TRIAL BY FIRE (35 page)

“My goodness,” Edie Larson said. “I can’t imagine what Dave could have said that made you so upset. You practically hung up on him.”

I didn’t practically hang up on him,
Ali thought.
I really hung up on him.

It angered her to think that the vicious attack on Sister Anselm had been turned into a political football, with none of the various agencies accepting responsibility for it. That was true for ATF agents Donnelley and Robson, but it was also true for Sheriff Maxwell and Dave Holman. In order to further the ATF’s investigation, everything else was being shoved onto a back burner.

“What’s going on?” Edie asked when Ali didn’t answer right away.

Shaking her head, Ali looked from her mother to her father. “Sometimes men drive me nuts,” she said. “Present company excepted.” With that, and having taken only that one sip of wine, Ali pushed her glass aside and stood up.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I need to go to bed.”

“Is something wrong with your wine?” Bob asked.

“No,” Ali said. “It’s fine. I just don’t want to drink it. I’m going to my room.”

“But we came all the way down here to see you . . .” Edie began.

“Now, Mother,” Bob said. “Let her go.” He pushed away his empty beer bottle and reached for Ali’s glass of wine. “It would be a shame to let it go to waste,” he said.

Edie glared at him and then shook her head. “The lady at the desk says they serve a free breakfast in here every morning. Should we meet up here?”

“Sure,” Ali agreed. “That’ll be fine.”

“What time?”

“It’ll depend on how I feel,” Ali said. “Please call when you’re ready.”

Ali was still doing a slow burn as she went downstairs. With McGregor dead, everyone else seemed ready to pass the buck as far as Sister Anselm was concerned. Ali seemed to be the only person who was convinced that the attack on Sister Anselm had been carried out by two perpetrators rather than just one. And the fact that Sister Anselm was now in a hospital room in Saint Gregory’s didn’t mean she was entirely out of danger.

Ali allowed her parents think she was on her way to bed. Instead, she went to her room and called for her car. When she left her room to head back to the hospital, Ali took her briefcase and computer along with her. After all, Ali’s computer had saved Sister Anselm’s life once today. Maybe it would do so again.

By the time Ali drove back to the hospital, the valet parking stand was closed. Driving into the garage, she saw a dark-suited man with the look of a security guard standing near the garage elevator, watching everyone who came and went. For some reason, that made Ali feel better. When she exited the garage elevator in the lobby, she was relieved to see still another guard posted near the front entrance. There hadn’t been a noticeable security presence at Saint Gregory’s the night before, but she was glad to see one now.

Once she was in the hospital, finding Sister Anselm wasn’t as easy as it should have been. No one seemed willing or able to give out any information. Having struck out everywhere else, Ali finally ventured into the waiting room outside the ICU.

As she stepped off the elevator, she was surprised to find two more rent-a-cops in black suits there as well. One stood to the right of the elevator, while the second was stationed just inside the waiting room.

The presence of the security detail probably meant that a celebrity of some kind, or maybe even a high-powered politician,
was undergoing treatment in Saint Gregory’s. Fortunately for them, the guards made no attempt to waylay Ali. If they had, she most likely would have given them a piece of her mind—the piece she hadn’t let loose on Dave Holman.

When Ali first entered the darkened waiting room, she thought it was empty. Then a shadowy figure rose from a chair in the corner and walked toward her through the gloom.

“Please turn on the light, Edward,” a man’s voice said. “I’m through resting my eyes for the time being. There’s no need for our fellow visitor to stumble around in the dark.”

One of the guards moved at once to switch on the overhead light while Ali examined the elfin figure who had issued the order. He was tiny—only about five foot four—and he, too, wore a black suit, only his was topped by a clerical collar. His unruly mane of white hair seemed at odds with his clothing, as did his mischievous blue eyes and ready smile.

“I’m Bishop Francis Gillespie,” he said, holding out his hand. “From what Sister Anselm told me, I would assume you to be Alison Reynolds. Is that correct?”

Thunderstruck, Ali nodded. “Most people call me Ali,” she said.

When he clasped her hand in both of his, Ali was startled to realize that his hands weren’t nearly as small as the rest of him.

“I must confess that I had a little more help in identifying you than just Sister Anselm’s description,” he added. “After she spoke so highly of you, I took the liberty of looking you up on the Internet. I more than half expected that if you came here tonight, you’d still be wearing that bright red wig. Sister Anselm indicated that she thought the red hair looked very fetching on you.”

Ali was struggling through her memory banks, trying to
remember the proper term one should use when addressing a bishop. Was she supposed to call him Your Excellency, or Reverend Gillespie, or was there something else?

“Sit down, sit down,” he urged pleasantly, leading Ali to a chair.

“Sister Anselm is here now, in the ICU?”

Bishop Gillespie nodded. “Yes, they brought her up from the recovery room a few minutes ago. I spoke to the surgeon—an orthopedic guy. He says they set the leg and put in metal plates and screws to hold it in place. It was broken in more than one spot. They won’t be able to schedule the hip replacement until sometime next week. No visitors but relatives,” he added.

“I can’t see her, then?” Ali asked.

“No,” he said. “Sorry. They may let me in later, but then I have special dispensation.”

Having seen Sister Anselm’s damaged leg with her own eyes, Ali wasn’t surprised to learn that more than one surgical procedure would be necessary to repair it. As for the fact that Sister Anselm wouldn’t be allowed any visitors? That was fine with Ali.

“I’m sure you’re startled to find me here,” Bishop Gillespie continued, “but Sister Anselm is rather a special case. Considering the seriousness of the situation, it seemed to me that having a contingent of security guards on hand to keep an eye on her while she’s recovering would be a good idea.”

Ali agreed with that assessment completely. She also liked the fact that the security guards in question appeared to take their responsibilities seriously. They seemed more than capable of handling any unexpected contingency.

“The truth is,” the bishop went on, “if I had really listened to Sister’s concerns—if I had been paying attention—I would have
sent one of my cars and a driver to take her to and from the hospital as needed. That’s what I should have done. Now we have to deal with the consequences of my negligence.”

“I’m sure Sister Anselm will forgive you,” Ali said.

“Yes,” Bishop Gillespie agreed. “She’s a very forgiving soul. But knowing she’s come to grievous harm, I’m not at all sure that I shall be able to forgive myself. Then, of course, there’s what happened to you today as well,” he added sadly. “I understand you, too, have sustained some injuries in the process of rescuing Sister Anselm.”

The man seemed so troubled that Ali didn’t want to add to his burden. “Nothing serious,” she said casually. “A few scrapes and bruises, but nothing’s broken.”

“I understand the man responsible for that dreadful attack is dead. It’s difficult to imagine that kind of evil loose in the world. What sort of depraved individual would leave one poor woman to burn to death in a fire and abandon another to die in the desert? Behavior like that is entirely beyond the pale.”

Ali realized that someone had been feeding Bishop Gillespie a whole lot of very accurate information that he wasn’t supposed to have. Despite Agent Donnelley’s embargo on information, Bishop Gillespie seemed to know almost as much about the day’s events as Ali did. Under the circumstances, her best tactic seemed to be changing the subject before she, too, ended up divulging unauthorized information.

“Have you and Sister Anselm been friends for a long time?” she asked.

He nodded. “A very long time,” he said. “Has she told you anything about her background?”

“Some. She told me about her mission and about how, when she’s dealing with badly injured people, she’s often as concerned
about healing their broken relationships as she is their broken bodies.”

Bishop Gillespie nodded sagely. “That’s true,” he said. “She’s forever trying to do for others what other people once did for her.”

“The nuns in France, you mean,” Ali said. “Before she became Sister Anselm.”

Bishop Gillespie beamed. “So she did tell you some of it?”

“About losing her parents and being left alone after they died.”

Bishop Gillespie nodded. “Sister Celeste, Sister Anselm’s first mother superior, recognized her natural facility for languages and encouraged her to study as many of them as possible. The convent saw to it that Sister Anslem received a degree in nursing. Once she was able to return to the U.S., she also earned a doctorate in psychology.”

“She never said exactly how that happened,” Ali said. “How she came back home.”

“I’m proud to say a good deal of that was my doing,” Bishop Gillespie said. “She lived and worked in France, speaking all those languages, but she wasn’t French any more than she was German. By then she had given up all hope of reclaiming her birthright as an American citizen. Yes, her family had been badly treated during the war. For her parents and her sister, Crystal City was a prison, but not for little Judith. That was her name then. As a child she had loved the relative freedom of living in the camp. She loved Texas and being out of those cold midwest winters, and she wanted desperately to come back home.

“It was Sister Anne Marie, Sister Anselm’s next mother superior, who first brought her to my attention. That was during the sixties, when I went to Rome as a special envoy to Vatican Two.
Sister Anselm was dispatched there to serve as a translator. By then she could speak several additional languages, including fluent Italian and, I’m told, credible Latin as well,” he added with a chuckle. “She made a big impression on me at the time, but it took another fifteen years before I was able to help negotiate her return to this country, first to California and now here. I was also able to help her regain her lost citizenship, so she is now free to travel wherever I need her to go on an American passport.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Ali asked.

“Because I want you to know what a treasure she is,” Bishop Gillespie said, “and because I want you to help me.”

“Help you do what?”

“You may have wondered what Sister Anselm was doing with the latest GPS/networking applications on her iPhone. Those are my doing as well, I’m afraid. When she’s at home, she stays in Jerome, in Saint Bernadette’s, a convent that specializes in treating troubled nuns, but when she’s on the road . . .”

Ali knew from reading Nadine Hazelett’s article that Sister Anselm’s home convent was in Jerome, but she knew nothing of Saint Bernadette’s.

“Wait a minute,” Ali interrupted. “What’s this about troubled nuns?”

“Back when Jerome was a busy mining community, there was a parochial school there. That shut down when the mines did, but the building itself was still in good shape, as was the convent. Since the diocese couldn’t find a suitable buyer at the time, we ended up keeping it. A few years ago we remodeled the place and turned it into a rehab facility.

“It turns out nuns have the same kinds of difficulties everyone else has—anger management issues, substance-abuse
issues.” Bishop Gillespie smiled and shrugged. “You name it, we’ve got it. With a doctorate in psychology, Sister Anselm helps out there with the sessions when she’s home, but when she’s on the road, it’s important for me to be able to stay in touch with her, and with some of my other special emissaries as well.

“As I said earlier, over the past several days Sister Anselm had e-mailed me some of her concerns,” Bishop Gillespie continued. “She felt that even in a hospital setting, Mimi Cooper might still be in danger—that the people responsible for the attack on her life might attempt to strike again. She was also concerned that due to working so closely with Mimi, she, too, might be targeted. It turns out she was all too right about that,” he added regretfully. “What do you think?”

Bishop Gillespie’s direct question put Ali on the spot. “I was there,” she said finally. “I know that the man who died this afternoon, Thomas McGregor, is the person most directly responsible for what happened to Sister Anselm, but I don’t believe that he acted alone.”

“Why?” Bishop Gillespie asked. “Who else do you think might be involved?”

“I’ve been told there may have been two people in the vehicle that picked Sister Anselm up this morning, supposedly under the guise of giving her a lift to the hospital. The parking attendant at the hotel told me that vehicle was red. The vehicle McGregor was driving this afternoon, the one he abandoned in the desert, was green.”

Bishop Gillespie nodded thoughtfully. “All right,” he said. “That makes sense. Two vehicles; two people. It’s my understanding, Ms. Reynolds, that you were with Sister Anselm at
the time she was rescued. Was she able to tell you anything about the identity of her attackers?”

Ali shook her head. “No, she was in bad shape by the time I found her, but if she recognized her attacker, she didn’t pass that information along to me. She wasn’t able to.”

“I’m quite confident she would have, had she been able,” Bishop Gillespie said, patting Ali’s hand. “She trusts you implicitly.”

“I’m not sure why,” Ali said.

“Sister Anselm is a very good judge of character,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons she’s good at her job.”

“What about her e-mails to you?” Ali asked. “Did she give you any theories about who might have been behind that initial attack on Mimi Cooper? And did you know Mimi Cooper died earlier this evening?” Ali added as an afterthought.