Dismas was up next to her, giving her the keys. Fumbling, seconds going by.

“Which one?”

Dismas taking the key, getting it in, turning it. Pushing it open, the door, pushing him aside, and running running into the hall, yelling her son’s name.

Cavanaugh was standing by the bed when Steven opened his eyes. He was holding a pillow in front of him with both hands. And there was Mom in the door to the room.

“He’s not dead? God say he’s not dead!”

Then she was next to him, her arms around his neck. He couldn’t move at all, or talk. Maybe he was dead.

And Mom saying, “You might as well kill me as kill my baby.”

Her hand running down the side of his face, again and again, like a cool breeze.

Her baby. She thought of him as her baby. He might as well kill her as her baby.

“Erin…” Father began.

Hardy was standing in the doorway, and his mom started crying. “Oh, he’s breathing, thank God!” She buried her face into the sheets up by his face.

He thought he heard Cavanaugh say his mom’s name again, but she kept herself up near him, holding him, touching his face, his hair. “Oh, God, I love you,” she said, still crying. “I love you, Steven, I love you. Please don’t die…”

Okay, he wouldn’t, then. He wouldn’t die.

“Leave ’em alone,” Hardy said, motioning with his head, taking hold of Cavanaugh’s arm and pulling him out to the living room. He still held the pillow.

Hardy sat on one of the stools near the bar. “Talk,” he said.

Cavanaugh even now tried his smile, but it didn’t work out just right. “I told you before, it wasn’t fair,” he said. “But you didn’t understand. You can’t know.”

“I can’t, huh?”

“You know what it’s like to live right in the midst of everything you want-day in, day out-and never get to have it? To see the kids growing, perfect. Erin’s kids, Ed’s. We could’ve had that, Erin and me. And she so happy with that, that goddamned gardener. And then it starting to go on, another generation of it, of the perfect Cochrans and their perfect happiness.”

“Well, you ended that,” Hardy said.

“I couldn’t accept it anymore. When Eddie told me they were pregnant. It was just for a moment. I didn’t really plan it.”

“You planned it enough. How’d you get him to fire the gun?”

Cavanaugh shrugged. “I just bet him he couldn’t hit something out on the canal. It was easy. And he had to fire the gun, you see?”

“Sure.”

“And then, once he had, there was nothing left to do.”

“He just gave the gun back to you and you shot him.”

He gripped at the pillow, raised it to his face, left it there, shutting out the world. Himself. Finally letting it down.

“It was too much. I broke-”

“Like you broke out of the seminary?”

Cavanaugh opened his eyes wide. “How did you…?”

“When Erin got married, you couldn’t handle that either, could you?”

“It isn’t right. It wasn’t the sex. Not having sex. Being celibate. It was Erin.”

“Fuck you, Father,” Hardy said. “Fuck yourself very hard.”

Cavanaugh walked halfway across the room and looked out the sliding glass doors to the backyard. “So what do we do now?” he asked.

Hardy, breathing hard, waited a long time. Finally he said, “You know, you’re the expert on suicide. I got a Suzuki parked out by where you killed Rose, looks like a Jeep. There’s a loaded gun in the glove compartment.” His face crinkled up. “You know how to use a gun, don’t you?”

Cavanaugh let his hands all the way down in front of him. He dropped the pillow to the floor. Hardy found himself staring at the pillow, hearing the front door open and close as Cavanaugh went out.

Abe found the note in Father Dietrick’s chair. It was a strange note. “I’m sorry. I’ll miss you.” Did people say they were going to miss people when they were going to kill themselves? Maybe. He didn’t know what minds might do at that point.

He left the note where it was. He’d send one of the team back to pick it up, check it for handwriting, oils, all that. It seemed to close it up for him, though. Hardy was wrong on this one.

Speaking of which, where was Hardy? One of the priests from outside, the tan one, was walking toward him in the hallway. “I’m Father Paul,” he said.

“You know anything about this?”

“No. I just got here. From Brazil.”

“Is that right?”

He seemed to be waiting for Glitsky to say something else.

“So what can I do for you?”

“I thought I’d unpack,” he said. “But the car seems to be gone.”

“The car?”

“Father Dietrick’s car. The one we came in.”

“It’s gone?”

He led him to the front door and opened it. “I’m sure we parked it right here, in front.”

So what? Glitsky thought. “Look, Father, we’re homicide. You got a stolen car, you should call the cops.”

“But aren’t you…?” Then he pointed. “There it is. Who’s that driving it?”

The car pulled into the driveway. “That’s Father Cavanaugh,” Abe said. “I want to talk to him.”

The hawk-faced black policeman jogged across the blacktop and got to the Honda as Father Cavanaugh was getting out. They shook hands, and while Father Paul was still crossing the lot, fighting the glare from the van and the other automobiles, he heard a funny, high-pitched laugh. It must have been Father Cavanaugh, as though he’d just heard a good joke, though it seemed poor taste to be laughing right then in the presence of mortal-sin death.

The two other policemen came out from inside the garage. Father Cavanaugh, the hawk-faced policeman and the other two all stood in a knot out in the sun. Father Dietrick had become a statue. Maybe he was in shock. Father Paul should go over to him, try to help him. That would be the Christian thing to do.

But he was more interested in what Father Cavanaugh was saying to the policemen. He hurried his pace a little, getting there in time to hear Father Cavanaugh saying, “I’m not lying.”

And the hawk-faced policeman saying, “I don’t think you’re lying.”

Father Cavanaugh wiped the sweat from his forehead. “You mind if I sit down a minute?” His face had a sick look, shiny white as though he might faint. “I’d like a minute alone.” Telling a joke, like. “I think it’s my last chance to be alone for a while.”

They watched him walk the ten yards or so over to the Jeep and get in the front seat. All three policemen were quiet, watching him. He sat there, seeming to be catching his breath, taking out his handkerchief and wiping his forehead.

“Father, you all right?” the shorter white man asked. Father Cavanaugh nodded. The other men closed in on one another, and Father Paul stepped up to hear them. Father Paul glanced over to the Jeep one time. Father Cavanaugh was doing something, like fussing with the radio knobs.

He heard the taller man say, “Well, that was easy,” and the hawk-faced one started to say something when suddenly Father Dietrick yelled “Father!” but it was drowned out almost immediately by a tremendous explosion.

Father Cavanaugh had come halfway out of the Jeep. His upper body lay out on the ground, one leg caught at a funny angle as though it had stuck up under the front seat.