by Carrie Smith
He descended the steps. “Good morning, Rector.”
Anna Brookes rose to her feet. “I need to get in my office, Detective.”
“You can’t. It’s a crime scene, Rector. We’re not done collecting evidence.”
“But I have to send a note to my parishioners. My laptop’s in my office. I can’t get to the parish e-mail list without my laptop.”
“We’ll be done by tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s too late,” Anna insisted. “They’ll have read about the deaths in the papers by then. Reporters are swarming this place.”
She was different this morning, Haggerty thought. She wasn’t the vulnerable woman who’d folded into herself on the stones and prayed over the dead body last night. “I need to get in there now. Even if it’s just for five minutes.” She reached out and grasped his wrist. His first instinct was to pull his arm free, but he didn’t.
“Please, Detective.” She held his eyes without blinking. The eyes had a glass-hard determination, and he found himself wondering what kind of sermon Anna Brookes would deliver the next time she ascended to the pulpit. How would she filter these deaths through the lens of her Christian faith? He thought of the stale homilies he used to hear during mass as a boy. Something told him Anna Brookes didn’t download her sermons off the Internet.
He stared at her clerical collar. He’d known priests who lied, gambled, bribed, and raped children, and yet this collar still did and probably always would activate his latent Catholicism and demand his consideration. He heard Claire’s warning voice in his head. Don’t let her play you. You don’t know what role she has in this. But he wasn’t Claire. He didn’t have her superhuman powers of deductive reasoning—nobody else he knew did. Instead, he had his gut instincts, and right now his gut told him to trust Anna Brookes, just like he’d trusted Rose Bartruff in the kitchen last night. “Come on,” he said.
He led her through the front door, past the Community Room and Blue Lounge, and they turned left toward her small windowless office. Anna sat at her desk, opened her laptop, and powered it on. He stood over her left shoulder as she opened an e-mail and began a note to her parishioners. “With deep sadness, I write to inform you that our beloved senior vestry warden, Philip Graves, and vestry secretary, Emily Flounders, have died.”
He watched her agonize over each word of the lengthy missive until she came to her conclusion. “At times like these, we must seek our strength and solace in each other and in God. Please join me on Saturday at 11 AM for a prayer vigil of remembrance. May Emily’s and Philip’s souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace.”
She clicked the send button, closed her computer, and turned to face him. “Thank you, Detective. You have your work to do, and I have mine.” She rose. “Please find the killer for us.”
“We will, Rector. Don’t worry. We will.”
She walked to the door, stopped, and turned back. Her mouth opened, but she didn’t speak. She looked at him for several seconds.
Haggerty sensed her indecision. “Is there something you want to tell me, Rector? Something you think I should know?”
Anna Brookes shook her head. “No.”
She didn’t sound convincing. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes.” But she didn’t look him in the eyes as she answered.
Haggerty reached in his pocket, pulled out a card, and handed it to her. “If you change your mind,” he said gently, “you can call me anytime.”
CHAPTER 37
Muñoz phoned Codella as soon as he checked the evidence room. “Emily Flounders didn’t have any vestry minutes in her possession last night when we found her,” he said. “I have an itemized list of everything that was in her purse, pockets, and minivan. I’ll bring it to you when we meet over lunch. And so far, CSU has found nothing like that in the church. But they’re keeping their eyes open.”
“Thanks, Eduardo,” she said. “Let’s hope you can get us some phone records.”
“I’ll do my best, Detective.”
Vic Portino was on his way to his desk with a mug of black coffee when Muñoz found him. “Detective Codella said you might be able to help me get some phone records fast. She said you have sources.”
“Had.” Portino slurped his coffee. “I’m down to one right now. It’s not like the old days when I had a whole Rolodex to tap.”
Muñoz watched the veteran detective lumber back to his desk. He needed knee surgery, but he didn’t want to have it until he retired in three months. “Meniscus tear,” he told anyone who asked why he was limping. “I wish I could say I was chasing a perp, but I was crossing Broadway to go to the bank, and I tripped. Son of a bitch.”
Portino sat and sipped his coffee again. “Everything’s digital now. You log into the system and leave a big fat trail. Most of my sources got spooked.” He set the mug on his desk and sniffled. “Now I just got my cousin at Verizon. I’ve helped him with a few little law enforcement matters, so he owes me. But even he only does it if I really lean on him.”
“This is a big case, Detective Portino. Two dead vestry members at St. Paul’s Church. Looks like a double homicide. We’re gonna need you to lean.”
Portino flexed his stubby fingers and smiled. “For Codella? Sure. Can’t think of anyone else I’d rather help on my way out the door.” Muñoz heard detachment in Portino’s voice. The older detective no longer shared Codella’s hunger to lead the charge or Muñoz’s urgency to prove himself. “You got the numbers?” Portino held out his hand.
Muñoz reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a list. Portino ran his eyes down the eight names. “I can only help you with the Verizon ones. Find out which those are.” He handed the sheet of paper back to Muñoz.
“How do I do that?” Muñoz asked.
Portino shook his head. “Don’t let Codella know you asked me that. Go get on the Internet and figure it out. It’s not rocket science.”
Muñoz logged onto his computer, searched “how to get someone’s cell provider,” and found a site to look up carriers. One by one, he entered each of the eight numbers. Three were Verizon subscribers—Peter Linton, Stephanie Lund, and Vivian Wakefield.
Muñoz took the numbers to Portino. “How long do you think it’ll take your cousin?”
“In a hurry to make an impression?” Portino smirked. “Sit down and take a deep breath,” he said. “We’ll get you something. Don’t worry.”
CHAPTER 38
The parquet creaked beneath Codella’s shoes as she followed the narrow passage into the living room. In the center of the room, she turned in a slow three sixty, giving herself time to absorb the sights, sounds, and smells of Philip Graves’s apartment. This was as close as she would ever get to the living man.
Haggerty came up behind her. “It stinks like rotten fish in here.”
Codella pointed a gloved finger at the food container on the coffee table. “His Last Supper—sans disciples.”
She watched Haggerty’s repulsed expression as he stared at the decomposing shrimp. “What a fucking pig,” he said. “You’d think he could carry his dinner to the garbage before he went to his meeting.”
“He wouldn’t get away with that in my apartment,” she said.
“Uh-oh. Sounds like a warning.” Haggerty grinned.
Codella smiled. Then she turned and stared at miniature tumbleweeds of dust next to the baseboard molding. She pointed to the pile of books on the end table, a stack of old newspapers next to the couch, and a teetering tower of dog-eared magazines on a chair. She lifted a copy of a book written by Philip Graves—The Coldest Thirteen Days—and scanned the jacket flap.
“He was a fucking hoarder.” Haggerty pointed to the clutter. “I can’t imagine what the rector saw in him.”
She set down the book. “Maybe they liked to talk about religion and history.”
“Yeah, right.” Haggerty rolled his eyes. “I know what I saw last night, and I’m telling you, if you’d seen her kneeling in that garden, y
ou’d have drawn the same conclusion. She was in love with him.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I just can’t figure out what she saw in him. The guy was a good twenty years older than her.”
“Maybe she’s got daddy issues.”
“Or maybe they were fucking each other.”
“One doesn’t preclude the other.”
“We need to find out. But how?”
“That’s easy,” said Codella. “We ask her.”
“And she’ll deny it.”
“Maybe, but then we’ll ask her if she’s lying, and if she is, she’s not going to be able to do it convincingly a second time.”
“Her Christian conscience?”
“Right.”
Codella’s phone rang. Banks said, “That shovel you found, Codella? Somebody wiped the shaft of the spade clean. No prints.”
“That’s it? That’s why you called?”
“No, I called because we did get something.”
“What?”
Haggerty wandered into the kitchen.
“A tiny spot of blood on the handle grip. There was a metal edge jutting out. Whoever held that spade got a little cut. The blood is a different type from the blood on the back of the blade. Graves’s blood is A positive. This blood is O positive.”
Codella sighed. “That’s about as common as you get, Banks. That’s not going to help me all that much unless I can match DNA.”
“Well, it’s something,” he said. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
Codella hung up, and Haggerty called out, “Hey, come look at this.”
Two empty wineglasses and a corked bottle of wine were on the kitchen counter next to the stainless-steel sink. Haggerty read the label on the bottle. “Who do you suppose sipped this lovely Central Coast Cabernet with him?”
Codella stared at the dried sediment in the bottom of the glasses and examined the lipstick print on the rim of one glass. “Looks like he entertained a woman.”
“I bet it was Anna Brookes,” Haggerty said.
“She wasn’t wearing lipstick last night.”
“She probably doesn’t wear it when she’s being the St. Paul’s rector, but she might wear it to visit the man she’s in love with.”
Codella moved closer to the blotchy pink half circle and studied the small vertical creases the lower lip had left behind. It looked like any of a thousand other lipstick prints, but the creases, she knew, were as unique as a fingerprint, and the traces of DNA the print contained could be compared to other DNA samples, including the blood on the shovel handle.
“We need to know who was here.” She stepped back and photographed the sink area with her iPhone. “Put that glass in an evidence bag, and get it to Banks right away,” she told Haggerty. “Have him check for fingerprints and use whatever leverage he has with the medical examiner’s office to get rapid DNA analysis prioritized.”
“And then what?”
“And then we ask the rector if she’ll give us a DNA sample.”
While Haggerty bagged the glasses and wine bottle, Codella followed a passage from the living room to the other rooms in the apartment. The bathroom was long and narrow with floor-to-ceiling subway tiles. The toilet stood against the back wall next to a vintage tub from the 1950s. A clear vinyl shower curtain hung from a rusted rod bolted to the walls. Codella stepped in front of the porcelain pedestal sink, where Graves’s toothbrush lay on its side next to the soap dish. His electric razor was plugged into the wall socket beside the medicine cabinet. She opened the cabinet with two gloved fingers. All he had in there was a bottle of cologne, a nail clipper, and a tube of bacitracin. It was like the man was living out of a travel kit.
She wandered into his bedroom. In her years of searching the apartments of the dead, she had seen messy unmade beds like this one and others meticulously staged with elegant throw pillows and fluffy duvets. For some people, she had come to understand, an apartment was merely a private repository for self and possessions. For others, it was a painstakingly constructed work of art. In both cases, it provided a window into its owner’s customs and values.
Evidently, Philip Graves had cared little about this space. His clothes lay on the floor and on the radiator. His stand-up halogen lamp—which he’d left on—listed to one side. The black desk below his window looked like cheap office furniture. The chair was pulled out, and a binder lay on the seat.
Codella took out her iPhone and photographed the desk and chair. She snapped pictures of the unmade bed and the lit halogen lamp. Then she opened the binder, careful to touch only the upper right edge. Moscow Nights, she read. A Novel by Philip J. Graves.
She turned the page and started to read as Haggerty’s footsteps approached.
“Thomas Dexter peered silently out his fifth-floor window at the Four Seasons Hotel, steps from Red Square. The summer night sky glowed iridescently above the silhouetted Kremlin. A cold shiver of terror pierced his chest like a dagger as he pictured Vera smiling at him in her bed hours ago. How long after he’d left her had she waited to pick up the phone and call her handlers? How long would it be before someone knocked on his door? How painful would the interrogation be? He could try to run, but he knew they would find him.”
Codella stopped reading. “Our dead man was a John le Carré wannabe.” She closed the binder and stared at it.
“What’s wrong?” Haggerty asked.
“Why is it lying on the chair? Why isn’t it on the desk?” She turned and pointed to the halogen lamp. “And why is that light on?”
“For the same reason his dinner is still sitting in the living room.”
“You mean because he’s a slob?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Codella studied the stacks of papers on either side of the desk. The surface between the stacks was empty except for the familiar connector end of a white Mac power cable. “Did we inventory a laptop for Graves last night?”
“Nope. Only what was in his pockets—wallet, coins, gum.”
“And no keys,” she remembered aloud as she pointed to the cable. “He powers a computer here. Look around. See if you can find a laptop.”
Haggerty pulled a black laptop case from under the desk. “Empty,” he said.
“Look in the closet. Look in the other rooms. Make sure there’s no computer in this apartment.”
Haggerty was gone several minutes before he returned empty handed. “It could be in his Columbia office,” he suggested.
Codella stared at the dim glow of the halogen lamp. She studied the Moscow Nights binder resting on the chair. “Call Portino. Ask him to send someone up to Graves’s office to check. I think somebody might have beaten us here.”
CHAPTER 39
Roger Sturgis cradled the phone between his ear and his shoulder. “I don’t know yet,” he said in a low voice as he waited for a man blocking the aisle to lift his luggage into the overhead bin. “Keep your fingers crossed. Look, I have to hang up now. And don’t call me again. I’ll call you when I know something.”
He found his main cabin row—he’d booked too late to get first class—and placed his carry-on bag on his seat. The man assigned to the middle seat next to him was extremely heavy and had raised the armrest to give himself more space. His beefy bicep completely concealed the armrest, and his torso and thigh usurped almost half of Roger’s aisle seat. His head was turned toward the window—deliberately, Roger suspected.
Roger walked to the back of the plane where a flight attendant with long brunette hair was placing cans of seltzer and soda into storage drawers. When she noticed him, he smiled. “I wonder if you could help me.”
“I’ll certainly try,” she said pleasantly.
He pointed over his shoulder. “I’m on the aisle in row fourteen, and there’s a very large man taking up half of my seat. Do you think you might be able to find me a different aisle seat—or am I supposed to charge him rent?”
The flight attendant tapped her long pink nails against the lapel of her jacket. “It’s
not a full flight. Wait here,” she whispered, “and I’ll see what I can do.”
Ten minutes later, Roger sat back and closed his eyes in a premium main cabin seat on the aisle of the spacious exit row. He felt intensely focused and alert. Sex with Kendra always helped him concentrate, and he was impatient for the plane to get off the ground so that he could get to work.
When they finally hurtled down the runway, the molded interior walls of the fuselage vibrated and the overhead compartments rattled. His mind flashed back to flying over the desert in rickety Apache helicopters while he was in Iraq and Kuwait. When the nose of the plane tilted skyward, the laptop case under the seat in front of him slid against his shoes. He closed his eyes and felt the surge of the jet engines.
As soon as they reached ten thousand feet, he removed the laptop from the bag, set it on his tray table, and powered it on. Seconds later he was staring at the same password screen from the night before in Philip’s bedroom.
He pressed enter on the optimistic off chance that Graves hadn’t set a password—but the computer rejected his effort. He took a deep breath and released it slowly. What were the usual sources of people’s passwords? Children’s names? Wives’ names? Dogs’ or cats’ names? Philip had no children—at least none that he talked about—and his ex-wife, Jill, had divorced him and walked away with the co-op apartment he’d been so proud of. He still smarted over the loss of that river-view real estate. No way would he want to think of his ex-wife every time he accessed a document. In truth, Philip only ever wanted to think about one person.
Roger typed in variations on the name Philip Graves, but the computer did not lower its defenses. He entered Philip’s initials, address, apartment number, and street name. Nothing happened. He thought back on all his conversations with the vestry warden over the past three years. Had Philip ever mentioned a favorite movie? A vacation spot? A book or author he liked? Then Roger remembered Philip once telling the whole vestry about the positive reviews he’d received on his most recent book, The Coldest Thirteen Days, his analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis. “You can get it on Amazon,” he’d said as if any of them wanted to read his academic tome. Roger typed in the title now—with and without spaces and capitalization—but to no avail.