Even if Casey can’t fight off the growing urge until it’s time to deal with Rowan Mundy, nothing can happen so close to home again. Breaking the self--imposed rule once was daring enough. Twice wouldn’t be daring, it would be stupid; maybe even disastrous.
Having studied the methodology of the Sleeping Beauty Killer and other famously elusive and equally brilliant murderers, Casey is well aware that they managed to evade capture because they remained focused and methodical.
Ted Bundy started out that way, but then he sloppily escalated his crimes and failed to resist the allure of an entire sorority house filled with women. That disorganized spree proved to be his undoing.
It won’t happen to me. I’m much stronger than he was, much smarter.
They’ll never catch me. Never.
Five minutes late for noon Mass, Noreen steps out of her car and hurries through the wet snow toward Saint Ignatius by the Bay.
At least she made it this week. It’s been a while—-was it October, maybe?—-since she’s attended Mass.
Things have been too hectic at home.
Not that that’s an acceptable excuse. Even when the kids were babies, or later when all four were playing sports, they almost always managed to get to church together as a family. Sometimes it took so much effort to get six -people out the door on Sunday mornings—-five of them complaining—-that she’d wonder why she bothered to insist. But then they’d slip into their pew and that familiar sense of peace would settle over her, and she’d know it had been worthwhile.
These days, Noreen attends Mass alone, if at all. And when she does, she’s not so sure that it’s even worthwhile. Ever the respectable Catholic, she doesn’t like to be reminded that she’s committed mortal sins, or where those sins—-past and upcoming—-place her in the eyes of the church. But you can hardly forget that something is amiss when you’re hurrying alone up the wide steps where you posed as a bride twenty--three years ago—-and later, cradling four different babies in white christening gowns.
She remembers her father’s initial distress when she told him that she wouldn’t be getting married at Holy Angels in Mundy’s Landing. He was more upset about that, at the time, than he was a year later when Rowan married a Protestant.
He eventually came around when Noreen explained that she didn’t want to walk down the very aisle where her mother’s casket had made its final journey.
“Last time I set foot in that church was the saddest day of my life, Dad. I don’t want to get married there.”
How could he argue with that?
Of course, she didn’t tell him that she also happened to prefer the aesthetic of this elegant brick structure overlooking the Long Island Sound to her hometown parish. Unlike the stone and stucco Protestant churches that preside over the Village Common, Holy Angels is a small clapboard structure perched like an afterthought on a side street in The Heights.
According to Rowan, who’s still a member there, not much has changed at the old church over the years. Anyone who doesn’t arrive half an hour early Christmas and Easter to get a spot in the pews still winds up sitting along the wall in folding chairs, or standing conspicuously in the aisles. The Carmichael family invariably stood, much to Noreen’s humiliation. Rowan told her that the Mundy family now does the same, but it doesn’t seem to bother her or her kids.
Nor does she seem to mind that the Holy Angels congregation is perpetually in fund--raiser mode, always trying to replace or repair something: choir robes, hymnals, the notoriously leaky roof. When Rowan and Jake were married in the church on a rainy day—-which was supposedly good luck—-the flower arrangements had to be strategically placed on the altar to catch the drips from the ceiling, and the Communion host became as soggy as the bride’s veil. That would never have happened here at the cathedral--like Saint Ignatius, even if the weather hadn’t been picture--perfect on Noreen’s wedding day.