old locks don’t offer much security inside, but we’re a family.”
“Sister,” Perelli had something on his chest, “with all due respect, you’re living in the inner city, and with that front door practically open and your antique locks, don’t you think you’re taking a huge risk with your safety?”
“We never believed we had enemies.”
“Until tonight,” he said. “Get that front lock fixed and the others changed. Grace, we’d need to get some uniforms posted here and have Central patrol this area.”
“Okay, Dom.” Sensing Perelli’s growing anger over the nun’s death, Grace steered matters back to the investigation. “Sister, can you think of anyone at all who might have wanted to hurt Sister Anne?”
“No.”
“Someone from the shelter? An ex-criminal, or a husband or boyfriend looking for his abused wife, an addict, or someone violent or with psychological problems?”
“She was an angel of mercy. Everyone loved her.”
“We understand the order was involved in spiritual counseling at prisons and for those released to the community.”
“That’s right.”
“Did she ever mention a problem, or fear, concerning any of them?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Maybe something in her background, or past?”
“She was so quiet about herself, entirely devoted to others. You might want to ask the sisters from Mother House.”
“Mother House?”
“Headquarters of our order. Sister Vivian is on her way from Chicago.”
“Sister, please think hard now. Did you notice, hear, or see anything different tonight?”
“No.”
“No one heard anything strange going on? A struggle? A cry for help?”
Florence shut her eyes tight and shook her head.
“No, we didn’t hear anything. Most of the nuns are older and their hearing isn’t so good, so we usually play the sound of the movie quite loud. We even tell the pizza guy to knock hard.”
“All right, so you went upstairs to see if Sister Anne had returned from the shelter and invite her for pizza and a movie. What happened?”
Sister Florence paused to swallow.
“Her door was open just a crack, usually our signal that you’ll accept a visitor. Oh good, she’s home, I thought and I knocked. But I didn’t get a response, so I called in. And waited. She didn’t answer. Again, I called her name and I entered-”
Sister Florence gasped and her voice broke with hushed anguish.
“I saw blood, then her foot, her leg, and she was so still. I saw her neck and didn’t-couldn’t-believe my eyes. But at the same time, I knew. It felt like slow motion. I knelt down and shouted her name. I took her into my arms. She was still warm. Then I heard this deafening roar as I tried yelling her name but she didn’t answer and the others told me the deafening roar was me.”
“You?” Perelli said.
“Screaming.”
Perelli’s lower jaw muscle was twitching as his anger seethed that someone would kill a nun.
“Then the others came,” Florence said. “Someone called 9-1-1. Most all of the sisters have some sort of medical training. They checked for signs of life but we all knew that Sister Anne was dead. We were kneeling in her blood. So much blood. We took her hands and prayed over her. We didn’t stop, even as we heard the sirens, even as the officers and paramedics thudded up the stairs with their radios going, we didn’t stop praying.” Sister Florence pressed her white-knuckled fists to her mouth. “We’ll never stop praying for her.”
As the tears flowed down her cheeks, her pain clawed at Grace and she was suddenly overwhelmed. Sister Anne had lived a holy life, had devoted herself to helping those who were often beyond it. How could Grace Garner, a pathetically lonely self-doubting cop, on a losing streak, actually believe that she was skilled enough to find her killer? Grace’s secret fear burned in her gut as she glanced to the votive candles, the flames quivering with the tiny light of hope.
“Sister, what prayers did you say when you found her?”
“The Twenty-third Psalm.”
The Lord is my shepherd.
“That’s a beautiful prayer,” Grace said as a soft knock sounded at the door and a uniformed officer stuck his head into the chapel.
“My apologies for interrupting, Detective Garner, but they need you outside now. They’ve got something.”
Chapter Seven
S teel glinted in the beam of the police officer’s flashlight.
The officer was in the alley behind the town house with Kay Cataldo, a crime-scene investigator. They were crouched over a blackberry shrub next to a length of worn picket fence and the rusting frame of a bicycle. A second officer was taping off the area as Grace Garner approached.
“Where’s the safe way in?” She didn’t want to contaminate the scene.
“Close to the fence,” Cataldo said.
“What do we have?”
“Officer Ryan Danko here’s got the eyes of a hawk.”
With great care, Cataldo spread the shrub’s leaves, revealing a kitchen steak knife. It had a wooden handle and a six-inch serrated blade. Close inspection showed tiny reddish-brown flecks in some areas.
“This our weapon?”
“It’s a candidate.” Cataldo, aided by Danko, concentrated on taking photographs, measurements, and notes. “We’ll type it against the victim. We’ll process this knife, see if it matches anything the nuns use or if anything’s missing from any drawers in there.”
“What about foot impressions?”
“Got a partial inside and we’ll use it when we cast around here.”
“All right, and we better put the word out to watch for every tossed cigarette butt in the area.”
“Our guy’s a smoker?” Danko said.
“Just a hunch. Good work, Danko. Thanks, Kay.”
Encouraged by the promise of evidence, Grace stepped aside and called Perelli.
“We may have a weapon. A blade. Serrated, about six inches. Wooden handle.”
“Could be our break.”
“Could be. You talk to the sisters about a volunteer list for the shelter and everyone she had contact with tonight. I’ll follow up next door on the canvass.”
“Sure. And Grace, this thing’s already drawing heat. Reporters are calling in here trying to interview the nuns over the phone.”
“Tell the sisters not to speak to the press, then get downtown to send someone up here to handle that. This is just the beginning.”
Grace saw a news truck creeping down the alley toward the tape as she took stock of the surrounding buildings and windows, assessing lines of sight into the dimly lit area. She shone a penlight on her notes as she updated them and reviewed her sketches and the precanvass done by the responding officers, mining it for witnesses. There wasn’t much to work with from the alley side.
But the front, now, the front was a different story.
In the front she had Bernice Burnett, age seventythree, a widow and retired telephone operator. Lives in the adjacent building, alone with her cats. Bernice Burnett’s big window looks into Sister Anne’s second-floor
