Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (48 page)

The old man took a deep breath, slowly exhaled. His trembling eased, and he sank back wearily in the pew. “I would very much like to know what happened afterward,” he said in a voice so low Brendan could barely make out the words.

“Didn't Vanderklaven tell you?”

The old man sighed, producing an odd rattling sound in his lungs. “Henry Vanderklaven put a bullet in his brain soon after returning here from Europe, which was about three months after the events we have been discussing transpired. I believe it was because of something you said or did to him.”

Brendan searched inside himself for some feeling of pity for Henry Vanderklaven, a man who, according to his belief system, had sentenced himself to eternal damnation. He felt nothing. He believed the man had done nothing to himself except end his life. He found he no longer believed in hells or heavens, save for those created by living human consciousness and deeds, and perhaps never had. His faith had always been about living each day as a human trying to live up to the example set by Christ, not eternal rewards or punishments. What he did believe, what he knew, was that Henry Vanderklaven had created a hell for others that still tormented them, and he was glad the man was no longer alive.

“Brendan?” the cardinal continued softly. “What happened?”

“After Lisa ran away for the second time and came to the children's shelter, I promised her she would be protected from any kind of demons—human or otherwise—until I had investigated to try to determine the truth,” Brendan said in an even tone that belied the turmoil once again building inside him. “I failed her. Not only did her mother commit suicide as a result of my bungling questions, but Werner Pale—acting on the father's orders—kidnapped her a second time while I was otherwise occupied trying to defend myself against excommunication. Then father, daughter, and Werner Pale left for Europe. As far as law enforcement and social welfare agencies here were concerned, the matter was out of their jurisdiction. But it wasn't a situation I could live with. I'd promised Lisa she wouldn't be harmed. I searched for them, and I found them. The details aren't important. What matters is that I finally found a way to make Henry Vanderklaven face up to the fact that the friend he relied on to stir up his business of death had cuckolded him and raped his daughter repeatedly. He saw, finally, how his own greed had blinded him, destroyed his wife, and caused his daughter to hate him. I didn't know he'd killed himself. For all his outward zealotry, he apparently didn't believe in forgiveness, not even for himself, and he certainly must not have believed in redemption.”

“And where … is the girl now?”

“In New York. She's happily married, with a child. She works for a private children's social service agency.”

Now the old man again slowly turned to look at Brendan, studied his face for some time. Finally he said, “Ah, yes. It's the same agency, I presume, for which you have done such good work, the one operated by the former nun with whom you are rumored to have a … relationship?”

“I don't think that's really a part of this story, eminence, is it? The point is that Lisa is safe now, with her own life to lead. She still has nightmares, but those will pass with time.”

The cardinal nodded slightly. “And … Werner Pale?”

“He's dead. I killed him.”

Brendan watched the other man react with what could have been surprise, but also with something else Brendan could not quite determine. “You, priest, killed this professional soldier?”

“He was trying to kill me. We fought, and I was lucky. He'd planned to burn me to death, but he was the one who fell into the fire.”

Once again the old cardinal, apparently lost in his own thoughts, was silent for some time. At last, he said, “I've heard it said that you've killed a number of men since you left us. Can you have changed so much, priest?”

“How much I have changed is not for me to say, eminence. I've harmed no one who was not trying to harm me, or sometimes a child. I've told you what you wanted to know. Are you satisfied?”

“Would you care to hear what has happened to me over the past five years?”

“If you feel the need to tell me, I will listen.”

“God has turned his face from me, Brendan. I wronged you, and I've been punished. While it's true that the decision to excommunicate you came from Rome, the same people ultimately blamed me, for they knew the truth you spoke of. I often feel as if I have been excommunicated along with you. There has been no peace for me during the past five years.”

“It sounds to me as if you've been busy punishing yourself, eminence. You made a mistake, and God will forgive you. Where is your faith?”

The cardinal shook his head impatiently, with renewed vigor. “It was more than just a mistake. It's true that I never believed the girl was possessed, and yet I sent you to perform a sacred ritual simply to mollify her father. That is blasphemy, sacrilege. I need not only God's forgiveness, but yours, Brendan.”

“You have it.”

“Hear my confession.”

“I believe I already have.”

“In the confessional. Please.”

“I don't think so, eminence. This is the second time you have asked me to perform a sacred rite under inappropriate circumstances. The—”

“Precisely!”

“—first time neither of us believed in what we were doing, and death and my excommunication were the results; now that I have been excommunicated, church authorities would not recognize the sanctity of any confession you made to me. I don't understand what it is you really want, but I do know that it can't be the sacrament of confession.”

The old cardinal slowly rose to his feet, turned to face Brendan, drew himself up very straight. Suddenly his eyes were very bright. “If you do not understand, priest, then you have not been listening to my words carefully, as I asked you to. I need to confess to you so that I can hear you say the Hail Marys.”

Suddenly Brendan felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck, and he resisted the impulse to make any sudden movement. “As you wish, eminence,” he replied in an even tone, bowing his head slightly.

“The confessor will come to you,” the cardinal said in the same strong voice, and then turned away.

Brendan forced himself to remain still, to breathe evenly, as he watched the old man hobble across the sanctuary and disappear through a door to the right of the altar. He waited a few seconds, then rose and walked toward the ornately carved wood confessional stalls to his left. He hesitated just a moment before entering the priest's section of the confessional and sitting down.

Sins have a way of coming back to punish you in this life. Listen to me
.

Almost five minutes passed, and then Brendan heard the door in the section on the other side of the wood screen open. Brendan glanced through the screen and watched as a stooped figure wearing a white robe with a cowl entered.

Even without the cardinal's cryptic request to hear him speak Hail Marys, which was a reversal of the rite and all wrong, he would have sensed danger now, for this robed and hooded figure wore the white sash, the alb, around his neck, and that was wrong; a priest wore the alb to receive confession, not to enter the box as a penitent.

His earlier sensation of being watched had not been a fantasy, Brendan thought, but the eyes watching him had definitely not been those of God.

… Are you carrying a gun?

Brendan stood and hurled himself at the screen, hitting the wood with his right shoulder and placing his left forearm across his face to protect his eyes from splinters. He hurtled through the fragile latticework, landing against the robed figure, and they both fell to the floor of the stall. Brendan used his left hand to grab the wrist of the man's right hand, which had emerged from the robe holding a .22-caliber pistol, while he drove his right fist into the man's midsection.

The cowl slipped back, revealing a face that was a nightmare mass of milk-colored, puckered scar tissue and lines of pink scars that could only have been the results of a series of failed operations. Werner Pale writhed beneath Brendan with the strength born of bottomless hatred and rage, swung at his head with the steel hook that had been used to replace his left hand. Brendan ducked under the blow but felt the sharp tip against his back as the steel began to dig its way through his leather jacket toward his flesh. He reached out with his free hand, found a shard of wood from the shattered screen, wrapped his fingers around it. As the steel tip sliced through his jacket and touched skin, he raised the stake in the air, then drove the tip down into Werner Pale's throat.

Blood spurted from the pierced jugular. The scarred O of the man's mouth opened in a silent scream, but almost immediately the one seeing eye began to glaze over. The body beneath Brendan twitched violently for a few moments, then was still.

Brendan rose from the corpse, threw open the door to the confessional, and, wiping blood from his face, ran through a labyrinth of narrow stone and wood corridors toward the cardinal's private chambers.

He found the old man, looking even paler and with pain clearly evident in the watery eyes, sitting at the desk in his study, seemingly holding himself upright with his palms on the polished oak surface before him.

“Brendan,” Henry Cardinal Farrell breathed as Brendan came through the door, stopped. “Thank God. My prayers have been answered.” He paused and squinted, as if he were having trouble seeing. “You're hurt …?”

“The blood is Werner Pale's, eminence, not mine.”

“Thank God.”

“Thank you for your warning. It saved my life.”

“I couldn't warn you outright, priest. He was listening.”

“I understand,” Brendan said and again started forward. He stopped a few feet from the desk when the cardinal raised one trembling hand with the palm outward, as if to push him back.

“He came to me … to kill me, of course, since I was responsible for sending you into his life. He wanted to know where to find you and the girl, and he said that he would kill me quickly if I told him. There is nothing he could have done to make me tell him, Brendan. Believe me.”

“I do, eminence. You don't have to explain.”

“But I want to,” the old man said in a voice that was growing progressively weaker.

“I believe he spent most of the past five years in hospitals, or he would have known how famous you've become. He would have had no trouble finding you, and you would have had no warning. He might also have traced the girl, Lisa. I decided to gamble for your life and the girl's; you had defeated him once before, and perhaps you could do it again. I sensed that he was afraid of you. But I also sensed that he badly wanted to make you suffer, and that shooting you down from some rooftop would not be satisfying for him. I acted well, Brendan. I got down on my knees before him and begged him for my life. I told him I would bring you to him and extract the information he wanted, if only he would spare my life. I also told him I would help trap you in a closed space, where you would be at his mercy. He was very pleased with the idea of killing you in the confessional booth, positively delighted when I suggested that he could pretend to be me. He said he was going to shoot you in the belly or kneecaps first, and then carve you up. He couldn't stop laughing when I showed him the robe and sash he could wear. He loved the idea of dressing up like a priest to kill you.” The old man paused, and the broad smile that suddenly appeared on his face seemed to belong to a much younger and less troubled man. “That's when I knew we had a chance, priest, for you, of all people, would find it rather odd that I, of all people, would ask you to join me in an act of heresy.”

Then the cardinal coughed blood and pitched forward on the desk. Brendan rushed forward, lifted the old man by the shoulders, saw the blood, and the handle of the stiletto that was protruding from the other man's stomach. He also saw that it was too late.

“Pray for me, priest. God listens to you. Pray for me. Help my soul find its way to heaven.”

“I will.”

“Do you … understand what I … mean?”

“Yes. I will.”

And then the old man was gone. Brendan walked to the wardrobe in a corner of the office, removed a robe, and put it on. He removed the crucifix from the cardinal's neck, put it around his own. Then he knelt beside the old man's body and began performing the last rites, his last rite. For the first time in five years he prayed in the old way, as if it mattered.