Gardened of the Damned

by Blake Banner

  I took a step closer to him and stared him hard in the eye. “He is a key witness in a murder investigation. Those men may have been looking for him to silence him. If you don’t help us find him, you could be sentencing him to death, Father Sullivan. You need to get with the program. Where was he going from here?”

  He had the good grace to look a little ashamed and said, “He refused to tell me. I don’t think he knew himself.”

  “You lend him your car?”

  He nodded. I gave him my notebook and my pen. “License number, make and model.”

  He wrote it down and I gave it to Dehan. “Get an APB put out, will you?” She walked away, dialing the precinct. I turned back to Father Sullivan. “If he comes back, keep him here and call me. If he contacts you, find out where he is and tell me. If you hear anything at all, I want to know.”

  He nodded.

  The sun was sinking in the west and the shadows were growing long when I stepped out onto the stairs. Dehan was a couple of steps down, hanging up the phone. She looked up at me.

  “White Ford Ka.” She gave me the license number. “APB is out. What now?”

  I scanned the empty streets. The first haze of dusk was enfolding the trees. “I don’t know. I really cocked up, Dehan.”

  She shrugged. “If you did, we both did. I agreed with your plan. I don’t see what else we could have done.” She shrugged and shook her head at the same time. “Who could have foreseen he’d run? What the hell did he run for? Where could he be safer? And he had the chance of a deal…”

  “Doesn’t make much sense. What the hell was he looking for?”

  The voice came from behind us, at the top of the steps. Father Sullivan stood looking down at us, a black shadow against the arch of the church door.

  “Confession,” he said. “And absolution.”

  SEVENTEEN

  By the time we got back to St. Mary’s, dusk was turning to evening and the CSI team had set up a string of ark lights over the dig. It was an eerie sight, with the guys in their plastic suits appearing and disappearing behind the screens, in the glow of the lamps against the church wall. We ducked under the tape and made our way along the footpath. We could see they had dug four trenches at right angles to each other, and the team was about waist deep in them.

  The uniformed cops had removed their jackets and had their shirt sleeves rolled up. They looked tired. Dehan quickened her pace and pointed but I had already seen it. There was a large plastic sheet laid out, and on the sheet there were bones.

  Frank saw us approaching and climbed out of the trench. He held up one hand as though to stop me.

  “Before you ask me, John, I don’t know. At this juncture, I know what you know, you predicted they’d be here, and they are. So that tells you something, but not much. As to the bones, whom they belong to, whether they are male or female, what age, how many…” He shook his head. “Don’t bother asking me because I don’t know, and I won’t know until I get them back to the lab.” He pointed at the sheet. “You can look, but you can’t touch. Now, I have to get back to work.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and hurried back to the trench. Dehan and I moved to the plastic sheet. There were two skulls. They were small. There were a few bones that might have been ribs. Nothing more.

  “Is one of them Alicia?” I looked sharply at Dehan. She had tears in her eyes. “I used to play dolls with her when we were kids. Is that her, there?” She turned to look at me. Her eyes were large and dark, and the amber light of the arc lamps was reflected in her tears.

  I had no answer for her. No explanation.

  “Let’s get out of here, Stone. They’ve got this.”

  “Sure.”

  We walked back toward the gates. Evening was shutting down and night was closing in. I glanced over and saw lights in the rectory. It looked like the kitchen. She put her hand on my shoulder. “Let’s have a word with Mrs. Doyle before we leave, she might have heard something.”

  The door was open and we went in. We found her in the kitchen, sitting at the long pine table staring at a mug of tea. She looked up but didn’t say anything. Dehan smiled at her. “You got one of those for a couple of tired cops?”

  Mrs. Doyle didn’t smile. She looked back at her mug and said, “In the pot, love. Help yourself.”

  Dehan glanced at me. I shook my head. She poured herself a mug and we sat. I said, “No word?”

  She shook her head. Then, in exasperation, “Sure, where would he go? His family’s all back home in Ireland, them that’s still livin’, most of them are dead, God rest their souls. Amn’t I all he’s got? The feckin’ old fool! God forgive me for sayin’ it but he is, so he is.”

  Dehan smiled. “He’d been at Father Sullivan’s. You were right about that, but he left just before we arrived. Where do you think he’d go from Father Sullivan’s?”

  “Isn’t that what I’m tellin’ you? There is nowhere for him to go. I made him his favorite stew an’ all.”

  “I saw you making it. It looked good. Every cop in New York is on the lookout for him, Mrs. Doyle, even at the airports, shipping ports, railway stations… He’ll show up sooner or later.”

  She didn’t look very convinced. “I’ll have somethin’ to say to the silly feckin’ eejit when he does.”

  “You’ll let me know the minute he does?”

  It was as though I hadn’t spoken. She stared into my face with total incomprehension. “Where, in the name of all that’s holy, is he going to go? Where is he going to sleep? Who’s going to feed the silly gobshite?”

  Dehan finished her tea and we stepped back into the night. We crossed the gravel drive to the sidewalk, and I leaned on the roof of the Jag. She came and leaned next to me.

  “He’s going to come back here, isn’t he?”

  I nodded. “He had a crisis of conscience, or faith, or whatever religious people have. He’s in fear for his life and he needed to confess, to make peace with his creator before he died. Now he’s alone in the city. He’s scared and he’s going to get cold and hungry. He will come home.”

  She nodded. “He’s all we’ve got to connect the bones to Sadiq Khan, Bishop Bellini, and the others. If he dies, the case dies with him.”

  “I know.”

  “We have to stay.”

  I looked into her face. “You okay? You want to go? I can stay.”

  She shook her head, and as she did it, I saw the car parked fifty yards away under a plane tree. The young April leaves cast dappled shadows in the limpid light of the street lamp, but you could see it was white. It was a white Ford Ka. I pointed at it and suddenly knew where he was. Dehan ran for the car, I began to walk back toward the church.

  She caught up with me at the steps.

  “The car is empty.”

  The great wooden doors were unlocked and I pushed them open. The huge nave was in darkness, except for four candles that burned at the altar, illuminating the statues of the saints, the elaborate gold leaf, the frescoes and the giant crucifix. There was absolute silence. Father O’Neil was on his knees in front of his tortured, weeping lord, a bent, broken figure in black. I walked down the central aisle and stood behind him. He was hunched forward, his hands clasped in prayer in his lap.

  He had died as he had lived, on his knees, but he had died, as he had wanted to die, making peace with his God. It would have been quick, and virtually painless. There was barely a mark on him, save for the small puncture mark at the base of his skull.

  Dehan sat on the pew behind him and looked at me.

  “We’re fucked, Stone.” Her eyes traveled down to gaze at him where he knelt, and almost echoed my thoughts. “He died as he lived, fucking things up for everybody else.”

  I pulled out my cell and dialed the captain.

  “Stone! Did you find him?”

  “Yeah. He went to confess with his pal Father Sullivan, then came back to St. Mary’s, where he was killed with an ice pick while he was praying.”

  “He was
murdered?”

  I closed my eyes and counted to ten before answering. I wanted to tell him, no, it was a freak accident, he fell backwards onto an ice pick while kneeling in prayer at the altar. Instead, I said, “Yes, Captain, he was murdered.” I didn’t add that that was the usual way to acquire an ice pick in your brain.

  “And this happened with fifteen cops on the premises?”

  “Yeah, they are kind of busy at the moment, digging up skeletons.”

  “How is that going? Have they found any?”

  “When I last checked they had two skulls and several ribs. It is painstaking work.”

  “I know.”

  “Nobody is to blame, Captain.”

  “Okay, Stone. I’ll have a team sent over, meanwhile, seal the area.”

  We took a reel of yellow tape from the CSI truck and sealed the church. Dehan told the cop on duty we had a second crime scene and followed me back to the rectory to give Mrs. Doyle the news.

  EIGHTEEN

  They worked through the night, and all through the following day. They recovered a total of fourteen bodies, more than I had expected. Frank had the remains taken to his lab where he and his team carefully, painstakingly, started to reassemble the bones into skeletons. After that, the slow, detailed process of analysis would begin, to establish the age and sex of each one, and if possible, the cause of death. It could take weeks.

  All he was able to tell me, after they had started assembling the skeletons, was that it was very unlikely that there were any boys, and that only one of the skulls appeared to be over fifteen years of age.

  Alicia.

  Dehan went to see her aunt, to give her the news and to ask for Alicia’s dental records. She asked me not to accompany her, so I spent the time tracking down Sadiq Khan, then called Bishop Bellini’s office. Sadiq Khan was out of the office and Bishop Bellini was out of the country.

  Joe, the CSI team leader who had processed the scene of Father O’Neil’s murder, called to tell me what I already knew. It had been a very professional job. There was not a trace of the killer. His spinal cord had been severed at the base, where it met the brain, with a single thrust of a small, sharp blade, probably an ice pick.

  Dehan came back about four in the afternoon and dropped into her chair.

  “I sent Frank the details so he can contact her insurance company. He said he’d give her priority, as a favor. We should know soon.”

  I nodded. After a bit, I said, “We seem to have hit a dead end. We uncovered all this from a haircut and a manicure, but I can’t see a way of linking what happened to the people who did it.”

  She leaned back in her chair and rolled her head. I heard her vertebrae crunch.

  “Mick is dead, Father O’Neil is dead, that leaves, who? Sadiq Khan…”

  “Out of the office.”

  “The bishop…”

  “Out of the country.”

  “‘H’…”

  “Untouchable until we have more evidence.”

  “And Conor Hagan.”

  I sighed. “Conor Hagan…” I reached in the file and pulled out the two emails and the list and placed them on the desk. “He isn’t on the list.”

  “God dammit, Stone!” I looked at her. “There is no evidence! How can you investigate a case where there is no evidence? It’s twelve years ago!” She mimicked, “‘Where were you on the night of the fifteenth of January, twelve years ago?’”

  “Hmmm… You’d need somebody with a superb memory.” I picked up my phone and called Hagan Construction.

  “Hagan Construction, how may I…”

  “This is Detective Stone of the NYPD. I need to talk to Conor Hagan on a very urgent matter, now.”

  “Thank you caller, please hold the line while I try to connect you.”

  I put the phone on speaker, picked up a pencil and methodically broke it into matchwood. Then a voice like talking concrete emerged from my cell.

  “This is Conor. What do you want, Stone.”

  “I need to talk to you. This is important for both of us.”

  “I’m at the Shamrock.”

  “Will you still be there when I get there?”

  “Yes.”

  He hung up. I picked up the folder of photographs.

  He was at the same table when we arrived. He was still studying papers and he still had a Guinness, but this time, instead of a beef sandwich he had a whiskey chaser. As we approached, he looked up and nodded at the bartender. We sat.

  “I’m guessing you know that Father O’Neil was murdered the night before last?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “I don’t murder priests.”

  “That’s not what I asked you. I asked you if you knew who did do it.”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “We have reason to believe—good reason to believe—that his murder is connected to Sean O’Conor’s murder.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “I’m coming to that, Conor. My partner thinks I am crazy, maybe I am, but my gut tells me that whatever you might be, and whatever you might do, you didn’t do this.”

  “Am I supposed to be fucking grateful?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Because Sean’s murder turned out to be about a hell of a lot more than squatters.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Like what?”

  The bartender came over with two pints of Guinness and set them in front of us. “It’s on the house,” he said, and returned to the bar.

  I raised my glass to Conor and said, “Slánta.” He nodded and turned to Dehan. She had the good sense to do the same.

  She sipped and said, “You were putting money into his relief program, and to provide shelter for the people you were evicting from the building on Tiffany Street, and education for the children. There were a few other people who were putting money into that program, too. But the program, and the kids, were being exploited and used for something else.”

  His eyes went hard, his face slowly flushed red, and his breathing grew heavier. This was anger, not fear.

  “What are you telling me?”

  I showed him the list of names. “This is a list that Sean made. These people are all people involved with the program, but your name is missing.”

  He pulled the list over and studied it. “Who are these two?”

  He pointed to the two decayed names.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Who do you think they are?”

  “This one is that cunt Mick Harragan. This one I have no idea.”

  “You know the others?”

  “That’s the bishop, and Sadiq I’ve met, but I didn’t know he was involved in the program. What fucking interest could he have in helping Catholic kids and educating them in the Catholic faith?”

  “None,” I said, and pulled out the first photograph, where the kids were all standing together, fully clothed. I slid it across to him. “Do you know who these kids are?”

  He studied the picture and after a while, he nodded. “I’m not fucking Mother Theresa, Stone. You know who I am and what I am, and I’ll be damned if I pretend to be anything else. I didn’t go and fawn over the kids and pretend to be a fucking saint so they could praise me and thank me. I’m a bad man and I’ll probably go to hell. So be it. But I didn’t want them sleeping on the streets, going into prostitution, getting hooked on drugs. They were only kids. I don’t deal in fucking child prostitution or drugs, and I don’t hurt children. Okay?” He sighed and looked back at the picture. “Sure, I remember these kids, most of them. They were on Father O’Neil’s program.”

  I slid the folder across. He opened it. He raised his eyes to glare at me and for a moment I thought he was going to attack me, but he looked back at the picture, then methodically worked his way through all twelve of them. I could see his hands were shaking and his chest was rising and falling hard. Dehan decided to add some fuel to the fire.

  “Their remains were dug up from Father O’Neil’s churchyard yeste
rday and the night before. Among them were the remains of my cousin, Alicia, who was their teacher.”

  “Alicia was your cousin?”

  Dehan nodded. “And Sean’s fiancée.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  I shook my head. “Anything, Conor, anything that will link these bastards with those bones.”

  His face flushed crimson. “I had no fucking idea that they were doing this. Father O’Neil knew that if I’d had the slightest idea I would have broken every fucking bone in his body, and his pals. Personally! Priest or no fucking priest.”

  “I believe you, but your anger doesn’t help me. I need you to think, remember, was there anything, anything at all at that time, that might connect the bishop or Sadiq Khan with these bodies?”

  “I already told you. I was not involved personally.”

  Dehan said, “If we can’t prove a connection, Father O’Neil will take the rap and these two, or three, will walk.”

  He looked at her through hooded eyes. “I know. If I think of anything, I’ll give you a bell.”

  I took a long pull on my Guinness and stood. I gave him a nod. “Thanks for the drink. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Dehan stood. Hagan watched me a moment. “I don’t know what you wouldn’t do.”

  I held his eye a moment. “Not a lot.”

  We stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine and started walking towards the Jag. Dehan was frowning at her boots as she walked.

  “I am not sure what you just did in there, Stone.”

  I held up a finger and pulled out my cell. I dialed Khan’s number. It rang twice and his secretary answered.

  “This is Detective Stone of the NYPD. I have a very urgent message for Mr. Sadiq Khan.”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell him that Father O’Neil is dead. He has been murdered and that Detective Stone needs to talk to him first thing tomorrow morning. Have you got that?”

  “Yes, Detective, I will tell him as soon as he comes in.”

  “Call him and give him the message.”

  “Yes, Detective.”

  Dehan was frowning at me. I smiled and dialed the bishop’s number. His secretary answered.