Bless the Child (48 page)

The young nun stopped a moment to collect herself, and the Abbess handed her a glass of water, which she sipped gratefully. Devlin had decided not to interrupt, but to let her tell the tale in her own way; he could fill in the gaps later. Janice Fellowes seemed to have a methodical mind.

“Four years ago,” she began again, “Jimmy came to visit me one night. He was horribly agitated, more distraught than I’d ever seen him. My brother’d been in Vietnam, Lieutenant . . . he’d covered riots and murders . . . my brother wasn’t a man who spooked easily. But that night, Jimmy was a basket case. He told me he believed his wife, Terry, had read his research and somehow sold him out to the Satanists. If that was so, he said, and if they really were on to him, he had far too much evidence on them now, to be left alive.” She bit her lip, and struggled for control, before continuing.

“He handed me a key and a signature card for a safety deposit box at Chase Manhattan Bank on Forty-third Street, and told me never, under any circumstances, to let it out of my possession, or let anyone know I had it. ‘They’re all around us, Jan,’ he said in a desperate sort of voice. ‘They’re everywhere, sweetheart. You can’t know who to trust, where to turn. You’ve got to hold this key for me till I figure out what to do—you’re the only one I can count on now!”

“He said he had an appointment with an important official at Quantico the following morning. The man was an old army buddy of Jimmy’s from Vietnam, and he’d said he would help.”

The young nun looked straight at Devlin. Tears shimmered in her eyes and on her pale cheeks. “My brother never made it to Quantico, Lieutenant. His car went out of control on the turnpike and he was trapped inside and burned to death.” She had to stop to regain control. “I took the key, and the day after my brother’s funeral, I spent eight hours in the safety deposit vault at Chase Manhattan poring over his research. I was shocked beyond anything I could possibly convey to you.
Oh God,
I wish I’d never seen any of it! I wish my sweet Jimmy’d never heard of Maa Kheru! I locked it away again. It’s still there.

“The next day, I applied to Mother Superior for admittance to the Carmelite Order. I was accepted as a novice and have never left here since.” The young girl glanced at the older woman, and a knowing look passed between them; she had been given sanctuary.

“Not until you read Jimmy’s notes, Lieutenant Devlin, will you understand why I’m here. There is no secular way to beat them. They’re too strong, too powerful, too evil. Only here, with God, can I do my small part to fight them. I’m giving you the key, because Mother Superior says I should. May God have mercy on you, Lieutenant . . . and may God have mercy on me for placing you in such terrible danger.”

“If any harm comes to Sister, Lieutenant Devlin,” Mother Superior said authoritatively, “I shall hold you personally responsible.” The old ruler-on-the-knuckles Voice of God, Devlin thought with an internalized smile.

“With you in her corner, Mother, I expect she’s at least as safe as that bank vault at Chase,” he said, meaning it.

Sister Cecilia was dismissed, and Mother Immaculata rose from her chair to see Devlin out. As she shot the bolt on the heavy front door, and moved aside to let him pass, she said, “Do you know what it is we do here, Lieutenant?”

“I know only that you pray, Mother, silently, before the Blessed Sacrament.”

“From the moment that ornate iron gate clangs shut behind us, Lieutenant,” she said with great seriousness, “separating us from home, family, friends, and the world—we, who enter the contemplative Carmelite Order, devote ourselves to one thing only: We fight on God’s side for souls harassed by Satan and his legions.

“Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year, we maintain a vigil before the Blessed Sacrament. In eight-hour shifts, we pray for those tormented by the Evil One. You will find, Lieutenant, there are few priests who would perform an exorcism without first invoking our aid, or that of others like us.”

She smiled, the glacial-but genuine smile of a ruler who wishes to communicate with a recalcitrant subject, on a somewhat human level. “I do not tell you this out of pride, Lieutenant Devlin, but because I want you to know that you do not go into battle against this Adversary with no one at your back.”

The woman’s gesture touched him. He looked into the unwavering strength of her face. “‘
Though Hell should bar the way, Mother . . .’”
he quoted with a crooked smile. “I’d fight beside you anytime.”

She acknowledged the compliment with a small twitch of the mouth, that might have been mirth.

Then he was standing on the steps alone, looking into the New Jersey darkness, with quite a lot to think about.

Devlin arrived at his apartment building weary and troubled. He couldn’t get into Chase until the A.M., but he could
feel
bad news coming his way, and the worse the news got, the more he worried about Maggie.

Automatically, he checked the mailbox before putting the key in the vestibule door lock. Bills. Junk mail. Assorted garbage. What a crime it was to waste trees to produce such crap. There was a stampless envelope, written in a woman’s hand, at the bottom of the pile.

Devlin glanced at the proper Palmer Method penmanship, and smiled. Catholic school . . . no mistaking that. The flap said Mrs. Margaret Cavan O’Connor. Maggie. He opened the envelope still standing in the hallway. There were two handwritten sheets inside the envelope. Hastily, he stuffed the rest of the mail into the grocery bag he was carrying from the deli on the corner, and hurried to his apartment. He dropped the bag on the table, turned on the light and concentrated on the letter that was still in his hand. She hadn’t just mailed it. She’d hand-delivered it. There was no note. Just yellow lined paper that read:

Things I wish men knew about women:

• Women need to be listened to.
  

• They do not encourage rapists.
  

• They crave romance and tenderness like drowning men crave life rafts.
  

• They follow their instincts and their hearts implicitly and are, therefore, immensely rational.
  

• They need to have birthdays and anniversaries remembered with the same enthusiasm as fight dates, hockey playoffs, and World Series.
  

• Their clitorises need to be fondled, not mauled.
  

• They do not get immense joy from cleaning ovens and bathrooms.
  

• They understand children intuitively, because the children grew under their hearts.
  

• They cry, not because they’re weak, but because they’re in touch with their feelings.
  

• Even if they are strong, they like to feel protected.
  

• They would sometimes like to make love at their convenience, not a man’s.
  

• They are inordinately sexual, but not particularly promiscuous.
  

• To have husbands who are unfaithful is an injury to their souls.
  

• They don’t want to be called “girls” at forty-five, or “gals” ever.
  

• Periods do not make them crazy, unclean, or prone to attacks by wild animals.
  

• They long to know that their husbands want to make love
  before
  they get into bed without their diaphragm.
  

• They suffer in their children’s coming and in their going.
  

• Making love thirty seconds after a woman has put on makeup, fixed her hair, and gotten dressed to go out is not spontaneous and fun.
  

• They read Gothic novels because they still dream of someone loving them more than life itself.
  

• They need to be loved, desired, trusted, and respected, not just during courtship, but forever.
  

• Betrayal tears their hearts out.
  

• Certain things cannot be unsaid to them.
  

He sat down at the table and reread the list twice, wondering why it made him feel so sad.

Devlin
met Sister Cecilia Concepta outside Chase Manhattan Bank when it opened at 8:00 A.M. the next day. After she’d signed him into the safety deposit box vault and left in the squad car he’d provided, he settled down, with a paper cup of coffee, and Jim Fellowes’s exhaustive notes. In fifteen years on the New York City Police Force, Malachy Devlin thought he’d seen it all. He was wrong.

“Jesus Christ!” he whispered as he put down the last crumpled page, three hours later.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
Devlin pushed the papers back into the box, as if they were contaminated, and sat for a long time, staring at the institutional-beige wall in front of him. Then he took out a handkerchief, wiped his eyes, and blew his nose in an attempt at composure, before handing the box back to the safety of the vault.

This was big. And far-reaching. And very, very bad.

C
ody lay in bed feeling sad and sick from hunger. First, Ghania said she couldn’t have any breakfast or lunch, and then she wouldn’t give her dinner, either.

Now, her tummy hurt really bad. A burning kind of pain, that was hard to ignore. She tried not to think about it, but it was really hard because maybe she wouldn’t get any breakfast tomorrow, either. Just because she wouldn’t drink that awful stuff.
Couldn’t drink it.
Even if she wanted to, something weird happed to her whenever the cup came near her lips.

Cody went to the bathroom and poured a glass of water, but it didn’t help, so she got out the bear and re-counted her treasures. There were six now, but the button was still her favorite.

She lay down on the bed next to the bear and put the button in her mouth. It was cool and nice. It made her think of ice cream.
That’s what she wanted more than anything.
The Vanilla Crunch kind that Mim always got her at Häagen
-
Dazs on Eighth Street. That would put out the fire in her tummy.

Cody sucked on the button a long time before she fell into troubled sleep.

Maggie
turned over in her bed and glanced at the clock on the table. She blinked. 3:48 A.M. It was
hunger
that had awakened her, but why on earth would she be hungry in the middle of the night?

Whatever the reason, the insistent hollow feeling in her stomach urged her out of bed. She threw a robe around her shoulders, slid her feet into slippers and headed for the kitchen.

Half asleep, she opened the freezer door and pulled out a two-thirds-empty carton of Häagen
-
Dazs. It wasn’t until she was halfway through what remained of the Vanilla Almond Crunch, that she realized she was eating with Cody’s spoon.