Robert Stone - Death of the Black-Haired Girl

“What if they don’t accept it?”

“Don’t accept it? What do you mean?”

“Well,” McCallum said in some confusion. “I was talking to a friend over there. I thought it would be all right. Now it’s unclear.”

“I’ll go clear it up.”

“I don’t know,” McCallum said.

“Give me the… thing there. What do you call it?”

“Casket. It’s a casket.”

Stack went and got it.

“I thought it was ‘cremains’ or some shit.”

“Mr. Stack, please.”

“Casket. I’m going to take it over there to the church.”

McCallum rose from his chair and stared at Eddie Stack.

“I’d better go too.”

“Why?” Stack demanded, gripping the box. “What do you mean, you better go too?”

“Believe me, Mr. Stack. I should go. There are laws. If for some reason they don’t take it — I mean, I really thought they would — there are laws about transporting remains in New York State. You have to have a license.”

Stack and McCallum drove over to Holy Redeemer in McCallum and Jenkins’s Lincoln Town Car.

“I was thinking,” McCallum said as they drove. “You seem angry. So I’m thinking of the laws.”

“I appreciate it,” Stack said. “Does this cost me more?”

Maud’s remains were strapped into the rear seat.

“Are you serious? Of course not.”

On the way, McCallum kept trying to call his friend or whoever it was at Holy Redeemer who had encouraged his optimism, but he failed to make contact. When they got to the cathedral the undertaker parked in the space reserved for funerals.

“Nothing today,” he told Stack. “Except us.

“We’ll go to the rectory,” McCallum said. Stack, carrying the casket, kept falling behind, out of breath. Then McCallum changed his mind. “No, we won’t. We’ll go to the crypt — we’ll ring for the sexton.” So they reversed course and headed for the church itself.

Holy Redeemer had been built in the mid-1970s. It was a long, vaulted building with two huge winged structures on either side, like the flying buttresses on a Gothic cathedral. Both of the buttresses were larger than the vaulted construction in the center. They climbed three low, expansive steps and found every door of the main building’s entrance locked. McCallum went over to a small brass disk beside one door, a doorbell of sorts. It looked like a very old device, something from another era. Stack thought it might have come from an older church and been rigged up for this one. Above it was a plaque that read “Ring Bell for Sexton.” McCallum pressed it. No sound was audible where they stood. Stack heard no result. He set the casket down and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

“So warm today,” McCallum said to Stack. “Don’t worry,” he added. “This’ll work.” He seemed to have grown optimistic.

“Good,” said Stack.

Somewhat to Stack’s surprise, after a few minutes the door with the ring button beside it opened and a man in a black cassock came out and looked at them in a not particularly welcoming manner. He was wearing a civilian collar with a red tie under his cassock and seemed to be some kind of layperson, presumably a sexton. Stack recalled hearing or encountering the term “sexton,” but its meaning was unclear to him.

The man’s gaze immediately fell on the casket with Maud’s ashes in it. Stack found his stare somewhat offensive. He seemed to know McCallum and to not much care for him.

“What are you two doing here with that, McCallum?”

“This is Detective Stack,” McCallum said. “Detective, this is Arthur Porgest, the assistant sexton here.”

A detective was a good thing to be in Arthur Porgest’s world. He shook Stack’s hand.

“Mr. Stack unfortunately suffered the loss of his daughter. He wanted to place her remains alongside her mother’s. I’m sure it would be all right.”

“You’ll have to ask the monsignor.”

“No, no,” McCallum said. “We can unlock the crypt and put her up there.”

“I can’t just do that,” said the sexton.

“Sure you can,” Stack said. “Just do it.”

Porgest stalked off, leaving them on the steps, and came back with a pale, slight, bald priest with a purple band framing his Roman collar. The priest had a pamphlet in his hand. He raised it to his forehead to shield his eyes from the bright winter sunlight, the better to see them more clearly.

“Hello, Mr. McCallum,” he said. “Let me guess. Would this be Mr. Stack?”

“I’m Eddie Stack,” Stack said. “I’ve brought my daughter here. I mean, I’ve brought her body here.”

McCallum and the priest looked down at the white steps of the church, away from the casket.

“We’ve heard about your need from Mr. McCallum. I’m Father Washington.” He put his hand out but Stack did not take it. “I’m afraid this is still under discussion.”

“What do you mean, ‘this’? Letting my daughter be with her mother? I want to put her here now.”

“This is embarrassing,” the priest said.

“Is it?” Stack asked him.

The priest, smaller by several inches than McCallum or Stack, kept the pamphlet at his forehead and looked at them with what seemed great intensity. Because of his baldness and the smoothness of his head, the reflected glow he cast was impressive.

“For one thing, I’m afraid I can’t ask you into the rectory at the moment. Or…” He gestured beyond the tall doors of the church. “We may not look busy today, but we are. His Eminence hasn’t made a decision on this.”

“Couldn’t we,” McCallum asked, “just place Miss Stack’s remains now? And perhaps talk later.”

“Mr. McCallum,” the priest said, “we are not a convenience-store operation. You don’t drop in on us. You,” he told McCallum, “of all people, should know that. And,” he told Stack, “you should too, sir.”

“Mr. Stack is a police officer,” McCallum told the priest.

“Is that right?” Father Washington asked. “Very fine. Thank you for your service. Actually, I think I read that somewhere.”

“How about opening up and receiving the kid’s ashes?”

“Yeah, well,” Father Washington said in a strange tone, different from the brisk one he had been employing. “Now you want us.”

“Yeah,” Stack said. “Now I want yez.”

“Not so easy,” said the priest, with the hint of a smile.

“I think she wants her mother. I think her mother wants her there.”

“I’m sorry,” Father Washington said softly. “I haven’t the authority.”

“She made a mistake,” Stack said. “I guess you heard about that. But she wants to be with her mother. Her mother would want that.”

The priest looked at each of them in turn with renewed energy. “Look here, guys. Let’s put Maud away for the weekend and we’ll all discuss it further. His Eminence—”

“Put who away?” Stack asked him, biting his lip. “Who we putting away?”

McCallum put a hand to Stack’s arm.

“Why, the young lady,” Father Washington said. “I mean… Miss Stack’s remains.” He took a half step back toward the door.

“Let’s put them with her mother, Father,” Stack said.

“Look, McCallum,” said the priest. “When you get back to the funeral home you can explain this to him.”

“You explain it,” Stack said to the priest. “You explain it to me.”

Father Washington turned away and disappeared through the church door that was unlocked. Porgest, the sexton, had been standing just inside.

As they drove back — Maud strapped in the back seat again — McCallum started to explain.

“It’s a very conservative diocese, Mr. Stack. Other places would be more flexible. They’d be — I hope they’d be more understanding.”