"I know he's here," Carr said. He stepped back from the porch, looked at the lighted windows, then pushed the doorbell a third time. There was a noise from inside, a thump, and Carr stood on his tiptoes to peer through the small window set in the door.
"Oh, no," he groaned. He pulled open the storm door and pushed through the inner door, Lucas trailing behind. The priest stood in the hallway, leaning on one wall, looking at them. He was wearing a white t-shirt, pulled out of his black pants, and gray wool socks. His hair stood almost straight up, as though he'd been electrocuted. He was holding a glass and the room smelled of bourbon.
"You idiot," Carr said quietly. He walked across the room and took the glass from the priest, who let it go, his hand slack. Carr turned back toward Lucas as though looking for a place to throw it.
"You know what they're saying," Bergen said at Carr's back. "They're saying I did it."
"Jesus, we've been trying…" Lucas started.
"Don't you blaspheme in this house!" the priest shouted.
"I'll kick your ass if you give me trouble," Lucas shouted back. He crossed the carpet, walking around Carr, who caught at his coat sleeve, and confronted the priest: "What happened out at the LaCourts'?"
"They were alive when I saw them!" Bergen shouted.
"They were alive-every one of them!"
"Did you have a relationship with Claudia LaCourt? Now or ever?"
The priest seemed startled: "A relationship? You mean sexual?"
"That's what I mean," Lucas snapped. "Were you screwing her?"
"No. That's ridiculous." The wind went out of him, and he staggered to a La-Z-Boy and dropped into it, looking up at Lucas in wonder. "I mean, I've never… What are you asking?"
Carr had stepped into the kitchen, came back with an empty Jim Beam bottle, held it up to Lucas.
"I've heard rumors that the two of you might be involved."
"No, no," Bergen said, shaking his head. He seemed genuinely astonished. "When I was in the seminary, I slept with a woman from a neighboring college. I also got drunk and was talked into… having sex with a prostitute. One time. Just once. After I was ordained, never. I never broke my vows."
His face had gone opaque, either from whiskey or calculation.
"Have you ever had a homosexual involvement?"
"Davenport…" Carr said, a warning in his voice.
"What?" Bergen was back on his feet now, face flushed, furious.
"Yes or no," Lucas pressed.
"No. Never."
Lucas couldn't tell if Bergen was lying or telling the truth. He sounded right, but his eyes had cleared, and Lucas could see him calculating, weighing his responses. "How about the booze? Were you drinking that night, at the LaCourts'?"
The priest turned and let himself fall back into the chair. "No. Absolutely not. This is my first bottle in a year. More than a year."
"There's something wrong with the time," Lucas said. "Tell us what's wrong."
"I don't know," Bergen said. He dropped his head to his hands, then ran his hands halfway up to the top of his head and pulled out at the hair until it was again standing up in spikes. "I keep trying to find ways… I wasn't drinking."
"The firemen. Do you have any trouble with them?"
Bergen looked up, eyes narrowing. "Dick Westrom doesn't particularly care for me. I take my business to the other hardware store, it belongs to one of the parishioners. The other man, Duane… I hardly know him. I can't think what he'd have against me. Maybe something I don't know about."
"How about the people who reported the fire?" Lucas asked, looking across the room at Carr. Carr was still holding the bottle of Jim Beam as though he were presenting evidence to a jury.
"They're okay," Carr said. "They're out of it. They saw the fire, made the call. They're too old and have too many physical problems to be involved."
The three of them looked at each other, waiting for another question, but there were none. The time simply didn't work. Lucas searched Bergen's face. He found nothing but the waxy opacity.
"All right," he said finally. "Maybe there was another Jeep. Maybe Duane saw Father Bergen's Jeep earlier, going down the lake road, and it stuck in his mind and when he saw a car go by, he thought it was yours."
"He didn't see a Jeep earlier," Carr said, shaking his head. "I asked him that-if he'd seen Phil's Jeep go down the lake road."
"I don't know," Lucas said, still studying the priest. "Maybe… I don't know."
Carr looked at Bergen. "I'm dumping the bottle, Phil. And I'm calling Joe."
Bergen's head went down. "Okay."
"Who's Joe?" Lucas asked.
"His AA sponsor," Carr said. "We've had this problem before."
Bergen looked up at Carr, his voice rasping: "Shelly, I don't know if this guy believes me," he said, tipping his head at Lucas. "But I'll tell you: I'd swear on the Holy Eucharist that I had nothing to do with the LaCourts."
"Yeah," Carr said. He reached out and Bergen took his hand, and Carr pulled him to his feet. "Come on, let's call Joe, get him over here."
Joe was a dark man, with a drooping black mustache and heavy eyebrows. He wore an old green Korean War-style olive-drab billed hat with earflaps. He glanced at Lucas, nodded at Carr and said, "How bad?"
"Drank at least a fifth," Carr said. "He's gone."
"Goddammit." Joe looked up at the house, then back to Carr. "He'd gone more'n a year. It's the rumors coming out of your office, Shelly."
"Yeah, I know. I'll try to stop it, but I don't know…"
"Better more'n try. Phil's got the thirst as bad as anyone I've ever seen." Joe stepped toward the door, turned, about to say something else, when Bergen pulled the door open behind him.
"Shelly!" he called. He was too loud. "Telephone-it's your office. They say it's an emergency."
Carr looked at Lucas and said, "Maybe something broke."
He hurried inside and Joe took Bergen by the shoulder and said, "Phil, we can handle this."
"Joe, I…" Bergen seemed overcome, looked glassily at Lucas, still on the sidewalk, and pulled Joe inside, closing the door.
Lucas waited, hands in his pockets, the warmth he'd accumulated in the house slowly dissipating. Bergen was a smart guy, and no stranger to manipulation. But he didn't have the sociopath edge, the just-below-the-surface glassiness of the real thing.
Thirty seconds after he'd gone inside, Carr burst out.
"Come on," he said shortly, striding past Lucas toward the trucks.
"What happened?"
"That kid you talked to, the one that told you about the picture?" Carr was talking over his shoulder.
"John Mueller." Jug-ears, off-brand shoes, embarrassed.
"He's missing. Can't be found."
"What?" Lucas grabbed Carr's arm. "Fuckin' tell me."
"His father was working late at his shop, out on the highway," Carr said. They were standing in the street. "He'd left the kid at home watching television. When his mother got home, and the kid wasn't there, she thought he was out at the shop. It wasn't until his parents got together that they realized he was gone. A neighbor kid's got a Nintendo and John's been going down there after school a couple nights a week, and sometimes stays for dinner. They called the neighbors but there wasn't anybody home, and they thought maybe they'd all gone down to the Arby's. So they drove around until they found the neighbors, but they hadn't seen him either."
"Sonofabitch," Lucas said, looking past Carr at nothing. "I might of put a finger on him."