Page 73 of Coram House

The air is knocked out of me. “Paid people off,” I manage. What had Father Aubry said?Alan was instrumental to the plan, of course, but so was Bill.Is this what he meant?

“But—who?” I stammer. “What people?”

The fire crackles. Karen’s spoon clinks against the mug as she stirs her tea, though it must be cold by now.

“Whoever he could get away with. Listen, I can’t prove it. He’s too smart for that. But you hear things.” She raises her eyebrows meaningfully.

“So he didn’t offer you money?”

She gives me a stern look, like I’m a child who hasn’t been paying attention to the lesson. “Of course not. He knew I’d have thrown it right back in his face.”

I don’t know what to think. Karen sounds so sure, but she’d sounded sure on tape when she talked about the girl being pushed out the window. A girl whose death certificate says she died of the flu. An event Sarah Dale said never happened.

Karen puts down her mug and looks at me intently. “Look,” she says. “He pushed hard to convince every last one of us to take the settlement the church was offering. And I mean, pushed. And for people like Fred, he did a lot more.”

“You’re saying he paid Rooney off?”

She studies me. “You’ve met Fred, I’m guessing.”

I nod.

“Well, then you can probably guess how I know. Fred would do anything for a crumb of power he could wield over the rest of us. That never changed.”

I can picture it—Rooney as a teenager with that snarl, an enforcer on the littler kids. His power both shield and weapon. “But why didn’t Bill get in trouble if he was bribing people?” I ask. “If you knew, others must have too.”

Karen shrugs. “Who was going to prosecute him? Besides, Fred never came out and said it. Just dropped hints. Just enough to make it clear that he got a bigger slice of the pie than the rest of us.” She snorts in disgust. “Like we were competing to see who could get more of that blood money.”

“Is that why you didn’t take the settlement money from the church?”

“Of course I took it,” she says. “I needed a new truck.”

“But the NDA,” I say, my stomach sinking. Everyone who took the money had to sign a nondisclosure agreement that they wouldn’t discuss the details of the case, an agreement she was in violation of right now.

“Fuck the NDA,” Karen says. Then she looks at me, hard. “Was that all it was worth? Those years of our lives. The down payment on a truck?”

I think the question is rhetorical but it becomes clear she’s waiting for me to answer. “It wasn’t fair.”

She looks disappointed in me. “Life hardly ever is,” she says. “Hang on, I need to feed the fire.”

Karen opens a door on the stove and tosses in a scoop of wood pellets from a bucket nearby. The dogs are still a smelly snoring pile on the floor. My mind spins with what Karen has told me. Bill Campbell, bribing people to drop the case. This goes a step beyond anything I’d guessed. I wonder how Stedsan fits into this mess.

Karen settles back into her chair. “You know, I read about Sister Cecile in the paper,” she says. “So the old hag slipped and fell off a cliff?”

“That’s one interpretation.” I sip my tea, buying time while I decide how much to share.

Her eyes are hungry. “But not yours.”

“No. I think someone killed her.”

“Well, I’m not surprised someone wanted her dead. Hell, I poured myself a drink to celebrate. Someone should have put a stake in her heart years ago.”

I wince at the image of pierced flesh and spurting blood. For a second, I consider what I’m about to say, wondering if I’m violating my promise to Parker. But I know I’m going to say it either way.

“Karen, what if I told you that Fred Rooney was a suspect?”

Karen’s eyebrows furrow. “For killing Sister Cecile?”

I nod. She lets out a low whistle and leans back in her chair. Then, silently, she gets up and fetches a bottle of whisky from a cabinet in the corner. She pours some in her mug and then holds it up to me. The bottle looks old and dusty. I want some, desperately, but shake my head no. It’s a long drive home.

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