holding a pair of heavy-duty cable cutters.
And all the time, lying there, I’d think, Let’s take that ride again.
44
FATHER BOB WAS sitting outside his trailer, smoking a cigar, when I got back to St. Monica’s.
“Out late?” he said.
“Yes, Mother,” I said.
“Cigar?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
He snipped an Arturo Fuente for me, then offered a light. I sat on the other canvas chair. We smoked in silence for a moment.
“Ty, there’s been another e-mail,” Father Bob said.
I paused with the Fuente halfway to my mouth.
“It came in an hour ago. She had me look at it. We’re the only ones who know. I’d rather not have Sister Hildegarde, shall we say, upset.”
“What’d this one say?”
“It’s not so much what it said, but what it showed.” He tilted his head back and looked at the sky. “Why do people still not see the depravity of man?”
“What was it?” I said, no longer interested in cigars or theology.
“There was an attached drawing, showing a vile act on a nun. Along with some doggerel. ‘A young nun from Nantucket’ and so on. Foul.”
“Same e-mail address?”
“Yes. Oh, and the nun in the drawing, it looks like her. Like Sister Mary. Almost as if someone worked off her picture.”
My thumb indented the cigar against my first two fingers. I threw it on the ground. “Where is she?”
“She’s praying. For him.”
“For the guy?”
“That’s what we do,” he said.
“That’s not what I do.” I took out my phone.
Jonathan Blake Blumberg did not give his private number to just anyone. B-2, as he is known in the entrepreneurial business world, is a friend of mine. It happened when I helped him with a divorce problem. He took a liking to me, which is a good thing, because he’s very handy to have around. He produces prototypes and gadgets in a never-ending stream, some of which I get to play with.
You can have your Steve Jobs or your Bill Gates. B-2 is like them, only cooler.
“How you doing, Ty?” Even his voice sounded like it worked out.
I told him what was going on with the e-mails. B-2 has a team of R&D geeks who were writing computer code in their playpens. He told me to forward the messages to him and he’d get somebody on it.
After the call I left Father Bob and went to the chapel. Where I found Sister Mary kneeling behind a pew.
I slipped into it.
She looked up, crossed herself, and said, “Do you know?”
“Father Bob told me. How you holding up?”
“I can’t imagine why this is happening. It’s awful. It’s…”
I wanted to pull her to me and hold her. But the veil was between us and I’d promised to act appropriately. I let my hate for the stalker take over. What I wanted to do to him should not be mentioned anywhere near a church.
“Maybe down at the homeless shelter,” I said. “Somebody who took a liking to you.”
“That could be any number of people.”
“I’m getting B-2 on it, I want you to know. He can do more than the police. If this guy can be found, he’ll find him.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Keep your voice down, please,” she said. “He is someone who needs help, he—”
“Now don’t start in with that Thomas Merton stuff, okay? I can’t—”
“Stuff? It’s not stuff. It’s what makes us human.”
“When it comes to humanity,” I said, “I’m more of a law-of-club-and-fang guy.”
“What?”
“From Call of the Wild. Jack London. If I was standing on a street corner in Louisville, or anywhere else, that’s what I’d see. Everybody out for himself, and ready to take away what’s yours. That’s my revelation.” And had been ever since I’d been beat up looking for Jacqueline’s killers.
Sister Mary looked at her hands. I felt like a jerk.
“Can you hold up?” I said.
She nodded. “As long as it’s just e-mail, but…”
I waited. She looked at me in the dim light of the chapel. Half her face was in shadow. “We both know it’s not going to end at e-mails, don’t we?”
45
PROBABLY NOT.
Which was no doubt why I had trouble sleeping. Thinking of that scum out there, laughing. And then wondering about Merton and how Sister Mary could buy into it and why couldn’t I? Or did I even want to? And in all of that the memory of Thai food and wine and the smell of Kimberly’s hair.
And what did Plato ever have to say about Thai food and soft kisses in the night? The old fart.
I finally drifted off looking at