Bad Blood

Child abuse, murder. But we know about the problems that the Catholic Church has had. . . . There will be, Mrs. Flood, hell to pay. Literally. You read in your Good Book where John the Revelator says, when he talks about the City that has no need of the Sun, because it has the Light of the Lord. He says, ‘There shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie: but only they that are written in the Lamb’s book of life.’ Will the people in the church enter that City?”
    She sat as if stricken, didn’t say a word, but fixed him with an eye like a dead bird’s, not even blinking.
    One of the girls said, “Mom? Are you okay?”
    “‘They repented not of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts,’” Virgil said, leaning forward, pounding it in. “And then there’s the part that says, ‘And I saw, and behold, a pale horse: and he that sat upon him, his name was Death, and Hades followed with him.’”
    No response. One of the girls said, “I think you should go now.”
    Virgil stood and said to Alma Flood, “I’ve got a source who knows about the church. I spoke to her yesterday, and it’s possible that the sins of the church will come back to haunt all of you. Save yourself and your daughters, Mrs. Flood. Help me out, if you can.”
    Finally, she moved, to shake her head. “You go on now,” she said. “Go on out of here.”
    Virgil turned away, and she said, “Maybe.”
    “What?”
    “Maybe something will happen. Maybe the pale horse is already here.” She held up her hand and looked at it in the light of her reading lamp, and said, “You go on. But I will talk to you one more time. Not now.”
     
     
    THE TWO GIRLS came as far as the side door.
    Edna said, “Rooney wouldn’t like to see you here. He says you have a bad effect on our minds.”
    Virgil said, “I’d like to hear you speak your minds, what you two really think. What you talk about at night, between the two of you. You’re old enough to have your own thoughts. Then we could decide whether I’m bad for you, or Rooney is.”
    Neither one said anything, and Virgil walked away, turning once to see them standing on the porch, watching him. Helen’s lips were moving; she was speaking to Edna without looking at her, tracking Virgil instead; or maybe it was a prayer. Virgil was thoroughly creeped out, not only by Alma Flood and the two girls, but by himself.
    There was, he thought, something fundamentally crooked about using the Bible to crack a Bible-believer, and that feeling of being stained by his own actions, if that’s what he felt, reached so far back into his childhood that he’d never escape it.
    He looked back at the house, snarled, “Fuck it,” over his shoulder, and headed down the drive.
     
     
    SOMETHING LIKE two hours over to Hayfield, but he made it in a bit more than an hour and a half, by driving way too fast. As Virgil pulled in to the curb in front of Holley’s place, a brown Cadillac sedan came around the corner and pulled up behind him. Jenkins and Shrake, the BCA’s muscle, got out of Shrake’s Cadillac, and Shrake said, “Yet another case he can’t handle on his own.”
    Virgil asked, “You guys bring your guns?”
    Jenkins said, “Oh, shit, I knew we forgot something.” He was carrying a canvas bag and he lifted it and said, “Radios.”
    Shrake was looking at the house and said, “Are we all going to fit in there?”
    “Probably not. Probably only me, I’ll be in a bedroom closet, and one more guy, down the basement,” Virgil said. “The other guy will be next door, and when the talk stops, you’ll come out to the side door. If we need you, you’re five steps away.”
    “Couldn’t hear—”
    “I’ll be able to,” Virgil said, “and I’ll yell.”
     
     
    LOUISE GORDON, Dennis Brown, and Schickel were sitting in Holley’s living room, watching television, with a couple of sacks of Doritos and brown bottles of root beer. Gordon got up when Virgil knocked and came in, and said, “Are we going to do it?”
    “Sure, we’re good,” Virgil said, smiling at her. He introduced Shrake and Jenkins to the others, and asked Gordon, “You study your lines?”
    “Yes, I did. But Clayton said they sounded stilted—he used to be in a little theater.”
    “I was pretty good, too,” Holley said. “I once played the Nazi in The Sound of Music . That was sort of the high point of my career.”
    “We