Decatur (23 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
A Truce

As Tooley crossed his arms and stood like a drill sergeant, Max thought about how he could make the agent see the threat that Gar presented. He realized he was going to have to do it in a way that the FBI could accept. “I think Gar’s come here with a purpose in mind and all the killings are connected in some way to that purpose,” he finally said.

It was getting cooler and dusk was coming on as the three men stood by Agent Tooley’s silver government-issued sedan. “And what would that purpose be?” Tooley asked because Suzanne Cleary’s interrupted phone call was weighing on him heavily now.
What had she wanted to tell him?
Then there was the troubling lack of substance to a lot of House’s theories about Professor Rosenbaum. In the cold light of day they seemed designed to make Agent House look good to the Chicago office. Everyone knew House hated being in the flatlands, his ambitions were regular water cooler conversation. A drug and mob case was as good as it got for promotions. He then began to think back to his interview with Gar and Father Troy. Gar hadn’t said a lot, it had been Father Troy who had told him he had been to ‘Nam, and he pretty much just followed along. “What do you think, Father Weston, he’s been staying at your parish house, this guy, is he a vet?”

“I don’t think so, Agent. Gar has a way of letting people put things on him when it’s convenient. We just now found out that my housekeeper asked him to take some laundry over to Cleary’s Dry Cleaning this morning and he bicycled there.” Father Weston said pointedly.

Agent Tooley felt the sweat pop out on his forehead then. He was going to have to move fast now or get caught in an agency meat-grinder.

“I think Gar has a psycho-sexual obsession with a woman that he believes holds the key to his destiny. Suzanne Cleary was collateral damage because she tried to stop his pursuit of this woman by calling the tips line.” Max said trying to tell as much of the truth as he could.

“And who would this woman be?” Agent Tooley asked, leaning in to make sure he heard right, as the crepuscular light deepened more sharply, defining the shadows. His instincts were flaring; the same instincts that he was convinced had kept him alive during his tour of duty in ‘Nam. Father Weston looked at Max, who nodded.

“There’s a very special parishioner at St. Patrick’s,” Father Weston said. “It’s taken us until tonight to piece it together but we think he’s seducing her so he can take her soul…”

Max interrupted, “It’s part of his psychosis. He’s made friends with her and soon he’ll close in on her.” Father W gave Max a look; so that’s how they were going to play it,
psychosis.
Nothing about animphages for the FBI.

“We came here to warn her,” Father Weston said. “She works as a waitress at the Surrey. I’ve relied on Max’s expertise to help me understand but the late Monsignor also had his suspicions. He experienced a massive stroke or I’m sure he would have talked about them.”

“What makes her so special to Gar?” Tooley asked. He could feel how keyed up the other men were. Sometimes things had a spook on them. He had seen things in the jungle that were difficult to explain.

“He’s developed a pretty detailed personal mythology as far as I can tell. She’s susceptible to suggestion, hypnosis, and beautiful to boot. He thinks he has met her before in past lives and I think he believes her soul alone will satisfy his quest,” Max said.

Father W saw how fragile their story was as Max manipulated it for the agent. He began to wonder what really was real.

“So where is she?” asked Agent Tooley, feeling somehow like he was back in the mists of the Mekong Delta again even though he was on Church Street in little Decatur, Illinois. Something was telling him to believe the priest and the professor.

“We just missed her. We were on our way to her house,” said Max.

“I think the focus should be on finding and bringing Gar in for questioning. Currently your enemy may not know you suspect him. You might tip your hand if you show up there now,” Agent Tooley said, the old creep coming up his spine. “Why don’t we find a pay phone, call her, think of a way to find out if he’s there or been there and then get her to come into base,” Tooley advised, thinking about how they would get rookies who had gone off-roading high or crazy back to safety. “What’s the target’s name?”

“Marilyn. Her name is Marilyn,” said Max, wanting to bolt back to Weston’s car and just take off to her duplex, but the agent did have a point about the advantage of Gar not knowing they were on to him and Tooley didn’t look like he would tolerate any deviations to his plan.

Rowley had climbed up in bed with Marilyn and was shaking after Father Troy had left. Marilyn was stroking him, whispering that it was okay but Rowley didn’t think so. He could smell Gar in the apartment, his faint noxious odor seemed like it was coming up through the floors even. The phone rang in the kitchen. “What now?” said Marilyn as she threw off the covers and padded in her robe to answer it.

Gar was napping in Harry the Pill’s bed when he dimly heard the telephone ring in Marilyn’s apartment and her footsteps going to get it. He didn’t want to wake up because now when he slept, he slept the heavy sleep of the exhausted- just another reminder of the strain on his vitality. So he rolled over annoyed but didn’t rouse because after a day like today he needed his beauty rest.

Marilyn put the receiver of the phone to her ear, standing in her bare feet on the cold linoleum floor of her kitchen. She hadn’t bothered to turn on the overhead, light from the street seeped through the faded white kitchen curtains with the daisy borders enough so she could see. There was a faint rasp on the line. In a nanosecond Marilyn’s sense flashed on high alert, she knew that rasp. There was a long pause. Marilyn held her breath, trying to make herself disappear.

“You were sneaky horrid child and now you’re a sneaky awful woman,” the voice came through the line as her memory threatened to explode.

This wasn’t happening
.

“It’s time to return what you stole. I only let you get away with it because I always knew I’d get it back”

“Who are you?” Marilyn heard herself whisper, her mouth dry.

“Don’t play games. Bring it back to me; it’s your only hope.”

Feeling the room dip and spin for a terrifying second, Marilyn dropped the black handset and then slammed it onto the cradle cutting the connection.
It couldn’t be; she had to be dreaming
.

They found a payphone booth outside of Stuart’s Dairy Mart; the two cars pulled up close together in the parking lot. After a little conversation it was decided that Max would make the call to Marilyn.

The glass door closed behind Max and he put the quarter in the payphone as he held the black receiver attached to the industrial strength metal cord to his ear. The two phone books were missing where they should have been hanging from beneath the metal counter but it didn’t matter, he knew Marilyn’s number by heart. As the number dialed, he thought about what he would say, remembering that in both of the past life regressions Gar had held a powerful sway over the novice monk and the Shaker sister. He decided to go at it sideways and ask Marilyn to come in and meet him tomorrow in the Map Room and then see if she had been in contact with Gar. The phone gave the peculiar little pulsing drill indicating the line was busy. He held on for a split second, processing the busy signal; it was the last thing he expected. Max felt a mixture of frustration and relief, she wouldn’t be talking on the phone if Gar was there, he was pretty sure of that. He put the receiver down and the dime dropped down into the slot at the bottom and he pawed it out, shaking his head he stepped out of the booth. Both Weston and Tooley flashed their headlights at him, nearly blinding him. But in their flash he saw how a group of crows were now clustered on a dead squirrel, cawing and pecking, ripping it apart in the corner of the now closed dairy mart.

“That was short. Is he there?” called out Father Weston through his rolled down window to his friend. Max shook his head in the negative, feeling edgy with the crows feasting on their kill. “Line’s busy. I don’t see her talking on the phone if he’s there.” Max said.

“Well, that’s a blessing at least. Maybe we got lucky and Father Troy found him after all and he’s back at the rectory,” said Weston. The three of them looked at each other then.

“Let’s go,” said Agent Tooley from his car, and he honked his horn at the crows, wishing he hadn’t been so easy on Gar the first time. It wasn’t as simple as separating out those that had been to the shithole and those that hadn’t if he was honest with himself. ‘Nam had been a scary hallucinatory time where for every reluctant hero that pulled a grunt to safety there were the dead zone ones that took the ears of Charlie for souveniers or fragged officers for fun. He sounded his horn again and the crows cawed harder, backing up around the fuzzy grey corpse as if to say, “the hell with you”.

They pulled the two cars into the driveway off Eldorado Street and sprinted towards the rectory. It was quiet and dark with only the outside light on. The tall spires of St. Patrick’s towered above the parish house. Father Weston pulled his house key out of the leather key folder he carried and opened the door, calling out in the most casual voice he could manage, “Mark, it’s me. Gar there?”

They found Father Troy sitting at the kitchen table with his head in hands. A broken glass casserole was in pieces on the floor, with Mrs. Napoli’s good rigatoni in gooey over-browned chunks and stuck to the pieces. Father Troy looked up when Father W entered, his eyes full of frustration and something else, something Father W didn’t recognize in his fellow priest, it was an angry intense hatred directed at all three of them, like Father Troy had been turned into a poisonous snake.

“I tried to make supper for Gar in case he comes home,” Father Troy said in a shaking voice full of blame. “But he’s running from the FBI now, and your suspicions. The damn thing cracked. I guess I had it on too high,” he gestured to the mess on the kitchen floor implying that ‘this is all your fault’. “Met your friend tonight too, Father W, nice ass, if you like that sort of thing.” Father Troy didn’t care that two red spots came up into Frank Weston’s cheeks. It served him right standing there with the FBI agent and the professor that Bishop Quincy had warned him about. Well, Bishop Quincy was going to get an earful come morning, Father Troy would see to that.

“You saw Marilyn? Where?” Max asked, going over and shutting off the oven. It was hot in the kitchen and the oven was turned to high. Father Troy just looked at him.

“Answer the man, Father,” commanded Agent Tooley.

“I went to her apartment looking for Gar,” Father Troy said in a sulky voice. He wanted them out of here. What if Gar came home now?

“Why don’t you help me pick this mess up, Father Troy,” asked Father W in a kind way like he wasn’t aware of how much Father Troy hated him at this moment. He held a broom and dustpan.

Father Troy got up from his chair and crouched on the floor picking up pieces of the broken glass and chunks of rigatoni with his hands if only to avoid the nosy ancient religions professor. Father W had pulled the beige plastic garbage pail out and was sweeping bits of pasta and tomato off the floor.

“Had he been there?” persisted Max. The younger priest was infatuated with Gar, that much was clear.

Mark Troy felt a flush of triumph suddenly, he had information they wanted and he wasn’t going to give it to them, the bastards. “How would I know? But if it makes you feel any better I told her, he’s not ready for women, not women like her in any case. Women who sleep with priests, women who are just out there tempting men. Gar’s too fine for that, you understand.” the words spewed out of Father Troy’s mouth in an ugly stream of frustration, not caring who he hurt. It was good to hurt.

“You need to know that I’m going to pull an arrest warrant on Gar for the manslaughter of Suzanne Cleary,” said Agent Tooley, surprising even himself. He hadn’t thought he been entirely persuaded but now standing in the parish house it was easy to see that Gar was a dangerously seductive psychopath. “I’m gonna need for you to identify the bike left on the shoulder of the road where she was frightened to the point of losing control of her vehicle. It’s your bike, the one Gar rode to Cleary’s this morning, Father Troy, and if you’re honest with yourself you already know it.”