Heat Rises (7 page)

The rest of a typical day involved parish administration, visits to the sick, and meetings at a handful of community groups he served on. The housekeeper affirmed that he followed his pattern his last few days. Well, almost. “He had taken to longer lunches away in the afternoons. And was late for supper a few times, which was not like him.”

Heat drained her coffee cup and made a note. “Every day?” she asked.

“Let me think. No, not every.” Nikki waited while the woman thought and then wrote down the days and times she recalled while Mrs. B. poured her a refill.

“What about his nights?”

“He always heard confessions from seven to seven-thirty, although not many customers these days. Changing times, Detective.”

“And after confessions?”

The housekeeper’s face pinked and she rearranged the sugar bowl and creamer on the tabletop. “Oh, he’d read sometimes or watch an old movie on TV or meet with a parishioner if someone needed counseling—drugs, abused women, that sort of thing.”

Nikki sensed a dodge and asked another way. “Was there any time that he wasn’t working? What did he do for recreation?”

Her face reddened a bit more and she said to the creamer, “Detective, I don’t want to speak ill of him; he was flesh, as we all are, but Father Gerry, he liked his drink and he would spend his evenings most nights having his Cutty at the Brass Harpoon.” Another note to follow up on. If he had been a regular at a bar, even if it didn’t lead to suspects, it meant friends, or at least drinking buddies, who might have some insights into a side of the padre the old woman wasn’t privy to.

Nikki then got to the awkward question she knew had to be asked. “I told you this morning where we found the body.” Mrs. Borelli nodded in a small, shameful way. “Do you have any indication that Father Graf was . . . involved in that lifestyle?”

For the first time, she saw anger in the woman. Her face grew stony and her eyes were riveted on Heat’s. “Detective, that man took a vow of celibacy. He was a holy man doing God’s work on earth and he lived a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience.”

“Thank you,” said Nikki. “I hope you understand, I had to ask.” Heat then switched gears, studying the pages she had generated, and said, “I notice yesterday, the day you last saw him, as well as the day before, he left immediately after breakfast instead of conducting his usual meetings and office work. Any idea why he changed pattern?”

“Mm, no. He didn’t say.”

“You asked him?”

“Yes. He told me to butt out. Joking but not joking, either.”

“Did you notice any changes in his mood?”

“I did. He was sharper with me. Like the butt out joke. The Father Gerry I knew would have said that and I’d have laughed. And so would he.” Her lips drew tight. “He was definitely on edge.”

Heat had to come at it again. “And you have no idea where this tension came from?” When she shook no, Nikki asked, “Anybody argue with him? Threaten him?”

“Not the past few days, as I recall.”

Odd answer from the woman who seemed to recall everything about him. Nikki made a note to come back to that one later. “Any problems at the church?”

“There are always problems at the church,” she said with a chuckle. “But nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Any new people around? Strangers, anyone coming by at odd times, anything like that?”

She rubbed her chin and shook no again. “I’m sorry, Detective.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Nikki. “You’re doing fine.”

Fatigue and the stress of a traumatic day were starting to draw the old woman under. Before she faded, Heat opened the manila envelope of stills Raley had pulled from the security cam at Pleasure Bound. The housekeeper seemed glad for the change of tasks. She cleaned her glasses and studied each of the faces carefully before shaking her head and turning the next page. About halfway through the array, Heat noticed her react to one—not a large reaction but a hesitation. Nikki flicked a look at Hinesburg, who nodded; she’d caught it, too. “Something, Mrs. Borelli?”

“No, not so far.” But she looked at the photo one more time before she turned it facedown and flipped to the next. When she finished the stack, she said none of them looked familiar. Nikki had a feeling Mrs. Borelli might be going to confession soon.

They quit the kitchen, and Heat asked if Mrs. Borelli would mind walking her through the rectory so she could see firsthand the things that had been disturbed. “Where did the missing St. Christopher medal live?”

Before the housekeeper could reply, Sharon Hinesburg said, “The bedroom,” striving for relevance.

“Before we go up there,” said Mrs. Borelli, “I want to show you something.” She beckoned for them to follow, leading them into the study, where she gestured to a cabinet that doubled as the TV stand. “I told your
CSI
folks about this. After they got here, I looked around and found this cabinet door cracked open just a smidge. And take a look inside.” Nikki was about to stop her from pulling it open, but she could see that the door and its glass front had already been dusted for prints. There were two shelves inside. The lower was filled with books, a mix of paperbacks and hard-bounds. The shelf above was completely empty. “All his videos, gone.”

“What sort of videos were they?” asked Heat. She noticed that the TV rested atop a dinosaur
VHS
player, and to its side sat a compact portable
DVD
unit with red, yellow, and white cords jacked to it.

“A bit of everything. He liked documentaries and someone gave him the Ken Burns
Civil War
, that’s gone. I know he had
Air Force One
. ‘Get off my plane,’ over, and over, and over . . .” She shook her head, no doubt banking that as a fond recollection of the dead pastor, then looked back to the empty shelf. “Let’s see, there were also a few
PBS
things, mostly
Masterpiece Theater
. The rest were personal, like videos people took at weddings and gave to him. Also some videos he shot at some of his protest marches and rallies. Oh! The pope’s funeral! He was at the Vatican for that. I suppose that’s gone, too. Would that be valuable, Detective, would someone want to steal that?”

Nikki told her anything was possible and asked if she would write down a list of all the videos she could recall, just for a complete record or in case, by some unlikely chance, any of them showed up in someone’s possession or at a flea market.

The crew from the Evidence Collection Unit was nearly done upstairs, and so the three of them were able to go through the whole house, except for the attic, where the
ECU
was still at work. One of Detective Hinesburg’s observations had been correct, and that was that Mrs. Borelli was a housekeeper who took her job as a mission. She knew where everything went because she was the one who put it there and made sure it stayed clean, dusted, and in place. The anomalies were subtle and would have been lost on the casual visitor. But for the woman who went so far as to square the edges of stacked undershirts in bureau drawers and to align gleaming shoes on the closet floor, with tassels front, any disturbance was a Disturbance in the Force. With the guidance of her schooled eye, it was clear to Detective Heat that someone had definitely given the rectory a once-over. And that with the low degree of disruption to the house, it sure felt like a professional job.

That opened a whole new front. It certainly cast major doubt that the death of the priest had been a dominance session gone awry. Nikki knew better than to get ahead of the investigation, but the whole torture thing, combined with a search of the rectory, was pointing less toward a sexual proclivity and more toward someone trying to find something out. But what?

And what was Captain Montrose’s search about the night before?

Heat met up with the lead
ECU
detective, Benigno DeJesus, coming out of Father Graf’s bathroom, where he had just logged and bagged meds from the cabinet. He recapped his findings, which corresponded to Mrs. Borelli’s: the missing videos, moved clothing, doors slightly ajar, and the absent holy medal. “Something else we found,” said DeJesus. Atop the priest’s dresser he indicated the dark brown velvet box, hinged open to expose the tan satin liner.

“This where the St. Christopher was?” asked Nikki.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Borelli from behind her. “It meant so much to Father.”

The
ECU
detective lifted the empty box off the dresser. “Got something a little unusual.” Heat knew and liked Detective DeJesus and had worked scenes with him often enough to read his understatement. When Benigno said something was a little unusual, it was time to pay attention to Benigno. “Underneath the doily.” And when Heat hesitated, he added, “It’s OK, I’ve dusted, logged, and photographed.”

Nikki lifted the lace runner that covered the bureau top. There was a small scrap of paper under it, right under the spot where the St. Christopher’s case had been resting. DeJesus tweezed the strip and held it up for her to read. It was a handwritten phone number. Heat asked, “Mrs. Borelli, are you familiar with this number?”

The
ECU
man slipped the paper into a clear plastic evidence pouch and laid it on his open palm for her to see. She shook her head. “What about the handwriting,” asked Heat, “do you recognize it?”

“You mean is it Father Graf’s? No. And it’s not mine. I don’t know this writing.”

Heat was jotting the phone number onto her spiral when one of the other
ECU
techs appeared in the doorway and nodded to DeJesus. He excused himself to the hall and reappeared shortly. “Detective Heat? A moment?”

The attic had one of those pull-down wooden staircases that tele scoped into the ceiling. Nikki ascended it into the loft where DeJesus and the technician who had summoned him were crouched in a pool of portable light beside an old mini-fridge. They parted to give her a view as she joined them. The tech said, “I noticed the dust pattern on the floor indicated this had been opened recently, but it’s not plugged in.” She looked inside and saw three square holiday cookie tins stacked on the white wire shelves.

DeJesus snapped open the lid of the top one for her. It was filled with envelopes. The
ECU
detective took one out for her to examine. Like all the others, it was a parish collection envelope. And it was filled with cash.

Benigno said, “This might be worth some study.”

At the end of the day Detective Heat gathered her squad in the bull pen for an update of the Murder Board. It was a ritual that served not only as a chance for her to recap information, but also as an opportunity for Nikki and her crew to bounce theories.

She had already logged Father Graf’s moves on the timeline, including the notation of the unaccounted for hours the day preceding and the day of his disappearance. “There’s nothing on his calendar that helps. If we had his wallet, we could run his MetroCard to see what subway stops he made, but that’s still missing.”

“What about e-mails?” said Ochoa.

“Right there with you,” said Heat. “Soon as Forensics finishes with his computer, why don’t you pick it up and start reading? You know everything to look for, don’t need to tell you.” She tried not to let her gaze sweep to Hinesburg, but she did, and registered the pissy look before turning her back to print “Graf’s e-mails” on the board.

Raley made his report. At Heat’s direction, he had gone to Pleasure Bound to show copies of the stills to Roxanne Paltz, who made ID of the three dommes who worked there, two past and one present. As for the men, the manager either didn’t know or wouldn’t say. Afterward, on his own initiative, Detective Raley had walked the area near the underground dungeon, flashing the stills at local retail shops and to doormen. “I didn’t get any hits,” he said, “but I may have gotten a nice case of frostbite. Windchill’s down below zero today.”

The canvass of Dungeon Alley had also come up empty. Detectives Ochoa, Rhymer, and Gallagher covered the main
BDSM
clubs stretching about twenty blocks from Midtown to Chelsea, and none of the workers or guests they encountered said they recognized the photo of the priest. Detective Rhymer said, “It could mean someone’s lying or it could mean Graf was discreet.”

“Or he wasn’t in the lifestyle,” said Gallagher.

“Or,” added Nikki, “we haven’t talked to the right person yet.” She told them about the slip of paper that was hidden under the lace runner. “We ran a check on the phone number. It was for a male strip club.”

“Male strip club? Who did you run the check with—Rhymer?” When the laughs died out Ochoa continued, “You deny it, Opie, but it’s always the wholesome ones.”

Raley chimed in. “Don’t listen to him, Opie. Miguel’s just mad ’cause you only put a buck in his thong last time.”

Heat declared that since Raley and Ochoa seemed the most knowledgeable, they could have the detail of going to the strip club to show Graf’s picture. After Roach took a chorus of ribbing from the squad, she finished her recap of the missing items at the rectory. Detective Rhymer, who was on loan from Burglary, wondered if the videos got stolen because they had sex tapes in them. “If the priest was into something . . . unpriestly . . . maybe there was something embarrassing to someone else who was on the video.”

Heat acknowledged that could be so and jotted it under “Theories” on the board as “damning sex video??” That notwithstanding, Nikki said that some things made her want to broaden the scope of their investigation. No sooner had she said the words than behind the squad she saw movement from the glass office. Captain Montrose got up from his desk and stood leaning against his door frame to take in her briefing.

“Starting tomorrow,” Heat said, “I want to dig deeper into the parish. Not just to look into the parishioners who could have motives, but also any of the other activities Father Graf could have been involved in. Clubs, immigration protests, even charity drives and fund-raisers.”

Then she told them about the stash of money in the attic, which came to about a hundred fifty thousand. All in bills under a hundred, all in parishioner collection envelopes. “I’ll reach out to the archdiocese to see if they had any knowledge or concerns about embezzlement. Whether it’s skimming, or an inheritance, or, I don’t know, a secret lotto win—however that money came to be in his attic—we can’t rule out the possibility that someone wanted to get it and tried to force him to say where it was. But,” she cautioned, “it’s too soon to run for that piece of candy, because there are other things to look at as well. Let’s just say it’s one of many reasons to open this case wider.” Then she relayed the findings of the autopsy. “What was particularly striking was the degree of electricity the victim took before he died.
TENS
, in mild doses, get used in some torture play. But his burns, the heart attack, this did not look like play.”