Once Pete had navigated the crosstown traffic and turned onto Madison, the drive up to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was slow but steady. It took a bit less than thirty minutes by the time Pete was able to pull over to the side of the road next to the residence. As soon as they’d come to a stop, Jack hopped out, slid open the van’s door, got the ossuary over to the edge, and then lifted it. By then Pete had come around, and he closed the slider.
“I appreciate the help, Pete,” Jack said over his shoulder.
“No problem,” Pete said, eyeing the stark, gray stone residence.
Jack hauled the ossuary up the front stone steps and, balancing it on a bent knee, gave the receiving bell a good pull. Within he could hear the chimes. Always mindful of possible imminent disasters, Jack could suddenly see himself dropping the awkward ossuary down the stone steps, where it would certainly shatter and dump the bones, scrolls, glass panes, codex, and Saturninus’s letter out onto the concrete. As a consequence, Jack gripped the stone more tightly and was even contemplating putting it down when the door was swept open by the same priest who’d welcomed him to lunch.
“Dr. Stapleton,” Father Maloney commented. “What can I do for you?”
“It might be nice to invite me in,” Jack suggested, with a touch of sarcasm.
“Yes, of course, come in!” Father Maloney stepped back to give room. “Is the cardinal expecting you?”
“He might be, since he knows more about what’s been going on than I, but I’m not certain. Why don’t I wait where I waited last week?”
“That is a superb idea. The archbishop is meeting now with the vicar general, but I will let him know you are here.”
“Very good,” Jack said. On his own, he’d already started down the hall, clearly remembering where the small private study was located. Father Maloney sprinted ahead and held the door ajar by the time Jack arrived. The first thing Jack did was place the ossuary on the floor. He was careful not to damage the flawless surface.
“Is there anything I can get you while you wait?”
“If you sense it is going to be a while, a newspaper might be nice.”
“Would the
“That would be fine.”
Father Maloney closed the door behind him. Jack looked around the ascetic room, noting the same details he had on the previous visit, including the strong but not overbearing odor of cleaning fluid and floor wax. Already starting to get warm, he pulled off his leather jacket and tossed it onto the small club chair. Then he sat down on the mini-couch exactly as he’d done when he’d come for lunch, making him acknowledge how much a creature of habit he was.
Contrary to his concern, he did not have long to wait. Within just a few moments of Father Maloney’s departure, the door burst open. Dressed like a simple priest, James stepped into the room. After closing the door behind him, he rushed over to Jack and mimicked their greeting the week before with a brotherly hug. “Thank you, thank you, for coming right over,” James managed. It was then that he caught sight of the ossuary.
As if a schoolboy, James let go of Jack and clapped his hands in appreciation. “You already brought the ossuary! Oh, thank you! You have answered a prayer that the ossuary would come back to the Church. Tell me, is everything back into it?” James had his palms pressed together as if in prayer.
“Everything is in it,” Jack said. “Bones, samples, all of the scrolls, even Saturninus’s letter and the codex it came from. After what has happened, I felt I wanted to get it into your hands as soon as possible.”
“What did you think of this tragedy?”
“I was blown away,” Jack said. “I learned about it only an hour or so ago. I was told by a friend, Lieutenant Detective Lou Soldano.”
“I met him last night,” James said. “He was here at the residence.”
“He told me,” Jack said. “He’s a good man.”
“I sensed that.”
“Why didn’t you call me as soon as you learned what had happened?”
“I don’t know. I thought about it, but I’m so confused. Jack, I don’t know if I’m guilty or not.”
Jack looked askance at James. “What are you talking about? What do you think you might be guilty of?”
“Murder,” James said. Unable to maintain eye contact with Jack, he looked away. “I don’t know if I didn’t suspect in the hidden corners of my mind that there was a chance this might happen. When one plays with fire, pardon the pun, one can get burnt. I knew the person I was asking for would be unbalanced, maybe even to the extent of feeling he could use sin to fight what he considered to be a bigger sin. Luke called me yesterday morning to tell me that Shawn was about to change his mind and not publish. He said he was confident of success, and it was more due to tactics than argument. I should have known then that a tragedy was about to unfold, but instead I was so pleased plan B was going to work, I didn’t question what Luke meant by the word
“James, look at me!” Jack demanded, holding on to both of James’s shoulders and giving them a gentle shake. “Look at me!” Jack insisted. James’s face was an agony of torment, with injected eyes awash with tears and slack skin. Slowly his brimming, blue eyes came up to meet Jack’s. “I was part of this almost from day one,” Jack continued.
“Never once did you have any wishes of physical injury, much less thoughts of death toward Shawn or Sana. Never! Your goal was to find someone passionate and persuasive about the Virgin Mary, which you did. To go beyond that and scheme of killing someone is something your mind or my mind is not capable of doing. It’s only after the fact that we are able to consider it. Please don’t magnify the tragedy by trying to take responsibility. The responsibility was in the mind of the perpetrator, which we will never understand. Something set him off. Probably we’ll never know what, but something.”
“Do you truly believe what you are saying, or are you just trying to mollify me?”
“I believe it one hundred percent.”
“Thank you for being supportive. Your thoughts are important to me. You have encouraged me to take some time off to think and pray about this affair. I’m going to ask the Holy Father if I could spend a month or so at a monastery conducive to such contemplation and prayer.”
“That sounds like a good, healthy plan.”
“But first this awful episode must be cleaned up,” James said. He looked intently up into Jack’s face. “I’m afraid I have to ask one more rather large favor from you, my friend.”
“And what can that be?”
“The ossuary!” James said. “I need to ask you to help me put it back.”
“Put it back where?” Jack questioned, although he already guessed. He guessed because he too thought it was the best solution to the entire unfortunate episode. The ossuary should go back to where Shawn and Sana had found it, under Saint Peter’s. “Do you mean take it back to Rome . . . ?” Jack continued, his voice trailing off.
“I knew you would understand,” James said, reviving to a degree from his melancholy.
“You and I are the only ones who know about the story. I would not be able to do it myself. You must help me, and the sooner, the better.” Jack’s immediate thought was Laurie, especially considering JJ and the need to check his antibody level to see if treatment could be restarted. “I’m afraid I have a full schedule these days,” Jack said. “When were you thinking of doing this?”
“Tonight,” James said matter-of-factly. “I have already made reservations for us late this afternoon. I hope you don’t feel aggravated by my presumptuousness assuming you’d agree. The ossuary will be coming with us on the same flight. We’ll be in Rome in the morning, and tomorrow night I will make arrangements to put the ossuary back where it came from. Then, if you’d like, you can come back to New York on Saturday. It’s taking you all the way to Rome, but you’ll be gone for only two nights. Don’t make me beg, Jack.”
Jack suddenly had a thought that made the idea of flying all the way to Europe seem like an interesting idea above and beyond putting the ossuary back into its burial site. It involved one of the three sheets of computer printouts he’d placed in his inner jacket pocket when he’d been packing everything else back into the ossuary in the lab. Instead of adding the printouts to the other objects, since they had come from the lab, he decided to pocket them with the idea of mulling them over at a later date. One of the pages had the name and an address of a patient seen at the Ein Kerem campus of the Hadassah Medical Center.
“I tell you what,” Jack said. “I’ll come tonight and help you put back the ossuary under two conditions. Number one, my wife, Laurie, and our four-month-old child come with us, provided I can talk her into it, and two, I can tell my wife the whole story of the ossuary.”
