Body Double

A strip of sunlight caught her eye; the door leading to the side yard was ajar. She crossed the garage to close it. She had just pushed it shut when she heard a footfall behind her, and she froze, heart thumping. Knew, in that instant, that she was not alone.

She turned. Halfway around, darkness met her.

SIX

MAURA STEPPED FROM THE AFTERNOON SUNSHINE into the cool gloom of the Church of Our Lady of Divine Light. For a moment she could see only shadows, the vague outlines of pews, and the silhouette of a lone woman parishioner seated at the front, her head bowed. Maura slipped into a pew and sat down. She let the silence envelop her as her eyes adjusted to the dim interior. In the stained glass windows above, glowing with richly somber hues, a woman with swirling hair gazed adoringly at a tree from which hung a bloodred apple. Eve in the Garden of Eden. Woman as temptress, seducer. Destroyer. Staring up at the window, she felt a sense of disquiet, and her gaze moved to another. Though she had been raised by Catholic parents, she did not feel at home in the church. She gazed at the jewel-toned images of holy martyrs framed in these windows, and though they might now be enshrined as saints, she knew that, as living flesh and blood, they could not have been flawless. That their time on earth was surely marred by sins and bad choices and petty desires. She knew, better than most, that perfection was not human.

She rose to her feet, turned toward the aisle, and paused. Father Brophy was standing there, the light from the stained glass casting a mosaic of colors on his face. He had approached so quietly that she hadn’t heard him, and now they faced each other, neither one daring to break the silence.

“I hope you’re not leaving already,” he finally said.

“I just came to meditate for a few minutes.”

“Then I’m glad I caught you before you left. Would you like to talk?”

She glanced toward the rear doors, as though contemplating escape. Then she released a sigh. “Yes. I think I would.”

The woman in the front pew had turned and was watching them. And what does she see? Maura wondered. The handsome young priest. An attractive woman. Intent whispers exchanged beneath the gazes of saints.

Father Brophy seemed to share Maura’s uneasiness. He glanced at the other parishioner, and he said: “It doesn’t have to be here.”

They walked in Jamaica Riverway Park, following the tree-shaded path that led alongside the water. On this warm afternoon, they shared the park with joggers and cyclists and mothers pushing baby strollers. In such a public place, a priest walking with a troubled parishioner could hardly stir gossip. This is how it always has to be between us, she thought as they ducked beneath the drooping branches of a willow. No hint of scandal, no whiff of sin. What I want most from him is what he can’t give me. Yet here I am.

Here we both are.

“I wondered when you’d come by to see me,” he said.

“I’ve wanted to. It’s been a rough week.” She stopped and gazed at the river. The whish of traffic from the nearby road obscured the sound of the rushing water. “I’m feeling my own mortality these days.”

“You haven’t before?”

“Not like this. When I watched that autopsy last week-”

“You watch so many of them.”

“Not just watch them, Daniel. I perform them. I hold the scalpel in my hand and I cut. I do it almost every day at work, and it never bothered me. Maybe it means I’ve lost touch with humanity. I’ve grown so detached that I don’t even register it’s human flesh I’m slicing. But that day, watching it, it all became personal. I looked at her and I saw myself on the table. Now I can’t pick up a scalpel without thinking about her. About what her life might have been like, what she felt, what she was thinking when…” Maura stopped and sighed. “It’s been hard going back to work. That’s all.”

“Do you really have to?”

Perplexed by the question, she looked at him. “Do I have a choice?”

“You make it sound like indentured servitude.”

“It’s my job. It’s what I’m good at.”

“Not, in itself, a reason to do it. So why do you?”

“Why are you a priest?”

Now it was his turn to look perplexed. He thought about it for a moment, standing very still beside her, the blueness of his eyes muted in the shadows cast by the willow trees. “I made that choice so long ago,” he said, “I don’t think about it much anymore. Or question it.”

“You must have believed.”

“I still believe.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Do you really think that faith is all that’s required?”

“No, of course not.” She turned and began walking again, along a path dappled with sunlight and shade. Afraid to meet his gaze, afraid that he’d see too much in hers.

“Sometimes it’s good to come face-to-face with your own mortality,” he said. “It makes us reconsider our lives.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Why?”

“I’m not big on introspection. I grew so impatient with philosophy classes. All those questions without answers. But physics and chemistry, I could understand. They were comforting to me because they taught principles that are reproducible and orderly.” She paused to watch a young woman on Rollerblades skate past, pushing a baby in a stroller. “I don’t like the unexplainable.”

“Yes, I know. You always want your mathematical equations solved. That’s why you’re having such a hard time with that woman’s murder.”

“It’s a question without an answer. The sort of thing I hate.”

She sank onto a wooden bench facing the river. Daylight was fading, and the water flowed black in the thickening shadows. He too sat down, and although they didn’t touch, she was so aware of him, sitting close beside her, that she could almost feel his heat against her bare arm.

“Have you heard any more about the case from Detective Rizzoli?”

“She hasn’t exactly been keeping me in the loop.”

“Would you expect her to?”

“As a cop, no. She wouldn’t.”

“And as a friend?”

“That’s just it, I thought we were friends. But she’s told me so little.”

“You can’t blame her. The victim was found outside your house. She has to wonder-”

“What, that I’m a suspect?”

“Or that you were the intended target. It’s what we all thought that night. That it was you in that car.” He stared across the river. “You said you can’t stop thinking about the autopsy. Well, I can’t stop thinking about that night, standing in your street with all those police cars. I couldn’t believe any of it was happening. I refused to believe.”

They both fell silent. Before them flowed a river of dark water, and behind them, a river of cars.

She asked, suddenly: “Will you have dinner with me tonight?”

He didn’t answer for a moment, and his hesitation made her flush with embarrassment. What a foolish question. She wanted to take it back, to replay the last sixty seconds. How much better to have just said good-bye and walked away. Instead, she’d blurted out that ill-considered invitation, one that they both knew he shouldn’t accept.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I guess it’s not such a good-”

”Yes,” he said. “I’d like to very much.”