Unholy City Page 7

  She watched the doctor glance down at the buzzing cell phone in her purse. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s probably my husband leaving me a message. He’s on West Coast time right now.”

  Codella nodded. “You said a moment earlier that St. Paul’s was filled with caring people. In your opinion, Doctor, was Philip Graves one of those people?”

  CHAPTER 20

  Roger Sturgis stood at the corner of One Hundred Twentieth Street and dug the ring of keys out of his pocket. He counted seven keys in all, and one was obviously a car remote. Another one, small and silver, looked like it might open a file cabinet or desk drawer. It wouldn’t take him long, he judged, to figure out which of the other five unlocked the apartment door. He knew what he was supposed to do with these keys, and if he didn’t do it now, the window of opportunity would close. The question was, did he have the nerve?

  He looked through the building’s glass front door and saw no attendant within. The door was locked, but after two unsuccessful tries, he slid the correct key into the keyhole and let himself in.

  The lobby was spacious and well lit, though hardly as inviting as the lobby of his and Kendra’s building. Here, no elegant drapes framed the windows. No tasteful wallpaper adorned the walls. And no soft leather couches formed a comfortable waiting area. The small white hexagonal floor tiles had long ago lost their sheen and were outlined in time-blackened grout. A wooden table and chair just inside the door suggested that someone was usually stationed in this lobby, and he felt a ripple of adrenaline as he swiveled his head and listened for sounds. “Hello?” he called, but the only response was the echo of his own voice in the cavernous entrance hall. Maybe this was one of those cost-conscious buildings that only hired a daytime attendant to sign for deliveries and dry cleaning. Did closed circuit surveillance take over at night?

  He peered up and around but did not see the telltale drop-ceiling mounts of wide-angle cameras. He spotted the elevator and was halfway there when he stopped abruptly. Jesus fucking Christ. How could I be so stupid? He stared at the keys in his hand—the promise of absolution—but without an apartment number, they might as well be garbage.

  If there was no twenty-four-hour doorman, he thought, then there must be apartment buzzers. He returned to the outer door. A name was next to each buzzer, but not a number. He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. “Think, goddammit,” he whispered, and then realization dawned. The small key on the ring he was holding did not open a file cabinet or desk drawer. It was the key to a mailbox.

  Every Manhattan apartment building had a bank of mailboxes, and Sturgis found this building’s discreetly hidden behind a wall on the right side of the lobby. The small square front door of each little box was labeled with an apartment number. All he had to do was match the key on the ring to one of these locks, and how difficult could that be? He moved to the far-left mailbox in the top row. The small key fit into the lock but did not turn it. He tried the key in every lock across the top row with no luck, and then he returned to the left and tried the second row of boxes.

  Halfway through the third row, Roger heard the lobby door open and close on the other side of the wall. He froze as footsteps crossed the tile floor. Would the police have come so soon? He stared at his hand poised in front of a mailbox. Breathe, he reminded himself. It can’t be the police. They’re too busy right now. And you’re just a resident getting your mail. You’ve faced far more dangerous situations than this.

  The footsteps stopped. The elevator door opened, and when it closed again, Roger resumed his efforts with a sense of physical and emotional exhilaration. He continued along the rows, penetrating each lock with the key until he arrived at the second to last mailbox in the fourth row, and the key not only went into the lock but turned it. The door opened. He smiled. Apartment 6E.

  CHAPTER 21

  The door to the Blue Lounge burst open, and Peter Linton—red-faced and out of breath—stormed into the room followed by Officer O’Donnell. Codella noticed that the man’s fists were clenched, and his mouth was so compressed that his lips were almost white. She stood as he charged toward her. Susan Bentley called out, “Peter! What are you doing?” He was only ten feet away from the couch when O’Donnell grabbed his arm and pulled him back. Peter turned and rammed his shoulder into the officer’s chest. O’Donnell flung him to the carpet and pinned him like a wrestler.

  “Get off me!” Peter managed to free one arm and flailed it in front of O’Donnell’s face.

  Codella stepped closer to the two men. “Stop resisting, Mr. Linton, or he’s not going to let you go.”

  Peter finally stopped squirming. His breathing was heavy. His face was flushed. Codella waited several seconds before she gave O’Donnell the cue to release his grip. Then O’Donnell stood back, and the short, beefy man rose to his feet and rubbed his wrists. “That was unnecessary force,” he accused.

  Codella ignored the accusation. “Why did you barge in here, Mr. Linton? What’s the problem?”

  “The problem,” Peter said as he turned his back to O’Donnell, “is that it’s two in the morning and you’ve interviewed everyone except me. You’re deliberately keeping me here because I pissed off that other detective. Don’t think I don’t know it.”

  Codella took a deep breath before she spoke. “What I know, Mr. Linton, is that you’re throwing a temper tantrum.”

  “No. I’m expressing my constitutional rights.”

  “Oh, really?” She smiled in a way she knew would fuel his fury.

  “You think that’s funny? I’m an attorney. I know my rights.”

  “And I know mine. The medical examiner has confirmed that a homicide occurred here, Mr. Linton. Like it or not, you’re part of a homicide investigation now. Everyone else has been patient, and you need to be patient too. You’re not the only one waiting to speak with Detective Haggerty and me. In fact, your rector asked that she be the last person we see so that you could all go home first.” She paused for him to take this in. “Any slight you may perceive is only in your head.” And that head, she noted now, was as smooth and hairless as polished marble. Only a patchy fringe of dull brown strands still grew above his ears and at the nape of his neck. Why did balding men cling pathetically to their small weeds of hair?

  “Bullshit!” He spit out the word. “I know how you civil servants think. It makes you feel so powerful to keep people waiting.”

  “You seem to have a deep disregard for the police, Mr. Linton. Or is it just that you have a deep disregard for anyone in a position of authority?” Codella watched the angry twitch of his upper lip.

  “I don’t have a problem with authority. But I have a problem with people who take theirs too far.” He looked over his shoulder, letting Officer O’Donnell know he was one of those people too.

  Susan Bentley rose from her chair. “The detective is just doing her job, Peter.”

  Peter glared at her and flicked his fingers as if he were shooing away a mosquito. “Don’t talk to me, Susan.”

  Codella turned to Susan, “You can go now, Doctor. I’m sure we’ll speak again.”

  As soon as Susan Bentley was gone, she turned to O’Donnell, thanked him for his help, and asked him to shut the door on his way out. When the door closed behind him, she turned back to Peter Linton, who was rubbing the bald crown of his head like a worry stone. “Why did you speak so dismissively to Dr. Bentley just now?”

  “What?” he sneered.

  “You sounded very angry at her.”

  “I’m not angry. I’m just upset. My back is killing me. I have a bad back, and it’s not easy to sit for hours on end.”

  “I understand,” said Codella. “Shall I have someone bring you some Advil?”

  He smirked. “Advil’s about as effective as a Tic Tac. This is Vicodin pain.” He looked at his watch. “I need to get home. I start a trial in the morning. I still have a lot of prep work I was planning to do tonight. This is an important case for me. My client is depending on me to keep h
im out of prison.”

  “Well, two people are dead—your fellow parishioners, Mr. Linton—and they’re depending on me. Detective Haggerty mentioned that you’ve been upset since he arrived.”

  “These vestry meetings always get me worked up.”

  “What got you worked up tonight?”

  Sweat soaked the collar of his dress shirt. He glanced at the door.

  “Sit down.” Codella pointed him to the couch Susan Bentley had vacated. Then she pulled over a straight-backed chair and sat directly in front of him. “Roger Sturgis mentioned that you gave a cemetery report at the meeting. Is that correct? He mentioned that you want to make improvements to the cemetery but others don’t agree. Is that why you’re upset?”

  “We have no more space for in-ground burials.” Peter sighed as if explaining this to her were a huge waste of his time. “But there’s a strip of city land adjacent to the cemetery. It’s been there for decades—the city will never develop it. I want St. Paul’s to buy it, and I’ve spoken with the councilman from Sheepshead Bay. He’s willing to advocate for us. If we got that land, we could bury five hundred more bodies and build a new aboveground mausoleum. That would mean a lot of revenue for the cemetery—and since the cemetery provides thirty percent of the church’s operating budget, it’s a lot of funding for church programs. But you know how vestries are. Everyone’s got his or her own agenda.”

  “I see.” Peter’s profit-and-loss discussion of bodies struck Codella as far more ghoulish than the jokes CSU investigators often made while they processed grisly death scenes. Those investigators were defending themselves against their emotions, whereas Peter Linton seemed to have no emotion other than rage.

  “And our crematory furnace is ancient,” he continued. “We can barely process two bodies a day. If we had more capacity, we could burn bodies for the smaller funeral homes in the area. I’ve already investigated new cremation models. The technology has improved dramatically since St. Paul’s purchased its equipment. I’ve done a return-on-investment analysis based on some very reasonable assumptions about the added business we could generate.”

  “And you thought the vestry would vote for your proposal?”

  Peter nodded. “Any moron could see the advantage. We’re facing tough fiscal times. We’ve had a shortfall in the budget for months now because of our boiler problems—we had no choice but to replace it in December. Do you have any idea what a boiler costs? Two months ago, we had to let our choir director go. We couldn’t afford him full time anymore, and he wouldn’t accept a part-time position. We had to replace him with a part-timer, Stephanie Lund. She’s fine for now, but when the youth choirs start back up next September, we’ll need someone full time again. We need a revenue stream. If we don’t turn things around, we’ll have to defund programs, and no one on this vestry wants that.”

  “And how did the vote go tonight?”

  “Well, let’s just say that if I were running for president, they wouldn’t call it a landslide.” He smiled for the first time and shrugged. “Look, I’m sorry for being so difficult. I’m stressed out about this trial tomorrow. It’s a manslaughter case. I need it to go well. Are we done here?”

  “Not quite yet,” Codella said. “Where were you when Dr. Graves left the vestry meeting to go home?”

  “In the Blue Lounge,” said Peter. “Oh, except when I stepped out to take a phone call.”

  “Stepped out where?”

  “Into the hall. I just walked around out there while I spoke to my client. He’s understandably nervous about tomorrow. He killed a young girl on her way to school. He’s charged with vehicular homicide.”

  Codella touch-typed a note into her iPhone. “How long were you on the phone?”

  “I don’t know. A couple minutes, I guess.”

  Codella projected an expression of disinterest that she didn’t really feel. “One other question. What were you texting tonight in the garden while the EMTs performed CPR? Sergeant Zamora observed you. You might as well tell me the truth. We’ll be requesting your mobile phone records anyway.”

  “My records? Why?”

  “You’re a lawyer. You can figure that out, can’t you?”

  “No judge is going to give you a warrant for my phone records just because I was texting.”

  He was right, of course, Codella knew.

  “But if you’re so interested, I texted my wife. I knew I was going to be late. I told her Philip was dead and that she should go to bed without me.”

  “Sergeant Zamora told me you texted while the EMTs were still working. How did you know Philip Graves was dead if they weren’t finished trying to resuscitate him?”

  Peter gave her an “are you crazy?” expression. “Any idiot could see he wasn’t going to reopen his eyes.”

  Codella stared at the perspiring man. “All right, Mr. Linton. You can go now,” she said, “but I’m sure we’ll speak again.”

  CHAPTER 22

  This time, the woman who came to the door looked annoyed rather than anguished. She was an attractive middle-aged redhead wearing a blue satin robe. A man stood behind her in a T-shirt and sweats. “What’s going on?” he demanded, his arm resting protectively—or possessively—on her shoulder.

  Muñoz displayed his shield and apologized for the late intrusion. “Are you Jill Graves?” He addressed the woman.

  “I used to be.” She frowned. “My name is Jill Woodruff now. This is my husband, Robert.”

  Muñoz nodded at the man briefly and returned his gaze to the woman. “Philip Graves was your husband?”

  “That’s right. But we’ve been divorced five years now. What’s this about?”

  Muñoz sensed little need for delicacy. “Mr. Graves is dead.”

  “Dead?” She looked more confused than upset. “Philip?”

  “May I come in?”

  She stepped back and Muñoz entered. Beyond the door was a spacious and modern open-concept living area. The leather sectionals looked new and expensive. The light fixtures and glass coffee table were sleek and modern. Through the west-facing windows, he could just make out the lighted-up buildings across the Hudson River in New Jersey. During the day, the view through those windows would be stunning. “His death appears to have been a homicide, Mrs. Woodruff.”

  “You mean he was murdered,” she stated rather than asked. “By whom?”

  Muñoz was struck by how different this death notification was from the previous one. Martha Flounders’s knees had buckled as he and Officer Dunn led her to her couch. The young woman was so distraught that he’d asked Officer Dunn to stay with her until her aunt—Emily Flounders’s sister—could arrive from Union, New Jersey.

  By contrast, this notification barely caused a snag in Jill Woodruff’s emotional fabric. Curiosity appeared to be her primary feeling. Her question—who had killed him?—could just as easily pertain to a neighbor or a stranger on the street, he thought. Either Woodruff was a constitutionally detached individual or her relationship with her ex-husband had been so unpleasant that his fate engendered no pity in her at all.

  “We’re investigating that,” he said. “Did you have any children with Mr. Graves?”

  “We had a son,” she said crisply, “but he died early in life.”

  Muñoz recognized the brittle tone of someone who didn’t want to revisit a painful loss. “Is there anyone else I should inform about his death?” he asked. “A sibling? A parent?”

  “Philip’s parents are dead. He has a sister in Oklahoma, but they weren’t close. Her name is Olivia. I wouldn’t know how to put you in touch with her.”

  Muñoz jotted the name on his notepad. “Is there a friend?”

  “He’s on the faculty of Columbia College. In the history department. You could contact them.”

  Muñoz nodded. “When did you last see your ex-husband?”

  Woodruff turned to the man behind her. “Was it four months ago we ran into him at the Fairway uptown?”

  The man yawned. “Yes, thr
ee or four months ago.”

  “So you didn’t see him often?” asked Muñoz.

  “No. I’ve probably only seen him twice in the past five years.” She shrugged. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how people can live within twenty blocks of each other in this town and never see each other.”

  “Yes, funny.” Muñoz studied the rich blue silk of her robe. He noticed the carefully balanced high- and lowlights in her red hair and the subtle, appealing scent of her perfume. She was obviously a woman who liked to look good and be surrounded by beautiful things. Had she divorced Philip Graves because he couldn’t provide those things, or had he divorced her because he found her too superficial? “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to do your ex-husband harm?” Muñoz asked.

  Jill Woodruff’s eyebrows rose. “I imagine there were plenty of people who didn’t like my ex-husband, Detective. He was”—she considered her words—“prickly. And pompous. He liked to be the smartest one in the room. And he didn’t go out of his way to be tactful. He told you exactly what he thought about things. That got us scratched off quite a few guest lists, I can tell you, but I can’t imagine it would cause anyone to kill him.”

  Muñoz nodded. “Thanks for your time.” He turned to go. If Jill Woodruff remained awake after he left, it wouldn’t be for need of solace.

  CHAPTER 23

  The light was on in the foyer—Susan always left it on—but judging from the darkness beyond, her husband hadn’t returned. That meant he couldn’t get a flight out of Seattle. Ordinarily she would sympathize—conducting a chamber orchestra, even a renowned one, wasn’t as glamorous as many people assumed it was, and Daniel was often at the mercy of regional weather systems—but now she was relieved that she didn’t have to face him.

  She dropped her purse and kicked off her heels. Her toes ached from confinement. She stood still for several seconds, her whole body humming like an overworked electric grid. How much time did she have before the truth came out? So many incoming thoughts and emotions crowded her mind that she couldn’t think straight. Short of a miracle, Philip’s death ensured that her judgment day was near. She felt tears roll down her face as she thought of what she would lose. Daniel would certainly want a divorce. And her sons? Would they turn on her too? Or had she sufficiently opened their minds to the varieties of human experience?