“How do you get into the cemetery?” I asked. Many of the centuries-old churches of lower Manhattan still had adjacent graveyards. Trinity Church and St. Paul’s were even tourist attractions, and my route to the DA’s Office took me past the last man-made remnant of Manhattan’s seventeenth century — the cemetery of Sephardic Jews from Brazil who immigrated here in the 1600s, neglected but still standing on St. James Place.
“This entrance is the only way, Alex, but it was gated and locked.” Manny led us down the corridor and onto the damp soil of the burial ground. “Maybe it was a couple of men — one helping the other scale the wall and carry the girl over. I’ve got Crime Scene checking out this old oak inside the walls, as well as the tree branches that overhang from Prince Street, for any trace evidence.”
“Still liking my orangutan theory, Coop. The guy must have been swinging from a tree.”
The exposed body of the young woman lit up in the flash of the camera. I stood about three feet from her, taking the measure of her young life. She might have been a few years older than I. She was certainly shorter — probably only five feet five or so — and rounder in the stomach and hips. Her cropped brown hair looked wet from the dew, and the gaping wound in her throat appeared to be large enough to spill out all her innards.
“Who found her?” I asked.
“The caretaker,” Manny said. “He doesn’t usually show up until six a.m., but he’s got a guy coming in to fix the organ this morning, so he just woke up early and strolled over at four o’clock. No better reason than that. I’d say he missed our perp — or perps — by less than an hour.”
Mike and Manny were crouched around the body like a pair of bookends. They had gloved up, and Manny was showing Mike the back of the victim’s head.
“I think he must have bludgeoned her with something to subdue her, in order to bring her in here and finish her off. See that crack in the rear of her head?”
Mike nodded. “The ME say anything?”
“They just sent a cleanup crew. No docs. Shorthanded. Hal got all the photos, so we’ll just ship her off to them.”
“What do you make of the tongue, Manny?” I asked. “It’s still Little Italy. You think the Mob?”
Mike stood up and I could see that he was taking a measure of the entire setting. There were five tall stained-glass windows that decorated the south side of the old cathedral. The body had been deposited directly below the one in the center.
“The Mob cuts off balls, Coop. Not tongues.” Now Mike was back to examining the dirt around the body. There were so many imprints of footsteps, it would be impossible to know what the disturbance had looked like before the cops arrived.
“If she was a snitch, I’d say of course it could have been an organized-crime operation. They might go for the tongue. But after last night’s case? There’s something else going on. This isn’t an OC dump. Doesn’t have the look or feel of that. And no way wiseguys would desecrate an old Catholic church in the ’hood. There’s a different message here, even though I don’t know what it is.” Manny Chirico got to his feet. “I leave that to you and Mr. Chapman.”
“I’m working on it, Manny.” Again, Mike turned his attention to the windows. “Our first vic winds up on the steps of a church that used to be a synagogue.”
“What does that tell you?”
“I’m trying to brain it out. At least it’s what I got Coop here for,” Mike said, pointing to the dark images worked into the old glass windows above our heads. “You think maybe this placement wasn’t accidental? I mean, the cemetery for sure. But maybe she’s dumped under this particular image for a reason.”
“I was thinking where she is has something to do with the tombstones, not the stained glass. Maybe these names are meant to connect, once we get a make on her.” Manny Chirico shrugged, then began to pace around the grave markers, reading the names aloud. “ ‘Right Reverend John Dubois, Third Bishop of New York. Francis Nealis. Brendan Callahan.’ ”
“Possible, but not a lot of broads buried here,” Mike said. “Can you have one of your men do a list of all the dearly departed? Who they are and where, relative to her body?”
“On it.”
“Can we get inside? I’d like to see what the stained-glass windows depict. Is the caretaker here?”
“Yup. He’s in the church.”
We let the crew with the body bag get to work and retraced our way to the narrow corridor through which we had entered.
Manny took us into the main chapel, which was dark and cool, much grander than it appeared to be from the street. It indeed had the feel of a large, old cathedral interior.
I couldn’t see anyone at first, but I was surprised by the beauty of the huge white marble altar that spanned the entire western wall, and by the stunning collection of carved gold-leaf reredos, the ornate religious statuary that surrounded it.
Only when I glanced around did I see the caretaker, on his knees in the very first pew, bent over the railing as he wept.
We stayed in place, giving him a few minutes alone. When he got to his feet, Manny asked him to turn on the lights, and Mike started along the wall to look at the windows, which displayed themselves far more vividly from within the church.
I planted myself below a striking image of Madonna and child, straining my neck to look up at it, wondering whether that feminine portrait had anything to do with the position of the corpse in the graveyard.
“Can’t you count, Coop? Wrong one.” Mike was twenty feet away from me. He stepped up onto the seat of one of the pews for a closer examination of the center window, and I walked directly in front of him.
Below the figure of a solemn, gray-bearded man, pen in hand, apparently writing his gospel, was a name, the lettering made of deep-brown stained glass, barely visible with such low lighting.
“Matthew the apostle,” Mike said. “Matthew the Evangelist.”
“What does that say to you about your killer?”
He leaned a hand on my shoulder and got down. “I’m not sure yet. But if Mount Neboh wasn’t a random dropping-off point, then neither is this place. I got things to do, kid. You get the tombstone map and start reading your Gospels, and we’ll talk later.”
Again I followed Mike, this time from the chapel through the corridor and out onto the street. As we emerged from the church, I could see Mercer approaching from behind the parked RMPs.
“Bad way to start the day. Slow down, Mr. Wallace,” Mike said. “You haven’t missed much.”
“I got waylaid. Something else to stir the pot.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Port Authority cops cut short my sleep. Daniel Gersh was quick to board that bus to Chicago last night. Get himself out of our hair. Problem is, the first stop was Philadelphia.”
“Don’t tell me—”
“He got off there and crossed town to the Thirtieth Street Station. Used his credit card to buy a ticket on the last train back to New York.”
“So he was here?…” I wasn’t able to finish the sentence.
“By midnight. It’s no wonder he didn’t fly. Daniel Gersh had no mind of leaving town, no matter what his stepfather told him to do.”
NINETEEN
WE found a dive a few blocks away for coffee and eggs. Our plans for the day hadn’t changed. The forensics work on the new case would be under way, and the investigative piece would pick up steam as detectives tried to make an identification.
Mike left for the morgue at seven thirty, while Mercer and I made the short trip to my office.
