62
Warrant in hand, Cash waited while Father Moore unlocked the final door to the basement room at Saint Mary’s Church and turned on the lights. He held it open for them. It had taken a lot of suppressed cursing to get Colcord down the stairs with his wheeled leg contraption, and only with Father Moore’s assistance. The priest was stronger than he looked. But they had finally made it, sweaty and panting. Colcord was the grumpy one for a change, which delighted Cash.
“All right, Thomas the Tank Engine, you first.” She gestured him forward.
Colcord squeaked ahead, grumbling under his breath.
Inside the door, they both stopped and peered around.
“Here is my little collection,” said Father Moore. “With my sincere apologies for my role in this tragedy. I’m not a worldly man. I was greatly deceived by Brother Gregory and his lies. To think that I gave those killers room and board during their visits! And then borrowing items from my collection—they had said they needed them for an exhibit as they closed down their monastery, why, I had no idea—”
“No need to go into it again,” said Cash, cutting off the voluble father. Moore had saved their lives at great risk to his own. He was still a doctrinaire, narrow-minded, and sexist person, but he had good in him as well, courage, and even a kind of wisdom.
The priest hadn’t a clue what Devotio was or why it existed. Based on the papers they had found in Brother Gregory’s belongings, the society was supposedly an offshoot of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church office descended from the original Inquisition. Theyhad been operating independent of church leadership for over a century, since the first members had come together over the revelations involving the origin of Jesus and several of his followers, pledging their lives to keeping such knowledge buried. Paradox, run by Khachatryan and Castillo, had been equally determined to find the proof they needed to reveal the truth. The struggle, she knew, would continue. The artifact at the bottom of Solitary Lake, she’d learned, was one of several. From what she’d heard, Khachatryan had disappeared, but Cash was sure that Paradox and its mission lived on.
Father Moore had explained that he’d become suspicious of Brother Gregory when it was first reported that Grooms had been tortured with a Spanish boot. Moore recognized it immediately as one of the devices Gregory had asked to borrow for the exhibit he was organizing at the Aspen monastery, which was in the process of being shut down. Moore had thought it rather surprising that Aspen would want to display such devices for the general public. Most people didn’t share his interests in such things. His suspicions had grown when he found a gun among the monk’s things, while he was looking for other missing relics from his collection. And finally, when he’d overheard Brother Gregory speaking with one of his odd friends staying in the rectory, Father Moore’s suspicions had crystallized, and he had pursued Gregory, following him up to Grooms’s cabin, where he’d heard the explosion.
“If you don’t mind,” said Cash, speaking to the priest, “protocol requires that we work in private.”
“Of course,” he said, bowing and retreating, closing the door behind him.
Cash looked around. It was a curious little room, this museum of the Inquisition that Father Moore had set up. Framed manuscripts, letters, and various church garments hung from the walls, along with several illuminated glass cases displaying the priest’s treasures.
And in a dark corner, Cash could see the collection of old iron contraptions that Armagh had mentioned—stuff that Brother Gregory had asked Moore to store for him.
Now that they were alone, Cash asked, “How’s the foot coming along, Inspector Gadget?”
Colcord scowled. “Hilarious. It’s a pain, but I can wheel myself around pretty good.”
“At least you can’t fit your foot in your mouth anymore,” Cash said.
“Ha. Ha. I thought you were the expert in that department. Stitches coming out tomorrow. Another turn of the screw,” he said, more seriously, “and it would have been a lot worse. You saved my foot and my life.”
“Let’s not go into that again,” said Cash, embarrassed. “You saved mine too. We were just doing our jobs.”
They turned their attention to the collection of torture devices, Colcord crutching and wheeling himself over.
They contemplated the iron equipment, cleaned, restored, and oiled. The Spanish boot, the chair, and three of the other contraptions were noticeably missing, locked up in the evidence room.
Cash started taking photos and drawing up an inventory.
“This gives me the creeps,” said Colcord. “If you think about it long enough, you can kind of figure how each one works.”
“Yeah, and I wish I could un-figure it. I can’t believe people did this to each other.”
“They’re still doing it. All over the world. They always find excuses to torture. The Inquisition believed they were saving people’s souls by torturing them. Unbelievable that they thought God would approve.”
At the mention of the wordGod, a long silence ensued. Cash felt uneasy. They had not had a conversation yet about the alien device and what it had communicated to them.
After a moment, Colcord said, “You know, Cash, we need to talk this thing out.”
Cash shook her head. “Why? What’s done is done. The artifact’s at the bottom of Solitary Lake.”
“Because we need to.Ineed to.”
There was a long silence, and then Colcord went on, “When I was a kid, the Jehovah’s Witnesses used to come around. Two sweet, middle-aged ladies with their brochures and pamphlets. My mother, God bless her, invited them in for tea because they looked so discouraged and tired from rejection after rejection.”
“We had the same thing in our neighborhood in Maine, but my mother always sent them packing.”
