I shook my head. “Not a thing,” I said, “but I didn’t really expect to, any more than I expected you to find a wolf among the lambs.”
“Then why did we—”
“Eliminating the impossible,” I said.
“And we’ve done that now?”
I nodded. “I can’t think of anything else we can do,” I said.
“And that leaves us with … ?”
“The highly improbable,” I said.
“A miracle?” she asked. “Is that so much more improbable than any other highly improbable scenario?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said, “I guess it’s not.”
The following morning, after a few hours sleep in a dorm room— Anna in the girls’, I in the boys’—and a shower, we were gathered in Father Thomas’s office.
Father Thomas was sitting behind his desk, Sister Abigail standing not far from him. Father Jerome was seated on the other side of the desk, Sister Mary in a chair beside him. Anna was sitting on a love seat, pulled over from the seating area on the other side of the room. I was standing in the corner leaning against a filing cabinet.
Tommy Boy was serving coffee to everyone while we waited for Dr. Norton’s arrival.
“Does this gathering mean you’ve come up with a solution?” Father Thomas asked.
“I haven’t come up with anything so much as excluded everything else,” I said.
“But you’re saying after you’ve excluded everything, there’s still something left?” Sister Abigail asked.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding, “a pregnant virgin.”
“Do you mean …?” Father Thomas asked, his voice rising.
“My solution requires faith,” I said.
Father Jerome sat up in his seat.
“Praise be to God,” Father Thomas said. “It’s exactly what the world needs right now—a sign of God’s presence among us.”
“Surely that’s not what you’re saying,” Sister Abigail said.
“I’m saying that I’ve eliminated the impossible,” I said. “Sister Mary says she hasn’t had sex, hasn’t even been near a man—which means no room for accidents—and she’s telling the truth. A lie-detector test proves it. I’m saying that she is both a virgin and pregnant and medical evidence proves that.”
“But that is impossible,” Sister Abigail said.
“Maybe with men, but with God all things are possible,” Father Thomas said. “We’ve got to call the bishop immediately.”
“John?” Sister asked.
“Most cases I’m involved in have clues and evidence,” I said. “Tangibles that when fitted together the right way create a picture or tell a story. With this one, though, what we have is nothing.”
“Nothing?” Father Jerome said. “You’ve lost me.”
“We have no clues, no evidence, just a process of eliminating the impossible in hopes of finding an improbable.”
“And have you?” Sister asked.
I nodded.
The door opened and Dr. Norton walked in.
“Sorry I’m late,” she whispered.
“Someone here is in love with Sister Mary Elizabeth,” I said.
Tommy Boy, who was replacing the carafe of coffee onto the tray, dropped it, and it clanged loudly, but only spilled a little since it was nearly empty.
“And the person wants Mary to have their child,” I said. “Or, if not their child, at least a child who is part of them.”
“But she hasn’t had sex,” Father Thomas said. “You said so yourself.”
“That’s right,” I said. “But there are other ways to get impregnated. Aren’t there doctor?”
She nodded.
“Could it be done without tearing the hymen?”
She nodded again.
“With?”
“Any number of instruments,” she said. “From a syringe to a turkey baster.”
Sister Mary cringed.
“Surely you didn’t call me out here just to confirm that?” Dr. Norton said.
“No,” I said.
“Then why?”
“We’ll get to that in a minute,” I said.
“So you’re saying someone impregnated Sister Mary with an, ah, instrument?” Sister Abigail asked.
I nodded.
“But she’d remember that,” Anna said. “And according to the lie-detector, she doesn’t.”
“And I’m a very light sleeper,” Mary said. “No way someone could do that to me and me not know it.”
“Unless,” I said, “you were unconscious.”
She frowned. “I haven’t been unconscious,” she said.
“Yes, you have,” I said. “You called it passing out and you couldn’t remember if it was before or after you got pregnant, but you were really being drugged.”
“Drugged?”
I nodded. “Probably roofies, special K, or GHB.”
“Date rape drugs,” Anna said, the light of revelation sparkling in her eyes.
“Somebody drugged her and raped her?” Father Thomas said.
“Rape of a sort,” I said. “They didn’t have sex with her, but they did impregnate her. A violation like rape, just not as violent.”
“Who?” Mary asked.
“Who gives you tea all the time?”
She turned and looked at Tommy Boy. Everyone in the room followed her gaze.
“Who’s in love with you?” I said.
No one said anything, just continued to stare at Tommy Boy, who was now backing into the corner.
“Who’s dying?” I asked.
Everyone looked away from Tommy Boy, back to me, then to Father Jerome.
“What?” Jerome asked, trying to sound outraged, but unable to pull it off. “Are you mad?”
“Improbable, yes,” I said, “but it’s possible—and all that’s left after we’ve eliminated all the impossibles. You love her, worship her even. You’re dying. I think you wanted to leave something of yourself in the world—something of your best self, which Mary brings out. She does that for everyone. Good people always do. This wasn’t about sex. That’s why you didn’t rape her. This was about mortality, about not wanting to die.”
“Jerome,” Father Thomas said.
“It’s not true,” he said. “I would never do anything to Mary.” He turned to Mary. “You’ve got to believe me, Mary. I love you. I would never hurt you. This is all madness.” He began to look around the room. “This is insane. Don’t believe him. Don’t do this to me. Ask him if he has any evidence.”
“Do you?” Father Thomas asked.
“Is that why you searched the abbey?” Sister asked.
I nodded.
“What’d you find?
“Nothing,” I said. “Whatever he used is long gone.”
“See,” Jerome said. “See. I told you. This is—”
“A matter of faith,” I said. “I told you all that at the beginning of this discussion. It’s not like other cases. There’s no evidence. It’s the process of elimination. What we’re left with is the truth.”
“John,” Sister Abigail said. “We can’t very well accuse a man of such an awful crime without evidence.”
“So you’re saying our faith needs science to back it up?” I said. “The way the lie-detector confirmed what we already knew— that Sister Mary doesn’t lie?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Okay.” Turning to Dr. Norton, I said, “Is it possible to determine paternity during pregnancy?”
Her face lit up. “That’s why I’m here,” she said. “Yes. If we do an amniocentesis I can harvest fetal cells that can be used to compare DNA.”
At that, Father Jerome dropped his bald head into his feeble hands and began to sob.
I returned to St. Ann’s a few days later.
Spring break was ending, and the abbey was beginning to fill up again.
I found Father Jerome and Sister Mary Elizabeth sitting on the front porch of his cabin drinking tea. At first, I was surprised, but only for a moment.
She’s forgiven him
, I thought.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Mary asked, as I reached the porch.
“No, thank you,” I said.
At first, Father Jerome wouldn’t look at me, but after a few quick glances, he must have seen that I wasn’t here to condemn him.
“I’m so sorry,” he said to me, his eyes filling, “but I’m so glad you figured it out. I felt so guilty. I knew I should confess, let everyone know what an evil thing I had done, but I just couldn’t. I was too weak, too self-centered.”
Mary said, “You don’t need to keep confessing to everyone you see,” she said. “It’s time to put it behind you.”
“But John was involved,” he said, “and I didn’t really get to tell him how sorry I was and how much I appreciated what he did.”
“Okay,” she said, “but let that be the last one.”
“Can you believe her?” he asked. “She forgave me.”
His eyes filled again, and this time he broke down.
I nodded., looking over at Mary. “I’m not surprised at all.”
She smiled up at me, and in that moment, I had to agree with Jerome. Sister Mary Elizabeth was a saint.
“How are you?” I asked.
I was leaving St. Ann’s, and Sister Mary Elizabeth was walking me to my truck.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I really am.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Stay close to Father Jerome,” she said. “I hope he can stay alive until our baby is born. Then I’m going to raise our child—where I’m not sure—perhaps as a nun, but probably just as a teacher.”
“If I can ever do anything,” I said. “Anything at all, just let me know.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Don’t be surprised when I call.”
“You’re an extraordinary person,” I said. “I find you to be enormously inspiring.”
Her big blue eyes glistened with moisture.
“I don’t say this often,” I said, “because I don’t think it’s true of very many people, but you are, in the very best and most profound sense of the word, a Christian.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” she said.
“Well, it’s true,” I said. “In fact, it may be the truest thing I’ve ever said. Father Thomas and some of the others thought this was a miracle, a sign from God to anyone willing to see it. Well, it is—
you
are. You are a grace. You make me believe in God, in goodness, in love, in compassion, and in a virgin birth.”
The body lay face down in the greening grass of late March, damp with dew, its limbs splayed out at odd angles. There were no signs of trauma, the brown correctional officer uniform, though wrinkled and ill-fitting, was neither torn nor blood-soaked.
I had a feeling things would change once the body was turned over.
I was standing near the back corner of the Potter Correctional Institution rec yard at a little after seven in the morning, having been met at the front gate by a new captain named Baker who escorted me past the chapel where I had been headed and through the closed compound to join the warden, the colonel, and the inspector.
Everyone looked more or less masculine in the brown CO uniforms—especially from the back—but the long, overly processed, white-blond hair let us know we were dealing with a woman. I could tell the fried hair had been straightened a few too many times, that its length, a little longer than her shoulders, was made possible by extensions.
Baker said, “She spends a lot of time and money on her appearance.”
I nodded.
Baker was tall and thin with dark skin, a quick smile, and kind eyes.
“You can tell that from looking at her back, Sherlock?” the colonel said.
Colonel Patterson was a middle-aged white man with a sour disposition and an enormous southern-fried gut spilling out over his belt. He had bushy eyebrows dangerously close to meeting in the middle, and thick, perpetually sweaty hands.
“Look at her hair,” Baker said.
“Can we turn her over, Inspector?” the warden, Edward Stone asked.
Stone, an aging black man with graying hair, was one of the most formal people I had ever known. He was the only person at the prison to call Pete, Inspector. He seemed stiff, but the movements of the thin body inside the three-piece suit, like everything he did, were more measured and careful than stilted.
“I’ll catch hell from FDLE if we do, but I’m used to it,” Pete said.
As if Stone’s opposite, Pete Fortner, the institutional inspector, was pale, short, pudgy, and unkempt, his eyes blinking often behind glasses that perpetually slid down his nose—underneath which was an unruly bushy mustache.
The morning was cool, a bit of bite in the wind, the sun yet to penetrate the clouds and fog.
We waited a moment, but Pete didn’t do anything.
“Well …” Stone said.