The Christmas Night Murder Read Online Free Page B

of parked cars and the building. “Looks like he got out of his car, walked toward the building, then back to the snow, then cut diagonally back to his car. The dogs can’t seem to find any other direction that he moved. He probably never got into the building.”
    “Then he didn’t call from here,” I said. “There are no phones outside.”
    “He could have called from the rest stop north of here. It’s also south of Albany. Maybe he wanted to wait till the last minute to change his clothes.”
    “So what we’ve got,” Arnold said, “is that he walked over to the taped area—and we don’t know which route he took there and which back—dropped some articles of clothing, and took the other route back to his car.”
    “With or without someone who was forcing him with a weapon,” I said.
    “And then they—or he—drove away.” Jack summed it up.
    “If it was the car they were after, they would’ve left Hudson behind.”
    “It couldn’t have been the car, Arnold. He would never have spent a lot of money on a car. Even if he’d had the money, and he probably didn’t, he would have given it away before he’d spend it on a car.”
    “It seems to me that leaves two possibilities. One is that someone was after him, for reasons currently unknown. The other is that something happened to make him decide not to keep his date with St. Stephen’s.”
    “That’s just what I’ve been thinking,” Jack said.
    —
    We threw hypothetical scenarios at each other all the way back to St. Stephen’s but came up with nothing workable. By the time we got to the convent, the state police had called Joseph and told her about as much as we knew. They assured her they would keep looking for Hudson, but she sensed a resignation in what the officer said. The bloodhounds, which had been led up and down the strip along the thruway after we left, had found nothing, and all the police were convinced of was that Hudson—or whoever the owner of the clothing was—had left his car, walked back to the snowy area, and returned to the car, completing a circle that was more like a triangle. The snow had been so trampled that any footprints Hudson might have left were completely obliterated.
    Most of the nuns had gone off to bed. The fire had also gone to sleep, but we got it going again and Joseph and I made coffee and cut some cake that had been on the long table in the afternoon. Then the five of us sat around the fire and talked.
    “Tell me what you feel, Sister Joseph,” Arnold said.
    Joseph put her cup down and sat with her hands in her lap. “I feel something terrible has happened to him. I
know
something terrible has happened. We’ve been corresponding for months to set this day up. You didn’t have to read between the lines to sense his joy at coming back here. It was in every word.”
    “Do you have the letters?”
    “All of them.”
    “Tell me why he left, Sister.”
    “It was something he always wanted to do, something he had to work out with church authorities because he would no longer be under the direction of one diocese. He wanted to go to communities where there weren’t many Catholics and there wasn’t a priest, except now and then. He wanted to become part of those communities, to make a difference, to bring the people together, give a religious meaning to their lives, so that when he left, they would remember, they would be stronger. He never moved on until he was sure there was leadership, till he knew they could make it without him.”
    “If I asked you to describe his personality, what kind of person he seemed to you, what would you say?”
    “Carefree and serious,” Joseph said without a pause. “He’s a friendly, outgoing man, loves a party, laughs a lot. And he’s deeply religious, deeply committed. He cares. He cares about everyone and everything. He listens; he has time for people.” She turned to look at me.
    “I second everything.”
    Arnold leaned forward. He was still looking at Joseph