The Devil's Labyrinth

CHAPTER 52

MATT MCCAIN HAD never liked hospitals. He hadn’t liked them when his little brother died in one when Matt was only ten years old, and he didn’t like this one any better. Just walking down the sickly green corridor with its cracked linoleum floor made him feel gritty and sticky, despite the shower he’d taken less than an hour ago. But his own feelings didn’t matter — the job still had to be done. At the third-floor nurse’s station, he pulled out his badge and said, “We’re here to see Teri McIntyre.”

The nurse frowned, punched some keys on her computer, then looked up at him worriedly. “I’m afraid she hasn’t regained consciousness yet.” Her eyes moved from McCain to Steve Morgan, then back to McCain. “If you’re worried she might try to leave, I can tell you that’s not going to happen. If she goes anywhere, it’ll be to surgery, and as of an hour ago she wasn’t even stable enough for that.”

“Who’s her doctor?” Steve Morgan asked.

“Dr. Conover. Neurosurgeon.”

“Is he here?”

“I can page him.”

Morgan looked to McCain, who shrugged dismissively. “Who’s listed next of kin?”

Again, the nurse consulted her computer screen and tapped at the keyboard. “She was admitted three years ago for pneumonia. At that time, her next of kin was William McIntyre, her husband.”

“He’s no longer in the picture,” Morgan said. “Is there anyone else?”

The nurse looked slightly irked, but went back to her keyboard. “Actually, we recently had a sixteen-year-old named Ryan McIntyre as a patient, whose mother is listed as Teri McIntyre.”

“That fits,” McCain said. “There’s a boy’s bedroom in the house.”

“And it’s the same address,” the nurse said, looking up. “But that’s all I’ve got.”

“It’s a start,” McCain sighed, dropping a Police Department card on her desk. “Thanks. And call us when she wakes up, okay?”

“Sure.” She took the card and scribbled a note on the back of it. Then, instead of dropping it into one of the desk drawers, she taped it to the monitor, just above the screen so nobody sitting at the computer could miss it.

Knowing there was nothing more to be done at the hospital — at least right now — McCain turned away from the nurse’s station, and headed for the elevator.

“So we have a boy named Ryan McIntyre,” Morgan said, as he punched the Down button a second time, “who’s undoubtedly the vic’s kid, but wasn’t anywhere around the house. And we have William McIntyre, who might be an ex-husband, and the boyfriend, Tom Kelly. And we liked Kelly for the assault, but if there’s an ex out there somewhere, we can’t count him out as the perp for either the beating, or the break-in. In fact, he could have done both.”

“I’ll call it in,” McCain said as the elevator finally arrived to carry them down to the main lobby. “Shouldn’t be hard to get the story on the ex and the kid. But there’s gotta be a million Tom Kellys in Boston.”

“There’s at least a dozen just in the Department,” Morgan said. “And if he was the perp on the beating, I’ll give you odds he wasn’t using his real name.”

McCain nodded. “So let’s go back to her house and see if we can find out where the kid and the ex might be. I bet a neighbor knows something.”

They pushed out through the main door and McCain inhaled deeply the cool salt air that had blown in off the ocean during the night. It was exactly the kind of spring morning that made you glad to be alive. But even as McCain’s lungs sucked in the fresh air, his gut told him not to get too comfortable. Things, he was sure, were about to get strange.

† † †

Archbishop Rand glowered darkly at the telephone on his desk, almost as annoyed by the constant blinking of the line lights as he was by the incessant ringing that began the moment any line became free.

Line one had the local NBC affiliate demanding more information about the Pope’s sudden — and utterly unexpected — rescheduling of his tour to include a stop in Boston.

Line two was Arthur Cole, chairman of the Committee for Eucharistic Adoration, offering — actually demanding—that his whole organization be put to work for the Pope’s visit. Perhaps Rand could put him and his committee to work organizing the volunteers, who already numbered in the hundreds, all of them assuming that their work would be rewarded with a personal introduction to the Holy Father. Not that Rand even knew, at this point, exactly what was going to be needed.

Line three was Mrs. Boothe of the Catholic Women’s College Club of Boston wanting to know how she and her group could be of assistance and, of course, to secure a private audience with the Pontiff.

Rand had just hung up line four, a reporter from the Boston Herald who said he would wait for the faxed press release, so of course that line was now ringing again.

A soft knock came on his office door.

Rand took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose for a moment. What he actually needed was a strategy meeting, so everything that needed to be done could be organized in a logical, orderly fashion, but that wasn’t going to happen.

There was simply no time.

“Yes?” he called, instantly regretting the note of impatience that had crept into his voice.

His seminarian assistant opened the door. “The mayor to see you,” he said, almost apologetically.

Rand nodded, unsurprised that the mayor had simply showed up at his office, where he couldn’t be put off as he might have been on the telephone. “Show him in,” he sighed. “And ask Mrs. Boothe to bring her volunteers here tomorrow morning to help with logistics.”

“Here?” The seminarian’s brows rose and his eyes widened, and Rand instantly realized his mistake: there was simply no room for a dozen women to work, not in the cramped space his offices had been reduced to.

“Tell her that her first act will be to find a space for her people to work. Perhaps at the Paulist Center.” That, at least, would keep Emerald Boothe well away from him.

The young man nodded his understanding, then opened the door wide.

Rand rose from his chair to greet the mayor as he strode in. George Flowers was one of the few men tall enough for Rand to look straight in the eye, and his handshake was firm and blessedly brief. Then the mayor, as always, went straight to the point.

“Quite a bomb you dropped on my office this morning,” he said, lowering himself into one of the two threadbare chairs in Rand’s office.

“The same could be said for this office,” Rand replied, glancing at the phone where all four lines were still blinking.

“There’s no way we can mobilize a security force in time for the Pope’s visit,” Flowers said. “It’s impossible. You’re going to have to reschedule.”

Rand remembered all too well how he’d gone to the mayor for help when the Archdiocese was drowning in a sea of bad publicity, and Flowers — clearly not a Catholic — had simply shrugged it all off. “The Catholic Church,” he’d dryly observed at one point, “can withstand anything. It’s its own country, for God’s sake, with the Pope as its head, and all you Bishops and Cardinals as his commissioners. You’ll all think of something.”

Now it was Rand’s turn to shrug off Flowers’s problems.

“One doesn’t simply reschedule His Holiness,” Rand replied. “As you pointed out to me not so long ago, he is a head of state.” Rand’s bland expression betrayed none of the pleasure he felt at the mayor’s flinch. “I’m afraid he will neither postpone nor cancel his visit to Boston.”

Flowers took a deep breath and ran his hands through his sparse hair. “Then I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Rand savored the mayor’s discomfort for another moment, then relented. “Actually, you don’t need to do much at all,” he said. “His Holiness will only be here for half a day, and it is to be a very low-key event. The Pope wishes to visit the children at St. Isaac’s school, where he will hold a private Mass. That’s all.”

The mayor stared blankly at him, as if he must have misheard the Archbishop’s words. “That’s all?” he echoed.

Rand spread his hands in a gesture of magnanimity. “He will need security to and from the airport and around the school. But nothing more.”

Now the mayor’s face had gone ashen. “Nothing? No public appearances?”

“That is my understanding,” Rand said.

The mayor appeared utterly nonplussed, and Rand could practically see the wheels spinning in his mind: having the Pope come to Boston and make no public appearances at all could turn out to be even worse than trying to organize security in the few days they had. Sure enough, Flowers finally found his voice.

“You mean to tell me that the Pope is coming to Boston, and all he’s going to do is drive to St. Isaac’s and out again? Nothing at the Common? No event? No parade in the Popemobile?”

Archbishop Rand smiled blandly, thoroughly enjoying Flowers’s confusion. “All I know is what I’ve been told, George.” Then he decided to make things a little worse for the mayor. “But you never know what he’s going to do. He might very well change his mind once he gets here.”

“That’s what terrifies me,” Flowers replied. “If he does, then what am I supposed to do? We have to have some kind of plan, and if he’s coming here at all, he has to appear in public.” He looked Rand squarely in the eye. “Don’t try to tell me you couldn’t use an appearance as much as anyone else. So how about a Mass in the Common? We can keep it as small as he wants, but at least it will be something.”

Rand shrugged as disinterestedly as Flowers had months ago when he’d so blithely dismissed the Church’s problems, and Flowers slumped low in his chair. Only when Rand had decided the mayor had suffered enough did he speak one last time: “But you’re right, of course. His Holiness can’t come here and simply be invisible, which I’m sure he understands, and you’re also right that a Mass in the Common can be put together fairly easily, all things considered. Let’s consider it done.” He saw no point in telling the mayor that most of the planning for that event was already underway, and the Vatican had already approved it.