But Ray stuck to his guns. "I'm just doing my job. I talked to Mr. Conway, just like you wanted me to, and now I'm talking to you just like he-" He caught himself too late. The priest leaped on it immediately.
"Well?" Father MacNeill demanded when Ray didn't answer his question right away. "Did Ted Conway tell you to investigate me or not? It's a simple enough question."
"I told you, Father MacNeill. I'm doing my job, and my job is to investigate what happened last night. It's not to decide who did it, then go about making everything fit."
Father MacNeill glared furiously at the policeman. What on earth could make Ray Beckwith, who until this very afternoon had never failed to treat him with the respect his position deserved, suddenly speak to him as if he were a common criminal?
Then he remembered glancing out the window of the parish hall just after Ted Conway led his family out. He'd seen Ray talking to Conway, but mostly he'd seen Conway talking to Ray. Talking to him the same way he'd addressed the whole town at the meeting? Of course. And Ray, obviously, had fallen victim to the man's charm as easily as everyone at the meeting had.
It's time for me to talk to that man myself, Father MacNeill decided.
"Very well," the priest said aloud. "I wouldn't want to interfere with you performing your job, Raymond. And I'm sure when you're done, you'll have discovered the truth. But I'm telling you right now-if you think anyone here had anything to do with this terrible criminal act, you're wrong. Perhaps mortally wrong."
Leaving the threat to the future of Ray Beckwith's soul hanging in the air, Father MacNeill turned his back on the policeman and left the room.
Perhaps we ought to wait until tomorrow morning," Father Bernard fretted. The afternoon had turned warm, but not nearly warm enough to warrant the perspiration dripping down his arms and back. No, his sweating wasn't caused by the heat, but by his nerves. And to what purpose? Tomorrow morning he could call Jared Conway and Luke Roberts into his office at school and get the truth out of them very quickly, indeed. In his office, Father Bernard was in charge. Outside his office, it was another matter entirely. From the time he'd first arrived at St. Ignatius, he'd been the leader in the school; in the rectory, however, it was the force of Father MacNeill's personality that held sway. Which was how it happened that he was now walking along Pontchartrain Street toward the Conway house, with sweat trickling down his back, staining the sleeves of his cassock.
"There's no reason to wait until tomorrow," Father MacNeill shot back. "If Ray Beckwith won't do his job, we shall simply do it for him." He paused a moment, gazing down the street at the Conway house. This afternoon, with the sun shining on its new coat of paint, the house had finally lost its look of a crumbling derelict. The missing slate on its roof had been replaced; somehow Ted Conway had even managed to find new trim to replace the fancywork that had rotted and broken over the years the house sat empty and untended. The last of the overgrowth crowding the grounds had been stripped away, and only a few strands of dying kudzu still clung to the great spreading magnolia from which George Conway had hanged himself so many years ago. Indeed, the disrepair that had given the house its darkly foreboding look was gone, so much so that for a moment Father MacNeill wondered if it was possible that everything he'd ever heard about the house-everything Monsignor Devlin had shown him in the Conway Bible-had been untrue.
But an instant later, as he started across the street, he felt it. It was as if an evil force was emanating from the house itself. He tried to ignore it, but even as he neared the door, he felt it.
A chill.
And something else.
It was as if something unseen-unseeable-was waiting for him.
Preparing to attack him.
As he drew closer, every nerve in his body began tingling, and a wave of panic rose inside him. He forced it down, though, and with Father Bernard trailing after him, made himself stride up the walk, mount the steps, and ring the bell. From somewhere deep inside the house a chime sounded, and then a dog began barking.
The priest was about to press the bell a second time when Janet Conway opened the door. She was bent down, clutching at the collar of a large golden retriever. The dog was still barking, but its tail was wagging furiously as it attempted to scramble out. "I'm sorry," Janet blurted, "I'm afraid-" Her words died on her lips as she recognized Father MacNeill. An uncertain frown appeared as she straightened up. "I'm afraid Scout isn't much of a watchdog," she finished. Tightening her grip on the dog's collar, she pulled the door open farther.
A wave of cold rolled through the gap. Father MacNeill took an involuntary step back.
"Is there something I can do for you?" Janet asked, keeping her tone neutral, but with difficulty.
"I wanted to have a few words with you," Father MacNeill began. "And your son, too." As he uttered the words, the priest felt a wave of pure emotion break over him, an emotion he recognized at once.
Hatred.
Something-or someone-in this house hated him with an intensity he'd never felt before. A hatred so strong that once again he lurched back a step. Under his cassock, his body was suddenly slick with sweat, and the panic he'd only barely managed to control a few moments ago was again threatening to overwhelm him.
Janet's frown deepened as the priest staggered backward. "Are you all right?" she asked anxiously, opening the door still farther. "Would you like to come in for a moment?"
Father MacNeill struggled to control the panic that had seized him. He tried to take a step forward, but could not. It was as if a wall-a physical wall-blocked him. When he tried to speak, his voice was constricted, as though a rope was tightening around his throat. "I-wanted a word with-" His breath caught for a moment, then he managed to finish his sentence: "-with Jared," he stammered.
Once again he tried to take a step toward the open front door, but it was no use.
He couldn't enter the house, couldn't so much as set foot across the threshold.
"Jared?" Janet repeated. Her eyes flicked from Father MacNeill to Father Bernard. Both priests were sweating, and their faces were ashen. Before she could say anything else, Ted appeared behind her.
"Is there something we can do for you?" he asked coldly, his eyes fixed on Father MacNeill.
Once again the priest took an involuntary step backward. "If we could just have a few words with Jared," he repeated.
Ted Conway's eyes bored into the priest's. "About?" he demanded.
"Is he here?" the priest countered, his voice trembling despite his efforts to control it.
Janet, still struggling with Scout, looked uncertainly to her husband. "Should I call him?"
Molly peeped around the edge of the door. She gazed out at the two priests, then suddenly began crying and reached for her father. Ted swung the little girl up into his arms. "We might do better to call the police," Ted said as he jiggled Molly and she calmed down.
Janet glanced from her husband to the priest, then back to her husband. "I-I'll just call Jared," she stammered. If she didn't do something to break the tension between Ted and the priest, one of them very well might call the police. "He didn't have anything to do with what happened last night, so what can it possibly hurt?"
Without waiting for a reply from Ted, she hurried through the dining room and opened the door to the basement. "Jared?" she called. "Jared!" When there was no response, she went down the steep flight of stairs and rapped on the closed door to his room. A moment later the door opened a crack, and she could smell the musty odor of the fumes that constantly drifted up from the sump in the middle of the room. "Father MacNeill and Father Bernard are here. They want to talk to you."
Jared's expression clouded. "What about?"