Judgment Day

DAY 1 SANTA PELAGIA, MEXICO The first thing Deauchez noticed when he woke up was how quiet it was. He arose from his makeshift bed on the couch and went to the window of Father Espanza's office, pulled back the heavy drapes, and blinked in the glare of the midday sun. The streets of Santa Pelagia were empty. Discarded blankets in dirty doorways, food wrappers, and other, more personal castoffs, like the baby shoe perched on a nearby flowerpot, were the only evidence of the crowds that had so recently inundated the small village. Even the thick pall of fear was gone, leaving an aftertaste like that at the scene of a day-old car wreck. Deauchez checked his watch. He'd been out for ten hours. He wished Martinez or Espanza had awakened him, but then they wouldn't unless he'd requested it, would they? And he hadn't said a word to them when he'd stumbled back through the dark last night; hadn't spoken, hadn't even checked the statue in the vestibule. To what end? It had bled, of course. Certainly the thing had bled--his own clothes had been covered with the stuff. He looked around now and noticed that the bloodied suit he'd left on the chair had been taken by someone; somewhere a middle-aged woman scrubbed his things, watching mesmerized as the water turned red, all the while muttering breathless, endless novenas. A shrill bleeping sounded from his black leather bag. In a moment, Deauchez had the computer on the coffee table and opened it with a single smooth gesture. On-screen was the red-capped visage of Brian Cardinal Donnelley. "Just getting up, Michele?" "A moment ago, yes." "How are you feeling?" "I'm perfectly well." Donnelley managed a distracted smile. He tapped a manila folder on his desk. "I read your report. Any further thoughts now that you've had some rest?" "I have nothing to add, Your Eminence. Except that from what I can see of the town, most of the pilgrims have already left." "Last night's was understood to be the final message, wasn't it?" "Even so, the crowds must have been quite eager to get home. It's unfortunate. I was hoping to interview some of the witnesses." Donnelley leaned forward and studied Deauchez keenly. "There was something I missed in your report. You didn't specify ... that is, you didn't exactly come right out and say whether or not you yourself saw ... Well, I don't want to put words in your mouth." Deauchez had a brief flash of the old cypress in Sanchez's field: the leaf-laden, oddly twisted top branches shaking violently in a wind that made no sound. "Nothing," he answered sharply. "That is, as I wrote there, the, the, the ... mood in the crowd was thick with an almost opaque fear. Until you have been in such surroundings you really cannot imagine how difficult it is to think clearly. It was a classic case of crowd hysteria." Donnelley was looking at him with an odd expression. Deauchez found he didn't much care for it. He told himself it was only because the lighting in the room was difficult, with the bright sun hitting him from behind. The laptop's inboard camera was not the best. "Be that as it may, it would be more thorough, I should think, to record all observations from the site." "I beg your pardon, Your Eminence, but I saw nothing of relevance other than what I already mentioned in the report: that a few people in the crowd did appear to have the wounds of Christ spontaneously appear; and that the statuette I brought from the Vatican did bleed also, apparently independently, though there was blood on my own hands so I cannot absolutely confirm. It was very dark." "Any traces of stigmata on you now?" "None. If there had ever been wounds they were closed by the time I got back here last night. The blood on my cJensen, Jane is the author of 'Judgment Day' with ISBN 9780345430359 and ISBN 0345430352.