Fairstein, Linda - Silent Mercy
I covered the phone. “Who am I, Detective? This guy knows exactly who I am in Borracelli-speak. Nobody. I’m absolutely nobody and now I’m dropping a monster headache in his lap to boot.”
“Were you talking to me? It was muffled,” the headmaster said. “I couldn’t hear you.”
“No, sir. I’m driving into a dead cell zone. I think we’re done.”
“You may be finished with me, Ms. Cooper. But I don’t think you’ve heard the last from Vincenzo Borracelli.”
THIRTY-THREE
NAN Toth had set up our team in a conference room in her building, which was directly across the street from the main office on Hogan Place. At one point, the courthouse held the entire district attorney’s staff, but thirty years ago we’d annexed an adjacent government building as we more than doubled in size to close to six hundred lawyers.
I was on the phone with my secretary while Mike searched for a parking space. “Laura doesn’t even want me to show my face on the eighth-floor corridor. She’s given Pat McKinney the impression that I’ve taken the day off, like I’m taking the commissioner’s advice seriously. She’s sending Maxine over with all my papers on the case.”
“Excellent.” He backed into a no-parking zone and tossed his laminated police plate in the windshield. “So Nan’s your shill today.”
“She’s the ideal cover to take the lead. Battaglia thinks she walks on water.”
“Perfect talent for this case.”
We made our way into the 8 °Centre Street offices, which were so antiquated that the elevators still required operators to ferry the hundreds of lawyers and support staff up and down all day.
The tired machine groaned its way to the fourth floor, and I led Mike through the maze of security checkpoints and cubicles the size of rabbit warrens — homes to the rookie prosecutors — to the small conference room that serviced the Cold Case Unit and the Child Abuse team.
Nan and Mercer had established themselves at corners of the long table. My supersmart and good-natured paralegal, Max, was just unloading stacks of my Redwelds, already overstuffed with police reports and paperwork related to the two murders.
“Anything else you need?” she asked.
Mike and I staked out territory opposite each other. “Don’t you dare leave,” I said to Max. “We’re going to suck that powerful brain of yours dry today. Grab a seat.”
She was obviously pleased to be part of the team, and I valued the fresh pair of non-law enforcement eyes to reexamine all the facts that we had.
“Make yourself useful, Max,” Mike said. “You take dictation?”
“No, but—”
“I’ll talk slow. Turkey and Swiss hero. Lettuce, tomato, and mayo. Plenty of onion. Two Cokes. Big bag of chips. Get everybody’s order and have lunch here at one sharp.”
“I can handle that.”
She wrote down his order and passed the pad around so we could add our choices while he talked.
“Let’s all get on the same page.” Mike spent the next ten minutes summarizing the minister’s interview for the others. “Faith’s going to try to track down some of the women who knew Ursula best, who may have been with her last week. And get more info on these extreme ministries.”
“Faith sounds so interesting,” Nan said.
“Yeah,” Mike said. “I think I’m in love.”
“That would be a full-time ministry for the good woman,” I said. “You were making a good play for Chastity.”
“A bit more of a challenge there, I’d have to say. I like the idea of a sister act,” Mike stroked his chin and pretended to be giving the choice between the women a serious thought. “Have you given Max copies of those scraps of paper that Daniel Gersh tried to flush down the toilet?”
“I got them from Laura last night.” Max reached for one of my folders and extracted a much thicker stack than I recalled assembling. “I’ve put together a few hundred words and phrases, just pushing around the letters. I can refine the search once I hear more about what you know. Maybe certain words will make sense.”
“What else is new?” Mike asked, looking to Mercer. “What have you got to say for yourself, my man?”
“I stopped at the Chelsea Square Workshop on my way in this morning,” Mercer said, flipping open his notepad. “Lucky to find anyone there at all. Nothing running at the moment, so the house was dark, as they seem to say in the theater.”
“Who’d you talk to?”
“Guy says he’s the stage manager. He doesn’t have anything to do with the business end of the shows, but he hires the crews to work them.”
“Daniel Gersh?”
“Yes.”
“Does he know where that weasel is?” Mike asked.
Mercer shook his head. “Just like Gersh told you, he got to town in the late fall. He worked a couple of shows in November and December. Double-Crossed was one of them. He was still around in January, but they’ve only had two stagings since then, and Daniel Gersh wasn’t involved in either of them.”
“He must have information on Gersh,” I said. “Where he lives and how to reach him, no?”
“Unfortunately for us, it’s not a union operation. The place is like a funky, oversized coffee shop. The stage is just a raised platform with a homemade curtain. Doesn’t look ready for prime-time.”
“Latte and lowbrow drama,” Mike said. “How’d Gersh get to him?”
“They advertise in all those supermarket giveaways. Don’t pay scale and don’t really care who signs up to work. When they haven’t got a live play, they show classic cinema. This guy runs the projector and his wife makes the brew.”
“What does he remember about Daniel Gersh?” Nan asked.
“Precious little. He’s the cranky sort. He didn’t like anything to do with Ursula Hewitt’s play — not the subject, not the script, not the shots at the church. So he kind of shut down to everyone around him.”
“How about the team who worked the show with Gersh?”
“Two regulars — he gave me names and numbers — and another drifter.”
“Did he describe the drifter?” I asked.
“Nothing distinctive. You know the type. You could ask him to describe his wife of thirty-two years and he’d probably say ‘nothing distinctive.’”
“He’d probably be right,” Mike said. “Was there a Christmas party? I think maybe that’s what Daniel was talking to us about. A party after the performance Naomi attended.”
Mercer held a printout of the story that Nan had pulled up on the computer the night before, about the play. “I showed him this. He remembered that night because — you’re right — there was a celebration of sorts after the show.”
“That’s a start. Did he recognize anyone in the picture, besides Ursula Hewitt?”
“No. But it reminded him there was a man in the audience that night who got really angry during the performance.”
We all sat up at attention.
“How angry?” Nan asked.
“Angry enough to stay for the party so that he could have it out with Ursula Hewitt. A loud argument that Gersh and the other hands had to break up. He thinks Gersh took him outside to cool him down, maybe even left with him. My witness says the guy was about as angry as the thick red blisters on his cheeks.”
THIRTY-FOUR
“IS there a credit on that photograph?” I asked.
“I printed out a copy for each of you,” Max said. “No credit listed.”
“Whoever took this picture must have other snaps from that night. Call the newspaper, pronto.”
She nodded at me and walked to the corner of the room with her cell in hand.
“Was he wearing a clerical collar?” I asked Mercer.
“The stage manager couldn’t recall another thing about him except sunglasses, even though it was indoors, at nighttime.”
“If he really has no eyebrows, then maybe the frames of the glasses conceal that. Maybe it’s why he wears them.”
“I want Daniel Gersh,” Mike said. “I’ll call Peterson and tell him to send somebody over to the offices of Local One.”
“What’s Local One?” Nan asked.
“IATSE. International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. The stagehand’s union,” Mike stood up to speed-dial the lieutenant and started pacing. “Someone will know if that scab is still working in this town.”
I took notes while Mike talked.
“Loo? We need a guy over at Local One. Yeah. It’s on West Forty-Sixth off Tenth. See if the Gersh kid has signed up there. See if anyone can help us hunt him down.”
“But if he didn’t join the union—” I started to say.
“But if he did, Coop, they’ll have him. They do scenery, sound, and light for every show in town, from Radio City to the Met, Broadway to network television.”
Mike and Mercer were meticulous about the need to run down every lead.
“You, Coop, you need to call the kid’s stepfather.”
“I’m the last one he’ll want to hear from — a sex crimes prosecutor. I’m sure Daniel has confronted him by now about the pictures of him in bed with Naomi.”
“Then call the mother, okay? Worm some information out of her. Tell her that her boy is likely to get hurt if she doesn’t help us find him. What else?”
I fished through my notes to find the name of the suburban Illinois town to get to work on reaching Daniel Gersh’s mother.
“I’m tracking the guy from Highway Patrol,” Nan said. “Every precinct in the city turned out on the day shift with orders this morning to look for abandoned trucks as possible crime scenes. They’re doing stops at the bridges and tunnels too. He’ll check in on the hour.”
“Good.”
I was in another corner of the room, dialing Information for Lanny Bellin, Daniel’s stepfather. The robot that helped me get the number offered to connect me at no extra charge.
“Hello? Hello, Mrs. Bellin? I’m calling about your son, Daniel. My name is Alexandra Cooper, and I’m a lawyer—”
The line went dead.
“You got a machine?”
“No, I got distinctly hung up on.”
“Get the local cops to her house,” Mike said.
I dialed the area code again, asking for the nonemergency police number and explained our situation to the detective on duty. “He doesn’t know the family,” I said. “But he has my number and they’ll get someone to do it as fast as possible.”
Mike knew how close Mercer was to his minister, who had helped counsel him through a horrendous period after he had been shot by a deranged killer. “Can you call your preacher man and see what he knows about these far-out Pentecostals — these extreme ministries that Faith told Coop and me about this morning?”
“On it.”
Nan was glued to her laptop. “I don’t know if this is anything, but I’m following up on Sergeant Chirico’s body count.”
“Murders in other jurisdictions?” I asked.
“Yes. Pastors, priests, ministers. There are more of these than you’d think.”
“What have you got in the last six months, maybe a year?”
“Tennessee. A minister shot to death by his wife in the parsonage.”
“Not ours.”
“A nun strangled and raped in Baltimore.”
“Solved?” Mike asked.
“No, but appears to be in the course of a burglary.”
“Well, say a prayer for her, everybody. Doesn’t sound like our boy.”
“Here’s a love triangle in Texas,” Nan said. “A pastor hired his own son to kill his wife — the killer’s stepmother. The son’s still on the loose.”
“Cause of death?” Mike asked. He was restless and itching to break through to a solution.
“She was drugged. Then suffocated with a pillow, to look like an accidental overdose.”
“I’ll take the drugging part of it. Our vics must have been drugged to be moved to the killing ground. But accidental isn’t his style.”
“Okay. This next one had me at the headline, but wrong gender. Skip it.”
“Read,” Mike said.
“ ‘ Community Grieves Slain Pastor.’ It goes on to say that he was found inside the large church building — a converted warehouse — his throat slit—”
All of us stopped at those three words and gave our complete attention to Nan. She was cherry-picking phrases from the story. “No known motive. No suspects. Parishioners being questioned.”
“What kind of church?” Mike was running fingers through his hair and barking questions.
“Pentecostal. Happened last November.”
“Any ’scrip of the kind of Pentecostal? Anything about extreme?”
“I’m reading as fast as I can, Mike. I don’t see anything like that.”
“Where’d this go down?”
“The town is called Alpharetta.”
“It’s right outside of Atlanta,” I said.
“Details?”
Nan was pulling the follow-up story. “Beloved pastor. Eleven years at the church,” she said, taking a breath. “Whoops. Some think the killing may be connected to the fact that he just came out to his congregation a month ago. He’s gay. Wanted them to accept it, to welcome his longtime partner. Wanted to continue to serve. Split the community, to put it mildly.”
“There’s your outcast,” I said. “There’s your pariah.”
“Does it say anything about how he was dressed?” Mike asked.
“Fully clothed. Except for his collar.”
Maybe the killer wanted a trophy from his victim, a collar of his own. Maybe he wore it to the courthouse to watch Bishop Deegan testify. Maybe he used it to approach his trusting victims, knowing the simple clerical vestment would disarm them.
“One of the worshippers speculates the killer must have wanted the poor man defrocked.”
“Silenced,” Mike said. “Defrocked and silenced. That’s his signature, all right.”
THIRTY-FIVE
I studied the photograph taken at the Chelsea Square Workshop after a performance of Ursula Hewitt’s controversial play.
“The newspaper doesn’t have a credit for that, Alex. One of Hewitt’s friends e-mailed it to her, and she forwarded the downloaded image to the editor herself,” Max said.
“Thanks.” I covered my ears with my hands to think, while Mike tried to light a fire under a small sheriff’s office in Georgia to get police and autopsy reports, and someone who knew the case to talk us through it.
I scribbled a note to Faith Grant on the bottom of the page with the photograph. I had put her e-mail address in my BlackBerry earlier, so I wrote a note above the picture, and asked her to call me as soon as she received it.
“Hey, Max. Would you please scan this for me and get it out?”
“Sure.”
