Unholy City

by Carrie Smith

  “No. Of course not,” Codella insisted with more fervor than she felt. She didn’t need the landscape gardener censoring herself out of misguided loyalty. “Did anyone else at the vestry meeting do or say anything that struck you as odd or out of character?”

  As Rose thought about the question, Codella studied her earnest-looking face. Codella had met many people who appeared artless when in reality they weren’t, but she sensed no deceitfulness in Rose Bartruff.

  “I don’t think so.” Rose bit her lip. “I mean, Peter was Peter. He’s always unhappy. That’s just who he is. And Roger—well, Roger doesn’t take the vestry very seriously. He only joined because of Kendra.”

  “Kendra?”

  “His wife,” explained Rose. “Vivian’s niece.”

  “Roger’s wife is Vivian’s niece?”

  “She’s actually more like a second mother to Kendra. Kendra’s mother died when she was nine years old—she told me the story at coffee hour one time—and after that she went to live with Vivian.”

  The curtains dividing Codella from the truth seemed to part a little more. Was it significant, she wondered, that Roger and Vivian were related by marriage? “What about Vivian?” she pressed on as her phone vibrated again. “Did Vivian seem like herself last night during the vestry meeting?”

  Codella watched the muscles in Rose’s face tighten as she contemplated this question. “I guess so.”

  “You don’t sound sure.”

  Rose hesitated. “It’s just that—well, Vivian always makes tea before the vestry meetings, and at the end of the meetings, she and Emily always take the tea service back to the kitchen together. They’re very close—they were, I mean. But last night when Emily started to clear the teacups, Vivian took them away from her and insisted that she go home.”

  “Can you think of a reason why she might have done that?”

  “She said Emily should hurry home because her daughter was flying in, but Emily clearly wanted to stay and help her, and Vivian still wouldn’t let her.”

  “Could Vivian have had a different motive for wanting her to leave?”

  Rose tilted her head, and her eyes narrowed. “Maybe. Maybe she was upset with Emily.”

  “Upset with her why?”

  Rose leaned forward. “Well, Emily and Vivian usually vote the same way on vestry proposals, but last night Emily voted against the cemetery proposal.”

  “And Vivian voted for it?”

  Rose nodded. “Vivian might have been upset with her for that.”

  “Did Emily explain her reason for voting against it?”

  “Not while I was there. But she might have said something while I was out of the room.”

  “What do you mean, out of the room?”

  “Well, you see, I missed the whole cemetery discussion. My daughter’s babysitter called.”

  Codella felt the words like ice-cold water waking every sleeping synapse in her brain. “You mean you left the vestry meeting while it was in progress?”

  Rose nodded.

  “How long were gone?”

  “About fifteen minutes. My daughter accidentally flushed her asthma inhaler down the toilet, and she can’t be without it. I had to get on the phone with the pharmacy. It was either that or leave the meeting, and we already had two missing members. There wouldn’t have been a quorum without me. Philip held the vote until I got back.”

  “I see.” Codella stared at two botanical prints on the wall behind Rose. Fifteen minutes was a substantial interval of time. What had occurred in the Blue Lounge, she wondered, while Rose had not been there?

  When she got home half an hour later, she was still pondering this question. Haggerty was sitting on the couch watching basketball. “I called you,” he said. “Five times, I think. Maybe six.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I was busy.” She kicked off her boots.

  “Doing what?” he asked.

  “I paid Vivian Wakefield a visit.” She hung her jacket on the closet doorknob. “And then I went to see Rose Bartruff.”

  “Oh.”

  She could tell from his tone he was upset. “What is it?” she asked.

  He didn’t respond.

  “Tell me.” She stood in front of the couch.

  “I thought we were a team on this case.” He shrugged. “But I see you’ve gone rogue.”

  “No, I haven’t. But Vivian Wakefield is spreading malicious information to the press, and I had to confront her.”

  “I could have gone with you.”

  “It wasn’t a big deal, Brian.”

  He picked up the remote and turned off the television. “Whatever.” He stood and walked out of the living room.

  She followed him into the bedroom. “Why are you so upset about this? I think I made a little progress.”

  “Well, good for you.”

  She grabbed his arm. “Why are you acting this way?”

  He rubbed his chin. “This was my case, Claire. You’re on it because I called Manhattan North last night. If I’d waited to make the call this morning, I’d be working with a different detective. But I wanted to work with you. And now you’re working without me. You don’t even answer my calls. How do you think that makes me feel?”

  She looked away from him. She remembered the vibrations of her phone and her single-minded focus on the facts, and she knew how she would have felt.

  “You don’t want to work with me,” he said matter-of-factly. “You don’t really want a partner of any kind these days, do you? I wonder why I’m even here.”

  “Why do you have to make this about us?”

  “Because if we’re not sharing this case, what are we sharing? When you’re on a case, you don’t have the bandwidth to think about anything else. When I’m out of sight, I’m out of your mind.”

  “That’s not true.” But even as she said it, she knew he was right—at least tonight.

  He turned, walked into the bathroom, and closed the door on her.

  FRIDAY

  CHAPTER 54

  When Codella entered the kitchen, Haggerty didn’t look up from the Times. She made herself some tea and put half a bagel into the toaster. She was going to have to break the silence between them, but she wasn’t sure what to say or if he’d even accept an apology.

  She flipped open her laptop and went to the Daily News to see what the tabloids were saying. The headline was even worse than she’d anticipated: “Genius Detective or Bully With a Badge?” Her bagel popped up in the toaster, but she ignored it as she read.

  In an exclusive interview at her Harlem home, Vivian Wakefield, founder of three community outreach programs on the Upper West Side, questioned the integrity of the high-profile NYPD detective leading the investigation of two homicides at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. “In my opinion, Detective Codella needs retraining. She’s a bully using her badge to attack innocent people.”

  “Goddamn that fucking—” Codella lifted the laptop and almost launched it across the kitchen, but Haggerty rushed over and took it out of her hands.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Vivian Wakefield is doing everything she can to ruin my reputation.”

  Haggerty stared at the laptop screen before setting the computer on the counter. “Don’t read it.” His voice was gentle. At least he was talking to her now.

  “How can I not read it?” Her eyes burned with tears of rage. “McGowan will be eating this up. This is just the excuse he needs to rein me in. Wakefield is making all of this up—”

  “Shhh.” He put his arms around her. “You’re doing exactly what she wants you to do right now, Claire. Don’t you see? She’s threatened by you. She wants you as far away from the case as she can get you. And that means she’s scared of you. She’s afraid you’ll find out the truth.”

  Codella felt Haggerty’s arms loosen their hold around her, and she pulled him closer. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He didn’t speak.

  She looked him in the eyes. “I really am. I should�
�ve answered your calls last night. I should’ve looped you in. I was wrong. I—Never mind. No excuses.”

  He smiled. “All right. Apology accepted. I know you’re under pressure. But don’t do it again, okay?”

  “I won’t.”

  “If you’d taken one of my calls, I’d have told you that Anna Brookes came to the precinct and let us take her fingerprints and a cheek swab last evening. Banks thinks we can have results tomorrow.”

  “Did you ask her if she was at Philip’s apartment?”

  “I did, and she denied it, of course.”

  “But you don’t believe her?”

  “I don’t know.” Haggerty shrugged.

  “I’m beginning to think the lipstick stain isn’t hers,” Codella told him. “And I don’t think it’s Rose Bartruff’s either. Rose agreed to go to the one-seven-one this morning to be fingerprinted and swabbed.”

  “Then who did drink out of that glass?” Haggerty asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’m starting to wonder if it was Susan Bentley.”

  “The doctor? What makes you think it’s her?”

  While Haggerty spread mixed-berry jam on her bagel, Codella told him, “We got so focused on Todd Brookes and Stephanie Lund yesterday that we didn’t have time to think about the bigger picture. But there’s more going on here than Todd Brookes covering up his affair with the choir director.” She told him about Susan and Roger joining hands in the garden, Roger shopping for cars in Dearborn, Michigan, and Roger’s relationship-by-marriage to Vivian Wakefield.

  “What do you suggest we do?” He handed her the bagel.

  “I’m going to go have a heart-to-heart with Susan Bentley this morning. Can you find out why a car dealership in Dearborn, Michigan, ran a credit report on Roger Sturgis yesterday? And tell Muñoz to go down to Bellevue and check on Stephanie Lund’s condition. Then we’ll get together and figure out where to go from there.”

  She ate the bagel, showered and dressed quickly, and gave Haggerty a long kiss before she left the apartment. When she hit the street, a man she didn’t recognize started to walk beside her. “Detective Codella?”

  “Yeah? Who are you?”

  All she heard were the words Daily News. “Do you have any comment in response to the accusation that you’ve been bullying St. Paul’s vestry members?”

  Codella stopped and faced him. “You should have asked me that before you printed your story this morning.” She turned and continued walking. Then she reconsidered and stopped again. “I haven’t bullied anyone.” She shook her index finger close to his face. “Mrs. Wakefield’s comment was calculated to make the press question the integrity of this investigation, and you should have done your homework before quoting her. Detectives ask questions. It’s what we do. No one’s been harassed or falsely accused of anything. We’re searching for answers, and we’re making progress. That’s it.”

  She turned again and walked to West Eighty-Sixth Street to catch the crosstown bus.

  CHAPTER 55

  Susan Bentley’s receptionist knocked lightly on her open office door. “Doctor, there’s a detective in the waiting room—Detective Codella. She wants to see you. What should I tell her?”

  Susan held her breath the way she imagined the Grubers had held theirs yesterday. Tell her to go away, she wanted to say, but she knew she couldn’t avoid the detective forever. “Bring her in.”

  A moment later, Codella stood in the office doorway. Susan came around her desk, shook the detective’s hand, and gestured her to the couch. So much adrenaline was pumping through her arteries that her body felt like a bomb about to detonate. “Please, make yourself comfortable,” she managed to say.

  She watched Codella sit on the same cushion Jack Gruber had occupied yesterday morning, and it occurred to her that maybe she should be the one on that cushion. She, after all, was the one who had to face difficult truths today. Instead, she took the chair across from Codella and waited for the detective to break the silence.

  Codella didn’t keep her waiting long. “Why did you reach into Philip Graves’s pocket on Wednesday night, remove his keys, and give them to Roger Sturgis?”

  Time seemed to stop. Susan’s mind drained. Her body froze. “What?”

  “You heard me, Doctor. Why did you take the keys? And why did you give them to Roger Sturgis?”

  Say something, Susan commanded herself. Tell her you didn’t do it. The only way out of this was an immediate and forceful denial, she knew, but after living a fiction for decades, she now found herself curiously unable to summon one more falsehood.

  “Well?”

  Susan stared at her pale-blue office carpet and knew that Codella would recognize her silence as an admission of guilt.

  “You can tell me here and now, Doctor, or we can go to Manhattan North and sit in a room with a tape recorder on. Would you prefer that?”

  “No. Please.”

  Codella’s gaze was more than penetrating, like a powerful CT scanner illuminating a body’s secrets. Susan’s lungs screamed for air, but she couldn’t breathe. A terrible irony occurred to her. Beyond these walls, politicians were fighting over immigration policy, health care reform, and Supreme Court appointments. They were invading countries, trying to strip away people’s constitutional rights, and poisoning the environment. But all that mattered to her right now was self-preservation.

  “Answer my question, Doctor.”

  How could she possibly answer? So much truth would have to be told, and she had worked so diligently to hide that truth. The lies had invaded her mind like a malignant ganglion choking off the self she might have become if she’d been born in a different time and to different parents.

  “Goddammit, Doctor. Why do I get the feeling you’re not who you say you are?”

  The question felt like the sharp pain of a needle plunging into muscle. Susan dropped her head. Her shoulders folded in. She began to sob.

  Codella leaned forward. Her voice softened only slightly. “Tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then I’m going to have to take you to my station. I need answers. I’ll arrest you if I have to.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Doctor. I’ve got two dead bodies and a woman in a coma, and I know that you’re hiding the truth from me.”

  “My truth has nothing to do with you or those dead bodies!”

  “That’s for me to decide.”

  Susan stared at Codella over an invisible wall that protected her natural self from the unnatural forces of harsh human judgment. The detective intended to breach that wall one way or another. “All right,” Susan surrendered. “I’ll tell you. Just—just give me a moment.”

  Codella sat back, waiting. Susan rested both elbows on the desk and hid her face in her palms for several seconds. Finally she looked up and began to speak. “As you know, Detective, I’m a pediatric endocrinologist. I’m recognized internationally as an authority on congenital intersex conditions. What no one knows is that fifty-seven years ago, I was an infant like so many of my patients—biologically male but with anatomy that would never look male.”

  Then Susan closed her eyes to the present and acknowledged her hidden past in spoken words for the first time. Weeks after she was born, she told Codella, her father had walked away from his wife and the crying anomaly he didn’t want to acknowledge as his flesh and blood. Her mother had kept a diaper over the truth, too ashamed to take her infant for regular checkups and immunizations until the baby developed pneumonia at ten months old. Then she deposited the child at the door of a social services agency a hundred miles from her home with a note that read, “Has a bad cough. Needs medical attention.” No pronouns in that message.

  Susan’s only knowledge of these earliest months of her life came from her adoptive parents, Ed and Katherine Harrison, devout Missouri Synod Lutherans in Wisconsin who “took her on in the name of God.”

  “We brought you to a specialist at Johns Hopkins,” her adoptive mother had once recoun
ted with obvious pride in her accomplishment. Years later, Susan read about that specialist and others like him, surgeons who, with no empirical evidence, believed that gender identity did not become fixed for life until a child reached the age of eighteen months and that, if they intervened before that age, they could—with hormones and a scalpel—make someone the gender of their choosing. They had, Susan came to understand, frightened the Harrisons into immediate action. As a result, Susan had endured a series of painful operations that didn’t end until her adolescence. The truth, she knew from her study of medical history and her training at Columbia’s medical college, was that she and other genetic XYs like herself had been unwitting lab rats in the hands of pompous doctors who believed they were scientific gods.

  When Susan finished her story, she opened her eyes and squinted into the bright lights of the consultation room. For decades she’d felt an unearthly gravitational grip of guilt tugging at her body and soul, a constant reminder of the thousands and thousands of lies she’d told to her husband, her adopted sons, her colleagues, and her friends. Every Sunday at St. Paul’s, she recited her confessions of sin along with all the other parishioners—Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed—but those words from the Book of Common Prayer never did anything to diminish the guilt she felt about her lies of omission and commission. Now that she had finally spoken the truth, however—as much of it as she dared—she felt the dark gravity loosen its hold a little.

  She stared into Codella’s expression of obvious shock. “They used to put people like me in circus freak shows,” she said. “Thankfully I escaped that fate, but mine wasn’t much better. They took away my ability to choose who I became. I, in turn, tried my best to accept the identity I was given. I built a life around a lie. Maybe I would have acted differently if I’d come of age in a more forgiving time, Detective. Then again, are these times any more forgiving? I’ve consoled myself with the knowledge that I’m at least saving other infants from my own fate, but I’m not proud of my deceptions. They’ve haunted me.”