“To destroy evil necessitates a destruction of self, of ego,” added Strand. “That much I've learned in the ministry and from Father Luc Sante. No, I didn't help him to write his book, but I have read it more than once.”

“Yes,” she agreed with the two ministers, “destroying a man, even a maniac like Mad Matthew Matisak and some of the others I've killed, yes, it chips away at the block of one's humanity. That's without a doubt.” She thought about Jim Parry, the life she would never have with him, about children she would never have, about a home she would never know.

“Well, I have much to do tonight. Bingo night, you know, and the Houghton sisters are at it again. Must go play referee,” said Strand, smiling before he disappeared the way he'd come, hardly conscious of what his words had done to Jessica.

Luc Sante took Jessica's hand in his, squeezing warmly, and said, “You are essentially a good person, Dr. Coran.”

“Thank you.”

“I dole out no absolution to anyone. Despite what the church says, I don't believe in that sort of nonsense. But I am here, if ever you wish to talk, for to kill another human being does, as you say, chip away at all mankind's care and concern for the essential nobility and quality of existence. Still, certain evil out there cannot be ignored, either. Father Strand and others, myself included, we all sleep better at night thanks to the fearlessness of people like yourself. Fear is our first weapon against evil, courage our second, instinct our final defense. And you… you must trust to your instincts.”

“Even blindly so?”

“ is better than no instinct.”

“Well said, sir.”

“Still, in killing the evil that climbed from the primordial muck with us, we are likely to take down the innocent with the guilty.”

“So, you believe our killer or killers here in London are at war with Satan on this ground, here?” She pointed to her own head.

“Precisely. Doing battle, grappling with our most ancient enemy in an attempt to resurrect the Son, Satan's greatest nemesis. Your killer fixates on the victim, sees the mark not of Cain on the forehead but that of Christ in the eyes, or some such manner, and then proceeds from there in his attempt to resurrect the Chosen One to walk anew among us. But, of course, he keeps missing his mark, and the resurrection hasn't happened. Until it does, he will, I fear, go on killing.”

“In the name of God.”

“And the Son.”

“Theology student perhaps?”

“Who knows, but since the so-called true millennium is upon us, your killer likely believes this is the time of the Second Coming. He damned well wants to be a big part of it, hasten it along, just as others want to be a part of the biggest millennium party that will be thrown.”

“Some kind of twisted thinking. How did you arrive at it?”

“Confessionals.”

“Confessionals?”

“As I've said, I've had a great deal of experience in confessionals both in the booth and in my psychiatric practice, in this office.”

“But you said you didn't believe in granting absolution.”

“I don't. I merely hear confessions.”

“But if you listen to confessions, you must… must say something to your parishioners.”

“All right, I tell them I absolve them, but I don't believe it. I don't believe I have that power. I don't believe any man has, no matter the robes he wears. Absolution must come from within one's own heart, not from some formalized church ritual. I know, it's a wonder I haven't long ago been defrocked. I have had my disguises throughout my life as well, Jessica.”

“What about your psychiatric patients? They seek a sort of absolution, too, don't they?”

“It's called absolut-vodka-there.” He again laughed. “Seriously, though, one in every twenty or so patients I see, or confessions I hear, are nowadays about some grand-new beginning. Lately, concern and fear center around the doomsday prophets and soothsayers of the final end, Armageddon, all balled up with the new millennium. The fact that Armageddon or Apocalypse did not occur when the bell tolled on New Year, 2000, has only fueled the belief in the year 2001 as that of the final judgment, the final flood if you will.”

She easily agreed. “Fear… Fear of the end, not hope for the beginning is typical of human nature, unfortunately.”

“Not unlike every mental breakdown, every divorce situation, every loss of a loved one I've handled in my psychiatric practice, for instance.”

“And such fears fuel phobias and manic depression, insomnia, and psychosis, as well as psychotic behavior, especially religious psychosis, right?” she asked. “I think you've answered that one yourself.” Luc Sante took her chinaware from her and stacked it on the tray left by his secretary, called out through the door left ajar by Strand, but no answer returned. “Where the deuce is that woman?” he asked Jessica.

“It's well past five. I think she may have gone home for the day, Father.”

“What time is it?”

The bells of St. Albans answered the old man as if on cue, ringing six times. Luc Sante grumbled about his secretary and Strand, “Both long gone by this time, having had enough of the old man's stubbornness,” he spoke of himself in the third person.

Ignoring his obvious fatigue, Luc Sante now walked Jessica down the huge back corridors of St. Albans Cathedral. The ancient marble hallways clicked with the rhythm of Jessica's heels to counterpoint Luc Sante's more subtle step. To Jessica's right, the length of the otherwise dark corridor ran with beautiful stained-glass windows; but the images, relying as they did on sunlight, had grown dull, faded, hidden within the blotted colors as darkness had come to the world outside.

Luc Sante grumbled about the lost beauty of the panes, saying, “The new buildings all round us now blot out the sun more and earlier. I used to close up, make this walk, and fill my soul here in this corridor, replenished by the resplendent artwork you see there now in the darkness. All things bow to progress as they call it. Change, I suppose.”

Jessica felt a sudden sadness for the old, wise man's loss, and she felt a sudden amazement at how much time had flown by while in Luc Sante's presence. This fact decided for her that she genuinely liked and admired the old scholarly Jesuit shaman. His appearance and crustiness reminded her of a later-day George Bernard Shaw. With his knowing hand grasping mankind about the throat to check for a pulse, Father and Dr. Jerrard Luc Sante found just cause for cynicism, despair, and hope all in the same breath and heartbeat.

All these thoughts flooded her mind as they continued down the seemingly endless corridor. The thoughts continued at the great oak doors-the entrance to the cathedral. Like Shaw, she felt Luc Sante a voice in the wasteland-T. S. (Thomas Steams) Eliot's Waste Land, yes, but Eliot's wasteland had only become cluttered with more disaffection, more disenfranchisement of the human soul, more searing, jagged-edged alienation or other modem ailment since his poem had been written in 1922. And all of the ugliness of alienation of the soul had been eclipsed by an enormity of fear too great for the collective soul of man to bare up under.

Yes, an eclipsing fear in the late 1990s created a wasteland of the soul that mankind had never known before. Mankind collectively stood on the brink of the coming new millennium and teetered there, one foot in the abyss on a slippery slope that led to the end of a particularly black and empty hole, unless… Unless mankind and womankind turned the emptiness inside out, examined it, and came to terms with it. Unless people began to heed their own spiritual voices as had Luc Sante and others like him.

Jessica admired the old man's juggling his dual roles as priest and psychotherapist, his abilities in both fields, and his intellect and calculation that told all who came within his sphere that religion and science sipped from the same vast ocean-sized teacup of the unknown, and that both fields of human endeavor had much to offer the human psyche, and that both could and should cohabit down here on Earth together. The two, religion and science, did not negate one another; the two were necessary for understanding of the human spirit.

Luc Sante turned to Jessica, facing her now at the entranceway to the corridor, the streetlights filtering in through the windowed doors, bathing him in a green glow. Jessica stared into his warm, glowing, and rich blue eyes

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