Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [76]
Elena turned to look at Michael Roark. “Are you comfortable sitting up?” she asked.
He nodded ever so slightly, just a small tip of his head. But it was a definitive response, much more dynamic than his previous blinking in reaction to her squeezing of his thumb or toes.
“I’ve made something for you to eat. Would you like to try and see if you can get it down?”
This time there was no response. He merely sat looking at her, then moved his eyes away and to the window. Elena watched him. His head, turned as it was against the light, gave him, despite the bandages, a profile she hadn’t before seen. She hesitated, studying him a moment longer, then went past him and into the nook that was her part of the room.
Yes, she had turned into the store for sanitary napkins. But the move had been an excuse. Something else had caught her eye: a storefront rack with newspapers and a copy of La Repubblica with the bold headline FUGITIVES IN CARDINAL PARMA MURDER STILL AT LARGE, and beneath it, less bold, “Police Screen Victims of Assisi Bus Explosion.”
They were both stories she knew of, but in little detail. The assassination of the cardinal had, of course, been the talk of the convent, and then had come the explosion of the Assisi bus. But very shortly afterward she had gone to Pescara and had seen no papers or television since. Yet the moment she’d glimpsed the headlines, she’d reacted, making an instinctive correlation between the headline and Marco and the others—men who were armed and guarded her and her patient twenty-four hours a day. Men who seemed to know a great deal more about what was going on than she did.
Inside the store, she’d picked up the paper and seen photographs of the men the police were looking for. Her mind raced. The bus explosion had taken place Friday. Michael Roark’s automobile accident had occurred in the mountains outside Pescara on Monday. Tuesday morning she’d been given the order to go to Pescara. Could not a survivor of the bus explosion be badly burned and in a coma? Perhaps even have broken legs? Could he have perhaps been secretly moved from one hospital to another, or even to a private residence for a day or more before arrangements had been made to bring him to Pescara?
Quickly she’d bought the paper. And then as an afterthought—as a way to hide it from Marco and an unquestionable excuse for why she’d gone into the store—she’d bought the sanitary napkins and had both put into the same brown paper bag.
Back at the house, she’d gone immediately to her nook and put the napkins on a shelf where they could be seen. And afterward she’d carefully folded the newspaper, putting it away under clothing still in her suitcase.
“Dear God,” she’d thought over and over. “What if Michael Roark and Father Daniel Addison are the same person?”
Washing her hands and changing into a fresh habit, she’d started to take the newspaper from her suitcase, wanting to hold it up next to her patient. To look at the photograph and see if there was any resemblance at all. But Marco had called her from the staircase, and she had not been able to do so. Putting the paper back, she’d closed the suitcase and gone to see what he wanted.
Now Marco and Pietro were outside and Luca was sleeping. Now there was time.
Michael Roark was still looking out the window, his back to her, as she came in. Moving closer, she folded the paper back and held it up so that the photograph of Father Daniel Addison was level with her patient. The bandages made it difficult to tell; moreover, Michael Roark’s beard was growing, while the photo of Father Daniel showed a man clean shaven, but… the forehead, the cheekbones, the nose, the way the—
Abruptly, Michael Roark turned his head and looked directly at her. Elena started and jumped back, jerking the paper out of sight behind her as she did. For a long moment he seemed to glare at her and she was certain he knew what she had been doing. Then slowly his mouth opened.
“Wa—a—ah—t—errr,” he garbled the word hoarsely. “Wa—a