Punish the Sinners (42 page)

“I’ll see to it,” he promised.

Thirty minutes later Peter Balsam was asleep in Neilsville Memorial Hospital, a nurse sitting by his bed. She watched him for an hour, checking his breathing and his pulse. When she decided all was well with him, she silently left the room to go about her duties.

   He woke to the sound of church bells pealing, and knew what it meant.

All over Neilsville the churches were holding spedai services. The people had asked for them, needing something to take their minds off the horror of the day, needing something to tell them that soon all would be well among them again.

Peter lay in his hospital bed, thinking that it was curious. The bells were sounding for Marilyn, all of them except St. Francis Xavier’s. The bells of St Francis Xavier were sounding as usual, calling the faithful to evening Mass. Usually, on a weeknight, attendance would be light. But not tonight, he” was sure. Tonight
they would all be there, praying guiltily for the soul of Marilyn Crane, knowing in their minds that they should not, that Marilyn was no longer worthy of their prayers, but praying for her nonetheless.

He glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes, he thought, and they’ll all be in church. All of us, except those of us here, or in the grave.

All of us. He repeated the words to himself. All of us. Peter Balsam sat up in bed, the last vestiges of sleep falling away as his mind suddenly became alert Now was the time. If ever there was going to be a time, it would be now.

He rose from his bed and shuffled into the tiny bathroom wedged economically between his room and the next. He splashed cold water on his face and looked in the mirror.

His eyes were better, and the crow’s feet had faded. He needed a shave but it didn’t matter. No one was going to see him anyway.

He found the bloodstained robes hanging in the closet. Loathing them, he put them on. Then he sat down to wait

He waited until the bells died away, and silence fell over Neilsville. Then he left his room. Without speaking to anyone, Peter Balsam walked out of the hospital.

No one tried to stop him. Perhaps it was the strange figure he presented, barefoot, his bloodstained robes trailing the floor, his crucifix clutched tightly in his hand. The orderlies looked at the nurses, and the nurses looked at the resident but none of them spoke. Dr. Shields had admitted him, but had said nothing about keeping him there. “Make sure he sleeps.” That’s what the doctor had ordered, and that’s what they had done. Peter Balsam had slept and now he was going home.

But he didn’t go home. Instead he walked slowly up
Cathedral Hill, listening to the sounds of the choirs that were raising their voices to God all over Neilsville. No one was in sight, but he could sense than around him, praying quietly in the churches.

He mounted the steps to the rectory, and let himself in the front door. He picked up the silver bell and shook it, then shook it again. Its tinkle echoed through the dimly lit house, and Peter knew he was alone. He walked quickly down the hall to the door of the study.

He paused there, suddenly frightened. He had to remind himself that the room on the other side of the door was empty, that there were no strange rituals being performed, that tonight no one was reaching out to draw him to this room. Tonight, he had come on his own.

He opened the door, and entered the small room. He found the light switch, and the room was filled with a yellow glow that seemed to change its configuration, washing away the gloom.

He began his search of the desk, opening and closing the drawers rapidly. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He would recognize it when he saw it

There was nothing in the desk, and he moved to a small filing cabinet that was built into one of the walls. He opened the top drawer, and began going through the files. Nothing.

Nothing in the second.

In the third, he found what he was looking for.

It was a large sealed envelope, wedged behind the last of the files. Peter pulled it from its hiding place, and tore open the envelope. A scrapbook. A scrapbook and a file folder. He opened the file folder.

On top was a single sheet of paper; on it was written a list of names. Five of them had been scratched out.

At the end of the list, Judy Nelson’s name appealed again, with no line through it

Peter Balsam had found what he was looking for.

He slipped the file folder back in the envelope, and closed the drawer of the cabinet He let himself out of the study, snapping the light off as he went, then, carrying the bulging envelope, walked out of the rectory into the fading light of evening.

For the first time in several days the dusk held no fear for Peter. This night he would complete the puzzle. This night would end the terror, both for him and for Neilsville.

As he hurried down the hill the bells of St Francis Xavier began to peel once again. Mass was over.

   In his apartment, Peter began going through the scrapbook. He leafed through the pages quickly. They were all more or less the same: filled with yellowed newspaper clippings, each clipping headlined in bold type:

There were nearly fifty clippings in the scrapbook, from brief articles less than a column long to major features spread over several pages. AU of them were about
the same crime, all of them were from the same time. Peter Balsam subtracted quickly. He would have been two or three at the time the crime took place.

He went back to the first page of the scrapbook, and began reading the articles carefully.

Most of them gave simply the bare facts:

A man and his wife had been found in bed, murdered. In the same room their daughter was discovered hanging from a light fixture. When the room was thoroughly searched, the couple’s small son was found hiding in the closet of the bedroom, in shock.

The tabloids had spread the story over several pages, and it was in the clippings from the tabloids that Peter Balsam was able to glean the details of the bizarre crime.

The couple had been murdered while in the act of making love. Their daughter had walked in on them and hacked them to death with a cleaver. The weapon indicated premeditation. The motive was unclear. There was some speculation that the girl was reacting badly to her own misfortune—an autopsy had revealed that she was pregnant

But what the tabloids played up most was the little boy—the little boy who was thought to have watched the entire thing from the closet, from the moment when his parents came into the room and began making love—not knowing they were being observed—to the moment when his sixteen-year-old sister brought the cleaver into the bedroom, hacked her parents to death, then hanged herself from the light fixture.

He had been in shock when he was found, and had been rushed to a hospital. There, it was discovered that the child had no living relatives. In the end he had been anonymously placed in a convent

The convent was unnamed, but Balsam was sure he
knew which one it was. What he had just read was the story that had been whispered about when he was a child. None of the children at the convent had known the facts. Now Peter Balsam knew them all.

He searched through the papers.

The name. Where was the name of the family?

The name was not given. Nowhere. In every story the names of everyone involved in the crime had been carefully deleted, as if whoever had compiled the scrapbook had wanted the story known, but the identities kept secret. Nor were the papers themselves identified. Each clipping had been carefully cut from its page.

In only one story was there even a clue. In one story, someone had slipped. The child’s name was Peter.

Suddenly it all made sense. He had never gotten over the shock. It had festered in him all the time he was growing up, all the time he had studied for the priesthood. And then, sometime, not too long ago, the shock had caught up with him.

He had begun to hate adolescent girls. And why shouldn’t he? Hadn’t one of them taken his parents away from him? Taken his home away from him? Left him with nothing? If one of them could do that, why not all of them? His hatred had grown, had turned into an obsession.

And Peter Vernon—now Monsignor Vernon—had acted on his obsession. He had gathered together the forces at his disposal, and begun to strike back, taking revenge on the children his injured mind blamed for the loss of his parents.

Balsam leafed through the scrapbook. He could understand it, now, and for the first time he felt a trace of sympathy for the priest

He wondered what to do with the scrapbook. Should he take it to the police? But what would they do? All
right, so the Monsignor kept a scrapbook about a crime more than thirty years old. So what? If it was your family, wouldn’t you have kept a scrapbook too? Those girls killed themselves, mister, and the fact that a priest’s older sister did the same thing thirty years ago is just one of those coincidences.

The Bishop. He could take it to the Bishop. Even if the Bishop didn’t believe the Monsignor had anything to do with the suicides, at least the scrapbook would prove that something had gone wrong in the Monsignore early life, and that the priest should at least be carefully observed. The Bishop could order the Monsignor to undergo observation. From there, the psychiatrists could take over. It would all come out

The door suddenly opened.

Monsignor Vernon stood framed in the door, a small smile playing around his lips; a smile that was betrayed by the burning fire in his eyes.

“I went to see you at the hospital,” he said. “But you’d left.”

“Yes, I did,” Peter said blankly, his mind whirling.

“May I come in?” The burning eyes bored into Peter, and without waiting for an answer the priest entered the room and closed the door behind him.

“You found my scrapbook,” he said softly. His eyes darted around the room, coming to rest on the open scrapbook on the desk.

“It was you we all talked about, wasn’t it? When we were kids?”

“Yes, it was me,” the priest said. “But I didn’t know it, not until five years ago.”

“Five years ago?”

“Someone sent me that scrapbook. I don’t know who, and I don’t know why. But it explained a lot to me. It made me see what I had to do.”

“Do?” Peter Balsam felt his heart beat faster.

“I had to punish them. All of them.”

“You mean the girls?”

“They’re evil,” the priest said. “They’re evil with their minds, and with their bodies. The Lord wants me to punish them.”

“I thought it was St. Peter Martyr,” Balsam said softly.

“Of course you did. That’s what I wanted you to think. And that’s what I wanted the members of the Society to think. It makes it much easier that way.”

“I see,” said Peter. “The Society never had anything to do with religion, did it?”

“What is religion? It has to do with my religion, and with St. Peter Martyr’s religion. But not with the religion of the Church. The Church has no religion any more. It has become weak. It tolerates.”

“And you do not.”

“I don’t need to,” the priest said. The fire in his eyes was raging now, and Peter Balsam was suddenly afraid. But he had to know.

“Me,” he said. “Why did you need me?”

Monsignor Vernon smiled now.

“You think I’m insane, don’t you?” he asked.

“Are you?”

“If I were, I wouldn’t do what I’ve done.”

The fear stabbed at Balsam again. “Done? What do you mean?”

“You,” the priest said simply. “You’ve figured out everything else, but you haven’t figured out your own part in it, have you?”

“I’m to be St. Acerinus,” Peter said. “I’m supposed to kill you, and then repent. But I won’t do it.”

“No, you won’t,” the Monsignor said. “You’ve done everything else admirably, but I don’t expect you to kill
me. That was never part of the plan. That was the way it happened the first time. This time, St. Peter takes his revenge.”

“I’m not sure Pm following you,” Balsam said. It was all getting confused again. Did the priest really believe, after all, that he was St Peter Martyr’s reincarnation? And then the truth struck. Of course he did. He had to, or the guilt would be too much for him. If he weren’t Peter Vernon—if he were St Peter Martyr—then everything was different He was punishing heretics and sinners, carrying on the work of the Lord, and protecting the Mother Church. He was no longer just Peter Vernon, insanely avenging the death of his parents.

“I’m going to kill you,” Monsignor Vernon said in the silence.

Balsam stared at him. “You can’t,” he protested.

“Can’t I?” The priest’s eyes had grown cold. “What will happen if I do? They’ll think it was suicide.” He picked a letter opener off Peter Balsam’s desk, and began twirling it in his hands as he talked.

“When they find you, what will they find? A young man, a psychologist, a teacher. Wearing monastic robes stained with blood.”

The letter opener glittered as it reflected the light from the desk lamp. Peter Balsam blinked as the flashes of light struck his eyes.

“And who is this young man? His name is Peter. He grew up in a convent, after a tragedy in his youth.” The priest touched the scrapbook with the point of the letter opener. “And he was a failure at nearly everything.”

The letter opener glinted again. Peter Balsam watched it, unable to force his eyes away from the lamplight reflecting on the blade.

“His students have been dying, one by one,” Monsignor Vernon’s voice went on inexorably. “But has he
been trying to help them? No. Instead, he’s been busying himself by spreading preposterous tales about a simple religious study group. And he’s been acting very strangely.”

The light seemed to bounce off the blade directly into Peter’s brain.

He felt the sleepiness overcoming him, felt the heaviness in his limbs that he knew marked the first stages of hypnosis.

He tried to fight it, tried to summon his last reserves of energy to rouse himself, to look away from the flashing light, and block out the voice of the priest But he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the blade; the voice was relentless.