Even In Darkness--An American Murder Mystery Thriller (6 page)

The Abbey of Gethsemani has been put on notice to expect me. There are certain professional courtesies extended even to those like myself.

I drive up the curling asphalt path, noting the aged trees, the complex juxtaposition of old limbs and new. This is a monastery that looks like a horse farm. The kind of monastery you find in Kentucky or the south of France.

A twelve foot black iron gate stands open, and GOD ALONE is inscribed in stone. I hesitate before the gate, freeing the heel of my right shoe, which has become wedged in a crack between the flagstones. It is ten until two and someone is supposed to meet me on the hour. I expect that monks are punctual. Baptists, frequently, are not.

Caroline and Andee float like a mental screensaver of worry in the back of my mind. I want to storm the gates.

I hear a faint sigh and turn to see a man in trousers, soft-soled shoes and a coarse brown monk's robe standing on the other side. I did not see him approach, did not hear the sound of his shoes on the stones. He smiles at me, waiting, for what I do not know, but he, unlike myself, has an air of patience and centered well being. He is from India, his complexion dark, his skin rugged, his eyes so brown they look black. He beckons and I follow.

The monk leads me up a set of stone stairs, and along a paved walkway that skirts the grass. The abbey has four stories. We pass through a sort of lobby. His footsteps are quiet. Mine set up embarrassing echoes. The abbey seems deserted.

He heads down a hallway through an open set of double doors and into a spacious room with book shelves and tables, clearly a library. From there we pass into a narrower, darker hallway, and I follow, looking once, then a second time back over my shoulder until the monk turns right and waves me into a sort of library annex. It is beautiful here, with stone floors and a bank of windows all along one wall.

‘Welcome, dear friend, I am Father Panatel.' The Indian inflection transforms his English into music and the calm in his voice brings the surprise of tears to my eyes. I want to tell this man how alone I feel. How afraid I am for Caro and Andee. I want to confide in him. I want him to tell me what is right, and what is not.

‘Forgive the silence, before, but we are permitted to speak in designated areas only.'

Father Panatel shakes my hand and guides me toward two heavy, throne-like chairs. He settles across from me; we are in an open area of the room, away from a massive and intricately carved wood desk that sits along one wall.

The priest waits for me to talk. Begins when I do not.

‘I understand you are something of a colleague. I confess that I was doing the watching for you on television, plenty many years ago.'

Plenty many indeed. ‘I'm hoping you were a fan.'

He smiles at me gently, and I see that shiny look in his eyes, familiar still, that tells me he was, indeed. I know I should hold the look, summon the charisma, but my attention wanders through the room. I feel an odd hunger for this place, the walls deeply inset with shelves that are crammed with books. Every surface is pristine, dust free, the stone floors recently washed down.

The priest, to my envy, seems vibrant with happiness. I had expected someone sour with an air of depression, I'm not sure why.

‘May I show you something, dear lady?'

‘Of course.'

He goes to his desk, opens a side drawer. He moves quietly, easily, he is more comfortable here than I am anywhere. The drawer is deep, and he has to pull it all the way out. He reaches to the very end and tugs at something. A large tome, and my heartbeat picks up. It could be anything, here in this abbey. He brings the book to me, and as he gets closer I see that the pages are heavy, like cardboard, and bound with string, and my mind races from one possibility to another – some Catholic relic, some ancient text – only to see, as he gets close, that it is a garden variety scrapbook, a decade old, maybe two.

He sits with the book in his lap, and I see that he has taken care with this book, I see the edges of newspaper and magazine clippings.

Father Panatel turns the pages carefully, his attention caught from time to time. He looks up. ‘Please, I am sorry, I have not opened this book for some time. I started it years ago when I first began to feel my calling to the church.' He stands up to show me a page. A newspaper article from
The Times
, titled ‘Thomas Merton and the Abbey of Gethsemani'. ‘This is the article that first brought me here. I was studying in Oxford, you know. From Oxford to Kentucky, USA.'

I return his smile. An outrageous journey – India, Oxford, Kentucky.

‘Here, dear lady, this is you. This you must have to remember.'

He passes the book across to my lap. I turn it around and smile, just a small one. I shake my head. I have not looked at this in years.

The tag-line on the front cover reads ‘Divine Joy', and that's my picture, there, on the cover of
Time
magazine.

The cover shot was a surprise. The initial notion of a mention in a national magazine was flattering and terrifying, but when we set it up there was no mention that I was going to be cover material. I think it was the picture, spontaneous and unexpected. A tiny stab of meanness from my husband that backfired and landed me right in the spotlight.

I had been running late, as I always was in those days, and when the reporter and photographer arrived, my husband, Carl, had kept them in the foyer with that pompous little speech, the one he always made to the media – that they were not to put him in their article for any reason. He longed, always, for the protest. The family angle was important, he thought.
He
was important – the man behind the woman. But this time, they did not bite. They were not interested in him, and they agreed immediately.

It made Carl angry, the dismissal. So he'd taken them through unannounced, opened the door to my office without knocking, and said in a mix of pomp and sarcasm ‘The great Joy Miller' before he disappeared down the hall. Which is why they caught the great Joy Miller scrambling to clean up her office.

I remember how my cheeks had gone hot when I saw them in the doorway, their faces registering the hostility from my husband. I shrugged, shook my head and grinned at them, standing with my back to the wall, my arms open wide. Carl or no Carl, I was excited about the interview, flattered, speculating about the good it might do. I used to think like that, when I was very young.

The photographer, alert like the best ones are, crouched right then and there and took a candid photo.

The picture astounds me. I hardly know this woman.

Joy Miller, back to the wall, wearing a black tweedy skirt and pink sweater, arms wide, that trademark smile that was so full of love and
joy
; the office mess around her, which included a baseball jersey and cleats that had clearly just been dropped by her son, a basket with an ancient, deaf basset hound named Bella curled up inside, dog toys and chewies littering the immediate area, open books on the desk, and a half eaten chocolate bar on the file cabinet.

I scan the article, wincing as I read.

Time
received a record number of letters about that picture, and with the exception of one man who clearly thought that Joy Miller was a disgustingly deficient housekeeper, most of the letters were cheers and jeers from the same old weary divide – how shocking, a woman who wants to preach. The article got it wrong, a lot of it. I never said monogamy was exciting. At least I don't remember saying that. And I had ‘the calling' and went to seminary before I got married, before Joey was born. But the man who was upset by my untidy home – he had a valid point. I was way too busy to be a good housekeeper, in those days. As is often the case with women, the three million I pulled in annual donations paled beside the question of whether or not my toilets were properly scrubbed.

I look at Father Panatel, and see the look I know very well. I am a celebrity in his shiny eyes. He will answer my questions and keep my confidence, and he would do so, church or no church.

‘Thank you, so much, for showing this to me. I'm incredibly flattered, to be in your book.'

He leans toward me. ‘I just want you to know you are with a friend. For you to please, just be free to talk here, dear lady.'

There is a calmness about him that makes me ache, and I want to lean on this man. I will have to watch myself, not to tell him too much. My photographs – good reminders there – are in the hands of the FBI, but the memories are easy to conjure. They slide in and out of my mind.

I clear my throat, compose my thoughts. What to tell – what to hold back?

‘First, let me thank you for meeting on such short notice.' I fall back on the southern courtesy do-si-do. ‘As I said on the phone, I wanted to ask you about someone who I think was a visitor here, on a retreat, roughly fourteen years ago. Which I know is a long time. But the Dark Man is the kind of visitor you would remember.'

I give the date once again, a date that stays in the back of my mind. ‘He would have come alone, without making previous arrangements. He would not fit in. He would not be overly concerned with your rules. He might smoke cigarettes in places he is not allowed to smoke. He has a way about him. A feeling. He is the kind of man you would hesitate to cross.'

Father Panatel shows me a furrowed brow. ‘It is a strange thing to be asking, I think, if I can remember a man from fourteen years ago.'

I feel the hot flash that means my cheeks are going red. ‘This man makes you afraid, Father. Being around him can make you afraid.'

Father Panatel leans back in his chair and frowns at me. ‘When I got your call, dear lady, and you made so clear the urgency of this matter, I did go back over my notebooks. All through the years I keep a spiritual journal. So I am able to go back and see what I am writing then, in that particular period of time. As it happens, it was a significant period for me as well. And this feeling of discomfort and fear you speak of, this most definitely brings someone to mind. It makes me think I know the one. You are so correct when you say he makes the impression. If it is the same man, I remember him very well.'

Father Panatel rubs his chin, and the ripple of disturbance that invades the calm gives me hope. The Dark Man has been here. He would leave this wake of discomfort.

‘I remember him, I'm thinking, and I remember the other, as well.'

‘I don't understand, Father. What other man?'

‘One of our postulates. A man named Jathan Sandbone, who has befriended this man you talk about, this Dark Soul Man. They left together, at the end of the retreat, on their way from here to Salt Lake City.'

‘Why Salt Lake City?'

Father Panatel nods. ‘Sandbone was taking him to our sister abbey. But after we have talked on the phone, I am trying to find Sandbone, and there is no luck. It would seem that neither of them arrived in Salt Lake City. And Sandbone was never seen again, from what I can tell due to checking. Of course, he could have dropped away. Some do. But I would not have thought it of him.'

I dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands. ‘Do you have a name, Father, something in your records?'

‘I can find nothing but what I have already in my memory. That Sandbone referred to him as Paul.'

‘Paul? That's it?'

‘I do not think this was his real name,' Father Panatel says. ‘I believe it was to be a new name, and a new start.'

‘Of course. Saul, the criminal. Paul from Damascus.'

‘Yes.' Father Panatel laced his fingers together. ‘Sandbone was a good man. How would you say it? That he was
true
? He had much of the life experience, and he was compassionate. This other man, Paul, as we called him, made many of the brothers uncomfortable. Every one was relieved when Sandbone tucked him under his wings.' Father Panatel looks at my face. ‘This is the expression, yes, dear friend? Under his wings?'