to do something about them—trace them, test them, whatever?”
“I wouldn’t mind, Your Eminence. It would be the easiest thing in the world.”
“I’m glad you think so,” the Cardinal said. “Now go up to Maryville for me. That won’t be the easiest thing in the world.”
Gregor Demarkian didn’t need the Cardinal to tell him that. Even before he’d seen those anonymous letters, he knew the Cardinal had another world-class mess on his hands. Somehow, the fact that it was also a mess on Gregor Demarkian’s hands seemed, to Gregor, to be entirely natural.
Gregor often thought it was a good thing he hadn’t been born Catholic. He had far too great an inclination to accommodate the princes of the Church as it was. If he were Catholic, he’d have an obligation to accommodate them—and he’d probably never get a full night’s sleep again.
Three
[1]
T HERE WAS AN ANTIQUE grandfather clock along the west wall of the main room of the Maryville Public Library, and when it rang six o’clock that Friday night of March 1, Glinda Daniels felt she’d won a victory. In fact, she felt she’d won two. Getting through the week that followed the death of Brigit Ann Reilly hadn’t been easy. There had been a million and one everyday details to attend to, most of them the result of water damage caused by the flood. Insurance companies to call, replacement carpets to be inspected and priced, St. Patrick’s Day decorations to be cleaned or remade and hung: Glinda would have been going out of her mind with work even if she hadn’t started feeling sick and dizzy every time she had to pass in front of the storeroom door. That was her first victory, that it all got done, in spite of how she felt or how little sleep she’d had. She had been getting very little sleep, and not much rest when she was awake, either. Her head always seemed to be full of dreams, and the dreams followed her. Sometimes, unavoidably back there in that corner of the room, Glinda thought she could hear them, hissing and snapping, getting ready to strike. It was like the only other time she had ever been forced to live through something awful, the other time that she never thought of anymore because it made her head ache. It followed her—there was no other way to describe it—but when she thought about telling other people, she felt struck dumb.
Her second victory had to do with the state of the library itself at six o’clock this Friday night. It had been a big week for library patronage. It might have been so even without the death, because in spite of what Cardinal O’Bannion had told Gregor Demarkian, the news of the beatification of Margaret Finney had not “got a big play” in Maryville before the flood. The Colchester media had made a fuss about it, but the local media hadn’t had a clue. The local paper had been bought out five years ago by a chain based in North Carolina, and their present hand-picked, specially shipped-in editor-in-chief didn’t know a beatification from a banana split. Then there had been the flood and the murder and the snakes. With one thing and another, it wasn’t until the day before yesterday that the paper had got around to mentioning it, and then the inevitable had happened. There were a lot of lost souls out there, the kind of people who watched the 700 Club but not the TV news, the kind of people who pored through the back pages of the papers for messages from God. They were the spiritual cousins of the people who drove thousands of miles to visit the Shrine of the Blessed Taco, and this week they were visiting her library.
Of course, most of the strange people who had wandered into the library this week weren’t in the least interested in the beatification of Margaret Finney. They were following a blood scent to its source—and Glinda thought it a victory within a victory that she had managed not to kill one of them. They slid along the edges of the main room’s walls, trying the doors to the
“I wouldn’t mind, Your Eminence. It would be the easiest thing in the world.”
“I’m glad you think so,” the Cardinal said. “Now go up to Maryville for me. That won’t be the easiest thing in the world.”
Gregor Demarkian didn’t need the Cardinal to tell him that. Even before he’d seen those anonymous letters, he knew the Cardinal had another world-class mess on his hands. Somehow, the fact that it was also a mess on Gregor Demarkian’s hands seemed, to Gregor, to be entirely natural.
Gregor often thought it was a good thing he hadn’t been born Catholic. He had far too great an inclination to accommodate the princes of the Church as it was. If he were Catholic, he’d have an obligation to accommodate them—and he’d probably never get a full night’s sleep again.
Three
[1]
T HERE WAS AN ANTIQUE grandfather clock along the west wall of the main room of the Maryville Public Library, and when it rang six o’clock that Friday night of March 1, Glinda Daniels felt she’d won a victory. In fact, she felt she’d won two. Getting through the week that followed the death of Brigit Ann Reilly hadn’t been easy. There had been a million and one everyday details to attend to, most of them the result of water damage caused by the flood. Insurance companies to call, replacement carpets to be inspected and priced, St. Patrick’s Day decorations to be cleaned or remade and hung: Glinda would have been going out of her mind with work even if she hadn’t started feeling sick and dizzy every time she had to pass in front of the storeroom door. That was her first victory, that it all got done, in spite of how she felt or how little sleep she’d had. She had been getting very little sleep, and not much rest when she was awake, either. Her head always seemed to be full of dreams, and the dreams followed her. Sometimes, unavoidably back there in that corner of the room, Glinda thought she could hear them, hissing and snapping, getting ready to strike. It was like the only other time she had ever been forced to live through something awful, the other time that she never thought of anymore because it made her head ache. It followed her—there was no other way to describe it—but when she thought about telling other people, she felt struck dumb.
Her second victory had to do with the state of the library itself at six o’clock this Friday night. It had been a big week for library patronage. It might have been so even without the death, because in spite of what Cardinal O’Bannion had told Gregor Demarkian, the news of the beatification of Margaret Finney had not “got a big play” in Maryville before the flood. The Colchester media had made a fuss about it, but the local media hadn’t had a clue. The local paper had been bought out five years ago by a chain based in North Carolina, and their present hand-picked, specially shipped-in editor-in-chief didn’t know a beatification from a banana split. Then there had been the flood and the murder and the snakes. With one thing and another, it wasn’t until the day before yesterday that the paper had got around to mentioning it, and then the inevitable had happened. There were a lot of lost souls out there, the kind of people who watched the 700 Club but not the TV news, the kind of people who pored through the back pages of the papers for messages from God. They were the spiritual cousins of the people who drove thousands of miles to visit the Shrine of the Blessed Taco, and this week they were visiting her library.
Of course, most of the strange people who had wandered into the library this week weren’t in the least interested in the beatification of Margaret Finney. They were following a blood scent to its source—and Glinda thought it a victory within a victory that she had managed not to kill one of them. They slid along the edges of the main room’s walls, trying the doors to the
Similar Books
