Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (142 page)

He punched himself hard in the stomach. Then he just stood there, looking a little like Rick at the train station when he realizes Elsa isn’t coming.

“Sometimes I think God took her away to punish me for something I did. I don’t know. All I know is that there’s no going back. I can’t make it right. It’s too late for that. What I can do, what I have to do is catch this guy. Maybe then God will let…”

The wind took his last words.

“Look, I’d like to help out, but I need some sort of proof that you’ve tracked down the right man. The police will want something. Do you have evidence that links this guy to your wife’s murder?”

My phone buzzed. It was Ty, asking if I was ready to go. I wrote back letting him know I’d meet him in the parking lot in five.

“Sorry, anyway…” I said as I pushed the send button and looked up.

But I was talking only to the trees now. I turned around and headed back to the lot.

CHAPTER 13

Chef Dubois walked in carrying her laptop and notepads and placed them down on the counter up front, crossed her arms, and stood watching students file in and take their seats.

“
Bonjour
,” she said, even-toned.

The sounds and chatter were immediately sucked out of the room.

“We have a lot to cover in a short time. Let’s begin.”

We were in the main cooking auditorium with stadium seating, the professional kitchen below and two large TV screens on each side so that students were able to see the work being done up close. The class only filled a small part of the room, but it was big enough for the many cooking events that were held throughout the year.

“Today you begin on your journey of becoming chefs,” Dubois said. “You will begin learning about the mother sauces in classical French cuisine. And if you take your culinary career at all seriously, you will spend hours, days, months, and, yes, even years trying to perfect these five sauces.”

She walked out from behind the counter. I swallowed hard and tried to turn as invisible as a ghost.

“
Mademoiselle
Miller, the definition of a sauce,
s'il vous plait
.”

Dana was sitting near me, texting in her lap. She looked up stunned and then cleared her throat.

“Uh, something you make to pour over fish or, er, I mean, put on a protein.”

“I would suggest putting away the phone if you have a desire to stay in my class this afternoon.
Monsieur
Wilson, a definition of a sauce.”

“A sauce is a liquid with a thickening agent, along with other flavoring ingredients.”

“
Oui
,” she said.

I heard a few students sigh as she looked around the room. This class was the most stressful part of a long, hard day. School had started at eight and then there was dinner duty all night at the student restaurant. I wasn’t going to get home until late.

“Let us begin,” Dubois said. “We will start with a
béchamel
.
Monsieur
Berasategui, what is the base and thickening agent for this first sauce?”

“The base is milk, and it will be thickened with a
roux
,” Miguel said.

“
Oui
,” she said. “And now students, you will watch as I prepare the
béchamel
. Afterwards you will each create your own.”

After the demo we headed over to the student kitchen.

“She is so full of herself,” Dana whispered.

“I can’t believe I’m paying someone to abuse me like this,” Joe said. “I should have just hired a dominatrix.”

“This is the best class I’ve ever had,” Miguel said, looking over at me and smiling.

I liked Miguel’s attitude and tried to remember it when I found myself on Chef Dubois’ bad side.

I made the sauce, which didn’t seem so difficult. Then I heard the click of shoes on the floor growing louder and louder and my confidence tiptoeing toward the door.

“I trust,
Mademoiselle
, that you tasted this first and adjusted your seasonings accordingly?”

I nodded, handing her a spoon.

She dipped it into the sauce, tasted it, and squinted in pain as if a large and clumsy dance partner had just stepped on her toe.

“A beginning, perhaps,” she said as she walked off.

CHAPTER 14

David was on the treadmill next to me, moaning in rhythm to something coming off his earbuds. I was afraid to ask.

“Hey, what are you listening to?” I said anyway.

He slowed his pace and paused the music, squinting at me through a downpour of sweat.

“Did you say something?”

I repeated my question.

“It’s Britney, bitch.”

I didn’t say anything, but my
at least it’s not Bieber
expression must have given me away.

He stopped and almost shouted in a breathless, high-pitched voice, “Whatever gets you through the night, Abby Craig. After everything you’ve been through, you should know that. Don’t judge a man by what he listens to on his workouts.”

I would rather have been outside, but unless I wanted a serious case of frostbite or scrambled brains after slipping on an icy sidewalk, the gym was the only game in town.

There were a few characters that took some getting used to. There was the grunting woman who confused the weight room for a hospital delivery ward. There was the human fly, a guy who would buzz around whatever machine I was on and ask, “Are you almost finished here?” There were the socialites, people who carried on loud conversations from across the room like they were the only ones in the place. But, all in all, most of the people were into their own thing and kept to themselves.

I could hop on a machine in the warm air and look out the windows at the snow coming down or at the icicles hanging from the roof. But for all the advantages that a treadmill offered, the drawbacks were brutal. At times the boredom was almost unbearable.

I tried different things to make the miles go faster. Listening to podcasts that played music at a certain number of beats per minute, watching the little TVs, doing the programmed courses, promising myself not to look at the distance readout until the next song ended.

Some days, though, nothing worked. No matter the speed, it always felt like I wasn’t going fast enough. It felt like I was running in place and getting nowhere slow.

This was my third winter at this gym. I should have been used to the routine by now, but this year it felt like my whole being was fighting it. To make things worse, my iPod had died less than a mile in and I was at the mercy of whatever was being piped through the gym speakers. I really wasn’t feeling it.

After a few minutes,
What is Love (Baby Don’t Hurt Me)
came on. I sighed and tried to block it out, but it was no use. It didn’t take too long before I found myself riding in the car with those guys in that old SNL sketch. It was almost impossible not to bob my head along to the music. I noticed my legs were moving faster too.

I waved over at David and got his attention.

“What is it now, Abby Craig?”

“You’re right,” I said and smiled. “You’re absolutely right.”

“Damn right I am.”

CHAPTER 15

I stared at the smoking ghost from behind the pastry case and took in a long breath. He was sitting at a table near the front, looking out the window.

I had been thinking about Charles Modine on and off all day, wondering when I would see him again. I headed to the back and found Mo, who was doing inventory.

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said, her voice dripping with a mischief bordering on malice. “You seen Manti’s dead girlfriend lately?”

“No, but we talk on the phone every night.”

She smirked.

“Could you take over for a few minutes?” I asked. “I have, you know, a
visitor
.”

Mo looked at me and then gave a quick nod, understanding. It hadn’t been that long ago that I had helped her dead brother.

“That’s creepy shit, Craig,” she said. “I’m glad I’m not you. I’ll be out in a sec.”

I walked back over to Modine, stopping briefly behind the counter to gather my thoughts. His expression was dark, the energy around him like a thunderstorm. I sat down at the table as he slapped and rubbed his hands together.

“I can’t get warm,” he said. “The winters back East can get colder than a witch’s tit, but this is something else right here.”

“You caught us at a bad time. We’ve been setting records all winter.”

“Makes me wish this son of a bitch had taken off somewhere tropical.”

My mind drifted back to Lyle’s description of that beach.

“I hear Brazil’s nice,” Modine said. “If you’re not too attached to your kidneys.”

He sat down.

“Anyway, I’ve been thinking about what you said.” He squinted at me through the smoke between us. “About the proof.”

I gave him a slight nod.

“Okay, look, I don’t have any. I don’t have any proof,” he said slowly. “Nothing the cops would be interested in anyway. Certainly nothing that would stand up in court. But I know it’s him, Abby. I know it’s him.”

I sat back as the music changed abruptly mid-song.

“I feel for you,” I said. “I really do.”

“But?”

“You know the
but
. Even if you had some proof, I’m not sure what I could do, but without it…”

“I know,” he said. “I know. That’s the kind of person I used to be, too. Logical. I only believed in the things I could see and touch. And now look at me.”

“How are you so sure it’s this guy in Bend? I mean, what’s it based on?”

 “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you.” I waited again and he finally put it out just above a whisper. “Dreams.  A series of dreams.”

“Dreams?” I said.

“Yeah, you see, I’ve been having these dreams. I know, it sounds nuts. I hear myself. But…”

It didn’t sound so nuts to me even though this was a first. I hadn’t ever come across a ghost who talked about dreams. As far as I knew, they didn’t even sleep.

“What kind of dreams?”

“Well, it’s just one. Always the same one,” he said, his voice trailing off. “About that day. The day she was murdered.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I see him kill her over and over again. I see his face clearly behind the wheel, as clear as I see you now. And it’s the face of this guy. I’m telling you it’s him. The same guy I see hanging around the church.”

“Wait,” I said. “Slow down. What church?”

“The Catholic church, not far from here. I see him there in the mornings. He’s there a lot. He probably goes in to ask for forgiveness. And they’re the ones to give it, too.”

I thought about it for a moment.

“Okay,” I said. “The police couldn’t find this guy while you were alive. And then after you died, you started looking for him. And then you started having these dreams that led you here, to this man who hangs around the church?”

“That’s basically it, yes. I mean, I’ve been chasing him for a while, not just here. Other cities, other places. But he’s here now.”

He took a long hit, lost in thought and then continued.

“They killed her, you know.”

“
They?
” I said. “Wait. I thought there was one killer.”

He looked at me, then over at Mo at the counter, who was scraping the machines.

“Well, he was the trigger man, so to speak. But he was working for them.”

“Them who?”

Again, his eyes darted around the café, as if to make sure nobody was listening.

“The Church. You see, Sarah was an assistant district attorney. She was working on something at the time of her death. Something big. Something that was going to blow the steeple off.”

He started talking faster.

“She struggled with it, being Catholic like we were. Even though she was a modern woman, the Church still had a special place in her heart. I can’t tell you the agony it caused her, the sleepless nights. But in the end, it was harder for her to turn the other way and do nothing.”

“Okay, you need to slow down,” I said. “You’re losing me.”

If anything he started talking even faster.

“She had evidence! Evidence that it went straight to the top, the highest levels of the archdiocese. That they were systematically protecting the pedophiles. They were harboring the scum of the earth and she was going to do something about it. She had witnesses, a long list of credible witnesses. She was going to go after those bastards. She was going to prosecute high-ranking Church officials and maybe even the archbishop himself.”

He paused to light another cigarette.

“She had put away a few priests along the way. Those cases took a lot out of her, spending time with those abused boys, some of them grown by then. She rarely swore, but she told me once, she said, ‘What they’ve been through. Charlie, those kids are damaged beyond repair. They’re fucked for life.’ After a while she realized that going after individual priests was like treating cancer with a Band-Aid. The problem went much deeper. And higher.”

I tried to keep up with his story.

“Of course, the DA and the mayor didn’t want any part of it. They didn’t have the stones for it. But Sarah, she was a fighter. She wasn’t going to back down. She gave them a deadline and if they didn’t give her the go ahead, she was going to turn everything over to the press. Then, just three days before the time was up, she was murdered. No way was that a coincidence. No God damn way.”

“You’re saying there was some sort of conspiracy involving the Church and the DA and the mayor?”

“I don’t know that. All I know is that the Church had her killed. Whether city government was in on it, I can’t be sure. But they sure as hell helped cover it up.”

“Do you have any proof of any of this?”

“There’s that word again!” he said, banging his hands on the table. “Of course, I don’t have any proof. After she died, they destroyed the files. All trace of what she was working on. You think we’re dealing with amateurs here?”