“Federal judge Joseph Peter Wallace? A good man. Not much of a golfer, but a good man.”
“Yes sir. My client has asked Judge Wallace for a temporary restraining-”
“No,” Gallagher said, clapping his hands together. “Not another word.”
“-order to halt this ad hoc proceeding and-”
“I’m sorry,” the judge shouted over Repelmaus, “I haven’t heard a word you said and if you speak another, Judge Wallace will have to post your bail.”
Repelmaus pursed his lips.
Gallagher turned back to the box. Dirt was caked around its hinges, and it was tall enough that all we could see of the judge was his head and the few stray tufts of silver the chemo had spared. He motioned to Doc Joe. “Could you come over here?” Doc Joe came around behind the judge. Gallagher handed the coroner a pair of latex gloves, then turned to Whistler. “Mr. Whistler,” he said, “can you tell us why you’re here?”
“I demand a lawyer, Your Honor.”
“Well, then, Mr. Breck?” Gallagher said. “Can you tell me why Mr. Whistler is here?”
A fax machine resting on a credenza behind Gallagher sputtered to life, chugging from hum to clatter as it began spitting out a page.
“Pardon me,” Gallagher said, turning to Doc Joe. “It’s impossible to conduct a conversation with that thing clunking along.” Doc Joe reached behind the credenza and yanked a plug from its socket. The machine went silent.
“Judge, you can’t be serious,” Repelmaus said.
“Much better,” Gallagher said. “Mr. Breck?”
Breck looked at Whistler. “He obviously made a mistake,” Breck said. “He must have worried that my arrest would lead to his, and he panicked and went looking for that”-he nodded toward the box on the judge’s desk-“and somebody figured it out.”
Darlene and me, I thought. Finally.
“And why would Mr. Whistler care about what’s in this box?”
Breck made a show of turning to look at Repelmaus. “Because he thought it might be worth a lot of money to the archdiocese. Like maybe five million dollars.”
I looked at Whistler, who appeared ready to explode, his cheeks crimson, his pinkie ring tap-tap-tapping on his chair arm. I wanted to hear from him.
“Not only that,” I interjected, “but he and his partner, one Beverly Taggart, sought to get women in town to help them with their little extortion plot under the guise of writing a history of St. Valentine’s Church.”
Whistler took the bait. “It wasn’t a ‘guise,’” he said.
“So, Mr. Whistler, you do want to speak,” Gallagher said. “What would this history of yours say?”
Whistler looked around at his audience. He couldn’t help himself. “Everything Breck says about the church framing his grandfather is true,” he said.
“Preposterous,” Repelmaus said.
“They had to frame somebody because Father Nilus Moreau had killed Sister Cordelia with his bare hands and buried her beneath the old church. Later he moved the bones so they could build the new church.”
“How do you know this, Mr. Whistler?” Gallagher said.
“My mother knew Nilus. Only too well.”
“Why wouldn’t the archdiocese just hand Nilus over to the authorities and wash their hands of him?”
“It was too late for that,” I said. “They were already covering up years of Nilus screwing his parishioners.”
“Your Honor,” Repelmaus pleaded.
“If the murder of a nun came out, everything would come out,” I said. “The archdiocese couldn’t help but look complicit, and who knows what else.” I looked at Repelmaus. “Your pal Reilly didn’t tell you about the paternity suits, Regis?”
“Judge,” he said, “this man has zero credibility as a journalist. Why is he even in here? What kind of crazy court is this?”
My mother jumped up. “Don’t you dare say that about my son.”
“Hush, all of you,” Gallagher said. “Beatrice, please, sit.”
“God damn you to hell, if he hasn’t already,” she told Repelmaus. She sat.
“Maybe Sheriff Aho should hire your son, Bea,” Gallagher said.
“Hah,” Whistler said. “He’s clueless.”
“Enough out of you,” Gallagher said. Then, to Repelmaus, “This is not a courtroom, sir, this is my chambers. There is no jury. The rules of evidence do not apply. But since you’re so keen on having the facts correct, please tell us: Did Mr. Whistler endeavor to extort money from the archdiocese?”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor, I would have to claim attorney-client privilege.”
“Ah. Maybe Mr. Whistler isn’t the only one with something to hide.” He waited for a reply, but Repelmaus had none. “All right, let’s see what could be worth the risks you people have taken.”
Gallagher stood. He lifted the hasp on the box. He took hold of the lid with his gloved hands and eased it open. A musty odor floated up from the open box. I imagined the sort of line that would appear in a newspaper story: The room filled with the smell of death. I watched Gallagher’s face as he examined the inside of the box. Doc Joe moved closer. His face blanched as the judge, whose face did not blanch, reached into the box and handed something to Doc Joe.
The coroner took the skull in one hand, rolled it over into the other. It wasn’t much bigger than a softball and was about the same color and roundness, except for a small, irregular oval circumscribed by a hairline crack in the rear left part of the skull. The dent looked like one a ball-peen hammer might make in a sheet of drywall.
“Jesus God,” Breck said. Whistler dropped his head to his sweatshirt.
I looked at Mom. Her eyes followed the coroner’s hands as he turned the skull this way and that, peering in through the eye sockets and up through the neck.
“Your professional opinion, Doctor?” Gallagher said.
“Purely unofficial, of course,” he said. “But on first glance, looks like a female skull, based on its size.”
“Human,” Gallagher said.
“Certainly.”
“And this?” The judge indicated the dented area.
“Probably some sort of blunt force. Hard to tell whether it’s passive or aggressive. It’s possible she fell. It’s possible somebody hit her with something. Not too terribly different from what happened to Phyllis, actually.” He peered over his glasses at Mom. “I’m sorry, Bea.”
She shook her head softly, pressing a wad of tissue against her lips.
Gallagher put a hand out and Doc Joe placed the skull in it. The judge set it back inside the box. He rested his hands on the edges of the box.
“Beatrice,” he said.
Mom had begun to rock back and forth in her chair, her tongue bobbing inside her lips, making an “N”: “Nonny Nonny Nonny.”
“I haven’t heard that name in a long, long time,” Gallagher said. “Whatever was it supposed to mean, do you know?”
Mom shook her head again. “Nothing,” she said, barely audible.
“Sister Cordelia made cakes for the kids’ birthdays,” I offered.
Gallagher’s smile was gentle. “That’s not quite correct,” he said. “I was a couple of years ahead of Bea, but St. Val’s was a tiny school. Sister Cordelia always made cookies for birthdays. She made cake for Bea’s. Didn’t she, Bea?”
Mom nodded.
“Bea was her pet.”
“She used to keep me in from recess to work on my spelling.”
“Did it work?” Gallagher said, still smiling.
“No.”
Gallagher addressed the whole room now. “I used to listen to detective dramas on the radio,” he said. “I always wondered why that body never washed up. Doc, is there a way to get positive identification?”
