"That's the Order," Karras shrugged as he pulled on the pants.
"Still, you'd know who was sick at the time and who wasn't, correct? I mean, this kind of sickness. You'd know that."
"No, not necessarily, Lieutenant. Not at all. It would only be an accident, in fact, if I did. You see, I'm not a psychoanalyst. All I do is counsel. Anyway," he commented, buttoning his trousers, "I really know of no one who fits the description."
"Ah, yes; doctor's ethics. If you knew. You wouldn't tell."
"No, I probably wouldn't."
"Incidentally---and I mention it only in passing---this ethic is lately considered illegal. Not to bother you with trivia, but lately a psychiatrist in sunny California, no less, was put in jail for not telling the police what he knew about a patient."
"That a threat?"
"Don't talk paranoid. I mention it in passing."
"I could always tell the judge it was a matter of confession," said the Jesuit, grinning wryly as he stood to tuck his shirt in. "Plainly speaking," he added.
The detective glanced up at him, faintly gloomy. "Want to go into business, Father?" he said Then looked away dismally. " 'Father'... what 'Father'?" he asked rhetorically. "You're a Jew; I could tell when I met you."
The Jesuit chuckled.
"Yes, laugh," said Kinderman. "Laugh." But then he smiled, looking impishly pleased with himself. He turned with beaming eyes. "That reminds me. The entrance examination to be a policeman, Father? When I took it, one question went something like: 'What are rabies and what would you do for them?' Know what some dumbhead put down for an answer? Emis? 'Rabies,' he said, 'are Jew priests, and I would do anything that I could for them.' Honest!" He'd raised up a hand as in oath.
Karras laughed. "Come on, I'll walk you to your car. Are you parked in the lot?"
The detective looked up at him, reluctant to move. "Then we're finished?"
The priest put a foot on the bench, leaning over, an arm resting heavily on his knee. "Look, I'm really not covering up," he said. "Really. If I knew of a priest like the one you're looking for, the least I would do is to tell you that there was such a man without giving you his name. Then I guess I'd report it to the Provincial. But I don't know of anyone who even comes close."
"Ah, well," the detective sighed. "I never thought it was a priest in the first place. Not really." He nodded toward the parking lot. "Yes, I'm over there."
They started walking.
"What I really suspect," the detective continued, "if I said it out loud you would call me a nut. I don't know. I don't know." He was shaking his head. "All these clubs and these cults where they kill for no reason. It makes you start thinking peculiar things. To keep up with the times, these days, you have to be a little bit crazy."
Karras nodded.
"What's that thing on your shirt?" the detective asked him, motioning his head toward the Jesuit's chest.
"What thing?"
"On the T-shirt," the detective clarified. "The writing. 'Philosophers.' "
"Oh, I taught a few courses one year," said Karras, "at Woodstock Seminary in Maryland. I played on the lower-class baseball team. They were called the Philosophers.'
"Ah, and the upper-class team?"
"Theologians."
Kinderman smiled and shook his head. "Theologians three, Philosophers two," he mused.
"Philosophers three, Theologians two."
"Of course."
"Of course."
"Strange things," the detective brooded. "Strange.- Listen, Father," he began on a reticent tack. "Listen, doctor.... Am I crazy, or could there be maybe a witch coven here in the District right now? Right today?"
"Oh, come on," said Karras.
"Then there could."
"Didn't get that."
"Now I'll be the doctor," the detective announced to him, punching at the air with an index finger. "You didn't say no, but instead you were smart-ass again. That's defensive, good Father, defensive. You're afraid you'll look gullible, maybe; a superstitious priest in front of Kinderman the mastermind, the rationalist'
' ---he was tapping the finger at his temple---"the genius beside you, here, the walking Age of Reason. Right? Am I right?"
The Jesuit stared at him now with mounting surmise and respect. "Why, that's very astute," he remarked.
"Well, all right, then," Kinderman grunted. "So I'll ask you again: could there maybe be witch covens here in the District?"
"Well, I really wouldn't know," answered Karras thoughtfully, arms folded across his chest. "But in parts of Europe they say Black Mass."
"Today?"
"Today."
"You mean just like the old days, Father? Look, I read about those things, incidentally, with the sex and the statues and who knows whatever. Not meaning to disgust you, by the way, but they did all those things? It's for real?"
"I don't know."
"Your opinion, then, Father Defensive."
The Jesuit chuckled. "All right, then; I think it's for real. Or at least I suspect so. But most of my reasoning's based on pathology. Sure, Black Mass. But anyone doing those things is a very disturbed human being, and disturbed in a very special way. There's a clinical name for that kind of disturbance, in fact; it's called Satanism---means people who can't have any sexual pleasure unless it's connected to a blasphemous action. Well, it's not that uncommon, not even today, and Black Mass was just used as the justification."
"Again, please forgive me, but the things with the statues of Jesus and Mary?"
"What about them?"
"They're true?"
"Well, I think this might interest you as a policeman." His scholarly interest aroused and stirring, Karras' manner grew quietly animated. "The records of the Paris police still carry the case of a couple of monks from a nearby monastery---let's see..." He scratched his head as he tried to recall. "Yes, the one at Crépy, I believe. Well, whatever." He shrugged. "Close by. At any rate, the monks came into an inn and got rather belligerent about wanting a bed for three. Well, the third they were carrying: a life-size statue of the Blessed Mother."
"Ah, boy, that's shocking," breathed the detective. "Shocking."
"But true. And a fair indication that what you've been reading is based on fact."
"Well, the sex, maybe so, maybe so. I can see. That's a whole other story altogether. Never mind. But the ritual murders now, Father? That's true? Now come on! Using blood from the newborn babies?" The detective was alluding to something else he had read in the book on witchcraft, describing how the unfrocked priest at Black Mass would at times slit the wrist of a newborn infant so that the blood poured into a chalice and later was consecrated and consumed in the form of communion. "That's just like the stories they used to tell about the Jews," the detective continued. "How they stole Christian babies and drank their blood. Look, forgive me, but your people told all those stories."