Read In the Still of the Night for Free Online Page B

of the passageway. It was such a little distance to the school door and yet the fire light above the door seemed remote. Two low-wattage bulbs caged in ceiling outlets scarcely lit a place already without shadows. No wonder it was called the tunnel. She wanted to hurry, to escape the echo of her own footfalls—if that was what she was hearing—but an inner warning held her back. The last few feet and she crashed into the brass bar that ought to have opened the door, but it did not budge. Again and again she pushed, but it was solidly in place, locked tight. She drew a deep breath and listened for the sound of the children: their room was not far from the door. But she did not hear a murmur. Could Dan have sent them home? And if he had, would he not have come this way himself and waited for her in the passage?
    It came to her then that there had been a recent change in the lock-up system. Looters had come through the church and vandalized some of the classrooms. Now, at a given hour, you could pass from the school to the church, but not from the church to the school. Her panic eased and she turned back. She opened the church door to confront a figure palely lighted and seeming about to enter the passage she was leaving. He turned abruptly and went the way the monsignor had gone, passing behind the altar.
    “Father?” she called after him. It might have been one of the other assistants. He did not return. She had only seen his face darkly, but she was sure it was the same she had seen reflected in the museum door that morning.
    Morrissey was waiting for her, alone in the classroom she was allowed to use for her after-school art class. They both spoke at once, Kate asking where the children were, and Morrissey saying she’d been gone a long time.
    “You look terrible,” he said then. “What happened?”
    Kate shook her head. “Nothing. I take it you dismissed the children?”
    “They dismissed themselves, the little villains. I sent the one called José to the boy’s room. He’d wet himself. And when he didn’t come back, the youngster who sat next to him said he’d gone home. How she knew I don’t know. I’m no good with children, Kate, and Monsignor Carey knows it. But every chance he gets, he throws me in with them.”
    “Daniel to the young lions,” Kate said.
    “It’s no joke. That José or Rafael or whatever his name is a troublemaker.”
    “He’s not,” Kate said. “He’s full of imagination and his home life is dreadful. He has an older brother he adores, but who beats up on him regularly.”
    Morrissey remembered how the youngster had not even flinched when he had come near hitting him. It crossed his mind that the boy wanted to be struck. “What did the monsignor have to say? I have to go in a minute.”
    “The troublemaker is the youngster who tattles on him all the time, Annabelle.”
    Morrissey was impatient. “Do you think the Old Man suspects us? That’s the bottom line, isn’t it?”
    “No, I don’t think he does. If he did, I think he’d come right out and ask what was going on between us.”
    “Just like that,” Morrissey said, mocking her. “And what would you say to that?”
    “Nothing, monsignor.”
    She could premeditate her lies, Morrissey thought. She was more honest than he was, who, at best, could figure out ways to evade the truth. “I must go,” he said again. “I can go through the tunnel. You had to go around, didn’t you?” She nodded. “Don’t hang around here, Kate. These days you never know. Dear God, this place is depressing. No wonder kids grow up hating school.”
    “You’d better go, Dan. As you say, you never know.” The only sound in the building was the pipes, the heat going on or off.
    Neither of them had the impulse to embrace, to throw away caution, as was so often the case. As soon as the heavy door to the passageway closed behind him, he wanted to go back and at least say he loved her as he had never hoped to love a woman. But the day so