In Tongues of the Dead (5 page)

“Foster parents, actually.”

“Oh?”

“Yep, I don't know for sure what happened but his biological parents aren't around anymore. He's been in foster care for at least a year.”

“Poor little guy.”

Samantha nodded.

“Well, if there's anything I could do to help him …”

“You know, it was kind of a surprise to see you talking to him,” she said thoughtfully.

“Why's that?”

“Well, you were crouched down right next to him at that book display and normally that's one of those things that would set him off and he'd have a screaming fit for an hour.”

“Oh my. I had no idea. He showed no signs of being upset when I approached him. In fact, he didn't even acknowledge me.”

“That's how he is. You can be shouting right in his ear and
he doesn't even flinch, but then if you touch him or say the wrong word —
bam
! He loses it.”

“It must be so difficult for the foster parents. Have you met them?”

“The Youngers?”

Father McCallum noticed that her expression darkened.

“Yeah, I've met them. I guess they have a lot to deal with. They don't come around the school too often.”

“Yes, I'd bet it is quite difficult for them.” He paused and then added, “Well, thank you for your time. You know how to find me if there is ever any way I could be of assistance.”

“The Beinecke Library,” she said.

“The Beinecke Library,” he repeated. “Speaking of which — I need to get back there.” He thanked her and left. As he pushed through the front doors, he exhaled deeply.
Matthew Younger. At least I have the name. Now I need to find out where he lives
.

Father Ronald McCallum sat nervously in his rental car. He'd parked where he could see the children filing out of school and heading for the rows of waiting buses. At intervals, teachers helped herd the kids in what seemed to be a well-honed procedure.

He no longer felt like a spy or a secret agent. He felt like a pedophile. He grimaced but continued his vigil.

He was soon rewarded. Matthew Younger drifted out of the school with a group of children. He strained forward, wanting to take note of which bus the boy boarded. Matthew boarded the second bus from the end. He waited nervously until the buses began to pull away from the curb, then started the car and put it in gear, his eyes glued to the back of Matthew's bus. All the buses looked the same. What if he lost track of which one was Matthew's?

Matthew's bus exited the school lot and turned right, rumbling down Elm Street. Only two other buses followed, the rest all turned left.

He breathed a sigh of relief and eased his foot down on the accelerator.

After a few more blocks the other two buses veered off onto different streets, and Father McCallum found himself directly behind Matthew's. He watched the kids through the back window of the bus. One of the children stared at him and made a face. He hit the brake, then heard a screech of tires behind him. He stepped on the gas again.

When the bus turned onto Alliance Avenue and began making stops, Father McCallum panicked. Every time the bus stopped he would have to stop right behind it — but that
wouldn't be safe. The kids in the back would surely say something about the old guy who was following them. He tried to slip his jacket off without veering all over the road. He decided he'd turn onto a side street and try to catch up to the bus using a different route. He put the turn signal on, then saw Matthew Younger step off the bus and onto the sidewalk.

He sucked in a breath. A tall, slender woman was waiting for the boy. There were no hugs or smiles. Matthew simply followed the woman when she turned and walked down a side road. The priest pulled up to the curb, and someone honked. His erratic driving hadn't exactly gone unnoticed.

He looked down the side road and saw the boy following the woman — his mother, the priest guessed.
Foster mother
, he corrected, remembering what Samantha had told him. He got out of the car and started following Matthew.

It wasn't long before the pair turned up a pathway and went through the front door of a weather-worn home. Father McCallum waited a few minutes then strolled past the house and noted the address: 55 Union Lane. It was a rough-looking single-storey house in desperate need of repairs. Obviously the Younger family didn't have much in the way of money, but at least Father McCallum knew where the boy lived.

“Thank you, God,” he whispered, and headed to his rental.

When they'd moved to Nova Scotia, Jake and Abby Tunnel had rented an apartment near the Halifax Shopping Centre. It was close to shopping and bus routes that took them right downtown. But there were a lot of people and the roads were busy with traffic, so when they were expecting their first child they bought a house. Now they lived in upscale Perry Lake Estates in Fall River, a suburb just north of Bedford and Lower Sackville. The house, a mixture of brick and dark red siding with white shutters on the windows, was a two-storey rectangular home with a gable roof. It was Abby's dream house. The driveway was paved and the one-acre lot was carpeted with a beautiful lawn and plenty of trees. They'd been there for eight years.

On Thursday evening, Jake sat in the finished basement watching tv. Wyatt played with Legos on the floor in front of him. Jake could hear Emily playing with her wooden Victorian dollhouse somewhere behind him. Abby was doing something upstairs — probably making supper.

“Wanna play Lego with me?” Wyatt offered.

“In a minute,” Jake responded without looking at his son. Sometimes it was hard to look at Wyatt without feeling a knot of panic in his gut. Wyatt's headaches, dizzy spells, and occasional blurry vision terrified Jake. Every day when he got home he asked Abby how Wyatt was. He hated hearing that he'd had another spell.

The spells had started a month and a half ago. Last week they had taken Wyatt to the Izaak Walton Killam Children's Hospital, where doctors had performed a series of tests. Jake knew they would get the results sometime on Saturday but had avoided looking at the calendar to find the exact time of their
appointment. Abby always wrote appointments on the calendar in the kitchen, but Jake felt sick when he saw the red-ink reminder.

He felt worn and tired. He wished for an easy solution to his son's headaches — Wyatt needed glasses or had an ear infection. The alternatives were too scary.

Tumor.

Cancer.

No. He shook his head. He wouldn't let himself think it. He glanced down at his son. Jake wondered if Wyatt was worried. The boy never let on if he was. Jake smiled.

“Jake!”
Abby shouted from upstairs.

“Mom's calling,” Emily announced without looking up from her dolls.

Jake laughed. “Thanks, I hadn't heard her,” he said, smiling.

Emily gave one of her
Oh, Daddy!
looks.

“Coming, dear,” Jake yelled toward the ceiling.

“What about Lego, Dad?” Wyatt asked plaintively.

Jake shook his head and stood. “Not right now, buddy, I've gotta go check on Mom and see about supper.”

Wyatt turned to his Lego ship and lifted it into the air. With a whoosh the spaceship crashed down into a pile of Legos — a horrendously failed landing. Pieces skidded across the floor in all directions.

“You'd better clean all that crap up,” Jake warned as he retreated up the stairs. “I don't want to find any under the tv.” He didn't know if he was saying it because it bothered him or because he knew Abby would freak out if she saw toys scattered everywhere.

“You said ‘crap,'” Emily informed him.

Jake continued up the stairs.

Something smelled good as he headed to the kitchen. He found Abby stirring something in a skillet. She'd recently taken to making very different kinds of dishes. Exotic things he didn't even know she could cook. He knew people dealt
with stress in different ways. He hoped her cooking helped Abby stop worrying.

“Liver and onions?” he asked, smiling.

Abby didn't laugh. “It's called Imam Bayildi — basically just eggplant and tomato. There's also some chicken in the oven. Hope that's okay.”

“Sounds good to me. What are the kids eating?” Wyatt and Emily were notoriously difficult to please.

“I don't know. Maybe throw some fries in the oven with the chicken.”

Jake tapped at the convection oven. “I'll have to increase the temp to four-fifty. That okay?”

“Sure. By the way, there's a circus at the Metro Centre in a few weeks. Should we take the kids?”

“Did they say they wanted to go?”

“They don't know about it,” Abby told him. “I thought I'd better run it past you first.”

“Yeah, sure. Want me to get tickets?”

She nodded but didn't look at him, just listlessly stirred the food in the skillet.

Jake paused at the oven, a pan of french fries in his hand. “What's wrong?”

She turned. Her eyes were full of tears. “I think it's getting worse. He was watching tv with Em today and then all of a sudden he was just sitting there, staring. His eyes weren't focused on anything.”

“What'd he say?”

“He said he was fine. He's trying to be so tough now because he knows how scared we are. He doesn't want to admit anything anymore. He's so brave.” Her voice started to crack.

Jake set the fries on the counter, went over to his wife and put an arm around her shoulders. “We'll sort this out. We've done everything we can. We saw our family doctor. We had Wyatt in emergency twice and we had the hospital tests. He's going to be fine.” He wished he believed it.

She turned toward him and put her face onto his shoulder. He could feel her sobs.

“Promise?” she asked.

“Promise,” he said confidently.

Father Benicio Valori's trip to the Phnom Penh airport was rough and wild. The men who found him in Prasat had excitedly pushed and prodded him through the streets toward a waiting
moto
, the traditional motorcycle taxi of Cambodia, and shoved him onto the back of the bike. The driver turned to him and announced, “I am Mook. I get you airport very fast.”

After nearly fifty minutes of hard driving, the bike screeched to a stop in front of the airport, a modern facility full of angles and recessed lighting. Benicio got off the bike and reached in his pocket to pay the bill, but when he looked up Mook and the moto were gone. Benicio shrugged and entered the front lobby, which looked as if it belonged in a hotel. He had been told to go to the Silk Air check-in.

He found the counter and leaned on it heavily as he tried to catch his breath.

“Can I help you, sir?” a beautiful clerk asked. Her voice had the slight clicking of an accent. She'd not bothered to attempt a greeting in Khmer.

“
Si, grazie
, I'm checking in for a flight. My name's Benicio Valori.”

“Destination?” she asked automatically as her fingers flicked over a keyboard.

“The United States.” He paused, realizing he didn't know exactly where he was going. “I'm sorry but I don't —”

“Oh, my apologies, Father Valori.” She nodded and smiled. “We're expecting you — we're actually holding the aircraft. Here is your boarding pass.”

Holding the aircraft
? He took the pass.

“We also have your passport.” She held out an envelope. “We've already cleared you through customs on this end. Please take a seat on the cart behind you. We'll drive you to the departure gate.”

Benicio stared at the clerk then took the envelope. He was sure he'd left his passport in the hotel safe in Phnom Penh. He turned and saw an airport attendant in a golf cart. The attendant nodded and pointed at the seat on the back. “I take you.”

Within moments Benicio was through the gate and walking down the ramp to the plane. He stopped at the door, where a flight attendant stood, and held out his boarding pass.

After a quick scrutiny the flight attendant said, “Mr. Valori, we're glad you've arrived. Your seat is three rows back on the left. We've already placed your carry-on luggage in the overhead compartment.”

“My carry-on luggage?”

“Yes,” she said and smiled broadly. “It was all arranged. Have a wonderful flight.”

In a daze, Benicio found his first-class seat and dropped into it.
My carry-on luggage
?

Within minutes the plane took off, and Benicio finally breathed a sigh of relief. He'd known the church to act with urgency, but this was extreme. Being pulled off an important assignment and rushed to the airport was a new experience for him. Moreover, the church had obviously used its enormous pull either by way of its status or by paying handsomely. As the plane climbed into the air he reviewed his ticket. He was flying to Singapore then boarding a United Airways flight to Philadelphia, followed by a short hop to New Haven, Connecticut. The total flight time was more than thirty hours.

He couldn't imagine what was going on in New Haven. He knew Yale University was in New Haven, but didn't remember it having anything to do with the Holy Church.

Except
… He thought for a moment, then dismissed the
idea.
It can't be that
. He vaguely remembered a rumor about a book in the Yale library, a book the church had long suspected was part of a terrible scandal from Old Testament times. It couldn't be that.

The plane finally reached its cruising altitude and the captain switched off the seat-belt sign. Benicio unbuckled and stood, eager to see what was in his carry-on bag. He opened the overhead compartment and found only one small piece of luggage.
Must be mine
, he thought, and opened it. He found some basic toiletry items and a change of clothing — a not-so-subtle suggestion from the church to get cleaned up. If there was one thing he'd learned about working with the Vatican it was that image was everything. He retreated to the first-class washroom to wash away the Cambodian slums.