Not a Sparrow Falls (39 page)

Fat. Fat. Fat. At. Fat. Cat. Sat. Hat. Fat. The doors opened again. There she was, the woman who knew where Mary was. Carmen. She looked at him, and he wondered what she had in that sack. Could it be Mary in that sack? Maybe that was the chopping he’d heard. No. Mary was somewhere else. And Carmen was looking at him, and that wasn’t good.

He leaned over like he was reaching for something on the floor. He stayed hunkered down for a minute or so, and when he lifted his head up, a police car had pulled to the corner. Jonah froze. That’s what the demons rode in. That meant they were back. Oh no. And Carmen was in cahoots with them, because the demon car pulled to the curb, and just like that she leaned in and gave him a kiss. Judas kissed. Judas was a woman. Who knew about that? And now Jonah knew what was in the sack. It was the thirty pieces of silver. He wondered if he would find her hanging, swinging, when he went to find Mary and get the pieces of his brain back. And his money. His money. He hung on to that thought as the Judas girl got into the demon’s car.

His hands shook as he started up his engine. His only chance was to follow them to wherever they were going, then wait until the demon left, then go inside and find Mary.

He crept along behind them all the way to the little apartment house, but instead of leaving, the demon parked his car and got out with the girl. That’s when Jonah decided he couldn’t stand it any longer. He would have to come back later. He wrote down the address on a piece of paper and put it in his pocket. That way, if they cut out that part of his brain tonight, he would be able to find this place again tomorrow.

Thirty-Four

Friday morning Bob combed his hair, gargled with mouthwash, put on his tie and jacket. He inspected himself in the small mirror of the hotel bathroom. His eyes were red, but he looked pretty good, considering. After he’d left Jim Wigby, hands clutching the still-warm dirt on Mary Bridget Washburn, he had thought hard. It hadn’t taken long to work things out. It would do him no good whatsoever if Gerry and MacPherson and the Knox elders resolved this situation tomorrow afternoon over tea and crumpets. The only way he was going to benefit from the months of hard work he’d been putting in was if he personally delivered MacPherson’s head on the silver platter before that meeting took place.

He’d burned the highway, arriving in Alexandria around four yesterday afternoon. He’d managed to finagle a meeting with the religion editor of the
Washington Post,
which had gone even better than he’d hoped, then swung by the Bag and Save. He’d shown Mary Washburn’s last driver’s license photo to the manager, and he’d verified the ID. Then Bob had checked in here and stayed up all night, writing. The article he’d produced—a work of art if he said so himself—was neatly printed and in the envelope in his briefcase, along with the documentation he’d been collecting. Either way today’s events went, he didn’t see how he could lose. Risky? Yes. But then again, he’d never been afraid of rolling the dice.

He packed away his shaving kit, zipped his suitcase shut, turned off his laptop, then checked his watch. It was seven-fifteen. A little early to come calling, but he didn’t want to take a chance on missing MacPherson. He nodded in satisfaction, gathered up his things, flicked off the light, and went to turn in his key.

****

Jonah pulled out the paper he’d written the address on. The numbers were jumping around, and he couldn’t read them, and he couldn’t remember the way he’d taken yesterday to find the place. Yesterday? Yeah, he was pretty sure. He slowed down and cruised down the alley, turned onto a street that looked a little familiar, a U-shaped red-brick building with a courtyard in the middle. That was it. And there was the demon’s car, still parked in the front. He rubbed his jaw and took another drink of the malt liquor.

He had planned on going to the door, but he thought maybe he’d best wait for someone to come out. He checked the address one more time, but the numbers were gone now, jumped clean off the paper.

****

Alasdair sat at the kitchen table and drank another cup of coffee. He hadn’t slept. Well, a little perhaps, here and there. Mostly he’d looked through the journals, determined to take the same journey his daughter and Bridie had taken. How could they talk about it unless he did? He had found his wife again in the pages of her books. He’d smiled, and wept, and anguished. This is it, he’d realized, turning the heavy pages. This is what you’ve fought so hard to hide. Or whom.

The doorbell rang. He glanced at the clock. Too early for Bridie, and he was glad, for he still didn’t know what he would say to her. He wasn’t angry anymore but wounded. Hurt by her duplicity. Yet what would he have said if she’d come to him? He could almost hear himself declaring there was nothing to discuss, all the while looking for a safer hiding place for Anna. A safe deposit box. A vault that no one could open but him. Somewhere she wouldn’t get out this time. He went to the door and opened it without looking.

“Bob.” The name came without thought, automatically, though now that he had a chance to think, the man who stood before him looked quite different than the seminarian
of fifteen years before. Heavier, a little less hair, a little darker, perhaps, or it could just be the light.

“I was wondering if I could have a few minutes of your time.”

“I have a meeting to prepare for.”

“This doesn’t have to take long.”

Alasdair stepped back from the door automatically, years of training taking effect. “Please, come in.”

“Thank you.”

He shut the door. He almost pointed toward the living room but remembered it was no longer the parlor. Besides, Cam and Bonnie were already playing in there. “Why don’t we go up to my study?” he suggested, and Bob Henry followed him up the stairs. He tapped on Samantha’s door and asked her to go downstairs and watch the children, then led Bob into his study and invited him to sit down.

They settled themselves, Alasdair pulling the desk chair out so he could face Bob. They exchanged inconsequentials. Bob’s eyes still darted around when he was being spoken to, Alasdair noted. As if he were trying to keep track of all the possible directions the conversation might take and be prepared for any one of them. A disconcerting habit.

“You’re wondering why I’m here,” Bob finally said, giving him an unexpectedly direct gaze.

Alasdair gave a slight shrug. “I assume it has something to do with the other matter.” The other matter. How delicate, how euphemistic. There he went again, tucking something unpleasant away in the dark. How much energy he expended just finding names for things. Ways to talk about things without really talking about them. “The fact that my congregation wants me replaced,” he corrected. “The matter of Gerald Whiteman’s job offer.”

Bob nodded. “Exactly.” He popped open his briefcase, and Alasdair had an uncomfortable flashback to the meeting with the Big Three. Nothing good had ever come out of a briefcase in his experience. He doubted if this would be the exception.

Bob set a piece of paper onto the small coffee table as if he were playing a hand of cards. Declaration of Bankruptcy, the first one said.

“What is this?” He felt a jolt of anger seeing Lorna’s name under the heading.

“This, my friend, is your life.”

Not my life, my sister’s, he started to say, but before he could get the words out a second piece of paper joined the first. It was a police report. Alasdair picked it up.
November 30. Juvenile shoplift. Bag and Save Grocery.

“Where did you get this?”

“The manager made me a copy of his report. He was happy to do it.”

“What are you doing? Who do you think you are?”

“I’m a man with a job to do,” Bob said, his face untroubled. “Shall I stop? Or shall I go on?”

Alasdair clenched his fist and wanted it to make contact with Bob’s sharp nose.

“Because if you’d like me to stop, all you have to do is sign this.” Another flourish. A piece of heavy cream stationery. Alasdair read the first sentence. His resignation, complete with the date and a signature line at the bottom.

“I’ll do no such thing.”

Bob held up a hand. “Don’t ever say never.” He laid down another sheet. Anna’s accident report.

Alasdair picked it up. He had that strange sensation again, as if he were an observer to the scene instead of a participant. He read it—for the first time. The details were all there. The ones he knew but never talked about. Single motor vehicle accident. Location: George Washington Memorial Parkway. Time: 1:32 p.m. Road condition: Wet. The responding officer wrote that after divers recovered the victim, CPR was performed by paramedics, but the victim was pronounced dead on arrival at Mt. Vernon Hospital. Estimated speed on impact: 65 miles per hour. No skid marks noted. Witnesses
said the vehicle accelerated prior to leaving the roadway and entering the water.

He laid the paper on his knee. “You are despicable.”

“I’m thinking the
Post
might want to run a feature. Especially when you throw in this.” He slapped the last batch of papers down.

Alasdair picked it up. It was an arrest warrant for someone named Mary Bridget Washburn. For manufacture and distribution of a controlled substance. Drug dealing, he translated.

“I have no idea who this person is.” But even as he said it, he thought, with a lurch of his heart, that perhaps he did.

“You poor, naïve fellow,” Bob said. He slapped down a color copy of an expired Virginia driver’s license.

Alasdair took a ragged breath in and out. So. That was her secret.

There had been hints. Yes. He looked back and saw the things he’d been determined not to see. The vagueness about her family and home, how she always took the bus, paid in cash, but mostly the sadness and the guilt. He had known there was something buried. He just hadn’t known what, and he hadn’t known where. And he’d been quite satisfied to leave it that way, he realized.

“I’m seeing the headlines now,” Bob went on. “ ‘Prominent Minister Harbors Felon.’ Maybe a few hints of a relationship. The rest of the article will fill in the details of your life. Your history. Your sordid little family secrets. Maybe they’re not quite as juicy as Jim Bakker’s and Jimmy Swaggart’s, but they’ll do on a slow news day. You know, it even occurred to me that you knew about this. Maybe she was supplying you. You’ve been awfully calm during all this trouble. Have you had a little help? And I’ll bet anything she was supplying Samantha, even back when she was working at the Bag and Save. The store manager thinks so. He thinks they’ve been—what did he say?—
in cahoots
for a while. He made the statement for the record. How about this headline: ‘Pastor
Hires Daughter’s Pusher.’ The ultimate in convenience. She can get her fix without ever leaving the house.”

Alasdair set the arrest warrant back on the table. “What do you want?” he asked.

“I want your resignation in my hand,” Bob Henry answered without hesitation. “I’ll fax it to Whiteman, and he’ll fax back an offer of employment with the denomination. We’ve come up with a plum job for you.”

“And if I refuse?”

Bob Henry shrugged. “Whatever you decide, I’ll go from here to the
Post.
The religion editor’s quite a great guy. We had a talk yesterday, and he’s saving room in tomorrow’s edition for a feature on you. Written by me.” Bob leaned back in his chair, and a little smile played on his lips. “Did you know it’s always been my dream to be a reporter, Alasdair? I took journalism, you know, after I left the seminary. The problem is,” he continued, “to get any kind of real job, you have to show you’ve got that reporter’s instinct—that intuition that sniffs out the story and the fortitude to follow it wherever it leads. You take someone with writing experience—like me—and combine it with a dynamite story, then, who knows, the doors might just open. Anyway,” Bob said, “I’ve got two pieces written, and I don’t much care which one I turn in. I can see advantages either way. If you sign the resignation, I’ll give the
Post
the one about your new job at denomination headquarters and the sidebar about the pressures of ministry, then go back to Richmond with Gerry singing my praises. If you don’t sign, I’ll turn in the
other
story. You won’t like it as well. It’s up to you, though,” Bob Henry said, looking as if he couldn’t care less what Alasdair chose.

He could take the job, Alasdair realized. He could make all of this go away. A heavy weariness came with the realization. There would be more secrets then. More secrets and more people knowing them. More strings hooked onto him that could be yanked at a moment’s notice. More reason to lie awake at night wondering who might guess the truth.

“Sign it, Alasdair. Otherwise,” Bob said, giving his head a little jerky shake, “I’ll have to strip you bare and parade you through the streets.”

Stripped bare. That’s exactly what had happened. Bob Henry had ripped aside the curtain, and he would follow through with his threats. Alasdair had no doubt of that. Everyone would see the great and powerful wizard was nothing more than a man. Once he lost his reputation, he would have nothing left to lose.

That would be almost peaceful, he realized. Yes. You would have almost perfect peace when there was nothing left to protect. What more could they do to you then?

There would be others caught in the fallout, he reminded himself. Lorna, and Samantha, and yet even as he recognized that fact, he knew what they would tell him to do.

“I’m not signing anything,” he said.

“I’ll tell,” Bob threatened, and Alasdair actually smiled. It reminded him of a child’s taunt.

“You do whatever you want,” he said, and as the words left his mouth, he felt the first rush of freedom.

****

The heavy feeling hit Bridie before she even opened her eyes. She pulled the covers up, wanting nothing more than to go back to sleep and not wake up again. In this morning’s gray light her fantasies of happy endings seemed hopelessly childish. She gave a bitter little smile as she thought of the times she had almost poured out the truth to Alasdair over coffee and dessert. A fine mess that would have been. If he was ready to cut her loose because of Anna’s diaries, what would he do if he knew the truth? What had she been thinking?