True Believers (34 page)
Authors: Jane Haddam
“Yes, Krekor, but the archbishop of the time was not a policeman, or even a psychiatrist. He did all the wrong things, yes, but he did them with the best of intentions. The man who came after him, now, that was panic. He wasn't thinking at all. He was only trying to escape.”
“This was the man who tried to effect the cover-up? The last archbishop before this one?”
“That's right, Krekor. But it's all been taken care of now, you know. There has been a settlement.” Tibor clicked at his keyboard again. A window came up that said “WE WON!!!!” “The men were triumphant, but that is to be expected. Some of them had been trying for years to be taken seriously. One of their mothers, too, who had done the unusual thing at the time and told the archdiocese about Father Murphy, she felt vindicated. She has her own web page. Would you like to see it?”
“No,” Gregor said, and then, “thank you,” so as not to be rude.
Tibor looked at him oddly, then clicked the keyboard again. The mug shot disappeared. In its place was a small rectangular billboard that said “Read My Newsgroups!”
“You are all right, Krekor? Does this have something to do with your murder that you are investigating?”
“I don't know.”
“Oh. Well, there is much information if you want it. There are many articles in the local papers and there is an organization, the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Well, you can imagine. But if there is something you want to know, and you
do not feel you can ask the Cardinal about itâ” Tibor shrugged.
do not feel you can ask the Cardinal about itâ” Tibor shrugged.
“I'm going to go buy Bennis a Valentine's Day heart,” Gregor said. “Thank you for all the information. It probably means nothing, but you know how that is. I'm going to see Anne Marie this afternoon, did I tell you that? Henry Lord set it up. She wants to talk to me.”
“It would be of more moment if she wanted to talk to Bennis,” Tibor said. “Or to Christopher, who is coming from California. They will not witness the execution, but they want to be together when it happens. I think it was very wrong of Howard Kashinian to suggest they make popcorn.”
“I think Howard Kashinian is going to be a murder victim one of these days if he keeps it up,” Gregor said. “Okay, Tibor. I'll talk to you later. I have to get something that glows in the dark. Literally.”
“Try Martindale's,” Tibor said solemnly. “They have them the size of blackboards that play music. It is even very bad music.”
Gregor went to Martindale's first, because it was on the way to the station, and then, coming out with the box under his arm, wondered why he wanted to be saddled with the thing halfway across the state. He was going up to the state penitentiary in Henry Lord's car. He could leave the box in the backseat if he wanted to, instead of carrying it with him through the prison. It still seemed odd to him to be carrying a box of chocolates for one sister while going to visit the other on death row. At any rate, the boxes in Martindale's were as big as Tibor had said they were, and covered over with so many ribbons and so much glitter they might as well have been wired for neon. They played music, too: “Yes, Sir, That's My Baby” and “Making Whoopie” being the two favorites. Gregor chose “Yes, Sir, That's My Baby.” All euphemisms for sex embarrassed him, as if there was nothing wrong with committing the act, but something wrong about pretending not to.
He was coming out of Martindale's when he saw the copy
of the Inquirer in a vending machine, with Dan Burdock's picture on the cover, dressed in ceremonial robes and doing something at an altar. Usually, Gregor got the paper either going to or coming from breakfast, but this morning he had been distracted, and he hadn't even seen it. Now he put his money in the slot and got a paper out to give it a better look. Once he had it unfolded he could see that there was another picture, of the outside of St. Stephen's Church, where Roy Phipps and his parishioners were picketing. Roy Phipps looked, Gregor thought, entirely unscathed. No police truncheon had come down on his head during the riot, and he had found clothes in his closet that were cleanly and carefully pressed. Gregor scanned the story. It said nothing much he didn't already know. Dan Burdock and the parishioners of St. Stephen's were giving a private prayer service for the victims of the riot. A public, more elaborate service was scheduled for later in the week. Roy Phipps and his people were protesting the “normalizing” of “perversion,” and intended to be back when the formal service was in session, “to bring a little sanity to these times in this place.” Sanity seemed to include more parishioners dressed in bedsheets and crowned with angel's halos, but that wasn't the kind of thing Gregor thought he could safely go into.
of the Inquirer in a vending machine, with Dan Burdock's picture on the cover, dressed in ceremonial robes and doing something at an altar. Usually, Gregor got the paper either going to or coming from breakfast, but this morning he had been distracted, and he hadn't even seen it. Now he put his money in the slot and got a paper out to give it a better look. Once he had it unfolded he could see that there was another picture, of the outside of St. Stephen's Church, where Roy Phipps and his parishioners were picketing. Roy Phipps looked, Gregor thought, entirely unscathed. No police truncheon had come down on his head during the riot, and he had found clothes in his closet that were cleanly and carefully pressed. Gregor scanned the story. It said nothing much he didn't already know. Dan Burdock and the parishioners of St. Stephen's were giving a private prayer service for the victims of the riot. A public, more elaborate service was scheduled for later in the week. Roy Phipps and his people were protesting the “normalizing” of “perversion,” and intended to be back when the formal service was in session, “to bring a little sanity to these times in this place.” Sanity seemed to include more parishioners dressed in bedsheets and crowned with angel's halos, but that wasn't the kind of thing Gregor thought he could safely go into.
He looked the story over one more time. He folded the paper up and put it under his arm. He went back into Martindale's foyer and headed for the pay phones. Here was a reason to have a cell phone. You could call anyone anytime from the middle of the sidewalk and not have to waste time at a telephone booth.
Except that there were no telephone booths anymore.
Gregor called Henry Lord, and asked, “You've got to go right by St. Stephen's, don't you, to get out of the city from where you are? Could you pick me up there?”
Henry had been willing to pick up Gregor on Cavanaugh Street, which was considerably farther out of the way. He would be more than happy to pick up Gregor at St. Stephen's, even if it meant pulling into the parking lot and searching through the church to find him. Gregor said thank you and took off, turning first left and then right, conscious all the time that neighborhoods changed quickly andâworse, and more annoyingâso did the infrastructure. Whoever it was who had
decided, sometime in the 1950s, that it made sense to put concrete highway overpasses over ordinary city streets must have been on drugs.
decided, sometime in the 1950s, that it made sense to put concrete highway overpasses over ordinary city streets must have been on drugs.
He got to St. Stephen's without incident, although he found himself counting homeless people along the way. There always seemed to be more of them instead of fewer, even in good economies. There was something he had never been called on to deal with. He had never been that kind of policeman, and he was glad he hadn't been. Alcohol and mental illness were beyond his understanding. Drug abuse seemed to him so monumentally stupid he couldn't imagine what it was people were thinking of when they took their first joint or their first shot of heroin. It was like hanging out a twenty-story window screaming:
kill me! kill me
!
kill me! kill me
!
When he got to St. Stephen's, the street was quiet. The doors to both St. Stephen's and St. Anselm's were propped open, but Gregor had the impression that they always were. There was no sign of Roy Phipps or any of his angels, although if Gregor tilted his head the right way he could see the tall white cross on Phipps's town house's front door.
Gregor went into the church and looked around. It was empty. He went to the back and out the back door to the courtyard and saw lights on in the annex. He went across the courtyard to the annex and let himself inside. It was warm and light in here. Most of the office doors were open.
“Can I help you?” somebody said.
Gregor turned to see Chickie George sitting behind a desk in the office to his left. He hadn't recognized the voice, because for some reason Chickie wasn't putting on the camp this morning. “I'm looking for Father Burdock,” Gregor said. “Is he around somewhere?”
“Up the stairs, first office you get to,” Chickie said. “I'd show you up, but I'm being held together by plaster of Paris.”
“So I heard. I hope it isn't too painful.”
“It wouldn't be painful at all if I could use it to sue that son of a bitch up the road. Dan's in. Just tell Mrs. Reed who you are.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Of course I do,” Chickie said, and suddenly the camp was back. “You're the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot.”
Gregor went down the hallâhe had only himself to blame
for that one; he'd been asking for itâand found the stairs with no difficulty. He went up and around, thinking as he did that he was being routed back toward the church proper, and found a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman in a flowered dress, typing away at a computer on a desk.
for that one; he'd been asking for itâand found the stairs with no difficulty. He went up and around, thinking as he did that he was being routed back toward the church proper, and found a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman in a flowered dress, typing away at a computer on a desk.
“Is Father Burdock here?” he asked. “My name isâ”
“Gregor Demarkian,” the woman said.
“Gregor Demarkian,” Dan Burdock said, sticking his head out the door of the inner office. “Hello. Is this the official interrogation? I've been waiting for you.”
“It isn't an interrogation at all,” Gregor told him. “I'm actually on my way to somewhere else. I have a friend picking me up in your parking lot in less than half an hour. It was just something that struck me, that's all, and since you were more or less on the wayâ”
“Sure. Come on in. Mrs. Reed can get you coffee, if you like.”
“No, no. I don't have time for coffee. It really is a small thing.”
Dan Burdock stepped back and shooed Gregor through the door into the inner office. Gregor found himself in a high-ceilinged, paneled room with a wide fireplace, like the libraries in private clubs for men that used to dot the better neighborhoods of the city. There was an enormous leather wing-backed chair just in front of Dan Burdock's desk. Gregor sat down in that and waited for the priest to settle himself.
“Well,” Dan said. “What's the problem? I can't imagine we've done anything in the last few days that hasn't been thoroughly documented on the evening news.”
“You probably haven't. No, it isn't anything you've done. It'sâ” Gregor tried to think of a way to make this sound sensible, and realized he couldn't. “It bothers me, in a way, that you and the Reverend Phipps are on the same block. It seems like too much of a coincidence. So I thought that perhaps it wasn't one.”
“You're right,” Dan said. “It isn't one.”
“So the Reverend Phipps moved into his town house in order to harass St. Stephen's. Was that before or after you became pastor here?”
“I've been pastor here for twenty-five years,” Dan Burdock said. “Roy has only been up the block for the last ten. And
he didn't come to harass St. Stephen's. He came to harass me.”
he didn't come to harass St. Stephen's. He came to harass me.”
“You personally?”
“Got it in one.”
“But why?”
Dan Burdock sighed. “We were in college together,” he said. “At Princeton. We were roommates one year. We were in the same entryway for two years. I'm the one he knows.”
“The one what?”
“Gay man.”
“Are you gay?” Gregor asked.
Dan Burdock sighed again. “Of course I'm gay,” he said. “I'm not practicing, as the church likes to put it, but I'm gay. Everybody knows it. Nobody will talk about it. Except, of course, Roy. Sometimes I think it would be easier if I posted a sign on the church bulletin board out there by the sidewalk that said, âThe pastor of this church is a homosexual. Other homosexuals welcome to worship.' Except that everybody knows that, too. It drives me nuts.”
Gregor nodded. “What about Roy Phipps? Is he also gay?”
“You mean, as a handy explanation for why he feels the need to persecute homosexuals? If you want my private opinion, and that's all it could be, the answer is no. I threaten the hell out of Roy, and I always have, but it's not because he's latent.”
“What is it, then?”
Dan Burdock stood up. “Do you know anything about Roy? I mean, beyond the rhetoric and the newspaper stories about picket lines at gay funerals?”
“No.”
“Well, I do. He came from a dirt-poor family in some backwater hollow in West Virginia, at a time when kids like that didn't get to places like Princeton. He fought his way through high school. He fought his way to a scholarship. He spent four years of college working three jobs and studying his head off and managed to graduate salutatorian of our class. He's a very unusual man, Roy is. He could have been anything. I've always thought of what he did become as a form of reaction formation. He finally couldn't stand it anymore. He wanted to bring us all down. Those of us who didn't have to fight, if you know what I mean.”
“But why pick on homosexuals?”
“I don't think he decided to pick on homosexuals. I think he decided to pick on me. And since I happen to be gayâwell, there it is.”
“He's going to a lot of trouble, just to pick on you.”
“I agree. But I do think that is what this is. I always have. Is that really all you came here to find out? Why Roy took up residence on this block?”
“More or less, yes. And I'm interested in the coincidences. The two churches, for instance, with their layouts so similar, the courtyards, the annexes, the parking lots.”
“Except that St. Anselm's has the school. But that's not a coincidence either,” Dan Burdock said, “and you must have known that. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to live in a world where everybody wanted to be an Episcopalian.”
“I think I lived through that era,” Gregor said. “But then, I'm a lot younger than you are. I'd better go downstairs and make sure my friend isn't freezing in his car in the parking lot. I told him to come in if he didn't see me, but I don't really know what he'll do. Thank you for your time.”
“You're more than welcome. Is there going to be an official interrogation one of these days? With the cops present, and all that sort of thing?”
“I don't know.”
“I've been getting ready for it for days,” Dan Burdock said. “No, longer than that. I've been getting ready for it since I first knew Scott hadn't died a natural death. Does that make any sense to you?”
“Yes. Some.”
“Let me come down with you and see you out.”
Gregor nodded slightly, and Dan Burdock led the way to his own office door. Outside the office windows, the day was already grey and dark, and it wasn't yet noon. It was lucky they hadn't had snow.
Gregor realized, at the last minute, that he'd left the Valentine's Day box on the floor next to the chair he had been sitting in, and went back to get it.
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