Rick Mofina - Perfect Grave

“Why not go to them now?”

“Your stories have been fair and accurate. I want to know that the truth will be known.”

He scanned the journal and the material. It was dynamite.

“If we go ahead, I won’t publish your name, but I think the Order is going to know where we got our information.”

“The Order will ultimately deal with me as it sees fit. I’ve accepted that, but I know Anne would want this, which brings me to another reason why I’m coming to you. A man came into our home and murdered our Sister. He’s still out there and he could harm others. I know we want him arrested and prosecuted.”

“That’s vengeful talking for a nun. Aren’t you supposed to forgive your enemies?”

“We’re also human, we get angry, and we seek what is right and just. Believe me, I have agonized over this.”

Jason shook her hand.

“I’ll do my best.”

“I’ll pray for you.”

After escorting Denise out, Jason returned to the boardroom and spent half an hour reviewing Sister Anne’s journal. Then he went to his desk and made a number of quick calls, to check out a few things.

Next he went to Reep, showed him the documents, and pointed out Sister Denise in the background of recent news photos, assuring him that she was a legitimate source. After he’d heard everything Jason had to tell him, and after flipping through the journal and the fax indicating where Sister Marie could be located, Reep steepled his fingers.

“So you want to go up to Canada, find this hermit nun, and see what secrets she holds about our murdered nun’s previous life?”

“I think I could deliver a helluva package.”

Reep turned to look at the map on his wall.

“You’d have to fly into Calgary, which is not all that far.”

“I checked. I can fly Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia, connect to Calgary, rent a car, drive to the nun’s place. Give me two days, tops.”

“What if the nun doesn’t talk to you?”

“We’ve got the ‘secret diary’ that was hidden under the floor of her room. That’s a heck of a scoop. And I’ll give you a Canadian place line, loads of color and intrigue. A Mirror exclusive, say, secret diary and hermit nun in Canadian Rockies may hold clues to Seattle nun’s murder.”

The beginnings of a tense smile flickered on Reep’s face.

“Go. Get on the next plane. But, I’m telling you, Wade, you damned well better come back with a big one.”

“ A n e-ticket will be waiting for you at the Air Canada counter. Take your passport, it’ll make things easier,” Maggie in travel told Jason over his cell.

He was driving to his apartment, eye on his rearview mirror because he was speeding. Before he’d left the Mirror, Maggie had given him four hundred Canadian dollars and a company credit card.

“You’ve got over two hours to make your flight,” she said. “I’ll get a cab rolling to your place to take you to the airport.”

At his apartment, Jason packed fast.

He grabbed his laptop, extra batteries, files, and enough clothes for two nights. Traffic was choked due to a wreck on I-5. By the time he arrived at Sea-Tac International, got his ticket, got wanded through security, and cleared Canadian Immigration, preboarding was commencing.

As the queue formed, Jason called Grace Garner. He had to smooth things over, he thought, as her line rang. If something broke on the story while he was away, he’d need help. And if he uncovered critical information on this trip, he might need to broker a deal. He got her voice mail. The sound of her voice resurrected memories of them together. He pushed them aside and he left her a message.

“Grace, it’s Jason. I know things have been tense lately, but call me.”

The jet to Vancouver was three-quarters full.

Jason had a window seat with no one beside him for the forty-minute flight. In the air, his stomach tightened over the story. What if he struck out and something broke back home while he was away? Not much he could do about that. Chewing gum did not ease his tension.

Things looked gray outside.

A gentle rain was falling when he landed in Vancouver, British Columbia. Before connecting to Calgary, he checked his phone to see if Grace had returned his call.

Nothing.

He tried calling his old man. Maybe his dad had something. More important, Jason was concerned about how his father was holding up.

No answer.

His jet to Calgary departed on time. When the plane leveled off over the mountains, he put his files, recorder, and laptop on the tray table and began working. He scoured the photocopied pages of Sister Anne’s journal, studied her graceful handwriting. The bulk of her entries were mundane notes or reflection on experiences of delivering hope in Third World countries. But scores of excerpts hinted cryptically at her past. Jason captured them into a story file, highlighting those that leapt from the page, such as: Oh heavenly Father, can I ever be forgiven for what I did, for the pain I caused? Although I am not worthy, please forgive me.

Regret and remorse were the underlying tones, he thought, as he read an excerpt written near the last days of her life: I deeply regret the mistakes I have made and will accept your judgment of me.

What the hell happened? What could a nun have done that would compel such tortured soul-searching? It wasn’t clear. She doesn’t spell it out here. And he considered what Sister Denise told him about Sister Anne’s odd revelation about “destroying lives.”

What does it all mean?

Jason gazed out his window for the answer. Was it out there among the Rockies, reaching up from the earth below? All he could see was an ocean of snowcapped peaks that stretched to the edge of the world.

The key had to be in her past life.

And his best shot at finding it would be with the hermit nun, he thought, closing his laptop and his tray as the plane made its descent.

As the jet banked, its wing tipped. Suburbs wheeled by, along with a web of expressways and buildings. When the plane lined up for its final approach, Jason’s stomach quaked in time with the hydraulic groan of the landing gear coming down.

Man, he could fail on an epic scale.

Or break this story wide open.

J ason didn’t have a second to waste.

On the ground in Calgary, he rented a compact car and got directions to Deerfoot Trail, a multilane expressway that sliced through the city.

Heading south, he glided by Calgary’s skyline with its gleaming skyscrapers jutting before the Rockies to the west. On his left, perched on a hilltop, he saw the glass- and-brick rectangle that was the Calgary Herald, the city’s dominant paper. Nice-looking building.

Jason checked his precision-folded map and the blue-inked line the rental clerk had made to guide him south along Deerfoot Trail and out of the city to Highway 2, which was the main provincial road. It ran north-south like an incision through much of Alberta to the Montana border.

About an hour from Calgary, as he passed High River he heard the intro to Led Zepplin’s “Rock and Roll” and he cranked the radio’s volume and marveled at how the prairie plains met the Rocky Mountains.

Glorious.

Some time later, as he continued south, he was intrigued by the signs for Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump, the ancient site where natives would drive the great herds over the cliff to their deaths for food and clothing. Farther south, after he turned west toward the Crowsnest Pass, he saw the massive wind turbines, giant white windmills harnessing energy.

Cool.

Some four thousand people lived in Pincher Creek, a town nestled amid the ranch country and foothills of the Rockies. Jason got a second-floor room at the Big Wagon Inn Motel, a stucco building with a small, clean restaurant with tables covered with red-checkered tablecloths.