"It was your description that made me connect the bat to Father Joe and Sean. Something small and heavy wrapped in something loose, like a golf ball wrapped in a washcloth."
"I like the way you put it together, Charlie. You and Sean have minds like that. You're naturally suspicious of just about everything. Me? I was always a face-value kind of person. Whatever it said on the label, I believed. I loved that way of looking at things. If it said 'new and improved' I believed it truly was new and improved."
Hood caught the past tense.
"So have you found Father Joe?" she asked.
"I'm working on him. Nobody I talked to in Costa Rica had any idea where he'd gone. Back home, I went online and found mentions of two Father Joe Leftwiches but only one is Irish Catholic. And neither of them were in Costa Rica in July. I've talked to the Irish Embassy, their West Coast consulate, the Catholic Church in Dublin, the Catholic Diocese in L.A. and the Vatican. They don't just give out information on priests like you think they would. Too many scandals. I've checked all the law enforcement databases just in case he's got a warrant or a record. Nada. I suspect he's a complete fraud, not a priest at all. Don't you?"
She turned her gaze to him. "He looked realistic in the getup, Charlie, in that little black shirt with the round white collar. But there I go again, believing the surface of things. He never mentioned what his plans were."
Hood looked back at her reflection in the mirror. "Before I left the Volcano View I got one last look at the registration book. I wrote down the names and addresses of ten of the guests who were there when you were. I've written letters to two and e-mails to eight of them, asking if they remember him, and if he said anything about where he was going. I asked them to e-mail any picture that might have him in it. When I was there, everybody had at least two cameras."
"I took a picture of him. Joe said, 'No, don't do that, I don't need my fat little face on film,' but I shot it anyway. He really didn't seem to mind very much."
"I'd like to see it, Sel."
"When we got home it wasn't on the camera."
"Did you ever see it?"
"Oh, yeah, I know it was there. It was the night we partied. I took Sean's camera and shot them with their arms around each other and their glasses raised. Father Joe didn't quite come to Sean's shoulders. I clearly remember looking at the image to see if I should take another but it was a good enough shot. So I gave the camera back to Sean and he put it in the case on his belt. I shot more pictures the next day. No more of Leftwich. Then we came home. And when I was picking out ones to put on disc, I noticed that the Joe picture was gone. I suppose I could have deleted it by accident."
Hood pictured Father Joe's room at the Volcano View, the screens for windows, the cool tile floor, the bed. And he pictured his own digital camera and the three time-consuming steps it took to delete a picture. "Or, Father Joe could have deleted that picture while Sean was asleep."
"Yes, easily. What's the charge against him if he actually gave us rabies and we die from it?"
"Neither of you is going to die from it."
"Now you sound like Father Joe, telling us how special we are and how we're headed for great things. How come everyone seems to know my future except for me?"
"Murder one," said Hood.
"I'll bet there's never been a murder by rabies. Except when one of us bit someone, or maybe raped or even kissed someone. But it wouldn't be murder unless you knew you had it, right?"
"No. It would be something else."
"You could never convict Father Joe based on what we know."
"No, you couldn't."
Hood watched as Seliah brought one of the book bags to her lap and looked down into it. She held up a Colt Model 1911.45 semiautomatic and waved it at him.
"Yours from Sean," she said.
"Careful, now."
"Not loaded."
"I can't take that. It's his."
"Not if doesn't get back here in a hurry. He'd want you to have it."
She set the.45 back in the bag and brought out a Smith amp; Wesson.357 K frame, then a Glock.40-caliber. "These, too. I don't need them. Sorry; I didn't bring any ammo. I don't know where he kept it. This is from me."
She held up a bottle of wine. "It's ten years old. I've been saving it for a special occasion."
"Then keep it for one, Seliah."
"If I live to drink another glass of wine, maybe you can be the one to pour it for me."
"You can beat this thing."
"They've used the protocol eighteen times since Jeanna," she said. "They all died but five. Five, Charlie."
His eardrums started ringing. Brennan had said nothing of this and now Hood's soul felt fooled and helpless and angry. "Five?"
"Yes. Now, I want you to hang on to these medals and give them to my mom and dad if I don't wake up. If Sean and I both go, then everything goes to the families. We have a will on file and I left a few numbers for you at home, on the kitchen counter. But I want these medals to come to Mom and Dad personally, and I want you to say thank you for me. These are mostly from college but some from high school. Mom and Dad drove me to every practice and meet you could think of, paid my way across the country and to Canada and Europe, helped me go to a college where I could swim. I was too wrapped up in myself to appreciate it at the time. But I know these trinkets would mean a lot to them. You can have one if you want but not one of the Pan Am games, okay?"
She held up a handful of them for him to see and dropped them back into the bag and lifted out another batch. In the rearview Hood could see the tears running down her face. Her voice was high and girlish and forced. "Now, I want to have my ashes scattered at sea, of course. So in this other bag I've got some stuff I want to be tossed overboard, too. I'm sure there's a law against that so you just make sure to do it yourself, Charlie. Here's Daisy, a ceramic horse with a broken tail that I loved, and Sean named the dog after. And here's a doll named Betty, which is what Sean named the Piper after, and here's my dried-leaf collection from when I was a girl… Just pull out the leaves and throw them in. And this little wooden chest? There's a lock of Sean's hair and I'd like you to throw that into the sea, too. I want the hair to float for a while, then sink down with the ashes. In scatterings at sea, if the sunlight is right, you can see down deep into the water and the ashes get suspended in a big swirl where the boat has traveled. It's a pale streak left by the person, their last track on earth. It widens and lengthens and slowly fades. And that's where I want the hair to be, mixed in with me."
"Okay."
"Now, I don't think this is likely to happen, but if Sean lives through this thing, and you ever see him again, these are for him." She reached into the bag and lifted in succession a stack of envelopes, two small ring boxes, a thick black book. "Love letters and poems from when we were dating. His and mine. And my engagement and wedding rings are in the boxes. They'll make me take them off anyway. If I die, you give them to Sean. There's also a journal I've been keeping for eleven years now. Nobody should read it but him."
She pushed the book back into the bag and yanked off her sunglasses and dabbed at her eyes with the black bandana. Her pupils were tiny and the whites were hot red and the irises faint blue. His eyes met hers in the mirror. She stared at him in between dabs, then growled at him and laughed and growled again louder. She pushed the sunglasses back on and stuffed the bandana into one of the bags. She was shivering and he could see the throb of her pulse in her carotid.
They were halfway there by now. Hood called Brennan on the cell and told him where they were. He told him to have people ready who could handle her in case she was violent. She listened and watched him in the glass. "I can't do this, Charlie."