VC03 - Mortal Grace (52 page)

She took a moment preparing herself, and then she took two faltering steps forward. Her open-toed sandals clacked on the stone floor. She looked down into icy mist rising from the stainless steel tray.

Her face went from pale to white. She began trembling. She reached back and grabbed Cardozo’s hand. A wordless whimpering sound came out of her, the sound a tethered and whipped animal might make.

Cardozo put an arm around her and led her away from the locker. He could feel her heart thudding. She turned her head, and her nose left a print of warmth on his palm.

He spoke to her quietly. “It’ll be okay. It really will.”

Those eyes with their meadow-flower blue irises misted over. She nodded, not saying a word. Her pain washed through him.

“Nell…is there anything I can do? Is there anything you need?”

Her teeth came down on her lower lip. “Could I have something to drink?”

“What would you like? Coffee? Soda?”

“Anything.”

He took her to the soda machine in the corridor and bought a can of Coke and snapped it open for her.

They stood silently in nervous fluorescent light. He watched her take quick little sips.

“Could I ask a favor?” he said. “Would you allow Dr. Hippolito to examine you?”

“Why?”

“You said you did some scenes for a client of Eff’s. He might have left marks on you. They might help us find the person who killed Sandy.”

She stood thinking a moment. Her tongue curled over her upper lip in indecision. “Will it hurt?”

He couldn’t help smiling. “Of course not.”

She seemed uneasy, but in a way she seemed to like the attention. “Okay.”

They went to Dan’s office. Cardozo waited in the hallway, pacing, thinking of three quarters of a million kids growing up in the city without homes.

When Dan came out of the office, his face was grim. “Go easy on her, Vince. She’s in terrible shape.”

“I know that. What did you find?”

“She has the same marks as Sandy. The same marks as the others.” Dan’s tone was as hard as the edge of a steel ruler. “You can’t let her go back to those docks.”

Cardozo nodded. “I know.”

“What are you going to do about her?”

“I’m thinking about that.”

“I found something in Sandy’s mouth.”

It was as though a knot had been yanked tight in Cardozo’s stomach. “The wafer? Finally?”

It was Dan’s turn to nod. “She doesn’t know it, but she’s probably been in contact with the killer. And she’s come damned close to winding up the same as her boyfriend. Put her someplace safe, Vince. She’s not going to stay lucky.”

“Who’s the
s
that did those things to you?” Cardozo asked.

“I never saw him before,” Nell said. “Eff set it up for me. I called him ‘sir.’”

They were alone in the elevator, riding up to ground level.

“What did he look like?”

She had to think for a moment. “He was heavy…in his fifties…losing his hair.”

“What color eyes?”

“I think he was wearing glasses. I only saw him that once. It was an Omaha scene. You’re supposed to be new—you can’t play it twice with the same John. I was pretty fogged out. He gave me a pill.”

“What kind of pill?”

“Pink.” She shook her head. “It sent me to Jupiter. I wish I had one of those pills now.”

The elevator shuddered to a stop and the door slammed open.

“Hey,” she said.

“What?”

“Thank you.”

“Come on.” He took her arm. A man was mopping the marble floor, and Cardozo guided her around the slippery area. The glass doors to First Avenue opened automatically at their approach. Night hit like a hot washcloth.

He’d parked the Honda beside a hydrant. A heavyset woman in slacks was leaning on one of his fenders. She saw him and waved. “Vince! Thank God!”

The voice was unmistakable. His sister Jill. He felt a thick, dull pain like a toothache throughout his body.

“I had to track you down through the precinct.” She’d tied her hair in a bandanna, but strands of pale brown were waving free. She kissed him and hair got tangled in the kiss.

“Jill, this is Nell. Nell, my sister Jill.” He unlocked the passenger door. “What’s the emergency?”

“I ran out of my prescription.” She was wearing an enormous amount of makeup, and her face seemed to be trying to sweat it off. “The drugstore says I’ve used up my refills.” She turned to explain to Nell. “If I don’t have my prescription, I can’t function, I can’t sleep.”

Cardozo sensed more than a touch of vodka in the white water rush of words.

“Vince, you’ve got to help me.”

“Sure, but just let me handle one thing at a time. Nell was first.”

“That’s okay.” Nell shrugged. “I’m not in any rush to get anywhere.”

The druggist tilted the pill bottle into a cone of halogen light. “Sorry.” He had a Chinese face and an American accent. “No way.”

“They’re for my sister.” Cardozo handed his ID across the counter. “She puts a lot of faith in them, and she’s run out.”

“I’d like to help you.” The druggist shook his shaved head. “But the law’s very tough on these substances.”

Cardozo lowered his voice. “You must have some kind of placebo pills—couldn’t you just make up a fresh bottle, put a fake label on it?”

The expression of refusal melted into a smile. “It’ll take me a couple of minutes.”

Cardozo turned and looked across the all-night drugstore. Syrupy Muzak and pale chalky light drifted down from a honeycomb ceiling. Beyond the piled skyline of cosmetic and diet pill displays, Jill stood chatting with Nell, twirling a carousel rack of jokey greeting cards. They seemed to be getting along.

The druggist tapped a counter bell. “Okay, Officer.”

“What do I owe you?”

“Forget it. On the house.”

When Cardozo gave Jill the pills, she squinted at the label. “What are these?” Her face had a suspicious, childlike look.

“They’re the generic. He says they’re even better.”

“Good.” She dropped them into her purse. “I’ll get a night’s sleep.”

Now she walked like a maharani, ruler of her own space. Cardozo held the door for the ladies.

Night was a growling gray shimmer over Second Avenue. When they reached his car, the radio was sputtering. He lifted the mike. “Cardozo.”

“Just got a call from Staten Island.” It was Greg Monteleone, patching in from the precinct. “A taxi driver picked up two kids at the ferry around 8:45
P.M.
yesterday. Male teenagers. One was dark-haired, one was blond. He took them to Hylan Boulevard in Dongan Hills.”

“What’s there?”

“A church.”

Cardozo slipped the mike back into its holder. He sat with the motor idling. “Problem.”

“I’m listening,” Jill said.

“I have to get going.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Nell needs a bed for the night.”

Nell flicked him a defensive, chin-down look. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s so.”

“No problem.” Jill’s voice bubbled with an almost panicky good cheer. “Nell can stay with me. She can have Sally’s room.”

The driver brought his cab to a smooth halt. “I left them right here.”

Cardozo stared out the window at a Mobil automated filling station, flood-lit like the Berlin Wall. He wondered if this could really be the place. “You’re sure you brought them here?”

“Right. Two lowlife kids. One of them told me my English stank. That’ll be four dollars.”

Cardozo gave him five dollars and stepped out. He looked up and down the darkened street. “Isn’t there a church around here?”

The driver pointed. “Through the alley.”

Cardozo didn’t see the alley till he was five steps away. Two stores just beyond the filling station had been boarded up. A sign in one of the windows still advertised pet food.

A narrow cobbled lane ran between the stores. Beyond a neat row of garbage cans, a naked lightbulb burned above three wooden steps.

Cardozo climbed to the screened in porch. He sidestepped a saucer of half-eaten cat food and pushed the buzzer. It was two minutes before a thin man with a mane of graying blond hair opened the door.

“Yes?” He was in shirtsleeves and wearing a clerical collar.

“I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, Father.” Cardozo showed his ID. “Vince Cardozo, Twenty-second Precinct.”

“Where’s that?”

“Manhattan.”

“You’re a little way off your beat, aren’t you? I’m Father Henry Shea—rector of Redeemer.”

“Could I trouble you for a little information?”

Father Shea had curiously bright gray eyes. “Certainly. What can I tell you?”

“Did two young men come to the church or the parish house the night before last?”

Father Shea didn’t answer.

“Around nine?”

“Maybe you’d better come in.”

It was a pleasant old kitchen, roomy and high-ceilinged, with wooden cabinets and an old-fashioned eight-burner gas range.

“The night before last was my mother’s eightieth birthday. I was in Brooklyn celebrating with my family.”

“Was anyone in the church or rectory?”

“The sexton was in the church.”

An odd inflection caught Cardozo’s ear. “Could I speak with the sexton?”

“I’m afraid not.” Father Shea dipped two fingers into his shirt pocket and pulled out a packet of Marlboros. “I had to discharge him.”

“Where he’s gone?”

“I don’t know.” The tone of voice added,
And I don’t want to know.
Father Shea offered a cigarette.

Cardozo shook his head. “When did you discharge him?”

“Yesterday.”

Cardozo ran the chronology through his mind. “Could I ask why?”

It was obvious that Father Shea was uncomfortable talking about it. He lit a cigarette, drawing in a long pull. “He impersonated a priest.”

“He pretended to be you?”

Father Shea exhaled. The smoke curled in every direction. “I don’t know if he was pretending to be anyone in particular, but he put on my vestments and he celebrated Mass.”

“When did he do this?”

“The night before last, while he had the church to himself.”

“Did he give communion to anyone?”

Father Shea seemed surprised at the question. “Naturally. Communion
is
the Mass.”

“Do you have evidence?”

“Evidence?”

“That your sexton gave communion two nights ago.”

“Yes, indeed. There was clear evidence.”

“Could I see it?”

SIXTY-SIX

A
T NOON THE FOLLOWING
day, Father Henry stood watching the crime-scene team work. Uneasiness was obvious in his face.

“I’m sorry this is taking so long,” Cardozo said. After three hours, technicians were still exploring the sanctuary of Redeemer, hunting down prints, hairs, skin particles, perspiration, saliva.

“It can’t be helped,” Father Henry said. “You’re only doing your work. If I’d done mine half as carefully, none of this would be necessary.”

The church had become borderline hot and very soon it would be stifling. The windows were shut and the air-conditioning had not been turned on. Movement of the air had to be kept to a minimum so as not to disturb easily airborne evidence. Human skin prints lost their viscosity within seventy-two hours at room temperature, and cooling of any sort hastened the process. Without viscosity, the prints could not be made to fluoresce.

“This wasn’t the first time he served communion,” Father Henry said.

“When was the first time?”

“Last April. The nineteenth. I overlooked it.”

“Why?”

“He’s a veteran. He’d been hurt. Mentally hurt.” Father Henry drummed the earpieces of his glasses against his wrist. “When I hired him I had no idea how deeply disturbed he was.”

“Didn’t the diocese have records?”

“Not on sextons—they’re not ordained. And I didn’t have time to check him out. It was an emergency situation. The church where he’d been working was in terrible upheaval. Draper had cracked once before, in the army, and it looked as though he was going to crack again. I detest the way our country has treated our veterans and I wanted to make some small sort of amends. I thought if he were moved to a less pressured environment, like Redeemer, he’d settle down again.”

Two men and a woman moved abreast down the aisle. Father Henry stepped aside to let them pass. One was brushing the armrests of the pews with carbon powder. Another was aiming a high-intensity light. The third was handling a camera.

Another trio was examining the altar with the aid of a mercury laser. The beam of eerily pure white light caught minute deposits left by human contact and excited them to fluorescence. The oils in fingerprints showed purple. Saliva stains on the rim of the chalice showed rust. Wine residue showed blue, like bruises.

“What was the emergency at the previous church?” Cardozo said.

“The priest had been murdered. There’d been a nasty investigation and all sorts of innuendo.”

“What’s the name of the church?”

“St. Veronica’s—over in Queens.”

“Father Chuck’s place?”

“That’s right.” Father Henry looked at him in wariness and surprise. “Did you know him?”

“He served with the American forces in Panama. I don’t know exactly what happened there, but he came back suffering severe posttraumatic stress syndrome.” Father Gus Monahan’s expression was solemn. He was dressed in casually scruffy jeans and a priest’s shirtfront. “Somehow he’d turned into a sort of pathetic church groupie. He wanted to be a priest and save the world. Failing that, he wanted some kind of work in a church. So Father Chuck took him on as sexton. In a way, Father Chuck adopted Draper.”

“What exactly do you mean,” Cardozo said, “adopted him?”

It was two-thirty in the afternoon. They were sitting in the scuffed leather chairs in St. Veronica’s rectory.

“Took care of him—looked out for him—monitored his drinking—held his hand when he needed hand-holding—scolded him when he needed scolding—saw to it that he shaved and bathed. Generally steered him clear of trouble.”

“It sounds as though Draper was a baby.”

“Call him a child. Draper was highly dependent on Father Chuck for protection and guidance. And of course, when Chuck was murdered, Draper went to pieces. By the time I took over, his drinking and drugging were out of control. Frankly, and I wouldn’t say this to anyone but an officer of the law, he’d become delusionary.”