Free The Judas Child by Carol O'Connell Page A

nun.
    “Ali, you look wonderful,” said courtly William, holding out her chair. “Academia must suit you. My belated congratulations on the Ph.D. Bright girl.”
    Myles Penny lifted his wineglass. “I’ll second that, Ali. Now why didn’t you go to St. Ursula’s when you were a kid? You’ve certainly got the brains. And I know your old uncle here would have kicked in the obscene tuition.”
    “Ali’s parents would never take money from me,” said Mortimer, in a hurry to get the words out before Ali could admit, unabashed, that she had failed the entrance exam.
    In light of how far she had come and how fast, he sometimes wondered if Ali had deliberately scored low on St. Ursula’s intelligence test. In early childhood, she had avoided calling any attention to herself. But that was years before her face had been marred, making her the focal point of every room she entered. He suspected the secret of Ali’s academic success was a bit darker; that she had worked harder than more gifted students—so that she might live up to the scar.
    His niece went against everything he knew of human behavior and logic. The mutilation of her face should have crushed her ego. In no reasonable scenario could Ali have blossomed in this way.
    “Allow me, young lady.” William poured her a glass of wine. “I was just telling Mortimer, I don’t know how I could possibly help you. You probably know more about pedophiles than anyone on the Eastern Seaboard. I don’t even dabble in the subject.”
    “But fifteen years ago you did,” said Ali. “When you were the acting county medical examiner? You worked on the body of a victim—Susan Kendall.”
    William leaned close to her, his voice conspiratorial, almost prissy. “Now why would you want to dredge up that sad business of the little Kendall girl?”
    “I wondered why you didn’t collect any forensic evidence.”
    “Well, it was obvious she died by a broken neck. No need to go any further. I gave testimony in—”
    “No rape kit?”
    “No!” William’s face flushed to a high red color. “Ali, it wasn’t necessary. The priest was charged with murder, not molestation.”
    “One year after the murder,” said Ali, “you published a paper on a genetic abnormality.”
    “Genetics?” Mortimer was surprised, for this was far outside the surgeon’s field. Most of William Penny’s papers had been related to procedures, hardware and chemicals for the heart. Ah, but publishing in another area would fit well with the inflated image of himself as a Renaissance man of modern medicine.
    Ali continued, “It was a postmortem on a little girl. Her surviving identical twin was a boy—a case in a billion.”
    “Identical?” Mortimer spilled red drops of wine on the white tablecloth. “Ali, surely you don’t mean monozygotic twins?” When she nodded, he turned to William. “Of different genders? That’s possible?”
    “That’s the problem with shrinks,” said Myles Penny, addressing Ali with a wink. “They don’t keep up on the medical literature.” And now he smiled at his host. “But you’re way behind. The first case was reported back in the sixties.”
    The psychiatrist dabbed at the wine spill and made it worse. “A hermaphrodite perhaps? The testicles never descended?”
    “No, Mortimer, a real girl,” said Myles, despite his brother’s attempt at signaling him to shut up. “Susan Kendall only had female genitalia. ’Course the ovaries were just fibrous knots.”
    William slumped back in his chair, lips pressed together in a thin, tight line as he glared unkindly at his brother.
    Ali was smiling, and now Mortimer realized she had been on a fishing expedition. Any physician would have taken great care to disguise the identity of his subject, changing the age of the girl and the date of the postmortem.
    “Thank you so much, Myles,” said William. “Old fool. Ali, you can’t disclose that information to anyone.”
    “I read your autopsy report,” she