VC03 - Mortal Grace (24 page)

“There was no point taking their names,” Father Montgomery said. “They were always giving false names.”

“Why was that?”

“They were usually on the run from someone—their family, the police.”

“You’re a trusting man to take them in, Father.”

“No more trusting than they were of Joe,” Sonya Barnett said. “After all, what does a clerical collar mean? Joe could have been some kind of monster preying on young runaways, couldn’t he?”

“Were you?” Cardozo said quietly. “Preying on runaways?”

Father Montgomery began laughing softly. “Very good, Lieutenant. Very good. But you’d have to ask them, wouldn’t you?”

“Without their names and addresses, that might be difficult.”

Sonya Barnett chuckled. “Joe’s too clever for you, Lieutenant.”

Cardozo nodded. “Obviously.”

THIRTY-ONE

O
N THE OFFICE WALL
above Dr. Barney Clayton’s head, the large capital E of an eye chart glowed faintly, like a full moon riding the sky of a sunny afternoon.

“Father Montgomery had advanced cataracts on both eyes,” Dr. Clayton was explaining. He was a thin, ruddy-faced man with a can-do smile that seemed to take hold of the space four feet around him. A polka-dot bow tie peeked from the collar of his white hospital jacket. “By the time Joe came to me, he had severe difficulty seeing. Early this year I removed the cataract from his left eye and inserted an I.O.D.”

“An artificial lens?” Cardozo said.

Dr. Clayton nodded. “An intraocular device. It restored full vision in that eye. Unfortunately, a street kid mugged Joe three weeks ago, and that was the eye that got punched in the mugging. The globe of the eye ruptured along the suture. The lens was lost, along with most of the vitreous and a good deal of tissue. The result is that Father Montgomery can’t see.”

A high bell-like tone seemed to start ringing in Cardozo’s ear. “Not even with the other eye?”

“Eventually, when the cataract on that eye is removed, he’ll see. But at the moment the right eye can only distinguish light and dark and rudimentary shapes.”

“Can he read with the right eye?”

“No.”

“Recognize faces?”

“No. At the moment he recognizes voices, not faces.”

“Can he walk down the street?”

“On a very bright day, perhaps—if it’s a very familiar street with no traffic. But I wouldn’t advise him to try it without a friend to guide him.”

“Could he get around his home?”

“Certainly. As blind people do.”

Something puzzled Cardozo. “If Father Montgomery was blinded three weeks ago, how is it no one knew till today?”

“Because he’s a man of enormous determination. He kept it a secret. He pretended he could see. I discussed it with him. He’s worried he might not recover his vision and could be forced to retire. It’s not blindness he dreads, it’s retirement.”

“So for the last three weeks he’s been operating by touch and sound?”

“And a rudimentary sense of light and dark.”

“Would it have been physically possible for him to stand on a chair?”

Uncertainty flickered across Dr. Clayton’s face. “Yes, if he’d wanted to.”

“And could he have placed a—let’s say a book—on top of a doorway?”

In the gray-walled stillness, Dr. Clayton stared at Cardozo. “He could have, but why on earth would he want to?”

It was getting close to eight
P.M.
when Cardozo let himself into his apartment. His nose detected a sour, fishy smell that got worse as he approached the kitchen. “If that’s my dinner, I ate at the office.”

Esther Epstein, the seventy-something widow from next door, was demonstrating something to Terri that involved a mixing bowl, an egg, and a can of 9 Lives tuna dinner.

“Hi, Dad,” Terri said. “Esther’s showing me how to feed Beverly.”

“What’s up, Esther?” Cardozo said. “Are we inheriting your cat?”

In cat years, Beverly was probably old enough to be Esther’s mother. She was a standoffish Angora with a disagreeable whine, and Cardozo did not relish the idea of sharing a bathroom with her litter box.

“Relax,” Mrs. Epstein said. “Bev’s not moving. But the V.A. has me on a new shift at the hospital, so Terri’s going to take care of the evening meal. You know how old animals need their routine.”

“Boy, do I. Why don’t you stay and have some dinner with us? We haven’t had a meal together in six months.”

“Thanks, but I can’t.” Mrs. Epstein shook her head and Cardozo realized she’d had her white hair bobbed and blued. “I’m working the eight-thirty
P.M.
to four-thirty
A.M
. shift.”

“That’s a strange shift.”

“It’s the twilight zone. They invented it special for me because they want to retire me. They think I’m lying about my age, which I am, but they can’t prove it, because I run the computer and I’ve put a password on my file. They can’t get into it.”

Cardozo opened the refrigerator and saw that Terri had fixed him a plate of chicken-stuffed avocado. He brought it to the table along with a can of Lite beer.

“You’re a clever lady, Esther. I hope you’re clever enough to take a cab to work and a cab home.”

“Nah, I hitchhike.” Mrs. Epstein kissed Terri good night and then stood on tiptoes and planted a kiss on Cardozo’s cheek. “Are you losing weight, Vince?”

“I wish.”

“You’d better watch your nutrition. My Bev eats better than you do.” She took the mixing bowl and waved good-bye. A moment later the front door closed.

Cardozo chewed thoughtfully on a forkful of chicken salad. Terri had seasoned it mysteriously and he couldn’t recognize the taste. “What did you put in the curry?”

“A little ginger.”

Sometimes little things about her amazed him. “Did you read that in a cookbook?”

“I made it up.” She popped the top off his beer and poured it into a carefully angled glass. “Like it?”

“It’s great.”

She leaned across the table to give him a kiss.

He looked up, catching a vibration. “Going somewhere?”

“Out to a movie with my friend Alice.”

“Hey,” he called after her. “Don’t stay out late. I worry about you.”

Cardozo couldn’t see her face.

Didn’t matter.

His fingertips started inside her forearms. Slipped with light fleet play up and across her shoulders. Down over her breasts and stomach. Finally, lingeringly, deep between her legs. Here the movement slowed into a long, pleasuring caress.

From far, far away he heard her sigh.

He made the whole journey over again, this time with his lips. His hand slid beneath her, lifted her. He pressed himself gently against her. Then easily, slowly inside her.

A buzzing sound began chiseling through the thin shell of sleep. He pushed it away.

She cried out and whipped her head around and with one hand she flung her hair away from her face. He found himself gazing into the eyes of Reverend Bonnie Ruskay.

The buzzing wouldn’t stop. He recognized the muted metallic bite of the phone bell. His soul grimaced and the dream leaked away. Eyes shut, he reached along the bedside table for the receiver. “Cardozo.”

“Vince—it’s Dan.” The voice was clipped, urgent. “Sorry if I woke you.”

“That’s okay.” It was not yet dawn. The corner streetlight still sent a yellow, mercury-vapor glow through the curtained window, dappling the bedroom wall.

“I just finished the autopsy on the kid from the rectory.”

Cardozo could sense something hanging in the air. “And?”

“You’d better get over here.”

“I’ll be right up. Give me twenty minutes.”

THIRTY-TWO

T
HE LATEX SQUEAKED AS
Dan Hippolito snapped his hand into the glove. He reached under the boy’s head and raised it from the pillow. “Can you see that?”

Cardozo saw the shaved area on the top of the skull. He nodded.

“The signature of this blow matches the front tip of the steam iron.” Dan’s finger touched a black opening that looked like a bullet entry. The impact had pushed up a ridge of white bone and peeled-back skin around the hole. “If you were striking a blow with that iron, you’d normally grip it so the back or the bottom of the iron struck the head. But to strike a blow like this, you’d have to angle your wrist up and rotate ninety degrees. Not very likely.”

“So what’s the most probable scenario?”

“As far as this blow is concerned, I go with the booby trap. The iron was balanced on top of the door. The victim opened the door, the iron fell and hit him. The blow probably disoriented him, and he would certainly have been in severe pain, but it didn’t kill him.”

“What did kill him?”

Dan laid the head back on the pillow and rolled it gently sideways. Another area of hair had been shaved, leaving a section of naked scalp behind the left ear. Three deep lacerations crisscrossed the bald patch.

“The assailant gripped the iron in the normal way, as you would for ironing. He swung it down from a good three-foot height. He swung three times and each time was a direct hit. The victim was lying on the floor, his head positioned pretty much as you see it now. Which accounts for the contusions on the opposite side of the skull.”

To Cardozo’s eye, the blows looked vicious. “Could a blind man do that?”

“Sure, why not? Close range, aim doesn’t have to be exact.”

“How strong was the assailant?”

“He could pitch a hardball that would knock your eye out.” Dan rolled the head back to its original position. He pulled the black nylon sheet over the boy’s face and slid the body tray back into the locker. “I can show you the rest in my office.”

Dan led the way. At this hour of the morning, silence lay along the deserted, fluorescent-lit corridor.

“The victim had sex an hour or so before dying.”

“What do you mean, had sex?”

Dan unlocked his office door. “I mean he ejaculated. And I think he had company.”

Dan crossed to the desk. He handed Cardozo two color glossies that looked like some weird landscape from
National Geographic
that only an explorer could love. There was nothing on the shots to indicate up or down.

“What are these?”

“Inflammation of the sphincter tissue. The dead man may have had passive anal sex.”

“I don’t feel like looking at that guy’s asshole before breakfast.”

Dan dealt more glossies across the desk top, like cards in a face-up hand of poker. “In addition: an injection mark on inner left forearm; the hands have been secured with leather belts; the ribs on the left side show signs of beating or kicking; there was burning of the skin around the nipple area such as might be caused by contact with dripped candle wax.”

Cardozo’s eye alighted successively on the forearm, on the wrists, on the ribs, and finally on the nipple.

The room was still, and the stillness knew something.

Dan picked up a plastic watering can and sprinkled the potted corn plants that grew on a low table against one of the windowless walls. He had had the office barely two months: it had come with his promotion to second chief assistant. The plants were a statement: instant permanence. We’re here for good—for the time being.

“I compared him with Ms. Basket Case.” Dan came back to the desk and read from the year-and-a-half-old autopsy report.
“Feet may have been secured with leather belt; burning of skin possibly caused by dripped candle wax.”

Cardozo sat musing. “So they both were into s/m sex.”

“Surprising in people so young. Unless they were prostitutes satisfying older clients.”

“Any other similarities?”

“Ms. Basket Case didn’t leave us that much to compare. But the dead man had recreational levels of alcohol and cocaine in his blood, cocaine residue on the injection mark, and trace amounts of azidofluoramine in his liver.”

Cardozo watched Dan polish his reading glasses. “What the hell is azidofluoramine?”

“Cutting-edge stuff. It’s not prescribable yet. There’s not even an analogue on the street. There are three ongoing protocols, but the data won’t be published till next month.”

“What’s it used for?”

“Acute panic disorder.”

“Any recreational use?”

“Sure—it zonks you out fast.”

Something flickered in Cardozo’s mind. “What drugs did you find in Ms. Basket Case?”

Dan flipped pages. “Her liver tissue was too far gone to pull any drug residue.”

Cardozo listened a moment to the whisper of air in the overhead cooling vent. “Would a blind man want to have sex?”

Dan gazed at him with a noncomprehending frown. “What are you talking about? Blind men have sex all the time.”

“What I mean is, if you’d just been blinded—would you feel like having sex?”

“If you’d just been blinded, maybe you’d feel there wasn’t much left you could do
except
have sex.”

“I checked the 911 tapes.” Ellie didn’t knock. She walked straight into Cardozo’s cubicle. “Samantha Schuyler’s call came in at 11:43
P.M.
the night before last. She reported a scream and breaking glass. She’s sticking to that order—the scream first, then the breaking glass. She’s definite on that point.”

Cardozo frowned. “He would have had to get hit before he broke in. Or at least before that window was broken.”

“Accuracy may not be the lady’s long suit. She says the church hosts a lot of disorderly activity—wild parties past midnight, loud music, drug use. She also implied that another young man may have been killed at the rectory.”

“What do you mean, implied?”

“Sort of let it pop out and then acted as though it was a slip of the tongue. I checked the records. No other death has been reported there. None of St. Andrew’s neighbors have phoned in a complaint—not even Mrs. Schuyler. Which makes me wonder if she isn’t embroidering a little.”

Cardozo nodded. St. Andrew’s was in an area where residents picked up the phone to report the slightest quality-of-life violations—a noisy radio, a ripped garbage bag, a car alarm, a shout. For the kind of taxes that they paid, they were not about to have junkies puking into their trash cans, let alone orgies in the church. Mrs. Schuyler did not sound like a reliable source.