Death Goes on Retreat (5 page)

Had someone fallen facedown in the needles? Knocked himself unconscious? That’s what happened, she thought. There was an acorn caught in the sole of one shoe. Surely whoever it was had slipped. Last night
Felicita warned them that the rocks and cones could be treacherous.

“Shoo! Shoo!” Mary Helen cried, waving her hands. “Get away! Shoo!” she shouted. The insects billowed up like a buzzing cloud, then landed again.

“Shoo! Shoo! Shoo!” Flailing with her plant book, she swatted at the bugs, dislodging some, but it was like trying to shake iron filings from a magnet.

“Be all right. Be all right,” she chanted over and over, louder and louder, as if shouting would make it so. Fighting down her repulsion, she grabbed one bug-blackened shoulder. Her hand slipped. She grabbed again. With great difficulty, she rolled the body over.

The mouth hung open. She swatted at the flies crawling along the thin brown scratch of blood that ran from the corner of it down to the chin. Pale blue eyes stared up at her, flat and unseeing. The shirt and leather jacket were blood-soaked.

Where had she seen that face before? It took her a moment to recognize it. Greg! It was Laura’s Greg. She didn’t even know his last name. “Greg,” she pleaded, “please, please be all right.” But even as she said it, she knew without question that Laura’s Greg was dead.

Recklessly Mary Helen scrambled down the hillside, her legs fighting to stay steady. Low branches yanked at her hair. She slipped on pine needles and felt herself hurled against rough tree bark.

A bevy of frightened quail rose up from the thickets. She covered her face as they flew at her with short, stubby wings.

With trembling hands she clung to a limb, trying to
catch her breath. Her temples throbbed. Furtively, she peered around her, waiting for someone to come crashing from the underbrush. But there was only stillness.

She ran forward. A shower of small stones rattled down the path behind her. Sharp twigs scratched at her legs and face. Chest aching, she finally stumbled into the parking lot and the waiting arms of Monsignor McHugh.

“Whoa! What is it, Sister?” He grabbed both her shoulders. “What happened? I heard you screaming.” Frowning with concern, he studied her face.

Mary Helen struggled to catch her breath. His eyes were so blue, so keen, so alive, such a contrast to the vacant, unseeing blue eyes staring up from the bug-infested face that she could not bear to look.

“You’re trembling.” Con McHugh led her to a bench and insisted she sit. Her knees felt too rubbery to resist. “What happened, Sister?” he asked again.

Sister Mary Helen’s throat ached. Oddly, she could not manage to get her tongue around the words.

“Calm down.” The monsignor smiled kindly. “Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?”

First Mary Helen nodded, then shook her head.

Father Ed Moreno, who had come out of his room in St. Philomena’s Hall, joined them in the parking lot.

Silently the two priests stood over her, examining her scratched hands and legs. Like a bug under a microscope, she thought wildly, and began to shiver.

“What’s all the hollering about?” A sleepy Father Tom, still in his pajamas, appeared on the porch.

“It’s Yellin’ Helen!” Ed Moreno called over.

He can’t help himself, Mary Helen thought, burying
her face in her hands. Without warning, she began to laugh and then to cry.

“It simply cannot be true.” That was all Sister Felicita said when she finally arrived in the parking lot.

The noise had drawn all the retreatants, one by one, from their bedrooms. They stood around Mary Helen like remnants of a lost tribe, waiting for her to speak. Slowly, painfully, Con McHugh coaxed out the story.

“I’m sure that he just fell,” Felicita said. “What is he doing here at this time of the morning anyway?” She sounded annoyed. “It can’t be true that he’s dead,” she repeated nervously.

“Maybe I am imagining things,” Mary Helen conceded, wishing that were the case. From the expressions on their faces, she knew that every one of the group shared Felicita’s disbelief. This could not be true! Everyone, that is, except Eileen. The color had drained from her face and she stared at Mary Helen in horror.

“If he fell, we’d better get up there.” Tom Harrington had slipped on a running suit over his pajamas.

“You’re right. Let’s have a look.” As chaplain of the Police and Fire Departments, Andy Carr seemed the natural leader.

With Felicita close at Andy’s heels, the small group wound its way up the hillside trail. Eileen hung back with Mary Helen. Together, they brought up the rear.

“I feel like the kiss of death,” Mary Helen said. She did not need a second opinion to know Laura’s Greg was dead.

“Don’t be silly.” Eileen, still pale, patted her hand encouragingly. “Surely you cannot be blamed. We’ve an old saying back home.”

Mary Helen groaned. Eileen could dig up an old saying for every occasion, even, as Mary Helen often suspected, if she had to invent one.

Eileen ignored her. “Nobody knows where his sod of death is.”

“Which means?” Mary Helen asked, glad to be distracted, if only for a moment.

Eileen blinked her gray eyes. “That nobody knows where or when he or she will die. That nice young man just fell. So how could you be responsible? Unless, of course, you killed him and we don’t even know that the man was killed.”

“Is this supposed to make me feel better?” Mary Helen’s head was throbbing.

“You can’t hang a person for trying.” Eileen shrugged, but said no more. Actually, both nuns needed all the breath they had for the trek to Madonna Grove.

The priests and nuns formed a small, stony-faced circle around the body of Laura’s Greg. Everyone, that is, except Father Denski. Mary Helen could hear the young priest behind the wide trunk of a hemlock, retching.

“He’s dead all right,” Andy Carr pronounced with authority.

“I don’t even know his last name,” Felicita said, as though it was an error in etiquette not to know the surnames of dead bodies found on your property.

“I know it,” Mike Denski shouted from behind his tree. “It’s Johnson. That is—was—Greg Johnson. He was in the sem—” That was as far as he got.

“Marva Johnson’s son.” Con McHugh sounded stunned. “She goes to daily Mass at St. Pat’s. Poor Marva.”

“It’s hard to tell who it is with all those . . .” Mercifully, Tom Harrington knew when to stop communicating.

“I thought that was his car here last night,” Ed Moreno said, almost to himself.

“How do you suppose he fell?” Felicita scanned the clearing for an errant limb or a recalcitrant rock.

“I don’t think he did fall. See those cuts?” Father Moreno pointed to a series of gashes on the dorsal side of the dead man’s arm. “It looks to me as if he was defending himself against someone with a sharp weapon. Like a switchblade. Or a long, sharp knife of some sort.”

“How do you know that?” Felicita sounded put out. Mary Helen didn’t blame her. If Greg Johnson was dead, of course Felicita wanted it to be accidental.

“Ten years in Juvie,” Father Moreno said simply.

Any semblance of Tom’s usual smile had vanished. “What are you saying, Ed?”

Moreno shook his head. “That it looks to me like— foul play.”

Andy Carr’s face was grayer than his beard. “Shouldn’t we give him the last rites or whatever we’re calling it now? Lord, there are four of us priests—well, four and a half, if you count Mike—standing here gawking at the poor devil.” Andy looked as if, any minute, he might join Mike Denski. “Shouldn’t we give him absolution or something?”

“Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine . . .”
Monsignor McHugh began the familiar ritual of the Sacrament. No one seemed to notice that he was using Latin. “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” A resounding “Amen” rose among the redwoods.

The regal old man made the sign of the cross over the body of Greg Johnson. “By His most loving mercy, may the Lord forgive you whatever wrong you have done . . .” The monsignor was mixing and matching his sacraments and his languages. Surely under the circumstances, the Lord did not care. Certainly, the grisly remains of young Greg Johnson did not care either.

At Sister Felicita’s suggestion, the group had moved to St. Jude’s dining room to await the sheriff.

“It’s a very small department and very understaffed.” Felicita’s voice shook as she poured mugs of hot coffee for everyone. “There are only a half a dozen cars to cover the entire county. I’m not sure how long we’ll have to wait.”

“It seems to me that a dead body would be a priority.” Although he was still deathly pale, Mike Denski was now able to speak. “How many dead bodies are discovered in these mountains?”

“More than you’d expect.” Felicita crumpled into a chair. “We’ve had some awful murders in these hills.” She frowned, trying, no doubt, to remember. “What was that one’s name? Miller? Muller?”

“Herbie Mullin,” Ed Moreno said. “That happened
twenty years ago. You’re not suggesting it’s something like that again?”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Felicita said quickly, as if the mere mention of a psychotic killer might bring one around.

“I haven’t thought of Mullin for years.” The monsignor stared out the dining room window with glassy eyes. “Poor old Henri. Such a good, gentle man. May he rest in peace.”

“Henri?” Mike asked. Obviously he was the only member of the group who did not know that Father Henri Tomic, a priest from Los Gatos, was Herbert Mullin’s thirteenth victim.

Ed Moreno filled him in. “A priest-killer would be in hog heaven with this group,” he added in an attempt to lighten the mood. No one took up the banter. If anything, his reference to a serial killer darkened the gloom.

Through the large picture windows, Mary Helen watched a hot ball of sun begin to show over the treetops, burning off the morning fog as it rose. She checked her wristwatch. It was just after seven o’clock. Could so much have happened in just one short half hour?

Andy Carr cleared his throat. “That name, Greg Johnson. Something about it rings a bell.”

“It should.” Mike pulled nervously at his long sideburns.

Andy turned his needle-sharp eyes on the young priest. “Why’s that?”

“Because he was one of the seminarians arrested in a Gay Rights demonstration.”

“Sure! Now I remember.” Andy shifted his large
bulk. “The creep got himself arrested and the archbishop was on my tail.

“ ‘It may create a grave scandal among the faithful, Father, if news that one of our seminarians was arrested were to leak . . .”’ Andy did a perfect, if irreverent, imitation of the prelate.

“Is he—was he—gay?” Mary Helen asked. If he was, what on earth was he doing with Laura the evening before?

“Hell, no,” Tom Harrington said with a knowing grin. “He’s a dyed-in-the-wool troublemaker. That kid is well aware of the Church’s official stand on homosexuality and what a difficult position he would put the archbishop in.”

He studied the toes of his Gucci loafers. “On the one hand, many of the Church’s staunchest supporters—and I could also say wealthiest—oppose anything even touching on the subject. Yet many of the City’s gays are Catholic. If the truth were known, the archbishop himself is unsure about his own pastoral position with the gay community.

“If you ask me, the kid got his kicks from watching Absolute Norm squirm. Old Greg was no innocent, idealistic seminarian, you know. He was a real good pot-stirrer. After the incident with the demonstration, the Arch sent him to me for an internship, figuring, I guess, that the kid had a flair for muckraking, so why not use it in the media?”

“Did it work?” Eileen always liked a happy ending.

Tom shook his head. “He was more interested in the office secretaries than he was in the office equipment.”

A chuckle went around the room. Once again all the
color drained from Mike Denski’s face. “Doesn’t it strike you as callous . . . no, ghoulish . . . to sit here and laugh when Greg is—”

“Lighten up, Mike,” Ed Moreno said, not unkindly. “We’re not laughing at Greg’s death. If you believe what you preach, Greg is laughing at us. You know that death is what life is all about.”