Prayer by Philip Kerr Read Free Book Online

Bishop, what’s in the bag? Is it guns you’re bringing me or the loot from the Woodforest National Bank robbery? The Buick that’s parked on the drive in front of your house looks like the getaway car on that one.”
    “Sorry to disappoint you, Gil, but it’s just a lot of newspaper clippings, a couple of books, and some printouts off the Internet. One way or the other, I seem to be spending a lot of time on the Internet these days.”
    “You and me both, sir.”
    “The papers and the books are for you.”
    Coogan unzipped the bag and handed me a paperback book titled
All the Possible Gods
. The author was Philip Osborne. As soon as I saw it, I laughed.
    “Only an hour or two ago Ruth was giving me hell for reading this book. And several others like it.”
    “Oh? Such as?”
    “Dawkins, Hitchens, Peter Ekman.” I shrugged. “Sam Harris, Dan Barker, Daniel Dennett . . .”
    Coogan chuckled. “That’s virtually the whole pantheon of disbelief you have there.”
    “Why the hell do you want to give me this book?”
    “Philip Osborne is a friend of mine,” said Bishop Coogan. “Or at least he was.”
    “You say that like he’s dead.”
    “He might as well be. He’s confined to the Harris County Psychiatric Center here in Houston. I visited him a few days ago and spoke with his doctors who described to me a case of psychogenic malignant catatonia resulting in permanent cognitive impairment. They’ve concluded there must be actual damage to the frontal lobe of his brain, although there’s absolutely no identifiable trauma that might normally have caused such a state of mental breakdown.”
    Coogan’s familiarity with all these medical terms impressed me, at least until I remembered that before becoming a priest, Coogan had been a medical student at Tufts in Boston, where he had been taught by my father.
    “So he didn’t fall and nobody hit him,” I said. “But you’re going to tell me what did happen.”
    “I’m not sure I am. But I’d like to tell you what I know, Gil. And why I wanted to talk to you about it.”
    “Go ahead, but”—I shrugged—“I don’t see how I can help. At the FBI we have jurisdiction over violations of federal law. And so far I can’t see there’s anything federal here. If you want, I can put you in touch with the right people in the Houston Police Department.”
    “Fidelity, bravery, and integrity,” said Coogan. He was quoting the Bureau’s motto. “Perhaps I should go ahead and add patience to that little trio of the better human qualities.” He laid his hand on the book. “It’s not a bad book at all. As a matter of fact, it was me who gave him that title. Or at least recommended it as a title.”
    “A
ll the Possible Gods?”
    “It’s from a quote by Stephen Roberts. He’s another of your so-called new atheists. As if they make any more sense than the old atheists.”
    “I think that perhaps I’m not as patient as you think I am, Eamon.” I looked at my watch pointedly.
    “About a month ago Philip turned up at my house in an agitated state. When I asked him what was wrong, he said he hadn’t been sleeping. That was obvious. And when I suggested he see a doctor and get some sleeping pills, he told me he couldn’t because he was already taking Xanax and that whenever he did sleep he had terrible nightmares. I asked him if he could account for this change in himself and he shook his head and said something strange. Well, for him it was strange—I might have said it was impossible. He asked me if I would pray for him.”
    Coogan sat back for a moment. “Gil, you could have knocked me over with a feather. It was awful, that’s what it was. You see, I’m a man first of all, and a priest second. So there was no bloody rejoicing about a lost sinner. I felt sorry for the poor bastard.”
    “So what happened after he came to your house?”
    “My praying for him seemed to give him a bit of peace of mind. But only for a while.” Coogan searched his