the thin, chain-smoking detective with yellow stains between his right index and middle fingers, mid-fortyish, thinning brown hair, intense blue eyes, intense expression, intense posture, everything about him aggressively intense.
Renny had got a look at the kid in the ER.
Twenty-plus years on the force and he'd never seen anything even remotely like what had been done to that kid. Turned his stomach upside down and inside out.
And now his chief was on the phone telling him he could pack it in until the day after tomorrow.
"I'm gonna stick with this one, Lieu."
"Hey, Renny, it's Christmas Eve," Lieutenant McCauley said. "Unlax a little. Goldberg's taking eleven-to-seven and what the hell is Christmas to Goldberg? Leave it to him."
No way.
"Tell Goldberg to cover everything else on eleven-to-seven. This one's mine."
"Something special about this one, Renny? Something I should know?"
Renny tightened inside. Couldn't let McCauley know there was anything personal here. Just play the cool, calm professional.
"Uh-uh. Just a child abuse case. A bad one. I think I got all the loose ends within reach. Just want to tie them up good before I call it a night."
"That could take a while. How's Joanne gonna handle that?"
"She'll understand." Joanne always understood.
"All right, Renny. You change your mind and want to pack it in early, let Goldberg know."
"Right, Lieu. Thanks. And Merry Christmas."
"Same to you, Renny."
Detective Sergeant Augustino hung up and headed for the doctors' lounge he had commandeered. That was where they were holding the guy who'd brought the kid in. He said his name was Ryan, claimed he was a priest but he had no ID and the sweatsuit he was wearing didn't have a Roman collar.
Renny thought about the kid. Hard to think about much else. They didn't know anything about him except what the so-called priest had told him: His name was Danny Gordon, he was seven years old, and until this afternoon he'd been a resident of St. Francis Home for Boys.
St. Francis… that was what had grabbed Renny. The kid was an orphan from St. F.'s and someone had cut him up bad.
That was all Renny had to hear to make this case real personal.
He'd left a uniform named Kolarcik on guard outside the lounge. Kolarcik was on the walkie-talkie as Renny approached in the hallway.
"They picked up the guy in the house," Kolarcik said, thrusting the handset toward Renny. "Everything there's pretty much like Father Ryan described it."
We don't know for sure he's a priest yet, Renny wanted to say but skipped it.
"You mean the guy was just sitting there waiting to be picked up?"
"They say he looks like he's in some sort of trance or something. They're gonna take him down to the precinct house and—"
"Bring him here," Renny said. 'Tell those guys to bring him here and nowhere else as soon as he's booked. I want to get a full medical on this guy while he's fresh…just to make sure he's not suffering from any unapparent injuries."
Kolarcik smiled. "Right."
Renny was glad to see that this particular uniform was on his wavelength. No way that fucker in Queens was going to take a walk on a psycho plea,- not if Renny had anything to say about it.
He opened the door to the lounge and took a look at the guy who said he was a priest. Big, clean-cut, square jaw, thick brown hair graying at the temples, good build. Good-looking guy, but at the moment he looked crushed by fatigue and pretty well frayed on all his edges. He sat hunched forward on the sagging sofa, a cup of Downstate's bitter, overheated coffee clasped in his hands.
His fingers trembled as he rubbed his palms against the cup, as if trying to draw warmth from the steaming liquid on the other side of the Styrofoam. Fat chance.
"You connected with St. Francis?" Renny said.
The guy jumped, like his thoughts had been a thousand miles away. He glanced at Renny, then away.
"For the tenth time, yes."
Renny took a chair opposite him and lit up a cigarette.
"What order you from?"
"The Society of Jesus."
"I thought the Jesuits ran St. Francis."
"Same thing."
Renny smiled. "I knew that."
The guy didn't smile back. "Any word on Danny?"
"Still in surgery. Ever hear of Father Ed? Used to be at St. Francis."
"Ed Dougherty? I met him once. Back in seventy-five at St. F.'s Centennial. He's gone now."
The guy had said the magic words: St. F.'s. Only someone who'd lived there called it St. F.'s.
Okay. So he probably really was Father William Ryan, S.J., but that didn't absolutely mean that he had nothing to do with what had happened to that kid. Even priests got bent. Wouldn't be the first time.
"Look, Detective Angostino," Father Ryan said. "Can we make small talk later?"
"It's Awgustino, and there's no small talk and no later in something like this."
"I've told you, it was Herb. The husband. Herbert Lorn. He's the one. You should be out—"
"We've got him," Renny said. "We're bringing him down here for a checkup."
"Here?" Ryan said. The fatigue seemed to drop away from him in an instant. His eyes came to blazing life. "Here? Give me a few minutes alone with him in this little room. Just five minutes. Two." The Styrofoam cup suddenly collapsed in his hand, spilling hot coffee all over him. He barely seemed to notice. "Just one lousy minute!"
Okay. So the priest most likely had nothing to do with hurting the kid.
"I want you to tell me the whole story," Renny said.
"I've done that twice already." The fatigue was back in Ryan's voice. "Three times."
"Yeah, but to other people, not to me. Not directly. I want to hear it myself, from you to me. Right from the moment these people stepped into St. F.'s until you arrived here in the ambulance. The whole thing. Don't leave anything out."