Mortal Sin (5 page)

“I see. And where do I fit into this little scenario?”

“I’m still trying to figure you out. You’re an anomaly. You don’t fit in anywhere.”

“Maybe that’s because I’m not Catholic. I don’t aspire to heaven, and I don’t believe in hell. So I have no reason to fear you.” She took a sip of coffee and studied him over the rim of the cup. “Or to impress you.”

“An infidel,” he said. “What a shame. So what can I do for you?”

Her gaze wandered to the desktop, worn by time to a gleaming patina. On one corner, beside an open jar of hard candies, perched a whimsical ceramic sculpture of a winged pig, poised for flight. Curious about its significance, Sarah tightened her grip on her coffee mug and met his eyes.

“Three days ago,” she said, “my sixteen-year-old niece ran away from home.”

“I see.”

“I believe she’s somewhere on the streets of Boston. It’s not the first time she’s run away. The last time it happened, Remy—my ex-husband—and I were absolutely frantic. Two weeks after she disappeared, the NOPD arrested her for soliciting a police officer on Bourbon Street. Kit swore it was a mistake, but I don’t know what to believe. I know what happens to young girls out on the street, especially pretty ones like Kit. I’m terrified that if she gets desperate enough, she’ll do the same thing again. Only this time, she’ll pick the wrong man and end up—”

She paused, shook her head to dispel the images playing in living color inside her brain. “I don’t know what to do. The police are useless. You know what they told me? That they’d enter her name into their database. If she gets arrested, they’ll give me a call. Meanwhile, she’s out there somewhere in this brutal cold. She’s sixteen years old, Father. Sixteen! And nobody seems to give a damn.” Cupping her coffee mug in both hands, she leaned forward. “I’m here because Josie said you could find her. She said you have experience with this kind of thing.”

Silence filled the space between them. He cleared his throat. “This isn’t precisely the kind of thing I have experience with. I pull teenage prostitutes off the street and place them in a halfway house. I’ve never gone looking for a missing girl before.”

“But Josie said you know the streets. You know where to look, who to talk to, what questions to ask. You’re it, Father. End of the line. I have nobody else.”

Those amber eyes studied her at length. “What do you plan to do with her if you find her?”

She brushed a strand of windswept hair back from her forehead. “Bring her home, of course. Bring her home and keep her there.”

He steepled his fingers on the desktop. “Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but that doesn’t seem to have worked very well so far. What’s to prevent her from just running away again?”

She stared at him for a moment, then she set down her coffee mug, hard, on the desktop. “I’m afraid Josie was wrong. I’m wasting my time here. I apologize for wasting yours.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you. I’m just trying to find out how thoroughly you’ve thought this through.”

“What’s there to think about?” she said in exasperation. “Damn it, do you expect me to just leave her there?”

A clock ticked in the silence. He got up from his chair, walked to the window, and stood looking out. “The police won’t help you,” he said.

“No. They made that abundantly clear.”

Turning, he said, “You have to understand their point of view. If they did an active search for every runaway teenager, they wouldn’t have time to do anything else. There’d be anarchy. Chaos in the streets. Criminals would have a field day.”

“That’s not much comfort,” she said, “when it’s your teenager who’s run away.”

“No,” he said, leaning against the window frame and tucking his hands into his pockets, “it’s not. Do you have legal custody? Anything on paper saying the girl belongs to you?”

“No. When Bobby decided he couldn’t handle her any more, he just dumped her on my doorstep. I don’t even know where he is.”

“Bobby’s her father?”

“Yes.” She grimaced. “My brother. Mister Responsibility.”

“And her mother?”

She drew a breath and squared her shoulders. “Ellie died when Kit was four years old.”

“That complicates things. Technically, custody belongs to her father. That means what you’re contemplating could be construed as kidnapping if she doesn’t go with you willingly.”

“That’s insane! Her father left her with me. Doesn’t that imply consent? Are you telling me I don’t have a right to protect her?”

“Unfortunately, that’s precisely what I’m telling you. You have no legal rights whatsoever.”

Outraged, she said, “What about a moral right, Father? What about my right to protect my own flesh and blood?”

She could hear the Mississippi Delta, thick as gumbo, coursing through her speech. No matter how hard she tried to prevent it from happening, intense emotion always exaggerated her accent.

“Sarah,” he said gently, “I’m on your side. I just want you to know what we’re up against. If we take her against her will, there’s a possibility we could both end up in trouble. Have you notified your brother that she’s missing?”

Somewhere beyond her anger and her fear, somewhere beyond the frustration of the situation, in some lucid corner of her mind, she recognized that he’d said
we
. Not
you
, but
we
. “I’ve tried,” she said. “But he’s pulled one of his infamous disappearing acts. Nobody seems to know where he is.” She leaned forward. “Does this mean you’re going to help me?”

“First,” he said, moving with easy grace back to his chair, “I’d like to know a little about Kit. Why’d she run away?” He sat, rolled the chair back from the desk, and crossed his long legs, resting one ankle atop the opposite knee. “What’s so terrible at home that she’d rather be peddling her body on a street corner?”

Fury spiked through her. She looked him directly in the eye and said grimly, “Every second Tuesday, I lock her in a closet and feed her Kal Kan sandwiches.”

For the first time, she saw a glimmer of a smile on his face. “I’m trying to get a feel for the situation,” he said. “I’m not accusing you of anything.”

“Look, my brother isn’t exactly a prime candidate for Father of the Year. For ten years, he let Kit ran wild. I’m the first person who’s ever said no to her, the only one who’s ever had expectations of her. She’s having a hard time dealing with it.”

“I can imagine that would be difficult for her.”

“If you want to get specific, we had a big blowout Wednesday morning over whether or not she was going to get her tongue pierced.”

“Let me guess. You were the one who voted against it.”

“Cute,” she said. “Very cute.”

“Have you checked with her school? Her friends?”

“That was my first thought. It was a useless endeavor. Her teachers all said the same thing. Kit kept to herself, didn’t talk to much of anybody. She ate lunch by herself, didn’t have any homeroom buddies. I tried talking to a few of the kids, but all I got was a big, fat zero.”

She leaned back in the chair, crossed denim-clad legs, and sighed. “I know I’m too strict. Ellie probably would’ve let her do it. She spoiled Kit rotten, but in a good way. She just wanted to give Kit the world. She was a wonderful mother. Then she died, just like that. An aneurysm, at twenty-six.” She paused, took a deep breath. “Bobby couldn’t handle losing her. Everywhere he looked, he could see Ellie’s face. I didn’t blame him for leaving home, but I just couldn’t see him carting Kit around from town to town while he played one-night stands with some third-rate country band. I begged him to leave her with me. Of course, he wouldn’t listen. She was all he had left.”

Softly, he said, “And?”

“And.” She took a sip of coffee. “They both survived Bobby’s haphazard lifestyle until Kit turned thirteen and all those adolescent hormones kicked in. The monster Bobby’d created came roaring to life, and he finally figured out that this parenting thing was a little more complicated than he’d thought. It actually involved work, and work is something to which my brother has always had a powerful aversion. That was when he remembered how his little sister had begged for the opportunity to raise his daughter. So he brought her to me.”

“Lucky you.”

She smiled, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “Kit,” she said, “is the teenager all parents pray their child won’t turn into. Sullen, rude, impetuous and lazy. She’s also smart and beautiful and talented. Strong, in the same way my mother was strong. Every once in a while, the clouds will part and I’ll catch a glimpse of Momma in there. Then the clouds move back in, and I’m convinced Kit’s some doppelganger planted by aliens for the express purpose of driving me crazy.”

His smile returned, turning those golden eyes of his to molten lava. “She sounds like a normal teenager to me.”

“If by normal, you mean obnoxious and unhappy and thoroughly unlikable, then yes, she’s normal.” Sarah’s voice softened. “I have to tell you this up front, Father. I’d lay down my life for that girl. I don’t expect you to understand. I know you’re concerned about the risks. So am I. Not for myself, but for you. If you got into trouble because of me, I’d feel terrible. But I’m desperate, and—”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. Do you have a picture of her?”

“Right here.” She fumbled in her purse, pulled it out, and slid it across the desk. “What do you mean, it wouldn’t be the first time?”

He glanced at the picture. “Pretty girl. She looks just like you.” He opened a drawer and took out a sheet of paper, picked up a felt-tipped pen in his left hand, and began writing. Even upside-down, his handwriting was distinctive. Like him, it was dark and bold and elegant. “I’ve been in trouble before,” he said. “The sky didn’t fall.” Still writing, he added, “I need some information about Kit. Height, weight, date of birth, any identifying characteristics.”

She answered his questions, watched his hand as it followed the words across the paper. His fingers were long and narrow, his wrist bony and lightly dusted with dark hair. “Are you sure you’re really a priest?” she said.

He crossed a final
t
, capped the pen and glanced up at her. “You know,” he said, “that’s the same question I ask myself at least twice a day. Do you like flowers?”

“Excuse me?”

“Flowers. One of my parishioners gave me two tickets to the spring flower show. If I invite my secretary—” he glanced at the closed door and grimaced “—let’s just say it’s not a good idea for me to invite my secretary. We’re walking a fine line already. If you’re free for a couple of hours, I’ll treat you to a taste of spring. While we’re looking at flowers, we’ll cook up some kind of game plan for finding your niece.”

His offer was tempting. All those flowers. An abundance of color and sweetness to feed her withered soul and provide some respite from winter’s monotony. And it wouldn’t be terribly painful to spend the next couple of hours in his presence. The man was charming and intelligent, and he exuded an energy so fierce the air around him vibrated with it. The fact that he was a priest was an asset. She wouldn’t have to worry that he’d make any moves on her.

“I’ll have to call Josie,” she said. “I can’t just disappear in the middle of a busy Saturday. She’ll think I got mowed down by a transit bus.”

He picked up the phone, held the receiver in midair. “I’ll give her a call. What’s the number?”

She gave in to the inevitable and reeled off Bookmark’s phone number. Standing, he pulled a shapeless black wool coat from the coatrack beside his desk. “Jose?” he said as he shrugged into it. “It’s Clancy. I’m kidnapping your boss for a couple of hours.”

The coat reached past his knees, exaggerating his lanki-ness. Cradling the phone between his ear and his shoulder, he leaned to open a desk drawer, pulled out an envelope and stuffed it into his pocket. “Fine, then,” he said, shifting the phone back to his left hand. “Don’t look for her until you see the whites of her eyes.”

When he ushered Sarah into the outer office, his secretary looked up at them in surprise. “Where are you going?” she said.

“Out. There’s something I need to do.”

She glanced quizzically at Sarah, then at the clock, and raised her eyebrows. He dropped Kit’s photo and his handwritten note on her desk. Looping his scarf around his neck, he said, “I’d like you to make up some flyers for me. Nice big print. Three hundred copies. When you’re done with that, give Kate Miller’s office a call. Tell them I picked up a new girl last night. See if you can get her an appointment for sometime this coming week. Then I’d appreciate it if you’d call the O’Malleys and tell them something’s come up, but I’ll stop by later today, after confession, to see the baby.”

“What about the altar guild?”

He knotted the scarf, patted his pockets, pulled out gloves, car keys. “Tell them I have absolute conviction that they can make it through their meeting this morning without my input. If they need to discuss any burning issues, I’m free for a couple of hours tomorrow after ten o’clock Mass.”

The secretary’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to mail the letter you wrote to the bishop, are you?”

“No,” he said, pulling on his gloves. “The letter’s in the drawer, with all the others I’ve written to the bishop. We’re going out in search of spring.”

“Spring?” she said, as though she’d never heard the word before.

“You remember spring. The season that falls between those six months of winter and those six weeks of summer?”

The girl looked at him, then at Sarah. Sarah shrugged apologetically.
You know him better than I do. You figure him out
.

“Oh,” his secretary said, and smiled. “Spring.”