The Judas Child by Carol O'Connell Read Free Book Online Page B

Fathers is a smashed testicle.”
    Nothing remained of her old choirmaster.
    “I wish they’d left me in the general population. On this cell block, I only hear the confessions of insects. The perverts share everything with me, all the things they won’t even tell their lawyers.”
    “Do they ever talk about the local case? The two girls?”
    “Sometimes. But they prefer to reminisce about their own crimes against women and children. They lie in their beds when the lights go out, and they jerk off their cocks while they confess to me in the dark. And then the corridor fills up with the stink of semen.” He pushed back from the table. “But I don’t think you need to hear any of that. Confession isn’t a perk of the priesthood. It’s a kind of hell.”
    “Father, I know you won’t remember me. I was—”
    “I remember you missed choir practice the week before I was arrested.” He sat back and regarded her with greater attention, making more assessments of her hair, her clothes, the scar. “Father Domina said your family moved out of town.”
    So at least a few people had noticed her passing by, taking up space in the world, and she marveled over that for a moment. “My parents never told me about Susan Kendall’s death.” She had been eighteen years old before she learned of the murder.
    An uneasy silence prevailed between them. Other noises intruded on the room, sounds from the prison yard outside the window, voices of men and the rhythm of a ball bouncing off the exterior wall. She noted the thrum of heavy machinery. The prison laundry must be close by; she could see the steam escaping past the side of the barred window.
    At last, he said, “I used to worry about you, Sally. You were the only child I ever knew who aspired to blend into the walls.”
    She understood this perception. As a little girl, she had been neither pretty nor homely, tall nor short, only finding her voice when she sang in the choir.
    “My name is Ali now,” she reminded him. Her open wallet of credentials still lay on the table between them, and her altered name was punctuated with a Ph.D. She wondered if he didn’t find that advanced degree quite odd, given the bland child she had been.
    He nodded in approval. “Ali suits you better. As I recall, you were in danger of an ordinary life. I’m glad mediocrity passed you by. I imagine the scar had a lot to do with that.”
    The choirmaster from her childhood came back to visit with her for a few moments. Father Paul’s eyes were penetrating, gently probing the soft places, silently asking where the hurt was—just like old times. Oh, but now he saw something new in her expression. Had she unwittingly given herself away? Whatever it was, it jarred him. He physically pulled back and cast his eyes down, perhaps in time to rescue himself from discovery.
     
    This morning, a state trooper manned the front desk, displacing the village police sergeant who usually sat behind the glass window with his newspaper and a cup of coffee.
    Rouge thought Chief Croft had been a good sport about handing his station house over to the BCI investigators. But then, Charlie Croft had always maintained that he could run the village’s six-man police force from a telephone booth. The chief’s small private office was on the floor above, but the remaining space had been used only for town council meetings once a month, and as a voting place in an election year. Now there were footsteps from many pairs of shoes walking across the ceiling. The ground floor of the station house was almost eerie in the absence of yesterday’s circus of noise and raucous energy. One man sat on a plastic chair in the reception area. A press pass was clipped to the lapel of his suit.
    Where had all the other newspeople gone?
    Rouge pinned his new identification tag to his jacket and signed the state trooper’s logbook. Then he climbed one flight of the narrow staircase and opened the door to a wide front room and a steady din