The Priest's Graveyard (30 page)

He rushed into the bedroom. Her shrieking was that of a wounded animal. This from such a small woman.

But he knew why. Renee was screaming because he’d trapped her in her hell, and she was feeling all its dread. He’d locked
her in that realm of punishment. Like Lamont had locked her in. He—Danny—had become her new law.

Yet he was sure that if he opened that door she would kill him.

Her screams would not relent. She was mindless in there, running around the room. Hitting the door with the gun and running
more, trying to find a way out.

Like a fist, a knot filled his throat; tears spilled from his eyes. He could not do this! He almost took his chances and opened
the door for her.

But there was something else happening. Renee was being confronted by a past she could not identify. Like an undiagnosed brain
cancer, its symptoms were wreaking havoc and pushing her to madness.

He could rush in and try to tackle her to the floor before she shot him, but it would be risky. If he died she would either
block out the incident and remain a captive of her past, or, realizing what she’d done to him, become a prisoner of guilt.
His death would only enslave her from beyond the grave.

He felt utterly powerless.

Danny leaned his forehead against the door, overcome with anguish.
I am so sorry, Renee. I am so sorry.

Still she wailed.

He turned, rested his back against the door, slumped down to his seat, leaned his head back, and silently wept for the woman
inside who was losing her mind to a pain she could not understand.

I don’t know
how it happened, really. I was furious at Danny for suggesting that he was ripping the cover off the ugly, hidden underbelly
of my life. They were lies, all lies.

Then he tricked me and left me alone in the room. The sound of the door slamming was like a thunderclap. I’d fired at him
twice and felt empowered, but with the door’s booming bang, the gun felt stupid and heavy in my hand.

All I could think was,
He’s left me?

I heard him lock the door. Then run, up the stairs. I still hadn’t moved a muscle when the distant sound of that door closing
reached me through the walls.

Danny had left me alone with all those lies.

My anger was gone, replaced by something I’ll never be able to properly explain. The walls seemed to close in on me, really
close in, physically smothering me. They were magic and I was the dove in the box that was being forced into a small black
hole.

I’d been here before. I did not like it then, and I didn’t like it now. Terror flooded my mind in waves that crashed into
me and sucked me under. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t hold the dread back.

It was then that I first wondered if Danny had uncovered something. What if everything I’d believed was suddenly wrong? What
if what I had mistaken for my life was actually a kind of death?

What if Lamont was a monster? My death? Maybe I thought I’d been saved by him, but I had only become his slave. This place
of punishment had been my personal hell.

That was impossible! I did remember some things, like when Lamont wanted to flush out a piece of chocolate or something I’d
eaten in a moment of weakness. He’d pour ten gallons of water down my throat using a funnel and make me throw it all up to
rinse out my system. This often took more than a day. This was the kind of thing I learned to hate about that living hell.

But it wasn’t Lamont’s fault. He was only trying to help me.

Danny had locked me up and gone.

It wasn’t just fear that smothered me. It wasn’t only the memory of pain. It wasn’t simply sorrow or self-pity or humiliation.

It was the ruthless stripping of my human dignity that left me an empty, hollow shell. I was not worthy to be called a person,
much less a woman.

When Danny locked me in that room, he left me alone with the horror of being nobody. I was the girl who had to be perfect
under Lamont’s laws in order to be somebody, which was impossible, which was why I was only
nobody
.

When Danny locked the second door at the top of the stairs, I lost myself. I blamed everything I felt on him.

On Danny. This was his fault, not Lamont’s.

I don’t even know what I was thinking, going berserk, banging into the door, pulling at my hair. I was screaming. A high-pitched
sound that made me think something had broken in my head, which only filled me with more alarm.

I had to get away, you see. The sight of the open closet made me crazy with terror. I had to get out, and Danny was the only
one who could help me get out. But Danny was the one who’d locked me in here.

This is why he locked you up, Renee. Lamont knew you were only a dog who would return to its vomit, just an animal who would
run around and scream, just a worthless excuse of a life. That’s why he was teaching you how to behave properly.

Eat the right foods.

Wear the right clothes.

Stay clean, clean, clean.

As the memories started to come in, my throat began to fail me and my wailing started to fade. I threw myself on the floor,
facedown, dried of sobs. My face was in the corner where the walls met and I imagined that I could hide there, but that didn’t
help. Somehow I ended up in the middle of the floor, curled up in a tight ball.

I was nothing.

I think I stayed like that for at least an hour. Maybe two. But the human spirit is built to deal with everything, including
nothing. Slowly, I began to accept my nothingness. Raw pain gave way to resolve.

I had put up with this before, right? Sure, I’d shut it all out of my mind, but I’d been strapped to the wall in that room
back there for days at a time until I learned to smile and kiss Lamont and show him all the appreciation he deserved for being
my “law unto life,” as he liked to say.

Now it was going to start all over again, only this time it was Danny who’d locked me in.

My mind melted, thinking about that. Why Danny? I had been so sure that he loved me for who I was, not for who I could be.
I thought he liked me. He’d been so kind and patient and showed me so many things.

My mind wandered in lazy circles, spiraling down to a place of familiarity. Lamont’s early lessons came back to mind: the
way he’d first treated me so nicely, feeding me drugs, always those drugs to keep me mellow. The lessons had ramped up slowly
over several months.

I had been such a messy girl, and he’d only set up the laws to help me.

What a fool you are, Renee. You’re here again, back where you started. It always comes back to the same thing—no matter how
hard you try, you can never measure up. You will always be too fat or too stupid or too messy or too ungrateful or too mean
or too rude or too talkative or a dozen other toos
.

The thoughts bogged me down and I settled into a haze. I slowly slipped back into a more manageable state of mind, where denial
and fancy head games were friends who led me to safety. I had been here so many times, hadn’t I? I was an expert at this.

I wondered how long it had been since the office had been properly cleaned. Maybe I should clean it before Danny returned.

I lifted my head, looked around the room, and saw that I was still alone. Of course, always alone. Lamont had left me like
this for days, but I didn’t really blame him. He was only trying to help.

But Lamont was dead. Danny was the new law. And although I didn’t really blame Lamont, I hated, hated,
hated
the thought of starting all over again with Danny.

More rules. More too this, too that. More punishment. I mean, look what Danny did to the worst of the monsters. He killed
them!

I settled back down and stared at the corner where a spider was lowering itself on a long string of web. Normally I would
have jumped up and killed the spider with a tissue, then thrown it in the waste can, but at the time I remember thinking that
at least I had someone to share the room with.

A thought came out of nowhere and stopped me cold.
If Danny is the new law, then I have to kill him
.

I had to kill Danny because he had killed Lamont, and now he was the law and the judge just like Lamont had been, and I couldn’t
do that again, I just couldn’t.

Really, those who demanded perfection when there wasn’t any were the worst.

I pushed myself up and thought about that. Danny’s law of punishing sin with death was the only thing in the world worse than
his Pharisees. Wasn’t that right? In fact, it made
him
a Pharisee. A viper.

I glanced at the door and saw where one of my bullets had gouged a hole in the wall nearby. My gun lay on the floor next to
a sheet of paper.

That was odd. I didn’t know where that paper had come from. The wind had blown it off the desk? But there was no wind. It
had fallen out of Danny’s kit? But he’d left his bag out by the bed.

The paper had been slipped under the door?

My pulse surged with a memory. Lamont used to slip me notes under the door sometimes. Usually to ask questions, like,
What did you do with the black paring knife?
That meant it wasn’t where it was supposed to be, which in turn meant I was in even more trouble.

I crawled over to the piece of paper, picked it up, and read the brief note scrawled there:
I beg you, hear my confession. I’ll be waiting
.

It was signed,
Danny
.

Confession? It sounded like some cruel trick. He expected me to hear his confession through this door? What that could possibly
mean, I had no idea.

I don’t need to hear your confession, Danny. I already know your sin. And you have the gall to accuse Lamont.

I picked up my gun and checked the clip. Empty. I tried to account for the shots. Three to Bourque. Which meant I had to have
gotten off six more down here. I didn’t remember all that, but I had a full clip in my kit upstairs, if Danny hadn’t taken
it.

I reached up and tried the doorknob just to be sure that it was still locked, an old habit from my past. The handle twisted
and the door swung in and I jerked back like I’d been stung by a bee.

It was open!

The bedroom beyond waited in darkness. I scrambled to my feet, gun out, ready for his trick even though I had nothing. He’d
believe I’d shoot. But when Danny didn’t appear after ten or fifteen breaths, I dared to take a step forward.

“Danny?”

The empty house swallowed his name.

I walked out into the bedroom, but it was empty, too. I crept up the stairwell and stepped through the open doorway at the
top.

There was no sign of Danny.

I checked the kitchen. Nothing. My bedroom. Empty. The only thing in the hallway was my kit, exactly where I’d left it.

The full clip lay on top of the kit. I couldn’t remember putting it there, on top. I reloaded.

Then I tried the front door, opened the latch, and stepped out into a cool Southern California night.

Danny was gone.

Waiting for me at confession.

IT WAS ALMOST
9:00
PM
when Danny pulled into the back of Saint Paul’s on Long Beach Boulevard in Long Beach. The parking lot was vacant except
for a maroon-and-white bus. The parish’s name was stamped in big bold letters on the side, under a silhouette of a dove.

He parked his Malibu behind the bus and turned off the engine. City noise filtered into the cabin—the faint hum of traffic,
the soft growl of a truck as it gunned its diesel engine through the intersection at the front of the building. A small dog
barked and another returned the challenge.

But back here in the lot surrounded by the tallest trees on the city block, there were no other signs of life.

The church rose into the night sky, dark except for a lone bulb over the rear staff entrance. For the hundredth time, Danny
questioned his decision to leave Renee at the glass house by the sea. Losing control of a situation so completely didn’t come
naturally to him, and he hadn’t been in the clearest frame of mind. Maybe he really had thrown it all away this time.

But of course he had, hadn’t he? Life as he knew it was over. What happened now was wholly in her hands. He was the puppet
on her string. It was the only way. The right way. He’d come to that conclusion as he’d wept outside the prison he’d locked
her in.

What if she didn’t come? With each passing mile as he headed south, south, and farther south, the notion haunted him with
increasing dread. Surely Renee wouldn’t stay there in her torment, not knowing he’d unlocked the door. Surely she would come.

Surely he had made the right decision.

He’d left the house and approached the cab. A thousand dollars had persuaded the driver to wait an extra hour, two hours,
three—all night if that’s what it took. If Renee didn’t emerge before sunrise, then he was to place a call to Danny’s cell
phone.

What if the driver didn’t wait? Left a thousand dollars richer and no worse off for the gift? What if she passed out in the
basement without finding his note? What if she found it but didn’t understand it?

He’d told the driver to bring her to Saint Paul’s, but what if she refused? Danny might have been better off waiting for her
outside the house. He might be better off to return now. But he’d passed a point of no return the moment he hit the Pacific
Coast Highway. If he missed her by even a few minutes she might reach the church ahead of him, find no one there, and leave.

Danny closed his eyes for a moment to still his spinning head.
Forgive me, Father. If you are there and you hear, bless me, for I have sinned.

He reached for his kit, withdrew his Browning nine-​millimeter, checked the load out of habit, then palmed it and stepped out of the car.

He took a deep breath, eased the gun behind his belt, and walked toward the lighted back door, aware of each footfall on the
paved lot. It took him a full fifteen seconds to find the right key on his ring, because his mind was still back there in
the basement with Renee.

It’s the right decision, Danny. It’s done, and it’s the right thing
.

He tried to insert the key and had to flip it three times before it slid in. Entering, he closed the door quietly behind him
and started to twist the dead bolt. No, better to leave it open—she might come this way.

If
she came. If he was right.

The hall brightened with a flip of a light switch. He’d leave this light on for her. She didn’t know the way.

What you must do, do it quickly.

The church taught that a man who committed suicide did not go to heaven. Then again, by their reckoning, suicide was the least
of the sins Danny would have to account for.

Danny took the side door into the main sanctuary. It was dimly lit by two rows of electric candles, which were mounted on
seven pillars on each side of the empty pews. There would be no witnesses tonight.

Walking faster under the watchful eye of the crucified Christ, he crossed the foyer, stepped up to the large mahogany doors
at the main entrance, jerked the brass bolt to one side, and unlatched a second restraining chain.

The church closed its doors at six on weeknights unless there was an evening service or social event. It was highly unlikely
that anyone would try the doors this late into the night. The locals were accustomed to the schedule, and the area wasn’t
a hangout for tourists or night dwellers.

Danny cracked the door to be sure it was open, then eased it closed.

He walked to a bench along the wall, opened the seat’s built-in storage compartment, and withdrew a hymnal. This he placed
on its end against the front door. Any attempt to enter would knock the book flat on the wood floor. Then the empty halls
would know. And the crucifix would know.

And he would know.

What you must do, do it quickly, my dear
.

Danny retraced his steps through the sanctuary, then turned right and approached the confessional nearest the front. He entered
the booth reserved for laity and lit a small candle reserved for show. If the wax gave out too soon, he would turn on the
night-light near the floor. But the occasion seemed to demand a flame.

There was a short bench in the booth, well worn by sinners seeking absolution over the church’s twenty-seven-year history.
Renee wasn’t Catholic—he wondered if he should leave a note outside the booth instructing her to enter this side. The sign
at the top of the door would have to suffice.

He backed out of the booth, closed the door, and looked around the sanctuary one last time before taking his familiar place
inside the left booth. Releasing two small swivel latches, he freed the metal screen from the window between the two booths.
Soft yellow light flickered through the wooden latticework that remained in place.

He rested his gun on the floor next to a two-inch gap that ran the length of the wall. A nudge from his foot would push the
weapon into the next booth.

Now he would wait for the sound of the toppling hymnal, the telltale
thump
that would announce the beginning of the end. He took a deep breath, laced his fingers together, leaned against the bench’s
backrest, and waited.

After half an hour, he began to wonder if she might have killed herself in the basement. He’d been so focused on his own moral
choice that he’d forgotten to consider the dangerous state of her mind. While he was down here in Long Beach, waiting to do
the right thing, she was there in Malibu, dead on the floor.

He stood, fighting an urge to rush to his car and go back to the house. But if she came, he would be gone.

He sat and steadied his hands. No, this was the only course. The right choice. The moral path. A poetic and just if poignantly
ironic ending to his journey.

You live by the law, you die by the law.

Lamont had lived and died by that law. Now it was Danny’s turn. That Danny had even considered the possibility of killing
Renee was the gavel that had finally sentenced him. It hit him like a brick as he’d wept on the floor.

He was as guilty as them all.

And now he would pay the price.

After an hour, he began to wonder if he’d misjudged Renee’s nature. For his own sake, it was critical that the terms of their
relationship be decided by the code that had put them in this situation. For Renee’s sake, it was critical that she become
what he’d made her: judge, jury, and executioner.

If she judged him and found him guilty, she must do what she must do.

After an hour and a half Danny began to sweat.

The hymnal did not fall.