John Jordan05 - Blood Sacrifice Read Online Free PDF Page A

to my left, I could see Father Thomas walking toward the chapel. Head down in what appeared to be avoidance of interaction more than the cold wind, he walked briskly, hands jammed into his pants pockets. Before he reached the chapel, Tammy appeared in his path, forcing him to stop and acknowledge her.
    “Don’t you want to know if he was—” I began.
    “Yes, but I also know that we may never know, and I can accept that. Can you?”
    I thought about it for a long moment before saying, “I don’t know. I’m not sure I can.”
    “Even if it costs you your sobriety—or at a minimum your serenity?”
    “I’m just not sure. I’d like to say I could, but I’m trying to be honest and I just don’t know.”
    After what appeared to be an intense exchange, Tammy pressed her body against Father Thomas and attempted to kiss him. Grabbing her arms, he shook her angrily and shoved her backward. As she began to laugh at and taunt him, he stepped around her and all but ran for the sanctuary of the chapel.
    “If it’s likely that you will drink if you continue to investigate and you continue to do it, would you agree you have a problem?”
    “Yes,” I said, “but not in the way you think. I’ve got to. I can’t stop. Investigating is as much a part of who I am as ministering—maybe more. May even be a form of it.”
    “But look what it’s cost you,” she said. “Was it worth losing your wife over?”
    “It wasn’t investigating that cost me my marriage.”
    “I thought it was.”
    Mixed in the books surrounding us on all sides were several titles—both popular and academic—about marriage, but even if she had memorized them all, what could this aging celibate know about that most difficult of human relationships?
    “It coincided with an investigation, but it can hardly be blamed on what I uncovered. If we had handled it differently…”
    “Why did you come here?” she asked.
    “To St. Ann’s?”
    She nodded.
    I thought about it. “In search of peace, perspective—I don’t know. I just wanted to slow down for a little while and give myself time to heal and to see if I could figure out why I keep repeating certain patterns.”
    “Not to investigate what will probably turn out to be an accidental drowning?” she asked.
    I laughed. “Point taken.”
    “Is it possible that you want to do the latter so as to be distracted from the former—from the real reason you came?”
    “Anything’s possible,” I said with a smile she did not return.
    “Do you see yourself as a controlling person?”
    I shook my head. “Not at all.”
    “And yet you have to be the one to investigate?”
    “Not always.”
    “Really?”
    “Really.”
    “I mean a crime you’re aware of and in close proximity to.”
    “So I’m controlling?
That’s
my problem?”
    “I’m just asking questions,” she said. “
You
have to provide the answers.”
    “You’re doing far more than just asking questions. You’re leading me where you want me to go.”
    “Am I?”
    “I don’t think I’m controlling,” I said. “If I were, I probably wouldn’t follow your leading questions, would I?”
    “Well, at least you spent a lot of time thinking about it before you answered, and that’s what matters.”
    I laughed. “I
have
spent a lot of time thinking about it. This isn’t my first experience with self-examination, you know. I know I have problems. I just don’t think being controlling is one of them.”
    “Does it have to do with your ego?” she asked.
    “Obviously.”
    “Is it pride? The attention? The need to know—because there are some things we never will.”
    “I know that,” I said.
    “Well?”
    “What about a gift and the need to use it? A desire for justice?”
    “Sounds good, but couldn’t that be a way of justifying what you want to do? Giving it a sense of the sacred? And do we ever really have justice down here?”
    “We approximate it sometimes.”
    She was silent, thinking a moment.
    Was I guilty of