Unholy City

by Carrie Smith

  She rang the churchwarden’s buzzer and walked up three flights of stairs. Vivian was waiting at her door. “Detective,” she said with an apparent lack of interest that must, Codella thought, belie her surprise at the evening visit.

  “May I come in, Mrs. Wakefield?”

  Vivian waved her in, and Codella wasted no time. “I see you had your own little press conference this morning.”

  “Some reporters asked me for a statement.” Vivian shrugged. “So I gave them one.”

  “A statement or an indictment?” Codella snapped.

  “I have a right to speak my mind, Detective.”

  “You told those reporters about some leads you think I should be pursuing, but you never mentioned those so-called leads to me or my team last night. I wonder why. Did you have a memory lapse?”

  “My memory is perfectly fine,” Vivian asserted. “You just didn’t ask. You were too interested in rushing to judgment against me and the members of my church. We’re victims of this crime, Detective.”

  “So I heard. The press loved that line, didn’t they? Well, they’ll love it even more when I tell them I came here in good faith to get those leads, and you wouldn’t give them to me because they don’t exist. If they did, you had ample opportunity to tell us about them last night. Instead, you gave Detective Haggerty a long-winded history lesson about Seneca Village.”

  The churchwarden’s face hardened into icy defiance. “I don’t have to stand here and tolerate your bullying.”

  “I’m not bullying you, Mrs. Wakefield. I’m simply speaking my mind too. Give me the so-called leads you spoke to the press about, and I’ll be on my way.” Codella took out her iPhone as if preparing to take down the information.

  Vivian’s eyes narrowed. Her closed lips quivered slightly.

  “You can’t give me any concrete leads, can you?” Codella stared into her eyes. “And meanwhile, another person associated with St. Paul’s has been attacked. Did you know that Stephanie Lund is lying in Bellevue Hospital right now because someone tried to kill her?”

  Vivian’s eyes widened slightly. Her mouth opened, but she didn’t speak.

  “These killings aren’t the work of some neighborhood crazy who doesn’t like your church’s social programs. How many more St. Paul’s people are going to die before you help me?”

  “I can’t tell you things I don’t know, Detective.”

  “No, but you know things you’re not telling me.”

  “Are you suggesting I’m a liar?”

  “Withholding information is a form of lying—whether or not the Bible covers that. Are you withholding information?”

  “No.”

  Yes you are, Codella wanted to say as she stared into Vivian’s eyes, and she felt an intense desire to expose the churchwarden’s duplicity. “Did you go to Philip’s apartment in the days leading up to his death?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “No.”

  “No, you won’t answer, or no, you didn’t go there?”

  “I have no reason to visit Philip at home.”

  “Are you willing to let us take your fingerprints and a DNA swab so we can eliminate you as a suspect?”

  The churchwarden raised her chin. “There you go again, Detective. You see? What I told those reporters was entirely true. You’re determined to persecute the victims.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I’m not going to help you conduct a witch hunt. Now I’d like you to leave my home.”

  Codella moved toward the door and gripped the doorknob. “All I’ve asked for is your cooperation,” she said as she pulled the door open. “All I want is to find the person or persons responsible for these deaths.”

  “No, Detective,” Vivian countered. “What you want is personal glorification. You don’t care about me. You don’t care about St. Paul’s. All you care about is your own reputation.”

  Codella pointed a finger at her. “We’ll see about that, Mrs. Wakefield. Time is going to tell whose motives are truly self-serving.” Then she stepped into the corridor, slammed the churchwarden’s door behind her, and walked downstairs. She hadn’t succeeded in making Vivian cough up information, but she’d put her on notice that she saw through her, that she wasn’t going to back down on her investigation of the church members.

  Dusk had turned to darkness by the time she walked back to Broadway. As she continued downtown, her thoughts returned to McGowan. She saw his index finger raised at her the way she had raised hers at Vivian moments ago. She heard his livid but uncharacteristically quiet voice saying, Get the fuck out of here. Why hadn’t he fired her on the spot? Was he plotting a more humiliating form of revenge against her? She knew from experience that he wasn’t the kind of man to let her have the last word, so she probably didn’t have much more time before he shut her down. She had to solve this case before that happened—but how?

  As she passed West One Hundred Twentieth Street, she gazed left toward Philip Graves’s building on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue. She and Haggerty had searched the apartment just ten hours earlier, but that visit felt more like a decade ago. She thought about the laptop missing from his desk, the halogen lamp left on, and the lipstick print on the wineglass in his kitchen. Had Haggerty managed to get Anna Brookes’s fingerprints and DNA swab? Was the rector having an affair with Philip Graves while her husband was lying in Stephanie Lund’s bedroom with those teddy bears looking on?

  She had to put the pieces together, but her mind felt sluggish. She was thirsty and hungry. She hadn’t slept since yesterday morning. She should go home and climb into bed, but how could she, knowing that she had gone too far with McGowan and that Vivian’s malicious sound bites would be airing again on the eleven o’clock news?

  She phoned Farah Assiraj as she crossed One Hundred Tenth Street. “Sorry to call you so late, Farah. But tell me you found something—anything—on one of those vestry people.”

  “Not much,” Farah said apologetically. “I ran background checks and credit reports on everyone, and I didn’t see anything worth noting—except that Peter Linton’s seriously leveraged, and Roger Sturgis went car shopping today.”

  “Car shopping?”

  “Yeah, a dealership in Dearborn, Michigan, ran a credit report on him. Michigan Avenue Ford.”

  Codella stopped walking. “That’s odd, don’t you think? Why would he buy a car there? Did he go to Michigan today?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Keep digging, Farah. Call me if you get something else.”

  Codella resumed her quick pace. She thought of all the vestry members she had spoken to directly—Roger Sturgis, Susan Bentley, Peter Linton, and now Vivian Wakefield. The only one she hadn’t interviewed herself was Rose Bartruff. Would Rose be any more forthcoming than the others?

  CHAPTER 52

  Rose set a glass of water on the dining room table in front of Detective Codella. She watched the detective drink most of the water in a long series of gulps. Finally the detective set down the glass and looked across the table. “Stephanie Lund was attacked in her apartment this afternoon.”

  “Oh, no.”

  Codella leaned forward and stared at Rose. The detective’s eyes were so blue that Rose couldn’t help but stare back at them. She remembered how her husband’s blue eyes were the feature that had drawn her to him in their senior year of college—before they’d ever exchanged a word.

  “I need your help, Rose,” the detective said, “before anyone else becomes a victim.”

  “Of course,” Rose told her. “How can I help you?”

  “We’ve found a little trace evidence that we can’t identify.”

  “What evidence?”

  “I’m not at liberty to tell you that. But would you be willing to go to the One Hundred Seventy-First Precinct tomorrow morning and give us your fingerprints and a DNA swab so we could eliminate you as a match?”

  “You think I’m a
suspect?”

  “Absolutely not,” Codella insisted, and Rose thought she heard sincerity in the detective’s voice. “This is standard procedure.”

  “I see. Well, if it would help, of course. Is that all you needed?”

  “No. That’s not all,” Codella said. “I want you to think back on last night, on all the things you saw after you tripped over Philip Graves in the garden.”

  “But I already told Detective Haggerty everything that happened.”

  Detective Codella shook her head. “Not everything.”

  The detective’s phone was lying on the table, and it began to vibrate. Rose watched the detective lift it, glance at the screen, and put it into her pocket. “You gave Detective Haggerty a summary, yes, but you didn’t tell him everything you saw. And sometimes it’s only after the fact, when we have a little time to reflect, that we remember everything.”

  “All I keep thinking about is landing on Philip’s body, how it felt underneath me.” Rose hugged herself.

  “Yes, but your brain recorded much more than that one incident, Rose. May I call you Rose?” The detective’s tone was forceful yet soothing. “If you closed your eyes right now and let your mind go back to that moment, you’d see other details, I’m sure. Why don’t you close your eyes right now?”

  “You want me to close my eyes?”

  “To help you concentrate,” urged Codella.

  “If you think it would help.”

  “I do.”

  Rose shut her eyes but felt immediately self-conscious. She reopened them. “I want to help, I really do, but—”

  Codella reached across the table and touched her hand. She smiled in a way that seemed to acknowledge that she was asking a lot. “I realize it isn’t pleasant for you to summon these memories, Rose, but can you give it a try? Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and let what you saw last night in the garden come back to you.”

  Rose shut her eyes again. She heard herself breathe. Pixels of color danced on the black backdrop behind her eyelids.

  “You’re in the garden. You’ve just fallen over the body.” Codella’s voice was a guided meditation.

  Rose followed her voice back to the scene. She watched herself rise to her feet, horrified at her discovery. She saw herself rush from the body back to the parish house. “Susan was in front of the coatrack,” she explained with her eyes still shut. “I tugged on her arm. I could hardly get my words out.”

  “Go on, Rose. What else do you remember?”

  “Susan and Roger followed me back outside. It was very dark in the garden.” Rose felt enveloped in that darkness now. “I’ve been complaining about the lighting in the garden for over a year.”

  “Stay there,” urged Codella. “Let your eyes adjust to the darkness.”

  Rose felt her closed eyelids flutter. She saw Susan Bentley kneel on the stones. “She was so good, so composed,” said Rose. “Susan, I mean. She didn’t panic at all.”

  Rose could almost feel the cool night air against her skin and smell the scent of fresh rosemary. The detective was right. Her brain had recorded more details than she’d realized. “Roger turned on his iPhone flashlight so we could see the body,” she continued. “Philip was lying on his side. We didn’t know it was him. We couldn’t see his face from where we stood. Roger called nine-one-one. Susan took Philip’s pulse. Then she rolled him onto his back, and Roger shined a light on the face—Philip’s face—and we all gasped.”

  Rose pressed her fingertips against her eyelids. The thin beam of Roger’s iPhone flashlight bore through the blackness in her mind, and she replayed the instant when Susan recognized Philip and leaned away from his body. “Susan looked frightened or—” She couldn’t think of an appropriate word.

  “Or what?” Codella prompted.

  “Or repulsed,” Rose finally said. She opened her eyes and stared at the detective. “I know it sounds strange, but I had the impression she wanted to get away from his body.”

  Codella nodded encouragingly. “What else do you see?”

  Rose stared into the detective’s blue eyes. “I ran to get the defibrillator, and it didn’t work, and Susan kept doing CPR until the police arrived.”

  Codella stood, moved around the table, and sat in a chair right next to Rose. “Close your eyes again. Don’t rush. Let yourself see the details. Did Susan or Roger say anything when they saw that the body was Philip?”

  Rose shut her eyes and took a calming breath. “No. They just stared at each other. No one said anything for a while. It felt like time stopped, you know? And then it restarted, and Susan told me to go get the defibrillator. She sounded so insistent. I’d never heard her speak like that before, and I felt terrified because my husband died of a cardiac arrest right here in this apartment, and I couldn’t save him.”

  Rose covered her face in her palms. Codella placed her hand on Rose’s back. “I understand, Rose. It must have been very hard for you last night.”

  Tears ran down Rose’s face. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry. I haven’t had a meltdown like this in a while.”

  “It’s okay,” said Codella. “But I need you to be strong. Can you stay in that garden just a little longer for me?”

  Rose nodded. She saw herself race back to the church. “I got the defibrillator from the Community Room,” she told the detective. She had never touched a defibrillator before that night, and as she’d opened the glass case and lifted out the unit, she remembered now, she’d thought about all the defibrillators she’d seen but never paid the slightest attention to in public places. She flashed to all the times she’d sat in an airplane exit row and never bothered to read the instructions on how to open the emergency exit because she was so certain she’d never be called upon to actually perform the task. “I ran from the room holding the defibrillator, and Peter asked me what was going on. I shouted something—I don’t remember what—and he followed me outside—he and Vivian.” Rose felt her heart pounding in her chest as if she were running the defibrillator to the garden right now.

  “So Vivian and Peter followed you back to Philip’s body?” Codella asked.

  Rose nodded. She relived those tense moments while Susan and Roger tried to get the defibrillator working. “Peter was behind me,” she said, “and when Roger announced that the defibrillator wasn’t working, Peter told us we had a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then Roger told him to shut the f-word up.”

  “And Vivian? What was she doing?”

  With her eyelids squeezed tight, Rose saw the St. Paul’s junior churchwarden standing next to Peter Linton. She described how Vivian’s lips had moved—in prayer, she assumed—while Susan Bentley performed CPR in the strained silence before the EMTs arrived to administer shock after unsuccessful shock.

  “Did it seem unusual for Vivian to pray like that?”

  Rose considered this. Praying openly was hardly unusual for Vivian. She was one of the old-school Episcopalians in the congregation. She didn’t shy away from overt expressions of devotion. On Sunday mornings when the congregation prayed, she folded her hands and bowed her head. When her pew row was called to receive Holy Communion, she bowed on one knee before she walked up the central aisle toward the altar. And when she returned to her seat, she pulled out a cushion from beneath the pew in front of her, kneeled to pray, and made the sign of the cross before rising again.

  “Vivian was just being Vivian,” Rose assured Codella, “and Philip’s death probably brought back her own tragedy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Rose opened her eyes. “Vivian’s only son died about five years ago. I wasn’t a member of the church when it happened, but I’ve heard the story from more than one member of the congregation. He was in New Orleans—crossing with the light—and a driver who’d been drinking on Bourbon Street all night ran the light and struck him. He was killed instantly. Vivian had his body flown back to New York and cremated at the St.
Paul’s Cemetery—Peter arranged everything for her—and now his ashes are housed in the columbarium behind the pulpit. Vivian once showed me the plaque that bears his name. I heard that his death sent her into a major depression and that Susan Bentley personally took her to a doctor and got her on antidepressants.” And now Rose found herself wondering if she too was clinically depressed because of Mark’s death. Would she also benefit from fifty milligrams of an SSRI?

  Codella said, “Close your eyes, Rose. Stay in the garden.”

  Rose returned to the moment after the EMTs announced that they could do nothing more for Philip. She watched Vivian’s hands rise to her lips. She saw Peter turn away from the body and rub the top of his bald scalp. She heard Susan tell Roger, “Well, that’s that,” and she saw Roger pat Susan’s shoulder as he told her, “You did all you could.”

  It occurred to Rose that Roger had been Susan’s constant helper throughout the entire terrible event—offering to take a turn at CPR if she was tired, draping his tweed jacket over her shoulders when she shivered, following her instructions for starting the defibrillator. “I’ve never seen Roger act quite so supportive or gentle,” she said. “And I’m sure Susan appreciated his attentiveness, because after the EMS guys pronounced Philip dead, he patted her back and she reached out and took his hand for a moment.”

  “Susan took Roger’s hand?”

  “Yes. It was touching.”

  “Open your eyes, Rose.” Codella’s demand startled her. “Take my hand the way she took his. Show me exactly what she did.”

  CHAPTER 53

  As soon as Rose grasped her hand, every drop of exhaustion drained from Codella’s body, and her mind jolted into high gear. She felt as if the thick curtains concealing the truth were beginning to part, and she needed to part them further. Her phone vibrated for the third time since she’d arrived at Rose’s apartment, but she knew it was probably Haggerty, and she didn’t take it out of her pocket. “You were surprised when Susan took his hand?”

  “A little. But you can’t be thinking—”