Mystery Story - Part One (Rough Draft)

In the books I read as a kid, a case always started with a smoking hot girl walking into the office.  She was all long legs, big eyes and new-to-the-city innocence, with a dash of that ephemeral wanton charm bubbling just beneath the surface, practically bursting to be let out for the dashing hero.  Me, I get world-weary, middle-aged nuns.  I’m not sure if that says something about the world or my status as a hero. 

Not that I’d ever claim to be a hero.  Heroism is a tiresome, thankless job, and I very much like to be thanked.  With money.  And the occasional show of feminine affection.  Looking at the sister, I didn’t figure I’d get much of either.  I sighed inwardly and smiled my best welcoming smile, motioning for her to take a seat in the big, cushy chair across from mine.  While I had a desk, it was buried somewhere in the corner beneath books, papers and sundry other things esoteric and geeky.

She sat down, perfect posture, and I heard the jangle of keys.  She wasn’t carrying a purse. 

“What can I do for you, sister?” I asked, putting my feet up on the ottoman. 

“I’m not sure,” she replied, actually managing to almost completely suppress her disapproval over my somewhat lax attitude toward professionalism. 

In my defense, I wasn’t technically a professional anything.  I was mostly just a guy who got things done for people who needed it.

“I’ve found that often makes my job a little tougher, though not always impossible,” I told her, grinning. 

She didn’t return it.  Instead, she gave my boots a quick glance, then looked back at me, her eyebrows lifting microscopically.  Unable to break her gaze, I felt my legs, seemingly of their own accord, slowly withdrawing and finding a place on the floor as my back straightened.  She gave me a barely perceptible nod, as if the world was again as it should be.  I’d have suspected her of witchcraft, but there was no magic involved, just sheer force of will.  I think I even sat up a little straighter.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.  “Mind if I ask why you’re here?  I don’t tend to get a lot of, ah, non-secular visitors.”

“I understand,” she said.  “I’ll admit that I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t important, or if I hadn’t exhausted my other options.  You are truly my last resort.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” I replied dryly.  It didn’t faze her. 

“I was sent here by a friend,” she continued.  “Not a member of the congregation, of course, but someone who I knew from before I received the calling.”

“Mind if I ask who?” I was curious, as my line of work made it so that I was strictly word-of-mouth.  There wasn’t a listing in the yellow pages for guys who were willing to use not-strictly-legal means to solve problems. 

“I do,” she said curtly.

“Fair enough,” I shrugged.  “Go on.”  Her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.  “Please,” I added quickly.

“A few months ago, one of our postulants…” she began.

“Sorry, postulant?”

“A young woman who sought to enter the order, but had yet to take her vows,” she clarified.  I nodded.  “Her name was Abby.”

She hesitated and I studied her face.  The hard lines I’d mistaken for the standard prim and proper stiffness of religious types, I realized were the scars of a life lived by someone who rarely took the easy way out.  There were wrinkles, sure, like the worry-lines dug deep in her forehead, but there were also the little lines at the edge of a mouth that was used to smiling.  It was the kind of armor you developed whether you liked it or not when you saw the worst of the world day in and day out, fought the darkness, losing more than you won, but still kept pushing to make it better anyway.  I leaned in closer.

“Take your time,” I told her.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

She took a deep, steadying breath before she went on, her hand reaching into the pocket of her coat.  She closed her eyes for a moment and when she looked up at me, I saw a deep sadness in her eyes.

“Abby was special,” she told me earnestly.  “She came from a…difficult background.  Her family didn’t have much, and what they did have, she saw little of.  Her mother didn’t have time for her and her father…” Her voice trailed off.  I nodded, my jaw tightening.  She didn’t need to say it.

“I remember the day she arrived at the convent,” she went on, a proud, fierce smile creeping across her face.  “She couldn’t have been a day over seventeen and obviously hadn’t eaten in days and hadn’t slept.  There were bruises and track marks on her arms and I could see she’d been crying, but she held herself up straight.  She said she’d heard the call and it was time for her to make a new life.”

“So she was an addict?” I asked, gently as I could.

“She was,” the sister replied, placing a heavy emphasis on was.  She held up her hand as if to stop me from going any further.  “But that isn’t all she was.”

I nodded.  “People aren’t usually just the one thing, when it comes down to it,” I told her.  She seemed to approve.

“I’ll be the first to admit that there was a period of acclimation with Abby.  I sat with her many of those first nights, while the vestiges of it left her system.  It wasn’t easy,” she said matter-of-factly.  “It never is.  But it wasn’t my first time, nor is it likely to be my last.”

“Once it was all over, though, Abby became one of the most devoted postulants I’ve ever known.  She had one of the brightest, most insatiable minds I’d ever come across, and that kind of energy you only find in the young and those touched by God.  I think she was both.”

“She sounds like a good kid,” I offered.

“She is.  She has a talent for doing the real work of Christ, the charity and the outreach.  She told me once that the reason God had made her life the way it had been was so she could better understand and help those around her.”  The sister’s eyes shone as she spoke, her voice thick. 

At her age, that kind of wisdom was both beautiful and heartbreaking.  I’d known kids like Abby.  I wish I could say they’d all made it out like she had, but I try not to only lie to myself about the things that don’t matter.

“There was nothing in the world that meant more to her than helping others.  She was driven and kind and wonderfully compassionate.  She…,” her voice trailed off.

“What happened to Abby?”

The sister’s eyes fluttered and she swallowed hard.  “That’s the problem, Mr. Andrus,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.  “We don't know.”