Let Us Prey

by Blake Banner

  We strolled in among the throng of people and headed for the cake stall. A pretty, blonde woman was attending it that must have been in her late thirties, and a pretty girl stood beside her, who had to be her daughter. She was probably in her late teens or early twenties. They both gave us bright smiles that looked as though they belonged in the South, where life is good and morality was uncomplicated.

  “Hi there!” It was the woman. She said it like we were old friends, and for a moment I wondered if I knew her. “Welcome! Can we offer you some amazing lemonade?”

  Dehan answered before I could draw breath. “You sure can, and we’ll have a couple of those brownies too.”

  The daughter poured while the mother shoveled. I took my brownie from her and said, “Maybe you can help us. We are actually looking for somebody.”

  “Oh.” She seemed genuinely pleased at the possibility of being able to help. “Well, we know most everyone around here, don’t we, honey?”

  Her daughter nodded and also looked equally as eager to help.

  Dehan said, “Sylvie Martin?”

  They were thrilled and I swear the mother gave a little jump. “Oh, well, that’s me! I am Sylvie Martin!” She took hold of her daughter and added, “And this is Mary, my daughter! How can we help you?”

  Dehan’s mouth was full of chocolate brownie, so all she could say was, “Umph…”

  I took over, with what is generally termed as ‘an easy smile.’ “We are police officers.” I put down my lemonade, fished out my badge and showed it to her. “I am Detective John Stone and this is my partner, Detective Carmen Dehan.”

  A hint of a frown, the smile strained almost imperceptibly by concern as soon as the words ‘police officer’ hit her ears.

  “Oh, is there a problem…?”

  “No.” I shook my head and bit into the brownie. It was good, and I allowed my face to say so. Speaking with my mouth full, I said, “It is the policy of the 43rd Precinct to review cold cases from time to time, Mrs. Martin, and we are currently conducting a review of…”

  I trailed off. She had gone very pale. Her daughter was watching her and had placed her hand on her shoulder. Sylvie said, “I thought that was a permanently closed case.”

  Dehan swallowed the last of her brownie and said, “Simon’s murderer is still at large, Sylvie. The case can’t be closed.”

  “I would… We would all, really, rather put the whole thing behind us. The Lord dispenses His own justice.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Martin.” I meant it, she looked genuinely distressed. “But we have to do our job. Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

  She gave a deep sigh and searched the crowd for a moment. Then, she raised a hand and called, “Oh, Paul… Reverend Truelove…!”

  I turned and watched a large, leonine man, with silver hair swept back from his head in a perfect swoop, move through the crowd towards us. He looked for a moment like a Spanish galleon parting the seas in some forgotten, surrealist book of the Old Testament. He graced us both with the bounty of his kind smile, lingering a little longer and with more bounty upon the beautiful Dehan than on me. Finally, he turned to Sylvie Martin.

  “Sylvie, who are your friends?” Then, turning to us again, he said, “Welcome to St George’s.” He had a voice like a particularly excellent church organ.

  I showed him my badge. “Detectives Stone and Dehan, NYPD. Superb brownies and lemonade, by the way. We were wondering if we could borrow Sylvie for five minutes. It is purely a formality. We are reviewing a cold case…”

  He frowned. “A cold case? You can’t mean poor Simon, surely?”

  Dehan, with her usual directness, asked, “Why not?”

  “Well.” He smiled. “That must be sixteen or seventeen years ago.”

  “Eighteen, but it is still unsolved.” She grinned. “So we keep working at solving it until we bring him justice.”

  “I see.” He frowned as though he did not agree. “Well, that is very commendable. By all means, would you like to use the vestry?” He gestured with his hand, ushering us in that direction. Turning to Sylvie’s daughter, he said, “Mary, you’ll tend the stall for a moment, won’t you?”

  She smiled. “Of course, Reverend.”

  Sylvie Martin led us down the side of the church, under the shadow of the trees, toward the side door into the nave, and all the way I could feel Reverend Paul Truelove’s eyes burning on my back.

  TWO

  The inside of the church was dark by contrast with the bright sunshine outside. The gothic arch of the doorway, on the far right, was startling, luminous in red and green. And on the left, there was the tenuous flicker of candles by the altar. Sylvie crossed herself and led us from the transept to another perfectly arched, wooden door that gave on to the vestry at the back of the altar.

  We followed her into a comfortable room that had the feel of an old world library or study. There was an oak desk, a two-seater sofa and a couple of black leather chairs. Two tall, frosted windows looked out onto the colorful fête outside. Sylvie sat on the sofa with her knees together, and bent them slightly to one side. Dehan and I took the chairs. I smiled in a way I hoped was reassuring.

  “Mrs. Martin…”

  “Sylvie, please.”

  “Sylvie. We understand that this must be difficult, and the last thing we want to do is stir up any painful memories. But you understand, a serious crime has been committed, and we are obliged to investigate.”

  She nodded. “Yes, of course I understand. I will try to help in any way that I can, I mean if I can…”

  “What can you tell us about the events of that evening?”

  She placed her hands, one on top of the other, on her lap and looked at them sadly, as though they had disappointed her somehow.

  “My memory…” she said. “My memory of that evening is practically nonexistent, if I am being honest. I just seemed to black out at the time and it has never come back.”

  Dehan said, “Don’t worry. Don’t force yourself. How about the hour or two before?”

  She smiled briefly at Dehan and said, “Um… I had fed and changed Mary. She was just one at the time. Ahmed had come over from the church…”

  “Ahmed?”

  “He was a refugee, a young Arab boy, from Iraq. He was just sixteen and Paul, that’s Reverend Truelove, had offered him some work at the church to give him a hand in making ends meet. Odd jobs, gardening and what not. We all hoped he would find the true faith, but we never pressured him.”

  I frowned. “And he had come over to your house?”

  “Simon had offered him work, too, in the garden, a few afternoons a week.”

  Dehan sat forward. “So you had fed and changed Mary, and then Ahmed had come over and he was working in the garden.”

  “Yes…”

  “What happened next?”

  Her face seemed to go tight. Her fingers closed on the hem of her dress. “I suppose it must have gotten dark. I am not sure. I know Simon came home from work. I remember he was calling to say he was home, but none of the lights were on in the house. I hate to waste electricity, you see, but I remember that the kitchen door out into the garden was open. I remember that without a doubt. I know I was sitting on the bottom of the stairs and the house was completely dark and still. I felt a bit cold. And Simon was lying there, in his coat. His briefcase was next to him and he was staring straight up at the ceiling.”

  She frowned, as though she was trying to remember something, and I was surprised to realize she was crying. She held her breath for a moment, and suddenly she was like a woman with a bad cold. I reached over and handed her my handkerchief and Dehan moved and sat next to her, putting her arm around her shoulders.

  “Where was Ahmed?”

  “Gone. Gone before the dusk.”

  “I know it is hard, but please try to remember. Did anybody else call?”

  “I don’t know. The kitchen door was open, into the garden.”

  I smiled at her. “Do you come f
rom Texas?”

  She gave a small, damp laugh. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Y’all still got the twang.”

  She laughed and wagged a finger at me. “Y’all ain’t never singular, Detective Stone. Y’all best remember that!” She fiddled with the handkerchief for a moment, then said, “Simon worked at Federal United. They transferred him here. We didn’t really want to leave Austin, we liked it there, but it was a chance for a promotion and more money…” She shrugged. “So we took it. We could have gone to Brooklyn. The bank offered us a place there. But Simon said we could do more good through the church here, where there was more need.”

  For a moment, I was reminded of the stickers in her window, but I didn’t mention them. Instead, I asked her, “Who alerted the police?”

  She stared at me. It was an odd expression, almost apologetic. “I had the phone in my hand… It must have been me.”

  Dehan stroked her back a couple of times. “Did you speak to him?” Sylvie turned to look at her. Dehan went on, “He called to you to let you know he was home. Did you answer? Did you say anything?”

  Her bottom lip began to quiver. She made a strange, guttural sound like, “Oh, God…!” and collapsed against her, sobbing. Dehan enfolded her in her arms and looked at me, shaking her head.

  I sat for a moment, watching her and thinking. When she had settled a bit, I said, “We won’t trouble you any more today, Sylvie, but we may want to talk to you again as the investigation progresses. I do understand it’s hard, but I would like you to give some thought to Detective Dehan’s questions and see if anything begins to surface in your memory. Can you do that for me?”

  She nodded, blinking, and blew her nose. “I’m sorry.”

  I stood. “No need to be at all.”

  “I suppose I had better get back to my daughter.”

  I smiled. “Y’all take care, y’hear?”

  She laughed sadly and we followed her out into the nave. As we approached the transept, a shadow moved across the door at the far end, and a foot seemed to scuff the stone floor, setting up an echo in the vaulted ceiling. Sylvie stopped and peered, and blew her nose.

  “Humberto?” The figure shuffled closer. Dehan glanced at me. Sylvie said again, “Humberto, is that you?”

  He was tall, almost seven feet, and massive, though he stooped and had a shambling gait. Slowly, he came into the diffuse light of the candles. His features were hard to make out with the glare of sunlight behind him, but his face was broad, his jaw was big, and his brow was low on his face. He was grinning as he came closer. Both his grin and his steps were hesitant. When he spoke, his voice was nasally.

  “Donna Maria, benedicta santisima, purisima mater nostra…” He laughed nervously, making a sound like a braying ass, knocked his knees and gripped his crotch with both hands, “Perdonattame, perdonattame…”

  She smiled at him. “It’s okay, Humberto, you can sit and pray, orare, orare, you can sit.”

  He brayed again, biting his lower lip. “Santisima madre, benedita, plena di grattia..”

  He backed away and after a couple of steps, turned and dashed off into the shadows among the rear pews. Sylvie opened the side door at the end of the transept and we stepped out into the sunshine. Dehan asked it. She had to and I knew it was killing her to know.

  “Who is that?”

  “Humberto?” Sylvie shrugged. “He’s attached to Paul…” She sighed. “Sorry, Reverend Truelove. Nobody really knows his story. He just seems always to have been here. I suspect the reverend adopted him at some point, but he’s so humble, he never talks about it.” She shrugged. “Either way, he has found a home, literally, in the church.”

  I frowned. “What is that language he speaks? It’s not Latin or Italian.”

  She laughed. “It is some kind of peculiar invention of his own. It’s a generic Latin. People have identified Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Modern Latin and classical Latin, plus a good few inventions of his own. He seems to make it up as he goes along.”

  “How old is he?”

  She shrugged and shook her head. “Nobody knows.”

  I saw the reverend walking toward us. Sylvie held up the handkerchief. “I will wash it and return it to you when you are around next. Thank you for being so understanding. I’d better go.”

  She had taken less than a dozen paces when she and the reverend crossed. We watched as he stopped and took hold of her shoulders. They looked into each other’s faces but they did not speak. After a moment, he patted her on the arm and she moved off in the direction of her stall, and Reverend Truelove—Paul—approached us with the walk of a man who owns a God who owns the world.

  Without preamble, he said, “It was almost two decades ago, but to her it’s as raw and livid as though it had happened today, five minutes ago.”

  “The mind is its own place, reverend, and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

  He looked at me curiously. “Indeed. Was she able to help any? It was a long time ago. Memories fade…”

  Dehan scratched her head. “Well, Reverend, from what you just said, it was a long time ago for you, but not for her. So her memory hasn’t faded.” She affected the accent of the deep South, “The mind bein’ it’s own place, an’ all.” She pointed at the large group of people milling among the stalls. There were perhaps eighty or a hundred of them. “See those people, Reverend, how many of them do you reckon were here eighteen years ago?”

  He looked startled. “I am not sure. Most of them, I should think.”

  “And how many of them, would you say, knew for sure that Sylvie’s kitchen door was open that evening?”

  His jaw dropped and he stared at her in astonishment.

  She plowed on. “Because, Reverend, in that—much smaller—group, you will probably find a man who wanted to kill Simon Martin.” She smiled. “Kind of changes things, doesn’t it? Bit less vague and a bit more immediate.”

  He did the goldfish thing of staring with big eyes and soundlessly opening and closing his mouth.

  I smiled at him and asked, “Were you here that evening, Reverend?”

  “Why… yes, um, I’m not sure… No.” He shook his head. “I truly don’t recall.”

  I shrugged. “It’s a long time ago. I just thought, given the events of the night…”

  “Oh, quite so. It just escapes my mind at the moment. I can tell you that I didn’t find out what had happened until the next morning. But for the life of me…” He hesitated. “It was a terrible shock, of course. I felt somehow guilty that I hadn’t been here for her at the time…”

  I nodded, then gave a small, sideways twitch of my head. “You can hardly be held responsible for that. What kind of man was Simon? Do you know of any enemies he might have had?”

  He puffed out his cheeks. “It is hard to imagine such a thing. He was a committed Christian, and a genuinely good man.” He gave a knowing smile, inviting us to join him in a cozy joke. “Because, as we know, there are many committed Christians, who are not necessarily genuinely good people.”

  Dehan snorted. “You got that right.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her that said he found her vaguely distasteful, then addressed me. “He was a serious man, did not invite easy friendship, but he was very upright and did a great deal for charity, and for the church.”

  I scratched my chin. “I have to ask this, Reverend, and I hope you understand that there is nothing to be gained by concealing the truth through a misguided sense of loyalty.” He looked affronted, but I ignored him and carried on. “How were things at home between Simon and Sylvie?”

  He looked grave. “To be honest, a little joyless. Simon was a very devout man who saw little point in having fun. Joy, in his view, was to be achieved exclusively through an undivided devotion to God.” He sighed and spread his hands. “Sylvie is a joyful, happy soul, and I fear she was withering a little in their marriage.” He smiled beatifically. “Of course, Mary brought her much joy and laughter while Simon was at work, but
, well, their life together was serious and contemplative, rather than gay and exuberant.” He smiled thinly at Dehan. “I use the word gay in its true meaning, of course.”

  I nodded. “Would you have described Sylvie as frustrated back then?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know that I would have chosen that particular word, but let’s say I would not have described her as fulfilled. However, certainly not frustrated to the point of homicide, if that is what you are getting at.”

  I shook my head. “I am not driving at anything, Reverend, just trying to understand the situation. We have no suspects yet at this time, unfortunately.”

  Dehan frowned. “One last question and then we’ll leave you in peace… for a bit. Does Sylvie have a job…?” She shrugged, shook her had and spread her hands all at the same time. “What is her source of income?”

  “Simon had made a very generous cushion, if you will, for her by means of a couple of insurance policies. That was him all over. So she works full time, on a voluntary basis, at the church. To be working in God’s service helps her to heal from what happened so many years ago.”

  I held out my hand. “Thank you, Reverend. We’ll try not to disturb you unnecessarily, but we will need to talk to you again at some point during this investigation.”

  He took my hand in both of his and held it tight. “Well, naturally, any help we can offer you, we will be only too glad to assist. But I have to say, Detective, it has taken Sylvie a long time to get back on her feet. We have all been there for her, to help and support her through very dark times. It would be a shame if, in seeking Simon’s killer, you reopened wounds that are only just beginning to heal.”