A Perfect Grave Part 32

"I'm sure you do, dear."

Jason left her for an hour, pa.s.sing the time by walking along the creek bed, mindful that a storm was brewing. He was amazed by the fact that he'd started the day in the metropolis of Seattle wondering where the story would take him, and now here he was, in some hidden corner of Canada, staring at the Rockies, trying to uncover the truth about the murder of a nun who'd buried her deepest secret.

He glanced back to the little cabin.

Sister Marie knew something. He felt it in his gut.

The afternoon sky had darkened with threatening clouds and lightning flashes when he returned. Sister Marie had finished, but was flipping through the journal.

"I will help you," she said and made him a fresh mug of coffee.

"I don't know how much this help will matter." She leaned hard on her cane and went to her bookshelf and searched along a long section containing several identical notebooks, a collection as expansive as a set of encyclopedias.

"May I record the information and take notes, for accuracy?"

"You may."

After checking the battery, Jason set up his recorder and opened his notebook.

"You know, I helped establish the Order in Paris," Sister Marie began. "We came into existence after World War Two. We broke away from a larger, more established group with the aim of being more progressive, more relevant to everyday lives of Christians. We were ahead of Vatican II. After a fire destroyed our early records, our Mother House was moved to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., then Chicago. We have about seven hundred sisters worldwide."

"Yes, I'd read some of the background."

"I am writing a history of the Order, to leave behind when I'm gone." She plucked a notebook from the shelf and returned to the table just as the rain started coming down hard and the afternoon turned as dark as night.

Sister Marie lit several lanterns, which bathed the cabin in dark golden light, then began flipping though the yellowed handwritten pages of a notebook. From what Jason could see it was all in French.

"Your information is correct. I did oversee a.s.sessments and screenings of candidates for the period during which Sister Anne came to us as a candidate."

As lightning flashed, Sister Marie paged through her book and Jason took notes.

"As I'd mentioned, many completed files were lost years ago in a fire. I took some notes, a summary if you will, on many of those that came through me. Sister Anne was approximately twenty-three years old when she came to us in Paris. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, given up for adoption by her fifteen-year-old mother. She was adopted by a Kansas City bank manager and his wife, who were a childless couple. At age seventeen she was sent to private boarding school in Switzerland. Four years later her parents died in a car accident while en route to see her in Geneva. She was kept on at the school where she studied art and helped younger students. That's what we were told."

Sister Marie stopped, then resumed talking as she returned to the bookshelf for more notes.

"Our screening process was similar to that of many orders. The young candidates submit to psychological and medical tests, background checks, letters of reference."

"Where is that file for Sister Anne?"

"Lost, I believe." The old nun pressed a finger to her lips. "No. Maybe not. Now, as I recall, she didn't go through all that. Just a moment." Sister Marie found another notebook; its pages crackled as she leafed through it.

In the lamplight, beautiful French handwriting reflected in her gla.s.ses.

"Yes, it's coming back now. The late Sister Beatrice Dumont made the discovery. Yes. It's here."

"What is it?"

"Sister Anne was first encountered in the back of a small church. A young woman, praying and crying, begging to be allowed to join the Order. At first, there were concerns about her psychological capacity. She was invited to volunteer at one of our missions. Over time, as she became known to Sister Dumont, it was understood that she was grieving the loss of her parents. The young woman was alone in the world and desperate for guidance. It seems that she bore the guilt of her parents' deaths, as she had desired to attend the school. Later she wanted to leave it and had summoned her parents to come and arrange it."

Jason weighed the revelation.

"Do you think this would account for the agonizing guilt she expressed in her diary?"

Sister Marie thought that it would.

"We gave it time and saw that she truly had felt a divine call to devote her life to helping others."

Jason ruminated over the information.

"She was accepted eventually as a postulant for something like a year, as I recall. Then she became a novice and dedicated herself to her studies and went on to take her temporary vows. I think, in her case, it was close to five years before she took her final vows. And then she went off to various missions around the world."

So that was it, Jason thought, a mundane explanation. Nothing at all that would point to her killer. No deep, dark secret. The part about "destroying lives" must've been her anguish and guilt at the loss of her parents.

"Is that everything, Sister?"

The old nun raised her head from her notebooks as the storm's intensity decreased with the whisper of soft rain.

"No." She turned to her bookshelf. "How could I ever forget? Please forgive my brittle mind." She went to another book but failed to find what she was looking for, as Sa.s.sy threaded his way through her legs. She checked another, then another. "Oh, I'm sure it's in one of these blessed books. I've got letters and notes scattered all over. I can never find anything." She tapped her cane to the floor in frustration, sending her cat to the corner.

"What is it, Sister?"

"In the process of becoming a nun you take your vows, which include the big ones, like chast.i.ty and poverty. In practical terms, candidates divest themselves of all their worldly goods and come to G.o.d, poor in material wealth. It's common for candidates to donate whatever they have to the Church or Order."

"And this was the case with Anne Braxton?"

"Oh, yes, indeed. In fact her donation was critical to the Order's initial success. It seems her father had made several wise investments, the proceeds of which she inherited from her trust at the age of twenty-five. It was held for her in a bank in Zurich, and she arranged to turn it over to the Order."

"She turned her inheritance over to the Order?"

"Yes."

"How much was it?"

"As I recall it was over two million Swiss francs."

"Was that a lot, at the time?"

"At the time, that worked out to over one million U.S. dollars."

Jason stared at the old nun.

Chapter Forty-Five.

Leon Dean Sperbeck.

Henry Wade's nightmare.

Sperbeck scowled at him from his DOC photographs, which Henry had propped against the salt and pepper shakers on his kitchen table in his house near Boeing Field.

There was Sperbeck glaring at him, just as he did so long ago during the horrific standoff at the heist.

The terrified eyes of the hostage.

Later, Sperbeck eyed Henry in court as he shuffled off in chains to pay with twenty-five years of his life.

Was it enough for what he did?

Sperbeck's image had tormented Henry the day Vern Pearce put his gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. It had invaded Henry's sleep, enveloping him like a burial cloth for his years of descent into an alcoholic abyss. And it had mocked Henry the day Sally walked out because she couldn't take it anymore.

Henry didn't blame her.

He blamed Leon Sperbeck.

But was he truly dead?

Henry resumed looking over the files that Ethan Quinn had copied for him. DOC records, court records, old police reports.

Is this how it ends? With Sperbeck's suicide robbing Henry of the chance to find the answer to the one question that had locked Henry in a prison of pain and continued to haunt him.

Was he really dead?

Like Quinn, Henry needed to be certain Sperbeck was dead.

It was critical to his own survival.

Sperbeck's suicide note wasn't much evidence, Henry agreed with Quinn. Until the Nisqually River gave up Sperbeck's corpse, and an autopsy confirmed it was him, all bets were off.

Okay, so what's it going to be?

One way or another, Henry had to come to terms with this thing. It was what his counselors had advised him for over twenty-five years. Twenty-five years. d.a.m.n. Henry admitted that a drink would feel good right now.

But it wouldn't help.

All right.

The time for battle had come.

He went back to his files and outlined a plan to investigate. He'd treat Quinn like a client who required verification of Sperbeck's death. Henry began by putting in several calls to sources, reminding himself that he was a detective, licensed by the state to conduct private investigations, and, if necessary, authorized to take a life.

He glanced at his new Glock 22.

He'd picked up the .40-cal pistol late yesterday after he got his letter from the state and completed all the paperwork. Having it around made him uneasy.

He hated the thing.

Hope to G.o.d I never have to use it.

Get to work.

First, Henry checked with the NPS Rangers at Mount Rainier National Park on whether they'd found Sperbeck's body.

"Naw. Nothing's turned up," Pike Thornton, a law enforcement officer, told him over the phone. "We sent out Search and Rescue, dragged the river near Cougar Rock, and got nothing."

"Any witnesses see him go in the water?"

"None that were absolutely certain. We had a retired county judge say he saw Sperbeck fis.h.i.+ng. We found his pole, tackle, and such."

"What about his vehicle?"

"He told the registration desk that he got a ride from Seattle. No one saw him or spoke to him. Seemed to be a man alone with his thoughts."

Awaiting return calls, Henry went back to Sperbeck's DOC file, which was extensive. Sperbeck had entered the system at WCC, where he was processed and sent on to Was.h.i.+ngton State Penitentiary at Walla Walla. He spent a lot of time making license plates there. Then he was transferred to Coyote Ridge at Connell, where he received treatment for his addictions while working on the farm.

At Coyote Ridge, Sperbeck also took part in spiritual counseling programs run by groups who visited from across the state. Afterward, he went to Clallam Bay, where he picked up a trade, cabinetmaking, before moving on to McNeil Island, but unlike many offenders, he did not work outside on the barges, tugboats, and ferries.

Even though he qualified for work release and to seek parole, he waived it all, choosing to serve his full time and work toward discharge, reducing the number of strings the system would attach to him.

"Sperbeck had very few conditions of supervision," Herb Kent, Sperbeck's CCO, told Henry when he finally reached him. "He stayed out of trouble inside and paid his debt in full. There was no indication he was a risk to reoffend."

"Did he talk about the crime?"

"You mean the money?"

"I mean the money."

"Not a word. He expressed remorse over the damage he'd inflicted."

"Did he have any kind of support mechanism waiting for him outside-friends, relatives?"

"Not really."

"What about his visitor list?"

"Spiritual counselors, some teachers, vocational advisors. No family or friends from his past to indicate he was going to reconnect."

"What do you make of his suicide?"

"It happens, Henry. Especially with long-timers. Guys get out to find that the world has changed. That there's no place for them in it. They can't go back to prison. So what's left for them? Sperbeck had a skill but couldn't get a job. He called me a couple of times, all despondent. He was slipping back into drugs, circling the drain."

Kent gave Henry two Seattle addresses that he had for Sperbeck. One was a run-down motel at the edge of Capitol Hill, the other a rooming house close to the ID, the address he was using when he vanished into the Nisqually River.

Henry got in his pickup truck and did some discreet door-knocking. He showed people Sperbeck's picture, which yielded mostly head-shaking, except at the Black Jet Bar, which was near the rooming house.