Desperate Measures

8

The priest led the way toward a door at the back of the sacristy. When he opened it, Pittman was amazed to look out toward a garden, its well-kept appearance in contrast with the decay at the front of the church. Neatly mowed grass was flanked by blooming lilacs, their fragrance wafting through the open door. The rectangular area was enclosed by a high brick wall.

Father Dandridge motioned for Pittman to precede him.

When Pittman didn’t respond, the priest looked amused. “Suspicious of me? You don’t want to turn your back on me? How could I possibly hurt you?”

“Lately, people have been finding ways.” Keeping his hand on the.45 hidden in his overcoat pocket, Pittman glanced back through the arch toward the church, which was rapidly being filled. He followed the priest into the garden and shut the door.

The morning sun was warm and brilliant, emphasizing the jagged white scar on Father Dandridge’s chin. The priest sat on a metal bench. The sound of the city’s traffic seemed far away.

“Why should I believe that you didn’t kill Jonathan Millgate?”

“Because if I did, I ought to be on the run. Why would I come to you?”

Father Dandridge raised his shoulders. “Perhaps you’re as deranged as the news reports say. Perhaps you intend to kill me, as well.”

“No. I need your help.”

“And how could I possibly help you? Why would I want to help you?”

“In the news reports, Millgate’s people claim they took him from the hospital to protect him from me, but that’s not true,” Pittman insisted. “The real reason they took him is they didn’t want to expose him to reporters after the story broke about his supposed connection with trying to buy nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union.”

“Even if you can prove what you say…”

“I can.”

“… it’s irrelevant to whether or not you killed him.”

“It’s very relevant. Look, I followed him from the hospital, yes. But I wasn’t stalking him. I wanted to find out why he’d been taken. At the estate in Scarsdale, the nurse and doctor who were supposed to be caring for him left him alone. He became disconnected from his life-support system. I managed to get into his room and help him.”

“But a witness claims it happened the other way around, that you cut off his oxygen and caused him to have a fatal heart attack.”

“A nurse came in when I was putting the oxygen prongs into Millgate’s nostrils. She heard Millgate tell me something. I think that’s what all of this is about. His people were afraid of reporters asking him questions. But I’m a reporter, and what Millgate told me may have been exactly what they didn’t want anybody to know. They tried to stop me, but I got away, and…”

Father Dandridge added, “So they decided to cut off Jonathan Millgate’s life-support system, to let him die to prevent him from ever telling anyone else. Then they blamed his death on you so that even if you tried to use what you were told, you wouldn’t be believed.”

“That’s right,” Pittman said, amazed. “That’s the theory I’m trying to prove. How did-?”

“When you hear enough confessions, you become proficient at anticipating.”

“This isn’t confession!”

“What did Jonathan Millgate say to you?”

Pittman’s energy dwindled, discouragement overcoming him. He rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s the problem. It doesn’t seem that important. In a way, it doesn’t even make sense. But later a man tried to kill me at my apartment because of what Millgate had told me.”

“Now you tell me.”

“A man’s name.” Pittman shook his head in confusion. “And something about snow.”

“A name?”

“Duncan Grollier.”

Father Dandridge concentrated, assessing Pittman. “Jonathan Millgate was perhaps the most despicable man I have ever met.”

“What? But you said that the two of you were friends.”

Father Dandridge smiled bitterly. “No. I said that he and I had a special relationship. I could never be his friend. But I could pity him as much as I loathed his actions. I could try to save his soul. You see, I was his confessor.”

Pittman straightened with surprise.

“When you saw me in the sacristy, you couldn’t help noticing my scars.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s quite all right. There’s no need to worry about my feelings. I’m proud of these scars. I earned them in combat. During the Vietnam War. I was a chaplain in I Corps. A base I was assigned to-close to the demilitarized zone-came under siege. Bad weather kept reinforcements from being brought in. We were under constant mortar bombardment. Of course, as a noncombatant, I wasn’t allowed to use a weapon, but I could care for the wounded. I could crawl with food and water and ammunition. I could give dying men the last sacrament. The scar on my chin is from shrapnel. The scars on my hand are from a fire I helped to put out. When I say I’m proud of these scars, it’s because they remind me of what a privilege it was to serve beside such brave men. Of two hundred, only fifty survived by the time reinforcements were able to come. None of those who died was older than twenty-one. And I blame Jonathan Millgate for those deaths, just as I blame him for the entire forty-seven thousand men who died in battle in that war. A hundred and fifty thousand men were wounded. Thousands of other lives were destroyed because of the psychological effects of the war. And why? Because Millgate and his four colleagues”-the priest twisted his lips in contempt-“the so-called grand counselors-advised the President and the nation that the domino theory was something worth dying for, that if we didn’t keep the Communists out of Vietnam, the rest of Southeast Asia would fall to them. A quarter of a century later, communism is a crumbling philosophy, and Southeast Asia is becoming ever more capitalistic, even though South Vietnam was taken over by the Communists. The war made no difference. But Jonathan Millgate and the other grand counselors became obscenely rich because of their relationship with the arms industry that inevitably profited from the war the grand counselors insisted was necessary.”

“And now Millgate was being investigated for a nuclear weapons scandal,” Pittman said. “Is that why he wanted so desperately to talk to you before he died? His associates were determined to keep him away from you. They felt you were a threat.”

Father Dandridge squinted. “When I came back from Vietnam, I harassed Jonathan Millgate at every opportunity. I organized demonstrations against him. I tried to shame him in every way I could. I believe I was one of the reasons he stopped being a diplomat and retired from public view. Of course, he still manipulated government policy, but at least he was forced to do it from comparative hiding. Then to my surprise, six months ago, he phoned me. He asked permission to come and see me. Suspicious, I agreed, and when he arrived, I discovered that he was having a crisis of conscience. He wasn’t a Catholic, but he felt a desperate need to bare his soul. He wanted me to be his confessor.”

“His confessor? After all the trouble you’d made for him?”

“He wanted to confess to someone whom he could not intimidate.”

“But what was so important that he needed to confess?”

Father Dandridge shook his head. “You know I’m bound, at the risk of my soul, never to reveal what I hear in confession.”

Pittman breathed out with effort. “Then I came here for nothing.”

“Duncan Grollier. Are you sure that’s the name you heard?”

Pittman nodded. “Except…”

“What?”

“He mentioned Duncan several times. Then snow. Then Grollier. Could Snow be someone’s last name?”

“I don’t know. But in this case, Grollier isn’t. It’s the name of the prep school Millgate went to. That’s a matter of public record. I’m not violating any confidence by telling you. In conscience, it’s all I can tell you. But it ought to be enough.”

“What are you talking about? Enough? I don’t understand.”