Broken Saint, The (20 page)

Chapter 34

The purple night sky was
lit up by three squad cars and an ambulance, all throwing their red, white, and
blue lights into the quiet suburban neighborhood. Ryan was already there when I
pulled up. He was talking with one of two EMTs who were lifting the gurney into
the back of the ambulance.

“I don’t know,” the EMT said. “BPs way low. I’d
say fifty-fifty at best.”

Beneath the oxygen mask, Mark Gerson’s face was
pale and lifeless. There was plenty of blood on his neck and all over the wet
white shirt and white tie.

“What do we know?” I said to Ryan.

“Mark Gerson broke into the meetinghouse through a
side window, slit his wrists with glass, staggered out into the hall, made his
way to the baptismal font, shouted a bunch of stuff, and lost consciousness.
The EMT says he’s fifty-fifty.”

“Yeah, I got that last part. How did we get
notified?”

“The meetinghouse has an alarm system that tripped
when he broke the window and got inside.”

“And how do we know about the shouting?”

Ryan looked down at his notebook. “Natalie
Thompson, a Church member, was doing janitorial work. She called 911 and
reported that he was in the baptismal font.”

“She still here?”

“Follow me.” Ryan led me inside the front
entrance. The building was two stories, simple brick exterior, with a dark blue
steel roof angled at a good pitch to handle the merciless Montana snows. Next
to the front entrance, simple silver letters attached to the brick said Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The next line read Rawlings, Montana.

“So this is a temple, right?”

“No, this is a meetinghouse. Most of the Church activities
are held in places like this. A temple is for the most-important covenants.”

“You got a temple here in town?”

“Billings.”

Inside the entrance were three hallways. Ryan led
us down the center hallway that opened into a large circular room with upholstered
chairs and some religious art on the walls. “This is the main lobby. Come with
me.” He pointed down a short hall.

We walked twenty yards to a room with a lot of
folding chairs in front of an opened accordion-style room divider and a glass
wall. On the other side of the wall was what looked like a small hot tub.

“That’s the baptismal font.”

Ryan led me around to an alcove that opened up to
the men’s and women’s restrooms. We walked through the men’s room, which had a
couple of showers, and out to the baptismal font. It was sunk about four feet
into the floor, covered with plain beige tiles six inches square that you would
see in any kind of locker room or pool area. A handrail circled the area,
except for where the four steps led to the bottom of the tub.

The water, which half-filled the tub, was pink,
with blood stains on the tile a couple inches above the waterline.

A uniform, Truman, stood next to a woman sitting
on a folding chair. She was my age, wearing a yellow sweatshirt and blue jeans,
running shoes. Blood stains covered her sweatshirt and her hands. She was
shaking a little, holding on tight to a wide push broom with one hand and to
the chair arm with the other.

“We want to talk to you in a couple minutes,” I
said to Truman softly after he walked over to us. He nodded.

“Ms. Thompson, I’m Detective Seagate. This is my
partner, Detective Miner.”

She stood and nodded. “Pleased to meet you,” she
said in a shaky voice.

“Can you tell us what happened, Ms. Thompson?”

“I was cleaning a couple of the classrooms on the
other side of the meetinghouse. I’d already unlocked the entrance to the
baptismal font and turned the water on—I was going to clean it. Then I heard
the alarm go off. I’d never heard it before. It really scared me.”

“What did you do?”

“For a minute, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t
know if it was a false alarm, you know, or someone was vandalizing the building
or breaking in. There isn’t a lot you’d want to steal here—just some
computers—but still, I was scared.” She took a deep breath. “I stood there for
a moment, listening to see if I could hear anything. I had my cell with me, so
I called 911.”

“What time was this?”

“I looked at the time on my phone: it was 9:12.
Anyway, when I heard some crashing around, I thought maybe someone was in trouble.
So I followed the sounds to this area. As I got closer, I could hear this young
man screaming and moaning. Then I saw him, just over there,” she said,
pointing, “right there in the font. It was horrible.”

“Describe what you saw and heard,” I said. Ryan
was taking notes.

“The font was still filling up with water. The
young man was dressed in baptism clothes, white pants, white shirt, long
sleeves. A white tie. But they were all covered with blood. Blood all over his
arms. I ran toward him and I could see that he had cut his wrists, both of
them. Oh, dear Lord, I’m sorry,” she said as she started to shake more and
began breathing shallow.

Ryan came over to her and held her. It looked like
they knew each other. After a minute she started to calm down a little.

“Can you remember anything he said?”

“It was crazy. He wasn’t making sense, like he was
having some kind of nervous breakdown. Something about how he killed her. He
didn’t say who she was. But he kept saying ‘I killed you.’ And how he didn’t
mean to do it. He apologized over and over again. Then there was something
about how now they were really married.” Natalie Thompson shivered. “I’m sorry,
just repeating what he was screaming is giving me the shivers here.”

“It’s okay,” Ryan said. “You’re doing great.”

“Yeah, Ms. Thompson,” I said, “you’re helping us a
lot here. So what did you do then?”

“When I realized that he was in trouble—that he
was badly injured—I called 911 again and told them to send an ambulance.”

“Did you go to try to help him, you know, when he
was in the water there?”

“I was shaking so bad I didn’t think I could help
him much, but I tried. I turned off the water. I went over to the entrance to
the font.” Her eyes were wet. “I told him I’m here to help him, you know, to
try to calm him down. That’s when he seemed to notice me for the first time.”

“What did he do?” I said.

“It seemed to agitate him more. He started
screaming even louder. Telling me to stand back, not to come any closer. He had
a big triangle of glass in his right hand, and he started waving it at me, like
he was going to come after me with it, or maybe cut himself more. I told him I
wasn’t going to hurt him. That I’d called for an ambulance, that it would be
here in a few minutes. But he didn’t seem like he understood what I was saying,
so I pulled back some more. He kept saying the same things over and over again.
You know, how he killed her, how he didn’t mean to do it. Then, about how they
were married now.”

“Then the ambulance came?”

“No,” she said, talking a deep breath, “before the
ambulance got here, he started to get blurry, like he was going to pass out.
The water in the font was getting darker. His speech started to slow down, get
fainter. Then his eyes closed and he passed out.”

“What did you do?”

“He went under the water. I went to the side of
the font and pulled him up by the shoulders. I managed to get him up onto the
steps so he wouldn’t drown. There wasn’t anyone else here, so I couldn’t leave
him to get some kind of tourniquets for his arms, so I sat there with him,
holding his arms up, trying to stop the bleeding with my hands. I didn’t know
what else to do. I sat there with him and prayed.”

“And then the ambulance came?”

“I think it was just another couple of minutes,
not much longer. There were two EMTs. They lifted him up and put him on the
gurney.”

“Before he went unconscious, can you remember
anything else he said?”

“I heard this name over and over. It was Marcel or
something like that.”

“All right, thank you, Ms. Thompson,” I said. “I
realize this was a very upsetting episode, but I need you to know you saved
this boy’s life. You really did—by calling it in the first time, then the
second time for the ambulance. And keeping him from drowning. You saved his
life.”

Natalie Thompson started to cry and almost
collapsed in Ryan’s arms.

By this time another two uniforms had come in. I
turned to one of them, a woman named Buss. “Can you make sure Ms. Thompson gets
home?”

Officer Buss nodded and said, “Will do.”

Ryan and I walked over to Officer Truman. “You were
first on scene?”

He nodded.

“Walk us through it,” I said to him.

He led us out the front entrance, into the frigid
night, then around to the west side. “Here it is.” Truman pointed to the double
casement window, one side shattered.

I stuck my head up close to the opening, careful
not to step in the glass shards lying on the brown grass. It looked like some
kind of classroom for little kids, with all kinds of crayon drawings pinned to
bulletin boards and little desks neatly arranged off to one side. There were
some bloody glass shards on the floor just inside the window, then a set of
bloody footprints snaking across the tile floor.

Truman said, “When he broke this window, it set
off the alarm.”

“Let’s go in,” Ryan said.

Truman led us back to the main entrance. We headed
down one of the hallways toward the classroom. The footprints, now getting
fainter, led us down another hall, back toward the lobby, then down the hall
toward the restrooms and the baptismal font.

I said to Ryan, “Is this the meetinghouse the
Gersons use?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I looked it up.”

“So presumably Mark Gerson knew his way around the
building?”

“We can’t be sure,” Ryan said. “He’s probably been
coming here since he was an infant, but it’s not clear how often in recent
years. He’s not here every Sunday, that’s for sure. And given his mental state
tonight, I wouldn’t make too much of exactly where he went.”

“But we’re pretty sure he was headed for the font,
right?”

“No doubt about that,” Ryan said. “Has anyone
called the Gersons yet?”

“No.” I took out my phone and dialed their home. “Dr.
Gerson, Detective Seagate.”

“Did you find Mark?”

“Yes, sir, we did. He’s being transported to the
hospital right now.”

“Oh, dear Lord, what happened?”

“We’re not exactly sure, sir, but he was found in
the baptismal font at your meetinghouse. He’s sustained some injuries, we’re
not sure how extensive.”

“Is he in danger of dying?”

“We don’t know the specifics, sir. He’s being
transported in an ambulance right now. My partner and I are gonna go to the
hospital now.”

“Thank you, Detective. Thank you.”

Chapter 35

Ryan said, “Ms. Gerson’s not here?”

Al Gerson shook his head. “When I told her Mark had
been injured, she fell apart. No way she could handle coming to the ER.”

Ryan and I were silent. When someone is as busted
up as Gerson and his wife were, I never know how to talk to them. The cop part
of me wanted Gerson to keep talking, since I might learn something, even though
I knew it was taking advantage of him. I didn’t think Gerson was the one, but Ryan
was still pissed at him for being a crappy Mormon, so I wasn’t the only one
wanted him to keep talking.

Gerson started up again on his own. “I called her
doctor. He came over, gave her a shot.”

“Is she gonna be okay?” I said.

He looked at me. “That’s one of those questions,
Detective.” He paused. “Short answer: She’ll make it through this situation.
One of our friends is over at our house. She’s a nurse. Andrea’s sleeping. Sort
of sleeping, anyway. Long answer: No. I don’t think Andrea is ever going to be
okay again.”

Ryan said, “I realize you’re going through a
terrible time here, Bishop Gerson. But please don’t give up on Heavenly Father.
He’d never give up on you—or on Mark.”

Al Gerson walked over to Ryan and put his arms
around him. Gerson was weeping. Ryan held him tight, his eyes closed.

I could tell Ryan believed what he was saying. He
wasn’t working Gerson. Normally, I’m embarrassed by this kind of thing and I’d
roll my eyes at it, but now I felt pulled in. It was envy. That’s what it was.
I wanted what these two guys had. I like to think it isn’t all my fault that I
don’t have it. Sure, I couldn’t pay the price. But I think it’s more you either
have the aptitude for faith or you don’t. I didn’t. If I did, maybe I could
walk the walk.

After a long moment, the two guys separated,
Gerson wiping at his eyes. “I’m sorry, Detective Seagate. I hope you didn’t
take my answer the wrong way. Sometimes I fall back on my defensive ways as a
teacher. You know, analyze the question. I’m just very frightened.”

“I understand, Dr. Gerson. I didn’t take it the
wrong way.” I paused. “Did you get a chance to talk to a doctor or anything,
you know, about Mark’s condition?”

“No,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “They told me
that he sustained serious injuries and that they’d be able to tell me more in a
little while.” He was silent a moment. “Would you please tell me what you
know?”

“We think he was having a psychotic episode. He
broke into your meetinghouse, through a side window. He cut himself up in the
process. He made his way to the baptismal font, where we think he kind of
passed out.”

Ryan spoke. “Sister Thompson was working there. Do
you know her?”

“Yes,” Gerson said. “Natalie. We do know her.”

“She pulled him out and kept his bleeding under
control until the EMT guys got there.”

“She saved his life,” Gerson said.

“Yes, she did,” Ryan said.

“I think we ought to tell you one other thing,” I
said. “She heard him say things …”

Gerson looked at me like he was unsure whether to
ask. Finally he said, “What things, Detective?”

“He said he killed Maricel. And some other
things.”

“That isn’t true. He didn’t kill Maricel. He
couldn’t have killed Maricel.” Gerson turned away from us, slowly, then started
walking away. He drifted over toward the bank of chairs against the wall. He
sat down, slowly, as if all his bones and muscles hurt.

I started to walk over to him, but Ryan put his
hand on my arm. “Give him a minute,” he said.

“Don’t you want to hear why Mark couldn’t’ve
killed Maricel?”

“Just give him a minute, please, Karen.”

Ryan and I walked over to a couple of chairs along
the opposite wall and sat down. “He knows we’re here. He’ll tell us what he
can—when he can.”

Gerson sat in his chair, his gaze straight ahead,
motionless, his hands in his lap. I couldn’t tell if he was concentrating real
hard or in some other zone where you try not to think at all. I’ve spent a lot
of time in that other zone, even though it almost never worked for me.

There were half a dozen other people in the ER,
sitting in rows of plastic chairs. One thirty-something woman was holding her
face where Loverboy smacked her around a little. A twenty-year-old guy with a
wool hat and baggy pants that were too long for shorts but too short for longs
was holding his elbow beneath his dislocated shoulder. A set of young parents
had given up trying to control their little boy in Batman pajamas. He was
coughing wet and chewy and putting out green snot, which he seemed determined
to deposit on every surface within reach. An old guy with patchy hair and a
moth-eaten beard sat off to the side, all hunched over like something was
chewing at his insides.

A doctor in bloody scrubs came out through the
wide swinging doors, walked over to the desk, and said something to the nurse
on duty. She looked out over the collection of sickos and pointed to Gerson.
The doc walked over to him. Ryan and I went over, too.

“Mr. Gerson, I’m Dr. Wiley. I want to tell you
where we are with Mark.” Gerson stood there, silently. “We’ve admitted him,
sent him upstairs to ICU. We’re cautiously optimistic about his prospects.”

“What does that mean?” Gerson said, looking scared
all of a sudden, like he hadn’t thought his son could die.

“We were able to stitch up his wounds, but the
cuts were quite significant. There could be considerable loss of function in
both hands.”

“He cut his hands?” Gerson said.

The doc looked at me and at Ryan. “Oh, I didn’t
realize you hadn’t been filled in. Mark slit both his wrists with a piece of
glass. He did some damage to the nerve structure.”

“He tried to kill himself?”

The doc shook his head. “That’s not really
something I can speak to. I just patch ’em up and send ’em upstairs. We’ve got
an excellent hand and wrist surgeon who we’ve already called in. She’s gonna
meet with the pysch people on the schizophrenia and work out a plan.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me now?”
Gerson said.

“No, that’s it for now. Our first priority was to
get him medically stable. We did that. We sewed up his wounds, admitted him.
The medical people and the psych team are working now on getting him back on
his meds so he doesn’t hurt himself further. And, like I said, our hand and
wrist specialist is on it. But we’ve got him sedated now. The med team is
probably going to keep him quiet for at least twelve hours.”

Ryan was still touching Gerson, although the guy
didn’t look like he was going to fall down in the next couple moments. “Thank
you, Doctor,” Gerson said.

The doc nodded and walked back in through the
swinging doors.