Cat's Eyewitness (20 page)

29

M
eticulously laid out on the stainless-steel table, with channels along the sides to capture any fluids should they escape the corpse, were the pieces of Brother Thomas.

Sheriff Shaw and Deputy Cooper watched Tom Yancy and his assistant, Marshall Wells, inspect the remains. Tom used long tweezers to pluck out a fiber or a bone splinter.

“What we’re seeing, Rick, is consistent with animals ripping over a body.” He pointed with the tweezers to part of the femur still attached to the hip socket. “The bone is cracked open, chewed. You can clearly see the teeth marks here.”

“Dogs, coyotes, most all carnivores love bone marrow,” Marshall said.

“What about vultures?” Rick viewed sights like Brother Thomas as a matter of course.

Didn’t mean he liked it, though.

“Yes. They’ve been at him.”

Coop remarked, “Tom, any idea if he suffered trauma before death?”

“Well, his skull is intact. Upper jaw still attached. Lower one gone. No broken bones around the shoulder. Too late to tell about the arms, of course. There’s just enough left of his liver and a scrap of kidney here that I can get a sample. If he was poisoned there might be a trace, depending on the poison.”

Rick cracked his knuckles. “Sorry. Bad habit.”

“Not as bad as smoking.” Tom reached into the body cavity to lift up a tiny piece of kidney, which Marshall snipped.

“No signs of stabbing?” Coop couldn’t imagine why his body had been dragged into the ravine and stuffed between and under large rocks.

“No.”

“If he’d been hit up with a hypodermic needle, something to put him down, too late for the mark?” Rick wondered.

Tom touched some fragments of one arm; the other hadn’t been found. “Not much chance. If the body had been intact, possibly, Rick, because the cold helped us. Yes, we’ve had a few warm days, enough for him to blow up and give off scent, which brought in nature’s garbage collectors, but the cold returned with a vengeance. I don’t have much arm here. Most of the flesh has been chewed off. Marshall and I examined the torso, used magnifiers; no obvious puncture except for fang marks. Some of those needles barely leave a trace.”

“Hmm, let’s say something appears in the kidney tissues or the liver. What would be your first choice?” Rick asked.

“You mean to kill him?” Yancy put down the long tweezers on a stainless-steel tray. “First of all, Rick, he may not have been killed where he was found. That’s one possibility. He could have been, say, poisoned at another location, taken to the statue, placed in a kneeling position. His body would be losing warmth and it was colder than a witch’s tit; he’d freeze up in less than three hours. Not much body fat on him. I’d estimate about nine percent, given his age and what I know of his people. The Bland Wades get painfully thin starting in their sixties. He was quite thin. Of course, he could have been praying, hard as it is for me to believe, on that bitter night. He could have just let himself go. People can will themselves to die.”

“No. I don’t think he willed it.” Rick shook his head.

“All right, then. Let’s say he did go to pray.” Tom Yancy shrugged. “He’s lost in communion with the Lord, and someone comes up behind him. He’s down on his knees. Now, if his neck were broken this would be an easy call. It’s not. So either someone reached around and knocked him out with, say, chloroform, or they shot him with the same stuff the vet uses to put down old Rover when his time has come. There’s always morphine and heroin, too. Or, my last thought here, he was smothered.” Tom moved up toward the head and neck. “There would be bruising on the neck, even now. There isn’t. But if he were smothered, at this point I wouldn’t know, because the eyeballs are gone.” He paused, then continued, “If someone is choked to death or smothered in a less violent way, the eyeballs are bloodshot, red.” He pressed his lips together. “I don’t have much to go on, but we’ve got pieces of a body. That’s a start, and we will invite poor old Brother Thomas to tell us as much as possible.”

“Any idea how long it will be before we hear from Richmond?” Rick hoped the state lab, one of the nation’s best, would be quick.

Tom shook his head. “Rick, it’s less than two weeks before Christmas. People are killing themselves in greater numbers than usual or they’re flaming out on the highway. There’s always some damned fool who drinks himself to death and the family won’t believe what the county coroner tells them, so off goes John Whiskey Doe to the state’s pathology lab. Christmas is a nightmare. I’ll do what I can to push them along.”

“You knew Brother Thomas; what did you think of him?” Coop asked.

Tom folded his arms over his lab coat. “I’d see the old fellow occasionally at the hardware store, sometimes at the huge nursery over there in Waynesboro, the one where Jimmy Binns used to do such good work. Now, that man could design anything.”

Yancy mentioned a retired gentleman who had a gift for landscaping.

“Ever see him, mmm, at the bank?” Rick picked up on Coop’s direction of thought.

“No. Can the brothers have personal money?” Tom wondered.

Marshall, a Catholic, said, “Depends on the order. For the Greyfriars, if the money is family money it can be in a trust. The order can’t touch it, but the brother can still have use of it. Trusts and wills can be both creative and binding.” He added, “Had to study the monastic orders in parochial school. Always liked the Cistercians.”

“Coop, check with Susan about this, will you?” Rick turned to his favorite officer.

“Okay.”

Rick returned to Tom. “I’d see him at Jeffrey Howe’s nursery, Mostly Maples. You couldn’t help but notice him in his gray robe with the white hood. Unfailingly pleasant.”

“I never heard him even say ‘darn.’ ” Tom gazed down on the pieces of what had been a good man. “Rick, why anyone would harm him, I don’t know. That’s your job. Mine is to find out what I can from what’s left.”

“While I’m here,” Rick glanced at the large wall clock, “anything else come back on Nordy Elliott?”

“Alcohol in the bloodstream. Not above the legal limit. A healthy male. Death was straightforward.”

“And painful.” Coop grimaced.

“Extremely, but it was swift. One blinding pain, and I mean blinding, and it was over.” Tom Yancy sighed. “Nordy wasn’t on earth nearly as long as Brother Thomas, but he certainly piled up the enemies. And here’s Brother Thomas, who, as far as we know, didn’t have any.”

“He had one,” Rick said.

“A lethal one,” Coop added.

30

L
ips white, face purple with rage, Brother Handle strained for self-control. “He walked out of the coffin!”

“Your angina, Brother, remember your angina,” Brother Andrew softly spoke as Brothers Prescott and Mark trembled on either side of him.

“Damn my angina. You put him in his coffin and you nailed shut the lid.”

“I nailed shut the lid,” Brother Mark squeaked.

“Well, you did a damned poor job of it.” Brother Handle ran his right hand over his head, feeling his tonsure.

“Brother, this is painful and difficult for all of us, but we will get to the bottom of it.” Brother Prescott, as second in command, knew how to handle the boss, but he’d never seen the boss this distressed.

Brother Handle paced in front of the three standing men. As he did, the knotted rope at his waist swayed with each step. “In all my years,
all my years,
not just as a brother, I have never encountered anything so disgusting, so bizarre, so vile, so disgusting.” He stopped, since he was repeating himself.

Brother Handle veered close to out of control, but he still weighed his words.

“It’s beyond imagining.” Brother Prescott’s voice sounded more soothing than usual.

“Things happen for a reason. This is the will of God,” Brother Mark stupidly whined.

“This has nothing to do with the will of God, you impertinent young pup. This is an effort on someone’s part to destroy our order!” He stopped in front of the slight young man, almost nose to nose. “Destroy our order! First we have a statue bleeding from the eyes. Every half-wit, every fool disappointed in love, every person suffering from illness has dragged themselves up this mountain to pray before the statue. Nordy Elliott, that insufferable reporter, hung around like a blowfly. He’s dead and now this!”

“The tears of Our Lady are a sign.” Brother Mark’s lower lip quivered.

“Oh, they’re a sign, all right,” Brother Handle glowered. “A sign that your mental wattage is about fifteen. Fifteen-watt Mark.” He smacked his hands together. “Weeping icons and statues have been part of Catholic lore for centuries, whether they’re found in Carpathia or California!”

The loud clap made Brother Mark jump back and Brother Andrew wince.

“It is possible those tears are—”

Before Brother Prescott could finish, Brother Handle said, “Manufactured? That is what you were going to say, isn’t it?”

“No,” Brother Prescott responded with some heat, which surprised the others. “No, I wasn’t going to say that. They truly might be a sign.”

“Oh, bullshit! You’re as weak-minded as this idiot.” Brother Handle turned, striding toward the large open fireplace in his office, the main source of heat. A small radiator rested under the window, but Brother Handle kept expenses down by utilizing the fireplace. “In Brisbane, Australia, a small statue has been weeping blood and rose-scented oil. In 1992, a six-inch statue of porcelain wept type O blood in Santiago, Chile. All hoaxes, whether proven or not.” He pointed his forefinger at Brother Mark. “A true believer does not need physical manifestation of God. And that’s the end of it.”

Brother Andrew, in his former life, dealt with extreme emotions regularly. One can’t be a physician without seeing the best and worst of people. He didn’t like seeing Brother Mark browbeaten by the Prior. He didn’t fear Brother Handle. “I, too, doubt the miraculous aspect of the tears, Brother Handle. I’m sure if we tore apart the statue we’d find some simple explanation.”

“You can’t do that!” Brother Mark cried, tears surging down his face. “She weeps out of sympathy for our sins and suffering. She weeps to bring us back to faith. People need signs.”

Brother Andrew turned to him. “She’ll never run out of things to weep about, the world being what it is.” He turned back to Brother Handle. “This event has brought a most welcome boost to our treasury. Brother Frank has been almost jolly of late—for him.” Brother Handle turned, his back to the fire, to fully face the doctor as Andrew continued. “It’s not just the offerings that visitors have given us; the sales in the shops have skyrocketed. People mail in donations. If anything, we should perhaps be more organized as to how we present this economic—if not truly spiritual—miracle. Tearing apart the statue, even if we could do so without destroying it, serves no useful purpose. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

A long silence followed, then the head of the order spoke, voice lower, less emotional. “I take your point. However, if it hasn’t occurred to you, it certainly has occurred to me that if these tears
are
exposed as a fake, a ploy to bring more money into the order, heads will roll. Even though I knew nothing, should this prove a hoax I will be held accountable. The order will be discredited. The buck stops here. I have to take responsibility.” He paused again, then spoke, an edge to his voice rarely heard by the others. “I’ve called you here hoping for an explanation of the desecration of Brother Thomas. I lost my temper. I’m sorry. If any of you removed that body, tell me now. I will forgive you if you tell me the truth.” He looked searchingly from face to face. No one responded. “Then I have to conclude that either one or all three of you are lying to me, or that someone in our order has something very big to hide. Big enough to toss away a corpse, big enough to kill.”

“Brother Handle,” Brother Prescott was scandalized, “what would anyone have to hide? And what would Brother Thomas have to do with it if there were something to hide?”

Brother Handle stepped toward them, silhouetted by the huge fireplace, the glow of the fire enlarging him. “Haven’t you asked yourselves what is it that Brother Thomas did?”

“Fixed everything. I miss him already.” Brother Andrew sadly smiled.

“He was an example of what we should be.” Brother Mark finally found his voice again after being harangued. “He was gentle, forbearing, ready to help. He was patient. He taught me so much. He loved our Blessed Virgin Mother with all his heart and soul.”

“Hmm.” Brother Handle just wanted to smack this kid. Instead, he all said was “Hmm.” He looked to Brother Prescott.

“He knew this place before any of us climbed Afton Mountain. He knew the grounds, the physical plant, the people who went before us,” Brother Prescott thoughtfully remarked.

“Exactly.” Brother Handle’s eyes burned into the three men.

“What do you mean?” Brother Andrew, middle-aged although still younger than both Brother Handle and Brother Prescott, inquired.

“I mean if something had happened before any of us came to this place, Brother Thomas would have known. Secrets. He knew every inch of plumbing, every part of the buildings that had been repaired. It’s safe to say, really, he knew every joint and joist.”

“But that was his job, his gift.” Brother Andrew shrugged.

“Indeed it was. And if Our Lady of the Blue Ridge had been jimmy-rigged to cry bloody tears, I think it’s safe to say that Brother Thomas would have figured out how it was done—if he hadn’t done it himself.”

“No!” Brother Mark cried anew. “He would never do anything like that.”

“You’re young,” Brother Handle acidly replied.

“Why?” Brother Mark sobbed.

“I don’t know.” Brother Handle’s jaw was set hard.

“Well, maybe he thought he could bring in more money, he could lift us out of our struggle.” Brother Prescott folded his hands behind his back. “He would create something to provide a steady income, more or less.”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that, too.” Brother Handle half-turned toward the fire. “Yet that wasn’t really his way.” He laughed for a moment. “Now, Brother Frank, yes, I could see that. Not that he would, but as our treasurer he bears a great burden. Brother Thomas belonged to the ‘consider the lilies of the field’ school of finance.”

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow,” Brother Prescott began to quote the famous lines from the Bible, which indicate that the lilies neither toil nor sweat nor fret about the Internal Revenue Service demolishing their gains.

“We know the passage.” Brother Andrew allowed himself a flash of anger.

“While we are quoting, allow me to mention Psalm One Hundred Twenty.” Brother Handle opened his hand, his fingers together as he pointed at the three men. “Save me, Lord, from liars and deceivers.”

“I resent that.” Brother Prescott stood up for himself at last. “I have served this order and I have served you for nearly twenty years. I am not a liar. I am not a deceiver. I want to get to the bottom of this as badly as you do.”

Unmoved, Brother Handle again clasped his hands together in front of him. “I hope that is so, Brother Prescott, I hope that is so. But you three last touched the body of Brother Thomas. So to you I must look for answers.”

“He was in the chapel.” Brother Mark’s voice rose. “Anyone could have come in if they were careful, pried open the lid, and taken him.”

“Not anyone. A brother. A member of this order!” Brother Handle remarked. “Now that Brother Thomas has been found, perhaps modern science will discover what happened to him while he prayed before the statue.” But Brother Handle’s voice filled with anger. “I will find and punish any and all involved.”

“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.” Brother Mark was very close to being disrespectful.

Brother Handle advanced on him, enunciating with clarity, “‘Vengeance is mine, and recompense for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.’ Remember your Deuteronomy? Well, I am the instrument of that vengeance.”