by Harker Moore
“Is that what you think,” he asked her, “that the killer saw Lucia as a boy?”
“I think the killer saw all the victims as sexually ambiguous,” she answered. “Androgynous. Like angels.”
The look in his eyes was neutral, which was encouraging.
“Remember, the killer’s reality is his fantasy. He will think and do whatever it takes to make that fantasy work.”
“And the names of fallen angels on the walls?”
“It would have made things a hell of a lot easier if he’d written names of good angels,” she admitted. “I just don’t know.”
She looked at him. “One thing I do know,” she said, “since Jimmy finally managed to get the Church to cooperate, agree to let us bring in Graff for a lineup, we just might get lucky and get a positive ID. Then I think we’ll have enough for probable cause, enough for the D.A.’s office to make a case. And there’s that partial heel print that the killer left in the church. It’s not much more than a smudge, but we can at least match for size, once we get Graff into custody.”
Darius shook his head, picking up the morning’s edition of the Post lying at the edge of the coffee table. The headline read PARISH PRIEST’S PORN PHOTOS. “I need a cigarette,” he said.
Welcome to the jungle…. Guns N’ Roses wailed inside his head.
Sakura reached for the CD player’s off switch and killed the sound, pulling away the earphones. He looked at the clock. 2:03 A.M. Why was he still here, sitting alone in his office? He got up from his chair and paced to the window that divided him from the squad room, where a few stragglers from the task force mixed with the regulars on shift. Not much to be done now but wait for the lab results on the accumulated samples from the search. He was hoping for the best—a hair or a fingerprint that would prove to be Lucia’s, even a fiber that could reasonably have come from the clothes she’d been wearing that Saturday afternoon she’d disappeared. Something more substantial than that necklace’s thin gold chain, which seemed too delicate to support alone the burden of Thomas Graff’s guilt.
A witness ID would help, and both the bartender and the waitress had agreed to attend tomorrow’s lineup. If either witness could make the link between Graff and Geoffrey Westlake, that would connect the priest to a second of the primary victims. Three of seven victims, counting Father Kellog.
He walked back to his desk and reached to pick up his cell phone, putting it into his pocket. His father had called this morning seeking to confirm their meeting, suggesting they have lunch together somewhere near the airport. Of course, he hadn’t been able to go. Too much going on with the search. His work, the perfect excuse to cancel out.
He glanced back at the clock. His father’s sudden appearance had canceled any chance he’d had to talk with Hanae last night. Truly, he’d been too tired for anything but sleep when his father had finally left their apartment. He’d be too tired again, if Hanae were still awake, for anything more tonight.
Just let me get through the case had become his silent mantra. Let me get through the case… successfully. Wasn’t that the caveat? Defeat was the threat that tore at him, that distracted from all else. Until this case was successfully concluded, he did not have the luxury of worrying over his father’s visit or what might have been left unsaid. No energy to spare for confrontation with his father. Or, even tonight, with his wife.
He was not yet ready to go home. He sat back down in his chair and recited for himself the samurai creed. “I have no parents; I make the Heavens and the Earth my parents. I have no home; I make the Tan T’ien my home. I have no divine power; I make honesty my Divine Power….”
He went on, speaking each of the more than twenty statements carefully, finishing softly with the last two. “I have no castle; I make Immovable Mind my castle. I have no sword; I make No Mind my sword.”
He was still sitting, silently now, in the chair, when Talbot, long past his shift, appeared at the door.
“I thought you’d called it a night, Detective. What are you still doing here?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.” Talbot drifted in and sat down. “I’m hoping we get lucky at the lineup tomorrow,” he said in a moment, echoing Sakura’s own earlier thoughts.
Talbot picked up the folder of Graff’s photos, which lay at the edge of the desk where Willie had left them yesterday. He set the file on his lap, flipping idly through the stack of nude shots.
Sakura could see the detective thinking, watched his concentration sharpen as he flicked several of the photographs back. He picked up a black-and-white print, stared at it, and nodded.
“I’ve seen this….” He was looking at Sakura now, pushing the print toward him on the desk, his finger jabbing at the image, at the dark and irregular blemish that ran out from the hairline like a stain.
“I know I’ve seen that birthmark,” Talbot said. “And I’m pretty sure that I remember where.”
Dreams had always plagued Michael Darius. His first conscious memory was of his mother snatching him up screaming from his crib, comforting him from some nightmare. His wails had been a child’s, but not his understanding. Even in his crib his waking thoughts had been sharp and coherent, in contrast to his dreams. It was the sharpness that allowed him to remember so near to the beginning of his life.
An old soul, Margot had called him, smiling as she’d said it, regarding it as a good quality, one of many she had once claimed to find in him, before those days were gone.
It had become clear to him over the years that his marriage, like everything else in his life, had been doomed. That the happy days of his youth, punctuated as they were with his claustrophobic dreams, had been but a warning of the time when life and nightmare would merge into a seamless hell. His sister’s murder had been the trigger of that melding but was not its cause. His own impotent rage, his parents’ inevitable decline, the short reprieve of his marriage, were symptoms of some poison greater than his sister’s death. Her senseless murder but a focus for what remained forever inchoate but potent in his dreams.
He had shut down completely after Hudson, had begun to believe that withdrawal was at least some protection against the poison that had leached into his life—the darkness from his dreams, which had claimed both his sister and his parents, would inevitably threaten anyone he got close to.
Was he crazy? A police department shrink might say so. Willie might say so. In the end it didn’t matter. Crazy or sane, the threat remained. From himself, if not the poison.
He was dreaming now—though as the nightmares went, he’d had worse. Although not his waking self, he was at least recognizably the protagonist of the jumbled and fragmented scenes that spooled from his unconscious. A chameleon self that shifted and changed, slipping in and out of personae, like discarded layers of clothes.
For a time the impression persisted of his own eyes laughing at him from the faces of these strangers, as if the dream were a mirror, and the mockery an answer to a question he hadn’t asked. But the screen went blank and was gone.
He was nothing. Centered on an apprehension that built on nothingness and flowered into sudden understanding. One brief instant he was light and unbound, but the certainty of the next moment was already a huge and hungry blackness. The agony of the plunge no less terrible for his knowing it would come.
He jerked awake and sat up in bed, sucking air like a man drowning. His throat had dried in the artificial heat of the apartment, and he ran his tongue reflexively over his mouth. There was a bitterness in the sweat that dotted his upper lip, the flavor of a memory that evaporated like the moisture from his body.
He was thirsty. He needed a glass of water. He turned, looked around the room. Where …? Walls not white, but colored dark like decaying roses. The bed. Too high off the floor. He missed the odor of raw wood.
He remembered now. The restaurant. They’d both gotten a little drunk. He had taken her back to her apartment in the Village.
She was sleeping on her side. Turned toward him. A s
eries of soft undulating curves under the thin sheet, her black unruly hair shadowing half her face. And the scent he inhaled was the smell of spent sex and Wilhelmina French.
CHAPTER
18
The week’s nasty weather in temporary retreat, the morning of Lucia Mancuso’s funeral dawned like a blessing. By eleven a crisp sunniness had peaked in the cold air, to glint and sparkle in the granite facade of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. The local and cable broadcasters milling across the street seemed to catch this exuberance—reporters chatting briskly to their satellite pickups; shoulder cams patrolling the police lines like tigers, to flash and zoom on the mourners who gathered on the wide stairs of the church.
A delivery van stopped short of one of the barricades. “Flowers for the Mancuso funeral,” the driver said, and the uniformed cop waved him through. Turning into a driveway located between the church and rectory, he parked in a paved area adjacent to a rear garage and got out. Opening the van, he unloaded a small potted fir tree decorated with teddy bears and bows. Walking back toward a side entrance, he removed his baseball cap before entering the church.
The driver looked around. The church was already three-quarters full. There wasn’t much time, since Mass was scheduled to begin at any minute. Keeping his head down, he moved toward the central aisle, where floral offerings were being amassed to the right and left along the Communion railing. He stopped, giving the little tree a prominent place near the sanctuary. Then turning, he walked briskly down a side aisle, toward the confessionals at the rear.
Stepping inside, the driver took a deep breath. First untying the Nikes, then removing the khaki jumpsuit. The driver would have preferred to have worn a suit instead of pants and a blazer, but the borrowed uniform had made that impossible. However, the soft leather bag had fit comfortably enough across the chest. Now the driver opened the bag and removed shoes. The pins holding the hair flat came out next. A few quick strokes with a brush. Dark glasses in place. The uniform and joggers would have to be left behind. Straightening the lapels of the jacket, the driver thought that if everything continued to go as smoothly, the hundred-dollar bill was a small enough sacrifice to have bribed the original driver of Wonderland Flowers.
Zoe peeped out from between the confessional’s heavy drapes. The coast was clear. Walking up the same side aisle she’d come down, she found a nearly empty pew midway, slid in as far as she could toward the center aisle, and knelt. A buttery smell came to her of candle wax mixed with fresh pine.
She looked through the ombré haze of her sunglasses. Near the front was a string of high-ranking clergymen, solid in black cassocks and capes. Magenta the only relief in a somber sea of dark. Close by were Sakura with Lincoln McCauley, along with representatives from the D.A.’s and mayor’s offices. On the opposite side of the aisle, several rows were roped off. Dressed in the navy and white of a Catholic-school uniform were students of Immaculata. Their small faces pale against the white of their starched collars. Their eyes grave and frightened. Lucia’s classmates, bussed in from St. Sebastian parish. Come to say good-bye.
In the front nearest the aisle was Lucia’s teacher. Her back ramrod straight in the pale dove gray of her habit, her disciplined eyes on the altar, rosary beads pinched between long fingers.
Rozelli was nowhere in sight. Maybe he was outside, working the crowd. She’d spotted another florist van as she’d driven in, this one allowed to park near the entrance to the church. Surveillance taking pictures no doubt. Interesting that the task force was still actively seeking suspects. Which could mean Sakura wasn’t completely confident that Graff was the killer. Or the lieutenant was just being scrupulous.
She looked around. Near the rear on the opposite side was Agnes Tuminello. In a dark hat, with a veil pulled over her face, she knelt praying. Zoe could just make out a slight movement of the house-keeper’s lips. She turned quickly, securing the dark glasses on her nose. As far as she could tell, there were no members of the press among the mourners. She would be way out front with an exclusive on the funeral. But what she really wanted was something more sensational. A follow-up on her “priest porno” story. Except for the search of the rectory—and those results were still a big question mark—the riverbed had run dry. She needed to burst the dam.
The tower bell began to toll. Zoe stood with the congregation. Then, like a catch of breath in the air above their heads, the organ breathed, then boomed its opening notes. Zoe turned to the back of the church, where a trio of altar boys was leading the funeral procession. The first, a little ahead of the others, carried a large golden cross. Behind the boys came three priests. And next, pallbearers with Lucia’s small flower-covered coffin.
The Mancuso family followed. Mr. Mancuso supporting his wife. The other daughter, eyes down, walking beside them. An older woman shrouded in black, a mantilla covering her head, moved slowly between two young men. One reminded her of Johnny, Italian handsome in his dark suit and even darker expression. A trail of aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Soon enough Mass began. Zoe sat and knelt and stood, mentally taking notes. Inside the leather bag a recorder was running. She’d have all the speeches verbatim, though she wished for a copy of the slide show that was presented in lieu of a eulogy—photographs of Lucia chronicling her brief little life. And nothing could replace film for family reaction shots, though she just wasn’t close enough for that, even if she could have gotten away with a camera. She knew for a fact that MSNBC had been turned down flat on a live telecast of the funeral.
Time for Communion. Mr. and Mrs. Mancuso went up to kneel at the rail. Then the older daughter, Celia, her hands out to receive the Host, placing it inside her mouth as she turned. There was only the slightest hesitation, her eyes dark in the too white flesh of her face. A sidelong glance at the small coffin of her sister, stolen as though in secret. Then her lids shutting tight as she made the sign of the cross.
Zoe stood as her pew emptied for Communion and moved to the side aisle. She walked to the back of the church, still haunted by the look in Celia’s eyes, as Lucia’s little classmates began to sing:
Let there be peace on Earth
And let it begin with me.
Let there be peace on Earth,
The peace that was meant to be….
It was way more than enough. She walked through the lobby, glad to push through the huge wooden doors to the outside. But the sunny morning had disappeared, given way to a leaden afternoon.
The lineup room was a glassed-in stage, fronted by a dimly lit hallway. Gil Avery stood waiting in the corridor-shaped room with Detective Walter Talbot. Avery’s attitude was sullen, but an improvement on his mood when picked up earlier in the morning. It was Avery who had discovered Pinot’s body, and Talbot who had interviewed the eighteen-year-old after his roommate’s murder. He well remembered the boy’s creepy self-possession at the time, a feral aplomb that held no quarter. Jude is dead. I’m alive. So…?
Avery had been told nothing about why he was here now, or who he was expected to identify. Their best bet for an honest reaction was to maintain the element of surprise.
“Here they come,” Talbot said unnecessarily as a door opened and five men walked onto the stage. Four were civilian clerks or cops, commandeered this morning for the lineup.
“See anybody you recognize?” Talbot searched Avery’s face.
“Is that what this is about?” Sullen had become bored. “You gonna bust this guy for taking pictures?”
“Which guy are we talking about?”
“Number two.”
No surprise. Graff was number two. The boy had verified what they knew.
“What are you saying exactly?” Talbot tied it down. “Where have you seen number two before?”
“He took pictures of me. Nude shots. But it wasn’t my dick that got him going. The freak had some kind of weird thing for this.” Avery fingered the birthmark at the side of his neck. He looked back at Talbot. “Since when is taking pictures illegal?”
“Is that all that happened?”
“You mean, did he ask me to suck him off?”
“Was there any kind of contact, sexual or otherwise?”
Avery shook his head. “He never even said much. Paid good and never touched me.”
“Did this guy photograph Jude?”
Now Avery smiled, tight-lipped and self-satisfied that he’d finally gotten the point. He looked back to the lighted box, to where Graff still stood. The smile widened. “No way,” he said.
“Number two didn’t photograph Jude?” Talbot asked now.
“I don’t know about that. I’m just telling you that nutcase didn’t kill him.”
Avery was taken away to an interrogation room for further questioning on what exactly had taken place in that photographic session. But it didn’t seem now that they would be able to establish anything more than an indirect link between Graff and Pinot.
It was Tiffany Jameson’s turn now. The waitress looked even thinner to Talbot than she had in the bistro, balancing on her thick high heels and wearing some skinny little dress. She fidgeted with her ponytail as she glanced around, all doe-eyed and anxious.
“That’s my lieutenant down there,” he explained Sakura’s presence at the end of the hall. “He’ll be observing…. You ready?”
“Sure.” The ponytail got a tug.
He reached up and pressed the button on the intercom. “Send them out.”
The five men walked out for a second time on the stage. All five wore dark outdoor jackets now.
In her high heels Tiffany shifted nervously.
“Take your time,” he said to her. “And don’t forget, they can’t see or hear you.”
“I know. But it’s just … they seem so close.”