Sister O'Marie - A Novena for Murder

“I was just hoping you might be able to get away for a couple of hours.”

“And what is it you have in mind?”

“I want someone to go with me to visit Leonel.”

“Oh, poor Leonel.” Eileen’s wrinkled face puckered with compassion. “He’s such a lovely young fellow. I know in my heart there must be some mistake.”

“You’ll come, then?” Mary Helen asked, as if she didn’t already know.

“Of course I’ll come. Just give me a moment to notify my office. Someone can fill in for me. The worst thing that can happen, God knows, is that a few books won’t get straightened.”

She’s almost too easy, Mary Helen thought affectionately, watching Eileen, round and blue, bustle toward the nearest intercom phone.

“Meet you by the garage,” she called after her friend.

Lifting the keys off the hook by the garage door, Mary Helen automatically began to sign out on the car calendar that hung beside the hook. “S.E. and S.M.H.” She wrote their initials in the tiny square. “Eight a.m. until noon, Hall of Jus…” She stopped abruptly. Sister Therese was an avid car-calendar reader. No sense spending an entire lunch answering questions about Leonel. Erasing “Hall of Jus…” she boldly printed “OUT.”

Smart move, she congratulated herself, hearing Therese’s nervous footsteps clipping along the parquet corridor toward her.

“I’m on my way to the chapel,” Therese whispered. “Third day of my novena.” She raised three arthritic fingers.

Mary Helen winked. With two of her own fingers, she shot the fleeting Therese a V for victory.

“Here I come,” she heard Eileen call cheerfully down the hallway.

“I’ll warm up the brown car,” Mary Helen called back.

With Eileen firmly planted in the passenger’s seat, Mary Helen pulled out of the garage. The headlights cut a comet of light through the low, dripping fog as she nosed the car down the curved driveway. The fog made small, bright halos around the headlights coming up the hill toward them.

“I can’t see the cars coming in until they’re nearly on top of me,” Mary Helen said, shifting into low.

“You keep an eye on the cars. I’ll keep an eye on the hill.” Eileen moved forward in her seat and crossed her fingers. “Don’t worry, old dear, I’ll let you know if the road disappears.”

“Eileen, if the road disappears, we’ll both know it!” Mary Helen hit the bright beams.

Eileen gasped. “Glory be to God, look!” She pointed over the side of the hill. “I swear by all that is good and holy, someone is crouching in the bushes.”

Stopping the car, Mary Helen checked in the rear view mirror. “Eileen, how could you possibly see someone in the bushes over the side of the hill? We can hardly even see the road.”

Carefully, she backed up and pulled over to the side.

“When you put on that high beam, I know I saw a head in that clump of pampas grass.”

Both nuns climbed out of the brown car. “I know I saw a head,” Eileen repeated, scrutinizing the mound of bluish-green grass. Its long, silvery-white plumes fluttered as cars passed on the opposite side of the road.

“I don’t see a blasted thing,” Mary Helen said. And it’s just as well, she thought, because I don’t know what I’d do if I did.

Eileen shrugged. “Well, I surely don’t see anyone now.” She stomped her feet to keep warm. “Maybe I’m just imagining things because of all that’s gone on. Besides, what in the world would we do if we actually saw someone?”

“I guess we’d be accused of more pluck than prudence.”

“How does the old saying go-‘Pluck makes luck’?”

Mary Helen pointed to one silky plume growing just above the grade. “It was probably the headlights hitting that.”

“You could be right. Come on in, old dear, before you freeze,” Eileen said, rubbing her hands together and climbing into the passenger seat.

After a final look, Sister Mary Helen slipped behind the steering wheel. She carefully rechecked the rear view mirror, then inched along down the driveway.

The two nuns were silent as they approached the downtown area. From the James Lick Freeway, they could see the dense morning fog beginning to lift. Ahead of them, the large antenna dominating the roof of the Hall of Justice had begun to penetrate the fog.

“Now, look at that.” Eileen pointed to the lone beam of sunlight reflecting off the antenna’s metal disc. “That has to be a good omen.”

“I surely hope you’re right.” Mary Helen was thinking about Leonel. Jailed in a strange country, with a strange language-how frightened and despondent the young man must feel.

After parking their car behind the large, gray building, the pair hurried along the walkway. Passing the Coroner’s Office, Mary Helen felt queasy. The coroner! The words “felony” and “penitentiary” jumped into her mind. She wondered when or if the man would notice the slit in his seal on the professor’s door. Through the glass she noticed a hurriedly dressed family huddled on the wooden bench. One older woman, her hair still in curlers, cried softly into a wad of Kleenex. Beside her, Mary Helen could feel Eileen begin to pucker.

“Those poor, dear people,” she muttered. “I wonder if there is something we can do to help?”

“Probably not,” Mary Helen said. “Let’s get upstairs and see if we can help poor, dear Leonel.”

A lanky patrolman in a dark-blue serge uniform held the lobby door open for them.

“Coming in, Sisters?” he asked.

“How ever does he know we’re nuns?” Eileen whispered.

“Maybe it has something to do with no makeup, no jewelry, conservative blue suits, and the cross we each have in our lapels.”

Inside, the lobby of the Hall of Justice was a thick stew of people: detectives, patrolmen, visitors, vendors criss-crossed the marble floor. A baby’s shrill cry pierced the din.

Along the far wall, a lonely line of men and women queued behind a cagelike window. “Over there,” Eileen said. Above the small window a sign read JAIL VISITING HOURS, 11 to 2.

“What in heaven’s name do you think we do?”

“Beats me.” Mary Helen checked her wristwatch. “We have plenty of time and absolutely no ‘know-how.’ “She shrugged. “Maybe we should drop in on Inspectors Gallagher and Murphy. They’ll help us out. All we have to do is play a little dumb.”

“And we won’t be fooling, old dear,” Eileen mumbled, following her friend to the large, black wall directory by the elevators.

“Going up?” A clean-cut young man held the elevator door open for them. Once inside, Mary Helen felt dwarfed. She had never realized how tall policemen were. Poor Eileen! Her nose must be a foot below everyone else’s. Eileen, wedged in the corner behind several erect backs, was rolling her eyes toward a peculiar bulge on the side of the conservative gray tweed suit in front of her.

“Gun,” she mouthed.

Mary Helen nodded.

The elevator came to a smooth stop. The two nuns zig-zagged their way out. Turning right, they followed the fourth-floor corridor to room 450.

From the doorway, Mary Helen scanned the cluttered room. It looked nothing like what she had imagined. Brightly colored phones, gray filing cabinets, and computer screens were scattered throughout. Fourteen wooden desks were pushed front to front into seven crowded groups. At each, two neatly groomed detectives faced one another. In dress shirts and ties, with jackets slung over the backs of chairs, they looked, Mary Helen thought, like insurance agents or realtors. That is, except for the shoulder holster and gun each man wore.

At the far end she spotted one desk with the flag of Ireland stuck in an empty Guinness bottle. On the facing desk was a lovely ceramic dish-garden full of healthy plants: piggy-back, philodendron, a touch of creeping charlie. Mary Helen knew, before she looked at the chairs, that the desk combination must belong to Inspectors Gallagher and Murphy.