Then he heard it: the countdown. A mix of voices, male and female, began shouting.
"Ten! Nine! Eight!…"
Bill began to walk, gliding his feet, gathering speed until he was moving as fast as he could without actually running.
"Seven! Six! Five!…"
He whisked past the office door, then began to run.
"Four! Three! Two!…"
As he reached the door he slowed for half a second, just long enough to allow him to hit the lever bar at the same instant the voices shouted, "One!"
The noise of the opening door was lost in the ensuing cheers as he rushed headlong into the parking lot. He had parked St. F.'s station wagon illegally, hoping his clergy sticker would buy him some leniency. The last thing he needed now was to find that the wagon had been towed away.
He sighed with relief when he saw it where he'd left it. She was a rusting old junker but at that moment she looked like a stretch limo. Gently, he laid Danny on the back seat and arranged the blankets loosely over him.
"We're on our way, kid," he whispered through the folds of fabric.
Then he heard a slurred voice behind him.
"That him? 'S he the one?"
Bill whirled and saw the two ragmen from earlier this evening, one big, the other shorter and slight. How had they got into the lot?
"No, that's not him," said the smaller of the two. "Hush up about that."
The big one stepped closer to Bill and peered into his face. His beard stank of wine and old food.
"You the one?" Another moment of too-close scrutiny, then, "No. He's not the one."
He turned and lurched away.
The little one scampered after him for a few steps.
"Walter! Walter, wait!" Then he hurried back to Bill. "Don't do it!" he said in a harsh whisper. "No matter what you've been told, don't do it!"
"I'm sorry," Bill said, shaken by the man's intensity. "I'm in a hurry."
The little man grabbed his arm.
"I know you! You're that Jesuit. Remember me? Martin Spano? We met long ago… at the Hanley mansion."
Bill jolted as if he'd touched a live wire.
"God, yes! What—?"
"Not much time. I've got to catch up to Walter. I'm helping him search for someone. Walter was a medic once. He sometimes can cure people but he can't cure that kid. He can't cure anybody when he's drunk and he's drunk almost all the time these days. But remember what I said. Don't do it. An Evil power is at work here. It's using you! I was used once—I know how it is. Stop now, before it's too late!"
And then he was off, running after his fellow derelict.
Thoroughly shaken, Bill got in the front seat and sat for a moment. Martin Spano—hadn't he been one of those crazy people who'd called themselves the Chosen when they'd invaded the Hanley mansion back in 1968? Spano had been crazy then and was obviously crazier now. But what had he meant—?
Never mind. He couldn't allow himself to be distracted now. He shook off the confusion and drove out of the lot, forcing a smile and waving as he passed the guard in the booth. He drove north, toward the Bayside section of Queens, toward a place he'd spent much of the early evening preparing for Danny.
Renny slammed the phone down and threw off the covers. "Damn!"
"What's the matter?" Joanne asked from the other side of the bed. They'd spent New Year's Eve at home, catching up on their lovemaking.
"The kid's gone!"
"The one in the hospital?"
"Yeah," he said as he pulled on slacks and a sweater. "Danny Gordon. The nurse went in to wish Father Bill a happy New Year and found the room empty."
"The priest? You don't think—"
"They were both in the room before twelve, they were both gone after. What else can I think?" He gave her a quick kiss in the dark. "Gotta go. Sorry, babe."
"It's okay. I understand."
Did she? Renny sure hoped so.
The priest! he thought as he raced toward Downstate. Could he have been the one who cut up on that kid?
Nah! Not possible. No way.
And yet…
Renny thought again about how everyone he'd interviewed at St. F.'s had mentioned good old Father Bill's attachment to little Danny, like father and son. How Danny would always sit on his lap. What if that attachment hadn't been entirely on the straight and narrow? You heard about fag priests, about priests molesting kids. It hit the papers every so often. What if the thought of giving the kid up for adoption had scared him? What if he'd been afraid Danny would talk to his new parents about things he'd had to let Father Bill do to him?
Renny increased his speed. He squeezed the steering wheel as he felt his insides tense up.
What if Danny had told the Loms something on Christmas Eve? And what if in their shock and disbelief, in a misguided attempt to give this wonderful and gracious man an opportunity to defend himself, they'd called Father Bill first instead of the police? And what if he cracked when they told him? What if he said he'd come right over and talk this thing out? What if he went completely berserk in the Lorn house? -J
"Jesus!" he said aloud in his car.
It didn't explain everything. Nobody—nobody—was ever going to give Renny a satisfactory explanation of what had happened to Herb Lorn, so he stuffed that incident into a mental limbo. But the bogus Sara—what was her angle? Was she a red herring? Or was she somehow in league with the priest in some plot to get Danny away from St. Francis to a place where the wonderful Father Bill could have freer and more discreet access to the kid?
And suddenly all the pieces started falling into place.
The priest had spent every waking hour by the kid's side, even slept in a chair in the boy's room. Renny had been taken by this show of such deep devotion. But what if it hadn't been anything like devotion? What if the priest had just wanted to be there when Danny started coming out of it? What if he'd wanted to be the first to know if Danny was going to talk again?
And there was more! The priest had been fighting the endless round of tests and procedures all the docs wanted to perform on the kid. Renny had assumed it was for the kid's sake… until now. What if he was really afraid they'd find a way to bring him out of it, or at least get him to the point where he could name his attacker? And now, with the legal machinery moving toward making Danny a ward of the court, the priest was facing certain shutout from having any say in Danny's care. That might have been the last straw. He must have gone into a panic tonight and took off with the kid.
Maybe to finish him off.
Shit!
Renny swerved into the entrance of one of the Downstate parking lots and jumped out of his car. A couple of winos were there. They fairly leapt on him.
"He took the boy!" the shorter one said.
"Who?"
"The Jesuit! He took the boy!"
"You saw him?"
Before the little guy could answer, the bigger wino pushed forward.
"Are you the one?" he said, staring into Renny's eyes.
Renny turned away. He'd heard enough. He flashed his badge at the guy in the guard booth and grabbed the phone. It took a while—he had to go through the hospital switchboard—but he got a line to4he desk at his precinct.
"I want an APB on a Father William Ryan. He's a Jesuit priest but he probably won't be dressed like one. He's wanted for kidnapping and for attempted murder. He'll have a sick seven-year-old kid with him. Get his picture out of the file now and get it to all the papers and all the local news shows. Do the usual bridges and tunnels thing. Have anybody and everybody looking out for a guy in his forties traveling with a sick kid. Do it now. Not ten minutes from now—now!"