'God.'
'He drew ten-to-twenty for possession with intent to sell. About three years into his sentence he got in a grudge fight with another inmate and got stabbed to death.'
'God.'
'The thing is, you wonder just how far you have a right to turn things around like that. Did we have a right to set him up? I couldn't see letting him walk around free, and what other way was there to nail him? But if we couldn't do that, did we have a right to put him in the river? That's a harder one for me to answer. I have a lot of trouble with that one. There must be a line there somewhere, and it's hard to know just where to draw it.'
A LITTLE while later she said it was getting to be her bedtime.
'I'll go,' I said.
'Unless you'd rather stay.'
We turned out to be good for each other. For a stitch of time all the hard questions went away and hid in dark places.
Afterward she said that I should stay. 'I'll make us breakfast in the morning.'
'Okay.'
And, sleepily, 'Matt? That story you were telling before. About Ruddle?'
'Uh-huh.'
'What made you think of it?'
I sort of wanted to tell her, probably for the same reason I'd told her the story in the first place. But part of what I had to do was not tell her, just as I had avoided telling Cale Hanniford.
'Just the similarities in the cases,' I said. 'Just that it was another case of a girl raped and murdered in the Village, and the one case put me in mind of the other.'
She murmured something I couldn't catch. When I was sure she was sleeping soundly, I slipped out of bed and got into my clothes. I walked the couple of blocks to my hotel and went to my room.
I thought I would have trouble sleeping, but it came easier than I expected.
Chapter 15
The service had just gotten under way when I arrived. I slipped into a rear pew, took a small black book from the rack, and found the place. I'd missed the invocation and the first hymn, but I was in time for the reading of the Law.
He seemed taller than I remembered. Perhaps the pulpit added an impression of height. His voice was rich and commanding, and he spoke the Law with absolute certainty.
'God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
'Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them, for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments....'
The room was not crowded. There were perhaps eighty persons present, most of them my age or older, with only a few family groups with children. The church could have accommodated four or five times the number in attendance. I guessed most of the congregation had made the pilgrimage to the suburbs in the past twenty years, their places taken by Irish and Italians whose former neighborhoods were now black and Puerto Rican.
'Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.'
Were there more people in attendance today than normally? Their minister had experienced great personal tragedy. He had not conducted the service the preceding Sunday. This would be their first official glimpse of him since the murder and suicide. Would curiosity bring more of them out? Or would restraint and embarrassment-and the cold air of morning-keep many at home?
'Thou shalt not kill.'
Unequivocal statements, these commandments. They brooked no argument.
Not Thou shalt not kill except in special circumstances.
'Thou shalt not commit adultery.... Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor....'
I rubbed at a pulse point in my temple. Could he see me? I remembered his thick glasses and decided he could not. And I was far in the back, and off to the side.
'Hear also what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.'
We stood up and sang a psalm.
THE service took a little over an hour. The Old Testament reading was from Isaiah, the New Testament reading from Mark. There was another hymn, a prayer, still another hymn. The offering was taken and consecrated. I put a five on the plate.
