Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
The chain-smoking, wise-cracking queer nun Sister Holiday returns in this blistering follow-up to the acclaimed Scorched Grace __________ 'Such a thrill. Douaihy blends edgy counterculture with sincere faith, violence and nihilism with genuine yearning for human connection, all in one hell of a mystery.' Gillian Flynn __________ Tattooed from her neck to her toes and sporting a gold tooth as sharp as her wisecracks, Sister Holiday struggles to stay on the righteous path. She's committed both to taking her permanent vows with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and joining Magnolia Riveaux's latest venture, Redemption Detective Agency-both in service of satisfying her eternal quest for answers. When Sister Holiday and Riveaux set out to bust a philandering husband, they instead find the body of a priest floating in the Mississippi river, and with it, Redemption's next case. As a torrential rainstorm drowns New Orleans for three harrowing days over Easter weekend, Sister Holiday and Riveaux follow the clues. With the stakes rising alongside the relentless floodwaters, our favourite punk nun-sleuth throws herself into the deep end yet again.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 312
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
praise for SCORCHED GRACE
‘[A] showstopper of a series debut’
new york times
‘Skilfully plotted, propulsive… one of the best crime fiction debuts I’ve come across in a long while’
don winslow
‘Takes readers on a searing journey through faith, fire, and female rage. A brilliant debut mystery’
elizabeth hand
‘If you’re looking for a queer edgy Agatha Christie-type read, then this is one for you’
gay times
‘Sister Holiday embodies the frailties of faith, the contradictions of humanity, and the joy of sisterhood in all its forms’
sophie ward
iii
v
Contents
1WHETHER IT’S GOD, science, or magic doesn’t matter—you can swallow a glass rosary bead and survive. I know because I swallowed one that awful weekend and didn’t die or double over.
Cheating death on Easter. Classic.
After my prayers for clarity, for forgiveness, for a cigarette, for a way out of this fucking mess, deep inside the wet cave of my body was an unmistakable tickle. I could even hear the rosary bead sloshing in the chem-dark bathtub of my guts.
Contractions of a tiny, secret heart. Still beating. It breathed liquid, as we all did. One body inside another body—we prepare for life fitting perfectly. In the womb, fluid night. Before things become beautiful or terrible, there’s no separation. No good or bad. Until we’re pushed into the light.
The bead fought my stomach acid for hours, leaching its blessing or poison or unmet wish. Anything hidden always finds a way to escape, no matter its careful sealing.
A glass bead, divinely translucent, stubborn as a bullet. A solid Glory Be. A cold prayer trapped in my warmest place. Like 2wanting to eat a moment to keep it. Closing your eyes and saying, I will never forget this.
So, yeah, I swallowed it.
Too ridiculous to be true, but a true story, nonetheless.
If you’re asking how a grown-ass woman could ingest a piece of glass on purpose, don’t. That’s a dumb question. You open your mouth and down it goes.
What you should be asking is why? Why is it tied to the Polaroids, the flood, the bodies, and the bloodshed?
The why is what matters.
The why dredges everything to the surface.
GOOD FRIDAY
4
7:00 A.M.
SISTER HOLIDAY IS WHAT I prefer to be called. Not Holiday, not Sister, and definitely not Sis. But I let it slide when Riveaux called me Sister Goldsmobile as she tapped her left canine, as if I’d ever forget that I had a gold tooth. Without mirrors in the convent, maybe I could’ve.
Besides being a nun, I was a music teacher at Saint Sebastian’s, a part-time private eye, and a full-time pain in the ass for PI Magnolia Riveaux, the hellcat who ran Redemption Detective Agency, one who could out-sleuth Sherlock and out-nose the swankiest perfumier in Paris. Riveaux smelled rain clouds a state away when the wind was right. She could have been my blood sister with the ways we protected and irritated and appreciated and disappointed each other. Riveaux was the brains; I was the bear trap. Metal teeth and all. Once I latched on, you’d have to gnaw off your own leg to get rid of me. But we understood each other. Not that we were always sunshine and unicorns. More like hailstorms and cobras.
Riveaux agreed to train me for a hundred hours on the sly, so I could take my PI exam and do good things with the bad cards 6I was dealt. Or at least shuffle the deck to stay out of trouble. Like trouble wasn’t my true calling.
Our agency office was a scalding slice of unrenovated warehouse in Carrollton, near Riveaux’s family home. Part PI headquarters, part perfumery. Her two passion projects in one spot. It was so balmy in there, spring rainy season in full drip, that walking from one corner to the other felt like being the victim of a felony. The air was thick with her pungent concoctions: jasmine, peppercorn, leather, and spices I couldn’t name if you paid me. The combination made my eyes water. The ceiling was high, the wall was mostly windows, and the space was outfitted with supremely scuffed up furniture.
Riveaux reached over her desk, scarred with a dozen coffee rings and cluttered with perfume bottles, beakers, and an overflowing ashtray, to hand me a PI apprentice certificate.
“Better not lose it,” she said with her trademark wry flourish. “I’m never filling out all that paperwork again.”
“I thought stepping through red tape was one of your specialties,” I said.
“More like stepping into shit.”
“Speaking of, what’s on today’s shit list?”
She smiled and closed her eyes, her eyelashes clumped behind her glasses. “Go to Pier 11 and meet the client. She’s expecting us at eight sharp. I’m headed home for the extra camera battery, then I’ll meet you there.” She placed a tower of coins in my gloved palm for streetcar fare.
Belligerent wind rattled the windows. I looked out and saw a bald spot on a palm tree where the storm had peeled off its bark.
Riveaux re-Velcroed her back brace, then wrapped her left elbow with athletic tape.
7“Hope those contraptions keep you from falling apart,” I said.
“Watch it. Even with my busted body I could make you say ‘uncle.’”
“Don’t you mean ‘Hail Mary’?”
She grabbed her cane. “Don’t make me regret forgiving your ass.”
“We forgave each other’s asses,” I corrected.
“More than I can say for most friends.”
“Or nuns.”
In the line of duty, Riveaux had blown more discs than I knew existed in the bendy straw of the human spine. She used a cane now, but was off pills of any kind. Even Advil. Extreme, sure, but better to go all in than halfway. Cigarettes were her last vice. Mine too. At least that’s what I told myself. Riveaux looked rested. Younger. Her divorce from that jackass Rockwell in the works. Stinging with the ferocious focus of a new chapter. A double-act comeback. We both deserved do-overs. Even the bare agency lightbulbs glowed a godly yellow, like the nodding heads of goldenrod.
We had our first official case as PIs.
We were on the edge of glory. Toes hanging over the deep end, ready to dive in. Fire didn’t burn us. Painkillers didn’t kill us. Healing was miraculous, but it fucking hurt like hell.
7:17 A.M.
RIVEAUX SHOUTED FROM her swivel desk chair, “Snap out of it and stick to the damn plan!”
The handover of my certificate—applause of thunder, the only fanfare—marked the official start of my PI apprenticeship. I wasn’t sure what I’d hit first, my permanent vows with the Diocese, a hundred hours of sleuthing, or the end of my rope.
I left to meet the client, Mrs. Jasmine Norwood, at the Mississippi River, Pier 11. The streetcar took me to the southern end of the line, then I hoofed it in the rain to the water’s edge.
We forgave, but Riveaux didn’t fully trust me. And vice versa. It was for the greater good, but we had double-crossed each other.
Trust is earned, and I was all cashed out.
My trust in God felt different, too, after losing Jack, Sister T, Voodoo, Sister Augustine. But my mother and the Holy Ghost, willowy angels, whispered their vapor voices into my ears and guided me back to the righteous path. My faith was running up credit even though I’d already paid. Would keep paying. With interest.
9And Moose, my brother, I owed him most of all.
Would my younger brother always feel like a son I had lost? A hurt, scared kid I sent down a rough-rapid river? Did all siblings play tug-of-war between grief and joy, anger and adoration, or was it just us, the queer Walsh kids?
All I knew was this: Ruin can be sweet, too. No one’s a pure saint or sinner. Miracles lived everywhere. In black coffee. In rubble. The shattered pieces that fit back together enough to catch the light.
Rain blasted me as I walked to the pier to meet Jasmine Norwood. Its stop-start-stop rhythm like the most proficient torturer. I clung to my umbrella but still got drenched. Soaked through my socks. My eyes burned with wet. Why was I surprised when the levee fractured?
Finally, I saw Pier 11 printed on a green sign in the watery haze.
Right on time to meet our first client.
Part of God’s plan. Like the storm that hallowed weekend. Test after test to baptize me and see if I could swim. Because water cleanses and ravages. Because water replenishes life as quickly as it ends it.
Rain slammed the sign, Pier 11, terrorized it, but the words remained.
8:00 A.M.
MRS. NORWOOD HAD EMAILED Redemption the day prior, writing, “I want y’all to dig up dirt on Mr. Clay Norwood, my sorry excuse for a husband!”
It was exhilarating, seeing her message come through on Riveaux’s fancy computer. Our soon-to-be client needed hard evidence that their nuptial vows had been breached—a tale as familiar and predictable as pounding your body during a cannonball dive. You wouldn’t think water would hurt so much, but it’s all about the angle, the way you enter a new world. Like marriage. It only works when the delusion is shared, when you know the rules of the game you’re about to play.
One gay nun’s opinion—take it for what it’s worth. Or don’t and suffer.
Riveaux and I had to learn the Norwoods’ daily schedules, the husband’s travel routes. We needed proof—evidence of motel stays, Mr. Norwood’s GPS data or a car tracker, receipts for mistress gifts. We’d trail him, catch that dirtbag in the act using Riveaux’s million-megapixel camera.
11In Mrs. Norwood’s email, she specified that she wanted to talk it all through with us “in person” before we started. IRL, as my students said.
But I waited at Pier 11, and Mrs. Jasmine Norwood never showed.
Riveaux was taking forever to get the battery. For twenty minutes I prayed for the Sorrowful Mysteries and cursed in the annihilating wind and rain, my umbrella useless, my gloves, scarf, and pants dripping wet. My sensible nun shoes were sopping messes.
So much of my life in New Orleans felt preordained, even the events that unfolded over those three hellish days—starting with the gentle placement of that PI apprentice certificate into my gloved palm.
I scoffed at the anchored Creole Queen, a riverboat jazz cruise monstrosity designed to lure tourists in with its milquetoast, whitewashed version of New Orleans. As I studied its stupid exterior, something caught my eye.
In the water, there was a bag. No, an animal. No. Bobbing against the red paddle of the riverboat was a body.
Rain powered down in glass hammers. I ran from the pier and yelled for help, though I couldn’t see anyone or anything.
Into the backwash of the river, I jumped. Tried to pull that manatee of a person up to the embankment, but it was impossible, like dragging ten of myself. The head was swollen. The comb-over, thin wisps. The dead hands, tied behind the back, at the wrist, palm to palm—reverse prayer position.
I cried again for help, dog-paddling, choking on the rain and thick river water.
“Why the fuck you swimming?” Riveaux hollered from the dock, her hands arched into a bridge to shield her eyes.
12“Call 911!” I threw my head back to scream. “There’s a goddamn body in here!”
“Get it out! Pull it in!” In her floppy red rain hat and strangely adorable oversized rain slicker, yelling with her whole body and pounding her cane, Riveaux looked like a pissed-off Paddington Bear. Was it only anger I saw in Riveaux that Friday morning? Rage was a trendy cover for disappointment. For sadness. For something unnameable, maybe even unknowable.
I propped myself up and sat on the flat ledge of the ship’s red paddle, half in, half out of the gritty water, one hand on the body to keep the Mississippi from taking it.
The swollen head marbled like rotting meat. The face submerged. Trying to stay afloat with a body that big was a repetitive exercise in failure.
Failure, my brand. At least God kept things consistent.
Minutes later, a cop lifted the corpse high enough for EMTs to grab the body and pull it out of the water. I was breathless, coughing up water. Needed a cigarette.
I reached up to a beefy medic who pulled me onto the concrete lip of the embankment. Strong and weak at the same time, I was electrified by the discovery but hated needing help, hated needing people at all. The medic’s strength was bold, confident, a bodily conviction. To be so alive in the flesh, less caged in the gerbil wheel of a mind. Was that what my brother, Moose, felt as he patched up soldiers on the battlefield? He sure as hell didn’t learn his bravery from me.
The pounding rain blurred the details, no edges, couldn’t even see my own tattoos. A terrible smearing. The water held me, and, in a sick way, it was spellbinding.
The corpse from the river was clad in all black, like me. I leaned closer and saw that both its eyes were gouged out. 13Eyebrows gone. Large crosses branded deep into bloated cheeks.
Someone tried to erase his face.
But despite the butchery, I knew the dead man. I knew his faceless face.
Father Reese.
8:48 A.M.
I BLESSED MYSELF, dropped to my wet knees.
“Father Reese.”
“You know this guy?” A fist of wind knocked Riveaux’s hat off. She jumped for it but missed, and the hat disappeared into the lacerating air.
“My priest,” I said. “Father Reese has been at Saint Sebastian’s for forty years.”
His skin looked boiled. My own, freed from my gloves and scarf, felt stewed.
I pulled the mushy pulp of my PI certificate out of my pocket. Shocked that it took a whole hour before I destroyed it.
The police, as they arrived, worked to lock down the area and tape off the scene. The yellow hazard tape fluttered in the merciless wind.
Riveaux and I looked pathetic. Drenched rats. The EMTs and police moved in quick but fluid steps. The rain powered down like it wanted to devour us. Acts of God, like anything we cannot control, equalize us.
15Eyeless Father Reese. Not so much a human, but a relic scooped out from a forgotten pit. I still knew it was him.
Dear Lord, hear my prayer. Maybe share some bullet points of your divine plan? For fuck’s sake.
I caught my breath on the filthy embankment of the filthy river in the jewel-toned city I loved. It was raining so hard a palm tree broke its own neck. Like the memory of the best sex you’ve ever had, New Orleans taunts as it redeems. It’s the sweat that never leaves you. A siren song. What enchants also ensnares, then you’re fucked.
Coughing up water, every limb felt heavy, sandbagged to the muddy ground. With Father Reese bound like an Easter ham on Good Friday, tell me God doesn’t have a wack sense of humor.
You don’t have to believe in God or a higher power. Megachurch leaders are insane, the “religious right” is neither religious nor right, and most radio preachers are about as legit as the belief that you can fly after huffing glue. But trust when I say that pulling Father Reese out of the water was a form of birth. A new reason to wake up, a new door to redemption.
I should know. At thirty-four years old, I was the youngest servant with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood by forty years, although there were only two of us now. Six months away from my permanent vow ceremony. I had settled into my routine, my simple room in our modest New Orleans convent. No car, no phone, no TV, no nonsense. No money of my own. Anyone who wanted to get ahold of me wrote a letter or rolled up in person. People who felt suspicious or sorry for me didn’t get it. My life made more sense and had more grace in it now than most modern existences brimming with fuckery and hypocrisy. Rules were clear, and I stayed in line.
16Most of the time.
I looked at Father Reese’s body again. Someone had ended his life, left his flesh to the hungers of the water. The divine took his spirit, crane-gamed his soul to a different plane. There was still an expression on his mutilated face, a yearning. Even in death, when you’re long gone, the you of you reaches back, reaches for home.
9:11 A.M.
SIRENS BLARED. Crude and jagged. Like the pulse of the devil. Through the downpour, forensics managed the moment with quiet intensity. After hundreds of crime scenes, such orchestration became second nature.
In the freshly erected medical tent, I saw a familiar face.
“You?” It was Mickey, the EMT with the chin dimple as deep as a well. “Fucking hell, Sister Holiday. When am I going to stop seeing you?”
“When I stop saving the day.” I made the sign of the cross.
“This guy’s day is looking unsavable at present,” said Riveaux, who leaned on her cane.
Riveaux cradled what I presumed to be her camera under her big rain slicker. Mickey draped a towel around my shoulders and eased me into the mesh chair he had unfolded.
Father Reese was a sap, frequently on the road for conventions and lectures, boring us to tears with lukewarm homilies on the Sundays he happened to be in town.
Our second priest picked up the slack. Father Nathan arrived from Ascension Parish three months earlier—a plucky, young 18priest, newly minted after seminary. Reese was supposed to show him the ropes, but it was Nathan who had the deeper, more meaningful relationship with God. I could tell by the way he preached and prayed. In the silences he allowed. Father Nathan was special. He cared. An ally, like Sister T. Me and Nathan were friends in a hard place. Comrades because we shared the one thing you cannot fake: true faith.
And, yeah, Reese didn’t even know my first name, but he didn’t deserve such a brutal end.
I’d get to the bottom of this, like I did last time.
Crows darted over the riverbank like black flames. Detective Reginald Grogan stalked into view looking like a good ol’ boy Captain Ahab, cocky and tall but tight as a fist ready to break somebody’s nose. Mine most likely. Obsession had carved age into his face.
Sergeant Ruby Decker walked a step behind Grogan, but they were exactly in sync. Two limbs of one authorial body.
“Sister Holiday,” Decker said with no attempt to conceal her disdain, “you have a gift for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Rain shot down on the tent with brute force.
“I have many God-given gifts,” I said. The towel felt soft and warm on my body, but I could feel my eyes reddening with each cough.
Grogan brought his mouth close and parted his lips near my face but said nothing. His breath smelled like two-week-old tobacco juice and the kind of coffee that scraped your throat on the way down, then sent you sprinting to the john.
He stood and eyed Riveaux up and down. “Why you here, junkie?”
Riveaux brushed it off, but I saw her glitch. “A client named Mrs. Jasmine Norwood hired us.”
19“Hired a joke-of-a-nun and a druggie?” Grogan laughed. “For what? A pill-popping gay prayer circle?”
I piped up though the rain dulled my voice. “We’re working a case.”
Riveaux nodded. “Redemption Detective Agency, ID number 6—”
“666?” Grogan wasn’t funny but acted like he invented comedy. Did all cops think they were gods? Or just the ones in my life?
“Isn’t your boat in the marina nearby?” Riveaux probed Decker. “The one Rock and I joined you and Sue on last Fourth of July?”
What card was Riveaux playing? Showing off her investigative chops and memory? Or reminding her that they were once colleagues? Pals?
“Yes, it is,” Decker said through clenched teeth.
Grogan cast down his gaze on Father Reese’s corpse. “All kidding aside, congrats Maggie, on that PI thing. But y’all need to clear outta here now. Scoot.” He swept us aside with his big hands.
Grogan was a hard-ass. Who knew what that man had seen, all the pain he’d soaked in. All the cases that went cold. Detective work was in his family, like mine. Grogan’s old man was NOPD Chief Albert Grogan, long dead. My father, who was still alive but dead to me, was NYPD Chief Frank Walsh. Policing was scary, sure. But it didn’t give them a license to bully, to kill, to harass with impunity. I watched Grogan take control of the scene.
“He’s in a foul mood,” I said.
“I heard Grogan and his wife are having problems again,” Riveaux said. “I can sympathize.”
20Riveaux and I were finding our way back to trusting each other, but it was stunningly clear that Decker and Grogan weren’t going to kiss and make up with her any time soon. My dad told me that once you leave law enforcement, you’re out. For good.
Determined not to cause more trouble for Riveaux, but unable to help it, I said to the Homicide Squad, “So you can only do your jobs when no one’s watching? Performance anxiety?”
Decker was incensed. “What did you—”
“What Sister Holiday meant to say,” Riveaux interrupted, squaring her shoulders, “is that we are here to tail a cheating husband, so our client can get a better settlement in her divorce. She was going to pay our retainer here, in person, this morning.” Riveaux was being earnest. She held up her PI card. Mist clouded the lenses of her glasses. “Transparency.”
Grogan huffed as the rain hastened its tempo. “Don’t see any client around, do you?” He spit brown tobacco juice into the wet wind.
“She emailed the agency yesterday.”
I cleared my throat and clutched my towel. Decker stared at my inked knuckles, at the grime under my fingernails.
“At least I found Father Reese before he washed away,” I said.
“We’d have found him sooner or later,” Grogan said.
“You’re jealous I got the action, again.”
The change in Grogan’s face, the corkscrew of his lips, made it clear I was under his skin. Exactly where I wanted to be. He hated that I could get to him.
“When did you first see him in the water?” He refocused.
“Twenty after eight, over there.” I pointed to the red paddle of the riverboat tourist trap.
21The Homicide Squad left my soggy self behind and did their thinking aloud as the forensics swarm clicked photos and bagged evidence, wearing protective white suits, gloves, and hoods. One white woman crouched low, gently brushing away wet grass to reveal something unseeable from my perch. Another expert a few feet away worked the ground with tweezers.
“What if Mrs. Jasmine Norwood was a ruse?” Riveaux pushed her glasses up her nose.
I laughed at ruse. Don’t know why. Like biting your lip when you’re parking or trying to remember a name. No reason. Not sure if it was my faith stopping or starting again, but I felt an engine rev deep in the meat of my heart muscle.
The energy of a new case was holy. It routed all my mania onto one target. One goal. We’d crack the case together, me and Riveaux.
Obscene rain drummed the tent. Father Reese was a molted casing, a sad reminder of human cruelty. The ultimate riddle of God.
Somebody might have set us up. It would have been the logical cue for any sane person to get the fuck out of dodge, trash the Redemption PI Agency before we even began, and save ourselves from all the torment the discovery of the body unleashed.
But the fastest way out is through the dead center. It’s also the most dangerous path. Like Moses through the tidy split in the Red Sea.
9:46 A.M.
RIVEAUX DROVE ME BACK to Saint Sebastian’s—my campus, my new home—before the second period bell rang. It was a miracle I didn’t start teaching until ten on Fridays, and, since it was Good Friday, we had an early dismissal.
I had to talk to Father Nathan, to learn everything he knew.
The two priests lived together in the Saint Sebastian’s rectory. Like roommates. Or inmates. Or lovers. When you share a dwelling, alliances and rivalries form. Hard to tell them apart. Nathan was different from any other male-presenting cleric I had ever met in New York or New Orleans. He didn’t fall for the pseudo-reverent congregants. He wasn’t duped by the wealthy folks looking to ensure a fast track through the pearly gates with their church donations. Hypocrites.
A quick rosary brought me back to myself. In the convent, I took a one-minute ice-cold shower, towel-dried my hair, and changed into a clean black uniform. As I buttoned my blouse, I read the ink that was tattooed from my jawline to my toes. A biblical plague of tatts. Words, faces, names, and vignettes 23that melted into my nervous system, colors that felt different day-to-day. Lines Nina used to trace, to kiss. But now my ink was concealed by the black gloves and scarf I still wore every day, even though Sister Honor didn’t require it. Old habits were hard to break. Any nun would agree. I enshrined it as my own rule. My nun-sleuth uniform.
No one could decipher me, and I liked it that way. To strangers, I imagined I looked like a clean slate.
In the convent kitchen, I slugged back a cup of atrocious coffee before I dashed out. The sludge was so caustic it burned my throat. Like her request for forgiveness after our latest dustup, Sister Honor—sanctimonious starlet of God, the only other Sister left in our Order—bungled the coffee-making. Pride got in the way. Sister Honor could not or would not ask for help, then she played the victim. Her favorite role.
No surprise.
In my music room, catching my breath, the bell rang as the rain outside gathered strength. The cataclysmic downpour droned in my inner ears. I had river crud, shower water, and who knows what else jammed in there. I tilted my head, bounced up and down, and let my ears cry.
Ryan Brown (the noodge), Fleur, Aisha, and Rebecca all answered “present” as I took attendance, but they didn’t look up. I still recited “Prince Dempsey,” though I knew I’d hear no smart-ass jab in response. Misfit Prince had skipped so much school recently it would take a holy decree for him to be handed a diploma. Not sure the kids realized Prince had been so frequently absent, though. Their attention was welded to the open palms where their phones lived. Where stigmata circled Jesus’s sacrifice. I could have been ramrodded by extraterrestrials, 24suspended in a spaceship tractor beam, and my students would not have noticed. The here and now were neither. No one was anywhere anymore.
Advanced Guitar Ensemble was an exercise in group trust. We learned and tried and failed together. But for all intents and purposes, I was alone.
“Morning,” was all I could offer the class.
A loud burp from Ryan Brown was the only reply.
“Phones away,” I said, “and let’s begin.”
A chorus of grumbles and groans erupted. At least they were in unison.
Lord, forgive my low threshold for dweebs, for rich and entitled teenagers with dynastic wealth.
After synchronized swimming with Father Reese’s carcass in the river, I resented having to teach. I was ready to go, to pop off and fight. There were clues to find. A killer to smoke out. I needed to talk to Father Nathan. The crime scene had to be revisited. Still wasn’t sure if I could trust Riveaux, and absolutely knew I couldn’t trust the cops. Another dead body in my sight line. Another lost soul on that Friday of biblical rains. No Mrs. Jasmine Norwood. Was she a distraction, a perp, or a second victim?
All the while, it stormed, slick and awful, like fangs biting down.
My zillion hours of PI apprenticing had begun, and I needed to sleuth. I had picked up a trick or two from Riveaux already—she always zoomed out for the big picture.
I had a bad track record taking instructions from others. A pasty frat boy at the Bay Ridge Y tried to teach me and my kid brother how to swim. I was seven and a half and Moose was 25nearly six. Moose took it slow. One stroke at a time. I dove into the deep end and prayed for a miracle.
Still in the deep end decades later.
“Nice of you to join us, Sister Holiday.” I didn’t need to turn to face the doorway. Knew it was science genius Rosemary Flynn by the superiority in her voice and the percussive t in Sister. We’d been sharing a classroom since the east wing fire last semester. That morning her anxiety pricked the air. Maybe a real heart was clicking somewhere in the porcelain jail of her polished body. Couldn’t tell. And yet, when I did turn, Rosemary Flynn looked so goddamn pretty, as always. Strawberry-blond hair in a tight bun. Ruby-red lipstick. A quicksilver flash of something alive—mischief?—in her gray eyes. She stood upright, her whole body strong and erect with the brutalized conviction of a ballerina’s big toe. She sneered at me. With us, it was either hate or lust. Maybe both. But never disinterest. “You missed the morning meeting,” Rosemary said, her arms symmetrically crossed, red fingernails rapping.
“Would love to chitchat but …” I pointed to my students, who were flinging guitar picks at one another’s heads. Of course, I needed to talk with Rosemary, Father Nathan, and everyone else about Father Reese’s death, including the students. One-on-one. But I would have to wait until class ended. Our students had been through so much. Drag them and complain about them, sure, but they were my charges. And if they were hiding something, it was up to me to figure it out. The police couldn’t find a needle in a goddamn pile of needles.
Rosemary motioned to me with her aggressively manicured hand, and I stepped away from my student circle. Her eyebrows 26lifted as her voice lowered. “Was Father Nathan with you? We can’t find him.”
“What?” I whispered. My stomach turned.
She sighed. “His history class is waiting for him, and Sister Honor has been looking for him all morning. I thought since you were both gone, and you are friendly, maybe you were together.”
I walked into the hallway and signaled for Rosemary to follow me out.
“Father Reese is dead,” I said. Thunder rippled the roof. The rickety hallway lights flickered.
“Oh no.” She blinked with genuine shock. “Did he pass away in his sleep?”
My face was so close to hers I could smell her rose cologne. The scent was so velvety, I wanted to cry. “I found him in the river this morning. Murdered. Bound up and slashed.”
Rosemary inhaled, grabbed her mouth, held it tight with her hand as if her lips might leap off her face. “No.”
I shifted my weight from my left foot to my right and tried to not to stare, but the intensity of the moment and the potential of her unraveling held my gaze.
“Where the hell is Nathan?” For a split second, my heart stopped. Father Nathan was uncharacteristically absent. On the morning I found Reese dead.
Rosemary shrugged. “I truly don’t know. I haven’t seen either of them since yesterday. Bernard searched the rectory and said he didn’t see anyone.”
Bernard Pham, my comrade, the janitor at Saint Sebastian’s, cleaned up everyone’s messes. And God’s chaos. He was also an experimental noise musician, which some found baffling but 27endeared him to me even more. He was solid. If Bernard said the sky was falling, which it essentially was, I believed him.
Father Nathan had no cell phone, so we couldn’t call or track him.
“Have you noticed anything else unusual recently?” I asked Rosemary. “Anything off?”
She said, “A pair of rubber gloves were taken from my science lab. I noticed during my weekly count. Some test equipment, too. I figured I should tell you.”
“You do a weekly count?” I was slightly impressed.
I made the sign of the cross, let it sink in for real.
Father Harold Reese was dead. The old priest I had known for nearly two years.
Father Nathan Troy was MIA. The young priest I had admired for three months.
I hoped Nathan was late. Or lost. Anywhere but floating in the river, God forbid. Or connected to the murder. Nothing was impossible; even good people were capable of barbarity. The thought made me sick.
I stuck my head inside our classroom and saw pencils protruding from the foamy ceiling like errant rockets piercing an innocent moon.
Back in the hall, I held Rosemary’s eyes, wouldn’t let her look away from me.
“I need to find Father Nathan,” I said.
She cocked her head. “What if he doesn’t want to be found?”
Despite her know-it-all air, she rarely helped or had anything to offer. No tidbits. No clues. And yet, I couldn’t help feeling like Rosemary Flynn held a piece of the puzzle. A puzzle that shape-shifted every time I looked at it.
10:50 A.M.
AT THE SIGHT OF SISTER HONOR marching down the hallway, Rosemary Flynn left me at the classroom door and swiftly caught up with her. Chin up, Rosemary dutifully followed our default Mother Superior.
Good holy and true Lord in heaven, why does the human species dote? Why do we cling to the people and creatures and places that don’t need us and can’t keep us?
As Rosemary panted after Sister Honor, I raged against the pathetic memories of my own weakness. My awful patterns. How I continually chased, then ran from Nina. How I failed Moose again and again. How I could only show up for him in the wake of a crisis. Moose was always trying to get my attention, holding up a mirror. Fuck that. I knew too well what shame looked like. Didn’t need his constant reminder.
“Hey, Sister!” Bernard Pham had appeared from around the corner with a mop and bucket.
“Have you found Father Nathan?” I asked.
29“Not yet. Duty keeps calling.” He pointed to the mop and bucket. “The roof can’t handle this storm. Like a waterfall up there.”
“Seriously?”
“Yup. I’m literally bailing us out every time it rains. The whole shebang’s gonna give.”
“Not exactly the ambiance we want for optimal learning.”
“We need a better solution. I have to bend Sister Honor’s ear.”
He trotted to track down Sister Honor, who was long gone by that point.
I resumed teaching, or my best imitation of it.
Only a few more minutes before the bell, before I could sleuth again, before I could look for Father Nathan. For any clues to his coordinates. He never missed class. This was bad. But how bad and what brand of bad, I wasn’t sure. My body felt it first. The way my chest seized, like an invisible force choke-chaining my heart, said danger. Something was very, very wrong. Flesh knows what the mind cannot rationalize, tries to deny.
Father Nathan came to Saint Sebastian’s from Ascension, a parish located an hour northwest of New Orleans, to share leadership duties with Father Reese and teach history. I couldn’t help but think he also came to help us heal, to comfort us after Sister Augustine’s grisly end. A fresh start. Our Moses in a baby-sized basket.
