Sophie Medina: Ghost Image Part 5

He grabbed my arms. "Hey, what's wrong? Hold on there. Why are you running?"

"Where's your guardian?" I said. "Where's Father Xavier? I just found Brother Kevin Boyle in the Gethsemane Grotto. I'm so sorry . . . he's dead."

The words tumbled out and the friar flinched. He was young, in his early twenties. "What are you talking about? Dead? Are you sure?"

"He's lying at the bottom of the stairs and there's blood. He's . . . believe me, he's dead. I called 911 and the police are on their way."

A scowl crossed his face. "The police? Why did you call them?"

"Because that's what you do when someone dies, that's why." He was staring at me like I was speaking in tongues. "You need to get Father Xavier."

"Who are you?"

"Sophie Medina. A friend of Kevin's. Who are you?"

"Paul Zarin." He let go of my arms and pulled his phone out of his s.h.i.+rt pocket. "Don't go anywhere. Stay right here."

He sprinted away and slipped into the church through a side door. Kevin had mentioned a Franciscan named Paul the other night. He had been walking through the monastery when Kevin thought someone was following him in the cloisters. According to Kevin, Paul had heard nothing.

He was back in less than a minute, accompanied by two knights of St. Sepulchre in white ice-cream suits. They split up, the knights heading toward the entrance to the lower garden and Paul Zarin returning to where I waited.

"I want to thank you for finding our brother," he said. "You're free to go. We'll take care of him. Our guardian will talk to the police if it's necessary."

"Take care of Kevin?"

"He belongs to G.o.d now," he said as the two knights disappeared down the ramp.

"What are you talking about? What are they going to do?"

"Bring Kevin to the church to lay him to rest there. It's what he would want. It's where he should be."

I caught my breath. "You can't move him. No one should touch anything in that grotto. Kevin could have fallen down the stairs, but he also could have been pushed. It could be a crime scene."

Paul Zarin's head snapped back as if I had just uttered something that defiled this holy place. "That's not possible. No one here would do such a thing."

"You have visitors, people who come and go as they please. And Kevin was a controversial public figure, you know that. People heckled him at talks all the time. Maybe someone showed up today and went too far."

Paul Zarin gave me another dark look. "Or maybe nothing like that happened and it was merely G.o.d's plan to call Kevin home. Thank you again for finding our brother, but now I must ask you to leave. Please. Go in peace."

I folded my arms across my chest. "I'm not leaving. I can't leave. I'm the one who found him. The police will want to question me."

I thought when he had taken out his phone he'd called his superior, a quick, discreet conversation with Father Xavier Navarro to let him know something was seriously wrong, that this was an emergency. Instead it seemed like he'd alerted the entire monastery. I heard male voices as about a dozen men in Franciscan habits and a few in street clothes ran toward us, some emerging from the church, but most coming from the friary.

He pointed to the entrance to the lower garden and shouted to the others. "Down there. He's in the Gethsemane Grotto with two of the knights. We must pray for him and then bring him to the church."

"Are you crazy?" I said. "You can't send them down there. They'll trample everything. They could destroy evidence before the police get a chance to search the area. Don't do this. You need to get Father Xavier here right now."

"Father Xavier is on his way back to the monastery. He should be here any minute." His clear gray eyes were cool and he pointed to my khaki trousers. "Did you fall or trip on something? That mud stain on your knee is fresh. You never told me what you are doing here or how you knew where to find Kevin."

It took a moment before I realized he was implying I had something to do with Kevin's death. I said, stunned, "I didn't know where to find him. And I came here to return something to him, plus Kevin asked me to take photos of the community garden. Ask the security guard at the residence. I checked with him when I got here."

But Paul Zarin had stopped listening. "Did you bring a friend?" he asked.

"Pardon?"

He pointed over my shoulder. "Her."

Yasmin Gilberti, stylishly dressed in jeans, leather boots, and a Burberry rain jacket with a pashmina scarf knotted around her neck, walked toward us down the middle of the driveway. Her vivid red hair was even more startling against the grayness of the afternoon. Paul Zarin didn't take his eyes off her.

I had forgotten all about our meeting. Ursula would be here at any moment as well.

"Sophie," Yasmin said when she reached Paul and me. "What are you doing here?"

It was an odd question. Maybe Ursula had decided to fire me after all and I just hadn't found out yet. Maybe Yasmin was expecting someone else.

"Kevin's dead, Yasmin," I said. "I found his body . . . found him . . . in the garden a few minutes ago. I'm sorry."

I shouldn't have blurted it out like that, but I was still dealing with my own grief. Yasmin turned pale, a horrified expression on her face. When she finally spoke, she sounded as though she were gasping for breath.

"Oh, my G.o.d. That's not possible. He can't be."

Paul Zarin spoke up. "Here comes Father Xavier."

A small black car sped through the main gate and stopped in the driveway across from the three of us. A slight, white-haired man in a Franciscan habit got out.

Father Xavier and Paul Zarin exchanged glances, and a look pa.s.sed between them that I didn't understand. "Where is Kevin?" Xavier asked him.

"The Gethsemane Grotto. Our brothers are praying for him, and then two of the knights are bringing him to the church. It's where he would want to be. In G.o.d's house."

The old priest turned to Yasmin and me. "I understand a woman found him," he said in his gentle voice. "I am Father Navarro and I am in charge of this monastery. Was it one of you?"

"I found him, Father," I said. "I'm a friend of Kevin's. My name is Sophie Medina and this is Yasmin Gilberti. She and her fiance are going to be married here in June."

Xavier nodded, apparently recognizing Yasmin's name and possibly mine, but before he could speak, I said, "With all respect, you can't move Kevin. I mean, you shouldn't. All those people who are down there now are leaving footprints everywhere . . . if it's a crime scene they could destroy evidence."

Father Xavier shot me a startled look as the full meaning of what I was saying seemed to dawn on him. "You are right," he said. He turned to Paul. "Go and tell whoever is in the grotto not to disturb anything and that they must leave at once. I will call the police and we will cooperate with them."

Yasmin's face was still as white as bleached bone. I took her arm and said, "You don't look well. There's a bench over there in the courtyard. Maybe you should sit down."

She shook her head. "I'm okay."

She didn't look okay. She looked scared. To Xavier, I said, "I called the police as soon as I found Kevin."

Two blue-and-white Metropolitan Police Department cruisers pulled into the monastery driveway. "So you did," he said. "It looks as though they're here."

The 911 dispatcher was right that the police wanted to talk to me since I was the one who had found Kevin. I caught a glimpse of Ursula's black Mercedes with its blue, yellow, and white West Virginia "USS" license plate pull into the parking lot as a pet.i.te African American officer whose name tag said her last name was Carroll walked me into the visitors' lobby of the church.

She pointed to one of the benches in front of a screen where a video usually played before the tour started.

"Please have a seat," she said. "I'll be right back."

I glanced up at the clock behind the reception desk where the knights usually sat. It showed exactly five o'clock.

Officer Carroll didn't return for half an hour. She sat next to me and apologized for keeping me waiting before she asked all the usual questions, how I'd found Kevin, what my business was at the monastery, and eventually, my relations.h.i.+p with the deceased.

I flinched at that word and she looked up. Her short, glossy jet-black hair framed her face in a cap of loose pin curls that reminded me of a cherub.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I know this is difficult."

I told her about my friends.h.i.+p with Kevin as she made notes in a spiral notebook.

"You came here for a meeting with Senator Gilberti and her daughter," she said. "Why were you also looking for Brother Kevin?"

I fished the little gray key out of my pocket. "To ask if this belonged to him. I found it on the ground at the Tidal Basin this morning and I wondered if he had dropped it."

Officer Carroll took the key and turned it over. "You think it's his?"

"I don't know. Like I said, I found it on the ground. Maybe he dropped it or maybe someone else did."

"Do you know what it opens?"

"No idea."

"You can keep it for now." She handed it back to me. "Did Brother Kevin have any enemies that you know of?"

"A lot of people didn't like him because of his views on the environment and climate change, especially after he wrote Reaping What We Have Sown," I said. "He told me once someone called him 'a tree-hugging kook in a robe.'"

"Did he mention any names?"

I shook my head. "But this morning at the Tidal Basin he told me he thought someone had begun following him. Last night after the party at the Austrian amba.s.sador's residence and two other times, here at the monastery."

She gave me a sharp look. "Did he know who it was, or why someone would be following him?"

"No to your first question. But he thought it might have to do with a new book he's working on, something he came across in his research."

Officer Carroll tapped her pen on her notebook. The cap looked chewed on, as if she used it when she was thinking things through. "What research would that be?"

"Although Kevin's mostly known as an environmental conservationist, he has a PhD in botany. He was working on a botanical history of gardening and agriculture in colonial America."

She frowned. "Go on."

"He said he believed he'd made some kind of historical discovery and if he was right it could be worth a lot of money. Quite a lot of money."

"Botany." She shrugged. "That's plants. Any chance he could have been referring to something to do with drugs? Those kind of plants?"

Drugs. The word dropped into the silence of this holy place and spread like a dark stain. My G.o.d, was she right? Not medicinal drugs but narcotics, derived from plants. Heroin, cocaine, hash, marijuana-what else was on that list? Had Kevin somehow gotten mixed up in something drug related?

I s.h.i.+vered as though a blast of cold air had just pa.s.sed through the room, a specter moving from this life to the next. "I don't know . . . I mean, no. No way. Kevin . . . he was a good man, Officer Carroll. He would never knowingly get involved in anything illegal."

She gave me a searching look. "You got any idea how many times I hear that? 'I didn't mean it.' 'It wasn't my fault, it just happened.' Usually right before they ask to cut a deal."

"Not Kevin." I was adamant, my hands clasped tightly together so she would not realize how badly they were shaking. "I would bet my life on it."

"I hear that, too." Her smile was grim. "Anybody else come to mind who didn't get along with him? Maybe someone who had a grudge against him?"

I knew this wasn't going to sound good, but I told her anyway. "Last night at a party I overheard him arguing with Edward Jaine, or rather they were arguing with each other."

She looked up. "The Edward Jaine? The rich guy?"

"That's right."

"What was it about?"

"I don't know. They were in a corridor by themselves and they kept their voices down."

"But you're sure it was an argument and you're sure it was Edward Jaine and Brother Kevin Boyle?" When I nodded, she said, "All right, we'll check it out. As well as whether anyone else at the monastery knew about Brother Kevin being followed."

If Paul Zarin, whom I'd just met, was the Paul who'd been there the other night when Kevin heard footsteps in the cloisters, he'd shoot that theory down right away. So would the knight who'd been in the catacombs with him. I didn't want Officer Carroll thinking Kevin was some loony tune who heard voices, or that he was paranoid.

So I nodded and didn't say anything as she flipped back through her notes. "You're sure you didn't see anyone else in the garden when you got there?"

"Positive."

She shook her head in disgust. "Well, now that the grounds around that little cave have been contaminated thanks to everyone and his cousin trampling the place, it's going to royally screw up any chance of figuring out what the h.e.l.l happened. Whose bright idea was that?"

I gave her a rueful look. "The Franciscan who was with Father Xavier and me when you first arrived. Paul Zarin. I told him that it might be a crime scene and that Kevin shouldn't be moved." I shrugged. "For all the good it did."

"It's not going to make the medical examiner's day, either."

"There'll be an autopsy?"

"For an unattended death with no obvious underlying conditions there's always an autopsy," she said. "Speaking of which, I didn't ask you whether Brother Kevin seemed unwell when you saw him this morning."

"He seemed fine," I said. "Are you saying he might have died of natural causes?"

"Until we have the results of the autopsy, we don't rule out anything. But if the ME finds injuries consistent with a fall and there are no witnesses, plus no obvious motive for his death-" She shrugged. "Then it may just well be an accident. It does happen, you know."

"You mean you won't try to find out if he might have been murdered?"

She gave me a withering look. "Right before I came here I was with a mother whose twelve-year-old got shot walking home from school. He's at Children's Hospital about fifteen minutes from here, in critical condition. Probably not gonna make it. I promised that woman I'd catch the a.s.shole who shot her son whose straight-A report card is now covered in his blood. I make a lot of promises to a lot of people, and I do my best to keep them." She pointed to a small crucifix that hung on the wall. "But I'm not G.o.d."

"I'm so sorry about that little boy."

She said with feeling, "Me, too. We do the best we can, Ms. Medina." She stood up. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta talk to a few priests about the death of one of their own. You're free to go."