by Avery Corman
“I went there to tell him to stop harassing me. I was in his office.”
“Strangled to death. Whew.”
“He sent an e-mail to his congregation to leave me alone. I think he was going to cooperate. I can’t believe it. He’s dead.”
Nancy eventually went to work. Ronnie took a long bath, contemplating the nearly incomprehensible events of the previous day. She went to see Cummings to confront him, she blacked out, she couldn’t even remember much of her time up there, and he was murdered. What if she had been present when the killer arrived? She might be dead, too.
A few minutes after 11:00 A.M. she pushed herself to her desk to coordinate notes on the book. She worked unevenly. If she had never written about Cummings, she contemplated, would attention not have been directed toward him and would he still be alive? Did she contribute to the death of someone? It was a hard way for the harassment to stop, with his death, but she assumed it would stop now.
The original call to the police about Cummings came the previous afternoon from the assistant, Cosmo Pitalis. When Santini and Gomez arrived he was sitting on a step to the rear door, weeping. After observing the editing of a new film for the Web site, Pitalis returned to the church from the production studio at about 4:30 P.M. and found the body, he told the detectives. Beginning to build a time line on suspects, they asked if he could remember when he left the building. A few minutes after 2:00. His appointment at the video studio was for 2:15. This was later confirmed by three different people at the production house, located on 125th Street. Pitalis arrived there at 2:15 and departed from the studio at 4:20. He originally left “when that woman arrived,” he said.
“What woman was that?” Gomez asked. The detectives were kneeling next to the overwrought assistant.
“The Delaney woman. That so-called writer.”
“She was here?” Gomez said. He and Santini were taken aback by the information. “What was she doing here?”
“I have no idea.”
“And she came just after two. What time did she leave?” Santini asked.
“I couldn’t tell you. I was gone. Why did they kill him? His mission was to help people,” and he began weeping again.
“How do people get in and out?” Gomez asked.
“Front door, locked during the week. Side door, when I open it. This door is for deliveries and it leads to parking.”
“Can you just open a door and walk in?”
“Can’t get in unless a door is opened for you.”
“So you found the body—”
“In the corridor.”
“Near this door?” Santini said.
“Yes.”
“Did you see anyone entering the building at any other time when you were here or anything suspicious when you left the building?” Gomez asked.
“Nobody. Except the assholes.”
“What assholes might that be?” Santini said.
“With the signs.”
“The protesters,” Santini said. “They were there when you left the building?”
“Yes.”
“And when you came back?”
“Yes.”
“How many were there?”
“Just two, I think.”
“All right, sir, we thank you for talking to us. We’re going to want to talk to you some more. To help things along, we’d appreciate it if you don’t leave town for the next period of time.”
Pitalis moved away from the building past the police, the area taped off as a crime scene. Santini and Gomez remained there a moment.
“What the hell was she doing, complaining about the guy, then she comes here,” Gomez said.
“Maybe she didn’t like the pace we were moving at. Can’t blame her for that.”
“I guess. Let’s talk to the crazies.”
John Wilson and Beattie Ryan left their spot to join the dozen people outside the building observing the police. They carried their banners and their chairs, worried someone might steal their possessions if they left them across the street.
“Could we speak to you folks?” Gomez said and motioned them to move away from the others and they walked a few feet from the onlookers.
“What happened here?” Wilson asked.
“A crime was committed,” Gomez answered.
“What crime?”
“We’re not at liberty to divulge. Now who are you exactly?”
“The Anti-Satanist Group,” Wilson replied.
“Why have you been out here?” Santini asked.
“It’s in our literature. Praised be the Lord,” and he handed them each a flyer. The detectives read the material, which thrilled Wilson. “Do you have any questions?” Wilson said, referring to the flyer.
“We have a lot of questions,” Santini said, and took down their names, addresses, and phone numbers and asked for the same on any other members of the group.
Santini and Gomez asked to see where they had been positioned. Standing where Wilson and Ryan had been, the detectives noted the protesters had a clear view of the front door of the building and the side door, but no view of the rear door.
“I want you to think very hard about whoever you saw going in and out of the building while you were out here,” Santini said.
“The weird guy,” Ryan answered. “He went out and then he went in.”
“Do you remember when?”
“We got here about noon, so he must have gone in before. Then he came out, what time was it?” she said to Wilson.
“Maybe two or so,” Wilson said. “After we ate lunch. Around when the girl came. She went in, he came out. Then he went back in around four thirty.”
“Could you describe this girl?” Santini said.
“Pretty. A brunette. John talked to her.”
“A slut. The devil’s slut,” Wilson said.
“How’s that?” Gomez asked.
“He had his way with her, that Cummings.”
“He had his way with her?” Gomez said.
“When she came out, she was weaving, like, you know, he entered her with his Devil’s staff.”
“She was weaving and that tells you he entered her with his Devil’s staff?” Santini said.
Ryan offered on Wilson’s behalf, “People follow him, evidently. Could be he stiffed her. She was walking funny.”
“She went in around two, you say, and came out when?” Gomez asked.
“She was in there about an hour and a half, servicing the Devil’s lust,” Wilson said.
“Is that how you remember it?” he asked Ryan.
“That’s right.”
“And you people, where were you from noon when you say you got here?”
“Right here,” Wilson replied.
“You never left the spot? Neither of you?”
“Not until the police came,” Wilson said. “Then we went across the street to look.”
“You were right here, never left?”
“Right here. Don’t you think we’re entitled to know what happened?” Wilson asked.
“I’m sure you’ll hear about it on the news. Don’t either of you leave town. You’re potential witnesses. Anything else occurs to you that you saw, anyone in or out, anything, give us a call,” Santini said and handed each of them a business card.
Ronnie gave up her attempts to work and tried to learn more information about the death of Cummings on the radio and the Internet. The information was the same and she set out for her doctor’s appointment.
In detail she described the blacking-out episodes to the internist, Dr. Emma Lawson, a thoughtful woman in her forties, deliberate and thorough in her medical Q and A. She also asked about any changes in Ronnie’s social life that might have had a bearing on her emotional state.
“I was with someone and we broke up. That was a few months ago. I’ve been kind of seeing someone since. He travels a lot.”
“Does that cause you stress?”
“I doubt seeing this guy has caused stress, over and above the New York usual. Maybe more,
but not significant. I’d say the death threats I’ve been receiving—”
“Death threats?”
Ronnie recounted the incidents since the article appeared. The doctor somberly took notes.
“That would cause stress in anyone. You said you lost consciousness in the race you ran, but you were able to keep running?”
“Yes.”
“Were you aware of anything in your surroundings, the path of the race, the runners?”
“No.”
“So you were physically intact, but it was your consciousness that was affected?”
“Yes.”
“And before that day, can you recall similar incidents?”
“No.”
“And it happened again yesterday. Except yesterday was somewhat different. You lost consciousness and you were feeling faint. You actually passed out.”
“Yes. Some ways it was worse. Everything was worse. He was murdered, the man I went to see, sometime after I saw him.”
“Murdered?”
“A man named Randall Cummings.”
“I saw something about it. You have some heavy traffic in your life.”
“I’m very upset. I didn’t like him. I knew he was behind the harassment, but not to the extent that I’d want to see him dead. I even thought we worked it out yesterday.”
“Being upset about his death doesn’t account for what happened yesterday or that race you ran. Our medical puzzle is why you’re going into these fogs.”
The tests the doctor ordered were the most extensive Ronnie had ever taken; blood was drawn, she was administered an EKG, chest X-ray, stress test on a treadmill, and, finally, a CAT scan. Ronnie was there all afternoon and the doctor met with her once more.
“We’ll have to wait for the test results. Give us a week or so on that, but from what I can see here, you’re in excellent shape. Now for the stress, I can offer you some medication to round out the edges for you.”
“I’m a writer and I’m writing a book. I’d be afraid to take anything to round out the edges.”
“If you change your mind, it’s there for you. Let me know if there are any other episodes. And, Ms. Delaney, if those threats were causing you stress and they’re over, then that’s hopeful, isn’t it?”
“It is. But there’s also the guilt. I wrote about the man, I brought attention to him, and he was murdered.”
“Why guilt?”
“Why not guilt? I was Catholic as a little girl.”
At New York City police headquarters Rourke met with the department’s chief of detectives, the chief of Manhattan North Homicide, and the police commissioner. The meeting focused on the headline-making cases of late, the Cummings murder and the hit-and-run case. The mood in the room was somber, the feeling among the participants that, based on the initial evidence, these were going to be difficult cases, and they could still be unsolved well after the news stories faded.
To augment Rourke’s detective squad, two more homicide detectives were assigned. Tom Carter was an African American in his late thirties, a muscular, six-foot-tall former baseball player for Fordham University. Bill Greenberg, five feet seven, in his midthirties, was a stocky Jewish boy from Brooklyn, the first detective ever from his Crown Heights congregation.
“Coroner says Cummings died by strangulation, approximately three o’clock. A frontal assault. What does that give us?” Rourke asked his detectives at the station house.
“We have these religious nuts across the street,” Gomez said, reading from his pad. “Man named Wilson, woman named Ryan. They were protesting the cult. They alibi each other. Claim they never left their spot across the street, so they would have been there time of death. As possible witnesses, they were in a position to see who comes in and out, but not for the rear door of the church. Anybody came in and out that way and didn’t come around to the street, they wouldn’t have known it.”
“We have Cummings’ assistant. He says he leaves the building around two, is back around four thirty,” Santini said, “and he’s got a production studio where he went confirming he was at the studio the whole time.”
“The only other person seen going into the building around that time is Veronica Delaney,” Gomez told them.
“Really?” Rourke said.
“Yes.” For the benefit of the other detectives Santini said, “She got all kinds of stupid pranks played on her after she wrote an article about Cummings, like a dead black cat, decapitated picture of her, and she was sure Cummings or his people did it. Anyway, she goes into the building at two, according to the assistant and the religiosos across the street. The assistant isn’t there, so he doesn’t know when she comes out. The religiosos say she comes out, walking funny, hour and a half later.”
“Walking funny?” Carter asked.
“So says this guy, that Cummings entered her with his Devil’s staff.”
“Brother!” Carter said.
“She’s there time of death then,” Greenberg offered.
“If you can believe these people and their powers of observation,” Santini said. “They’re pretty strange. Plus she’s little, probably doesn’t weigh a lot more than a hundred pounds, and he was—”
“Six two, two forty,” Rourke said from his notes.
“Be a real long shot that she strangled him,” Santini said.
“She’s your account,” Rourke said, gesturing at Santini and Gomez. He turned to Carter and Greenberg. “Check out the religiosos.”
“They were protesting the cult?” Greenberg said.
“The Anti-Satanist Group, they call themselves,” Gomez responded.
“Well, with this guy dead maybe they don’t have so much to protest anymore,” Greenberg remarked.
“We’re going to have to get a list of who was in this cult and work through it,” Rourke said. “And we’re going to have to find out if he had enemies, rivals. We’ve got wackos inside and out—and a goddamn strangler walking around.”
Ronnie sent an e-mail to Richard:
Cummings strangled to death. I feel badly about it. Like if I didn’t write about him he wouldn’t be dead.
He did not immediately respond.
Santini and Gomez revisited the crime scene with Carter and Greenberg. Carter downloaded the files on Cummings’s computer, found a list of names, addresses, and e-mail addresses of congregants and printed it out, more than a thousand names; a daunting task ahead if they needed to interrogate these people. With his confirmed alibi for the time of death Pitalis was not a prime suspect. He was a valuable source of information about the cult, though. Carter and Greenberg went to his apartment on Dyckman Street where he gave them two hours of background on the cult. He was of the opinion that Cummings had no rivals in the field and said, “No one in the congregation would have wished our leader any harm.”
Ronnie was watching the eleven o’clock news. Two people identified as the parents of Randall Cummings were shown coming out of the Twenty-sixth Precinct house, the father a tall, bald man, his face ashen, the mother a thin woman wearing dark glasses. They stopped for a moment in front of cameras and microphones and he spoke, a father’s public opportunity to redeem his son and salvage a legacy for him.
“We would like him remembered, our son, Randall, as a person who found a way, unconventional as it may have been, of helping people get hold of their lives.”
That was all he was going to say, a dignified, succinct epitaph, and the parents started to move on. An aggressive, no-sympathy-for-the-grieving reporter shouted out, “But he was a satanist, wasn’t he? He promoted evil.”
“He was originally an actor,” the father said in an even tone that effectively diminished the reporter. “He was creating theater.”
“Creating theater.” On hearing this, Ronnie felt even guiltier about the possibility that she was a journalistic accomplice in his death.
Ronnie knew Cummings’s assistant would tell the police she was there that day and she would have to deal with that eventually. She did no
t want to precipitate the upsetting admission that she couldn’t account for part of the time. If she had a reliable male friend she would have been with him these evenings, to confide in him and deal with a crisis the way she imagined people together behaved.
Richard finally sent an e-mail back.
This Cummings murder has nothing to do with you. It’s the madness of the world.
“The madness of the world” was rather grim for encouragement, she thought.
In the hit-and-run case, in an effort to explore all possibilities, a fax had been sent from police headquarters to auto repair and body shops in the city advising the establishments to report instances of body work on the driver’s side. Someone was looking for such work on his car at an auto repair shop in the Bronx, and the man seemed so peculiar his behavior attracted the shop owner’s attention and he called the police.
Santini and Gomez went to see the owner, Joe Drennan, at Elite Auto Repair. The car was a 1998 Buick and a dent ran along the driver’s side. Drennan saw a lot of dents, he explained, but the owner of the car seemed extremely odd and Drennan immediately thought about the hit-and-run killer. The customer’s oddness took the form of rapid mumbling. He would talk in complete sentences and where the normal pauses in conversation would be, he mumbled. The customer also complained of a problem with the steering. Drennan told the detectives the steering problem was consistent with that type of body damage; the car obviously had struck something that affected the steering and the wheel alignment. The detectives checked, and according to the registration the car belonged to an Alfonse Batrak of 138 West 118th Street, the same name and phone number he gave Drennan. Santini and Gomez thanked him for his help and immediately impounded the car.
Lab tests indicated that the dented side bore paint residue that matched the paint of the parked SUV that was damaged in the near-miss of the second female jogger. And fabric strands snagged in the headlamp portion of the Buick were an identical match with the fabric of the cotton running shorts worn by the jogger who was killed. They had the vehicle that was used in the crime.
Santini and Gomez went to the address on 118th Street, a few blocks from where the victim was killed. Sitting on a step of a five-story building was a Hispanic woman in her fifties in a housedress.