The folder also contained a sealed white envelope. Eddie tore it open and dumped a stubby silver key into his hand. It was shiny and sharp, apparently just cut.
That was it? No instructions? Hippo Vaughn occasionally tested Eddie’s patience with his bizarre sense of humor.
Eddie gathered his paperwork and looked for a conspicuous lock. He walked both blocks next to the church, spying every door and delivery truck for a padlock. No luck. The church itself, maybe? The giant double doors were shut with chains and locks, but Eddie couldn’t test them with all these people around.
He walked around the church. If there were any other doors, they were hidden by thickets. Eddie checked the black and white photograph in his packet. It was taken in the 1930s, when they used to trim the shrubs. The picture showed a small door on the west side of the church, one of the long sides with the buttresses and stained glass.
He hustled around the building and battled through an overgrowth of ornamental bushes. Panting, and with fresh scratches on his hands, he reached the stone foundation. There he found a wooden door, gray and needing paint, shut by a silver padlock.
The key popped the lock. The door resisted at first. Eddie put a foot against the wall for leverage and yanked it open with one violent jerk. A steep wooden staircase, practically a ladder, rose out of sight.
“Hippo?” he called out.
Nothing.
Eddie climbed the steps. They led to the church vestibule, behind the three great oaken double-doors.
“Hippo?” he called again.
He started into the main church sanctuary, unconsciously reaching his right hand to dip a finger in the holy water at the door. The dish held naught but dust. He blessed himself anyway with the sign of the cross, and felt sheepish doing so in the long-abandoned house of worship.
The impressive outside architecture of St. Francis de Sales could not compare to the inside, which seemed even more immense than Eddie had imagined. He gaped at its beauty. Two rows of white columns, linked by sharp gothic arches, divided the main body of the church into three sections, each filled with rows of cherry wood pews separated by narrow aisles. The ceiling chamber above the center aisle, rising higher than on the sides, peaked in a web of arches and vaults adorned with scenes from the Old Testament. Moses on the mountain. An angel staying the hand of Abraham. The serpent coiled in the tree. These characters played their parts on a background painting of a starry night sky.
The setting sun lit the stained glass into the Stations of the Cross, in a pale blend of blue and red light. The figures seemed to leap from the glass. The talent of the artist—of all the artists who had made this place—was plain to Eddie.
So was seventeen years of neglect. Hunks of plaster had plunged like meteors from the ceiling and exploded into fragments on the floor. The church smelled like mildew and wet cement.
No splendor or decay could stop his eyes from lingering upon the eight-foot church crucifix, like none he’d ever seen. It dangled two stories above the church altar on wires running from the tips of the crossbeam to a black chain, which disappeared into a hole in the ceiling.
The Christ figure on the cross wore dust like snowflakes, and seemed too real for art. The head slumped forward, the eyes bulged and pleaded for help, the lips parted in a gasp. This Jesus would have spoken, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” Only its hugeness showed any artist’s license. Real iron spikes through the wrists and feet pinned the plaster Christ to a cross of round timbers lashed together with rope. The lean body tensed against the nails, stretching its plaster muscles. The nude figure was positioned in a twist on the traditional crucifixion pose; the statue’s legs were bent at the knees and swung to the figure’s left side. A single spike piercing both feet entered through the right ankle. The twist made the figure seem even more pained and real, though it may have been designed that way just to hide its private parts.
Eddie shook off a shiver and called again for Vaughn. “Hippo? Are you here?”
The church’s granite walls dampened the city noise outside. The bullhorn at the rally sounded far off. This was no place to trespass. Eddie turned to leave, but the thought of finally getting some answers about Nowlin rooted him. He had already trespassed. Might as well see it through.
The building’s vastness swallowed his footsteps up the center aisle. Eddie imagined the empty pews full of nineteenth-century working-class folks on their knees, hands clasped and knuckles white. Mill workers, most of them—the carders who combed out the rough cotton fibers, the spinners who twisted the fibers into yarn, and the weavers who interwove yarn into cloth on the looms. They would have been thankful for the blessing of a job in the mills. Yet they begged for a better life. A teenaged girl who left the family farm to spin yarn made fourteen dollars a month, minus a fiver for a bunk in the company boardinghouse. Bells controlled their lives. The mill bells told them when to start work in the morning, and when to quit fourteen hours later. The bells told them when to eat and when to stop eating. The church bell called them here on Sunday.
The church’s main aisle finally ended at a low wooden railing. The altar table beyond the railing was a square marble slab on granite pillars.
Eddie turned left, walking along the front row of pews, and under a high arch between two stone columns. Ahead, three confessional booths stood, along the west wall of the church. Their oaken doors had a patchwork design, and looked heavy. Tarnish blackened the brass doorknobs. The largest booth, in the middle, was where the priest would sit to hear confessions. A decorative iron bracket on the door held a glass lantern. Back when the church was active, the priest would light a candle under the lantern as a sign he was inside, ready to hear sins and dispense absolution.
The lantern was lit.
Dusk seemed to fall suddenly, robbing light from the windows and dulling the colors of the church. The candle put Eddie’s shadow in a pew. And Fear nibbled his ear.
He walked in silence to the door. Hot white wax rolled down the candle. The brass doorknob was almost too big to grip. It would not turn, wouldn’t even click. Could a priest be working here now?
The door on the right, where parishioners entered to confess, was unlocked. A light tug swung it open without a sound on three massive hinges. At first, there looked to be nothing in the darkness inside. Then, as Eddie’s eyes adjusted, fabric drapery appeared on the walls, and a padded kneeler came into view beneath the screen that separated the parishioner from the priest. The booth smelled like a top-rate consignment shop. He stepped in. The door clicked shut behind him and the place was black. See it through. His heart hammered against his ribcage, wanting out through the bars of bone. Fear draped herself over him.
Eddie dropped to his knees, wincing at the pain in his hip. His right hand traced the sign of the cross. And then, in the confessional whisper he had learned in catechism, Eddie said, “Bless me father, for I have sinned.”
The barrier behind the screen slid open with a bang. Fear raked her nails across his back.
“Oh, do tell, Edward, and make it juicy.”
Vaughn! “You old bastard!” Eddie said, still whispering. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
The congressman giggled. “Come now, unburden your soul, young man. And just the action, don’t bore me with tales of coveting—I do plenty of that myself.” Vaughn continued to giggle until Eddie couldn’t help himself, and laughed along with him.
“You have always had the weirdest sense of humor,” Eddie said. “When the Red Sox win the Series, I will piss on your tombstone, you crazy S.O.B.”
Vaughn laughed even louder and applauded himself. “When the Sox win the Series, I’ll be sitting behind home plate in a seat worth five figures. But I’ll raise my cup to my old friend Eddie, who’ll be watching at home on a portable TV, with a coat hanger for an antenna.”
They both laughed. There’s a little truth in every joke.
“I thought it important we meet this way for several reasons,�
�� Vaughn said. “The first is obvious—it was funny.” He giggled some more. “Also, I want to stress to you the importance of keeping the secrets I intend to share today. Nothing is more secret than the sanctity of the confessional. Even a second-string Catholic such as yourself knows that.”
“I may have lapsed, but I still know the church rules,” Eddie said. “I’ll protect you.” He’d go to jail to protect a source. So would most of the people he knew in the business. It almost never happened, but reporters ached for the opportunity to prove their gallantry to a judge, and to each other.
Vaughn continued, “Finally, this odd arrangement offers me a wee bit of protection, should someone deduce from your future inquiries that you have inside information.”
“How so?”
“I never lie, but in sensitive times I may not offer the whole truth. Should someone ask me if I proffered inside information to you, I would take umbrage, and swear, my right hand to God, that I have not seen Eddie Bourque for weeks. That is true. I did not see you come in, and we cannot see each other through the screen. Capiscono?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
“The autopsy report is done,” he said. “I was able to get the executive summary. The facts are scant, but they’ll have to do.” He sucked a deep breath and eased it out. “The medical examiner concluded that Daniel was viciously beaten. He was murdered.”
Of that, Eddie was already sure, despite what that lying Frank Keyes had said. Still, it stung to hear the news confirmed, like when a relative on a deathbed finally passes; it was a shock, though not a surprise.
A penlight clicked on behind the screen. Vaughn crinkled some papers.
“He had orbital fractures around both eyes, and the zygomatic bones—the bones that lift the cheeks—were beat to shards with a blunt weapon. Terrible injuries, all of them, but probably survivable.”
“That’s survivable?”
“Most likely, though he’d need a plastic surgeon to repair the face, like reassembling a mirror that fell off the wall.” He shuffled more papers. “They estimate Danny was struck between six and eight times. The worst of the blows left a depressed skull fracture over his right ear. The epidural bleeding that followed is an awful thing. The expanding clot and the skull work like the jaws of a vice, squeezing the brain as it bleeds. Even with medical attention this is often fatal.”
Vaughn coughed and cleared his throat. “But that’s not what killed him.”
“You said it was fatal.”
“In a matter of hours it would have been. But something else got him first.” He shuffled still more papers. “The medical examiner has determined that Daniel P. Nowlin died of diacetylmorphine poisoning.”
“In English,” Eddie demanded.
“Heroin, Eddie. Danny died of a heroin overdose.”
Vaughn let Eddie digest the concept in silence for a full minute. Eddie’s brain recalled the image of Leo under the bridge, melting heroin in a tin. Except that the image had Nowlin’s face on Leo’s malnourished body. Eddie willed the image away and felt the prickle that comes before nausea. Could Leo and Gabrielle have lied about finding Nowlin’s body? Could they have attacked him?
Vaughn continued, “The drugs entered through a vein in his upper left thigh and overwhelmed his system. The best guess is a dose of approximately six hundred fifty milligrams.” His voice was flat, like he was dictating scientific notes about an interaction in a test tube.
“Is that a lot of heroin?”
“Depends who you are. That’s probably not lethal for a daily user who might inject fifteen hundred milligrams or more, due to a tolerance built up over a long time. But five hundred is plenty to kill a casual user, or someone new to it.”
“I wouldn’t have noticed needle marks if Danny shot up into his leg,” Eddie said. “But I can’t believe Nowlin was a regular user.”
“Neither does the examiner. She found no other recent needle marks on the body—I mean, on Danny.” Hippo’s voice seemed human again. “One more thing, the left elbow was dislocated. But there was no bleeding from a damaged artery. That means no blood pressure, and the elbow was probably a post-mortem injury caused by something jarring.”
Like being dumped in a canal.
“So Danny died of an overdose,” Eddie said. “He certainly didn’t smash his own melon.”
“True. The blow that injured his brain came from behind. There were no defensive wounds on his hands, so it’s logical Danny didn’t fight back. Once a skull is crushed like that, there’d be no fight left in any man.”
“Do the cops have leads?”
“Just that his computer notes were utterly destroyed by a virus, a complex one, apparently. And with nothing else to go on, here’s the political reality—there’s heavy pressure on the mayor to keep the investigation low-key, to minimize publicity. They assigned the case to Lucy Orr, the least experienced detective on the force. And I imagine the political pressure will make it tempting to write this off as drug-related violence, practically unsolvable.”
Something about Detective Orr—her subtle intensity, maybe?—made it hard to believe she’d ever give up on anything. A detective didn’t need experience to be a bulldog.
“Who’s applying all this pressure?” Eddie asked.
Vaughn smacked his lips. “I’m hearing lots of things, and some point to your office.”
“To The Empire? But Danny was our employee. We should be pushing the other way, for an ass-kicking investigation. Round up everybody Danny ever talked to and give ’em a polygraph.”
“That would stir controversy,” Vaughn said. “I’ve noticed the paper has been rather vanilla lately—nothing controversial at all.”
Vaughn was right. “They rewrote a shooting story I did this week,” he said. “Edited out the sexy parts. I heard the order came from Templeton. And Keyes lied to get me to drop Danny’s story.”
“Sounds like Templeton and his minions want to keep things calm before the election.”
“That’s no way to sell newspapers,” Eddie said. “Alfred Templeton hired me to pump up the political coverage.”
“He did a good thing there, bringing you back. And I’ll bet that Dracula was nice to his cocker spaniel, but he still was a goddam vampire.” Hippo chuckled. “I’m still not sure how Templeton ended up in charge of the paper all those years ago.”
“I heard he just showed up at a board meeting in control of a majority of the shares and appointed himself publisher.”
“But how he bought those shares on a journalist’s salary has always mystified me,” Hippo said. He fidgeted behind the screen. “His bagman called my office to offer an editorial supporting one of my pet environmental projects—if I got on board with this church redevelopment, and some other crazy project to fix this neighborhood. I’m tempted to have a press conference to expose the whole rotten deal. You know, call all the statewide media, offer them free beer and good story. Except that once I do that, The Empire brass will be out to get me forever.”
“You turned down the editorial?”
“I told them to take their carrot and fuck off,” Vaughn said with a chuckle. “So I got an eye out for the stick. I like this old church. The last priest they had before it closed was a real wordsmith, gave a good sermon.”
“And how would a Methodist know that?”
“Your formerly fine newspaper used to print ’em every week, back in my younger days.”
Eddie laughed. “Back in your younger days the Apostles would autograph your Bible. Find that priest’s new church. There’s nothing stopping you from hearing his sermons in person.”
“Except that he ain’t around—ran off to California, or something.” He sighed. “People have been abandoning this church for years. Not me, though.”
Eddie thanked Hippo for his help, and then got up to leave.
“Don’t forget your penance,” Vaughn said. “You should pay in advance for the trouble you’re going to cause. G
imme a thousand Hail Marys.”
Chapter 14
The advertising department at The Empire was more corporate-looking than the newsroom. Green fabric cubicles in a maze-like grid accounted for most of the floor space. The desks were neat, the ceiling tiles snowy white, and the computers new. Customers sometimes walked in off the street to do business with the advertising department, so the employees there couldn’t curse like the newsroom staff. Poor pent-up bastards.
A night’s sleep in his bed, rather than under a bridge, had soothed Eddie’s stiff muscles, though his bruised hipbone still ached and his hands had scabbed over. He tried not to dwell on the memory of being thrown in the canal, but the experience had left him jumpy and scatterbrained.
It was just after eight in the morning, an hour before the advertising office opened. The lights were off, the place still empty. Eddie snaked through the cubicles and headed for a former walk-in closet tucked in a back corner. The hand-lettered door read “Intellectual Consultation and Technical Services Department—Stan Popko, Director.”
Eddie knocked and went in. The room was long and narrow, more like a hallway that didn’t go anywhere than a room. It smelled like dust and smoldering wire insulation, an odor recycled by tiny fans whirling inside a dozen humming metal boxes. The machines were spaced across steel shelves and connected by a rainbow of tangled wires draped like bunting. A police scanner was relaying the details of a traffic stop.
The computer room was smaller than two cubicles in advertising, yet contained the electronic brains for the entire news department. The shelves and wires ended at a chubby guy seated at a desk, his back to the door. He was playing a video game on a computer screen set between a microwave oven and a chrome toaster. The guy was in his late twenties, and had skin so pale it approached translucent. He thumped his keyboard and guns blazed. Monsters on the screen died in pools of their own pixilated blood.
“Excuse me, Stan?” Eddie said. “How’s it goin’ man?”
The chubby guy kept his eyes on the game. “I got shingles,” he offered. “And you?”
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