“As a doctor, a man of science, do you have any kind of concrete evidence to support your belief that Michael Grinnell was responsible for ... what happened to you?”
Lukas raised an eyebrow. “As to who was responsible, Ms. Malley, I can tell you I’ve put such thinking behind me. Something about moving forward with one’s life. The rehabilitation center was big on such things. But what I will tell you is that the first day I met him, Michael warned me to stop asking questions. Told me I’d be very sorry if I didn’t.” His eyes grew distant. “A childish threat to say the least. And so, I treated it as such. Now, given the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight, I can only warn you that he was absolutely right.”
Being punished by the old man was nothing compared to being coddled by him. Temperature and pulse checks every hour or so. Homework help over take-out ordered from half-a-dozen menus. And doughnuts. Ever since Jonas had come home from the hospital, his life seemed to have been transformed by the doughnut fairy. Boston crèmes for lunch. Glazed buttermilk for dinner. When he dozed off on the living room sofa, he awakened to find a blanket tucked around him and a pillow slipped beneath his head— along with a bag of Bear Claws and cold milk in a vacuum flask that looked suspiciously like it might have once seen service in the old man’s lab.
Lukas had just dispensed a pair of crullers like they were aspirin when his phone rang. He listened only briefly before snapping, “Impossible. I’m sorry.”
The voice on the other end said something more. “I appreciate both your obligations and your concern,” Lukas replied, “however, it is my professional opinion that my son is in no condition to speak to anyone.”
Another welter of words, and the old man’s face fell. Suddenly he just looked tired.
“Well, in that case, I owe you an apology. As well as a thank you,” he said. “Would this afternoon be convenient?”
After he hung up, he lapsed into a silence almost as black as when he had witnessed Jonas’s resurrection down at the Outreach Center.
“What is it?” Jonas asked. “What’s going on?”
“The local prosecutor would like to have a word with you. I’m afraid I can’t convince him otherwise.” Another long, silent moment, and then just like that, the old man was back in action, snapping out orders like he was in an operating room. “However, he is willing to do it informally, down at the Outreach Center, rather than subjecting you to an interrogation. I will, of course, insist on being present at the interview. In fact, it would be best if you allowed me to do as much of the talking as possible. You can simply tell him you don’t remember anything. I can attest to the fact that it’s a common result of trauma.”
Jonas stared at him. “But that’s ... a lie.”
“No, it’s not. It’s a medical fact.”
“You know what I mean.” Jonas folded his arms. “You could go to jail for that. I don’t want you to go to jail because of me.”
Well, maybe he should have thought of that before he started stealing drugs. Jonas could hear the old man point out the obvious before he said a word.
But incredibly, Lukas didn’t say it. And that was the last straw. Jonas couldn’t help himself. The next words tumbled out in a rush of anger and fear. “Go ahead. You’re just dying to say it,” he snarled. “I really fucked it up this time, didn’t I?”
His father’s shoulders stiffened, and he took his time studying Jonas over his reading glasses as if he were some kind of unfamiliar specimen. “Do you really think that’s the case?” he asked, and he sounded genuinely disturbed. “Do you really think I would find this cause to ... gloat?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I would very much like an answer to my question.” Jonas shut his eyes. “Nossir.”
“Then can we agree that you will let me handle this, and do what I can to make things right?”
“Why should you?” Jonas demanded. “I’m the one who fucked up.”
Another long look, like the old man was having trouble identifying exactly who or what his son was. “Because I’m your father,” Lukas said. “And while it’s clear I’m not a particularly good specimen, I’m the one you were landed with. And this is what fathers do when someone threatens their son.”
Jonas wasn’t sure how he’d feel walking back into the Outreach Center. But what was strange about that? Jonas wasn’t sure how he felt about anything anymore. He supposed the cliché that was his world had been turned upside down, but didn’t it make a lot more sense to think that he was the one who was ass-backwards—tumbling in a long somersault down the fast track to the nuthouse? It didn’t help that the old man kept shooting anxious glances Jonas’s way whenever he thought Jonas wasn’t looking—like he was just dying to pull out a thermometer and check Jonas’s temperature one more time.
But Jonas felt nothing as he entered the crowded church basement. Most likely because nothing had changed. The place still looked like some third world Ebola camp, filled with sweaty, pregnant women trying to mop up their kids’ vomit with crumpled tissues, and bag men belching and coughing up long strings of ... who the hell knew what? And as for the smell—hell, take Jonas at his worst after he’d crapped himself and multiply it by one of those exponents that the old man spent their quality time trying to explain in this weird new Mr. Rogers voice he kept trying to use. Sweat and piss and puke and shit, all of it rising from a bunch of swamp people who were mouth breathers.
The nun who ran the place came hurrying over as soon as she saw them. “Are you sure this is wise, so soon after ...” Her eyes went to Jonas as she groped for a word. “... the incident?”
“I don’t think it’s wise at all,” Lukas said. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been given much choice in the matter. The police have decided to investigate.”
“You’re bringing the police here?” The nun’s face darkened into a scowl. As if somehow she thought this was all Jonas’s fault. And why shouldn’t she? This was 100 percent Jonas’s bad.
“Fortunately, Trey Carey has stepped in to mediate,” Lukas said. “He’s offered to have Jonas walk him through what happened informally, in order to spare him from going down to the local police station to make a formal statement.”
“But Trey’s still a prosecutor.”
“He’s also the husband of Marie Grinnell. Whose family has supported the Outreach Center since it was founded,” Lukas said. “Which is why he’s making every effort to handle this as a discreetly as possible. It seems to be in everyone’s best interest to cooperate with him.”
The nun gestured toward a couple of skinny addicts who were emptying sugar packet after sugar packet into their coffee. Too bad Jonas hadn’t thought to bring them a couple of spare doughnuts from home.
“In whose best interest? Theirs? These people need to be protected. They have the right of sanctuary.”
Lukas’s nostrils flared. “Be that as it may, the fact that the shooters are reputed drug dealers complicates the issue considerably. For, as much as I respect the Church’s ancient prerogatives, I need to point out that neither the federal government nor the AMA has much patience with physicians who cannot keep track of the medicine in their dispensary. Licenses are revoked. Jail sentences are handed down. Which means, if you are as committed to providing free medical care as you are to the concept of sanctuary, the center needs to cooperate with the prosecutor’s office. Complete transparency. So, if you don’t mind, I would like to check the medicine cabinet to see if anything’s missing before Trey arrives.”
Without another word, he wheeled up the ramp that led out of the shelter and back out onto the street. Doing his best to ignore the nun’s furious glare, Jonas crept after him.
It didn’t matter that Jonas had two good legs, and even once in a while ran track at school, by the time he’d screwed up the courage to follow his father into the storeroom, Lukas was already peering at the medicine chest through his reading glasses as if it were a suppurating chest wound. With a rapid twist of his wrist, he double-checked the lock, then pulled out one of those latex examining gloves he used in the clinic. And by the time Jonas had figured out what he was doing, or had recognized the dented table knife that his father was holding for what it was, the old man had inserted it between the doors of the cabinet and jimmied them open in one swift move.
Which was in a way pretty cool. Jonas wondered what other tricks his father might teach him. “What the f...? You’re faking a break-in.”
Lukas raised an eyebrow. “Since you’re perspicacious enough to realize that, I assume you’re perspicacious enough to realize I would prefer it if you kept your voice down.”
“But ... why?”
Tossing the knife away, Lukas removed the latex glove and crumpled it into a pocket. “Licenses revoked. Jail sentences. That kind of thing.”
Yeah. Jonas knew. It was pretty fucking hard to forget it. “I mean, why are you faking it?”
“Because if the prosecutor’s office finds drugs missing from a locked cabinet on our little walkthrough, that points to someone with knowledge of the combination,” Lukas said. “Whereas anyone could have simply jimmied that lock. They have better security on the communion wine. Now, shall we take a look and see what’s missing?”
“No, Dad, please listen...”
“Dr. Croswell? Are you in there?”
A small, slender woman with long red hair materialized in the doorway in a rattle of footsteps. She was the kind of woman you usually only saw here on Thanksgiving, elbowing the others out of the way for the privilege of serving turkey to the homeless. More often, her kind showed up right on their doorstep, angling for the privilege of serving turkey tetrazzini to Lukas Croswell and his pathetic son.
That was another thing about the old man. He was a regular chick magnet. Women always wanted to take care of him—from the yoga teacher who wanted to teach him to meditate, to the librarian who wanted him to join a book club, to the elderly Jehovah’s Witness who wanted to save his immortal soul. Three guesses how any of those had worked out. It had gone easiest for the Witness. On the other hand, at least the food was decent during the brief interval between a woman’s deciding to take his father firmly in hand and the moment Lukas concluded his definitive demonstration of why they would have better luck taking a pit viper to their bosom. Casseroles seemed to be the weapon of choice in the crusade to save Lukas Croswell’s soul.
But one look at the redhead, and a muscle began to twitch in the old man’s cheek. So, no. This had nothing to do with casseroles.
“Dr. Malley,” he said. “I suppose it was too much to hope you’d take my advice.”
“Actually,” she said, “the point is moot. Father Gregory heard that the prosecutor’s office wants to settle this matter quietly, and he sent me down here to see if I can facilitate matters on his behalf. To tell the truth, I think that translates into him wanting me to run interference with Sister St. John, but if there’s something you need from me ...”
Lukas studied the redhead for another moment, then gestured toward the broken lock on the medicine cabinet. “We seem to have had a break-in,” he said, refusing to meet Jonas’s eyes. “Perhaps you could check whether any other items have been taken while I check the drugs.”
“Did this happen when...?” She glanced at Jonas. “You know.”
“I couldn’t say,” Lukas said. “Maybe you’ll find some evidence that will help us pinpoint a time in all that.”
He waved toward the shelves that were crammed with cardboard boxes and rotting books. But the redhead just kept staring into the cabinet. “That’s an awful lot of drugs,” she said.
Lukas forced a smile. “The Grinnell Corporation has always been more than generous in funding our pharmaceuticals,” he said. “As I’m sure Father Gregory has already informed you.”
“I mean, there are a lot of them in there. Why didn’t the thieves take them?”
The smile faded; the muscle twitched harder. “Perhaps they were interrupted.”
“By your son? That can’t be. The shooting took place outside, remember? They would have already cleaned everything out of the cabinets.”
“Then maybe they weren’t interrupted by my son,” Lukas said. He was starting to look uncomfortable. Didn’t take much to figure out why. Christ, wasn’t he the one that was always lecturing Jonas on how lying was never the answer. How one lie just fed into another until the whole house of cards came crashing down around your ears?
And you got hauled off to jail just because you were trying to help your fuck-up of a son?
“Maybe they weren’t looking for drugs,” Jonas said. “Maybe they were looking for ... you know ... like relics? Of the priest who’s supposed to haunt this place?”
An odd look flashed across Lukas’s face. “Honestly, Jonas. The Congregation for the Causes of the Saints is one thing. The Da Vinci Code is an entirely different thing altogether.” Part of Jonas would have been ready to swear he’d seen his father bite back a smile. If he had, it was gone before Lukas turned back to the redhead. “Nonetheless, if you could check the shelves to see if any relics are missing, that would be very helpful.”
He spun back toward the medicine cabinet and pointedly began to count the drugs, but his chair caught against an edge, rattling the shelves and sending a sheaf of papers sliding to the floor. The old man stared at them with about the same expression as he had when Jonas had spilled a tray of saints’ teeth all over the floor of his lab. “Those belong on the other side of the room. Who on earth put them there?”
“I’ll get them,” the redhead said, scooping up the papers. Major violation of house rules, but Lukas barely seemed to notice. Jonas guessed staging a crime was more distracting than his father had thought.
The redhead frowned as she glanced at the paper. “What’s the Lazarus Vector?” she asked.
“I honestly have no idea,” Lukas said. “I suppose it would be logical to assume it’s somehow connected to this being the Church of St. Lazarus.”
“Then what was it doing in the medicine cabinet?”
Lukas drew an irritable breath. “I suppose it could be some kind of bottled miracle cure,” he said with a tight smile. “The Lazarites’ answer to the water at Lourdes. But it might be simpler to assume that it was misplaced. The filing system here doesn’t strike me as exhaustive.”
“No Finding Aid,” the redhead agreed. But she didn’t put down the papers. “Still, I’m the world’s foremost expert on the Lazarites—at least until someone else decides to write a dissertation. So if anyone should know what a Lazarus Vector is, it should be me. And I’ve never heard of it.” She flipped through the pages, skimming them as she went on, “The Lazarus Map, yes. It’s a strangely oriented Hungarian map in which Northeast is straight up instead of North. One of the more arcane theories is that it is pointing the way to the mythical Northern kingdom of Thule ...”
“Then I congratulate you on discovering another Templar meridian,” Lukas said. “In the meantime, if we could get to work ...”
“Oh, no. The Templar meridians are completely different. I’ve seen them. I once spent an entire summer—”
The redhead broke off, flushing beneath Lukas’s incredulous stare. Under normal circumstances, Jonas would have been pissed. Under normal circumstances, he would have pushed her to go on, maybe even asked her what she thought about the Oak Island Treasure. But these weren’t normal circumstances. In fact, Jonas was beginning to doubt there was ever going to be such a thing again. Because Jonas could tell them exactly where that paper had come from. Just like he could have told them that, yes, the Lazarus Vector was a drug. A shit-assed, scary drug that had been sitting in the bottom shelf the last time Jonas had snuck into that medicine cabinet, vials packed in a padded cooler bag like some kind of serum a hero dog would rush to a village suffering a plague. One sniff, one taste was enough to make Jonas give it up as a bad idea. He just wanted a buzz—a little relief from the itching and the jitters. He wasn’t so far gone that he wanted to mess around with shit you had to shoot up or shit that had to be kept cold.
“Dad—”
An angry shout cut him off. “You want to talk to Lukas Croswell, you head around outside. But you don’t come downstairs. You don’t violate sanctuary, do you hear me?”
“And that, I believe, is our cue for a facilitating intervention,” Lukas said to the redhead. Slamming the medicine cabinet shut, he spun for the door, barely managing to hide his relief. “Sister St. John may be a woman of great courage and faith, but frankly, she has more of a taste for plastic handcuffs than I think is strictly healthy.”
A shadow shifted in the depths of the sacristy as soon as the door closed behind them, and the busker slid out from the alcove where he had been hiding. His mouth twisted in an angry smile as he scooped up the computer printout.
“The Lazarus Vector,” he snorted. “Really? What is it with you people and names?”
“You prefer to call it the Path of the Awakener?” the ghost asked, materializing beside him.
“I prefer to call it a pain in the ass.” The busker shook his head, shoving his hand back through his hair. “Christ, why would anyone want to resurrect this crap? What the hell are they up to?”
“How should I know?” the ghost said. “I’m just a psychological projection, remember? I can’t dematerialize and walk through walls to spy for you.”
“And here I’d hoped you might be useful.”
“You don’t value my spiritual advice?”
“Spirit advice, you mean?”
“Have it your way,” the ghost said. “I’m here to help.”
“How? By advising me to come back from the dead to save the world?”
“I understand it’s the traditional path.”
The busker cast the ghost a long look. “And it was my understanding this came from a different place altogether.”
“You’d know better than anyone.” The ghost shook his head and fresh blood trickled from his nose. “Just as you’re the only one who can really understand what’s at stake here.”
The busker sighed. Sure. He knew exactly what was at stake. The memory of red hair bouncing in the sunlight. And the thought of a kiss that could wake the dead. Not to mention the possibility—no, the sure and certain knowledge—that here was a chance for him to play hero once more. And maybe this time earn a kiss as a reward. Too bad the ghost didn’t see things as clearly as he did.
Christ, talk about a pain in the ass. He had done everything he could to hide from what he didn’t want to see—spent an entire lifetime in shadows where no pretty girl with red hair would venture, so that he didn’t have to see the ugly desires, the half-assed evasions, the petty grudges, and venal cheats that pretty much made up people’s souls. The secret, stupid shit that no one really wanted to know about anyone else, and frankly people didn’t want to know about themselves. No man could hide from the busker. No man could lie to him. The grim corollary of all that was the busker damned well couldn’t lie to himself either.
“I didn’t come here for that and you know it,” he said. “I’m no hero.”
“Labels don’t matter,” the ghost said. “You know what you need to do.”
Yes. He did. He also knew that it wasn’t what a hero would do.
Shaking off the ghost, the busker began searching the vestry’s shelves, pushing aside frayed and yellowed vestments, mismatched chalices and patens, jugs of port wine and a wax paper sleeve of communion wafers— rifling through sagging shelves of parish records, boxes upon boxes of type-written minutes of the Altar Guild and various sodalities, until he found a bent cardboard box that bore the label, “Cause of Servant of God Father Enoch.”
He only glanced inside. A faded photograph, dried flower petals lying among carefully embroidered handkerchiefs, a couple of baptismal spoons, and a snake-like tangle of rosaries were enough to convince him he had found what he needed. Tossing the computer print-out on top of the rest of the mess, he grabbed the cardboard box and got the hell out of there— fleeing back to his world of shadows while he still had a chance.