Unholy City Page 3

  “Anna Brookes. Mother Brookes.” She saw the slight rise of his eyebrows. Was he one of those dogmatic Irish Catholics who objected to women having any church role other than nun? “Rector Brookes, if you prefer,” she said. “This is my parish. What’s happening here?”

  “A man has died.”

  “What man?”

  “His name is Philip Graves.”

  Anna shook her head. “Excuse me? What did you say?”

  “Philip Graves,” he repeated. “Did you know him?”

  Anna was aware that her hands had come out of her pockets, that they were now pressing into her temples. “Did I know him? What are you saying? There has to be some mistake.”

  “I don’t think so.” The detective spoke gently. “His body has been identified by five church members.”

  “His body?” Anna attempted to push herself between the two men, but they each grabbed an arm and pulled her back.

  “I need to see him,” she insisted.

  “Let’s go inside,” said the detective.

  “No.” She returned her hands to her head as she swallowed past a constriction in her throat. She bit her lower lip to silence a cry of anguish the same way she had silenced her pleasure half an hour ago. “I want to see him.”

  “I’m sorry. You can’t. It’s a crime scene.”

  “A crime scene? Are you saying he was murdered?”

  “No more questions, Rector. Let’s go inside with the others.”

  She clutched his arm. “Please. This is my congregation, Detective. Philip was the senior warden of my church. At least let me pray for him.”

  The detective stared at her fingers around his arm. “Did you not hear me? It’s the scene of a crime.”

  “Yes, I heard you.” Anna let go of his arm. “But it’s also the scene of a soul leaving a body.” She raised her chin defiantly and held his gaze. Whether he was a good Irish Catholic boy or a lapsed one, he wouldn’t deny her the right to bless a soul, would he? “I realize you have a job to do, Detective, but so do I.”

  She heard him sigh. Then he shrugged in a way that told her he’d relented. He led her in the direction of the lights beaming down at the ground from tripods. Twenty feet in front of the lights, he stopped her, signaled to a police officer, and said, “Get her some booties.” They were produced, and the detective told her to put them on. Only then did she notice that he was wearing booties too. She stretched the elastic over her sneakers. Then he led her closer to the lights. When they were ten feet away, he placed a hand on her bicep. “That’s as far as you go, Rector. Say your prayer from here. I’ll wait.”

  He stepped back, but she felt his eyes pressing into her shoulder blades. She breathed deeply and exhaled him from her consciousness. And then she looked at Philip’s face, bluish under the stark white light. Her eyes caressed the blood-matted beard that her fingers had longed to touch. She stared at the strong hands she’d so desperately wanted to envelop her. She regarded his open mouth that would never press against her lips. She recalled the pleasure of his phantom touch and wished she could lie next to him and feel his real flesh against hers just once. Instead, she kneeled on the stones, folded her hands, lowered her head, and allowed all her unacknowledged intent to streak her face in salty shame. She was not mourning the death of a man, she realized, so much as the death of her own unfulfilled desire. God had punished her, and he had saved her from herself.

  She opened her mouth to whisper a prayer for the dead, but the words that came to her lips were a prayer of penance: “May God our Father forgive us our sins and bring us to the fellowship of his table with his saints forever.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Haggerty surveyed the spacious St. Paul’s Community Room from the doorway. Ceiling-high windows on the left wall—the south side—faced the street where the squad cars and CSU van were parked. Along the opposite wall, three narrow rectangular tables, set end to end and covered by vinyl tablecloths, formed a makeshift serving line. Haggerty stared at the commercial coffeemaker on the far table and visualized Sunday worshippers filling cups with caffeine to rouse themselves from soporific liturgies.

  Between the serving line and the windows were ten round restaurant-style tables. Sergeant Zamora had seated each of the five vestry members at a different table, and now the visibly shocked rector, Anna Brookes, sat down at a sixth.

  Haggerty stared at the faces and matched them to the details Sergeant Zamora had given him before the rector’s arrival. The blonde woman against the back wall, Susan Bentley, was the doctor who’d performed CPR for a full five minutes. The fact that she looked exhausted hardly surprised him. He’d performed CPR a few times himself and knew how strenuous it was.

  The black-haired man sitting by the windows was Roger Sturgis. He was staring intently at the doctor. One of his hands was in his pocket while the thumb and index finger of his other hand smoothed the outer edges of his thick, wide moustache in a slow repetitive motion. He wore a pale-yellow Oxford shirt with the collar open, and his tweed jacket was stylish in a retro sort of way.

  The black woman seated near the door—Vivian Wakefield, the junior churchwarden—had a perfectly erect posture, high cheekbones, and a flawless complexion. Her intricately braided salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back tightly and arranged into a bun at the back of her head. When she noticed him staring at her, she smiled. She alone among the gathered vestry members looked relaxed and patient.

  In the center of the room, the slim brunette who had tripped over the body—Rose Bartruff, the church gardener—was checking her watch, and one table over from her, Peter Linton, the bald man who, according to Zamora, had texted during the resuscitation efforts, was clicking his pen over and over. Who had he been texting? What had he said? And how willing would he be to share that message when he was questioned?

  Were these seemingly upright church members merely innocent bystanders, or were they more? Haggerty had been here only minutes, but that was long enough to know this was not a simple death scene he could process with precinct resources only. If a random crazy guy had cracked open Graves’s skull, where was the weapon? If robbery was the motive, why was Graves’s wallet still in his pocket? And there was the failed defibrillator Zamora had told him about. Why hadn’t it worked? Was that just a coincidence? Everyone sitting in this Community Room was a potential witness and suspect. Every one of them had to be questioned tonight.

  He closed his fingers around the phone in his pocket, but before he could pull it out, Officer Milan Kovac appeared at the other end of the corridor. Haggerty turned and walked toward him. Kovac had a bristly crew cut and spoke in a low voice. “Did you know there’s a homeless shelter in this church—on the north side of the building?”

  “No. Who’s in there?”

  “Four church volunteers and ten homeless men,” said the earnest officer. “A van dropped them off at eight thirty. Supposedly they were all signed in by eight forty-five, and no one left the shelter after that. We’re taking statements now.”

  Haggerty rubbed his fingers across the stubble on his chin. “Okay. Good work. We’ll deal with them later. Go help Sergeant Zamora search the rest of the building.”

  Haggerty pulled the phone out of his pocket, but Officer O’Donnell’s voice from inside the Community Room sounded urgent. “I said sit down, sir.”

  Haggerty peered into the room and saw the pen-clicking bald man standing with his hands on his hips. “What’s the matter?” the man was saying now. “I can’t even stretch my legs?”

  Haggerty moved quickly to O’Donnell’s side. “What’s the problem here?”

  “The problem,” snapped the angry man, “is that it’s almost midnight, Detective. I need to get home.”

  “You’re Mr. Linton?” Haggerty asked.

  “That’s right. Peter Linton.”

  “Well, Mr. Linton, I’d appreciate a little patience, and we’ll get you out of here as soon as possible.”

  “And do we have to be treated like prisoners while
we’re here?” Linton glared at O’Donnell, who had been instructed not to let anyone use their phones or leave the room unescorted.

  In Haggerty’s early days on the force, a man like Peter Linton might have ignited his own short fuse. But now all he said was, “I’m sorry, but you see, when people send text messages at the scene of a crime, it raises concerns for us.”

  “What are you implying?”

  Haggerty raised his eyebrows in a don’t-play-innocent expression.

  “Relax, Peter,” Roger Sturgis called out.

  “Don’t patronize me, Roger,” Linton turned and snapped.

  Haggerty held up his hands and faced the others in the room. “Look, I apologize for the inconvenience. I know this is stressful, but you may be stuck here for a while. Does someone want to make coffee?”

  Rose Bartruff raised her hand. “I’ll do it.” She stood and disappeared through a door behind the serving line.

  “Great, now it’s coffee hour,” grumbled Peter Linton. He combed his fingers through his hair over and over. He was a twitchy man. “I’ve got a trial starting first thing tomorrow,” he announced.

  “We’ve all got things to do in the morning, Peter,” Susan Bentley responded with a dash of disgust in her voice. “But someone we knew and cared about has just died.” The collar of her tan blazer was turned up, and she seemed to be shivering.

  Peter Linton gave her a harsh look and turned away.

  Anna Brookes suddenly awakened from her apparent shock. “I think we should all join together in a prayer.” She stood, held out her hands, and waited for others to rise and form a circle.

  Vivian Wakefield rose calmly from her seat and came to stand beside the rector as if in solidarity. Susan Bentley and Roger Sturgis pushed out their chairs like obedient if not enthusiastic disciples. Peter Linton, already on his feet, sighed loudly as he shuffled over. The rector bowed her head, but Wakefield touched her shoulder. “Wait, Mother Anna. Rose is still in the kitchen. Rose will want to pray too.”

  Haggerty saw the rector look at him.

  “I’ll get her,” he offered and walked through the same door the gardener had used. He found her in an impressively outfitted commercial kitchen standing in front of a stainless kettle over a gas flame. Her cell phone was pressed to her ear.

  When she saw him, she whispered, “I have to go,” and hung up.

  Haggerty didn’t hide his annoyance. “Who was that?”

  “My babysitter.” Then her eyes filled with tears. “My daughter, Lily, has asthma. She flushed her inhaler down the toilet by accident tonight. I was just checking to make sure the pharmacy delivered the new one.” She held out her phone to him. “Here, call her back if you don’t believe me.”

  She met his gaze with a mother’s defiance that turned his irritation into grudging sympathy. He pushed the phone back to her even as he told himself, Claire wouldn’t take her at her word. Claire would make that call. “You’re wanted in there.”

  He followed her back to the Community Room and watched her stand between Roger Sturgis and Susan Bentley. Then the rector closed her eyes. As he ducked quietly out of the room, he heard her begin, “Merciful God, who brought us to birth and in whose arms we die.”

  The words carried him back to all the masses he’d attended at Queen of Peace Catholic Church on Staten Island when he was a boy. They also brought to mind the battle scenes between his parents every Sunday morning when his mother tried to awaken his father after a night on the bottle. Usually, she failed. “Leave me the fuck alone,” he’d grumble until she gave up and dragged Haggerty and his younger brother to mass by herself, and then she’d tell anyone who asked that their father was home in bed with a virus or a migraine headache or a flare-up of sciatica.

  “In our grief and shock at Philip’s sudden and violent death,” he heard the rector saying, “contain and comfort us that we may not be overwhelmed by our great loss.” She was the only one who seemed overwhelmed by the great loss, he thought. She was the only one who had shed a tear for the victim since he’d arrived.

  He had to make the call, he told himself firmly, but something—the pull of his early Catholicism?—compelled him to wait till the end of the prayer. “Grant to Philip eternal rest,” he heard the rector say with a fervor that struck him as authentic and touching. “Let light perpetual shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.”

  He turned to see Sergeant Zamora standing beside a woman with blue hair shaved close on one side. Her black-framed glasses, baggy T-shirt, black leggings, and laced high-heel boots made her look more hipster than Upper West Side Episcopalian. As he moved closer, he saw that her fingernails were painted midnight blue and she was carrying a stack of sheet music.

  “Found her upstairs playing the piano,” said Zamora.

  “My name is Stephanie Lund. I’m the interim choir director. I’ve been practicing a piece for this Sunday. What’s going on?”

  Things just got more and more complicated here, Haggerty thought. “Put her with the others.” He walked out of the building and down the steps as he dialed.

  CHAPTER 8

  This time the ringtone was hers. She reached through the darkness toward the lighted dial of her iPhone. “Codella.”

  “Got one for you, Detective,” said the dull voice of the desk sergeant at Manhattan North.

  Codella sat up and waited.

  “Hope you’re the religious type. You’re going to church.”

  She switched on her lamp. “What church?” But she knew the answer before it came.

  “St. Paul’s Episcopal. Detective Haggerty from the one-seven-one is on the scene. Needs homicide support right away. Grab your rosary beads.”

  She ignored his self-satisfied laughter. Episcopalians don’t count rosary beads, you idiot, she wanted to say. “Tell him I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  She ended the call. The clothes she’d worn earlier were lying in a heap on the floor. She threw them on, clipped her shield to her belt, and worked her arms through the straps of her shoulder holster. She stuck her backup gun in its IWB holster inside the back waistband of her slacks and found her leather jacket hanging over a chair in the kitchen. Then she was out the door.

  As she stood on the uptown side of Broadway flagging down a cab, she pulled out her phone to speed-dial Haggerty. But as a yellow taxi veered to the curb, she reconsidered. Had he called Manhattan North because he knew she was on duty—because he wanted her in on his catch of the night—or had he made the call reluctantly because the circumstances left him no choice? As a precinct detective, he knew as well as she did what making that call meant. He had mobilized Manhattan North’s central homicide unit. He had handed over control of the case from the one-seven-one to her.

  She climbed in the taxi, tucked her phone away again, and stared out the window at the blur of darkened storefronts as the taxi flew uptown. For seven years, she and Haggerty had been partners and best friends at the one-seven-one. Their desks sat side by side in the detectives’ squad room, and almost every morning Haggerty arrived with a large latte for her. As a team, they had the most impressive case clearance stats on the Upper West Side. But she had wanted to solve murders, and when their commanding officer at that time, Captain Reilly, let her do some research on a file Manhattan North had set aside, she ended up identifying the killer of Elaine DeFarge, a Columbia Presbyterian nurse who’d disappeared after her shift one morning. In the process, she also solved the cold cases of five other hospital workers killed by the same man—Wainright Blake, an itinerant nurse who’d snipped a lock of hair from each of his victims and kept them in a cigar box under his bed.

  Codella’s one-woman investigation garnered national news coverage and sent her to Manhattan North Homicide as the only female detective in Lieutenant Dennis McGowan’s unit. While she was being interviewed on national television and dubbed the “genius of deductive reasoning” in New York magazine, Haggerty remained a precin
ct detective juggling his caseload of robberies, grand larcenies, felonious assaults, rapes, and only the occasional dead body. He wasn’t happy about their new unequal status, of course. She wouldn’t have been either. And he was even less happy when he made a drunken proclamation of love one night outside the St. James Pub and she pushed him away.

  She should have called him the next day, but she wasn’t any better at intimacy than he was then. And cancer happened before either of them figured out how to repair the damage. Restoring their friendship had taken a long time. Becoming lovers had taken far less. But she wasn’t sure their relationship was strong enough for whatever this case would demand.

  CHAPTER 9

  Haggerty waved over the four uniformed officers waiting by their squad cars. They huddled around him outside the church gate. “Here’s the deal,” he told them. “We’ve got a dead male in the church garden. Midfifties. Senior warden of the church. He left a meeting tonight sometime between ten thirty and ten forty-five, we think, and from the looks of it, he never made it through this gate. Someone cracked him over the skull.”

  He paused to stare into each set of eyes, making sure they were paying attention. “This could be an inside job, or we could be dealing with a neighborhood nutcase who has a gripe against God. We need to know if anyone on this block saw someone coming or going from the church. We need a thorough canvass. Two of you on the south side, two on the north. Start in the middle, closest to the church, and move in opposite directions. You know the drill. Get names and take down notes on everyone you speak to. If you get no answer, note that too because we’ll have to come back tomorrow. That’s it. Any questions?”

  “No, sir,” came the cops’ answers in unison.

  “Good. Then get started.”

  When Haggerty returned to the crime scene, Banks was aiming a plastic spray bottle into a wooden storage chest against the church wall behind Graves’s body. In the bright light from an LED, Haggerty saw a fine mist hang in the air over the chest and fall like gentle rain onto the muddy garden tools inside.