Deadly Blessings (22 page)

“
Sophie,” I said, in a soft
voice, “it’s Alex.”

Her silent cries transformed into a wracking
moan as her body froze for a moment before beginning to shake.
Casimir, who’d shuffled up to the doorway to peer in, gave a quick
nod, as though he’d seen enough and everything was all right now.
He waved a hand at me to indicate that he was going back upstairs.
A second later, I heard Sophie’s back door shut with a click.

She resisted my attempts to turn her toward
me, at first.

“
Sophie, come on,” I
urged.

Her words were muffled, unclear, like she
was speaking to me through a mouthful of marbles. In Polish she
begged me to go away and leave her alone.

I had few experiences with grief in my life,
but this reaction was ringing alarm bells. Sure, everyone handled
death differently, but something was wrong.

Grabbing her right shoulder, I squeezed. In
warning, I supposed. An attempt to get her to turn of her own
volition one last time. She fought me again, but with less resolve
this time.

With effort, I turned her to face me.

It took a few seconds for the full
realization to sink in.

“
Sophie,” I said. And
though my voice was soft, the words sounded like a scream to my own
ears. “What happened?”

Despite the scant light, her injuries were
obvious. Her face had purpled and was swollen around her mouth and
along the entire left side of her head. Dried blood from her nose
and a cut crusted her lip; she’d bled all over her pillowcase. Her
left arm was discolored and she held it against herself in a way
that let me know she was in pain.

Her blond hair was plastered to the side of
her face, a combination of blood and tears locking the tresses, as
though some four-year-old had just made a doll picture and glued
the strands of yarn in the wrong places. She spoke in English.

“
I go see Lisa,” she said,
her voice cracking. I strained to hear every word. “I tell her I
finished. I no work any more.”

Sophie licked at the open sore on her lips
before continuing.

“
When I come back … Rodero
here. At my apartment. He wait for me.”

Chapter Fifteen

“
No hospital!”

Though battered and bruised, Sophie
maintained enough strength to sit up in her bed. She let me look at
her arm. It didn’t appear to be broken, but I was no doctor. She
swore it was merely bruised, that I shouldn’t worry, but what broke
my heart most was the way she kept her face slightly askance as she
spoke. As if to keep me from seeing the damage done. I wondered if
she’d been beaten before.

I tried repeatedly to get her to agree to
have her injuries looked at, just in case. But Sophie was adamant.
With no other options, I soaked a few washcloths and brought them,
dripping, from the bathroom to help her clean herself up. She
patted at the blood on her lips, and the side of her face, and I
winced every time she did when the terrycloth stung her raw
skin.

She shook her head as she worked, speaking
in Polish, so quickly and so quietly that I had trouble following
her. She lamented the fact that she’d ever been lulled into this
life. She mumbled between sobs, about how she should have listened
to Matthew. She called herself every dirty name in the book and
cried about how ashamed she was.

And now, she seemed to believe she couldn’t
get away. Now, when she finally realized what a mistake she’d made,
she was stuck in this life, for as long as her body and her looks
held out. And she called out to Matthew, and she knew he didn’t
hear her.

I listened for a long time. The pale light
that brightened the room when I first got there, now nearly
dissolved in the late afternoon. Shadowy, the room was dim enough
to warrant turning on a lamp, but I sensed that doing so might make
Sophie more self-conscious.

We talked in the dark. Despite her many
pleas for me to go home, I knew that there was no way I could leave
her here in this condition, despite my belief that Rodero wasn’t
going to be coming back for a while.

“
Did you tell Helena?” I
asked in Polish.

“
Oh, no!” Sophie said.
“Rodero would go after her if I did. That’s why you shouldn’t even
be here. If he finds out that I told anyone, he’ll kill
me.”

“
Then there won’t be a next
time. Come home with me,” I said. “At least let me keep an eye on
you tonight. You shouldn’t be alone.”

“
If I leave here, Alex,
where do you think they’ll look for me?” Sophie’s mind was still
working; I took that as a good sign. “They’ll ask Helena, but she
can only tell them the truth, that she doesn’t know. And then what?
They’ll come to you. They’ll come to your house. No.”

* * * * *

“
Alex? Twice in as many
days? Should I take that to mean that the Holy Spirit has moved you
in some unusual way? Or—?” Father Trip’s jovial greeting was cut
short. Undoubtedly by the look on my face.

I caught him at home. His rectory, a
converted red brick bungalow, was much smaller than the imposing
structure Father Bruno lived in, though both had been built in the
same era. Father Trip answered the doorbell moments after I rang
it, which was good, because leaving Sophie alone in the car
unnerved me.

She was crouched down in the passenger seat,
her eyes wide and terrified, looking even bluer than normal against
the angry purple bruising of her face. I’d pulled to the curb and
hurried around to head up toward Father Trip’s, despite her
protestations not to leave her alone. The poor girl shook, holding
her hands tight together, jammed up close to her chest. I assured
her that I wouldn’t let the car out of my sight.

About to swing the door wide to admit me,
Father Trip halted his movement, asking, “What? What happened?”

“
I need a favor,” I
said.

I watched his eyes flick toward the car.
“What happened?” he said again.

“
Do you trust me?” I asked,
hoping I knew the answer.

The two-second delay in his response didn’t
seem to indicate hesitation. More like he needed to gear himself up
to accept whatever information I was about to impart. “Yes,” he
said. “Of course.”

“
There’s a girl in my car.
A … friend. And she’s in serious trouble. For reasons I can’t
explain right now, I can’t take her home, nor to a battered women’s
shelter. There can’t be any attention drawn to her.”

Except for another quick glance in the
direction of my car, Father Trip kept his eyes on me, his face
devoid of expression as he waited for me to continue.

“
I know that you’ve helped
people in the past. You must have connections. And she needs to be
hidden. For a little while.” My brain took a moment to catch up
with my actions. I wondered how I’d play Sophie’s disappearance to
Lisa, should the subject come up. And I had no doubt that it would.
Coupling that with my decision to cancel the scheduled doctor’s
appointment could make me suspect in their eyes. I thought of
Sophie’s poor swollen face and my stomach churned. For both of
us.

All of a sudden Father Trip looked old to
me. As though the smiling lines around his eyes I’d grown used to
all these years had suddenly become age-telling wrinkles. He
nodded, very slowly and I could almost hear him weighing my words
against his need to caution me about my involvement here. He rubbed
his face, and the late afternoon stubble caused a rasping sound at
the movement in the quiet chill of the air.

“
Bring her in,” he finally
said, tilting his chin that direction. The simple imperative gave
me immense relief.

I trotted back to the car, then bit my lip
when I saw that I’d startled her by opening the car door. “Come on,
Sophie,” I said, “A friend of mine will help.”

* * * * *

Jordan caught me by the arm as I made my way
through the hub the following morning. “Bass is on the warpath.”
That didn’t seem like news to me, but it obviously did to Jordan. A
couple of the other administrative assistants were watching us,
their able fingers poised above their keyboards, their body
language telling me that they wanted in on this conversation. Okay,
they got my interest now.

“
What’s up?”

Jordan looked both ways, just like the
criminals do in old movies, and steered me directly to my office.
Her brown fingers held my arm with the sort of grip that gave me
the impression that if someone, Bass perhaps, were to step out into
the hub at that moment, she’d pull me under the nearest desk.

Shutting the door behind
us, she tilted her head and wagged a finger at me. “You gotta do
something,” she said, her brown eyes blazing. “Bass is pulling the
Milla story. Says that we’re gonna be outclassed by
Up Close Issues
anyway.
Because Fenton didn’t do squat on it. And all
he’s
been doing is bitching and
moaning that you screwed him over.” She glanced toward the window
that separated my office from the hub and peeked out through the
white sheers, “And now Bass sees you gone for the past couple of
days, and thinks that you’re messin’ with him …”

She let the thought hang.

Just what I needed. To have to hold Bass’s
hand today. I swung my purse toward the credenza behind my desk and
flung it into a corner. “Shit,” I said.

Jordan put a hand on one hip and sauntered
closer to my desk. “He’s making life living hell around here, lemme
tell you. Even made two of the girls cry today.” She shook her
head. “Mary and Vivian.”

“
There you are,” Bass said,
bounding into the office without knocking. Jordan jumped at the
noise as the door hit the rubber stopper at the wall and bounced
back to close. Shooting me a look of compassion, she eased herself
out.

“
Bass.”

“
Where the hell have you
been?”

His fury broadcast itself through the twin
tendons that stood out, bright red, on his neck, and from the vein
that popped out right in the center of his forehead. Flustered, and
spewing complaints at me that ranged from my recent absence, to
Fenton’s inept handling of the Milla story, which made me gleeful
though I kept my face straight, he got so excited talking, that
little bubbles of spit gathered at the corners of his mouth.

I knew better than to interrupt. And I knew
better than to sit down.

His short body nearly danced with barely
contained frustration. “I should never have told you about the week
off for the political story. You just thought it was free ride
time, didn’t you? Taking advantage of the station’s money to go get
your hair done at some fancy salon. Skipping out on the work.
Fenton could’ve used some help here, but did you give him any?
No.”

Bass held a manila folder stuffed with
papers in his hand. He waved it up toward my face for a moment,
then dropped his arm as he began to pace. The rug in my office had
been there since the fifties, short-napped and a non-descript
gray-brown. It never wore out, although Bass was giving it his best
shot right now. He’d left his suitcoat elsewhere, and his shirt had
puffed out, as though he’d been doing lots of overhead work and had
forgotten to tuck it back in. It bloused at the waistline, like a
rumpled balloon, making him look much wider than he was.

As he paced, his voice quieted. Just a
bit.

I still waited.

“
What am I going to do?” he
asked. Rhetorical, I waited for my moment. “They give me this idiot
kid who can’t find his own asshole with two hands and a map, and
they want me to babysit. They let all the veterans go, the people
who knew what they were doing …”

He had his back to me at this point, but I
raised an eyebrow at his comment. Almost as if I’d called out, he
looked over. “Okay, okay. Not all the veterans. You and David know
what you’re doing. I don’t know about this Armstrong fellow
yet.”

At the far point of his pacing he turned,
set his hands on his hips, still holding the manila folder, now
nearly bent in half at his waist. He looked out the window and I
watched a forced calm come over his features. He shook his
head—frowned at me. “What am I going to do?”

“
Have a seat,” I
said.

As though all the life had drained out of
him, he sat. The look on his face was a combination of anger and
tentative hope. I knew he expected me to solve all his problems on
the very story he’d taken me off of none too ceremoniously. And I
knew I could do it, too.

But not without a price. I was going to get
full cooperation, whether Bass realized it at the moment or
not.

He scratched the top of his head with the
tips of his fingers. More of a stalling move, than an answer to an
itch, I’d wager.

“
Okay,” I said. “I have
some leads on a story. But let me call William in here,” I said,
lifting the phone. “I think maybe the three of us need to discuss
this one anyway.”

“
Is it a good story?” he
asked as I hung up. The tone of his voice was pitiful. Hopeful and
wary at the same time.

I didn’t answer, choosing instead to ask
Jordan to hold all calls except for any from Father Trip or Sophie.
Bass raised his eyebrows at the mention of the priest’s name.
“Patience,” I said.

“
Remain faithful to your
regulation,” he whispered. Barely moving his lips, he spoke so
quietly, I almost didn’t hear.

“
What?”

His eyes, having wandered away along with
his mind, apparently, snapped back to meet mine with apprehension.
“What?”

“
What did you just say
about regulations?”