Rachel was happy. She had trotted out her womanly wiles with Dan Morgan, the owner of One and Done, and they had worked like a charm.
“I’ve finally gotten ahold of the paperwork for a protection order,” she had told him. “I’ll be filing it first thing next week.”
For months now, she had been crying on Dan’s shoulder, telling him what a tightwad her abusive husband was. At least the tightwad part was true.
“In situations like yours, getting a restraining order is often the most dangerous time,” Dan advised her sympathetically. “If things are going to go bad, that’s when it happens. Is there a chance he’ll get violent?”
Rachel sighed and did her best to look as though she was trying to hold back tears. That worked, too.
“Do you have a weapon?”
Rachel shook her head. In exchange for her engagement ring, she left the pawnshop forty-five minutes later with a replacement for Rich’s revolver—an off-the-books loaded Ruger LCP in her purse. Dan was nothing if not full-service. He just happened to have a drawerful of ammunition in his back room, which included a box of the .380 ammo the little Ruger called for.
“Have you ever done any shooting?” he asked as he loaded cartridges into the clip, showing her how in the process.
Not since last night, she thought. “Not lately,” she said. “Years ago I did some target practice with a twenty-two.”
“Firing an LCP is a lot different from firing one of those,” he told her, handing her the loaded weapon. “For one thing, this has a laser sight. All you have to do is point and shoot, but you need to be close to the target. If I were you, I’d head for the nearest shooting range and practice, in which case you’ll need to pick up some more ammunition.”
“Thank you so much,” she said, giving him a brushing peck on the cheek as she left. “I owe you big time!”
Twice during the day, wanting an update on the archbishop’s condition, she had used her burner phone in an attempt to log onto his homepage, only to be told it couldn’t be found. On the drive back home, she tuned into a local all-news channel on the radio. That was where she heard the unwelcome news that not only was Francis Gillespie still alive, but also his condition had been upgraded from critical to serious but stable. In other words, he would most likely live, but wasn’t that what she had expected? Wasn’t that why she was driving around with a loaded pistol in her purse? Her first attempt had failed, but the next one wouldn’t. And she had to make that happen before Rich, now emerged from his birdhouse stagnation, could turn her in to the cops. With that in mind, she headed for the hospital.
As she drove, it suddenly occurred to her that she wasn’t at all affected by the death of the other priest, Father O’Toole. Shouldn’t she be sorry about that? Had her preoccupation with David’s death finally sent her completely around the bend? Maybe she really was nuts. In that case, if the cops arrested her, maybe she could opt for an insanity plea. Maybe I’ll end up in a mental institution, she told herself. That way I won’t have to go to prison, and Rich can make those damned birdhouses to his heart’s content.