there was no indication as to whether he’d hit him. He reached around to where his back ached unbearably and felt the rough wooden handle. “What the fuck is this…?” he said to no one in particular, and collapsed.
Paz began to move as soon as Skeeter’s head hit the ground. He kicked the man’s weapon under the van, then checked his pulse. Finding none, he took his own pistol from Emmylou and entered the white vehicle. There he found, as he had expected, the fourth and final notebook.
“Is he dead?” asked Emmylou when he emerged. She was standing over the body.
“Yeah,” said Paz. “You knew he was involved in this, didn’t you?”
“No. I’m not a criminal mastermind, Detective.”
“Oh, yes, you are,” said Paz, “in your own sweet way. And you were going to let him shoot Lorna too, weren’t you?”
She said, “He wouldn’t have shot Lorna with me pointing a gun at him, he would have shot me. But the Lord sent an angel.”
“That was a schizophrenic Cuban, Emmylou.”
“Yes, an angel of the Lord. Not all of them are pretty blondes with feathery wings.”
Paz wanted to shoot her himself just then but instead spoke to Barlow. “Cletis, if you would, get the ladies into our car and take them to Lorna’s place. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You all need to get out. By now that guard in there has called the cops.”
“Youare the cops,” said Lorna.
“Maybe not for long,” Paz said and looked sadly at Cletis Barlow.
Then he called Tito Morales.
It is unfortunate that the title of this work seems so technical; not everyone after all is interested in the formation of nursing sisters. Were it not so, then perhaps St. Marie-Ange de Berville’s great work would have taken its place besideThe Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola or St. Teresa of Avila’sThe Interior Castle as monumental guides on how to live the life of a vowed religious focused on a particular aspect of God’s work. Marie-Ange begins her introduction with the famous lines “What is this life that we should love it so, even though we are assured by God Himself that bliss lies beyond the sleep of death?” She thus confronts head-on the great paradox of the Christian religion: if there is another, better world ahead of us, what is the value of the only one we know? This is the core of her training method, which is different from the training methods of her two great predecessors, in that it is anascetic; she focuses instead on the appreciation of the gift of life in all its forms, and is relatively unconcerned with a narrow propriety with respect to the sins of the flesh. “Our Lord loved sinners for a good reason,” she writes in her introduction, “and in any case, blood is the best washing.”
— FROM THE FORMATION OF NURSING SISTERS, BY MARIE-ANGE DE BERVILLE, 8TH ED. FOREWORD BY SR. MARGARET CLARE MCMAHAN, SBC, NEW YORK, 1975.
Twenty-three
Paz arrived at Lorna’s in a car driven by his partner, Tito Morales, who had been told just enough about recent events to give him cover. The young cop seemed glum and irritated, and as Paz was getting out of the car he said, “What was that line about telling your partner everything?”
“That’s only for honest cops,” Paz said. “Take care of yourself, Morales. Stay away from crazy people.”
He rang the bell and Barlow answered it, holding his S amp;W Model 10 revolver by his side.
“Any problems?”
“No. The ladies are sleeping. Emmylou went down in a jiffy. Lorna stayed up reading that notebook.”
“You read it too?”
“I did. ‘And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory and honor, and power, unto the Lord our God.’ Revelation 19:1.”
“As good as that, huh? Well, I guess I better read it myself.”
“Go ahead. It’ll do you a world of good, I believe. And now, if there’s nothing else, I reckon I’ll be going. I’d like to be with Edna. I’ll take your rental, if I may. If they want me, y’all know where I’m at.” Barlow handed over his big pistol without being asked and walked out.
Paz went into the living room and found the notebook on the coffee table and read it through, and as soon as he finished he went into the bedroom, dropped his clothes in a pile on the floor, a thing he rarely did, and slid into bed beside Lorna. He lay flat on his back, exhausted but so jangled by what had happened and what he had just read that sleep remained a distant rumor. He thought of Emmylou’s confession?the maniac had actually signed it!? and of what any prosecutor would say if he presented it in evidence, and it made him laugh out loud, an unpleasant and high-pitched sound on the near edge of hysteria. The sound made Lorna stir and moan, and slide closer to him, and he slid his hand under the curve of her butt, and brought his face close to her shoulder, breathing deeply of the sleep-scent that rose from her skin, like vanilla he thought, or was that synesthesia, she was so creamy.
At which point Paz let the reptile brain take command. She responded in her sleep and then awoke quite in midfuck, and made pleased and pleasing sounds, somewhat louder than was her usual wont he thought, a gasp ‘n’ groaner rather than a screamer or talker, which was actually his favorite type of the three. He thought the increased volume might have had something to do with the woman sleeping (or not) in the guest room on the other side of the headboard. Some women liked to advertise they were getting it, he had found, or maybe it was the special circumstances here.
In any case, it blew most of the static out of his brain, and afterward she rolled around and he saw her face in the rosy glow from her digital clock and was pleased that it seemed once again drained of the pinching tension it had worn, suffused with pleasure, looking years younger. He said, ” ‘A woman touched by a man pretends, sometimes, to sleep, for the pleasure of letting him think that she awakens. After, her thighs sleep differently from before.’ “
“Did you just make that up?”
“No, it’s from one of Willa’s poems. ‘Sleep,’ it’s called.”
Lorna stiffened and then let out a long, deep sigh, like an unraveling of something tangled in a dank internal place. “I don’t mind. You can go back to her after I’m dead.”
“Oh, would you just shut the fuck up,” he said gently and kissed her face innumerable times until she drifted off again. Moments afterward he joined her in sleep.
She was still out when he rose in the morning. He took a quick shower and dressed in fresh clothes from his suitcase, then peeked into the guest room and was pleased to see the cropped dark head of the Former Suspect from Hell on the pillow. By the bed was the bag he’d used to bring her possessions from the houseboat.
Lorna was stirring when he went back to her room. He leaned over and kissed her, which turned into more than a simple farewell smack.
“Get those clothes off!” she ordered.
“I can’t. I have to see Oliphant first thing. He’s out on a long limb on this and I owe him an explanation.”
“Are you going to tell him the…what the hell’s that?”
“It’s a.38 revolver. I’m leaving it with you, and your cell phone’s right next to it. We might’ve got all the bad guys last night, but who the fuck knows? Don’t let anyone take her without, one, seeing a warrant, and two, calling me. Okay?”
“Yes, captain,” she said sourly, touching the brim of a notional hat. “If I go to sleep again, will all of this not have happened when I wake up?”
He laughed, kissed her again, and left to call a cab.
This morning Paz had his police coffee in a mug that said NATIONAL TAX FRAUD CONFERENCE,SALT LAKE CITY, 1999, which did nothing to improve the flavor of the brew. Oliphant looked tired, as if he had not been able to return to sleep after Paz’s call had roused him in the middle of the night.
Oliphant tapped the stack of papers on his desk, the report Paz had knocked together in the small hours. “It says here you were pursuing a lead in connection with the Wilson killing, which is not our case, and which I specifically ordered you to stay off of. You were alone, also against orders, and armed with a shotgun. Two men
