Joel Goldman - Deadlocked

Mary shook herself free of Mason's guiding hand as they passed beneath the arched limestone entrance to the church, flowing among the many people who greeted her, hiding her apostasy and her darker self in the rainbow light that refracted through the stained-glass windows lining the outer walls of the sanctuary. The windows were tall rectangles of bold color depicting great moments of faith, saints and sinners immortalized in their triumphs and failures.

She took a seat in a pew near the front, wedged between two large, older women who sheltered her, their blue-white coiffed heads towering over Mary like sentries. Mason got the message. She didn't want his company while she communed.

Mason slid into a pew at the back of the church, an outsider looking in on a ritual that was foreign to him. Moments later, a priest led a procession into the sanctuary, making his way to the stage a hundred paces from the entrance. He was a couple of decades younger than Father Steve, his devotion to his faith evident in his sure steps and the certainty of his gaze as he made eye contact with the congregation, favoring everyone with a comforting, confident nod. They were all in the right place at the right time, he said without speaking a word. People beamed back at him, silently confirming their mutual bond.

Father Steve was a no show. Mason doubted that priests could take Sundays off without a note from God, but Father Steve had become almost as elusive as Whitney King. Though he'd managed to defy the long-standing practice of the diocese to rotate priests at least every five to ten years, holding on to his pulpit for more than thirty, Mason saw Father Steve's future even if the priest didn't. Father Steve was on his way out. There was a new priest on the block.

The priest ended his processional by taking his place behind the pulpit. There was a set of stairs at each end of the altar that allowed the priest and his parishioners to come together. Another stairway, nearly invisible descended from a back corner of the altar, providing a private passage for the clergy, though Mason couldn't tell where those stairs led.

He scanned the parishioners, looking for Whitney King, the only other person who would be as obviously out of place as Mason even though King belonged to St. Mark's. The sanctuary had three sections of seats divided by two aisles running from front to back, each section split in half by aisles running side to side. Though it was only about two-thirds full, the sanctuary easily held five hundred people. A sea of heads bowed in front of him, listening to readings from the Old and New Testaments, reciting prayers and singing hymns, rising for the Gospel and kneeling for prayers until, as if on cue, they rose and formed three lines to receive communion, one line on either side of the sanctuary and the third down the center aisle.

Mary's two protectors peeled away from her, taking up station in front of the altar at the head of the lines on the sides of the sanctuary, where the wafers that were supposed to represent the body of Christ were being passed out. The priest performed the same rite in the center aisle. People jostled for position, preferring the priest's line; stragglers grumpily gave way for the blue-haired ladies. Mary let the crowd sweep past her before slipping into the priest's line.

The low buzzing chatter of people waiting their turn burst into an astonished miniroar as Father Steve emerged from the stairs at the back of the altar and walked briskly toward Mary. He wrapped his meaty arm around her, leaning to her ear as he whispered and pulled her out of line. Mason stood, watching as Father Steve elbowed aside the stout blue-haired guardian blocking the steps to the altar, knocking the bowl of wafers from her hands, pressing his hand into the small of Mary's back, propelling her up to the altar.

Chaos broke out when the bowl of wafers hit the floor, congregants rushing to scoop them up. When Mary cast a backward glance searching for him, Mason began weaving through the crowd, picking up his pace as Father Steve reached the stairs at the back of the altar. Mason broke into open field running, catching falling worshipers as he brushed past them, cursing loudly enough for many to hear when Mary and the priest disappeared from view.

People yelled as he vaulted onto the altar, nearly tripping over an exposed microphone cord. Though their outraged voices mixed together making it difficult to understand them, he was certain that they weren't offering their blessings. The young priest tried to restore order, calling back two men who thought to chase Mason.

Mason stopped for an instant at the top of the back stairs to get his bearings, throwing a look at the men that told them to listen to their priest. The menace in his unshaven face and bullet-hole eyes persuaded them to retreat.

There was a short hall at the bottom and a door that was slowly closing as he took the stairs two at a time. That door led into another passageway that continued straight ahead a short distance before branching off at right angles in opposite directions.

Mason looked down both halls. He didn't hear voices or footsteps, but he saw a red-lighted exit sign at the end of the hallway to his right. He ran down that corridor, turning another corner, crashing through a door and into a concrete cavern at the bottom of yet another set of stairs, the morning sun casting a shadow at his feet. He had emerged from the church's basement on its back side after bolting up the stairs into the sunlight.

Clearing the top step, he stopped again. He was on the edge of an empty grassy quadrangle; the church was behind him, the high school to his right, and the street to his left on the far side of the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the grounds. Opposite him and set back a hundred yards was a small house buried in a stand of tall oaks, their broad leafy expanse serving as camouflage. Mason guessed it was the rectory, Father Steve's house.

He sprinted across the grass, barely slowing when he reached the front door of the house, not bothering to knock as he shouldered the door open. He skidded to a stop in the front hall, caught off guard by the unexpected scene in the living room to his left.

He found Mary and Father Steve staring at an aquarium sitting on a black metal stand, the price tag still visible on one leg, brightly striped fish happily oblivious to the humans who had invaded their space.

The morning was hot and the house was stuffy, a floor fan stirring up dust mites without cooling the clotted air. The living room was sparsely furnished, a wooden rocker with a flattened red pillow on the seat, a tired gray couch half-covered with a turquoise knitted afghan, and a low wooden table littered with magazines. The hardwood floor wheezed with each step Mason took. A fireplace dominated the outer wall, a black screen drawn across the grate, a brick hearth cut into the floor.

Mary and Father Steve whirled toward Mason, both clutching their hearts.

"You scared me!" Mary said.

"Makes us even," Mason answered. "You left in kind of a hurry and you didn't look too happy about it."

"I'm afraid that's my fault," Father Steve said.

"You won't get an argument from me," Mason told him. "But don't expect me to believe you hustled Mary out of the church just to show her some fish."

"They're my fish," Mary said. "Father Steve rescued them for me."

The missing fish and the abandoned deep sea diver in Mary's aquarium had convinced Mason that she was still alive, though she had denied knowing what had happened to them. That Father Steve had taken them, buying an aquarium for their foster home, was the latest paragraph in the indictment Mason planned for him.

He said to the priest, "Then you knew Mary wasn't coming back. Which is funny since you told me she'd gone to Omaha to see her husband."