“Give me the register for the week before, too,” Gordon said. “Just to be sure.”
“Right.” Father Burns unclipped the pages from the clipboard and carried them to the copying machine. As the machine whirred away, spitting out the two pages, Father Gervase again was struck with doubt about the wisdom of giving the names out. There were seven names.
“Just these?” Gordon asked.
“Yes. It was early in the summer, so we hadn’t begun to use it as much as we usually do. For small weddings. Christenings. That kind of thing.”
The detective scanned the pages. “And these seven people are the only ones who had access to the chapel during those two weeks?”
Father Burns looked at the page. “Yes. Except for Father Gervase and me, of course. And Wayne Jervis.”
“Jervis. You say he’s the custodian?”
“Yes. Part-time.” Father Gervase watched as Gordon penned in Jervis’s name on the list. “He comes in Saturday mornings to do a little maintenance and to clean the chapel.”
“Well, that should narrow the time frame for when the object was left there,” Father Burns added.
“And the people on this list would all be parishioners?”
“Yes.”
Gordon pointed to the last name on the list. “And this one too?”
“Well, the family are parishioners.”
“But they aren’t regulars,” Father Burns said.
Father Gervase stared at the finger still pointing to the last name and was swept by a chill of foreboding.
Duane LaBrea.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“We are looking for Duane LaBrea.”
Rain recognized the policemen standing at the door. They were the same two who had questioned her after Lucy disappeared, and then a second time after Lucy’s body had been found in the woods at the edge of town.
“We understand you were her best friend,” one of them had said, the one who’d made her nervous because he was the kinder and, she had sensed immediately, the smarter one. “We know how best friends tell each other secrets,” he had said with a smile that hadn’t fooled her for an instant. “We need to know anything Lucy might have told you. Even if you promised not to tell.”
“No, nothing,” she had lied. She’d thought that would be the end of it. Lucy’s secret was safe with her.
Instead, to her amazement, they were now asking for Duane. Even surprised, Rain couldn’t contain a smile. What the hell kind of trouble had Duane gotten himself into that brought police to their house? The police, for God’s sake. So her mother’s Golden Boy of the decade, the model for a saint, wasn’t so damn perfect after all. Too bad her mother had gone shopping and wasn’t here to witness this. But then her mother would probably have ushered the policemen in, offered them coffee, and waited for them to inform her that Duane was receiving some special, fabulous citizen-of-the-year award or something. That was how pathetically delusional her mother was. The only prize Rain could imagine Duane winning was for lamest seventeen-year-old on the planet. In the galaxy. In the universe. “Just a sec,” she said and left them on the porch to descend to her brother’s basement lair, where he was doing whatever the hell he did down there. Predictably, the door to his room was closed and locked. Apparently their mother didn’t have a problem with him locking his door. Not Duane the saint. Oh, wait. The ex-saint.
“Duane?” She heard music. Something predictable lame. An old Queen album, the volume low per their mother’s running order so she didn’t have to put up with the noise. “Duane. I know you’re in there.”
There was a slight rustling on the other side of the door. The music stopped.
“Duane, damn it, open up.”
“What do you want?”
“I’ll tell you when you open the door.”
“Just go away.”
“And what? You want me to send the police down here to get you?”
“The what?”
“The police. The cops. There are two of them waiting on the front porch, and they want to see you.”
The lock clicked open. Duane wore only a pair of old boxer shorts in a faded pink. Since he started doing his own laundry and no matter how many times their mother told him the correct way to do the wash—another of their mother’s rules: always separate the white clothes from the colored—his clothes were weird shades of blue or red or, once, purple. There was a crease slashing his cheek where it had been pressed against the pillow. She avoided looking over at his bed. If he’d been down here watching porn and jerking off she sure as hell didn’t want to know.
“Police?” His voice cracked like he was twelve. “Here?”
“Right.”
“What do they want?”
“Have you gone completely deaf? They want to see you.”
“Jesus.” He thought a minute, then dropped his voice to a whisper. “Look, tell them I’m not here. Tell them you forgot and I’m at work or you don’t know where I am. Okay? Just tell them something.”
She wanted to tell him that she wouldn’t lie for him, especially not to the police, but he looked so genuinely scared that she caved.
The two policemen hadn’t moved from where she’d left them on the front porch.
“He’s sleeping.” Okay a lie, but not a big fat one. Not a criminal one. Definitely landed in the fib category.
“I see,” the smaller one said, the one she instinctively was more leery of. “Okay, Rain. We’ll wait while you go wake him up.”
“You want me to wake him up?” She hadn’t planned on their persistence. What the hell had Duane done?
“And if you don’t mind, we’ll step inside while you get him,” said the other one. “Get out of this heat.”
“Okay,” she said. Though it was most definitely not okay. Without her knowing how it had happened, the power had shifted and they were running the show. She wished her dad was home. He’d know how to handle this. She descended to the basement, where she was again met by a closed door.
“Duane. Open the fucking door.”
“Did you get rid of them?” Again the conspiratorial whisper.
“I told them you were sleeping.”
“And they left?”
“No. They told me to wake you up. They’re waiting in the front hall.”
He yanked open the door. “Jesus, Rainy.”
He hadn’t called her that in ages, and suddenly it was like they were again children and had gotten in trouble with their mother. “Why are they here anyway, Duane? What do they want?”
“Shit, I don’t know.” He pawed through a pile of laundry on the floor and pulled out a pair of khakis. They were badly wrinkled, and there was a smear of chocolate ice cream on the thigh, but he stepped into them anyway. She looked at his concave chest, counted his ribs. When had he gotten so thin? Was he using drugs? Was that why he’d lost weight? Was that what had brought the police to their house?