In God's House (18 page)

Winding along the country road on the way home, I had the windows down and the moon roof open. I could hardly stay awake. I could not reconcile the conflicts within me; I could barely even identify them. Since becoming involved in the case, I had spent a lot of time thinking about doing the right thing, even arguing with others about what was right, and now I believed I had witnessed or participated in an act that by any other name amounted to obstruction of justice.

The house was quiet. Purple and gold crepe paper draped the kitchen, the colors of my team, the LSU Tigers. An uncut sheet cake was set out on the den table. I looked at the cake and candles. I saw gouge marks in the cake that I knew could be matched to Sasha’s little fist.

Kate was in the den thumbing through gift catalogues.

“Have you slept? You have dark circles under your eyes again.”

“I slept all weekend, I think. I’m just really tired. It’s been a long week. I must have over a hundred phone messages at the office and I worry that everything is coming unhinged there. I’m just kinda overloaded.”

“Can we go outside to talk?” she asked.

“Sure.”

I went to the refrigerator and got two long-neck beers. I cradled them under one arm as we held hands all the way out to the guest cottage.

When we reached the cottage, Kate turned on some of the landscape lights, including the green light I had had an electrician install on the far bank of the pond. We settled in rocking chairs on the porch.

“Ren, I’m worried about you.”

I nodded. “I feel like I am drowning and I have a long way to swim. Something is really wrong in the diocese, I think, and I don’t think anyone’s going to try to do the right thing. Someone has to get it right for the children somehow.”

Kate stood up. “You missed your birthday, Ren. You forgot your own birthday! What does that tell you? It tells me you’re coming apart fast. You gotta get away from this stuff.”

I said nothing.

“Sasha was so hurt, so disappointed, she acted out her anger. She beat up the cake – pounded it with her little fists. She thought she was mad, Ren, but she was scared and hurt. She slept on the sofa with your gifts so you would wake her up when you came in. I carried her to bed in the middle of the night. She woke up this morning and when… when you weren’t here, she said she was scared something happened to you.”

There was a long silence. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Ren, I really think our marriage has been over for some time. It doesn’t matter how it died – I killed it, you killed it. It doesn’t matter who killed it. The marriage is dead. If we stay in this, one or both of us is going to die emotionally.”

“I’ve been here a lot this summer, Kate. I’m here right now.”

“No you aren’t. You’re never here. I bet you even money that right now, at this minute, you’re thinking about some law thing. Yeah, you’re thinking about some law thing. I know it. It’s sad, Renon. People should not be sad so much. I really can’t take it anymore.”

She kicked a flower pot off the porch into the shallows of the pond.

“No, Kate.”

She wiped her tears with her shirttail and said, “I will stay as
long as I can. I really love you so much my heart hurts, my throat’s raw, and I wish I could stay for—”

She was finished talking about this. I always knew when she was finished. I was relieved that she stopped as suddenly as she had started. Kate took my hand and walked me into the guest cottage, guiding me to the bed.

“Let’s talk, Ren. Tell me.”

“Children,” I said. “God, I don’t even know how many children, Kate. You wouldn’t even want to know the things done to them. I know some of their names, but I think there are a lot of children whose names I don’t know, will never know. I’ve never felt like this. I don’t know what I can do. But I can’t walk away.”

I told her everything from the lunch at the Old Bishop’s House to my essentially agreeing that Monsignor Moroux lie under oath about having destroyed evidence. When I finished, there was a faint light in the sky.

Kate sat up on the bed, cross-legged. She addressed me like I was a child. “Ren, don’t you see? There’s not just one. The diocese has a nest of perverted priests. That’s what I think they are covering up.”

“What?”

“They have a nest. I think that is what they all know that you don’t know. They would not be expending all this money and energy if Dubois was the only one. Having one pervert couldn’t hurt them.”

“You think the diocese has a bunch of guys like Dubois?”

“Well, yeah. That’s what I think.”

“Kate, I’m so tired.”

“I know, Ren, I know.”

“Tell me you will stay with me till this is over. Can you tell me that?”

“No, Ren. I love you, but I can’t tell you I will stay another day. We wore this marriage out a long time ago. I’m as sorry as you are.”

“Just till this is over, Kate. Just—”

“Ren, I will stay as long as I can, okay? That’s all I can promise you.”

She lay down and held me in her arms. “Try to sleep a little. I’ll wake you in a couple hours. Okay?”

I liked feeling her heart beating close to mine, hearing her breathe.

Johnny Wilcox, a retired state trooper and the best private investigator I knew, had picked up a copy of the subpoena list containing the priests’ names from my secretary, Mo, at my office Thursday afternoon. He set a meeting for 7:30 the following morning at what he referred to as his office – Jacques’ Café, a downtown eatery.

The diner was crowded. I had never gotten there early enough to find out what time they opened. The owner, Tee-Possum Reaux, Little Possum, tasted everything and his huge girth attested to that. Everyone called him Possum, just as they had his father, because he always seemed asleep, even when standing behind the register.

I sat across from Wilcox. We were served by the waitress everyone called Turtle, an ancient black woman who moved slowly. It was useless to specify a breakfast order with Turtle. She would not write it down because she couldn’t write, and she wouldn’t remember it because she didn’t try to remember. She just told the kitchen to give her whatever came to her mind.

“I’ve got the list, Ren. What d’you want me to do with it?”

“I want you to dig up anything and everything you can on these thirty-one priests. Skip the first name, Father Francis Dubois.”

“And I would be looking for what exactly? Stealing from the collection plate?”

“Sexual abuse of children.”

“Oh, that,” Johnny said with an exaggerated air of nonchalance. “Just that? And just exactly how am I supposed to find that kind of information? Ask the priests? Ask the kids in the neighborhood parishes?”

“Johnny, if I knew how to do this, I’d do it myself. All I can say is that I know less than a handful of priests – just the ones who are or have been in parishes where my kids go to school. And every single one of them is on that list.”

“Look, I’m not going to bullshit you, Renon. I don’t think I am going to turn up anything. I don’t see how I can. I don’t know why I’d do this thing. I think it is useless and I’d just be wasting your money.”

“Why don’t you look at it this way, Johnny. You will be getting paid, getting a little closer to that new bass boat you talk about all the time.”

“Speaking of that, my boat’s hooked to my truck around the corner. I’m on my way to fish the Atchafalaya Basin from here.”

“What do you do with all those fish you catch?”

“Throw ’em back. Same as I do with the people I catch. When I was a cop, I kept the people I caught, locked ’em up, and I kept fish too. Now, I throw everything back. If I kept the fish I caught, there would be no fish left.”

“You ever use bacon and popcorn as bait?

“No. Why?”

“I heard it was good bait. My daughter says it’s magic bait.”

Johnny Wilcox nodded slowly. “Popcorn and bacon.”

“Okay. Let’s eat whatever Turtle wants us to eat,” I said.

“Whatever Turtle wants…”

When I left Wilcox, I drove to an old house filled with memories. The house had once belonged to my grandfather. Now my father
lived there alone. I knew my father could have seen the television interview with Kane Chaisson, and I knew that soon my name would be tied to Father Dubois in the media. It was time to talk to him.

As I approached The Palms, as the old estate was always called, I felt apprehensive. My father was a better man than most men I knew, and he was a man of faith. Like many sons of aging fathers, my feelings about him were mixed with sadness and regret about what might have been. My father had miraculously managed to hang onto his goodness, a lot of his naiveté, and even some of his innocence well into his eighties. If I could not imagine Father Dubois doing the things he had done, I was certain my father would never grasp these things.

The long driveway had once been lined with sixteen palms, which my grandfather always believed had been brought in from Cuba. My father thought they were grown on a farm in Pensacola, Florida. I remembered the tall palms. For the rest of my life I would love palm trees and love places where palms grew naturally. They did not grow naturally in Thiberville. Disease killed some of the palms and others were knocked down by hurricanes. As I turned into the drive, I noticed that the last palm seemed to be doing well.

I let myself into the house and wandered through the maze of downstairs rooms. My father’s hearing was all but gone and I did not want to shout, nor did I want to walk up and startle him. As I slowly made my way to the glassed-in back porch, I heard him speaking French in a soft voice.

He was across the room when I saw him, sitting in a rocking chair. His eyes were closed and he was unaware of my presence. In his first language, French, the only language he knew as a young boy, he was reciting his rosary, a mantra for a man grown old.

What could I tell him? What could I say to him?

Every morning he went to Mass and communion. Since he’d moved to The Palms, he walked to Mass at Saint Stephen’s
Cathedral. He even went to Mass on mornings when he was sick, leaving his bed to pray in the place where he had invested all of his faith. I knew there were a lot of people like him in the diocese. In a way, I believed my father and the faithful laity were going to become collateral victims when they learned the truth about their bishop and the monsignor, about how they had consciously sacrificed children to save themselves and their Church from scandal. I wanted to talk to him before he found these things out from the media. But as I watched my father pray the rosary in French, I lost whatever words I had prepared to tell him about the Dubois situation. There was no way to explain.

When we were children, he would gather us every night to pray as a family. My mother would read from the Bible and my father would lead us in the rosary. When I was confirmed, he gave me a sterling silver rosary. I still had the rosary, in its small cloth pouch in a drawer at home. It had been years since I had seen the rosary and I imagined the silver beads were tarnished. I no longer had any idea of how to recite the rosary.

Now I really wanted to say the rosary, to pray the rosary with my father. Instead, I slowly backed out of the doorway without interrupting him, made my way through the great room and let myself out. Once in the drive, I walked over to the last palm and put my hand on the tree. Closing my eyes, I imagined I could still hear him, slowly rocking in his chair, praying the rosary in French.

The call came early. When I heard the voice on the phone, my heart raced. It was District Attorney Sean Robinette.

“Ren, I can’t wait. The kids and their parents have been through enough. I’ve got to get them through the grand jury. We will meet late this afternoon – at a rural schoolhouse, to make the children more comfortable and to avoid the possibility of some reporter hanging around the courthouse discovering us. I will have an indictment before the ten o’clock news tonight.”

“What will you release to the media?”

“You know me. Name, rank and serial number. I won’t tell the press anything. My office will release a written statement listing the counts of the indictment. We will advise that you are Father Dubois’s counsel and that you have agreed to waive extradition and return the defendant voluntarily to this jurisdiction so he can be formally arraigned.”

“O-kaaay, I’ll go get him.”

“You should get out of town this morning. Or you’re gonna have a lot of company, a planeload of media going with you. You have my numbers. Stay in touch. We’ll work out his return. Don’t come home until we talk. Got it?”

“Wait,” I said. “Sean, what do you expect the indictment to be?”

“Enough to make sure he’s never in a place where he can do anything like this again.”

By the time we hung up, I was wide awake. Both Sean and I knew exactly what he was alluding to when he signed off. There were already rumors of people around Bayou Saint John who planned to murder Dubois. Sean did not want some vigilante act to end Dubois’s life.

In the kitchen, there was coffee. I called my secretary. Mo was huffing and puffing as she paced on her treadmill. In short order, she had flights and a hotel booked for me. To avoid being traced and found, I was not going anywhere near the Stalder Institute. I was going back into Manhattan and would stay there until everything was in place to bring Dubois home.

“Call me tonight. And Ren…”

“Yeah, Mo?”

“Watch your back.”

Mo was waiting for my call from New York.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey back.”

“You got it, Mo?”

“I got it. It was the lead story at ten. According to the news, the indictment contains three counts that carry mandatory life sentences, twenty counts than run up to twenty-five years each – then I lost track of the other counts. Channel 2 did say Father Dubois was in a lock-down facility. I don’t know where they got that. They said that you were representing him, and that the district attorney expected extradition would be waived and Dubois would return this week to be arraigned.”

“Okay. They won’t find me. I worked it out at the desk with a
hundred-dollar tip and I’m registered in this hotel under the name Richard Starkey.”

“Okay, Ringo. You be safe.”

I turned out the lamp and sat in the dark next to the window, looking down on Central Park from my thirty-fourth-story perch. I was moving into uncharted waters, and would be going farther from home than I had ever been, to places I had never wanted to see.

I wanted to call Kate, but she knew me too well, knew my voice too well. She would hear fear in my voice. I never wanted anyone to know I was scared of anything. I pulled the nun’s card out of my wallet and turned it over to where Sister Julianne had written her home phone number. I thought about calling her. Instead, I dialed room service for a bottle of vodka.

Looking at the lights of the city and relative darkness in Central Park, I remembered I had been here just over a week ago, in this same hotel with this same view. It seemed like years ago. Everything was moving fast and at the same time everything seemed to be fading fast to a distant memory. The night sky was like a blank canvas. I could have painted any image I wanted in my mind but nothing came to me.

My early-morning call to the Stalder Institute presented unexpected problems. When I advised the nursing supervisor on Dubois’s wing that I would be picking up Father Dubois and accompanying him to Louisiana, I was told he was not allowed to go anywhere.

“What do you mean you will not allow him to leave? He is checked in on a voluntary basis. There is no court order to hold him.”

“Sir, I have my orders from the director. Just as I was coming on duty last night, the patient received a phone call and learned
that there had been television news about criminal charges against him in Louisiana. He said the caller told him he was going to prison for life. He totally destabilized. He is on suicide watch again with one-on-one supervision around the clock.”

“Who in the hell called him and told him that?” I asked.

“Let me get the phone log and check.”

I waited a few minutes for the supervisor to come back on the phone. “Here, I have it. Walter Dubois. A brother.”

Dubois’s pedophile brother, the one who hated him. The one who’d worn the Saints jersey and had choked back a laugh when I broke the news to the family about their son and brother. The one who’d phoned me.

“Ma’am, if he does not voluntarily return to Louisiana, there will be a court hearing up there in New Jersey to extradite him. Going through that hearing will do more damage to him than going back home with me. The last child molester extradited to Louisiana was gunned down in the Baton Rouge airport while he was in police custody. We don’t want to go through an extradition hearing we can’t win and travel with the media surrounding us.”

“All I can tell you to do is to put in a call to Doctor Dobson after nine this morning, or maybe the director of the Institute, Clay David. But I don’t think they will release a person who is on suicide watch. If he did kill himself because of this, someone could sue us for negligence. It would be unprofessional and irresponsible – actually malpractice – and would create huge legal issues if such a patient were allowed to walk out.”

Understanding I would get nowhere in this call, I signed off politely and quickly dialed another number.

Sean answered on the second ring.

“Sean, you awake?”

“Yeah, but it’s kind of early for you, isn’t it?”

“Well, I’m up and I have a problem.”

“Your problems are just beginning.”

I recounted the conversation I’d had with the nursing
supervisor and asked Sean to give me some time to try to work things out.

“I’m not your problem. The media will be looking for him this morning. They’re not gonna stop until they find him. You better tell those people at the diocese not to disclose his location. Otherwise—”

“The diocese won’t talk to reporters.”

“I will hold this info tight. What airport will you both be flying out of?”

“Philadelphia. And we will be flying tomorrow. You can book that, Sean. I will do what I have to do to get him out of the place he’s in and we’ll be heading back tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

As I was about to ring off, thinking of Sean having to handle all those children in a grand jury setting, I said, “I don’t envy you for what you had to do yesterday.”

“I don’t envy you for what you have to do today,” he said.

The rest of Wednesday blurred. I spent the whole day on the phone. When I finally got through to the Stalder Institute’s lawyers, they were tough. After exploring every possible option, I had Mo send them my financials via a telecopier to substantiate that I was worth more than any claim that could be made by a relative in the event Dubois killed himself after we walked out of the institution. I took full legal and financial responsibility, agreeing to indemnify the Stalder Institute in the event Dubois died by suicide as a result of being released into my custody.

It wasn’t suicide that concerned me. It was homicide. Someone might be lying in wait for him when we arrived in Louisiana.

I called Sean Robinette to confirm that Dubois and I would be coming home the next day. Sean said, “Good. I need to confirm some things. Tomorrow two detectives from Bayou Saint John are going to meet you. Their names are Wade Melancon and Samuel Delcambre. They’re good guys. I picked them myself. They will meet you at Philadelphia airport at the US Air check-in counter
any time after noon. Renon, don’t go freelancing or improvising on me. Don’t you leave Philadelphia until you hook up with detectives Melancon and Delcambre.”

“Detectives are meeting us? For what, Sean? Why?”

“Just to help you come home, Ren.”

“How will I know these guys?”

“They know you.”

I ordered a car and driver to take me down to Jersey, where I visited with Director Clay David at the Stalder Institute, signed legal documents accepting responsibility for Dubois, and received permission to take him back to Louisiana the next day.

In a nearby Holiday Inn, I tried to sleep. It was a pointless exercise. That evening in the motel restaurant, I finally had a meal. A burger and a Coke float.