A Perfect Grave Part 18

Something moved in the blackness beyond the curtain. Jason couldn't see anything.

"Get out! Get out!"

The attackers were coming and coming. Cooper gripped his knife. He could hear Yordan, Bricker, Rose, calling him. gripped his knife. He could hear Yordan, Bricker, Rose, calling him.

Coop!

They were next to him now-getting closer.

"Get the f.u.c.k out!"

"Coop!" Jason shouted. "Hold on! It's Jason Wade. We talked, remember? Are you okay? Sir, it's Jason Wade from the Mirror. Mirror. You wanted to help me!" You wanted to help me!"

Help me help me help me.

Jason's words seemed to echo before they died in the sudden thunder of traffic hammering overhead, followed by an anguished groan from the other side of a blanket.

"Reporter?" Coop repeated.

"Yes, you spoke to me about Sister Anne, you wanted to help me. Remember?"

"Leave me alone."

"Coop, please, help me."

Coop help me.

Jason could not know how the phrase he'd spoken cut into Cooper.

"Sir, you wanted me to know about the man."

"What?"

"The man who took the knife from the shelter. The man who argued with Sister Anne before she was murdered."

Coop processed the information, his memory flickering back.

"Did they find that mother?" He shouted. "Because he's the one-I just know-the way he hurt her."

He's the one.

Jason felt something tingling at the back of his neck.

"He's the one?" Jason repeated. "Did you see something, did you talk to police?"

"No G.o.ddam cops. I never talk to them."

"But why do you think-?"

"Because I G.o.ddam heard him talking to Sister. This goof was so angry. Sister took him to the little office to be alone, but I was watching over her. She's my angel, and he was making her upset."

Jason's penlight was in his mouth, s.h.i.+ning on his pad. He wrote fast before withdrawing it to ask another question.

"Tell me what you heard, Coop, can you tell me, please?"

"He wanted something from her."

"What?"

"I don't know. She wanted to forgive him but, no, no, he was angry, he didn't want that from her."

"Forgive him for what?"

"His sins."

"What sins?"

"We all have sins."

"Coop. Who's this man? Tell me about this man."

Traffic pounded overhead, reminding Jason that his deadline was coming fast. d.a.m.n it. He had no time to get a photographer up here to get a pic of Cooper in tomorrow's paper. Cooper likely wouldn't even agree to it.

"You want to know who this man was?" Coop asked.

"Yes."

"He could be anybody."

"I don't understand. Did you ever see him before, did you know him?"

"I don't even know myself, man."

An anguished groan and a bottle sloshed.

"I couldn't save them."

"Who?"

"Yordan, Bricker, and Rose. My crew. I was their commander. I tried. It happened so fast. I tried to close the hatch but they were on us so fast."

Jason didn't understand.

"It must've been hard for you, Coop."

"They're always talking to me. I can hear 'em just like we was still there. It's always the same. Why'd you leave us, Coop? Why? Sister Anne understood. She told me to forgive myself."

The bottle swished.

"But I can't."

"Did you try to get help, Coop?"

"Nothing can save me now. Sister said she'd forgiven me. She said she'd pray for me. And she did. And for a while there, my crew left me alone. But then they started coming back. Asking me the same thing: Why, Coop? I told them I tried. I swear, I tried to close the hatch! But those mothers just kept coming, kept climbing on us so fast, man I tried. I tried and tried to save them."

"I know, Coop," Jason said. "Tell me about the man."

"Once I told Sister I couldn't take it anymore. I told her to stop. To stop forgiving me, stop praying for me. I wasn't worth it. I told her that. But she wouldn't stop."

"Coop, please tell me about the man."

"No, you tell me, a.s.shole! You tell me, now that she's gone, gone like Yordan, Bricker, and Rose, they're all gone and now she's gone, so you tell me who's going to pray for me now? I can never be forgiven for what I've done!"

"What do you mean, Coop? What did you do?"

Traffic hummed but no answer came.

Slowly, Jason pulled back the curtain and the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

Cooper was squatting against the wall, swinging his knife.

The blade glinting in the weakening light.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

Please G.o.d, tell me what to do.

Sister Denise was alone in her room crying.

She'd told no one about what she'd found hidden under the floorboards in the closet of Sister Anne's room. Of course, her first impulse had been to turn it over to her superior, Sister Vivian, and to tell the others. But for some powerful and inexplicable reason, Denise felt compelled to keep her discovery secret.

To protect it because no one should see it.

Maybe this was G.o.d's way of speaking to her. Denise didn't know. A moral war was raging in her heart. Should she tell someone, or forget that she'd ever found it?

Throughout the town house she could hear the sisters making last-minute arrangements for the funeral service at the shelter. It would begin in a few hours and they would leave very soon.

Denise had little time.

Drying her tears, she locked her door, knelt by her bed, made the sign of the cross, and prayed. Then she reached under her mattress and retrieved the cardboard box she found under the floor in Anne's room.

The box had been used to store candles and was about the size of a hardcover book. It was ancient with frayed, deteriorating corners that were held together with adhesive tape yellowed with age. It smelled of wax when she lifted the lid.

She reached inside and removed the red notebook. It was a number 82, plain, four-star line, with a red hardboard cover. The pages crackled when she opened it to the secrets of Sister Anne Braxton's life.

It was fitting that it was raining when I entered the little church in Paris to make my amputation with my past life. The warm water against my skin was my baptism...

So began the first entry of Anne's journal, dated well over twenty years ago. It was written with a fountain pen in Anne's elegant hand, the revelations of a young woman at the threshold of devoting her life to G.o.d.

In reading on, Denise empathized with how Anne had struggled with the same deep concerns that confront all women who contemplate a religious life. How they must accept that they will never bear children, never marry, never have a family or grandchildren, and are destined to live simply in humility and poverty. Anne seemed resolute in her readiness to embrace the realities of becoming a nun.

But as Denise read the entries again, she was troubled by the undercurrent that accompanied all of Anne's thoughts.

Guilt.

Although Anne offered no details of past acts, and only alluded to remorse for them, an air of atonement accompanied all of her entries.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Denise knew that one from The First Epistle of John, along with the rest of it, which Anne had written at the outset of her journal and throughout.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Flipping through the pages and the years of Anne's life, Denise kept coming back to Anne's personal torment over something that had happened long ago.

Oh heavenly Father, can I ever be forgiven for what I did, for the pain I caused? Although I am not worthy, please forgive me.

It was a consistent theme of Anne's writing, one she kept returning to even in the last months of her life.

I deeply regret the mistakes I have made and will accept your judgment of me.

What was it? What had she done? What could she possibly have done that would account for such mental agony?

It fits now.

Denise suddenly recalled one of her last conversations she'd had with Sister Anne. They'd gone alone for a Sunday walk near the park. Sister Anne seemed to be tormented by something before she had finally confided to Denise.

"I believe with all my heart that I will be judged by the sins of my past life and not the religious one I've strived to live." Anne stopped. "And I believe that my judgment could come soon. In the end, I believe G.o.d will determine if my struggle to atone was worthy."

"Atone for what? I'm not sure I understand, Anne."

"When I was young, I did the most horrible thing."

"Everyone makes mistakes."