Brother Odd

CHAPTER 41

WHILE THE SIXTEEN WARRIOR MONKS AND the one duplicitous novice determined how to fortify the two stairwells that served the second floor of the school, Sister Angela was present to ensure that her nuns were prepared to offer any assistance that might be wanted.

As I headed toward the northwest nurses' station, she fell in beside me. "Oddie, I hear something happened on the trip back from the abbey."

"Yes, ma'am. Sure did. I don't have time to go into it now, but your insurance carrier is going to have a lot of questions."

"Do we have bodachs here?"

I looked left and right into the rooms we passed. "The place is crawling with them, Sister."

Rodion Romanovich followed us with the authoritarian air of one of those librarians who rules the stacks with an intimidating scowl, whispers quiet sharply enough to lacerate the tender inner tissues of the ear, and will pursue an overdue-book fine with the ferocity of a rabid ferret.

"How is Mr. Romanovich assisting here?" Sister Angela asked.

"He isn't assisting, ma'am."

"Then what's he doing?"

"Scheming, most likely."

"Shall I throw him out?" she asked.

Through my mind flickered a short film of the mother superior wrenching the Russian's arm up hard behind his back in some clever tae kwon do move, muscling him downstairs to the kitchen, and making him sit in a corner on a stool for the duration.

"Actually, ma'am, I'd rather have him hovering over me than have to wonder where he is and what he's up to."

At the nurses' station, Sister Miriam, with Thanks be to God forever on her lips, or at least forever on the lower one, was still behind the counter.

She said, "Dear, the dark clouds of mystery surrounding you are getting so thick I soon won't be able to see you. This sooty whirl of smog will go past, and people will say, 'There's Odd Thomas. Wonder what he looks like these days.'"

"Ma'am, I need your help. You know Justine in Room Thirty-two?"

"Dear, I not only know every child here, but I love them like they were my own."

"When she was four, her father drowned her in the bathtub but didn't finish the job the way he did with her mother. Is that correct, do I have it right?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't want to think in what sort of place his soul is festering now." She glanced at her mother superior and said, with an edge of guilt in her voice, "Actually, I not only sometimes think about it, I enjoy thinking about it."

"What I need to know, Sister, is maybe he did finish the job, and Justine was dead for a couple minutes before the police or the paramedics revived her. Could that have happened?"

Sister Angela said, "Yes, Oddie. We can check her file, but I believe that was the case. She suffered brain damage from prolonged lack of oxygen, and in fact had no vital signs when the police broke into the house and found her."

This was why the girl could serve as a bridge between our world and the next: She had once been over there, if only briefly, and had been pulled back by men who had all the best intentions. Stormy had been able to reach out to me through Justine because Justine belonged on the Other Side more than she did here.

I asked, "Are there other children here who suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation?"

"A few," Sister Miriam confirmed.

"Are they-are any of them-more alert than Justine? No, that's not the issue. Are they capable of speech? That's what I need to know."

Having moved to the counter beside the mother superior, Rodion Romanovich scowled intently at me, like a mortician who, in need of work, believed that I would soon be a candidate for embalming.

"Yes," said Sister Angela. "There are at least two."

"Three," Sister Miriam amended.

"Ma'am, were any of the three clinically dead and then revived by police or paramedics, the way Justine was?"

Frowning, Sister Miriam looked at her mother superior. "Do you know?"

Sister Angela shook her head. "I suppose it would be in the patient records."

"How long will it take you to review the records, ma'am?"

"Half an hour, forty minutes? Maybe we'll find something like that in the first file."

"Would you please do it, Sister, fast as you can? I need a child who was dead once but can still talk."

Of the three of them, only Sister Miriam knew nothing about my sixth sense. "Dear, you are starting to get downright spooky."

"I've always been, ma'am."