Body Of Truth (10 page)

Authors: Deirdre Savoy

BOOK: Body Of Truth

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She nodded. “Maybe I'm just a little burned out. Maybe I just really, really needed that vacation.”

“Maybe you just needed someone to talk to.”

Maybe, but she wasn't sure she was ready to admit that yet. Joanna had accused her of acting like she didn't need anybody, and Dana couldn't deny it. She didn't want to need anybody, not to the point where she became one of those women like Nadine and her mother, simultaneously victim and predator. She knew that was one of the things she needed to work on in herself, but hadn't gotten very far with it. But she had to acknowledge that she did feel better having spoken aloud the feelings she'd bottled up inside for so long. “Thanks for listening, Father.”

“Anytime. But you have to promise to do something for me.”

“What's that?”

“Stop calling me âFather.' The way you say it makes me sound as if I've been dead long enough to be canonized.”

For the first time that day, she laughed. “What should I call you then?”

“Just Mike will do.”

“Okay, Just Mike,” she said and heard him chuckle. She settled back against her seat, looking out her window at the passing scenery while she contemplated her growing friendship with a priest.

On the ride back to the city, Jonathan got a call from Ferguson in the tech department letting him know they'd broken the password on Amanda Pierce's computer. He damn sure hoped there was something pertinent on it or on the numerous CDs they'd culled from her apartment, as their one good lead had bitten the dust that morning.

Ferguson, the chief tech, was waiting for them when he and Mari arrived. The other techs called him Porcupine because he had a habit of running his hand through his short black hair in a way that made it stand on end. He motioned for them to take seats next to his work station.

“What have you got?” Jonathan asked.

“I got plenty, but you'll have to figure out what it all means.”

“That's why they pay us the big salaries,” Mari said.

“Yeah, right.” Ferguson pressed a few keys on the computer. One thing I'll say for this lady, she has a devious mind. Wanna know what her password was?”

If Jonathan had bothered to give an answer, it would have been, âNot particularly.' But Ferguson seemed intent on dazzling them with his brilliance, or maybe it was only Mari he wanted to impress, as his gaze rested solely on her.

“Sure.”

“Archipelago. A body of land surrounded by water on three sides. You know, the Bronx is the only borough that isn't an island. It's an archipelago.”

Jonathan slid a glance at Mari, who looked back with a blank stare. For want of anything better, Jonathan said, “Okay.”

“Well,” Ferguson ran his hand through his hair. “Since you wanted to know what she'd been working on, I focused on the last files she started. Most of it is on one CD, a lot of information about someone named Brendan Malone, a priest who died in nineteen eighty something.”

Jonathan remembered seeing something about the man in the files they'd taken from Pierce's office. But those clippings had already yellowed with age, leading him to believe that they bore no relation to her current work.

“Malone had presided over a small church in the 140s,” Ferguson continued. “St. Jude's.”

Jonathan touched the medal that rested against his collarbone. His sister had given it to him the day he graduated from the academy. St. Judeâthe patron saint of cops and lost causes, which were often one and the same thing.

“What did Pierce want with him? Another priest pedophile?”

“Yeah, that was my first thought,” Ferguson said. “But if that was her angle I don't see any evidence of it. Mostly it seems to have something to do with some housing development. That's the weird part. He seemed to have some sort of financial involvement. Aren't priests supposed to take a vow of poverty?”

“Them and every other working stiff in the city,” Mari shot back.

“Well, that's as far as I got.” He reached under his console. “I took the liberty of printing out most of this stuff for you. I know how much you detectives like paper.”

Mari took the folder from him. “Gee, thanks, Fergie.”

“Anytime.”

“Cultivating a fan club?” Jonathan teased as they walked away.

“What else have I got to do with myself?” They stopped at the elevators. Mari pulled open the file. A copy of the CD lay on top of the sheaf of papers. “Here's what I don't get. Pierce is used to going after the Sinatras of the world, cultural icons. What was she doing slumming with the boys from the barrio, pedophile or no?”

“I guess that's what we're about to find out.” The cell phone clipped to his belt rumbled. Jonathan checked the readout, not entirely surprised to see his brother Adam's number. He accepted the call and brought the phone to his ear. “What's up?”

“Zack just called me. Ray took Joanna to the hospital. She's in labor.”

Uneasiness settled in Jonathan's belly. Joanna wasn't due for three weeks. He wondered how this turn of events boded for his sister. “How's she doing?” he asked, but Adam had already hung up.

Damn. That was his brother. Why bother to have an actual conversation when a few grunted words would do? But whatever was going on with Joanna must be serious for Adam to bother to call. Ten minutes later, he was in his car headed for St. Lawrence Hospital in Westchester.

Eight

“Come on, Joanna, breathe with me,” Ray urged his wife.

“I don't want to do any goddamn Lamaze. I want the baby to come.”

Dana stood on the opposite side of Joanna's hospital bed, watching the exchange between the couple. She'd been at their house when Joanna had gone into labor and had come with her and Ray to the hospital.

“I know, baby, I know.”

Dana suspected he also knew what Joanna was too preoccupied with the birth to notice. A moment ago, a new team of hospital personnel had entered the room, including an anesthesiologist and a surgical nurse. They intended to take the baby.

Joanna's doctor, a tall woman with a horse's long face and a mane of long dark hair re-entered the room. Dana moved out of the way so that the woman could come to stand by Joanna's bedside.

“Joanna,” she said in a kind voice. “The baby's in trouble. We need to do a C-section.”

Joanna nodded gravely. “All right.”

The doctor patted her hand. “Don't you worry. Everything will go just fine.”

The doctor moved off and Dana went back to her spot. She knew the first step would be to give Joanna the epidural she'd refused earlier. The doctor would need quiet and solitude for that. “I'll go see if Adam has gotten here yet,” Dana volunteered. When Joanna went into labor, they'd dropped the boys at Adam's house. Adam said he'd follow them to the hospital as soon as his wife, Barbara, showed up to spell him.

Joanna nodded. “But you're coming back, right?”

Dana offered her friend her most solicitous smile. “You don't think I'd miss my godchild being born, do you?”

She winked at Joanna, then left.

She found both of Joanna's older brothers waiting in the small area outside the room. Zack was sitting in one of the chairs, his arms folded, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his eyes closed, looking on the verge of sleep if he hadn't succumbed already. Adam paced with his hands fisted, a grim expression on his face.

Those were Joanna's brother's: as different as night and day, from A to Z, as far apart as their initials suggested. As she walked toward them, she wondered where Jonathan fit into that equation, how he dealt with having these two men for brothers. He struck her as being as intense as Adam, but definitely his own man, not a replica of either of his brothers.

“How is she?”

That came from Zack, the supposedly laid-back one. “She's fine, but the baby's not coming. They did an enzyme test to assess the amount of oxygen the baby is getting and it looks like the baby's in distress. They're going to perform a C-section.”

Both men nodded. Adam sighed. “I called Jonathan a few moments ago. I figured all those grim-faced doctors heading into Joanna's room couldn't be a good thing. He should be here soon.”

Dana nodded, not knowing what to say to that bit of news. “I'd better get back before Joanna misses me.”

Since neither man objected, she pivoted and went back to Joanna. The doctors had just begun to prep her for surgery when she got back. She silently slipped back to the same spot she'd occupied before, at the head of the bed. Joanna had asked her to come back, but she didn't really need her. Joanna's attention was totally taken up by her husband, who held her hand and whispered words of comfort and encouragement.

She had to admit Ray surprised her. His devotion to Joanna throughout the birth had been remarkable. Or maybe he was just such a drastic improvement from Joanna's first husband, who'd been out drinking when their first child was born and with another woman for their second.

That infidelity, which the bastard hadn't bothered to try to cover up, had been the death knell for the marriage. Joanna had ended up with a toddler and a new baby to raise alone. To this day, he hadn't paid one dime in child support, not that he'd ever been a big fan of holding down a job. He lived off women, not the other way around.

In between him and Ray, there had been a string of other men, none of them worth a good damn among them. Joanna was smart enough to not have brought any of them around her children, but Dana had met a few of them and disliked them all. Joanna seemed to be on a self-destruct mission that Dana had been powerless to help her friend through, except as being a shoulder to cry on when yet another son-of-a-bitch showed his true colors.

Dana knew that's why she'd been so hard on Ray right from the beginning. She'd been waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop, waiting for Joanna to call her to say Ray was married, or cheating on her, or he drank too much or hit her. Whatever it might be this time that would end the relationship and send Joanna into another depression.

But that call had never come. So far, Ray had done everything right. He treated Joanna like a queen, he was good to her children, he came home at night. Considering his present devotion to his wife, maybe it was time she cut him the slack he asked for.

The sound of the doctor's voice snapped Dana out of her musings. “It's a girl, Joanna. A girl.”

Dana beamed at her friend as the numerous staff members in the room gave up a cheer. After having two boys, she knew this was what Joanna had hoped for.

After a few moments, the pediatrician handed Joanna the baby wrapped in a pink, white and blue blanket with a pink stocking cap on her tiny head. Dana touched her fingers to the tiny cap. “She's beautiful, Joanna.”

Teary-eyed, Joanna beamed back. “Isn't she?” The baby smacked her lips while rooting around for something to suck on. “And hungry.” With Ray's help, Joanna adjusted her gown to offer the baby her breast. The baby latched on and began to feed.

“Ouch. This is the worst part,” Joanna said as if she were imparting news. “The first few days are murder.”

“That's what I hear.”

“You could do more than hear about it if you'd . . .
ouch
. That's human flesh you're munching on, baby.”

Dana offered up silent thanks to the baby for distracting her mother from her intended topic of conversation. She intended to distract her further. “What are you going to name her?”

Joanna glanced at her husband, then back again. “We've been having the great debate over that. If it was a girl, he wanted to name her after his mother, Sarah. I wanted to name her after mine, Elizabeth. Right now, Sarah Elizabeth sounds fine to me. What do you think, Ray?”

For a moment, husband and wife exchanged a look. “Whatever you want, baby. You're the one who did all the work.”

Joanna laughed. “And don't you forget that, either, bub.”

Within a few minutes, the room had cleared and an orderly came to transport Joanna and the baby to their room. Dana stayed behind on the pretext of checking to make sure they hadn't left anything behind. Truthfully, she wanted to give mom and dad and baby a moment to bond without outside interference. And even more than that, she wanted to settle her own emotions.

She was relieved that the baby was all right, happy for her friend, yet some other emotion shimmered on the surface of her consciousness like sunlight on water. A peculiar form of melancholia the cause of which she couldn't identify.

For some reason she was drawn to the window and its vantage point of nothing except the side of another building. She wasn't really looking, anyway. Her mind was busy analyzing the alien emotion and surprisingly, she settled on envy.

In some ways, Joanna was right. Her biological clock was sounding an alarm, not the one that demanded children but one that announced a far more earthy need. She wasn't ashamed to admit she missed sex. She missed being held and the pretense of intimacy. It had been way too long, long enough to make a less circumspect woman do something reckless.

But, never one not to learn from others' mistakes, she'd witnessed Joanna's mistakes, the missteps of her other friends, the defection of her own father and opted out of ever trying to find someone for herself. There had been men in her life, but none who hadn't known they were only temporary and that she called the shots.

She'd always told herself she had a brother to raise and not much time for any one or any thing that would demand much of her time or attention. But that was an excuse, not a reason.

She still couldn't bring herself to believe in that “happily ever after” that poets wrote songs about, but she hoped she could find someone who would fit for right now, someone who she could let in just a little bit. Someone who she could let go when things soured without too much emotional upheaval.

Maybe all she really lacked was the opportunity to get herself in trouble. She considered the way Jonathan Stone's image had popped into her mind the other day when Joanna was haranguing her about the lack of a man in her life. Aside from a devil-may-care priest and her clientsâmost of whom were either too old or debilitated to be of any useâwhat men did she meet? No wonder he was the first man she thought of. But not him. She needed neither his intensity nor his aloofness and self-possession. She realized, with a sense of irony, she still wanted a man she could control. Now what did that say about her?

She honestly didn't know, but she'd dallied long enough. Joanna would be waiting for her.

After a brief stop at the nurse's station to find which room his sister had been taken to, Jonathan found the appropriate door and pushed it open. They were all there, the doting parents, his two brothers, Dana, and as yet none of them noticed him.

What he noticed most was the way Zack's arm rested on Dana's shoulders as the two of them stood by the bed. Seeing them together, something shot through himânot anger, or even jealousy, but possessiveness, which didn't make any sense to him. Dana wasn't his and he had no intention of making any sort of play for her either. From what he knew of her, she was hard as nails on the outside and even tougher underneath. To his mind, a little softness in a woman both inside and out was a good thing. Dana didn't seem to have any.

Maybe it was seeing Zack's arm in particular that caused this reaction in him. Zack's cavalier attitude toward the opposite sex was likely to leave a woman like Dana hurt after an involvement with him. If Zack's short-lived marriage had proved anything, it was that the man was incapable of treating a woman right, not even one he claimed to love.

Jonathan stepped further into the room. “Hey,” he said, drawing the attention of everyone in the room, but his eyes were fixed on Dana. When she turned toward him, he noticed her arms were folded, a defensive posture that suggested the familiarity between her and Zack had been Zack's idea. He also noticed that while the others advanced to greet him, she was the only one who turned away.

After enduring congratulatory embraces from Ray and Zack and Adam's usual sedate handshake, he went to his sister. Bending to kiss her cheek, he said, “Congratulations, Sis.”

“Thanks. Wash your hands and I might consider letting you hold your new niece.”

He did as she asked, using the small lavatory in the corner of the room. When he got back, he realized Dana was no longer standing, but sitting in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the bed. It flashed in his mind to wonder if she'd moved to get farther away from him.

He'd left his jacket and tie in the car and rolled up his sleeves while he was in the bathroom. He took the sleeping baby from his sister and cradled her in the crook of his arm. He'd forgotten how tiny newborns were, how delicate. The last baby he'd held had been Joanna's youngest boy. “She's beautiful, Joanna.”

“That seems to be the consensus,” Joanna teased. He looked at his sister, really looked at her this time. She looked dead tired, but happy. “What did you name her?”

“Sarah Elizabeth. I think it's fitting.”

He nodded. He knew she referred to honoring their mother by naming the baby after her, but she forgot that, as the youngest, he carried the fewest memories of her. “Where are the boys?”

“At my place,” Adam said. “And come to think of it, I'd better be going. Barbara is going to kill me if I leave her with four rowdy kids much longer.”

“I'll walk out with you.”

Zack made no excuses for his desire to leave, but Jonathan would bet it had to do with some woman. After the two men left, Jonathan handed the baby back to his sister. “I'd better be going, too.”

“You just got here,” Joanna protested.

He chucked her under the chin. “And you and your hubby look like you're both ready to fall out.”

Joanna smiled at him sleepily. “I can't argue with you there.” She adjusted the baby in her arms. “Do me a favor and see Dana home.”

“I can see myself home,” Dana protested. “I live five minutes from here.”

“By car, and yours is waiting for you at home.”

Dana sighed. For the first time that evening she looked at him. “If you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate a ride home.”