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She’s setting an even more unforgiving pace than Ignatius did on our way here. In other words, she’s not showing signs of having just recovered from the flu.
“Do you mind me asking, what did you do before joining the convent?” I say.
She flashes me a look, then goes back to staring straight ahead like she was doing prior to my question.
“I joined young, at twenty-four, and I didn’t have much of a life before that,” she says. “My mother had multiple sclerosis and was bedridden for the last ten years of her life. I was her full-time caretaker and studied to be a nurse, but never worked as one. The nuns helped me care for my mother, and I joined the convent soon after my mother died. It was the only path forward for me.”
She’s definitely tall enough to match the description of the suspect, and she’s a trained nurse so she’d know where to stab a person to hit the heart. She’s also hardly winded from our brisk walk and the long speech she just delivered, which suggests stamina at least, and I’d assume strength as well.
“Yet despite being a healer, you chose to teach instead of taking care of the sick after you joined,” I say.
She flashes me another dark look. “I thought I had had enough healing to last a lifetime after taking care of my mother for so long. But I was called back to it a few years ago, which is the primary reason I stopped teaching. I spend my days visiting the sick and the infirm now to offer them comfort.”
“Do you ever visit the sick at night?” I ask and this time her sharp turn to glare at me causes her to slip in the slush. I grab her arm to prevent her from falling. It’s pure muscle and tendon. She’s definitely strong enough to kill too.
“Thank you,” she says as she rights herself. “Yes, sometimes the family calls for me in the middle of the night to be with a dying person. And I always respond.”
“Were you out between midnight and three AM last night?” I ask and this time she neither looks at me nor breaks her stride in any way. In fact, she speeds up so we can catch the green light on the street crossing.
“I was in my room sleeping last night,” she says once we’re across and only a short bridge over the river separates us from our destination.
“Can anyone confirm that?” I ask.
“Yes, of course,” she says. “The doors of the convent are kept locked from nine PM until six AM. Anyone who wishes to go out during those hours must have special permission. You can check if you don’t believe me.”
I will check that, but first things first. Even though I wasn’t raised religious, I still have enough respect for the church to know it’s not a good idea to treat a member of it like a suspect until it’s well warranted. And so far, she’s cooperating fully and answering all my questions. Though not exactly graciously.
We don’t speak again until we’re in her office at the youth center—a small, cold room at the end of the hall that separated the kindergarten from the youth center. Everything inside it is clean and functional, including all the binders on the shelves lining three of four the walls. She heads straight for the shelves behind her desk and proceeds to hand me a stack of four binders, then pulls out two more and holds onto them.
“In here are the names and short histories of all the people who attended the youth center in the last twenty-five years,” she says. “I trust you to return them to me in the same condition they’re in now.”
I assure her I will.
“And I will also need the list of all the bible school courses you and Father Ignatius taught,” I say and she shakes her head.
“I do not have hard copy records of those,” she says, which is odd, since there’s about a hundred more binders just like the ones we’re holding lining the shelves and I don’t see why those lessons wouldn’t be documented.
“I’ll compile those for you,” she adds. “And then I can send it via email, if you’d like.”
“That would be great,” I say and balance the folders I’m holding in one arm, so I can jot down my email on a piece of paper on her desk. I add my phone number as well. “Please get them to me as soon as possible.”
“Leave the note on the desk,” she says and I try to hand it to her. “You will have them tomorrow.”
Then she ushers me out of the room and down the hall. Once we’re outside, she locks the front door twice before following me to my car. She places the files she’s carrying gently in the trunk when I get it open, then refuses the ride back to the convent, wishes me a curt goodbye and strides off towards the church, still reminding me very much of an officer marching.
And the thing about that image is… would anyone really consider her gait exaggeratedly female? I sure don’t. But she ticks a lot of the other boxes when it comes to the kind of killer we’re looking for, I can’t deny that.
