Speaking in Bones (27 page)

“I’m with Detective Slidell. He made a ballet reference.” Putting it kindly. “That made me think of Susan Grace, because she lied to her grandmother in order to follow me, and the photos of Oscar’s brother, Edward, and Hazel Strike’s account of CLUES, and my own research. Bang. Suddenly it all came together.”

“The brain as supercollider.”

“Yes.” Uncertain the accuracy of the analogy.

“Want me to call Grandma?”

“Better to go to the courthouse and pull the birth certificate.”

“I’m on it.”

When we’d disconnected, I started to explain to Slidell.

“I got ears.”

“Should I ask Susan Grace about the olive oil concoction?”

“And say what? Hey, Sis, did Big Bro put goop on his hair? Larabee’s not confirming ID, so, far as the family knows, the kid’s still kicking.”

Slidell was right. Such an odd question would arouse suspicion.

Before Slidell left, I got online, logged in to CLUES, and double-checked the dates of OMG’s postings. The first occurred in August 2011, roughly a month after Cora Teague dropped from sight. The last was in September, approximately one month later.

Slidell was halfway through the door when Ramsey phoned back. I put him on speaker.

“You’re dead-on. Mason’s birth certificate lists his full name as Oscar Mason Gulley. Grandma filed it. Neither parent had bothered.”

“Slidell and I checked dates,” I said. “OMG’s posts tally with Susan Grace’s story about Mason going to Johnson City. The posts end around the time he stopped contacting her.”

“Okay,” Ramsey said. “Say it’s true. OMG is Mason Gulley. What does it mean?”

Not one of us could put forth a reasonable guess.

When Slidell left I sat a moment arguing with myself, weighing obligation to a nameless victim against personal commitment. Then, moving at sloth speed, I dialed and canceled my flight to Montreal.

Dreading the upcoming discussion, I called Ryan. Got voice mail. Guilt-ridden at feeling I’d escaped a bullet, I sent a lengthy email explaining my decision. Ryan would understand. Or he would not.

But did
I
? Was I relieved over dodging an unpleasant phone conversation? Or over avoiding the trip?

I found Larabee in his office, briefed him, as I’d promised Slidell I would. No anthropology case had come in, so I told him I’d be heading home to work on my taxes.

Larabee’s look expressed what he thought of my procrastination. He’d probably filed in January.

I really did plan to stick with it. And did. Until four-fifteen, when Father Morris phoned.

“I have information for you.” In a somber newscaster voice that sent a frisson of a tingle up my spine.

“Great.” I reached for a pen.

“I think it best if we speak face-to-face.”

“Sure.” Looking at the paper piled around me in not-so-neat stacks. At the half-full carton. Half-empty? “Shall I come to the rectory?”

“Yes. Perhaps in an hour?”

“I’ll see you then.”

I disconnected and looked at Birdie, who was looking at me. I could swear the cat shrugged.

—

St. Patrick parish is in Dilworth, a neighborhood one circle outside of uptown. Though modest as such structures go, the church is actually a cathedral, the mother ship for the Diocese of Charlotte. Neo-Gothic in style, it has the usual limestone and stucco exterior, domed nave, bell tower, and stained glass. High above the front doors stands a statue of the good saint holding his staff.

St. Pat’s was forty years old when renovations began in 1979, a face-lift that continued on and off for three decades. New marble altar, pipe organ, and bell. Spiffy copper roof, shiny hardwood floors, Celtic cross on the lawn. Perched on her hill, the old gal is now nipped and tucked and looking damn fine.

While visiting me a few years back, an out-of-town friend queried the high number of colleges in Charlotte. Not understanding the Queen City’s love affair with religion, she’d misinterpreted the town’s abundant and expansive religious complexes for institutions of higher learning.

St. Pat’s is no exception. With its main church, parish family life center, gardens, lawns, parking lots, convent, and rectory, the grounds resemble a small university campus.

Ten minutes after leaving the annex, I parked where Morris had directed and climbed the steps to the rectory. A thumb to the bell produced a soft lyrical bonging. I was about to give it another go when the door opened.

“Tempe. Please excuse my casual appearance.” Morris was wearing a most unpriestly combo of jeans, plaid shirt, and green wool vest. “I’ve completed my pastoral duties for the day.”

“You look very stylish.” Jesus, was that appropriate? Crap. Jesus as an expletive? Double crap. Decades since I’d last donned my little uniform, priests and nuns still made me nervous.

Morris smiled. “Shall we go into the study?”

The foyer had a tapestry on one wall, a woman chastely cloaked from head to toe, bathed in heavenly light. A red Persian on the floor, a carved wooden chair in one corner, an elaborately banistered staircase on the right. The study was a short way down a very wide hall. Portraits of somber clerics hung on both sides at perfectly spaced intervals.

The study was wood-paneled and lined floor to ceiling with shelves on three walls. Another Persian underfoot, this one in tones of green.

A cement-manteled fireplace was centered on the fourth wall. Before it were two Queen Anne chairs and a small table. Above it was a jarringly colorful painting. To one side was a small glass-fronted secretary.

Morris led me to the fireplace grouping. I sat. He didn’t.

“Can I offer you something? Perhaps tea?”

“Tea would be great,” I said.

I half expected him to ring a tiny bell to summon a shuffling nun with a dowager’s hump and mummy-wrinkled face. Instead, he hurried from the room.

I ran my usual mental inventory.

The painting was a landscape. Maybe. Lots of oranges and blues and what I thought could be a horizon.

A desk took up the far end of the room, mahogany with clean, sleek lines. Facing it were two uninviting wooden chairs. A ploy to keep whiny or cantankerous supplicants moving along with their tales?

The shelves were filled with books, journals, and the occasional decorative piece. Through the glass secretary doors I could see framed snapshots, a silver tray holding a small flask of yellow liquid and remnants of what appeared to be dried palm frond. Mother-of-pearl opera glasses. A brass candlestick.

Morris returned with a tin of tea bags, two napkins, two spoons, and two mugs of steaming water.

“Hope you don’t mind instant.”

“My usual poison.” Jesus!

I chose peppermint. He went for chamomile. As we removed the wrappers and began dipping, he started in.

“No one wants to talk about Granger Hoke.”

Though my pulse kicked up a notch, I never broke stride with my bag.

“I hope you can keep what I tell you confidential.” Setting his mug on the table, his dripping bag on the napkin.

“I will try my best. But—”

Morris held up a hand. “I understand that may not be possible if Hoke is involved in something criminal. It’s just that the church has received a great deal of bad press in recent years.”

“Father,” I said, but stopped there, unsure of what to say. His reference needed no explanation.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Tempe. What was done to these children is vile and disgusting. And sinful. Any priest who engaged in such behavior must be punished to the full extent of the law.”

“But you feel the situation has been misrepresented by the media?” I didn’t like where this was going.

“Much of the coverage has been fair and justified. Some has not. All I am saying is that another scandal would be devastating to the church.”

Morris dropped the hand and lifted his mug. Didn’t drink.

“A few rogue priests do not define who we are. Deep in my soul I believe the clergy is made up of moral and honorable men. Men who love God and their fellow human beings and want to make a difference in this world.”

Morris looked past me for a moment. But I saw his face reflected in the secretary glass. In his eyes I saw pain, perhaps fear.

My mouth went dry. I braced myself, certain Morris was about to tell me Granger Hoke had sexually molested children.

I could not have been more wrong.

M
orris turned back to me, face tired and sad.

“In 1998, Granger Hoke was defrocked for performing unauthorized exorcisms.”

“Exorcisms.” Not sure if the feeling washing through me was relief or shock.

“Yes.”

“As in driving out demons?”

“I suppose you could put it that way.”

“How would you put it?”

“As defined in the catechism of the Catholic Church, an exorcism is the public and authoritative demand, in the name of Jesus Christ, that a person, place, or object be protected against the power of the Evil One, and withdrawn from his dominion.”

“Satan.”

“He is real, in some form.”

“This isn’t the fifteenth century, Father.”

“No. It’s not.” Patient smile. “But evil still exists in this world and exorcisms are still performed. In fact, the Vatican reviewed the process and revised the rite in 1999, though use of the traditional Latin form is still permitted.”

“Performed under what circumstances?” I’d seen
The Exorcist,
The Rite,
but that was Hollywood. I was having trouble wrapping my mind around the concept of Lucifer in America in the age of Silicon Valley and Twitter.

Morris sipped his tea before answering, perhaps compiling a list in his head.

“Indicators of demonic possession include supernatural abilities and strength, speaking in foreign or ancient languages not known to the subject, knowledge of hidden or remote things to which the subject cannot be privy on his or her own, aversion to holy objects, profuse blasphemy, sacrilege.”

I could only stare.

“The underlying assumption is that the subject retains his or her own free will, but the devil has taken control of his or her physical body. The ritual involves prayers, invocations, and blessings that—”

“Who can perform an exorcism?”

“Technically, anyone.”

“Technically?”

“Yes. But the church recognizes the dangers inherent in exorcisms conducted by untrained individuals. And the potential for charlatanism. So only an ordained priest is permitted to perform the rite. And only with the express permission of his bishop. Don’t misunderstand me, Tempe. Exorcisms occur extremely rarely, and only following careful medical and psychiatric evaluation.”

“Granger Hoke is an ordained priest.”

“Was.”

“Fine. What was the problem?”

Morris raised the mug to his lips, lowered it without drinking.

“At one time, the function of exorcist was part of the ordination of priests. In hierarchy, the office fell somewhere above deacon and below full priest. Few seminaries now train exorcists, and today any ordained priest may perform the rite. But only those appointed by the bishop or archbishop are allowed to do so with the blessing of the church.”

“Official exorcists.”

“Yes.”

“How many are there?”

“Typically, one per diocese or archdiocese.”

“And Hoke wasn’t one of those sanctioned.” I could see where this was going.

“No.”

“Yet he kept doing it.”

“Though reprimanded and told to desist. But unauthorized exorcism wasn’t the only issue. Hoke was eventually relocated from the Midwest to North Carolina. In the mid-nineties, while pastor of a small parish in Watauga County, he began deviating from traditional Catholic teachings, shifting toward a more fundamentalist, Pentecostal doctrine.”

Morris nodded to himself and looked down at his mug.

“Did you know that exorcisms are performed by charismatic, Pentecostal, and many other brands of Christianity? I read recently that, by conservative estimates, there are at least five or six hundred evangelical exorcism ministries in existence today, quite possibly far more.”

“Hoke put a hellfire spin on his preaching?”

“He did.”

“And it got him booted.”

“Defrocked. After that he vanished for a while, eventually reappeared in Avery County and established the Jesus Lord Holiness church. Though ordered not to do so, he calls himself a priest, wears a cassock and collar, says Mass, administers the sacraments, and preaches his own distorted version of Catholicism.”

“Which features a starring role for Satan.”

“Yes.”

Somewhere beyond the quiet of the study, a door closed.

“Are exorcisms legal?”

“As long as the subject agrees of his or her own free will.”

“So the church has no way to stop a rogue like Hoke.”

“Sadly, no.”

“Anything else?”

A second slipped by. When Morris answered, his voice had the same guarded tone I’d heard on the phone. “No.”

In that brief hesitation I knew he was lying. Or at least holding back.

“Thank you, Father.” I stood.

Morris walked me to the door. Said “God be with you.” Offered a blessing. I took a pass.

“Remember what I’ve said about honor among priests, Tempe. I believe in it. And I believe in the church.”