Read Online In the Still of the Night by Dorothy Salisbury Davis - Free Book Online

tell him?”
    “Because … because, you know.”
    Kate did not follow up. She was remembering his one question Sunday: Why you not go to communion? “What did happen to you, José?”
    His eyes grew large and round as he began to tell her. “The big old building near my house? The doors … boom, boom, boom, boom …” He gestured a row of doors such as sometimes line the street where a building is being demolished. “The windows broke.”
    Kate nodded. She could visualize the building and knew its approximate location. A new housing project was about to get under way on that whole block.
    “My brother, I see him meet his girl, so I no get on the school bus. I follow them. I no come to school today. They go in this building. I go in and listen. Where they go? Then I hear them. I know what they doing. Si? ”
    “Go on,” Kate said.
    “Then she scream. Terrible, and Raffie swear. He call her bad names. She no scream no more, and pretty soon I hear Raffie come running. I hide so he don’t see me, but he no look. He run out. So I run out too. Across the street he look back and see me. When he catches me, he hit me. He say I get hit worse if I tell. I promise to no tell, but he hit me more.” José pointed to his lip. “First I go home and hide in basement. Then I go upstairs. Raffie no there. I watch TV till I come here.”
    “José, do you know the girl?”
    “She Rafael’s girlfriend.”
    “Do you know her name?”
    He shook his head, but Kate suspected that he did.
    Whether it was the right moment or the wrong one, it was the moment at which Morrissey appeared in the doorway. She put one last question to the boy before acknowledging the priest’s presence. “Have you seen the girl since?”
    José did not answer. He was staring at the priest defiantly.
    Kate looked ’round. “Good afternoon, Father.”
    Morrissey, who had approached the room without making a sound, had been listening outside the door. Without responding to Kate’s greeting, he said, “Don’t you think we should go and see if she’s still there, José?”
    “I no want to go there, Father.”
    “But suppose the police say you have to go?” The priest took a few tentative steps into the room.
    “I don’t know where. I forget,” José said.
    Morrissey repeated Kate’s question: “Did you ever see the girl again?”
    José made a break for the door. Kate almost intercepted him, but Morrissey caught her arm and held her until the boy was gone.
    “You have no right to interfere,” Kate said. “This is my place.”
    “So we’re talking about rights now. I didn’t know they went with a relationship like ours. Kate, that boy was lying to you. He’s got you in the palm of his hand and he knows it. You must not get us involved.”
    “I had no intention of getting us involved.”
    “You don’t know what he’ll say he saw or who he’ll say it to. Suppose he says he’s seen us together in some compromising place or situation?”
    “But he hasn’t, and who would believe him?”
    “You’d be surprised. I didn’t strike him, but that’s his story, and I think you, for one, bought it.”
    Kate thought of José’s brother; what he’d do to “the gringo priest.” He had been told something certainly.
    “He’s a good liar, Kate.”
    “A better one than you or me? And is that what’s important now? We should forget the girl. Is that it? Even if she’s lying half-dead in some wreck of a building?”
    “Frankly, I don’t think there is a girl.”
    “Do you care?”
    “If I thought there was a girl, yes. Then I’d say we should find a telephone right now and call the police.”
    Kate thought about it. “Do you think that’s what he wanted me to do?”
    “Oh, no.” Morrissey gave a small, dry laugh. “It’s what he’s afraid I’ll do. Kate, ask yourself: Why did he come to you with this story?”
    “You tell me,” she said.
    Morrissey thought for a long moment about what he would say. “I’ll give it a shot,”