at Stormy, she made a gesture that meant either “get on with it” or “up yours.”
Leaning against the door with undiminished purpose, I turned the knob all the way to the left. It squeaked. I would have been amazed if it hadn’t.
I shifted my weight and let the door ease open half an inch ... an inch ... and all the way.
If Robertson waited at either entrance to the sacristy, he was outside in the churchyard. Standing in the ruddy reduction of the last red light, he must have looked like something that belonged under a granite headstone.
Stormy stepped away from her station. Together we quickly returned to the sanctuary from which we had been so eager to flee only two minutes ago.
The moth danced across the light, and again Christ seemed to twist upon the cross.
The lingering incense smelled not sweet, as before, but had a new astringency, and the votive flames throbbed with the urgency of arterial aneurysms about to burst.
Down the ambulatory, past the choir enclosure, through the gate in the communion railing, I half expected Robertson to spring at us from unlikely cover. He had grown into such a menacing figure in my mind that I would not have been surprised if he had dropped upon us from the vaulted ceiling, suddenly having sprouted wings, a furious dark angel with death upon his breath.
We were in the main aisle when a great crash and shattering of glass shook away the churchly silence behind us. We spun, we looked, but saw no wreckage.
The sacristy had been windowless, and there’d been no glass in the door to the churchyard. Nevertheless, that chamber, which we’d just left, seemed to be the source of these sounds of destruction. They rose again, louder than before.
I heard what might have been the vesting bench slamming against the vestment closets, heard wine bottles smashing, heard the silver chalice and other sacred vessels ricocheting off walls and cabinets with a reverberant metallic clatter.
In our haste to escape, we had left the light on in that room. Now, through the open door, secondhand movement was visible: a farrago of leaping shadows and flares of shimmery light.
I didn’t know what was happening, and I didn’t intend to return to the sacristy for a look. Holding Stormy’s hand again, I ran with her along the center aisle, the length of the nave, and through a door into the narthex.
Out of the church, down the steps, we fled into a twilight that had nearly bled to death, had little red left to give, and had begun to pull purple shrouds over the streets of Pico Mundo.
For a moment I couldn’t fit the trembling key in the Mustang’s ignition. Stormy urged me to hurry, as if hurrying weren’t already my intention, and finally the key mated as it should, and the engine roared to life.
Leaving a significant offering of rubber in front of St. Bart’s, we traveled a block and a half on smoking tires, so fast that we almost seemed to have teleported, before I had the breath to say, “Call the chief.”
She had a cell phone of her own, and she entered Wyatt Porter’s home number as I gave it to her. She waited as it rang, said, “Chief, it’s Stormy,” listened, and said, “Yeah, it does sound like a weather report, doesn’t it. Odd needs to speak to you.”
I took the phone and blurted, “Sir, if you send a car to St. Bart’s real quick, you might catch that Robertson guy trashing the sacristy, maybe more than the sacristy, maybe the whole church.”
He put me on HOLD and made a call on another line.
Three blocks from St. Bartholomew’s, I pulled the Mustang off the street, into a Mexican fast-food franchise.
“Dinner?” I asked Stormy.
“After all that in the church?”
I shrugged. “The entire rest of our lives will be after all that in the church. Personally, I intend to eat again, and the sooner the better.”
“It’s not going to be the equal of my tower feast.”
“What could be?”
“I am starved.”
Holding the phone to my ear and driving with one hand as if that were still legal, I swung the Mustang into the line of vehicles waiting to get to the drive-up service window.
When Chief Porter came back, he said, “Why is he vandalizing St. Bart’s?”
“Don’t have a clue, sir. He tried to trap me and Stormy in the church belfry—”
“What were you doing in the belfry?”
“Having a picnic, sir.”
“I suppose that makes sense to you.”
“Yes, sir. It’s nice. We have dinner up there a couple times a month.”
“Son, I don’t ever want to catch you having dinner on the courthouse flagpole.”
“Maybe just hors d’oeuvres, sir, but never dinner.”
“If you want to come by here, we can still feed you two from the barbecue. Bring Elvis.”
“I left him at the Baptist church, sir. I’m with Stormy—in line to have some tacos, but thanks just the same.”
“Tell me about Robertson. I have a man watching his house in Camp’s End, but he hasn’t gone home yet.”
I said, “He was down in the graveyard, saw us up in the belfry. He gave us the rude number one with lots of emphasis and then came after us.”
“You think he knows you were in his house?” the chief asked.
“If he hasn’t been home since I was there, I don’t see how he could know, but he must. Excuse me a second, sir.”
We had reached the menu board.
“Swordfish tacos with extra salsa, fried corn fritters, and a large Coke, please,” I told the sombrero-wearing donkey that holds the order microphone in its mouth. I looked at Stormy. She nodded. “Make that two of everything.”
“Are you at Mexicali Rose?” the chief asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“They have fantastic churros. You should try some.”
I took his advice and placed a double order with the donkey, which, as before, thanked me in the voice of a teenage girl.
As the line of cars crept forward, I said, “When we gave Robertson the slip in the church, he must’ve been angry. But why he decided to take it out on the building, I don’t know.”
“Two cars are on the way to St. Bart’s, no sirens. They might even be there now. But vandalism—that doesn’t measure up to the horrors you said he’s going to commit.”
“No, sir. Not close. And there’s less than three hours till August fifteenth.”
“If we can park his butt in jail overnight for vandalism, we’ll have an excuse to poke around in his life. Maybe that’ll give us a chance to figure out the bigger thing he’s up to.”
After wishing the chief luck, I pressed END and returned the phone to Stormy.
I checked my watch. Midnight—and August 15—seemed like a tsunami, building height and power, racing toward us with silent but deadly force.
WAITING TO HEAR FROM THE CHIEF THAT they had nailed Robertson in the act of vandalism, Stormy and I ate dinner in the Mexicali Rose parking lot, with the windows of the Mustang rolled down, hoping to catch a breeze. The food was tasty, but the hot night air smelled of exhaust fumes.
“So you broke into Fungus Man’s house,” Stormy said.