Unholy City

by Carrie Smith

  Codella let her thoughts wander as a steady succession of parishioners spoke, but she tuned back in when a heavyset man with a shaved head reached the lectern. “Philip Graves is one of the most brilliant men I’ve known in my life,” he proclaimed in a slight British accent. “A Fulbright scholar. A tenured professor at Columbia. A man of impeccable character.”

  Codella watched a few heads nod. She saw Susan Bentley glance over her shoulder. Was she looking at Roger Sturgis? If so, Roger didn’t look back at her. Vivian Wakefield sat expressionless.

  “Philip was also a godsend to this church. He oversaw the altar renovation six years ago, and he devoted hours to helping Vivian set up the Weekday Beds program. Last summer, he faced down the objections to our Christianity-Islam study group with a cautionary lesson on despots throughout history who flourished in the fertile soil of xenophobia. I’ll never forget his fascinating lecture. And more recently, he has been facing down our fiscal challenges, doing everything he could to keep our programs alive. Philip was Mother Anna’s right-hand man. He loved the church, and I can’t understand why anyone would do something so terrible to someone who did so much good.”

  Haggerty whispered in Codella’s ear, “Oh, God, can this be over soon, please.”

  On the opposite wall of the nave, Muñoz was checking his phone.

  Then Peter Linton stood, squeezed past his wife, and made his way up the side aisle. Roger Sturgis, Susan Bentley, Rose Bartruff, and two other people Codella didn’t recognize—the vestry members who hadn’t attended the Wednesday-night meeting, she assumed—also stood and moved toward the lectern. Peter Linton leaned into the microphone. “We, your vestry members, cannot express the depth of our shock and sadness at the events that have touched our church.” He blinked several times. “We’ve lost two important leaders, but we don’t intend to let all their good works die with them.” He made a fist in the air as if he were delivering an impassioned closing argument in front of a jury. “In their memories, we are more committed than ever to ensuring the survival and growth of St. Paul’s. We grieve for our dear friends Emily and Philip, and we offer this prayer on their behalf.”

  Peter took a folded piece of paper from the breast pocket of his suit, opened it with jittery fingers, and cleared his throat. “Dear God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: Accept our prayers on behalf of your servants Philip Graves and Emily Flounders, and grant them an entrance into the land of light and joy in the fellowship of your saints; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”

  The church was silent as Peter and the others returned to their seats. Anna, still in the pulpit, stared into the congregation to see if anyone else wished to come forward. As Codella watched her, the rector’s expression turned from calmness to confusion and then to apprehension. Codella followed her eyes to a figure moving up the central aisle. When the figure paused midway, Codella recognized him as Todd Brookes. As he resumed his walk up the aisle, Codella looked alternatingly from him to his wife. The rector’s apprehension, she saw, was turning into fear.

  When Todd stepped behind the lectern, Codella squeezed Haggerty’s arm in a get ready signal. Her own hand moved instinctively to the Glock in her shoulder holster. Todd stared across the chancel at his wife. “Anna has spoken to you about Emily and Philip as a rector, but I know that her feelings for each of them were so much deeper.” He turned to his wife. “Weren’t they, Anna?”

  Anna looked too stunned to speak.

  “Let me tell you how she really felt about them.”

  Codella wondered if she was the only one who heard the menace below the false affection in his voice.

  “Emily was warm and nurturing. She was like the mother Anna wished she’d had when she was growing up. Wasn’t she, Anna?”

  Codella’s fingers tightened around the gun grip as she felt the sharp blade of Todd’s words.

  “And Philip,” he continued. “He was like the father Anna lost when she was eleven.” He paused, turning to his wife. “You were eleven, weren’t you, sweetheart, when your father died suddenly?”

  Anna’s open mouth expressed her surprise—or was it horror?—but Todd seemed not to notice. He looked back at the congregation. “Philip was a strong and forceful father figure for Anna, and I know she mourns him deeply.” His frown of concern struck Codella as calculated and insincere.

  “But she still has me,” he continued. “And she has all of you. And we can be Anna’s collective right arm as we move forward and get through this terrible time together.”

  With that, Todd descended from the lectern and returned to the back of the church. Codella let out the breath she’d been holding and eased her hand off her gun.

  CHAPTER 68

  Codella, Haggerty, and Muñoz huddled outside the second-floor reception hall. “Go downstairs and keep an eye on anyone coming or going,” Codella told Muñoz. As he turned to go, she looked at Haggerty. “I’ll stand over here. You take the other side of the hall.” She pointed. “I’m not sure what we’re looking for, but let’s hope we see it.”

  Codella stood just inside the doorway as parishioners streamed out of the church, then climbed the stairs and entered the hall.

  A serving line had been set up on long rectangular tables covered with cream-colored tablecloths, and Codella watched as men, women, and children waited to fill their plates. They dug into homemade lasagnas, scooped meatballs, forked slices of ham and turkey, and piled tossed greens, bean salads, and cut-up fruit onto their plates.

  The round tables from the Community Room downstairs had been arranged throughout the hall. On the raised stage at the back of the room sat the grand piano that Stephanie Lund claimed to have played on Wednesday night. A man now sat on the piano bench playing soft baroque music.

  Codella leaned against the wall and lifted her phone out of her jacket pocket to see who’d phoned her during the service. She expected McGowan’s name to stare back at her, but the number on the screen was unfamiliar. She played back the voice mail message.

  “Got your lab results, Detective.” She recognized Banks’s voice. “The lipstick stain on that wineglass belongs to a woman. No surprise there. But the fingerprints and DNA don’t match the samples from Rose Bartruff or Anna Brookes. They’re not in the database either. So I guess that’s a dead end. Sorry.”

  Codella returned the phone to her pocket and gazed around the reception hall. Her eyes landed on Rose Bartruff making her way through the food line. Rose had told the truth. She hadn’t visited Philip Graves. She hadn’t sipped wine with him.

  Codella spotted the rector on the other side of the room. Anna might have been in love with Philip, but when Haggerty asked her if she’d gone to Philip’s apartment, she’d told the truth. She hadn’t sipped from that cup.

  Then Codella saw Susan Bentley in a cluster of parishioners. The DNA on the wineglass from Philip’s kitchen belonged to a genetic female. But Susan’s DNA would have XY chromosomes. She hadn’t touched that glass. She hadn’t paid Philip a visit. So who had?

  Vivian Wakefield stood against the far wall, engaged in deep conversation with a woman Codella had never seen before. Codella moved a few steps closer and saw that Vivian was holding a clear plastic cup. As Vivian listened to her companion speak, she raised the cup to her lips and took a sip of something. And when she lowered the cup, Codella saw the bold imprint of Vivian’s lipstick on the rim. If any vestry woman had gone to Philip’s apartment, Vivian had to be the one.

  Codella approached the churchwarden and spoke close to her ear. “I need a word with you in private, Mrs. Wakefield.”

  “Now, Detective?”

  “Now.” Codella held her eyes.

  Vivian excused herself from her conversation, set her glass on a table, and walked with Codella out of the reception hall. They stepped into a Sunday school classroom, and Codella closed the door behind them.

  “What do you need so urgently that you have to interru
pt me now, Detective?”

  “The same thing I needed yesterday,” Codella told her. “The truth, and I don’t intend to leave this room without it. Since Wednesday, you’ve done virtually nothing to help my investigation, and you’ve done as much as you could to publically question my skills and integrity. Last night you—”

  “Detective, this is hardly the time for you to defend yourself!”

  “I’m not defending myself, Mrs. Wakefield. Last night you looked me in the eye and denied that you’ve lied to me, but I know that you have. Why did you go to Philip Graves’s apartment before the vestry meeting on Wednesday?”

  Vivian’s face revealed nothing. “We’re at a prayer service for the dead, Detective. I don’t intend to be interrogated here.”

  “Would you prefer to speak to me at Manhattan North, Mrs. Wakefield? Because I can easily arrange a little ride for us uptown.”

  The muscles in Vivian’s face stretched and pulled.

  “Why did you go to see him, Mrs. Wakefield?”

  Vivian still said nothing.

  “You drank a glass of wine in his apartment,” Codella said. “And that wineglass contains your fingerprints and DNA.”

  Vivian sighed. “All right, I went there. So what? It’s not relevant to your case.”

  “That’s for me to decide.”

  “It was just a vestry matter.”

  “What matter?” Codella demanded.

  Vivian glanced at her watch. “Emily had mentioned to me that Philip asked her to send him all of last year’s cemetery financial statements. She thought that was odd, and so did I. I figured Philip was trying to build a case against the proposal.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I went there to see what he was up to. He served me a glass of wine. We sat on his couch for a few minutes. He wasn’t forthcoming.”

  “But now you know what he was up to,” Codella insisted. “And you need to tell me. What happened at that meeting during those fifteen minutes when Rose Bartruff wasn’t in the Blue Lounge?”

  Vivian didn’t speak.

  “Does this have something to do with Roger? Are you protecting him?”

  “Why would I protect Roger?” asked Vivian.

  “Because protecting him protects your niece. Come on, Mrs. Wakefield. I’m not a fool. You sent your best friend home that night so she wouldn’t follow you into the kitchen. You wanted to talk to someone. I think it was Roger. I think you wanted a private conversation with him so badly that you sent your dear friend out into the garden. To her death.”

  “Stop!” Vivian’s eyes were watery now, and her chin was trembling. “Just stop!”

  Codella knew she had to continue. “But it’s true, isn’t it? Whether or not you realized what you were doing, you sent Emily to certain death.”

  Vivian’s stony facade was crumbling.

  “And you feel guilty about it. I see that,” said Codella. “It torments you. So why don’t you unburden yourself, Mrs. Wakefield? It’s hard to live with a death on your conscience. What was so important that you had to speak to Roger alone? Tell me—for Emily’s sake.”

  The churchwarden crossed her hands in front of her face. “I was just trying to save the church.”

  “From what?”

  “From greedy people who put their own interests first. I didn’t love Peter’s cemetery proposal. I don’t enjoy the idea of firing up our crematorium and burning bodies for every little funeral home in Brooklyn. It strikes me as ghoulish, in fact. But that and the additional burial plots to sell can save us financially without ruining the church. After Philip killed the proposal, he was going to sell our air rights to a developer who gave him the sweetest side deal.”

  Vivian removed a tissue tucked inside her sleeve and wiped her nose. “I don’t expect you to understand my feelings, Detective. You don’t seem to value beliefs and a higher power, so you can’t even open your mind to the importance my church and my faith have for me. You probably look at me and think how simple I am. How silly to put my faith in the idea of God. People usually disparage what they don’t understand. But I guess that’s to be expected.”

  “Oh, you’re really something, Mrs. Wakefield.” Codella didn’t hold back her anger anymore. “First you accuse me of being a bad cop, and now you try to make me out to be some religious intolerant. I don’t judge other people’s beliefs, but you’re certainly judging me.”

  Vivian seemed not to hear these words. Her eyes were hard black diamonds. “You don’t know what it’s like to be moved around and ripped from the ones you love, generation after generation. You have no idea how difficult it is to hold onto an identity when you’re never allowed to sink lasting roots.”

  Codella thought about her own past—shuttled from one foster family to another from the age of ten to eighteen. But Vivian, she knew, was talking about a legacy of enslavement—a far worse fate than she had suffered—and she remained silently respectful in the face of the churchwarden’s righteous indignation.

  “You intimated that I wasted your detective’s time with a meaningless history lesson. Well, the history of this church is my history, and that’s what I care about, Detective. My great-great-grandparents found their way north to freedom in New York City. I can’t be sure of this—I have no records to prove it—but I believe they were residents of Seneca Village. Their daughter, my grandmother, was a founding member of St. Augustine’s Chapel, the little church St. Paul’s helped to build after the city repossessed the Seneca Village land in 1857. My grandmother worshipped at St. Augustine’s Chapel all her life, and when she died, her ashes were placed in the St. Augustine’s columbarium. After the stock market crash, St. Augustine’s folded, and the mostly black parishioners were once again displaced. St. Paul’s opened its doors to them, and my grandmother’s ashes were moved to the St. Paul’s columbarium.”

  Vivian paused and took a deep breath. Her expression reflected pain and exhaustion. “People have moved my ancestors too many times, Detective. And now it’s up to me to keep them together. I’m the last one in my direct line. Someday—not that far in the future, I suppose—my ashes will be in the St. Paul’s columbarium with my grandmother, my mother, and my son. And I don’t intend to have my family uprooted again. This is my church, and I will make sure it stays where it is and what it is so long as I walk this earth. St. Paul’s could never survive in the shadow of a forty-story luxury high-rise that displaces the neighborhood residents we’ve served for two centuries.”

  “What did you do about that, Mrs. Wakefield?” Codella asked quietly.

  “I supported Peter’s proposal,” Vivian answered. “That’s all. What more could I do?”

  Codella watched every shift of Vivian’s eyes, every movement of her fingers. “What did you discuss with Roger in the kitchen?”

  “I told him I was disappointed in him.” Vivian glanced toward the door. “Now I’ve answered your questions, Detective. I need to get back to the reception hall. I have an obligation to the parishioners right now.”

  Codella shook her head. “No. There’s more.”

  Vivian’s fingers found the gold cross around her neck. She lifted it to her lips.

  “Come on, Mrs. Wakefield. You told me you’re not a liar. Liars don’t withhold information. Tell me what you know.”

  Vivian’s fingers released the cross. Her lips parted. “I was angry with Roger. That’s all.”

  “Did he tell you why he voted the way he did?”

  Vivian said nothing.

  “Did he tell you Philip blackmailed him into voting against the proposal?”

  Vivian still didn’t speak.

  “Come on, Mrs. Wakefield.”

  The churchwarden finally nodded.

  “And then what?”

  “And then nothing,” she asserted with vehemence. “Nothing happened. There was nothing to do. The vote was taken. It was over, and Philip had gone.”

  “Where did Roger go when he left you in the kitchen?”

  “I k
now what you’re thinking, Detective, but you’re wrong. Roger didn’t do this. Philip’s death was just a convenient act of God.”

  “Bullshit, Mrs. Wakefield. It was no act of God, and you know that as well as I do.”

  CHAPTER 69

  Anna had no appetite for food or conversation, and she didn’t want to smile at or console one more parishioner. She slipped out of the noisy reception hall, ducked into the Sunday school classroom across the corridor, and pulled out a chair at the end of the long table farthest from the door. No one would bother her here.

  She leaned forward and rested her head in her arms on top of the table, closed her eyes, and tried to clear her mind with every exhalation, but the image of her husband at the lectern and the sound of his mocking voice breached the barrier of her meditation: Philip was a strong and forceful father figure for Anna, and I know that she mourns him deeply. She did mourn him deeply, she thought now. She mourned the man she had wanted him to be.

  Anna jumped when she opened her eyes and saw Detective Codella standing in the doorway.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you, Rector. May I join you?” The detective walked around the table and sat in the chair next to Anna’s. She rested her arms in her lap and crossed one leg over the other. “I take it you needed to escape the crowd for a moment.”