Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

I had no answer for her. No explanation.

“Let’s get out of here, Stone. They’ve got this.”

“Sure.”

We walked back toward the gates. Evening was shutting down and night was closing in. I glanced over and saw lights in the rectory. It looked like the kitchen. She put her hand on my shoulder. “Let’s have a word with Mrs. Doyle before we leave, she might have heard something.”

The door was open and we went in. We found her in the kitchen, sitting at the long pine table staring at a mug of tea. She looked up but didn’t say anything. Dehan smiled at her. “You got one of those for a couple of tired cops?”

Mrs. Doyle didn’t smile. She looked back at her mug and said, “In the pot, love. Help yourself.”

Dehan glanced at me. I shook my head. She poured herself a mug and we sat. I said, “No word?”

She shook her head. Then, in exasperation, “Sure, where would he go? His family’s all back home in Ireland, them that’s still livin’, most of them are dead, God rest their souls. Amn’t I all he’s got? The feckin’ old fool! God forgive me for sayin’ it but he is, so he is.”

Dehan smiled. “He’d been at Father Sullivan’s. You were right about that, but he left just before we arrived. Where do you think he’d go from Father Sullivan’s?”

“Isn’t that what I’m tellin’ you? There is nowhere for him to go. I made him his favorite stew an’ all.”

“I saw you making it. It looked good. Every cop in New York is on the lookout for him, Mrs. Doyle, even at the airports, shipping ports, railway stations… He’ll show up sooner or later.”

She didn’t look very convinced. “I’ll have somethin’ to say to the silly feckin’ eejit when he does.”

“You’ll let me know the minute he does?”

It was as though I hadn’t spoken. She stared into my face with total incomprehension. “Where, in the name of all that’s holy, is he going to go? Where is he going to sleep? Who’s going to feed the silly gobshite?”

Dehan finished her tea and we stepped back into the night. We crossed the gravel drive to the sidewalk, and I leaned on the roof of the Jag. She came and leaned next to me.

“He’s going to come back here, isn’t he?”

I nodded. “He had a crisis of conscience, or faith, or whatever religious people have. He’s in fear for his life and he needed to confess, to make peace with his creator before he died. Now he’s alone in the city. He’s scared and he’s going to get cold and hungry. He will come home.”

She nodded. “He’s all we’ve got to connect the bones to Sadiq Khan, Bishop Bellini, and the others. If he dies, the case dies with him.”

“I know.”

“We have to stay.”

I looked into her face. “You okay? You want to go? I can stay.”

She shook her head, and as she did it, I saw the car parked fifty yards away under a plane tree. The young April leaves cast dappled shadows in the limpid light of the street lamp, but you could see it was white. It was a white Ford Ka. I pointed at it and suddenly knew where he was. Dehan ran for the car, I began to walk back toward the church.

She caught up with me at the steps.

“The car is empty.”

The great wooden doors were unlocked and I pushed them open. The huge nave was in darkness, except for four candles that burned at the altar, illuminating the statues of the saints, the elaborate gold leaf, the frescoes and the giant crucifix. There was absolute silence. Father O’Neil was on his knees in front of his tortured, weeping lord, a bent, broken figure in black. I walked down the central aisle and stood behind him. He was hunched forward, his hands clasped in prayer in his lap.

He had died as he had lived, on his knees, but he had died, as he had wanted to die, making peace with his God. It would have been quick, and virtually painless. There was barely a mark on him, save for the small puncture mark at the base of his skull.

Dehan sat on the pew behind him and looked at me.

“We’re fucked, Stone.” Her eyes traveled down to gaze at him where he knelt, and almost echoed my thoughts. “He died as he lived, fucking things up for everybody else.”

I pulled out my cell and dialed the captain.

“Stone! Did you find him?”

“Yeah. He went to confess with his pal Father Sullivan, then came back to St. Mary’s, where he was killed with an ice pick while he was praying.”

“He was murdered?”

I closed my eyes and counted to ten before answering. I wanted to tell him, no, it was a freak accident, he fell backwards onto an ice pick while kneeling in prayer at the altar. Instead, I said, “Yes, Captain, he was murdered.” I didn’t add that that was the usual way to acquire an ice pick in your brain.

“And this happened with fifteen cops on the premises?”

“Yeah, they are kind of busy at the moment, digging up skeletons.”

“How is that going? Have they found any?”

“When I last checked they had two skulls and several ribs. It is painstaking work.”

“I know.”

“Nobody is to blame, Captain.”

“Okay, Stone. I’ll have a team sent over, meanwhile, seal the area.”

We took a reel of yellow tape from the CSI truck and sealed the church. Dehan told the cop on duty we had a second crime scene and followed me back to the rectory to give Mrs. Doyle the news.

EIGHTEEN

They worked through the night, and all