Harlot's Moon Read Free

knob several times to make sure it was locked, then got into his big Chevrolet van.
    When he was done backing up and turning around, headed in the opposite direction, I walked over to 154 and knocked. Father Steven Gray opened the door immediately.

Chapter Two
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    T he room was dark and tomb-cold. The only light came from the bathroom in the back. There was a mixture of smells: mildew, dirty rugs, towels, linen, and death. The dead man had shit himself. He lay hunched fetus-style in the middle of the double bed. He was without shirt or socks. His pants were unbuckled. I wasn't sure what to make of any of these details. His mouth was open as if in a silent scream, the lips violent red with blood.
    I stood in the room and let myself be suffused with its history; all the betrayals and loneliness. The furnishings, stained, chipped, and dusty, looked too dirty to sit on.
    "What's his name, Steve?"
    "Father Daly. Peter Daly."
    "From St. Mallory's?"
    "Yes."
    I took a penlight from my sport jacket and knelt down next to the bed. I wanted a closer look at the wound in the chest. It was a large one. I suspected he'd been stabbed several times in the heart. But his open mouth was even more perplexing. This was not commonly seen in a murder victim. I shone my light inside and gagged. My entire body spasmed. I'd never seen anything like this.
    "What is it?" Steve said.
    "His tongue has been cut out."
    "Oh, my Lord."
    I went in the back and looked in the bathroom. Though I saw no blood I smelled some, probably in the dirt-and-mustard-colored carpeting. The police lab man would use a test called Luminol to see if there was indeed blood in the rug.
    Steve Gray followed me around like a child trailing a parent. He wore a white button-down shirt, a blue windbreaker, chinos and Reeboks. I wondered if the Pope ever dressed like that.
    "You looking for anything in particular, Robert?"
    "Not really," I said.
    When I came out of the bathroom, he said, "We need to talk"
    I shook my head. "Talk is for later. What we need to do now is call the police. You can't afford to stall them any longer."
    "I called two other people," he said. "And they're on their way over."
    "Who are they?"
    "Bob Wilson, who is the President of the Parish Board, and Father Ryan. He's the only priest left at St Mallory's now — besides me, I mean." He stared down at the dead priest. "We don't always agree, Father Ryan and I, but this time we do."
    "Why invite them now?"
    He raised his gaze from the corpse on the bed.
    "They're better at press relations than I am. I'll need their help."
    I surveyed chairs, end-tables, bed and bathroom counters for anything that had been left behind. There was a golden earring on one of the end-tables. It had been cast in the shape of a heart. I left it where it was. The lab folks would be very angry if I didn't. An open condom wrapper on the bed proclaimed itself to be of the ribbed variety, with a "special" tip.
    "Is that what they call a French tickler?" Steve said.
    "Uh-huh."
    He made a face. "He was quite a guy."
    I didn't want to touch the phone so I walked out of the room and went up to the office. Steve walked alongside me.
    "The night man here goes to St Mallory's," he said. "He'd had complaints about some kind of fight going on in the room. When he let himself in and found Father Daly dead, he called me right away."
    "What's the night man's name?"
    "Paul Gaspard."
    "Let's go see him. I'm not sure he did you any favors. The cops're really going to be mad."
    "This will hurt the parish," he said, not heeding me. "The scandal. I can hear all the jokes already."
    We passed a series of junk cars lined up along the walk. They all had out-of-state plates — Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota . . . drifters drifting, desperately trying to find justice or at least shelter from injustice. They'd work minimum wage for a time, maybe enroll their two or three scruffy youngsters in a local school, and then some night they'd do something crazy,