Perfect Grave Page 9

  Sister Monique printed the e-mail and hurried from the computer to read it to Sister Vivian: “The cardinal conveys personal condolences from the Supreme Pontiff, who has dispatched an Emissary from the Holy See in Washington, D.C., to represent the Holy Father at the funeral, or for any requirements of the order at this difficult time.”

  Sister Vivian did not share Sister Monique’s awe. As she removed her glasses to weigh matters, she said, “It appears the boys, who’ve always been wary of progressive nuns, now want to ride in the slipstream of Sister Anne’s good work.”

  The younger nun’s face flushed.

  “Monique, surely you’re aware that most men in the upper ranks of the old guard want us to remain socially isolated in convents, making jams and candles.”

  Sister Monique didn’t speak and Vivian suddenly cut herself off and waved her hand to silence the subject.

  She was exhausted.

  The night before, she’d slept on a couch in the living room. Well, she lay there, at least, grieving and looking at Anne’s file and photos of her, remembering her friend’s overwhelming capacity for forgiveness.

  Through the years, they’d worked together in so many places around the world. But when it came to Anne Braxton’s family background and her life before she became a nun, Vivian knew nothing. Unfortunately, it was exactly as Detective Garner had said, it was like Anne had “just dropped out of the sky.”

  It saddened Vivian.

  No family to contact. No mother, father, brothers, or sisters. No one listed in her personal file. Nothing. Information on her biography was arriving in small pieces from the missions where she’d served, and the former mother houses in Paris and Washington, D.C. But nothing that preceded her call to a religious life.

  Vivian was trying to locate the nun who’d first advised Anne when she was accepted as a postulant. And there was belief in some circles that the old nun was responsible for screening Anne in Paris, and had retired somewhere in Africa or Canada.

  One thing Vivian knew for certain about Anne was that in life she was happiest in her sweatshirts and jeans, helping those who felt they were beyond it, offering grace to those who felt undeserving of it.

  Anne Braxton would abhor any pomp imposed upon her in death.

  “Excuse me, Sister Vivian?” Sister Ruth appeared and pulled her from her thoughts. “What should I tell the Archdiocese? They require an answer. It seems a number of weddings are also taking place in the next few days.”

  “Tell them no thank you. We’ll have her funeral—a celebration of her life—in the shelter she helped found. In the very dining room where she gave so much of herself.” Vivian slipped on her glasses “Let the Vatican’s emissary pull up to it in his luxury sedan. Should be a nice juxtaposition for the news cameras.”

  Vivian tapped the printout of the Vatican e-mail to her chin, returning to her pondering about the old nun who had screened Anne, wondering if she was still alive and considering ways to locate her.

  “Where’s Denise? Is she done with the room yet? I’d like to lay down for a bit and I’ve got another job for her.”

  Upstairs, Sister Denise was alone again and almost finished cleaning Sister Anne’s apartment.

  Upon making a final inspection, she noticed that some blood had spilled into the hall closet next to the bathroom. A slender thread had meandered along the floor, like a tributary on a map, pointing to a secret destination. Denise freshened her bucket with cold water and ammonia, then used a soft-headed tooth-brush to scrub dried blood from the seams between the floor boards.

  That’s strange.

  The gap between two boards—as thin as the edge of a credit card—had widened ever so slightly. A loose board. It appeared that with the proper manipulation, the board could be completely lifted from the row covering the closet floor.

  Curious, Denise found a pair of manicure scissors in the bathroom, opened them, and used a blade to pry the loose board out. Two adjacent boards were also loose. Denise pried them out as well.

  Something was under the floor.

  Something rectangular.

  Denise opened the closet door wider to allow more light on the hole before she reached in to get the mysterious object hidden under the floor.

  It was a cardboard box.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In the twilight hour before dawn, Grace Garner sat alone in the empty homicide squad room, feeling the crushing weight of the case on her shoulders.

  It increased with every word of the morning’s headlines.

  The Seattle Times had NUN’S MURDER CONCERNS VATICAN—HOLY SEE ASKS CHIEF FOR UPDATE. While the Post-Intelligencer had SISTERS PLAN SHELTER SERVICE FOR SLAIN ‘ANGEL OF MERCY,’ and the Seattle Mirror had lined POLICE FOCUS ON WEAPON—A KNIFE FROM NUN’S SHELTER on page one above the fold.

  Each of the headlines hit Grace like a blow to her stomach. After digesting every article, she set the papers aside to work. As she reached for a re-canvass report, her cell phone rang. It was her sergeant.

  “It’s Stan, you see today’s papers yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “The heat’s on us to clear this one fast, Grace. My predawn wake-up call came from the chief. He said the commissioner, the mayor, even the governor, have ‘expressed deep interest’ in Sister Anne’s case.”

  “I’m writing that down.”

  “Grace.”

  “And what’s their interest in the murder of a seventeen-year-old hooker? Or, a homeless down-and-out loser—”

  “Grace.”

  “This kind of political crap sickens me. We go flat out, Stan. We don’t need to be told the obvious.”

  “It’s in my job description to tell you the obvious. By the way, we’re bringing in detectives from Robbery to help. Case status meeting’s at 7:30 A.M.”

  After the call, Grace noticed a message that had come last night from Cynthia Fairchild, with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, requesting an update. Came in about midnight. They were leaning on Cindy, too.

  The pressure was coming from all fronts.

  Grace had a stack of messages and shuffled them into priority. First things first. She brewed herself some fresh coffee, then began working on her candidates for suspects, so far.

  The full autopsy report and observations by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office on the angle and force of the wound suggested that Sister Anne’s killer was strong, likely over six feet tall and weighing more than two hundred pounds. Reviews of the shelter’s staff and client lists had, so far, yielded the following subjects who fell into that category:

  Haines Stenten Smith, Caucasian male, age 37, weight 235 pounds, height six feet, six inches. Recently released from Washington Corrections Center after serving time for choking a woman in a Tacoma park. Witnesses said he held a knife to the face of a volunteer at the shelter five months ago but was intoxicated at the time. Smith could not account for his whereabouts the night Sister Anne was murdered.

  Louis Justice Topper, African American male, age 33, weight 220 pounds, height six feet, three inches. Recently released from Coyote Ridge. A crack dealer who’d stabbed female crack addicts for nonpayment. Three weeks ago he’d flown into a rage at the shelter and threatened a client with his fists. A friend said Topper had “gone off his medication.”

  Johnny Lee Frickson, Caucasian male, age 43, weight 280 pounds, height six feet, two inches. A Level 2 Sex Offender who’d attacked women aged 40–60, in their apartments in Seattle. After undergoing treatment, Frickson qualified for a work-release addiction recovery program. One night, last month, after dessert at the shelter, Frickson lost his temper and shouted threatening gibberish at several nuns. Detectives interviewed him in a downtown flophouse. A neighbor alibied Frickson, placing him in the flophouse that night of the murder. Detectives were seeking more sources on Frickson’s alibi.

  Ritchie Belmar Brown, Caucasian male, age 52, weight 240 pounds, height six feet, four inches. Brown was recently released from King County
Jail. He’d served several months after trying to run down the organ player in the Seattle church parking lot where Brown was a Bible studies instructor. Legal action had bankrupted Brown’s struggling taxidermy business. He frequented Sister Anne’s shelter, where he began telling anyone who’d listen that the Catholic Church was the cause of his personal troubles. The detectives who’d interviewed Brown strongly recommended they go back on him because he kept changing his account of where he was the night Sister Anne was slain.

  Each of them had a connection to Sister Anne. Before their release, she’d visited each of them in jail, as she had visited many prisoners, to offer spiritual guidance.

  Each of these men had access to a shelter knife. Each of them was a smoker, which fit with Grace’s single witness account.

  Still, Grace did not like any of them for the murder. Nothing registered with her. They were all violent, dangerous men, but her instincts had not locked on to any of them.

  And these four heroes were not her only potential suspects.

  The shelter had people who were not regulars, those who drifted in and out. Sister Anne could have been stalked. And there were also “walk-ins.” Strangers who appeared every day, like anonymous ghosts.

  Sister Anne also counseled abused women who sought sanctuary. Through these situations, she often came in contact with their vengeful partners. Threats were common in these cases.

  Grace faced many possibilities.

  She needed solid evidence, a fingerprint that put someone at the crime scene. DNA. A credible witness. Something.

  Grace went to her notes and reviewed Sister Anne’s last moments. After leaving the shelter, she took the bus. No one indicated if she was alone, or was followed. Grace and Perelli interviewed the bus driver, who’d helped them find his few passengers. They were regulars and the driver pinpointed their stops and buildings, too. But it had yielded nothing. No one got off anywhere near Sister Anne’s stop.

  And the one witness account from Bernice Burnett, who lived next door to the nuns, suggested a stranger had been in Sister Anne’s apartment when she arrived—and was a smoker. She recalled him lighting up in the alley when he left.

  Grace flipped through other files. It would take time to collect and analyze cigarette butts from the alley to compare with possible DNA from the suspects who could already be legitimately placed in the vicinity of the crime.

  That made for a weak case against the four men she was considering so far. All of that evidence would be challenged in court.

  Okay, back to square one.

  So the guy’s in her place like he’s looking for something. But what? Nothing’s missing. Nuns have nothing; they vow to live a nonmaterialistic life. Maybe that’s it? He’s a two-bit criminal. Has no idea she’s a nun. He’s getting pissed off that she’s got squat to steal. Sister Anne discovers him and boom, he kills her.

  There was the tip from a couple of confidential informants that someone had been talking on the street about a gang thing. It was the same line Jason Wade was working on. Some kind of revenge thing, because Sister Anne had helped some banger in trouble. The fact was she helped anyone who needed it. The “gang connection” to the murder was just talk coming from a gangster named Tango whose crew was devoted to the Sister. About five weeks back, she had comforted one of the members who got stabbed outside the shelter by a rival gangster. Sister Anne had called an ambulance and saved his life. Tango just wanted to put the word out that if it was an act by an enemy, his people would exact vengeance.

  So far, nothing came of the gang angle.

  It might’ve been a false lead, but it showed how much people loved Sister Anne.

  Grace put her head in her hands and took stock of the empty squad room. Perelli and his family smiled at her from the framed photo on his desk. The other detectives had pictures of their kids on their desks, even the divorced dads who lost custody.

  No one smiled from a photograph at Grace. Suddenly she felt utterly alone. Everybody had somebody. Everybody belonged to somebody.

  It hit Grace that her life was similar to that of the nuns. They had taken a vow to give up any chance of ever getting married, of having children, of growing old with a husband and grandchildren.

  But they belonged to the church, worked together doing God’s work. In a sense, Grace worked for God, too. The God of Justice. But outside of being a homicide cop, Grace had no life. Even her attempt to find one with the FBI agent ended in disaster.

  He was a married lying bastard.

  Grace caught Jason Wade’s byline and felt something stir.

  She did have a thing for him. He was a few years younger but she was drawn to him. Something about him attracted her, his intensity, his razor-sharp intelligence. The guy exuded some kind of heat. It felt so right with him. Maybe that’s what scared her. They were both loners, both intense. So why did she break it off with him?

  Had she made the biggest mistake of her life?

  A wailing siren pulled Grace from her reverie to underscore the urgency of her case. She needed a break, something to put her on the right investigative path.

  Grace shook her head at her notes on Sister Vivian, who had yet to provide her with more files on Sister Anne’s past. CALL HER THIS A.M.! Grace underlined in her notebook.

  She stared at Sister Anne’s photograph in the newspapers.

  A kind, smiling face.

  Grace covered Sister Anne’s mouth with her fingers and looked into her eyes.

  I need you to help me. Tell me what to do, where to look. Help me.

  Grace’s phone rang and she answered it without removing her eyes from Sister Anne.

  “Good, Grace,” Kay Cataldo said. “I figured you’d be in.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Got a break with the evidence that brings us a step closer to the killer.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  After Jason looked at his grease-stained menu, with higher prices penned over lower ones, he counted four dead flies on the windowsill of his booth at Ivan’s.

  He didn’t mind; it was his kind of place. A small, twenty-four-hour diner on a side street off Aurora. The smell of bacon, onions, and coffee mingled with the soft conversations of working people, weary night crews who’d just clocked out and sober-faced day crews about to punch in.

  In one corner, a biker couple had fallen asleep. No one cared. No one needed their booth. Jason’s old man said he’d meet him here at 7:30 A.M. It was 7:50 A.M. Give him a bit more time, he was likely tied up in traffic.

  Jason looked through the window’s grime to the street and thought, maybe this would be it? Maybe his dad would tell him whatever it was he was trying to tell him the other night at the Ice House Bar. Before the nun’s murder had eclipsed everything.

  “You have to help me, son, I don’t know what to do here.”

  Jason shuddered at the memory of his dad poised over a beer. It triggered a torrent of searing images from his life: his mother walking out, his old man showing up drunk in the newsroom that night a few years back. “Where’s my boy? How come you don’t call me, don’t I matter anymore, Jay?” The shame from the final humiliation had forced his old man to face his problem, to get help and to start turning his life around.

  And was it all because of what had happened to him when he was a Seattle cop?

  For years, Jason had secretly tried to learn more about his father’s past. He’d dug up a few scraps of information here and there but never enough to get a full sense of the events that had forced him off the job. His dad had refused to discuss whatever had happened. With anyone.

  Ever.

  All that Jason knew, sitting here this morning, was that he would do all that he could to help his father confront his demon, kill it, and bury it forever. Because his old man had already paid too great a price, had already come too far, to surrender to it now.

  While waiting, Jason took his empty coffee cup to the counter.

  The gum-snapping waitress topped it off with a “thanks
, sweetie,” before Jason returned to his other problem: how to pursue the nun murder story today.

  He studied this morning’s front page.

  Okay, so he’d already used the knife angle in print. But he held back on how the guy who stole it from the shelter supposedly had some kind of heated discussion with Sister Anne.

  Was that guy her killer?

  Jason needed to dig up more, then consider taking it to Grace to see if he could leverage it into a major exclusive, so the Mirror would own the story. He entertained pleasant thoughts about her until his father arrived.

  Jason ordered a BLT, milk, and more coffee.

  “Just coffee,” Henry Wade told the waitress.

  “I’m sorry that I kept blowing you off when you wanted to talk,” Jason said.

  His old man shrugged off his apologies.

  “You’ve got the big story, I understand.”

  “All right, so let’s talk. Are you ready to finally tell me what happened to you when you were a police officer? Why you left the force?”

  As his father rubbed his chin, Jason saw that he’d nicked himself shaving.

  “This is all about the thing you wanted me to help you with, Dad, right?”

  Henry looked out the window searching for the place to start. “I don’t expect the name Vernon Pearce to mean much to you.”

  “He was your partner when you were a cop.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Look, after all these years, all the crap our family, well, what’s left of it, has been through, do you think I was going to let you keep your secret locked up?”

  “You know everything, then?”

  “No. But I tried to learn everything, without you finding out. I dug wherever I could. I dug carefully because I didn’t want anything getting back to you because I thought you’d stop me.”

  “So what more did you find out?”