John Jordan05 - Blood Sacrifice Read Online Free PDF

doing what I had criticized so many others for? Had I, like so many televangelists and terrorists, become an egocentric self-righteous idolater who had created God over in my image to justify my actions?
    Finally, she said, “Is Steve Taylor a capable cop?”
    I nodded.
    She stared at me for a long moment. “So why not just let him handle it?”

Chapter Seven
     
    “Guess who was last seen with Tommy Boy?” Kathryn asked.
    It was evening, the temperature falling with the slow diminishment of the day. I was standing at the edge of the lake where I had been for much of the afternoon, weighing Sister Abigail’s words, searching myself for answers, finding few.
    Though the onset of winter had muted its colors, the small lake was no less beautiful. What the brittle brown grass, straw-colored underbrush, and gray trunks of cypress trees lacked in lushness, it made up for in subtlety, and it matched my subdued, contemplative mood.
    Sister was right. I had come here for healing and anything else would be a distraction—including pursuing Tommy’s death or the woman who had just walked up behind me.
    “Who?” I asked, turning to face her.
    “Tammy. They were seen leaving here together in her Mustang late last night.”
    Tell her to notify the police
.
    “You should tell…”
    “Huh?”
    “I thought the program was for street kids?” I said. “What’s she doing with professionally manicured nails, an expensive dye job, and a new Mustang?”
    “How’d you know her Mustang’s new?”
    “There’s only one Mustang here,” I said.
    She nodded, then rolled her eyes at herself. “Of course.”
    My afternoon by the lake had done me good. I felt peaceful, connected, loved, and I wondered if it was the lake, the time spent in solitude and silence, or just being away from my life. Why couldn’t I ever maintain my serenity? Why was equilibrium so elusive? In the widening gyre of my life, why did things always have to fall apart? Why couldn’t the center hold?
    Something about the stillness of the scene was serene. It had felt so right to sit on the ground and watch a small burnt-orange butterfly flitter between tall blades of grass while hearing the splash of a fish jumping in the lake.
    What I had to do was figure out how to integrate this—time for stillness, quietness, and meditation—into my life away from St. Ann’s, even, or especially, when I was involved in a homicide investigation.
    “Most of them are street kids,” she said. “Poor. Alone. From abusive families.”
    “But not Tammy?”
    She shook her head. “Tammy’s actually the niece of the man who gave us this place.”
    “She’s a Gulf Paper Company Taylor?”
    She nodded.
    “And she’s here because…”
    “Her uncle gave us this place,” she said, a wry smile turning up the corners of her pretty pink lips.
    “Does she come here often?”
    She nodded. “When her family can no longer tolerate her, or she wants to disappear for a while.”
    “Which is it this time?”
    “Her family didn’t bring her. I’m not sure they know she’s here. Rumor has it—and that’s all it is—that she’s hiding from an abusive boyfriend and the drug dealer they owe part of her inheritance to.”
    I nodded as I thought about it, then turned away from her for one last look at the lake in the soft shadow of sunset.
    The reflection of the pine and cypress tress on the smooth surface of the water looked like an impressionist painting—though it was hard to imagine Monet, Renoir, or Cézanne using such a pale palette.
    Across the lake, a gentle breeze blew through the trees and onto the pond, rippling a narrow strip of the otherwise glass-like water.
    “Breathtaking, isn’t it?” Kathryn asked.
    I nodded, and watched as a small winter wren flew across the lake and came to rest on an old weathered board nailed between two cypress trees not far from the water’s edge.
    “How often do you come down here?” I asked.
    “Nearly every day,” she said.