“No. Not a church anymore. Deconsecrated a long time ago. Too bad, in a sense,” he added, with a touch of that disconnection the guard had described.
“How so?” asked Hardwick.
Lazarus answered slowly. “Churches are about good and evil. About guilt and punishment.” He shrugged, pulling up in front of the chapel and switching off the ignition. “But church or no church, we all pay for our sins one way or another, don’t we?”
“Where is everyone?” asked Hardwick.
“Inside.”
Gurney looked up at the imposing edifice, its stone face the color of dark shadows.
“Is Dr. Ashton in there?” Gurney pointed at the arched chapel door.
“I’ll show you.” Lazarus got out of the van.
They followed him up the granite steps and through the door into a wide, dimly lit vestibule that smelled to Gurney like the parish church of his Bronx childhood: a combination of masonry, old wood, the age-old soot of burned candle wicks. It was a scent with a strangely dislocating power, making him feel a need to whisper, to step quietly. From beyond a pair of heavy oak doors that would lead presumably into the main space of the chapel came the low murmur of many voices.
Above the doors, carved boldly into a wide stone lintel, were the words GATE OF HEAVEN.
Gurney gestured toward the doors. “Dr. Ashton is in there?”
“No. The girls are in there. Settling down. All a bit volatile today-shaken up by the news about the Liston girl. Dr. Ashton’s in the organ loft.”
“Organ loft?”
“That’s what it used to be. Converted now, of course. Converted into an office.” He pointed to a narrow doorway at the far end of the vestibule, leading to the foot of a dark staircase. “It’s the door at the top of those stairs.”
Gurney felt a chill. He wasn’t sure whether it was the natural temperature of the granite or something in Lazarus’s eyes, which he was sure were fixed on them as they climbed the shadowy stone steps.
Chapter 74
At the top of the cramped stairwell was a small landing, weirdly illuminated by one of the building’s narrow scarlet windows. Gurney knocked on the landing’s only door. Like the doors off the vestibule, it looked heavy, gloomy, uninviting.
“Come in.” Ashton’s mellifluous voice was strained.
Despite its weight and promise of creakiness, the door swung open fluidly, silently, into a comfortably proportioned room that might have passed for a bishop’s private study. Chestnut brown bookcases lined two of the windowless walls. There was a small fireplace of sooty fieldstone with old brass andirons. An ancient Persian rug covered the floor, except for a satin-polished border of cherrywood two feet wide all the way around the room. A few large lamps, set atop occasional tables, gave the dark, woody tones of the room an amber glow.
Scott Ashton sat wearing a troubled frown at an ornate black-oak desk, placed at a ninety-degree angle to the door. Behind him, on an oak sideboard with carved lion-head legs, was the room’s major concession to the current century-a large flat-screen computer monitor. He motioned Gurney and Hardwick vaguely to a pair of red velvet high-backed chairs across from him-the sort of chairs one might find in the sacristy of a cathedral.
“It just keeps getting worse and worse,” Ashton said.
Gurney assumed he was referring to the murder the previous evening of Savannah Liston and was about to offer some vague words of agreement and condolence.
“Frankly,” Ashton went on, turning away, “I find this organized-crime angle almost incomprehensible.” At that point the sight of his Bluetooth earpiece, along with the oddness of his comments, told Gurney that the man was in fact in the middle of a phone call. “Yes, I understand… I understand… My point is simply that every step forward makes the case more bizarre… Yes, Lieutenant. Tomorrow morning… Yes… Yes, I understand. Thank you for letting me know.”
Ashton turned toward his guests but seemed for a moment to be lost in contemplation of the conversation just ended.
“News?” asked Gurney.
“Are you aware of this… criminal-conspiracy theory? This… grand scheme that may involve Sardinian gangsters?” Ashton’s expression seemed strained by a combination of anxiety and disbelief.
“I’ve heard it discussed,” said Gurney.
“Do you think there’s any chance of it being true?”
“A chance, yes.”
Ashton shook his head, stared confusedly at his desk, then back up at the two detectives. “May I ask why you’re here?”
“Just a gut feeling,” said Hardwick.
“Gut feeling? What do you mean?”
“In every case there’s some common point where everything converges. So the place itself becomes a key. It could be a big help for us just to take a walk around, see what we can see.”
“I’m not sure that I-”
“Everything that’s happened seems to have some link back to Mapleshade. Would you agree with that?”
“I suppose. Perhaps. I don’t know.”
“You telling me you haven’t thought about it?” There was an edge in Hardwick’s voice.
“Of course I’ve thought about it.” Ashton looked perplexed. “I just can’t… see it that clearly. Maybe I’m too close to everything.”
“Does the name Skard mean anything to you?” asked Gurney.
“The detective on the phone just asked me the same question-something about some horrible Sardinian gang family. The answer is no.”
“You’re sure Jillian never mentioned it?”
“Jillian? No. Why would she?”
Gurney shrugged. “It’s possible that Skard may be Hector Flores’s real name.”
“Skard? How would Jillian know that?”
“I don’t know, but she apparently did an Internet search to find out more about it.”
Ashton shook his head again, the gesture resembling an involuntary shudder. “How awful does this have to get before it ends?” It was more a wail of protest than a question.
“You said something on the phone just now about tomorrow morning?”
“What? Oh, yes. Another twist. Your lieutenant feels that this conspiracy angle makes everything more urgent, so he’s pushing up the schedule for interviewing our students to tomorrow morning.”
“So where are they all?”
“What?”
“Your students. Where are they?”
“Oh. Forgive my distractedness, but that’s part of the reason for it. They’re downstairs in the main area of the chapel. It’s a calming environment. It’s been a wild day. Officially, Mapleshade students have no communication with the outside world. No TV, radio, computers, iPods, cell phones, nothing. But there are always leaks, always someone who’s managed to sneak in some device or other, and so of course they’ve heard about Savannah’s death, and… well, you can imagine. So we went into what a sterner facility might call ‘lockdown mode.’ Of course, we don’t call it that. Everything here is designed to have a softer edge.”
“Except for the razor wire,” said Hardwick.
“The fence is aimed at keeping problems out, not people in.”
“We were wondering about that.”
“I can assure you it’s for security, not captivity.”
“So right now they’re all downstairs in the chapel?” asked Hardwick.
“Correct. As I said, they find it calming.”
“I wouldn’t have thought they’d be religious,” said Gurney.
“Religious?” Ashton smiled humorlessly. “Hardly. There’s just something about stone churches, Gothic windows, the muted light. They calm the soul in a way that has nothing to do with theology.”
“The students don’t feel like they’re being punished?” asked Hardwick. “What about the ones who weren’t acting out?”
“The agitated ones settle down, feel better. The ones who were okay to begin with are given to understand that they are the main source of peace for the others. Bottom line, the agitated don’t feel singled out and the calm feel valuable.”