seized his elbow again, propelling him past the patrol officers and through the doors. There was no escape, no relaxing, she was not even allowed to perform the simplest tasks of her job without the constant reminder that everyone and his dog knew who and what and where she was. She would have preferred to have her nude photograph on the front pages—at least that would have required a degree of imagination on the part of the voyeurs. Instead of that, even the looniest of the park-bench homeless knew everything about her, had followed her exploits like some goddamned soap opera.
She stabbed her finger on the elevator button and stood staring straight ahead, not looking at the man beside her whose whole being radiated a patient understanding that was in itself infuriating. They stepped inside the elevator along with four or five others and the door closed. They went up, the others got off at the second floor, and when the elevator had resumed, Erasmus spoke to her.
“A fool’s mouth is his destruction,” he said, sounding apologetic. “Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee.”
Kate tried hard to hang on to her anger, but she could feel it begin to dissipate, shredding itself against the monumental calm of the old man in the priest’s robe. She sighed.
“No, Erasmus, I’m not angry. Hell, I’m a public servant,- I have no right to a private life, anyway.” The elevator stopped and the door opened. Kate gestured with the carved end of the staff. “Down there. I’ll see if my partner is here.”
She parked Erasmus at a desk and went in search of Al Hawkin. There were no signs of recent habitation in his office, and the secretary said no, she hadn’t seen him yet, so Kate phoned down to the morgue to find out when he would be through. She waited while the woman went to find out, but instead of a female voice, Al himself came on the line.
“What’s up, Martinelli?”
“I didn’t mean you should come to the phone, I just wanted to know how much longer you’d be.”
“Just finished.”
“What did he find?”
“Fractured skull—compression, not from the heat. Somebody whacked him. It’s ours.” Not just an illegal body disposal case, then, but murder. Kate eyed the hefty staff that she had left leaning on the wall behind Hawkin’s desk, wondering if she was going to have to bag it as evidence.
“There’s a fair amount of stuff for the lab, of course,” he said, “but there were no other overt signs.”
“Any chance of lifting fingerprints?”
“Two of the fingers have a bit of skin left, might give partials if we’re lucky. And there were no teeth to x-ray, and no dentures, though the doc said he’s been wearing them until recently. Is that what you’re phoning about?”
“No. I have Brother Erasmus here,- you said you’d like to be in on the interview.”
“I would, yes. Have you had lunch?”
How the man could think of food with the stench of the autopsy still in his nose…
“No. You’re going for a sandwich? Bring one for the good brother, too. He didn’t eat much of his breakfast.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I’ve changed.” He hung up. In the months since she’d been on active homicide duty, Kate had forgotten Al’s almost ritual cleansing after witnessing an autopsy. The smell was pervasive and tenacious, clinging to hair and clothes, and after the first couple of times she, too, had made a point of taking along a change of clothes and some lemon-scented shampoo.
Kate went back to Erasmus. He was sitting where she’d left him, the small green book open in his left hand, his right arm tucked up against his chest, with the fist curled into the line of his jaw. It was a peculiar position, and Kate stood studying him for a moment until it came to her: That was how he had stood on the seminary lawn, with the right side of his body wrapped around the tall staff. Except now there was no staff inside the fist.
“What’s that you’re reading?” she asked. He closed it and held it out to her.
APOSTOLIC FATHERS
I
Translated by Kirsopp Lake
She opened it curiously. The first thing she noticed was that it was a library book, property of the Graduate Theological Union Library. It was divided up into chapters titled “Clement,” “Ignatius to Polycarp,” “The Didache.” In the text of the book, the left-hand page was in Greek, which Kate recognized but could not read, with the right-hand page its English translation. Erasmus, she thought, had been reading the left side of the book. Kate read a few lines, which had to do with repenting, salvation, seeking God, and fleeing evil, then closed the book and let it fall open again, something she’d once seen Hawkin do, although she supposed it wouldn’t mean much in a library book. She read aloud: “ ‘Wherefore, brethren, let us forsake our sojourning in this world, and do the will of him who called us.”“ She let the pages flip and sort themselves out, finding: ” ’Let us also be imitators of those who went about “in the skins of goats and sheep.”‘ Yes, I’ve seen a few of those downtown lately.“ She let the book fall shut and handed it back to him. ”It’s going to be about half an hour before we can get started. Sorry about that. Do you want something to drink? Coffee? A toilet?“ At her last word, he stood up with an air of expectation. She escorted him down the hall, brought him back, and left him at the desk with his
It was closer to forty-five minutes before Hawkin arrived—his hair stilldamp—smelling faintly of lemons and strongly of onions from the pair of white bags he dropped on her desk.
“I didn’t know if your religious fanatic was a vegetarian, so I got him cheese.” Kate waited while Al dug the sandwiches out and handed her one, then she picked up a packet of french fries and a can of Coke and took them to Erasmus.
“Just another ten minutes,” she told him. “There’s cheese and avocado in that,- hope that’s all right.”
“My mouth shall show forth thy praise,” he replied gravely.
“Er… you’re welcome.”
She went back and found Hawkin halfway through his sandwich.
“What are you grinning at?” he said somewhat indistinctly.
“I’ve dealt with nuts before,” she told him, “but nobody quite like Erasmus. Is this that chicken salad with the almonds and orange things? Great.” The french fries were thick and crisp, and for several minutes the only noises to come from Hawkin’s desk were the sounds of food being inhaled.
“So,” said Hawkin eventually, “tell me about our friend down the hall.”
“Well, he’s going to be an interesting interview. He speaks only in quotations—the Bible, Shakespeare, that kind of thing—so of course there’re a lot a direct questions he can’t answer.”
“Is he coherent?”
“Yes, in a roundabout sort of way. There’s usually a kind of key idea in his quote that answers whatever question you’ve asked, but sometimes you have to dig for it. He usually hesitates before he speaks, to think about what he’s going to say, I guess. Some questions he just doesn’t answer at all; others, he answers with body language or facial expressions. When he really wants you to understand, though, he just keeps at it until he’s sure you’ve got whatever it is he’s driving at.”
“Interview by inference,” Hawkin grumbled. “How the hell can we transcribe a whole session filled with shrugs and eloquent silences?”
“It might not be so bad. The problem is interpreting the meaning of his words. For example, it looks like he’s confessed to John’s murder, but I may have misunderstood him.”
“Explain.”
Kate told him what had happened in the restaurant. “And Dean Gardner agreed that to have Erasmus using the words of a biblical murderer could be taken as an admission of guilt. So I read him his rights and brought him here.” Kate decided it wasn’t necessary to mention the little scene outside.
Hawkin shook his head and then began to laugh. “As you say, it’s nice to have a variety of nuts to choose from.” He drained his Coke and swept the rubbish into the wastepaper basket. “Let’s go see what sense we can shake loose from the holy man.”
¦
EIGHT
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