Exorcist Road Read Online Free

give him either of those things. I had already decided that Danny’s brother, though obviously skilled at playing the stock market, was a first-rate jackass.
    He patrolled the area between the granite islands like a practiced lecturer. “When someone is as young as you—again, no disrespect intended—and especially when he’s led a…” he glanced at Liz, who I noticed wasn’t watching her husband with any more warmth than I was, and gestured vaguely, “…well, what would you call it? A cloistered lifestyle?”
    Trying to keep my cool, I said, “I don’t see what my profession has to do with this.”
    Ron laughed again, the kind of laugh that declared I was even dumber than he thought. He took a big gulp from his glass, wiped his mouth. “Jesus Christ. I’m glad there are two of you then.”
    I opened my mouth to answer—I had no idea what I was about to say, but it would have almost certainly aggravated the already unhealthy dynamic between us—when we heard the front door open and a pair of male voices echo down the hallway.
    “That’ll be Bittner,” Ron said, something different penetrating his belligerent expression.
    Liz offered me a drink while we listened to them tromp down the hallway, but I demurred. Frankly, I was afraid I’d be unable to keep anything down. She nodded, chewing her bottom lip. I wanted to say something soothing to her, but my eyes caught sight of the laceration along her hairline, her bruised jaw. A chill whispered through me, and I kept quiet.
    I moved deeper into the room to accommodate Father Sutherland. He looked every bit as composed as I’d expected him to be, the priest wearing his sable cassock and purple stole as naturally as another layer of skin.
    What I didn’t expect was Jack Bittner.
    Danny had implied that Bittner had a nasty temper, but what he didn’t mention was Bittner’s sheer size. His unnervingly imposing presence. I guess I’d never really registered how enormous the man was because every time I’d seen him in the sanctuary, he’d been sitting down, and by the time I made my way to the lobby, he was already gone. But now I saw him all too well. Bittner easily dwarfed me and Ron Hartman and would have dwarfed Danny too had Danny been in the room. His shoulders as broad as a bookcase and his arms as thick as church pews, Bittner looked like an aging ex-professional football player, the kind who’d gambled his money away on women and alcohol. Bittner’s unshaven cheeks were speckled with salt-and-pepper stubble. He neither wore nor carried a hat, and though his black crew-cut hair was as wet as mine, he did not appear bothered by this, or to even notice it. His ruddy cheeks were pockmarked, his nose a bit mashed and crooked, like it’d been shattered in some violent brawl. His vast jaw reminded me of some long-ago sea captain, his burly chest and shoulders of some battle-scarred gladiator. On his saturnine face was what I first mistook for a dour courtesy, but what I soon realized was an unwholesome species of eagerness.
    Neither Liz nor Ron looked at Bittner, instead focused on Father Sutherland, on whom whatever hopes they retained were clearly riding.
    Sutherland nodded at me, then turned to Ron. “Is Officer Hartman here?”
    Something momentarily curdled Ron’s features—Derision? Contempt for his little brother?—then he nodded. “In the basement. Have you ever performed an exorcism?”
    Bittner grumbled something I couldn’t make out, but the only word discernible sounded like “bullshit”.
    While Father Sutherland was not a small man—he was about six feet tall and according to some at the rectory had been quite an athlete in his youth—he looked like a child next to Bittner. Yet Sutherland spoke with an authority that awed me. “The worst error we can make is to rush to judgment. This is a child we’re talking about, and while it seems certain there is something abnormal about this situation, we must remember to respect the