At Home in the Dark Page 27

  “Why would you suspect such a thing?”

  Janet wiped her eyes. “Abby was pregnant.”

  “What? Abby told you that?”

  “No, Father. The police did. It came up in the autopsy.” She choked on that last word.

  “The child might’ve been her husband’s,” I pointed out.

  “No. Abby didn’t see Frank at all. She told me she didn’t.” Janet gazed at me. “What did Abby say to you?”

  “It wasn’t anything she said outright,” I explained. “It was her attitude. Whenever I visited her in the past few weeks, she was in a much more forgiving frame of mind about Frank. She believed he was capable of change, I think.” I was silent for a moment. “I saw vases of daisies in her suite a couple of times. I suppose I simply assumed that they were from Frank. That was the flower they used at their wedding.”

  “She seemed so happy, before she died,” Janet said softly. “Glowing. Almost as if she were in love. That wasn’t because of Frank. She didn’t love him anymore. A mother knows these things.”

  “You haven’t said anything about this, have you?” I asked. “It’s not anyone’s business, but of course people might wonder . . .”

  “No. I don’t want her good name ruined. There are people who might think what that bastard—her husband, I mean—did to her was justified.”

  “No one would ever think that.”

  “Some people are cruel, Father. Abby was a good girl, but she . . . she had her flaws.”

  “We all do,” I told her, speaking softly but with a firmness I hoped would comfort her. “We are all flawed creatures, yet the Lord loves us nonetheless.”

  • • •

  The visitation started at three that afternoon. I stayed for the first two hours, offering comfort when I could. Abby had been an only child, but she had relatives on three continents, so her parents planned two days of visitation before her funeral to allow everyone to arrive in time. I left at five o’clock, stopping by my office at the church, as it was only six blocks from the funeral home. To my surprise, my secretary, Millie Tamliss, was still at her desk. She was seventy-two years old, with white hair and faded blue eyes. Her bones were only slightly larger than a sparrow’s, and she seemed to live on air. In the years since I’d come to the parish, I’d never observed her eating or drinking.

  “Good evening, Father. How was it?”

  “Very sad. So many people came by to pay their respects. No one can quite believe it.”

  “I still can’t, myself. Poor girl. It’s heartbreaking.” She clicked open her black patent purse, extracted a tissue, and blew her nose. “Just so you know, Father, there’s something wrong with the phone line. It’s been ringing off the hook for the past hour, but no one’s there when I answer.”

  “Technology. Never reliable when you need it to be.” I resisted the urge to glance at my watch. Mildred normally left the office by four, or four-thirty at the latest. Whoever was calling wasn’t expecting her to answer. “Thank you for staying so late. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I thought it would be best. On account of the gentleman.”

  “What gentleman?”

  “He’s in your office.”

  I glanced at my door, which was closed all but an inch. My stomach churned slightly. Before I could ask her anything else, Mildred was up on her spindly legs. “I’m off to pay my respects to the Killingsworths,” she announced. “Good night, Father.”

  “Good night,” I murmured, and turned to my office. It was six steps from Mildred’s desk. When I opened the door, I found a tall man in a suit studying my bookcase. His head swiveled in my direction. His thin face was narrowed to such a sharp point, it looked as if it had once been caught in a door.

  “Good evening, Father Byrne,” he said. “I’m Detective Reed. We talked on the phone a couple times.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, recognizing his voice. “Have you brought Frank DeSilva into custody?”

  Frank was Abby’s estranged husband, the man who went to the small hotel where Abby was renting a room and beat her to death. There had never been any doubt about who had murdered Abby. Frank was on camera entering the hotel, then departing with blood on his weathered hands and white shirt.

  Reed shook his head. “He’s still in the wind. I need to ask you a few more questions.”

  He was alone, which surprised me. I’d thought police officers did everything in pairs, like creatures bound for Noah’s Ark.

  “Of course. Would you care for some tea?”

  “No, thanks.”

  I sat at my desk, surreptitiously checking to see if anything had been moved. The screen of my computer was on, which meant he’d touched it, though it was stuck on the password screen. “How can I help you?” I asked.

  Reed stayed on his feet. “We’re having trouble getting a bead on Frank DeSilva. His parents are dead, and he’s got no family in the area.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know his friends.”

  “That’s okay. I’d like you to tell me about Abby’s relationship with her husband.”

  “I’m the priest who married them.” I took a breath. “I’ve known Abby since I came to this parish seven years ago. She was a teenager then, fifteen or sixteen. Frank, I only met two years ago, when they became engaged and came to me for pre-marital counselling.” I stared at my hands. “I didn’t know that he was abusive towards her, not back then. I’m not even sure that he was abusive at that time. From what Abby told me, he started beating her after they came home from their honeymoon.” I frowned, remembering exactly what Abby had told me about it. “There was a sporting event on television, a rugby match or something like it. Frank wanted to watch it and Abby had promised they would have dinner with her parents. That was the first time he hit her.”

  “Football,” the detective corrected me. “It was football.”

  “That’s it. But since you already know the story, why ask me?”

  “It’s often helpful to get different perspectives on the same event,” Reed said.

  “I see. Well, I didn’t know what had transpired at the time. Abby came to church on a regular basis, but Frank rarely showed up. Christmas and Easter, those were the only times I saw him the year after they married. Then Abby suddenly left him. Her family was upset. They’re very conservative.”

  “Yes, I’ve met them, Father.”

  His mouth twisted on that last word, and he frowned. I knew he was raised a Catholic from the way he addressed me. Perhaps he’d been an altar boy once.

  “Abby’s parents asked me to speak with her,” I continued. “’Talk sense into her,’ that was how they put it. I did, but then . . .”

  My mouth was suddenly dry. I could still remember Abby, standing in my office in the exact spot the detective stood now, pulling off the cardigan she wore despite the summer heat, revealing an angry pattern of tangled red scars on her shoulder. Frank shoved me against a hot stove because he lost money on a poker game, Abby had cried out to me. You’re telling me that I should go back to the man who did this to me?

  “What is it?” Reed prompted me.

  “When I counseled Abby, she told me about her husband’s abuse. She told me things that still make me feel sick inside.” I exhaled sharply. “It is my duty to love all of God’s children, but I was horrified by what Frank had done.”

  “Did she show you any evidence?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Did she show you any evidence? Photographs, video, anything like that?”

  I blinked at him. “I took Abby’s word for the truth, Detective. She was deeply shaken by what her husband had done.”

  “I didn’t mean to suggest that we don’t believe she was abused,” Reed clarified. “But Abby only reported the abuse to you and to her parents. We’ve been interviewing her friends, and none of them knew anything about it. She admitted to her best friend that Frank had problems with drinking and gambling. Nothing about the violence.”

  “Abby was an intens
ely private young woman,” I said. “Honestly, I think she had trouble believing the violence happened. That sort of thing wasn’t supposed to occur in her world.”

  “Her parents were glad that she could confide in you.”

  “When she told me, I suddenly understood why she’d had so many inexplicable accidents. I remember her coming to church with a cast on one wrist, and later, on crutches one time. It all made sense when she told me the truth.”

  “What happened after Abby left Frank?”

  “She moved back into her parents’ home. She wanted to finish her university degree, since she hadn’t graduated. Unfortunately, Frank would show up on their doorstep, demanding to see Abby. I know he sent her flowers. He tried to win her back. Their courtship had been a whirlwind, and he tried to re-create that.”

  “Did Abby call it a whirlwind?”

  “No. Janet—Abby’s mother—used that word. She talked to me when the pre-marital counselling started. She was concerned about Abby getting involved too quickly.”

  “She had doubts about Frank?”

  “Yes. She never liked him, but her primary concern was that the relationship was moving too fast, and that Abby always leapt before she looked. She made snap decisions, sometimes to her detriment.” I sighed. “Abby chose to leave her parents’ home because Frank wouldn’t let her alone there. Her parents supported her. They didn’t want Abby to be harassed.”

  “And that’s how Abby ended up at the Griffin Hotel. Nice place, maybe on the old-fashioned side. How far is it from here, maybe a fifteen-minute walk?”

  The phone on my desk started to ring. I gave it a sidelong glance, then turned my attention back to the detective.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” he asked.

  “Mildred said there was a problem with the phone,” I murmured, but I picked it up. “Hello?” I said.

  “Father, I’m so glad you answered,” said the voice on the other end. “I need . . .”

  “Hello?” I said again. “Detective, I believe there is a problem with this phone line.” I hung up. “I’m sorry, where were we?”

  “Why don’t you tell me about Frank DeSilva. The Killingsworths told me that he came to see you.”

  “Yes. When Frank couldn’t find Abby at her parents’ home any longer, he decided to come here.” I took a breath, remembering the first time Frank had shown up solo at my office. He wore a well-cut dark suit and an expensive watch and cufflinks, but he reeked of desperation, and his eyes were dark and hollow. Please, Father, help me get my wife back. Help her come to her senses, he had begged me. “I offered him my counsel.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “I told him he needed anger-management counselling and help with his gambling and his drinking,” I said. “I told him flatly that his wife would never come back if he couldn’t be a proper husband.”

  “You believed Abby should go back to him?” Reed asked.

  “I believe in forgiveness,” I told him. “I believe in redemption.”

  “You thought Abby should forgive her husband?”

  “Yes, for her own peace of mind. But I didn’t believe they could live together again unless Frank changed.”

  “Tell me about Frank’s visit to your office the day that Abby died,” he said.

  “We spoke about this on the phone already.”

  “True, but even the smallest detail might help.”

  I steepled my fingers together, conjuring up the memory. Frank had looked well the last time I’d laid eyes on him. He’d lost some weight when he stopped drinking, and he had an aura of fragile, almost boyish, hope. “Frank cared a tremendous deal about appearances,” I said. “He came in, dressed in his best, hair neatly cut and such. He believed he was ready to be reconciled with Abby. It had been six months since she left him. I counselled him on patience.” I paused again, remembering how I’d congratulated Frank, only my words had made his face pale. I pushed the thought away. “Frank didn’t like to be told he couldn’t have something he wanted, right when he wanted it.”

  “Your secretary, Mildred Tamliss, told me you left Frank in your office for a few minutes, and then Frank came running out like the devil was after him.”

  I rocked back in my chair, genuinely startled that Millie would be so indiscreet. “I had some literature I wanted to give him about anger-management therapy. I asked him to pray while I went to retrieve it. When I came back, Frank was gone.”

  “Here’s what I’m struggling with,” Reed said. “After Frank DeSilva left your office, he went to his estranged wife’s place and beat her to death. I want to understand how that happened. Something in your conversation must’ve set him off.”

  I frowned at that. “You want to blame me for what Frank did?”

  “Of course not. But something happened.”

  I shook my head. “I understand that my telling Frank he couldn’t have what he wanted upset him. I take responsibility for that. Perhaps I could have . . . said something different. Perhaps I should have been kinder. Frank believed that he had done enough work on himself and he was entitled to his reward, which was Abby. I attempted to explain to him that the world didn’t work that way.”

  “Did you tell him where he could find Abby?”

  “Of course not.” I rose to my feet. “You’re leaving out part of the story. Frank left my office and went to a bar. At least, that’s what you said on the phone.”

  He ignored that. “Did you know that Abby Killingsworth was pregnant when she died?”

  “Yes.”

  “She told you?”

  “Her mother did, this morning.”

  Reed’s jaw tightened. It was obvious that he was disappointed. He had hoped to shake me with the news, and he had failed.

  Still, he didn’t give up. “Who was the father of the child?”

  “How could I possibly know that?”

  “Well, Father, Abby was living at a hotel for the past four months, so she didn’t have neighbors who could identify you, but the hotel staff certainly does.”

  I’d been well aware, from the way he watched me and his abrupt manner, that he disliked me. There it was, suddenly, the real reason for his poisonous suspicion. It rocked me inside, though I was determined not to show it on my face. How dare he make such an assumption about me? What possible grounds could he have for it?

  “I visited Abby every week,” I said. “I listened to her confession. I gave her communion. She was afraid to come to church, in case her husband might surprise her there.”

  “Surely there are other churches she could’ve gone to, Father. Yours wasn’t the only one.”

  “Abby needed support at a difficult time in her life. I am a longtime friend of her family. I wasn’t about to abandon her in her time of need.”

  “How devoted of you. Didn’t you comfort her?”

  “Not in the way you’re suggesting.”

  Reed’s mouth twitched up in a rough facsimile of a smile. “I wouldn’t blame you, Father. This isn’t like those sicko priests molesting children. It’s not a crime if you had a relationship with Abby. You’re a good-looking guy. What are you, thirty-nine? Forty?”

  “It’s time for you to leave,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “Have a good evening, Detective.”

  • • •

  The next morning, I went to see Bishop Calton. He was a man I knew well, one with a fondness for dachshunds and Tolstoy and gin, but this wasn’t a social call. He kept me waiting for half an hour in his library, a grand wood-paneled room with a vaulted ceiling and a ladder stretching two stories up. I was so engrossed I didn’t hear him enter.

  “Every time you come here, I feel like you’re measuring the curtains, Michael.” Calton was a red-cheeked elf of a man with a cap of wild white hair that appeared impervious to combing.

  “Good morning, Your Excellency. Thank you for seeing me on short notice.”

  “I have an appointment at noon, so let’s keep this brief.”

  “We have a
problem. His name is Detective William Reed.”

  “I don’t know the name.”

  “He’s investigating the murder of one of my parishioners,” I explained. “A woman named Abby Killingsworth, who was murdered by her husband. It should be an open-and-shut case. She was murdered in a hotel. There’s video evidence. DNA evidence.”

  “What a sad circumstance,” the bishop murmured.

  “He came to see me last night. In the course of our interview, he made some odious statements about priests. Or rather, sicko priests, as he called them.”

  The bishop’s white eyebrows shot heavenwards in alarm. “What does child abuse have to do with this case?”

  “Absolutely nothing. But his hatred of the Church was palpable,” I said. “Abby and her family are very involved in the church. I have the sense that he’s trying to blame the Church for what happened.”

  “That won’t do,” the bishop said. “Not at all. What did you say his name was again?”

  “Detective William Reed.”

  “We don’t have the pull we used to,” the bishop said. “However, if this detective is making statements against the Church and clergy in the course of his investigation, he must be removed.”

  “I agree heartily,” I said. It was always important to allow the bishop to claim credit for whatever idea you came to him with. I’d learned that some years earlier.

  We spoke only briefly after that. I drove back to the parish house and parked the car. I retrieved the mail and noticed, amid the advertisements, a hand-addressed envelope with no return address. I tore it open and found a note on plain white paper, written in a childish block print and replete with misspellings.

  I’m desparate, Father. I don’t know who else to turn to. Call me.

  There was a telephone number I didn’t recognize underneath. I stared at it, then went into the house and burned the missive and its cover. I didn’t want to speak with Frank again. I didn’t want to listen to his confession and hear him sob. I didn’t want to have him describe the gory details of what he’d done to his wife, and how it hadn’t really been his fault, because the alcohol always clouded his judgment and made him lose control. He would find a way to blame everyone else for the terrible choices he’d made, and for committing a horrific act of murder. Now that Abby was gone, I wished that he would vanish as well. There was no comfort I could offer him. I dropped the little ash-heap into the kitchen garbage, wiped my eyes, and headed to the funeral home for the second day of Abby’s visitation.