The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors by Jonathan Santlofer, S.J. Rozan Read Free Book Online

“Desacralized, melted down, proceeds given to the poor.”
    â€œI’ll see to it,” Amanda said, hoping she sounded decisive. Then: “I went on the Internet last night, Mr. Taite. I didn’t find anything about a murder at Trinity and St. Michael. Joshua Bauer seems to have died of an undisclosed illness, back in the late 1970s.”
    He nodded, not turning. The airless room seemed to grow darker. “They would say that, of course. That he was ill. The police were never called, you see. The church could hardly endure a scandal. We had several doctors in the congregation. They knew what to do. Whom to contact.”
    â€œYou said it was in all the papers.”
    â€œA figure of speech,” he said in that same solemn tone. “I meant only that the facts were widely known, at least among the congregation. Do you ever pray for the dead?”
    The sudden change of subject momentarily threw her. Once again the Big E and the Big O reared their scary heads. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
    The thurifer nodded, as if to say he had expected as much. From a side table he lifted an aging volume he must have brought along, the Oxford Movement Centenary Prayer Book . “The Litany for the Dead,” he announced, then read aloud: “Have mercy, O Lord, upon the souls which have no especial intercessors with thee, nor any hope save that they were created after thine own image; who from age, or poverty, or the unbelief or negligence of their friends, are forgotten and whose day of departure is never remembered.” He glanced at her. “Nobody prays for the dead anymore.”
    â€œWe pray for the dead every Sunday.”
    His stern eyes rejected this cant. “We pray for the dead we know. The dead we cherish. The dead we miss. We are really praying out of our own pain, not for an easing of the pains of those who have passed on.”
    Amanda said nothing. She wondered how an otherwise intelligent man—a member of so accomplished a congregation—could possibly believe in this nonsense. Dead was dead, and that was all. But another part of her, standing in the drafty chapel, surrounded by the chalices and crosses and thuribles and candles, was terrified by the yawning possibility.
    Christopher Taite, meanwhile, had laid the book in her hands. “You might have need of this one day,” he said. “Perhaps quite soon.”
    She flipped to the title page. “This book was published in 1933.”
    â€œIn England,” said the thurifer. “And it is not officially recognized by the Episcopal Church. But, given some of the nonsense that passes for liturgy nowadays, I do not see why that should matter.” He lifted his chin, in the direction of the hallway: the site of the murder. “The Litany goes on at some length, but that is appropriate. The dead, too, have need of your prayers.”
    â€œLet’s go out and walk,” she said. Not adding: This place is starting to spook me.
    VI
    They were in the churchyard again, sitting on the same bench. She had examined the parish register that morning, confirming Christopher Taite’s story about his own family. She discovered that no fewer than three of the hereditary thurifers had been named Christopher. She judged the Christopher sitting beside her to be about forty. That meant he could hardly have been much older than ten or twelve at the time of Joshua Bauer’s death, or murder, or whatever it was. Amanda did not see how he could have been thurifer, any more than she saw how the congregation could have hidden the murder. She began to have the feeling that somebody was playing a terrible joke on her, a sort of hazing, meant to drive her away. She would not give in. Not to the ladies of the altar guild, not to the Madisons or the Routledges or Christopher Taite, or any of the others who hated her being white, and female, and not the right kind of Episcopalian.
    â€œAn affair of the