The Penitent Priest

Three-1

Three

“I know this was short notice, but I really appreciate you agreeing to talk to me,” Nate Rodriguez said, adjusting his glasses.

“Let me be clear, Mr. Rodriguez—”

“Nate, please call me Nate.”

“Okay, let me be clear, Nate,” I said. “I have not agreed to anything. I only said I would meet with you.”

It was two hours after he called the rectory that I found myself sitting across from this very earnest young man with a hipster beard and glasses, wearing a red plaid shirt at a coffee shop, the Perfect Cup, across Main Street from Myer College. The stone archway people considered the main entrance to the campus was just opposite where I sat.

Dominating the scene was the statute of Winthrop Myer, founder to Myerton and the College. Myer had arrived in the Western Maryland mountains having gained and lost one fortune in Baltimore. On the frontier, he built another on lumber and the railroad. He had dreamed of the mountain town rivaling Baltimore or Pittsburgh in size and wealth, with Myer College becoming the Johns Hopkins of the Alleghenies.

I looked at the young boys and girls, books in hand, backpacks on their backs, walking to class or back to their apartments. It was not far from that spot that I had met Joan.

I had just started working at the college’s archives, my first job after getting my Master of Library Science degree. One day in early March I was walking along, not paying attention to where I was going—I was reading something, don’t remember what—when I walked into a young woman, knocking her down and sending a large drawing portfolio flying out of her hands. The portfolio had a broken zipper, and it was a windy day, so in the next moment drawings and watercolors began flying all over the place.

“Hey, clumsy oaf,” she yelled, “why don’t you watch where you’re going? Look what you’ve done!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, still trying to process who would use the phrase “clumsy oaf” in a small mountain town in the twenty-first century. “I’ll help you get them back.”

“Yes, you will,” she replied as she began chasing after her drawings. I followed after her, grabbing sketches and watercolors cartwheeling across the lawn, all the while keeping my eye on this woman. Unlike most of the female students and faculty on campus, she didn’t wear jeans; instead she wore a long denim skirt that flowed after her as she ran and was blown by the wind. That day she had paired it with a red turtleneck. Covering her long chestnut-brown hair was a wide-brimmed black cloth hat that managed to stay on, I later found out, through the use of a long and formidable looking hat pin.

We managed to get the drawings gathered up, and we sat on a nearby bench. I handed her my stack. “I hope they’re okay,” I said.

She looked at each one as she placed them back in the portfolio. “They look no worse for wear, no thanks to you.”

“I did say I was sorry,” I replied. She looked at me, her blue eyes still flashing irritation. I smiled, trying to disarm her. It worked, because her frown turned into a smile and her eyes softened.

“Well, thank you for helping me get them back,” she said. “I don’t have time to redo this project.” She stood up to go. “I’m Joan Luckgold , by the way.”

“Tom Greer,” I replied as I stood. We stood there on the sidewalk, students passing us on their way to or from classes, looking at each other.

“Okay,” Joan said, “I guess I’ll see you around campus.” She turned and took two steps away from me.

“Are you hungry?” I called out. She turned. “I mean, I haven’t had lunch yet, and I thought—-”

“Come on,” she said, sweeping past me. Over her shoulder she said, “You’re buying.”

We wound up at Marlowe’s, a restaurant in a small Victorian house not far from campus. She had the Cobb salad, I had the tomato bisque and four-cheese grilled cheese. I didn’t know why I had asked her to lunch. I had been in a long-term relationship that had ended less than ideally, and I wasn’t looking for another one. But I had knocked her down, and I was responsible for her almost losing her artwork. Lunch seemed an appropriate apology. That’s all it was.

We were married a year later.

“I’ll be glad for any help you can give,” Rodriguez said, bringing me back to the present.

“Let’s just slow down a bit,” I replied.

“Sure, sure, okay.”

I stirred my coffee. “So, you make documentaries?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Anything I might have heard of?”

He shook his head. “No, no, nothing—well, actually, I’ve only done a few small projects for my classes at Myer, so this is the first big project I’ve worked on.”

“I see,” I replied. “You went to Myer?”

“Uh-huh, graduated two, three years ago. Got my degree in journalism.”

“Are you working for the Myerton Gazette?”

“Ah, well, not exactly.” He took a drink of coffee. “I actually work here.”

“Here,” I repeated. “At The Perfect Cup. As a—?”

He shrugged. “Whatever my uncle tells me to do—wait tables, bus tables, barista. Listen, Father, can we get on with it? I only get thirty minutes for lunch.”

I wondered even more what I was doing there. “Let me see if I understand correctly,” I said. “Your project is to investigate—-”

“Okay, well, investigate is probably too strong a word. I’m not really investigating your wife’s murder—can I call her your wife, I mean, with you being a priest?”

I sighed. “Obviously I was not a priest when I was married to Joan. You can call her my wife.”

“Okay, okay, well, your wife. So the project isn’t to try and find who killed her—though I gotta tell you Father, that would just be so cool.” He stopped himself when he saw the expression on my face. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean cool cool, just, you know, finding justice after all this time—”

I held up my hand. “So what exactly is your project?”

He took a deep breath. “I was looking for a project for my next film, so I was doing research in the files of the Myerton Gazette and came across stories about the murder. You know, Myerton is a relatively small town. Murders don’t happen every day. The way it happened, no one was caught—it got a lot of attention.”

I nodded. He was right. At the time, Joan had been the first person murdered in Myerton in a couple of years. The paper covered it extensively. Reporters from as far away as Baltimore came and did stories for a few days afterwards.

“So it got me thinking,” Nate continued, “about what happens after the news cameras leave and the paper stops writing articles. What about the people left behind? How do they cope? How did it change them? I mean, in your case—”

“Yes, yes, I see what you’re getting at.”

“So I’ve already done several interviews, researched the case, looked at the police file—”

“You got a copy of the police file?”

“Oh yes, you can get almost anything through a Freedom of Information request. There’s some portions blacked out, but it's been helpful. So I have that.”

“Who have you interviewed?”

He pulled out a notebook. “Let’s see, some people who knew her from college, her mother—”

“You interviewed Anna?” I wondered why she hadn’t given me a heads up about this guy.

“Yea, Mrs. Luckgold was great—very helpful. Gave me some great pictures and video to use.” He looked through his notes. “The owner of the gallery up the street, the Painted Lotus, she did an interview.”

“Bethany Grabble’s still in town?” She was a friend and colleague of Joan’s from Myer’s Fine Arts Department.

“Yea, she gave me all sorts of insights about who she was.”

One name was conspicuously absent. “Did you interview Chloe Archman?”

Rodriguez sighed. “No. She refused to talk to me.”

“Really? Did she say why?”

“No,” he shook his head. “She just said she didn’t want to talk to anyone about Joan Greer.”

I found that very odd. They were best friends, after all. Practically inseparable. Chloe had been Joan’s Matron of Honor at our wedding, like John had been my best man. If Anna would agree to participate, why wouldn’t Chloe?

And if Chloe didn’t, why should I?

I took a sip of my coffee. I’d let it get cold.

Putting my mug down, I said. “Nate, I wish I could help you, but—”

“Oh please,” he said, looking at me anxiously. “Don’t say but. Look, I’ve done a lot of work. It’s good, I mean I think it’s good, but there’s a big hole in it. That’s why I was so glad that Mrs. Luckgold called and told me you were back in town.”

“Anna told you I was back in town?”

“Yes, and I was so glad. I had tried to track you down, but after you left Myerton you kind of disappeared for a while.”

“Yes, I wanted it that way.”

“So then you came back here, and I thought, wow, just in time, he’s exactly what I need to really finish this. The victim’s husband. The man whose arms she died in.”

The night was a blur. Joan laying in my arms, gasping, the blood. Cold steel against my forehead. A painful throbbing in my temples. And the sound.

Click. Click. Click.

“I really, really need you for this, Father Tom,” Nate concluded.

I shook my head. “No. That night is not something I want to talk about. If you have the police report, you have my statement. I can’t help you.” I got up to leave.

Nate stood. “Father, please, just think about it. You know, one thing I keep coming back to in this, everyone I’ve talked to says how much they needed closure, how her murder not being solved never gave them closure. How it was just so senseless, the attempted rape, there not being another case like it. What if this film, well, maybe jogs someone’s memory? Maybe it could give the cops a lead. Who knows, maybe this film could help finally solve your wife’s murder?”

I looked at the young man. “No,” I said quietly. “I gave up that hope years ago. Her murder will never be solved. Her murderer will never see justice in this life.”

“Are you so certain of that?”

“Yes, I am,” I said. “I have to get back to Saint Clare’s. Good luck with your project.”

“Father,” he said as he stood up. “Just think about it. If you change your mind, please call me.”

I looked at him and nodded.

“Okay, if I change my mind. But I’m not going to.”

***