Quicksilver(93)

“Secure as a bank,” I assured her. “Can you meet me here?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Please tell no one, and come quietly. I am in some trouble.”

I disconnected, and turned on the desk lamp.

Preceded by Winston, Panthea and Bridget came in from the foyer and quickly lowered the shades at the two windows that provided a view of the street. Sparky followed, leaving the door ajar.

Not a minute later, we heard Sister Theresa in the foyer. These nuns wear simple white habits without starched wimples. Their heads are covered in part by a scarf that trails down their backs, though they call it a “veil.” Evidently, Sister had not yet retired when I called her, for she entered dressed as she had been for the day.

She was no more alarmed to discover four people and a dog than she had been to hear me on the intercom. I’d forgotten how much she resembled the late Aretha Franklin. I remembered a spring talent show in which she had put the nervous student performers at ease by opening the show herself, singing with gusto a version of “Respect,” the lyrics of which she’d revised to make it a song about the woeful fate that would befall students of Mater Misericordi? who didn’t do exactly what their teacher told them to do.

She came to me, and we hugged. When I introduced her to my companions, she shook hands all around and then she stooped to scratch Winston behind the ears. “What a handsome boy.”

Sister and I sat in office chairs, facing each other. Bridget and Panthea stood by the filing cabinets. Sparky closed the door.

“You,” Sister said, “are the last boy I’d ever expect to tell me he was in some trouble. I don’t find the claim credible. What kind of trouble would that be?”

“I’ve news about Annie Piper.”

Her made-for-smiles face formed instead a somber grimace. She knew that good news about Annie wouldn’t have been delivered in this way. “That precious child.”

“I am sorrier than I can express to tell you that when Annie went missing all those years ago, she was abducted and impressed into . . . sexual slavery. Recently, she was murdered by a man who horribly abused her.”

Sister bit her lip, bowed her head, and made the sign of the cross. I was backlit by the desk lamp. She sat in faded shadow, but even in the faint light, her mahogany skin seemed to be polished like the face of a saint on one of the statues in the church. Unshed tears glimmered in her eyes. “Do the police have him, this monster? Has an arrest been made?”

“Not yet. And that’s not all. It grieves me to tell you that Keiko Ishiguro was abducted by the same people.”

Shock like fishhooks pulled her facial features into a mask of anguish. “Is she . . . ? No! She can’t be, not Keiko, too.”

“Keiko is alive, but she’s suffered much. Her story will be in the news soon. And there’s more.”

Sister Theresa gripped the pectoral cross that she wore on a chain around her neck, pressed it tight in her right hand. “More? Please God not another of our girls.”

I shook my head. “Litton Ormond.”

Shock and grief made way for bewilderment. She regarded me as if I’d spoken gibberish. “Litton? Litton Ormond? What do you mean?”

“Someone—something—in Mater Misericordi? serves as a scout for the sex traffickers who are responsible for Annie and Keiko. And that same individual almost surely told Corbett Ormond where his son had secretly been stashed away.”

She blinked, blinked. Her lashes flicked away slivers of tears, and her eyes welled no more. Her face hardened in anger, as if grief were an insufficient response to the mounting horrors. “Quinn? How do you know these things?” She regarded each of my companions with sharper curiosity than before. “Who are your friends?”

If I began to talk about aluf shel halakha and babies born into this world without a father and with no DNA from their mothers, if I spoke of creatures from the first universe, I would lose her just when I needed her the most.

I said, “Trust me, Sister. All that will be made clear when we’re able to sit here with Sister Margaret and question her.”

“Sister Margaret? What would you need to question her about?”

“She’s the obvious connection. She encouraged Annie in her writing and guided her to a particular college where she was provided with a scholarship perhaps funded by Bodie Emmerich.”

“Who? Emmerich who? I’ve never heard of such a person.”

“You will. Sister Margaret developed close relationships with both girls, the better to stay in touch with them after they left here and spot them for Emmerich when he needed new . . . talent. She chose Annie and Keiko to care for Rafael. She took Litton Ormond to Bellini’s on the day his father was waiting there for him.”

“Have you forgotten that she took other children as well? Not just Litton. Quinn, dear Quinn, this makes no sense.”

“The other kids are lucky to be alive.”

“No, no, no. Corbett was going to shoot Sister Margaret.”

“I think she arranged with him to make a pretense of meaning to shoot her and then to relent and flee. Neither of them suspected Michael Bellini would pull a gun from under the checkout counter.”

Sister Theresa shook her head. “Margaret is shy, quiet, the most devout among us. How can you know these things?” She looked again at my companions. “You can’t know these things.”