Unholy City

by Carrie Smith

  She dug in her purse and found his card. And before she could question her impulse, she entered his number into her phone.

  He answered on the third ring. “Haggerty.”

  “It’s Anna Brookes” was all she could say before she ran out of courage to continue.

  “Rector.” His voice sounded soothing—so unlike Todd’s. “What can I do for you?”

  She began to cry.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  She blinked up at a street sign. “Ninety-Eighth and Broadway.”

  “There’s a Starbucks one block north of you. Go there and wait for me. I’m on my way now.”

  Before she could change her mind, the detective ended the call. She slipped the phone into her pocket. The sun was hidden behind dense clouds. As she crossed to the west side of Broadway, she noticed that rain was falling across the river in New Jersey. She walked the one block north and stood against the outside wall of the Starbucks storefront like a homeless woman waiting for a handout. Passing pedestrians glanced at her with curiosity or concern until Detective Haggerty took her arm, led her inside, and found her a seat. He bought her a cup of coffee and sat across from her. “What’s going on, Rector? Tell me.”

  His gentle voice teased out her fears, and she started to cry again. “I just came from the hospital. I saw Stephanie. I met her parents. I know Todd was seeing her. I—” She shook her head and stared into the steam rising from her coffee.

  “What?” The detective reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “You can tell me.”

  She opened her mouth to say, I’m afraid he killed her. But she couldn’t bring the words to her lips because Todd’s voice was louder than her own. Are you with me, Anna? Are you with me? She felt Todd’s fingers squeeze her wrists. She heard his threat. Do you want people to know about your affair? She hadn’t slept with Philip, but she’d wanted to, and wasn’t her deep desire for him virtually the same thing? If he hadn’t died, wouldn’t she have ended up in his arms? In his bed?

  She stared at Haggerty and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you. I’m fine. Really. Everything’s fine.” She stood.

  Haggerty stood too. “Anna,” she heard him say, “was your husband home all night after the vestry meeting?”

  Anna turned and walked to the door, pretending not to hear.

  CHAPTER 62

  A Columbia University security guard led Muñoz to the second floor of Fayerweather Hall and stopped in front of a closed door with a nameplate that read, “Philip Graves, PhD.” “You’re sure it’s okay for me to let you in here?” the guard asked. “Don’t you need a warrant or something?”

  “No,” Muñoz assured him. “Professor Graves was the victim of a crime. I’m investigating his death. We don’t need a warrant to search his belongings. What’s in here might help us solve the crime.”

  The security guard unlocked the door, and Muñoz stepped inside. A red light on Graves’s phone was blinking, and Muñoz pointed it out. “It looks like Mr. Graves has some messages. I’d like to listen to them. Can you get someone up here to help me access his voice mail?”

  The guard nodded. “Give me a few minutes.”

  When he left, Muñoz took out his phone and tapped the camera icon. How many times had he watched Codella photograph a crime scene? The first day they’d met, in the apartment of Hector Sanchez, she’d told him, Your camera. Your eyes. Never rely on someone else.

  Bookshelves covered two walls of Graves’s cluttered office. His desk sat below the window. Two chairs and a small low table formed a cramped sitting area between the desk and the door. Muñoz took several photographs before he approached the desk. A stack of what appeared to be student essays lay on the left edge. Muñoz picked up the top paper and flipped to the last page. A note scrawled below the final paragraph of the essay read, “This is not graduate-level work, Mr. Henley.” Next to this note was the circled grade: C−.

  Muñoz returned the paper to the stack, happy that he wasn’t one of Philip Graves’s students. He sat at the dead man’s desk and opened the top left drawer. Pens, thumbtacks, and the crumpled tinfoil wrappers of Hershey’s kisses littered the bottom. In the second drawer were the desiccated remains of a bagel and cream cheese wrapped in a napkin.

  Muñoz saw no documents attesting to Graves’s blackmail of Susan Bentley and Roger Sturgis. He did not find the vestry minutes handwritten by Emily Flounders before her last walk into the St. Paul’s garden. He shut the drawer, wondering when the mice would arrive. Then he turned to the portraits of world leaders taped to the wall beside the door. He was no scholar of history, but he recognized Khrushchev, Mao, Castro, and Stalin.

  He was scanning the books on Graves’s shelves when a woman’s voice caused him to turn. “You’re the police officer?” The young woman standing in the doorway had short, choppy hair and wore a sweat shirt over jeans.

  “I am.” He showed her his identification. “Detective Muñoz.”

  She slipped around him, picked up the desk phone, and showed him how to access the voice mail. “Is there anything else you need?”

  “No. That’s it.” He smiled. “Thanks.”

  When she was gone, he sat in Philip Graves’s desk chair and punched in the codes to access his new messages. The first voice was a student requesting an extension on a paper. The second was a dean of undergraduates calling on behalf of a student athlete who needed to reschedule a test due to a conflicting away game. Muñoz listened to three more new messages before he began to review the old messages Graves had not deleted. A moment later, he scrambled for his cell phone.

  CHAPTER 63

  Codella sat at Haggerty’s squad room desk and recalled the Daily News headline. “Genius Detective or Bully With a Badge?” Had McGowan seen the headline? If so, he would be relishing her public humiliation. She could hear his voice in her head. This is what you get when you work with precinct cops, Codella. What a mess you’ve made for us.

  She stared at her phone and wondered when his call would come. She needed to make an arrest before he got to her. But she didn’t have enough evidence. The fact that Roger Sturgis had stolen Graves’s laptop no more proved that he murdered Graves than Todd’s affair or suspicious appearance in the parish house established his guilt. Roger wasn’t going to confess, and thanks to McGowan summoning her back to Manhattan North yesterday, she and Haggerty had lost their opportunity to question Todd. The evidence she currently had would never convince a DA that either man should be charged. And where was she going to get more evidence if Peter Linton started serving as defense attorney to the vestry? Vivian Wakefield certainly wasn’t going to help her. And Rose Bartruff couldn’t.

  She reached for the water bottle Haggerty had been drinking earlier. Had she missed a lead? Was there something more she could be doing right now? Playing the waiting game was not her style. Waiting reminded her of lying in a hospital bed tethered to a chemo pole. She called Farah Assiraj. “Have you uncovered anything new?”

  Farah read off her findings. Peter Linton was a partner at Tabor and Higginbottom, a firm specializing in criminal defense. Roger Sturgis was on the board of the Randall’s Island Alliance and the Harlem Academy. And until last July, Todd Brookes was a business intelligence developer for First National Bank. “He’s also an elite amateur cyclist,” said Farah. “Last year he won the—”

  “Hold on,” Codella said when a second call came in on her cell. She glanced at the screen expecting to see McGowan’s name, but the name she saw was Dan Fisk. “I need to go, Farah. I’ll get back to you when I can.”

  But she didn’t take Fisk’s call. She waited until a pop-up message on her screen told her he had left a message. When she played it, Fisk’s grating voice boomed in her ear. “Call me, Codella. That’s an order.”

  She set the phone on the desk. Since when was Fisk giving her orders? Had McGowan sicced him on her as revenge for what she’d said yesterday?

  She flipped the phone face down. No w
ay would she call him back. She still remembered McGowan trying to reassign the Sanchez case to Fisk only hours after he’d assigned it to her six months ago. Let’s give this to Fisk. You’re just getting back on your feet. That case had meant everything to her at the time—it was the opportunity she needed to prove herself all over again—and this case was starting to feel just as important. Her reputation was on the line, thanks to Vivian Wakefield, and if Fisk took over, the press would have a field day with her. She’d be the “bully with a badge” forever. She couldn’t let that happen. She had to solve this before Fisk took it from her. Even if it meant McGowan slapped her with insubordination and mothballed her for a month—or worse.

  When Haggerty returned to the squad room, she was still staring at her phone. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  She played him Fisk’s message.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Good. Because we haven’t run out of leads yet.” He pulled up a chair and told her about his meeting with Anna Brookes. “She knows something, Claire. There’s something about Todd that she’s not telling us. We’ve just got to get her to open up.”

  When Muñoz rang ten minutes later, she put him on speaker so Haggerty could hear. “I’m in Graves’s office,” he said. “You need to hear this message on his voice mail.”

  Codella and Haggerty leaned closer to her phone and listened to the fuzzy voice of a woman saying, “I know what you did, and you should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “What do you think it means?” asked Muñoz.

  “I don’t recognize the voice,” said Codella.

  “I do,” said Haggerty. “I spoke to her on Wednesday night. That’s Stephanie Lund.”

  “You’re sure?” asked Codella.

  “I’m positive.”

  “What do you think she knows?” asked Muñoz on the other end of the line.

  Codella could only think of one possibility based on the evidence they had. “She knew he was blackmailing people.”

  “But how would she have found out?” asked Haggerty.

  In the silence, Codella recalled the text messages she and Haggerty had read on Stephanie’s cell phone yesterday. I thought you’d like a good story, Todd had texted to her. Well, I didn’t, she’d responded. I feel bad for her. The her was Susan Bentley. “Stephanie found out from Todd. He told her Susan’s secret—which means he knew what Philip Graves was up to.”

  She swigged from Haggerty’s water bottle. “When Susan met Graves at a diner last week, he set some documents in front of her to show her he knew her secrets. He told her to keep them as a reminder of why she was going to do what he asked her to do. And Roger basically told us the same story. Graves wouldn’t have given Roger and Susan his only copies of the documents he had. He must have kept copies for himself, but we didn’t find them in his apartment, and Roger didn’t find them on his laptop either. Are they in that office, Muñoz?”

  “No. I’ve looked through everything. There’s nothing about Bentley or Sturgis, and there are no vestry minutes either.”

  Haggerty turned to Codella. “You’re thinking maybe Todd was helping Philip Graves and he has the documents—at the rectory or on his computer.”

  Codella nodded. “He was a business intelligence developer at a bank until he got fired,” she said, remembering Farah’s words. “He might know how to access people’s data. And if he did—if he went into Susan’s medical records and Roger’s financials—then he’s at least guilty of a few class E felonies.” She spoke close to her phone. “Muñoz, when you get back here, find us a judge and try to get us a warrant. Let’s arrest Todd on suspicion of criminal possession of computer materials. And maybe if we’re lucky, something on his computer will prove he murdered Stephanie Lund.”

  “I’ll get on it right away,” Muñoz assured her.

  “Did you find anything else?” she asked him.

  “Just a drawer of half-eaten food he was hoarding and a wall plastered with tyrants of the twentieth century.”

  CHAPTER 64

  Haggerty reached for the toothpaste just as Codella turned on the faucet to spit into the sink. Her bathroom wasn’t big enough for them both, but wherever she was tonight, Haggerty also wanted to be—on the couch, at the stove, even here. He was doing his best to keep her distracted, she supposed. He knew that if he left her alone, she’d rehash her run-in with McGowan or replay Dan Fisk’s gravelly That’s an order and worry about when her phone was going to ring again as they tried to track her down.

  “We’ve still got an episode of Grey’s Anatomy on DVR,” he said now. “You want to watch it with me?”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  He smiled. “Or we could climb in bed, and I could take you out of yourself.”

  She smiled back. “Why don’t we catch the news.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Bad idea. You’ll just get worked up.” He stuck his toothbrush in his mouth.

  Codella sat on the bed and watched him brush his teeth. When he shut off the bathroom light minutes later, he sat down beside her. “I keep thinking about Anna Brookes at the rectory with Todd right now. I think she suspects him of being the murderer. When she was sitting in Starbucks with me, I could feel how frightened she was. But she wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  “Maybe she has a secret too,” Codella suggested.

  “What kind of secret?”

  “Maybe you called it right that first night, and she was having an affair with Philip. Maybe she’s hiding the biggest secret of all, and she wants to come clean, but she’s afraid of the consequences.”

  “Then why let me take her fingerprints? Why give me her DNA?”

  Codella’s cell phone rang. Her whole body froze.

  Haggerty picked up her phone and quickly declined the call for her.

  “Who was it?”

  “You know.”

  “I won’t be able to hold him off indefinitely. He’ll track me down, and then what? He’s vindictive. I could lose my shield.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “How can you be sure of that? Look what he made me go through just to get back on active duty. He’s been waiting for an opportunity like this.”

  She imagined the inevitable scene. McGowan standing in his office, grinning victoriously as he held out his hand and demanded, Turn in your shield, Codella. “I am never giving up my shield to that bastard.” She couldn’t give her shield up to anyone, she thought.

  “You won’t have to. You’re going to solve the case, and when you do, he’s not going to have a leg to stand on. Now get him out of your head, Claire.”

  But how could she get him out? She remembered something Susan Bentley had said that morning: I tried my best to accept the identity I was given. I built a life around a lie. The doctor had played the hand she was dealt, and so had Codella. She’d always known she would never escape the fact that she’d seen her father commit a cold-blooded murder. His crime lived inside of her; she couldn’t erase the memory or undo whatever effects it had had on her body, mind, and soul. Like Susan, all she could do was try to make something positive out of her fate. Susan had become an endocrinologist, and Codella had become a homicide detective. They were both, ironically, trying to save others in order to hold onto something in themselves. Codella couldn’t imagine who she would become if she couldn’t be a detective anymore.

  Haggerty took her face in his warm palms. “Listen to me, Claire. You’re going to go to bed now, and in the morning, you’re going to get up and keep working the case—we’re going to keep working it together until we make a breakthrough. And we will. Remember, we’re only forty-eight hours into it.”

  “McGowan doesn’t care about that.”

  “And you shouldn’t care about him. Trust me. We’re going to solve this case.”

  SATURDAY

  CHAPTER 65

  Claire tapped his shoulder. “Wake up,” she said. “We need to get moving.” />
  Haggerty groaned.

  “Come on. It’s seven.”

  He rolled on his side, reached his arm around her waist, and moved closer to her warmth until she sat up and swung her legs off the bed. “I had an idea in the middle of the night,” she told him.

  He sat up too. “Of course you did. Did you sleep at all?”

  She stood. “We need to walk that parish house again and think about where everybody was at the end of the vestry meeting. We’re missing something. I feel it. Let’s get over there before anybody shows up for the eleven o’clock service.” He watched her move toward the bathroom. “Call Muñoz,” she said. “I’ll take a quick shower.”

  Muñoz was standing at the south gate of St. Paul’s when he and Claire arrived forty-five minutes later. Claire led them up the parish house steps, past the Community Room, and down the corridor to the Blue Lounge. She stared into the room from the doorway. “This is where it started. Everyone was sitting in here. They all agree on that much at least.”

  Haggerty and Muñoz stepped aside and let her enter first. “Philip Graves sat over there.” She pointed to the long three-cushioned couch against the window. “Susan Bentley and Rose Bartruff sat next to him, and Vivian Wakefield was over there.” She pointed to the right cushion of the blue love seat perpendicular to the couch. It was like she was reading a map that wasn’t there, he thought as he watched her pull details out of her brain. “The rector was next to Vivian. And Roger, Emily, and Peter were on chairs.” She tapped the backs of two chairs upholstered in blue fabric.

  Haggerty was tempted to say, Okay, but so what? How does this help? What are we looking for? But he’d worked with Claire long enough to know you didn’t interrupt her when she was piecing things together. She’d probably been up most of the night, frustrated by her inability to navigate through the thicket of disparate facts and details the three of them had accumulated. And she was determined to find her way before McGowan found her.