“Saves trouble,” the priest said when the policeman had left. “Hard to get the cops to believe one of their own is bent. If Baladine denies the story when he recovers, he’ll have a lot of explaining to do, why Lemour was with him.”

The firemen helped me carry Mitch out to their own car. They gave Peppy and me a ride to the emergency vet and even stayed with me to bring me back to the church an hour later.

“Six o’clock,” Father Lou announced now. “Mass. Want to serve, young lady?”

I started to remind him I wasn’t even baptized, then saw his fierce look and shut my mouth. I followed him back down the hall to the church. Robbie trailed behind us. There was broken glass in the side aisle, and a piece of St. Veronica’s arm had been shot off the high altar, but the church looked remarkably placid in the daylight.

I went into the vestry with Father Lou and watched him robe. He told me what vessels to bring and just to do as he said and I’d be fine. I walked behind him to the Lady Chapel, where a half dozen women waited, teachers going to mass on the first morning of school.

Father Lou bowed to the altar and turned to the women. “I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the House of the Lord.”

Chapter 48: Meet the Press

48 Meet the Press

“This photograph is a close–up of a bruise on my abdomen. A forensic pathologist says he can identify at least the make and size of the boot that made it. There will be a trial, I’m suing the person who kicked me, and I’ll make an identification in court, so it doesn’t matter now whether he burns the boot or cleans it. The point is, I’m alive, and I can make the identification.”

The eleven people whose papers and broadcast stations had decided to send them to St. Remigio’s looked at each other with a kind of incredulity that said, is this what she dragged us out here for? I smiled at them, I hoped engagingly. When they had come into the school library where Morrell had set up the screen and the projector, they’d mobbed me, wanting answers to all kinds of questions, ranging from what I knew about Baladine’s injuries to where I’d been since getting out of Coolis. I promised they could ask me anything when I finished my presentation.

Murray Ryerson, looking both belligerent and sheepish, was the only one who hung back from the group swarming around me. He said he knew I couldn’t be dead, I was too much of a grandstander for that, then planted himself in a corner and made a big play of studying his own paper when I started speaking.