Ransom (65 page)

The old priests would tell him to offer his discomfort up to God for the poor souls in purgatory. Tom didn't see any harm in doing that, even though he wondered how his own misery was going to relieve anyone else's.

He shifted his position on the hard oak chair, squirming like a choirboy at Sunday practice. He could feel the sweat dripping down the sides of his face and neck into his cassock.
The long black robe was soaked through with perspiration, and he sincerely doubted he smelled at all like the hint of Irish Spring soap he'd used in the shower this morning.

The temperature outside hovered between ninety-four and ninety-five degrees in the shade of the rectory porch, where the thermostat was nailed to the whitewashed stone wall. The humidity made the heat so oppressive that those unfortunate souls forced to leave their air-conditioned homes and venture outside did so with a slow shuffle and a quick temper.

It was a lousy day for the compressor to bite the dust. There were windows in the church, of course, but the ones that could have been opened had been sealed shut long ago in a futile attempt to keep the vandals out. The two others were high up in the gold domed ceiling. They were stained-glass depictions of the archangels Gabriel and Michael holding gleaming swords in their fists. Gabriel was looking up toward Heaven, a beatific expression on his face, while Michael scowled at the snakes he held pinned down with his bare feet. The colored windows were considered priceless prayer-inspiring works of art by the congregation, but they were useless in combating the heat. They had been added for decoration, not ventilation.

Tom was a big, strapping man with a seventeen-and-a-half-inch neck left over from his glory days, but he was cursed with baby-sensitive skin. The heat was giving him a prickly rash. He hiked the cassock up to his thighs, revealing the red-and-white happy-face boxer shorts his sister, Laurant, had given him, kicked off his paint-splattered Wal-Mart rubber thongs, and popped a piece of Dubble Bubble into his mouth.

An act of kindness had landed him in the sweatbox. While waiting for the test results that would determine if he needed another round of chemotherapy at Kansas University Medical
Center, he was a guest of Monsignor MacKindry, pastor of Our Lady of Mercy Church. The parish was located in the forgotten sector of Kansas City, several hundred miles south of Holy Oaks, Iowa, where Tom was stationed. The neighborhood had been officially designated as the gang zone by the mayor's task force. The monsignor always took Saturday-afternoon confession, but because of the blistering heat, his advanced age, the broken air conditioner, and a conflict in his schedule—the pastor was busy preparing for his reunion with two friends from seminary days at Assumption Abbey—Tom had volunteered for the duty. He had assumed he'd sit face-to-face with his penitent in a room with a couple of windows open for fresh air. MacKindry, however, bowed to the preferences of his faithful parishioners, who stubbornly clung to the old-fashioned way of hearing confessions, a fact Tom learned only after he'd offered his services and Lewis, the parish handyman, had directed him to the oven he would sit in for the next ninety minutes.

In appreciation, the monsignor had lent him a thoroughly inadequate, battery-operated fan that one of his flock had put in the collection basket. The thing was no bigger than a man's hand. Tom adjusted the angle of the fan so that the air would blow directly on his face, leaned back against the wall, and began to read the
Holy Oaks Gazette
he'd brought along to Kansas City.

He turned to the society page on the back first because he got such a kick out of it. He glanced over the usual club news and the smattering of announcements—two births, three engagements, and a wedding—and then he found his favorite column called “About Town.” The headline was always the same: the bingo game. The number of people who attended the community center's bingo night was reported, along with the names of the winners of the twenty-five-dollar jackpots. Interviews with the lucky recipients followed, telling what
each of them planned to do with his or her windfall. And there was always a comment by Rabbi Jim Spears, who organized the weekly event, about what a good time everyone had had. Tom was suspicious that the society editor, Lorna Hamburg, had a secret crush on Rabbi Spears, a widower, and that was why the bingo game was so prominently featured in the paper. The rabbi said the same thing every week, and Tom invariably ribbed him about that when they played golf together on Wednesday afternoons. Since Jim usually beat the socks off him, he didn't mind the teasing, but he did accuse Tom of trying to divert attention from his appalling game.

The rest of the column was dedicated to letting everyone in town know who was entertaining company and what they were feeding them. If the news that week was hard to come by, Lorna filled in the space with popular recipes.

There weren't any secrets in Holy Oaks. The front page was full of news about the proposed town square development and the upcoming centennial celebration at Assumpion Abbey. And there was a nice mention about his sister helping out at the abbey. The reporter called her a tireless and cheerful volunteer and described at some length all the projects she had taken on. Not only was she going to eliminate all the clutter in the attic, but she was also going to transfer all the information from the old dusty files to their newly donated computer. When she had a few minutes to spare, she would be translating the French journals of Father Andre Vankirk, a priest who had died recently. Tom chuckled to himself as he finished reading the glowing testimonial to his sister. Laurant hadn't actually volunteered for any of the jobs. She just happened to be walking past the abbot the moment he came up with the ideas and, gracious to a fault, couldn't refuse.

By the time Tom finished reading the rest of the paper, his soaked collar was sticking to his neck. He put the paper
on the seat next to him, mopped his brow again, and contemplated closing shop fifteen minutes early.

He gave up the idea almost as soon as it entered his mind. He knew that if he left the confessional early, he'd catch hell from the monsignor, and after the hard day of manual labor he'd put in, he simply wasn't up to a lecture. On the first Wednesday of every third month—Ash Wednesday, he silently called it—Tom moved in with Monsignor MacKindry, an old, broken-nosed, crackle-skinned Irishman who never missed an opportunity to get as much physical labor as he could possibly squeeze out of his houseguest in seven days. MacKindry was crusty and gruff, but he had a heart of gold and a compassionate nature that wasn't compromised by sentimentality. He firmly believed that idle hands were the devil's workshop, especially when the rectory was in dire need of a fresh coat of paint. Hard work, he pontificated, would cure anything, even cancer.

Some days Tom had a hard time remembering why he liked the monsignor so much or felt a kinship toward him. Maybe it was because they both had a bit of Irish in them. Or maybe it was because the old man's philosophy—that only a fool cried over spilt milk—had sustained him through more hardships than Job. Tom's battle was child's play compared to MacKindry's life.

He would do whatever he could to help lighten MacKindry's burdens. The monsignor was looking forward to visiting with his old friends again. One of them was Abbot James Rockhill, Tom's superior at Assumption Abbey, and the other, Vincent Moreno, was a priest Tom had never met. However, neither Rockhill nor Moreno would be staying at Mercy House with MacKindry and Tom, for they much preferred the luxuries provided by the staff at Holy Trinity parish, luxuries like hot water that lasted longer than five
minutes and central air-conditioning. Trinity was located in the heart of a bedroom community on the other side of the state line separating Missouri from Kansas. MacKindry jokingly referred to it as “Our Lady of the Lexus,” and from the number of designer cars parked in the church's lot on Sunday mornings, the label was right on the mark. Most of the parishioners at Mercy didn't own cars; they walked to church.

Tom's stomach began to rumble. He was hot and sticky and thirsty. He needed another shower, and he wanted a cold Bud Light. There hadn't been a single taker all the while he'd been sitting there roasting like a turkey. He didn't think anyone else was even inside the church now, except maybe Lewis, who liked to hide in the cloakroom behind the vestibule and sneak sips of rot whiskey from the bottle in his toolbox. Tom checked his watch, saw he only had a couple of minutes left, and decided he'd had enough. He switched off the light above the confessional and was reaching for the curtain when he heard the swoosh of air the leather kneeler expelled when weight was placed upon it. The sound was followed by a discreet cough from the confessor's cell next to him.

Tom immediately straightened in his chair and took the gum out of his mouth and put it back in the wrapper. Then he bowed his head in prayer and slid the wooden panel up.

“In the name of the Father and of the Son . . .” he began in a low voice as he made the sign of the cross.

Several seconds passed in silence. The penitent was either gathering his thoughts or his courage before he confessed his transgressions. Tom adjusted the stole around his neck and patiently continued to wait.

The scent of Calvin Klein's Obsession came floating through the grille that separated them. It had a distinctive, heavy, sweet fragrance Tom recognized because his housekeeper
in Rome had given him a bottle of the cologne on his last birthday. A little of the stuff went a long way, and the penitent had gone overboard. The confessional reeked. The scent, combined with the smell of mildew and sweat, made Tom feel as though he were trying to breathe through a plastic bag. His stomach lurched and he forced himself not to gag.

“Are you there, Father?”

“I'm here,” Tom whispered. “When you're ready to confess your sins, you may begin.”

“This is . . . difficult for me. My last confession was a year ago. I wasn't given absolution then. Will you absolve me now?”

There was an odd, singsong quality to the voice and a mocking tone that put Tom on his guard. Was the stranger simply nervous because it had been such a long time since his last confession, or was he being deliberately irreverent?

“You weren't given absolution?”

“No, I wasn't, Father. I angered the priest. I'll make you angry too. What I have to confess will . . . shock you. Then you'll become angry like the other priest.”

“Nothing you say will shock or anger me,” Tom assured him.

“You've heard it all before? Is that it, Father?”

Before Tom could answer, the penitent whispered, “Hate the sin, not the sinner.”

The mocking had intensified. Tom stiffened. “Would you like to begin?”

“Yes,” the stranger replied. “Bless me, Father, for I will sin.”

Confused by what he'd heard, Tom leaned closer to the grille and asked the man to start over.

“Bless me, Father, for I will sin.”

“You want to confess a sin you're going to commit?”

“I do.”

“Is this some sort of a game or a—”

“No, no, not a game,” the man said. “I'm deadly serious. Are you getting angry yet?”

A burst of laughter, as jarring as the sound of gunfire in the middle of the night, shot through the grille.

Tom was careful to keep his voice neutral when he answered. “No, I'm not angry, but I am confused. Surely you realize you can't be given absolution for sins you're contemplating. Forgiveness is for those who have realized their mistakes and are truly contrite. They're willing to make restitution for their sins.”

“Ah, but Father, you don't know what the sins are yet. How can you deny me absolution?”

“Naming the sins doesn't change anything.”

“Oh, but it does. A year ago I told another priest exactly what I was going to do, but he didn't believe me until it was too late. Don't make the same mistake.”

“How do you know the priest didn't believe you?”

“He didn't try to stop me. That's how I know.”

“How long have you been a Catholic?”

“All my life.”

“Then you know that a priest cannot acknowledge the sin or the sinner outside of the confessional. The seal of silence is sacred. Exactly how could this other priest have stopped you?”

“He could have found a way. I was . . . practicing then, and I was cautious. It would have been very easy for him to stop me, so it's his fault, not mine. It won't be easy now.”

Tom was desperately trying to make sense out of what the man was saying. Practice? Practice what? And what was the sin the priest could have prevented?

“I thought I could control it.”

“Control what?”

“The craving.”

“What was the sin you confessed?”

“Her name was Millicent. A nice, old-fashioned name, don't you think? Her friends called her Millie, but I didn't. I much preferred Millicent. Of course, I wasn't what you would call a friend.”

Another burst of laughter pierced the dead air. Tom's forehead was beaded with perspiration, but he suddenly felt cold. This wasn't a prankster. He dreaded what he was going to hear, yet he was compelled to ask.

“What happened to Millicent?”

“I broke her heart.”

“I don't understand.”

“What do you think happened to her?” the man demanded, his impatience clear now. “I killed her. It was messy; there was blood everywhere, all over me. I was terribly inexperienced back then. I hadn't perfected my technique. When I went to confession, I hadn't killed her yet. I was still in the planning stage and the priest could have stopped me, but he didn't. I told him what I was going to do.”

“Tell me, how could he have stopped you?”

“Prayer,” he answered, a shrug in his voice. “I told him to pray for me, but he didn't pray hard enough, now did he? I still killed her. It's a pity, really. She was such a pretty little thing . . . much prettier than the others.”