The Surrogate, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book one (22 page)

She parked in the lot next to Our Lady of Perpetual Light and sat for a moment, sorting out her thoughts. She couldn’t remember the young priest’s name. It was a common name. Something like Father Willy or Father Joey. At any rate, something that sounded a little silly for a priest.

She rang the rectory doorbell several times. Eventually, the door opened a crack and the face of an elderly, white-haired woman peaked out.

“What is it?”

“Good morning. Or rather good afternoon. Could you help me? I’m looking for a young, attractive priest.”

The door swung wider to reveal the rectory housekeeper, wearing a faded calico apron over a black dress and a faintly puzzled expression on her brow.

“I’m afraid that didn’t come out right,” Teri said. “What I mean, is I’m looking for a certain priest at this parish. I can’t remember his name. I just know that he’s young and, you-know, good-looking. Is there someone here like that? It’s important that I speak to him.”

“That would be Father Jimmy, I suppose,” the woman said, as she backed up to let Teri into the entrance hall. “Not that the Monsignor doesn’t cut a fine figure for a man his age. If you’d like to take a seat, I’ll see if he’s free.”

She gestured toward the reception room and shuffled up the stairs.

Jimmy, Teri thought. She wasn’t that far off. She barely had time to inspect what to her mind was the rather forbidding furniture, when she heard someone bounding down the stairs.

Hannah definitely hadn’t overstated his attractiveness. Nice smile, long legs, slender, and the kind of dark eyes generally referred to as bedroom. What a waste, she thought.

“You wanted to see me? I’m Father Jimmy,” he said.

“Hello, Father. My name is Teri Zito. I’m a friend of Hannah Manning’s.”

“There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

“I was hoping you might know. This is going to sound foolish of me, but I just came from the house on Alcott Street, and she wasn’t there. We had made plans for her to come to my place today. I live in Fall River. When I got there, Mrs. Whitfield said she’d gone off for the day.”

“And you’re worried about her.”

“That’s not like Hannah. And I know she’s been uneasy about staying there lately. Anyway, she told me about you and I thought you might have an idea where she was. Actually, I just wanted to talk to someone.”

“I can understand how you might be concerned, Mrs. Zito.” The Monsignor’s injunction came back to him, loud and categorical. “I wish I could help you, but I’m afraid I haven’t talked to Hannah in several days. There’s bound to be an explanation. If I hear anything, I’ll be glad to—

“No, that’s all right. I’m sure it’s just a mix-up. I warned you I was going to sound foolish. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“It’s no bother, really.”

The priest accompanied her to the door and watched while she negotiated the porch steps. At the bottom, she paused to look back at him. “I just want you to know that Hannah has spoken very fondly of you, Father. Thank you for being kind to her. You’re the only friend she’s got up here. And well…she’s young and, I don’t know if innocent is the right word. No one is innocent these days. But she’s…a good person. You know what I mean?”

He nodded. Wistfully, she thought.

1:40

Once Teri’s car had disappeared, Hannah was taken upstairs to her bedroom by the two women, who walked on either side of her, each one gripping an arm. Hannah felt like a traitor being led to the tower.

“We’re sorry to have to do this, Hannah,” Jolene explained, as they reached the third floor. “We shared some very private information with you and you let us believe that you appreciated the importance of your role. We didn’t expect you to behave like this. Now we have to protect what is ours. I hope you understand.”

“Don’t waste the words on her,” Judith said.

The door was locked and Hannah found herself alone for the rest of the afternoon. Her sole preoccupation was how she could escape from the house and how soon. From all the signs, they didn’t intend to keep her here much longer. And after this incident, who knew where she would end up now?

Of course, she could open the window and start screaming again. But you could barely see the house next door and there was no shortage of dishrags in this one. Or she could try to pick the lock on the bedroom door, but she had no clue how to begin, and the available tools - a pair of scissors, tweezers, the silverware on her breakfast tray - were not those of the master burglar.

Somehow she couldn’t see herself climbing out onto the roof, either! Outside, the sky was morose and a light rain had begun to fall. With the temperature going down, the rain would turn to sleet before long and the roof would be as slippery as an oil slick. Not that she would ever dare test it.

She had to come up with a plan.

When Marshall brought her dinner, he asked her if she was doing okay.

“I’m fine.”

“You weren’t hurt?”

“No.”

“I’m glad.”

On his way out of the room, he paused, as if he was about to say something more, then changed his mind. He locked the door behind him.

Hannah went to bed, her mind numb, seemingly incapable of activity. The great escape plan hadn’t occurred to her and probably wouldn’t. What kind of a match was she for three healthy adults? Four, if you counted Dr. Johanson. Eight months pregnant, clumsy, tired, overwrought! What’s more, she had to pee! Lately, the baby’s head had begun to press against her bladder and the need to urinate frequently was complicating her life.

She rolled out of bed, shuffled to the bathroom, came back to bed.

Two hours later, she awoke with the same urgent need and it was only 1:30. Again, she wearily made her way to and from the bathroom. That was when the idea came to her. It wasn’t foolproof by any means, but if she played it right…Besides, what other choices did she have?

She switched on the bedside lamp. In her bureau drawer, she found a pair of old wool running socks. What else? Her eyes darted about the room. The notebook would work!

Tearing out several sheets, she wadded them into tight balls.

A plain wooden pole was all she needed now. The umbrella in the closet would have to do. She took everything into the bathroom and lifted the lid of the toilet.

She dropped the sock into the water first, pushed it as far down the drain as she could, then using the point of the umbrella, wedged it even deeper. She wrapped the balled-up notepaper in toilet tissue and plugged it in next, and, then for good measure, sealed it off with what remained on the roll. Satisfied with the job, she stepped back and flushed.

The water level in the commode rose slowly and stopped just short of the rim. She waited to see if it would recede. When it didn’t, she flushed a second time and the water cascaded over the top onto the tile floor. One more time, and the tiles were covered.

Now she had to awake somebody. Jolene and Marshall slept in the bedroom directly under hers, while Judith had taken the guest room across the hall.

“Hello!” she cried out. “I have a problem. Help!” The sound of her fists pounding on the door resonated in the stairwell. Her hands hurt, when at long last she heard stirring below.

“Is anybody up?” she called out.

“What is it? Is something wrong?” It was Marshall. The lock clicked and he stuck his head inside.

“It’s the toilet. It’s all plugged up. There’s water everywhere. I have to pee so badly I’m going to burst.” She hopped from one foot to the other, as if she were dancing on hot coals.

He took in the absurd jig with puffy eyes, not yet fully adjusted to the light, and plodded toward the bathroom to investigate. “Let me see what I can do. You can use the toilet downstairs.”

“You got here just in time.”

The Whitfields had their own private bathroom, but a guest bathroom was located at the end of the hall. Jolene was sitting up in bed, as Hannah tip-toed by. She stayed in the bathroom for ten minutes, flushed the toilet, ran the tap loudly in the sink. Then she returned upstairs.

Marshall had mopped up most of the water with towels, but had made little progress unclogging the toilet. His frustration was compounded by the late hour and the lack of proper equipment. “What the hell did you put down here?” he muttered.

“Too much toilet paper. It’s been one of those nights,” Hannah said apologetically. “I seem to have the use the bathroom every hour.”

“I’ll have to fix it tomorrow morning.”

“What do I do in the meantime?”

He shrugged, not wanting to deal with that problem right now. “I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to continue to use the one on the second floor.”

His soggy slippers left watery footprints on the bedroom floor.

“Thanks,” Hannah said to his departing form. She held her breath, waiting for the familiar tumble of the bolt. But all she heard, or thought she did, was the squish-squish of his feet going down the stairs.

Her door was unlocked!

She had counted on the fact that her bathroom needs were well known to all and accepted as an inevitable condition of her pregnancy. It had worked. Unless Marshall hadn’t gone back to bed at all, and was lurking in the darkness somewhere, waiting for her. She doubted it. That was the stuff of horror movies - people shouting “boo” in the middle of the night.

Forty-five minutes went by before she repeated the charade -creeping down the stairs, disappearing into the second-floor bathroom, flushing the toilet and running the tap. If anyone was awake, she was just making another obligatory bathroom trip. She was careful, when she got back to her room, to shut her door loudly enough so that it could be heard on the second floor.

It was almost four o’clock, when she got up again, this time making as little noise as possible. From the stillness of the house, everyone had settled into a deep sleep. The sleet had let up and the sky had partially cleared. The lawn shimmered, as if it had been dusted with cut glass. Without turning on a light, Hannah quietly pulled on her long johns and several pairs of tights. Two sweatshirts, a cable-knit sweater, a pair of pants and scarf came next. She was beginning to feel like Charlie Brown, dressed for a blizzard. She rolled up the pants legs, so that when she put on her bathrobe, only the tights showed. The tights and the shoes. Hopefully, no one would look at her feet. Hopefully, no one would be looking at all.

She slipped the change purse with all her money into a pocket and said a quick prayer.

She had planned the descent in stages. Getting to the bathroom was the easy part (the baby would always serve as her excuse, if caught.) Nonetheless, she was perspiring profusely by the time she reached the second floor and her heart was thumping so loudly that she feared it would wake the whole neighborhood. She stood just inside the bathroom, ear to the door, and listened to the ambient noise - the creaks and moans of beams and floorboards a hundred and fifty years old, as the oil heater switched off. There were no human sounds that she could distinguish.

She gave herself another five minutes to be sure, then, like a swimmer dipping a toe into frigid ocean waters, took her first tentative step down the final set of stairs. She counseled herself not to stop, once she’d started, and to concentrate only on her goal, the front door. It was now or never.

Midway, a stair tread squeaked under her weight, and she froze, while a shiver ran up her back. She made herself go on. The braided rugs in the hall would muffle her steps, once she got there. The outlines of the front door were visible now in the milky illumination that came through the windows and made silver coffins on the floor. She crossed the hall and turned the dead bolt on the front door with barely a sound. (The kitchen door, witness to her last abortive escape, needed oiling and was to be avoided.)

Carefully, she cracked open the door and braced herself for the rush of cold. When there was room enough for her to slip out - in her condition that meant the door was half open - she stepped over the threshold into the night air.

That was when the hand grabbed her by the hair.

“Marshall! Come quick!” Judith Kowalski shrieked, as she pulled Hannah back over the threshold into the hall, pulled so hard that Hannah thought the top of her scalp would come off. The sound of the woman’s voice and the sharp stab of pain triggered a flood of adrenaline in her body. She was not going to be incarcerated again, not going to be gagged and trussed like an animal. They had no right to treat her this way.

She spun around, arms flailing, and hit the woman in the face. The shock of the blow, more than its force, startled Judith, who loosened her grip on Hannah’s hair. Hannah managed to get back over the threshold, when Judith, coming from behind, was on her again, slipping one arm around her throat in a choke hold, the other arm locking the paralyzing grip in place.

Hannah gasped for air. The struggle lasted only a couple of seconds. The linked bodies revolved several times in a circle, a drunken merry-go-round of two, so that Hannah lost her bearings and didn’t realize how close to the edge of the steps they were. Her lungs screamed for breath. In a last effort to free herself, she drove her elbow hard into Judith’s stomach. That blow - and the ice that had crystallized on the edge of the stoop - combined to send Judith reeling backwards, down the steps and onto the walkway. The bricks shone like the glazing on a holiday pastry. The woman hit them with a thud.

Hannah didn’t start to run, until she was on the lawn, which made a crunching noise, as she headed for woods next to the house. She looked back when she had reached the stand of pine trees, and then only to see how much distance she had on Judith.

The carriage lamps by the front door had been turned on and Marshall was standing in the doorway in his bathrobe. Judith lay motionless on the brick walk, her nightgown hitched up to her thighs, one leg folded inward with incongruous coquetry. She resembled a rag doll, cast aside by a spoiled child, who has just acquired a more intriguing plaything.

Hannah kept to the woods that bordered the houses on Alcott Street, knowing that she wouldn’t have to emerge into the open until she got near the intersection of Alcott and Main. The ground wasn’t as slippery under the trees and she was able to move quickly, until her bathrobe snagged on some briars and she had to stop and detach it.

No one seemed to be pursuing her.

Were they preoccupied with Judith? They had probably taken her inside by now or called an ambulance. Hannah hadn’t heard a siren yet, so perhaps the woman had only been dazed by the fall. It had all happened so unexpectedly, the leap out of the darkness, the tearing of her hair. Hannah brought her thoughts back to the present moment.

The trees thinned out and the woods gave onto a field, where the kids played softball in the summer. The wind had blown down part of the backstop and the wire mesh was coated with ice. Across the street, the spire of Our Lady caught the moonlight.

Hannah was halfway across the deserted intersection when she heard a car coming down Alcott Street. Crouching low, she darted around the back of the church and across the rectory garden, narrowly avoiding the stone bench, where Father Jimmy had heard her first confession last summer. A large hydrangea bush offered temporary camouflage. Despite the layers of clothing, a chill had begun to penetrate her bones.

The mini-van pulled up in front of the rectory and Marshall jumped out. He jabbed the doorbell repeatedly, then stepped back and nervously wiped his shoes on the welcome mat. A light came on upstairs, followed by another in the hall. Finally Monsignor Gallagher opened the door and a brief conversation ensued.

At one point, the Monsignor appeared to invite Marshall inside, but the man shook his head vigorously and pointed to his wristwatch. His agitation was growing.

The Monsignor patted him paternally on the shoulder. “… my eyes and ears open….Count on it…”

” … kind of you. I appreciate it.”

After a hasty handshake and the elderly priest retreated indoors, while Marshall went back to his mini-van. Hannah watched the taillights grow smaller, before venturing out from behind the hydrangea. Through a side window, she could see the Monsignor conversing with somebody in the foyer and realized that Father Jimmy had got up, too. Then the foyer went dark.

No sooner had she concluded that they had both gone back upstairs than a light was switched on in the back of the house, where the kitchen was. Cautiously, she crept in that direction. Father Jimmy was in the midst of raiding the refrigerator, when she attracted his attention by rapping lightly on the storm door. He seemed taken aback at first, then relieved.