Fisher exhales heavily. "I can't keep them from exhuming the body."
"I know."
"And if you keep hiding information from me, it will hurt you, because I won't know how to work with it."
I duck my head. "I understand."
He raises his hand in farewell. I stand on the porch and watch him go, hugging myself against the wind.
When his car heads down the street, its exhaust freezes, a sigh caught in the cold. With a deep breath I turn to find Caleb standing not three feet behind me. "Nina," he says, "what was that?"
Pushing past him, I shake my head, but he grabs my arm and will not let me go. "You lied to me. Lied to me!"
"Caleb, you don't understand-"
He grasps my shoulders and shakes me once, hard. "What is it I don't understand? That you killed an innocent man? Jesus, Nina, when is it going to hit you?"
Once, Nathaniel asked me how the snow disappears. It is like that in Maine-instead of melting over time, it takes one warm day for drifts that are thigh-high in the morning to evaporate by the time the sun goes down. Together we went to the library to learn the answer-sublimation, the process by which something solid vanishes into thin air.
With Caleb's hands holding me up, I fall apart. I let out everything I have been afraid to set free for the past week. Father Szyszynski's voice fills my head; his face swims in front of me. "I know," I sob. "Oh, Caleb, I know. I thought I could do this. I thought I could take care of it. But I made a mistake." I fold myself into the wall of his chest, waiting for his arms to come around me.
They don't.
Caleb takes a step back, shoves his hands in his pockets. His eyes are red-rimmed, haunted. "What's the mistake, Nina? That you killed a man?" he asks hoarsely. "Or that you didn't?"
"It's a shame, is what it is," the church secretary says. Myra Lester shakes her head, then hands Patrick the cup of tea she's made him. "Christmas Mass just around the corner, and us without a chaplain."
Patrick knows that the best road to information is not always the one that's paved and straightforward, but the one that cuts around back and is most often forgotten as an access route. He also knows, from his long-lapsed days of growing up Catholic, that the collective memory-and gossip mill-most often is the church secretary. So he offers his most concerned expression, the one that always got him a pinch on the cheek from his elderly aunts. "The congregation must be devastated."
"Between the rumors flying around about Father Szyszynski, and the way he was killed-well, it's most un-Christian, that's all I have to say about it." She sniffs, then settles her considerable bottom on a wing chair in the rectory office.
He would like to have assumed a different persona, now-a newcomer to Biddeford, for example, checking out the parish-but he has already been seen in his capacity as a detective, during the sexual abuse investigation. "Myra," Patrick says, then looks up at her and smiles. "I'm sorry. I meant Mrs.
Lester, of course."
Her cheeks flame, and she titters. "Oh, no, you feel free to call me whatever you like, Detective."
"Well, Myra, I've been trying to get in touch with the priests that were visiting St. Anne's shortly before Father Szyszynski's death."
"Oh, yes, they were lovely. Just lovely! That Father O'Toole, he had the most scrumptious Southern accent. Like peach schnapps, that's what I thought of every time he spoke. . . . Or was that Father Gwynne?"
"The prosecution's hounding me. I don't suppose you'd have any idea where I could find them?"
"They've gone back to their own congregations, of course."
"Is there a record of that? A forwarding address, maybe?"
Myra frowns, and a small pattern of lines in the shape of a spider appears on her forehead. "I'm sure there must be. Nothing in this church goes on without me knowing the details." She walks toward all the ledgers and logs stacked behind her desk. Flipping through the pages of a leather-bound book, she finds an entry and smacks it with the flat of her hand. "It's right here. Fathers Brendan O'Toole, from St. Dennis's, in Harwich, Massachusetts, and Arthur Gwynne, due to depart this afternoon as per the See of Portland.' Myra scratches her hair with the eraser of a pencil. "I suppose the other priest could have come from Harwich, too, but that wouldn't explain the peach schnapps."
"Maybe he moved as a child," Patrick suggests. "What's the Sea of Portland?"
"See, S-E-E. It's the governing diocese hereabouts in Maine, of course." She lifts her face to Patrick's.
"They're the ones who sent the priests to us in the first place."
Midnight, in a graveyard, with an unearthed casket-Patrick can think of a thousand places he'd rather be. But he stands beside the two sweating men who have hauled the coffin from the ground and set it beside Father Szyszynski's resting place, like an altar in the moonlight. He has promised to be Nina's eyes, Nina's legs. And if necessary, Nina's hands.
They are all wearing Hazmat suits-Patrick and Evan Chao, Fisher Carrington and Quentin Brown, Frankie Martine, and the medical examiner, Vern Potter. In the black circle beyond their flashlights, an owl screams.
