38.

At four A.M. on Monday, Debra was on the road.

Time was racing by, but she had used her weekend well. Lots of rest, two workouts. She had never been stronger. She burned all the bloody drop cloths from the van along with the clothing, hers and that of the dead Stieboldt, and gathered up what was left of the pervert from the feeding room in the hog shed. She was fond of her two hogs and treated them kindly, but she’d learned how to withhold their food and make them very efficient. What bones they’d left she sawed up and scattered over several dumps. She was glad Stieboldt was the only one, so far, she’d had to bring home with her.

She forced herself to watch some of the media coverage, too, not because she needed validation of her efforts, but to learn what she could about public response. There was no mention of anyone mourning the dead priests, of course. Everyone knew they were animals who preyed on children. People knew, also, that they were lucky someone had the courage to treat those men as they deserved, as God willed.

There was no talk, either, of the order she was following. What the media stressed was that the victims were narrowly targeted, so there wasn’t the general panic there’d been with the D.C. snipers, nor the outcry that would have put hundreds of police out looking for her. This time it wasn’t fear that held the public spellbound, but blood and body parts, and morbid curiosity about the sexual misconduct of those priests. People were so weak, so easily drawn to sordid, sick details.

For her part, confident of God’s help and with just two to go to reach the fullness of seven, she would play her cards carefully, but she would not be afraid to play. Locating Stieboldt in the hospital and catching Truczik out in the open were both the result of careful surveillance, then swift and courageous action. God helps those who help themselves.

Each purging brought its own rush of excitement and satisfaction, and she would have liked more opportunity to savor them. But she couldn’t take the time. Carlo was coming out in nine days, a week from Wednesday.

It seemed so long ago, that night she’d had to run and leave him behind. That had torn her apart, and though she hadn’t seen him since, everything had been for his sake. The struggle to get to Sicily, submission to the clumsy pawings of la capra in his compound there, the painful plastic surgeries. Then coming home, and the loneliness of hiding out. Everything was for Carlo.

No one would see her, but when Carlo came out she would be watching, and she hoped to be able to gather him up at once. But she dared not contact him with advice, and he had never been smart the way she was. If he let himself be taken she had a plan. She would risk everything to save him, and with the help of God the two of them would be together again. He had never been able to function without her. She would have to protect him—and now even walk for him and talk for him. She would love him as though he were whole.

*   *   *

Debra drove on through the darkness, north of Chicago on I-94, the Tri-State Tollway, past the exit she always used for the seminary. Then, past the final toll booth, she exited and headed west. There were still farms up here that hadn’t fallen under the developers’ bulldozers.

Debra knew something about hiding out in the country and about using an alias. You couldn’t create a new identity simply by moving to a new place, a rural place owned by a cousin with a different name than yours, and then calling yourself by the cousin’s name.

“No,” she said, “that’s not enough.” She was alone in the van, driving past a mailbox with the name CHRISTOPHERSON on its side, but she spoke out loud. “There’s much more to it than that, my dear Father Ettinger, as you will learn.”

Beyond the mailbox a driveway led up to a well-kept farmhouse. A light shone behind drawn curtains in one ground-floor window. And then, as she drove past on the road, she saw something else. Drawn up beside the house and visible in the glow of a tall, backyard pole light, sat a late-model, light-colored, four-door sedan. Not your ordinary farmer’s vehicle, she thought. More like a car signed out from the pool of some governmental agency.

She cursed out loud and pounded the steering wheel with the heel of her hand … and drove on. But before very long she calmed herself. This setback, too, God would somehow turn into a blessing.