On the Fifth Day (9 page)

"Devlin?" he mused aloud.

He got to his feet, restless, suddenly anxious to get out of this room and its oppressive silence. He wanted to find Jim and tell him about his afternoon with the senator, the lion, and 57

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

the man who had thrown him to her, but on descending saw no sign that he was home. The rest of the house was still dark, so he wandered down to the one part of the building he hadn't seen, away from the front door and kitchen, past stained wooden cabinets through a musty-smelling corridor lit by a bare, low-wattage bulb. There was one door on the left, which was locked, and another at the end of the corridor. He tried it, and as it opened he stepped into his past.

It was a sacristy, where the priests dressed for mass, where they stored their vestments and the accoutrements of the liturgy. It smelled of incense and candle wax, and it was gloomy and wooden floored, like the sacristy where he had been an altar boy thirty years before. As a rule, Thomas didn't like dark, en

closed places, but this was different: familiar. At the far end were a pair of double doors into the church, and through them came a faint murmuring: Jim, saying mass, doubtless to a huddle of lonely seniors who had nothing better to do on a cold March night.

For the first time Thomas felt the loss of his brother wholly without rancor. This could have been where they horsed around in their cassocks before mass, messing about with the candles, arguing over who got to be the cross bearer and who had to be the acolyte. Ed always got the cross. He was two years older than Thomas, which made him taller, so Thomas would be paired with one of the shorter boys and together they would carry the heavy brass candlesticks on either side of Ed, who walked slightly ahead of the procession. The smell brought it all back to him, as if it were yesterday: the dead matches, the exotic fragrance of the incense so alien to the rest of their working-class world, and for a moment he thought he could turn and see his brother, ten or twelve years old, pulling the white surplice over his head and mimicking Father Wells's nasal singsong:
"In the name of the Father, and of the Son . . ."

Tears started to his eyes, not because his brother was dead, but because Ed and this place announced so clearly how very much he had lost since those days, that so much had gone of life and left him with so little. It wasn't just Ed that had gone, 58

A. J. Hartley

it was also his parents, several friends, and, of course, his exwife, and though she was very much alive, her absence from his life seemed to speak loudest of isolation and failure. Thomas stood still in the gathering darkness, only thinking to wipe the tears away when brought back to himself by the once-familiar rumble of the congregation saying in broken unison, "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen . . ."

The mass he had listened to through the closed doors had been over for two hours. He had shared a dinner of frozen chicken pot pies with oven fries and baked beans with Jim at the kitchen table and had watched the local news while Jim made a round of phone calls and tapped out e-mails on a droning, yellowed PC: "parish admin stuff," he said. Jim had listened aghast to Thomas's account of the incident at the zoo, specu

lating that Devlin had arranged the whole thing.

"Maybe," said Thomas, pleased by the priest's ambivalence about the senator, even by the way he seemed to be taking Thomas's side. "But Devlin didn't even try to warn me off."

"He didn't need to! He had some goon ready to kill you!"

"Not really," Thomas admitted, sipping his Bushmills. "I think he came to warn me off. I, sort of, fought back, and he lost his temper. I could have been killed, but I don't think he really intended . . ."

"That's about the dumbest argument I've ever heard," said Jim.

"So you think I should go to the police?"

Jim faltered.

"Well," he said. "I don't know.
The police . . .
"

"You don't trust them?"

"Cops are too fond of rule books," said the priest.

"Isn't the Bible . . . ?"

"No," said Jim, abruptly.

"Anyway," Thomas said, "reporting it will achieve nothing beyond making me look like an idiot."

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"That's what you're afraid of?" said Jim, his good humor returning as quickly as it had gone. "Looking stupid?"

"Well," said Thomas, "it
is
humiliating to have to talk about how . . ."

"Right," said Jim dryly. "I can see that. If I had been thrown down a trench to be eaten by lions I know that what would really bother me was how
embarrassing
it all was. I mean, what does one
wear
for such an event . . . ?"

"I'm not kidding, Jim," said Thomas. "The guy told me to leave things alone. If I'm going to keep poking into Ed's death, I need to be discreet about it. Sitting in a squad car and chatting to some well-meaning cop who can do absolutely nothing to help will achieve nothing, and may give whoever is watching me a reason to put me out of the picture for good. It's not worth the risk."

"And I thought
I
was paranoid," said Jim.

"When someone tries to make you into whatever lions have when they can't get zebra, you're allowed a little paranoia."

"Point taken, Daniel," said Jim, managing a smile.
In the lion's den.

"Funny."

"I thought so."

"I keep coming back to what Ed was doing in Italy," said Thomas.

"Research and a bit of downtime," said Jim. "But I got the impression he spent a lot of time away from the retreat house. They called here once asking if he had left early."

The phone rang in the kitchen. Thomas checked his watch and raised his eyebrows. It was after ten. Jim, used to being called--and called out--at all hours, just sighed and lumbered into the other room. Thomas closed his eyes and settled back. He was ready for bed. It had been a long, strange day, like the one before it, and he didn't know what to do next. He won

dered why he was still in the presbytery and if he was ready to go back to his empty house.

Better be. You'll be spending a lot of time there for the next
few months.

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The prospect of no job, no income, nothing to do with his time depressed and wearied him still further. He turned and noticed that Jim had left the computer on, the screen showing the parish website. One of the thumbnail images of the com

munity was the very picture of Thomas's wedding that cur

rently lay on the floor of Ed's room. That Ed would have used that picture, particularly after they lost touch, surprised him, and he stared at it, wondering what had been going on in his brother's life before he died.

"It's for you."

Jim was standing in the doorway holding the portable phone.

"Here," said Jim. "I'll see if I can turn up that contact ad

dress in Italy."

Thomas took the phone from him frowning.

"This is Thomas Knight," he said.

"Hello, Tom."

It was probably only a couple of seconds, but he felt that he had been standing there for at least a minute in stunned silence.

"Tom, you there?"

No one else called him that. No one ever had.

"Kumi?"

He didn't need to ask, hadn't really meant to. It had just come out, hoarse, distant, like the echoes of the past he had heard in the sacristy. The hairs on his arms were bristling and his heart had started to race.

"Hi, Tom."

"Hi. It's been a while."

"Five years, yes."

She said it without resentment, perhaps a little sadly. It was he, after all, who had refused to talk to her anymore.

"I called you at home, but I guess you still don't check your messages, so I thought I'd try to reach you here."

"Right," he said. He just couldn't find words. Jim had just walked back in brandishing a slip of paper, but his smile died when he saw Thomas's face, as if he thought he might be hav

ing a stroke. Maybe he was.

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"Listen, I just wanted to say how sorry I was about Ed," she said.

"Right," he said again. "Thanks."

"I know things hadn't been good between you lately, but . . . well, it's just terrible. I wish I could do something."

"Thanks. I know. It's okay." Then, as an afterthought, "Wait. How did you know?"

She seemed to hesitate.

"I had a call from DHS," she said.

"Oh," said Thomas, unsure of what to do with this.

"So," she said, moving things along. "You doing okay?"

"Not bad, you know."

"Work okay?"

"Fine," he lied. "You know, the usual."

"Right."

"You? Work, I mean."

"Oh yes. All work and no play. I was thinking of you in the office the other day," she said. Her voice was light now, almost frivolous. It sounded forced, ghostwritten.

"Yes?" he managed.

"Yes. I was thinking back to when we went to Arizona with Ed, and we went on that hike. That was great, wasn't it? I think back about that a lot. Remember, when we came down that dried-up creek bed? And Ed was there, and we were all laughing . . ."

"Kumi," he interjected, "you okay?"

She ignored him, her voice a little shrill now, high and fast as if she were auditioning for a sitcom.

"And the three of us were staying in that little hotel and it was just the best time and . . . And Ed kept talking about that time he went to Italy. Remember? I keep thinking about that hike up the creek bed. Remember that? Going back to the river source--and Ed said it was just like that place he went to and . . . Anyway. Listen, I'm sorry. I'm rambling. I'm calling from work so I shouldn't stay on. I just wanted to wish you all the best and say how sorry I was. Okay?"

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"Kumi," he repeated, more carefully, more seriously, "are you okay?"

"I'm fine.
Really.
It's you I'm concerned about, Tom."

"Wait," he said.

"I'm sorry, Tom. I really have to go. We'll talk again, okay?

Bye."

"Kumi . . ."

"Bye, Tom."

The line went dead.

Thomas stood there in the dimly lit room, staring at the phone.

"You all right, Thomas?" said Jim.

"I don't think so," said Thomas. The hairs on his arms were still bristling, and he felt very cold. "I think things are worse than I thought. Far worse."

CHAPTER 14

"It was your wife," said Jim, recapping, clarifying.

"Ex-wife," said Thomas, looking around the room. Maybe he should take his brother's papers.

"Ex-wife," said Jim, "who you haven't spoken to since the divorce."

"We're not divorced," said Thomas. "She wouldn't. Catholic, you see," he added bitterly. "Didn't want to be cut off from the Church, but couldn't stand being on the same continent as me. So, at my brother's advice, she went back to where we met and stayed there."

"Where you met?"

"Japan." Just saying the word pained him.

"But she's not Japanese?"

"Born in Boston," said Thomas. "Second generation."

"So she called to offer her condolences . . ."

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"That's not why she called," said Thomas. "Not really. She called to warn me."

"By talking about a trip you took to Arizona with her and your brother? I don't get it."

"We never laughed in Arizona," said Thomas, darkly. "We never hiked. We sat in the hotel room and screamed at each other for five days straight and then we went home and she packed her case and left. It was supposed to pull us back to

gether but it drove us apart."

"You didn't hike up a creek bed?"

"I did," said Thomas. "She didn't. I stormed out and trekked up some damn mountain. Anyway, I was climbing over a boulder--too furious to pay attention to what I was doing--

and I fell and broke my ankle. It took me all night to get back to the car, by which time I was nearly dead from exhaustion and heatstroke. Kumi, assuming I'd abandoned her, had taken a cab to the airport, so she never even heard about it till a week later, by which time we were too angry at each other. It was the perfect end to the trip from hell."

"What about Ed? Couldn't he help?"

"He might have been able to," said Thomas, snapping the case shut and turning to face Jim. "But he wasn't there."

Jim stared at him.

"What?"

"We might not have been the perfect couple," said Thomas,

"but when we took a trip to try and fix our ruptured marriage, we didn't take my brother along for the ride. Especially since he was part of the reason it was ruptured."

"If she was trying to warn you of something, why wouldn't she just say it right out?" said Jim.

"Because she's scared."

"Of what?"

"I have no idea, but she's not scared for herself, she's scared for me. I asked her and she said so.
'It's you I'm con

cerned about.'
It was the only thing she said that sounded like her. That and the stuff about going back to the source."

"Which means what?"

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"Where this all started, I guess," said Thomas.

"Which is where?"

"Ed said it was just like that place he went to,"
Thomas re

cited, reaching out to Jim.

For a second the priest stood there bemused, and then Thomas took his right hand and opened it. The slip of paper with the address lay on the priest's palm.

"Thomas," he said, "that's crazy."

"I don't know what else to do," said Thomas. "I don't know what's going on. My ex-wife thinks I'm in danger, and given my episode at the zoo, I'd say she was right. My brother is dead and no one will tell me why or how. The whole situation is crazy, and the only thing I know for sure is that it started here. Italy. That's what she's telling me. Start there."

He held up the slip of paper that his late brother had dic

tated over a crackling phone to the priest in front of him two months ago.