Murder Among the Angels

by Stefanie Matteson

  Finally, he spoke: “The church bells ring every evening at six o’clock, signaling to the inhabitants of Zion Hill that it is time to participate in one of the most important religious rituals of the day.”

  “And what is that?” asked Charlotte.

  “The cocktail hour,” Peter responded with a deadpan delivery.

  Charlotte and Jerry smiled.

  “I speak only partly in jest,” he continued. “The residents of Zion Hill take their cocktail hour very seriously.”

  “As well they should,” said Charlotte, for whom the sanctity of the cocktail hour was also inviolable.

  “On a more serious note,” Peter continued, “the church was built from 1909 to 1911 by Edward Archibald. The model was a thirteenth-century English parish church. Archibald chose a preindustrial model because he believed that a house of God should express the artistry of men, not machines.”

  “It seems like an odd attitude for someone who made his fortune in railroads to take,” Charlotte commented.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But not an uncommon one for that period. The arts and crafts movement, which advocated a return to craftsmanship in design, was very influential, and Archibald subscribed to their ideas. He insisted that his workmen use only preindustrial tools, but I suspect they cheated.”

  “I know they cheated,” Jerry said. “My grandfather was a stonemason who came here to work for Edward Archibald.”

  “Actually, I know they cheated too,” he said. “I used to be apprenticed to a glassblower who came from England to work for Archibald. That’s where I learned about stained glass. He came from Stourbridge, England, which was famous for its glassworks. Now I take care of all the stained glass.”

  “And he admitted to cheating?” Jerry asked.

  “Not so much him, because the glassblowing art wasn’t amenable to twentieth-century techniques. But he told me that others did. Anyway, the end product was preindustrial, even if the workmen sometimes did use modern tools.” He continued with his lecture: “Archibald also felt the Gothic model was the best expression of Swedenborg’s Doctrine of Uses, which holds that each man is put on earth to play an individual role, but that the role of the individual should be subservient to the harmony of the whole.”

  Jerry looked over at Charlotte, reminding her of their discussion earlier that day about this aspect of the New Church’s beliefs.

  “The idea was that the work of no one individual would stand out from that of any other; it was a communal undertaking. Which is not to say that individual contributions weren’t recognized. They were, and the way they were recognized was through the concept of freedom in variety.”

  At their puzzled expressions, he led them back through the cloister into the Parish Hall, where he paused before a large glass-fronted armoire. A quote from Isaiah was carved along the top: “And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder.”

  Then he opened the door of the armoire, which contained a display of large, hand-tooled metal keys hanging on hooks mounted on a background of purple velvet. Each key was a work of art, and each one was different.

  “This is our key cabinet,” he said, “which I always show to visitors to illustrate the concept of freedom in variety. No two details of this church are the same. No two windows are exactly alike, no two doors, no two keys. Even the length of each individual pew varies slightly.”

  Leaning forward for a better look, Charlotte could see keys with heads in the shape of a castle turret, a rosette, a Gothic trefoil, a Celtic cross, a Star of David, and ornamental knot.

  “This one is modeled after the key to the great west door of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris,” Peter said, pointing out one of the larger keys.

  “They’re beautiful,” Charlotte said.

  “We have twenty-two doors, and each one is different: different shapes, different latches, and different keys. Freedom in variety. In the case of the doors, the differences also have another symbolic meaning,” he went on. “They also symbolize the many ways to the divine truth.”

  “Fascinating,” said Jerry, who was studying the keys.

  Peter went on: “The New Church is unusual in that it believes that all world religions have their own validity.”

  “What’s the metal?” Charlotte asked, admiring the silvery white sheen of the heads of the keys on display.

  “It’s called monel,” he replied. “It’s a natural alloy of nickel and copper. It’s used throughout the church. It’s very difficult to work with, but its virtue is that it doesn’t rust, and, as you can see from the heads of the keys, it develops this lovely patina where it’s been touched.”

  “It’s very beautiful,” she said.

  “Would you like to go into the church now?” he asked.

  As he spoke, the church bells overhead started to peal. Charlotte recognized the melody as that of a lovely old English hymn.

  “It’s the cocktail hour!” Jerry announced. Then he addressed Peter: “I think we’d better skip it. Maybe we could come back another time. We actually came here on another mission, and our time is running out. Thank you, though. I think Mrs. Lundstrom enjoyed the tour very much,” he said. “As did I.”

  Charlotte nodded in agreement.

  “We came here to ask you about one of your tenants,” Jerry continued. “A young woman named Doreen Mileski, who resides in a two-family house that you own at 33 Liberty Street in Corinth.”

  “What would you like to know?” Peter asked.

  “Anything you can tell us,” Jerry said.

  “I’ll have to get my files,” he said. “They’re inside.” He nodded toward his rooms at the back. “Would you like to take a seat?” he asked, gesturing toward the Gothic-style chairs that flanked a large table displaying a collection of Swedenborgian literature.

  Charlotte and Jerry sat down, and Peter disappeared down a hallway at the back of the Parish Hall.

  As they awaited his return, Charlotte scanned the titles of the booklets: Our Eternal Home, Through the Valley of Death, Hell: Its Origins and Nature, and The Presence of Spirits in Madness. She would have liked to look at some of them, but Peter was back momentarily with his files.

  Pulling up another chair, he sat down and opened the file folder. “She moved in last November. Her full name is Doreen Marie Mileski. Birth date: April 16, 1967. Birthplace: Detroit, Michigan.”

  “Place of employment?” asked Jerry, who was making notes.

  “She wasn’t employed,” he said.

  Jerry looked up at him. “How’d she pay the rent if she wasn’t employed?”

  “She didn’t pay the rent. It was paid for her.”

  “By whom?” Jerry asked.

  “Dr. Victor Louria,” he said. He held up the file folder for them to see. The tab was labeled “Dr. Louria.”

  “He rented the apartment; he even filled out the rental application, for that matter. Hey,” he said, clapping a palm to his broad chest, “who am I to ask questions?”

  “You figured he’d be good for the rent,” Jerry said.

  “You’re darned right I did,” Peter said. “He’s probably got an annual income of a million dollars.”

  “Do you have any idea why he rented the apartment for her?”

  Charlotte wondered too. Why wouldn’t he have put her up at Archfield Hall? Then she answered her own question: he would have wanted to keep her a secret, and if he’d put her up at his house, people would have seen her coming and going, and become curious.

  Peter shook his head. “As I said, I didn’t ask any questions. Why do you want to know, anyway?”

  “She’s been missing since a week ago last Monday,” Jerry replied. “She probably went on a trip, but we thought we’d check it out.”

  Peter nodded.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know if she had any friends or relatives in this area, would you?”

  Peter shook his head. “I have fourteen properties in Corinth,” he said. “I can’t keep track of the personal lives of all o
f my tenants.”

  “Fourteen!” said Jerry.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I bought the first one eight years ago. Fixed it up and rented it. I’m pretty handy,” he said, “despite this.” He looked down at his empty sleeve. “Then I bought another, and another …”

  “A one-man gentrification movement,” Charlotte commented.

  “I guess you could say that,” he said.

  “Has Dr. Louria ever rented any other apartments from you?” Jerry asked as they were getting up to leave.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said.

  Jerry’s head swiveled sharply around, his throwaway question having yielded an unexpected payoff.

  “He had two other girls in another one of my apartments; it’s on Hudson Street, down by the river.”

  “Names?” Jerry shot out the question.

  “I don’t remember,” he said. He leafed through the file folder in his lap. “Here it is,” he said. “The first one was Kimberly Ferguson.” He gave an address on upper Broadway, near Columbia. “She moved in last May.”

  “When did she move out?” Jerry asked.

  “She never did move out. She just took off. I still have her stuff stored in the attic over there. The furniture stayed for the next tenant; it was all Dr. Louria’s. He had furnished the apartment for her.”

  “When did she take off, then?” Jerry asked.

  “Early September,” he said.

  Which was when the skull of the first victim was found, Charlotte thought.

  “The second one was Liliana Doyle. Born October 12, 1966, which would have made her twenty-six. She moved in late last September.”

  “After Kimberly had disappeared,” Jerry said.

  He nodded.

  “Last address?”

  “Let’s see,” he said, studying the form. He pushed his long blond hair out of his face with his one hand. “Here it is. In the city, again. In the East Village.” He gave an address on East Fourth Street.

  “What happened to her?” Jerry asked.

  “Same thing,” he said. “She up and left. At the beginning of last month.”

  “Didn’t you think it unusual that three young women occupying apartments rented on their behalf by Dr. Louria disappeared?” Jerry looked over at Peter, awaiting his explanation.

  He shrugged. “Now I see that it’s unusual, yes. But I was only aware of two. I didn’t know about this last one until just now. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think much about it. It happens all the time.”

  “It does?” Jerry said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’d be surprised. People just take off. Especially these young women. They meet a guy, and—poof!—they’re gone. In this case, the furniture didn’t even belong to them, anyway. I’m not dealing with the most stable class of people.”

  “Did Liliana take her personal belongings?”

  Peter shook his head. “They’re in the attic of the house on Hudson Street with the first one’s stuff.”

  “We’ll probably want to take a look,” Jerry said. “Would you be able to let us in there sometime?”

  “Sure,” he said. Reaching into one of the pockets in his leather apron, he pulled out a business card and passed it to Jerry. “This is my number here. If you can’t reach me here, you can try my beeper number. I’m always out and about fixing toilets and the like.”

  Jerry stood to leave. “Thanks,” he said, holding out his hand. “You’ve been an enormous help.”

  “Anything I can do,” Peter said.

  They had written Dr. Louria off as a suspect because of his reaction at seeing the skulls, but maybe they had done so prematurely, Charlotte thought as they drove back down the hill. She was reconsidering Jerry’s theory that Dr. Louria had created the young women in his dead wife’s image, and then killed them out of a need to exert the control over his dead wife that had eluded him when she was alive. The fact that he had set them up in Peter’s apartments as if they were kept women would seem to point to such a need. It struck her as unlikely that a man with such a solid public persona would harbor a homicidal obsession, but then she remembered what he had said about being forced to keep his “bad little ear” a secret until he was eight years old. To a person schooled in secrecy as he must have been, the ability to conceal such an obsession didn’t seem so farfetched. It was quite possible that he went through life wearing an invisible mask that concealed his dark side as thoroughly as the iron mask he displayed in his office had concealed the face of the French nobleman who had worn it for so many years.

  Charlotte wondered what to do about her own surgery. She was supposed to let him know by next week if she wanted to go ahead with it, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to sign on with a surgeon who might be a homicidal maniac.

  They had reached the bottom of the hill before either of them spoke. “What do you think?” Charlotte asked as they pulled out onto the highway.

  “I think we’re in business,” said Jerry. “We know who the victims are. At least, I think we know who they are. That’s half the battle …” He was interrupted by the crackle of the police radio.

  “I’ve got the registration on that Honda,” the dispatcher said. “It’s registered to Dr. Louria. The plastic surgeon on River Road.”

  Charlotte and Jerry exchanged looks.

  “There’s something else too, Chief,” she said. “We just got a call from the Corinth P.D. They’ve got a thirty-seven at the municipal park at the foot of Hudson Street. It’s in the water,” she added.

  “Shit!” Jerry muttered. Then he picked up the microphone and spoke to the dispatcher: “Tell them I’ll be right over.” He thanked her and returned the microphone to its cradle with an angry thunk.

  “What’s a thirty-seven?” Charlotte asked.

  “A dead body,” he said.

  A few minutes later, they turned off the Albany Post Road onto Hudson Street, a road that pitched steeply down to the shore of the river. The river’s mood had changed once again. A stiff breeze had come up at the close of the day, and the surface of the water, which had been so placid only a few hours before, was now choppy again. Sea gulls wheeled and dove for their dinner against a sky that was tinted orange by the setting sun. The water, which had looked blue-gray earlier in the day, now looked emerald-green against the diminishing light of the sky. At the foot of the road, a small postage-stamp shaped park jutted out into the water. Half a dozen police cars were parked at the base of the footbridge that led over the railroad tracks to the park, and policemen were strung out along the shore of the park like fishermen at the edge of a trout stream on the opening day of fishing season.

  As they parked, one of the policemen drew away from the cluster gathered around the police cars and came over to speak to them. He was dressed in plain clothes. Jerry introduced him as his captain, Harry Crosby.

  He was a tall man with stooped shoulders, a big belly, and a long, lugubrious-looking face that was heavily lined.

  “I hear we’ve got another body,” Jerry said.

  “Not a body,” Captain Crosby said. “An arm bone.” He turned to nod at a group of picnic tables under a small grove of willows whose branches were just beginning to bud. “A young couple spotted it while they were having a picnic.”

  Charlotte grimaced at the thought.

  “Any other body parts?” Jerry asked.

  “That’s what we’re looking for,” Crosby said, nodding at the policemen who were spread out along the shore. “The county guys came right over.”

  As he spoke, one of the policemen who was searching the shoreline at the far side of the park let out a shout. “I’ve found something,” he yelled, signaling for the others to join him.

  A few minutes later, Charlotte and Jerry were heading toward the policemen who had gathered at the water’s edge.

  “Are you sure you want to see this?” Jerry asked.

  Charlotte nodded.

  The latest find was floating between the rotted pilings in the water and the alg
ae-coated boulders that buttressed the shore. It was a woman’s foot, neatly severed at the ankle. A size eight, Charlotte guessed.

  The little group stood staring at the foot, which rocked gently in its watery pen on waves driven inland by the stiff breeze. No one spoke: it was as if they were mesmerized by its perfection.

  There were no corns or calluses, no twisted toes or bunions. Only a dead-white foot, its toenails perfectly painted with red polish.

  Charlotte couldn’t get the image of the foot, with its perfect pedicure, out of her head. She thought about it all the way back to New York, all the way through her dinner at her favorite neighborhood bistro, and, afterwards, as she sat in an armchair in the living room of her town house in Turtle Bay. Like the twisted nose on the woman she had met at the Hollywood party, the dismembered foot seemed to symbolize a quest for physical perfection that had gone awry, in this case horribly awry. Doreen Mileski, like Kimberly Ferguson and Liliana Doyle before her, had sought out cosmetic surgery to improve her appearance, and had lost her life as a result. Who were these young women who had been willing to undergo operation after operation in order to look more beautiful? Presumably, Dr. Louria had operated on them free of charge, paying their rent and probably their other living expenses as well. Maybe he had even paid them a salary. If so, it meant that they must have been young women in need of money, who didn’t have educations, or good jobs, or middle-class parents holding out a financial safety net. Were they prostitutes, perhaps? she asked herself, and then dismissed that idea on the basis that they wouldn’t offer pristine enough working material for Dr. Louria. Runaways from the Midwest? But how would Dr. Louria have established contact with them? Then she thought of a possible answer to her question: aspiring actresses.

  Aspiring actresses would fit all the requirements. With the exception of models, there were probably few categories of young women who were more concerned about their looks. They were also accustomed to a transient way of life, and were always in need of money. The addresses confirmed that: Morningside Heights, the East Village. They were the kinds of neighborhoods where young aspirants to the stage might share a low-rent apartment. Also, their acting talents would come in useful, if, as they suspected, Dr. Louria’s ultimate intention was to have them take over the role of his dead wife. And there would be a large pool to draw from. New York was a mecca for aspiring actresses. How would he have recruited them? she wondered. Then she thought of the answer: an ad in Backstage, the periodical that was the equivalent of the daily newspaper for every young aspiring actress, or maybe Variety, which served a similar purpose.