The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors by Jonathan Santlofer, S.J. Rozan Page A

to, sneaking it past whoever was reading over his shoulder.
    A new rector shows up, Lawrence Morrow had said. A few days later, Christopher Taite drops by to frighten him .
    She flipped the pages. One week later. Two.
    There it was.
    An eighteen-year-old dead “by his own hand.” A further notation: “ Not cons. gr. ” Amanda recalled the thurifer’s emphasis on the sin. In those days the Episcopal Church must have taken the rules very seriously, or at least this one did. Not consecrated ground , Father Dean’s brief note meant. The dead teenager could not be buried in the churchyard.
    â€œChristopher Wallace Taite,” the line in the ledger read.
    Known, she was sure, as Wally.
    Three hereditary thurifers named Christopher, and Wally, a suicide at eighteen, who never succeeded to the post. A ne’er-do-well. The black sheep of the family. Unlikely to have been chosen as thurifer of Trinity and St. Michael, even had he lived.
    But the church would not have left the succession to chance. There had to be another candidate: someone in training.
    And the congregation of today, when the national church had long resolved the issue, was unalterably opposed to women as priests.
    Not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offenses .
    Amanda took a flashlight from her desk and stepped out into the hall, then jumped against the wall because she heard the creak of footsteps. But she had locked the door behind her, so it had to be the building settling.
    Right. A hundred-fifty-year-old church built of solid stone, choosing just this moment to settle.
    She listened. No more creaking.
    Amanda took a moment to slow her breathing, reminding herself that the supernatural did not exist. There was only this life, this planet, this existence. The rest was repressive bunk.
    Fortified by her own denials, the priest made her careful way to the end of the hall and opened the heavy wooden door to the churchyard. In the darkness, nothing stirred. She clicked on the flashlight and tried to remember the path. She walked slowly, turning neither to the left nor to the right. The ghosts in the trees were only the night sounds of the material world. The watchful Heavens above were empty space. She recited this mantra, her desperate dying faith, as she reached the Taite family plot.
    There were the headstones.
    Not weighing our merits …
    She played the flashlight beam over the names, one by one. No Christopher Wallace Taite. Of course not. Wally was not buried in consecrated ground.
    But pardoning our offenses .
    The other grave she was looking for: The other one was there.
    For a moment Amanda was dizzy, the world shifting on its axis. She stumbled and found herself on her knees in front of the headstone. She scrambled up again, but her thoughts were whirling in twelve directions at once. Her doggedly materialist faith began to slip from her grasp. Meditate long enough on the Improbable, Professor Gyver used to say, and you will come to accept the Impossible.
    There had been two murders thirty years ago, not one; and the second, not the first, was the church’s dirty secret.
    IX
    At ten the next morning, she sat in the Lady Chapel, the 1928 Book of Common Prayer open on her lap. She was trying to memorize the traditional liturgy so that the deacons would stop looking askance as she read past their fingers. She felt, more than saw, Christopher Taite slip in. He settled beside her, so lightly the loose wooden pew never budged.
    â€œAre you staying?” he asked without preamble.
    â€œStaying where?”
    â€œHere. At Trinity and St. Michael.” He sat very still in his tie and shirtsleeves. “I would imagine you suspect a conspiracy to force you out.”
    She shut the book, leaving one of the attached ribbons to hold her place. “If I leave,” she said, “you probably won’t visit me anymore.”
    He considered this. “Would you stay if I said I shall continue to