Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(50)

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, softly and with sympathy. “Gaspera, what did you tell her? Could you help?”

“Not at all. Her Nance is lost, but,” he said to me rather than to Camille, “you should keep the drawing if you like it.”

“Technically, it’s evidence,” Wolf said. It wasn’t quite an objection; he was only trying to move the conversation back to someplace more manageable. “In the axe murders, you know. That’s where I found it, in a box with other evidence.”

“Evidence,” Mr. Lorino mumbled. “There’s evidence, and then there’s evidence. The attacker won’t be caught, not by the likes of you. Maybe he shouldn’t be.”

“Gaspera, don’t say such things.”

“I’ll say what I like,” he snapped at his sister. “If that’s the one privilege I gained by the bend in my skull, I’ll take it. The man who attacked us is misguided, but not so misguided as he seems. His heart is in the right place.”

Camille Lorino looked at me with apology in her eyes. “I’m sorry, but you see how he is. Talking in circles, and I never know what it means.”

He leaned forward and patted her knee. “It’s just as well. You have no part in this play, and I’m glad for that. It’s a small mercy. Maybe those are all the mercies we have left. But you don’t need to understand. They do.” He bobbed his head toward me, then Wolf. “They will unbend the pattern. Maybe they’ll even straighten the wrinkle—though if they don’t, he’ll straighten himself soon enough. Or someone else will do it for him . . . one of the robed men.”

“Mr. Lorino, are you saying that you know who attacked you? Who murdered all those people?” Wolf asked. He was not quite incredulous, I think because he didn’t know how much to believe. You could believe as little or as much as you liked when Mr. Lorino spoke . . . but good luck understanding any portion of it.

He shook his head, and the change in angle showed me quite clearly where the dent behind his left ear was deep and long, though it’d healed enough that his hair was growing back around its deeply cleft scar. “Do I know his name? No. I only know his shape, and his motive. He wants to unbend the pattern, too—but he’s making a mess of it. I wouldn’t worry about him.”

“You wouldn’t worry about an axe murderer?” I asked, trying to keep my eyebrows from lifting too high, or my voice from carrying too much insult.

“Not this one. He’ll stop before long, or they’ll stop him. Another two or three victims at best. There are bigger things at stake,” he said with great and sudden earnestness. “More lives, exponentially more lives. Look at you, both of you—you’re worried for the solar system, when the whole universe writhes in peril!”

His sister noticed the Bible on the floor, and bent to retrieve it—but he slapped it out of her hand, and rose from his seat. “It’s useless, and I want you to take it away! Worse than useless, because it makes promises but offers no answers!”

“Gaspera, calm down,” she told him firmly, and then retrieved the Bible. She held it to her chest, and did not offer to return it. “I’ll take it away, if that’s what you want—but you’re the one who asked me for it in the first place.”

“Take it away! Bring me something else, something with answers, not promises! I don’t need a prophet!” he all but shouted at her. “I need an astronomer!”

The situation had tipped, or as Mr. Lorino would’ve put it, it had become unbalanced.

It was time for us to leave, so we excused ourselves before we could rile him any further . . . and before Jeremiah could return and compel our exit. Camille apologized and apologized, and we reassured her again and again that we understood and took no offense.

We left her holding the book against her bosom, staring with patience and sadness at her brother, waiting for something like sanity—or, at the very least, reasonableness—to return to him.

Back down the linoleum halls we retreated, walking side by side, not touching or speaking until we’d made it outside. When the big doors closed in our wake and we stood in the sunshine, beside the trim green lawns and rows of meticulous flowers, I retrieved enough of my senses to say, “Chapelwood.”

“It’s an estate outside of town. I’ve been looking into it.”

“Coincidentally, so have I.”

He gave me a crooked eyebrow and a pursed lip. “You don’t say . . . ?”

I looked up at the bright blue sky, and blinked against the light. “Not Chapelwood exclusively, mind you. It’s more an interest in alternative forms of worship, and Chapelwood has attracted the attention of people who”—I cleared my throat, still so very dry—“people who watch such things.”

“Church-watchers? How funny,” he said, but it didn’t sound like he thought it was funny or even odd. “I didn’t realize you were that sort of enthusiast.”

“There is truth in the faith that raised me, but that’s not the only truth to be found. It’s not the only path . . . and some of the older, stranger paths . . . intrigue me.”

“I know the feeling,” he told me with a grin. “Well, let’s find our driver. Ah, there he is—parked over there. I told him to give us an hour, but we’ve scarcely spent two-thirds of that.”