A Fountain Filled With Blood

Ray smiled, stacking her hard hat on top of his. “It kind of seems like it would, doesn’t it?” He tucked the hats under his arm and turned toward the office trailer. The crew had abandoned their vigil in front of the steps and had retreated to a pair of wooden picnic tables under the fringe of trees behind the trailer. Clare could see a couple of coolers on the tables.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing else to see, Reverend. Sorry Ms. Landry hasn’t shown up. You can use the phone in the office to give her a call, if you want.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t have the number for her cell phone.” Her mind churned furiously. Her last chance to find out anything about Bill Ingraham was about to come and go. Aw right, ladies, it’s time to fly or die. Msgt. Ashley “Hardball” Wright used to say that during her survival training. Male or female, he had called all his trainees “ladies,” unless he was calling them something much worse. She tended to recall his aphorisms in situations her grandmother would never have found herself in—like pumping Ray Yardhaas for information about a man he didn’t know was dead.

“I want to ask you something.” She shaded her eyes from the sun’s glare when she looked up at him. “You seem to think highly of Bill Ingraham. Does the rest of the crew feel the same way?”

Ray shifted the stacked hard hats from one arm to the other. “Pretty much, I guess. There’s always a few who see management as the bad guy. But the new guys on the crew are making fourteen bucks an hour, and the senior guys are making up to twenty, so most of ’em don’t have a problem with the boss taking his profit. I figure, you want everybody to earn the same, go to Cuba.”

“Actually, I was thinking more about his…personal life.” She wiped a trickle of sweat off her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Does anyone have a problem with Mr. Ingraham, um, being, you know…gay?”

Ray frowned. “Why?”

“Well, because sometimes straight men don’t relate well to—”

“No, I mean why do you want to know? You’re not one of those preachers who go around telling folks God hates queers, are you?”

She recoiled. “Good Lord, no!” She wiped her hands against her jeans reflexively. “That’s a…sick perversion of God’s work. No. Just the opposite. I’m trying to get a handle on who might be propagandizing that kind of hate around here. I don’t know if you’ve kept up with the news, but there have been two assaults in Millers Kill recently. Two decent men beaten half to death because they’re gay.” She caught herself. “At least that’s the most likely explanation for the attacks. I want to understand where that rabid homophobia comes from, do what I can, as a priest, to stop it.” The image of Bill Ingraham’s savaged body came to her, causing her words to get stuck momentarily in her throat. Too little too late, she thought, and took a deep breath. “I can’t exactly waltz into the nearest pool hall and say, ‘Hey, guys, what do you really think of homosexuals? And be honest now!’ ”

Ray snorted.

She tilted her head toward the picnic tables at the edge of the construction area. The guy in the Desiderata T-shirt had opened one of the coolers and was passing out cans. It looked like it was Miller time. “Here you are, a bunch of manly men doing manly construction work, and your boss is a homosexual. An out-of-the-closet gay man. How do your coworkers feel about that? Have there been any problems?”

“You think maybe some of the crew could have been involved in those beatings?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who knows them.”

Ray looked over at the men sprawling in the shade and then glanced at Clare. “You’re not running back to Ms. Landry with any of this, are you?”

“No.”

“Or some kind of reporter?”

“I’ve told you the truth, Ray. I’m the rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church.”

He crossed his arms, obscuring the plumbing company ad on his chest. “I guess the reaction’s been mixed. I don’t think it really makes any difference to most of the guys, although you hear a whole lot more pansy jokes than at the last job I worked. Most guys figure what you do in your private life is your own business, and so long as nobody prances through playing the Sugar Plum Fairy, they don’t say much.”

“I hear you saying ‘most’ of the guys. What about the rest of them?”

Surprisingly, Ray grinned. “We got one Gen Xer, I guess you’d call him, thinks it’s totally cool to be working for someone like Bill. Of course, Carter’s got both ears pierced and these weird tattoos around his biceps.”

“So not only is he out of the mainstream but he’s got enough self-confidence to wear earrings on the job. Is there anyone else on the opposite end? Maybe some older guys? Or somebody who has to spend all his time proving what a jock he is?”