But the priest, Bill Ryan—Father Bill as Renny had come to think of him—he stuck by the kid's side, sitting by the bed like some guardian angel, holding his hand, talking and reading and praying into ears that weren't listening.
"They say his mind's gone," Father Bill told Renny and Nick on the morning of the fourth day.
This fellow Nick, late twenties and homely as all hell, was some sort of scientific professor at Columbia. He'd been in and out, hanging with the priest since Christmas night. Renny learned that the prof was a former St. F.'s orphan too. Good to see an orphan kid go from nothing to being a hotshot scientist. And seeing as they had St. F.'s in common, the prof was all right in Renny's book.
The three of them were sipping coffee in the parent lounge of the pediatric wing where Danny had one of the few private rooms. Late morning sunlight poured in through the wide picture windows and glared off the remnants of the Christmas snow on the rooftops around them, warming the room until the heat was almost stifling.
"I'm not surprised," Nick said. "And your mind'U be gone soon as well if you don't get some rest."
"I'll be okay."
"He's right, Father," Renny said. "You're heading for a breakdown at about ninety miles an hour. You can't keep going like this."
The priest shrugged. "I can always catch up. But Danny… who knows how much time he's got left?"
Renny wondered how much time Father Bill had left before he collapsed. He looked like hell. His eyes were sunken halfway into his head, his hair was unkempt from running his hands through it every couple of minutes, and he needed a shave. He looked like an escapee from the drunk tank.
And Renny was feeling like one. He hadn't had much sleep himself. Seemed like he'd been on a treadmill since Christmas Eve, which wasn't sitting well at all with Joanne. Bad enough he'd missed Christmas morning—good thing they didn't have any kids or he'd really be in the dog house—but he'd also missed Christmas dinner at his in-laws'. It wasn't that he didn't like his in-laws—they were okay folks—it was just that he was in deep shit with the department. A suspect in an attempted murder case had been transferred to him at Downstate, and a few hours later all he had in custody was a pile of stinking goo.
Renny's stomach gave a little heave at the memory. Over the past three days he had endlessly replayed the scene in the corridor in his mind, but no number of viewings could add any sense or reason to what had happened. One moment he had a suspect in custody, the next he had some lumpy brown liquid. Thank God there'd been witnesses or else no one would have believed him. Hell, he'd been there and had seen the whole thing and still didn't quite believe it himself.
And no matter who he talked to he couldn't get an explanation. None of the docs in this entire medical center could make any sense out of the MR images or the chest X ray, or what had finally happened to Lom's body. In fact there seemed to be a kind of doublethink going on. Since they couldn't explain it, they were sweeping it under their mental rugs. He'd overheard one of the medical bigwigs saying something like: Well, since what they say happened is obviously impossible, their memories of the incident must be faulty. How can we be expected to come up with a rational explanation when the primary data is faulty and anecdotal?
It was a different story up at the 112. The precinct had transferred a suspect to Renny and now the suspect was gone. A pile of goo was not going to be able to go before the grand jury for indictment. So they needed a new suspect. The hunt was now on for the missing wife. And Renaldo Augustino knew he'd better find her if he wanted to hold his head up again in the squad room.
So: Joanne was barely speaking to him at home, his name was mud down at the precinct, and Danny Gordon was still in agony here in the hospital.
Renny wondered why he stuck with this job. He had his twenty years. He should have got out then.
"Are they saying Danny's gone crazy?" Renny said to Father Bill.
"Not so much crazy as shutting down parts of his mind. The human mind can experience only so much trauma and then it begins to draw the blinds. The doctors say he's not really experiencing pain on a high level of consciousness."
"That's a blessing," Renny said. "I guess."
The priest gave him a sidelong glance.
"If they know what they're talking about."
Renny nodded tiredly. "I hear you, Padre."
None of the doctors seemed to know what they were doing in Danny's case. They trooped in and out of that room, new bunches every day, about as much help explaining what was happening to the kid as they'd been explaining what had happened to Lorn. Lots of talk, lots of big words, but when you cleared away all the smoke, they didn't know diddly.
Nick the professor sighed with exasperation.
"You both realize, don't you, that what's supposedly happening with Danny is impossible. I mean it can't be happening. They say they're putting blood and other fluids into Danny and it's simply disappearing. That's patently impossible. Fluid is matter and matter exists. What goes in as fluid may come out as gas but it just doesn't disappear. It has to be somewhere!"
Father Bill smiled weakly. "Maybe it is. But it's not in Danny."
"Wasn't he worked up here before?"
"Completely. Everything one hundred percent normal."
Shaking his head, Nick glanced at his watch and stood up.
"I've got to run," he said, shaking hands with the priest. "But I can be back tonight if you want me to spell you with Danny."
"Thanks, but I'll be all right."
Nick shrugged. "I'll come back anyway."
He waved and left. Renny decided he liked Nick. But he still had to wonder a little. Like, what was the relationship between Nick and Father Bill? An unmarried guy still visiting the priest that took care of him as a kid? What kind of a relationship could they have had when Nick lived at St. F.'s that would hold up after all these years. Renny remembered Father Dougherty from his own days at St. F.'s. He couldn't imagine wanting to pay that cold fish a visit every week, even if he were still alive.
He canned the thought. Just his policeman's mind at work. You got so used to seeing the slimy side of people that when it didn't hit you in the face you went looking for it. But he could see that Father Bill might be a pretty regular guy when he wasn't under this kind of stress, someone you might want to be friends with, even if he was a priest.
"How about Sara?" the priest said when Nick was gone. "Anything on her?"
Renny had been dreading that question. Father Bill had asked it every day, and until this morning the answer had been an easy no.
"Yeah," he said. "We got something. I sent for a newspaper clipping and a copy of her senior page in the U. of T. at Austin yearbook. They arrived today."
"Her yearbook? How can that tell you anything?"
"I do it routinely, just to make sure that the person I'm looking for is really the person I'm looking for."
The priest's expression was puzzled. "I don't…"
Renny pulled the folded sheets from his breast pocket and handed them over.
"Here. They're Xeroxes of Xeroxes, but I think you'U*ee what I mean."
He watched Father Bill's eyes scan the top sheet, come to a halt, narrow, then widen in shock. Renny had had almost the same reaction. The yearbook picture of the Sara Bainbridge who later married Herbert Lorn showed a big, moon-faced blonde. The second sheet was a newspaper clipping of a wedding announcement with a photo of the same big blonde in a wedding gown.
Neither of them bore the remotest resemblance to the woman in the photo the priest had given Renny from the St. Francis adoption application.
Father Bill flipped to the second sheet, then looked up at him with a stricken, befuddled expression.