by Philip Kerr
“Wonder what that’s about?” said Helen. “Maybe we should follow.” Helen turned around in her seat. “They’re stopping in front of the Hyatt.”
“False alarm. We’ve just come out of there and everything was okay.”
“We are on the scene.”
I cursed, but I was already turning the car around and putting the cherry on top.
I pulled up next to a cop who was already stringing out a line of crime-scene tape. I dropped my window and flashed my badge.
“Hey, buddy,” I said. “What’s happening?”
The cop glanced at me and then at the Spindletop. “Woman jumped from the top of the Hyatt,” he said.
“Jesus.” I glanced at Helen who returned a rueful look. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Of course.”
I stopped the engine and we walked the length of the Hyatt’s façade until, at the foot of the atrium’s “window,” we came upon a scrimmage of cops and paramedics. Behind them on the ground was a length of plastic sheeting screening something unspeakable. One of the cops turned to face me.
“Yeah, what?”
“We had a woman under surveillance,” I said. “Inside the Hyatt. Caucasian, red hair, fortyish, wearing a jaguar-skin print dress. Could that be your jumper?”
“Got a couple of feebees here who think they can identify the jumper,” he said loudly.
My BlackBerry was ringing. I looked at the screen.
“Shit.”
It was Gary Greene calling me back.
“Gary. Look, I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you right now. A sub I’ve been following has jumped from the top of the Hyatt Regency Hotel. I’ll have to call you back.”
“Make sure you do,” said Greene.
It wasn’t much of a conversation, but it was long enough for Helen to move out of my sight. When my eyes caught up with her again, she was staring at what was lying on the ground underneath the plastic, and then so was I, and all of a sudden I was able to understand why they’d needed such a long sheet of plastic.
Nothing ever prepares you for the sight of a dead body. Violent death is rarely ever neat and tidy, but there is something doubly unpleasant about viewing a body that has fallen from a great height; I’ve never seen anything as fatal as what happens to someone who jumps out of a tall building; and immediately I was thinking about those two hundred souls who were forced to jump from the Twin Towers—the most harrowing and enduring image of the horror that had been unleashed inside. At first I didn’t understand the actual details of what exactly had happened to Gaynor Allitt; it takes the eyes and the mind a while to disentangle the awful red and raw human wreckage of what you’re looking at; all I knew for sure was that it was Gaynor Allitt. The dress and the shoes she was wearing told me as much. But it took several seconds of horrified contemplation to perceive that when you hit the concrete from a great height everything that’s inside your body ends up being on the outside. In Gaynor’s case, some of her insides were fifteen or twenty feet away from her shattered body. Most distressing of all, perhaps, was the realization that most of her internal organs and intestines had exited her cadaver from between her legs, almost as if she had suffered some ghastly and giant miscarriage in the street.
Something caught my eye. It wasn’t the Jimmy Choo shoe that protruded from a pink mass of leg bone and flesh like a small sea urchin; and it wasn’t the jaguar print of the dress that made me think of some big cat incarnadined by the blood of some recently devoured prey; and it wasn’t Gaynor Allitt’s eyes, which were hanging out of their sockets. It was the card she was holding in her still identifiably human hand. I drew the attention of one of the cops to the card and asked him if I might take a look at it.
“Be my guest,” he said. “Just don’t remove it from the scene.”
I found an evidence glove in my jacket pocket and peeled it on my hand carefully. Gaynor’s grip was strangely firm, and I had to bend back one of her fingers to extract the card from her dead grasp.
It was my own business card.
I turned it over, read what was written on the back, and then handed it to Helen, mainly to avert her gaze from the butcher’s yard that lay on the ground. Then I took her by the arm and led her away.
She glanced up at the Hyatt tower. “We should go in and check it out. Someone must have pushed her, Martins.”
“No,” I said.
“What the fuck? Look, she just spent four thousand bucks dolling herself up. Chances are it was for someone who might still be in there.”
“No,” I said. “Look at the card. It was suicide. Had to be.”
“This is your card. Why the fuck have you given me your card?”
“She was holding it,” I explained. “Gaynor Allitt. It was in her dead hand. She must have been holding on to it when she jumped. There’s something written on the back.”
“‘Dear Agent Martins. Is this sufficiently concrete for you to base an investigation on?’” Helen pulled a face. “Jesus, you’re right. It must have been suicide. I guess that was her idea of a joke.”
“I’m not laughing.”
Helen returned my card and I gave it to one of the cops along with another business card on which I wrote Gaynor Allitt’s home address.
“She’d still be alive,” I told Helen, “if I had insisted on trying to get a mental health warrant.”
“You don’t know for sure that you’d have been granted one.”
“No, that’s true. But why the dress and the shoes? I don’t understand that at all. If you were going to kill yourself, why spend four thousand dollars on your wardrobe? It doesn’t make any sense, Helen.”
“Yes, it does,” said Helen. For a moment she looked like she was going to puke. Then she swallowed and said, “I think I can explain it.”
“Go ahead.”
“When I was on that yacht in France, one of the other agents told me that his dad had committed suicide. But beforehand he put on his best suit and shoes. He figured his dad had probably wanted to look his best when he died. This strikes me the same way. Maybe Gaynor wanted to feel and look a little bit special—the way only a new dress and a fabulous pair of shoes can make a woman feel special.”
We walked back to the car in silence. We drove down Fannin Street and, just short of the Gulf Freeway, we came in sight of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart.
“You can drop me here, if you like.”
Assuming she thought I was getting straight onto the freeway for Galveston, I shook my head. “That’s all right. HPD’s only half a mile down Fannin.”
“I know. That’s why I want to walk.”
“Sure. Whatever you say. I understand. After what we just saw . . .”
I pulled up at the side of the cathedral. Helen stepped out of the car, and when I didn’t drive away, she came around to my window. Behind her was the cathedral’s perfectly kept flowerbed, from which a variety of scents filled the air, and above this was an arched window near the organ loft where someone was practicing a Bach toccata and fugue. It seemed like a whole lifetime since I’d been in there to pray that my dwindling faith might be restored, but in truth it was only a few weeks.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I said.
“About what? Being a lesbian or a Roman Catholic?”
I smiled. “Any more surprises?”
“I think you’ve had enough for one day.”
“Are you going in there?”
“Yes. I thought I’d pray for Gaynor Allitt.”
“It can’t do her any harm.”
“You could come with me if you want. We could pray for her together.”
“And miss a quiet Sunday afternoon in Galveston? I don’t think so. Besides, your prayer has a better chance of being heard if I’m not kneeling beside you, Helen. If you’re going to speak to God, you’d better be seen i
n better company.”
“Oh, I don’t worry about that. I’m a lesbian, remember? I really don’t think that God understands lesbians at all.”
“Then why go in?”
“Because I think Gaynor would appreciate it. You see, Martins, she was a lesbian, too.”
I frowned. “Are you serious?”
“Of course. I don’t joke about that kind of thing.”
“But how can you be sure?”
“You’re such a man, aren’t you? It was right under your nose and you couldn’t see it.”
“And you did?”
“Of course.”
“You make me sound like an idiot, Helen.”
“You’re not an idiot, Martins. You’re just a man, that’s all.”
“When you say that, somehow you make them sound like the same thing.”
SIXTEEN
I didn’t drive to Galveston—not right away. I had questions about Gaynor Allitt I needed to answer. It seemed the least I could do after the note she had left for me on the back of my own business card. I drove to 1127 North Shepherd Drive and the Eleventh Division police station—a low-rise building surrounded by car showrooms and auto-repair shops; after her Friday-night accident on North Post Oak and Woodway, it was to one of these that Gaynor Allitt’s car had been taken, and where I was now directed by the desk sergeant.
I rolled on some latex evidence gloves. A mechanic showed me out back to a parking lot where he pointed out a Taurus with a heavily dented passenger door, and then tossed me a set of keys. Unbeknownst to him, it was the keys I wanted. In addition to the car key, there was a Yale and a Ford leather fob with four numbers written on it. I didn’t have to be a detective to see that the Yale was the key to Gaynor’s front door on Gregg Street, and the numbers were probably the combination for the house alarm.
There was nothing much in the glove compartment or the trunk, but the navigation system’s address book contained her favorite destinations. These included her home, the Harris County District Court on Franklin Street where she had worked, and a church near the Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake. I made a note of the church address and zip code and the four numbers on the key fob and then drove back to Gaynor Allitt’s house.
I parked the car on Cline Street, like before, just in case any nosey-parker neighbor paid attention to that kind of thing, but it didn’t look like it. Gregg Street was still quiet, which made it even harder to believe what had happened since driving away from that spot.
I went up the side stair, opened and closed the front door, and would have keyed the four numbers I’d noted into the alarm except that Gaynor hadn’t armed the system. What was the point when you knew you weren’t ever coming home again. I slipped on a fresh pair of evidence gloves, wiped the door handle, and looked around. My search of her house was legal under section 213 of the Patriot Act—the so-called sneak-and-peek provisions; then again, without even an EC or a field report in the name of Gaynor Allitt, it wasn’t completely warranted, either. But I had the feeling Gaynor wouldn’t have objected to my being there. I wasn’t likely to forget my business card in her hand or the sight of her shattered body. I was still in a state of shock about that. At least this was the excuse I was giving myself for the time being until I could think of a better one.
The house was open-plan with polished wooden floors, ceiling fans, and imitation Art Nouveau lamps. There was a big leather L-shaped sofa on one side of the sitting room and a kitchen area on the other. The house had two bedrooms, each with an en suite bathroom, and a handsomely furnished little study with plenty of books, most of them religious. Facing the desk was a video camera on a tripod, but the SD card was missing. Open on the leather-topped desk was a laptop, and a big family Bible. Something about the closet in the spare bedroom caught my eye—an antique double-size wardrobe made of rich flamed mahogany. But one of the doors was covered with a sort of thick heavy curtain resembling an intricately embroidered quilt cover, and although the design was unknown to me, there was something about it that suggested to me it might have religious significance. Drawing the curtain aside, I opened the wardrobe door and was intrigued to discover not a rail of clothes but a small cushioned seat, another Bible, and several rosaries, as if the wardrobe had served some devotional purpose. Curious, I stepped inside and sat down on the little seat, which was quite comfortable; there was a small electric lamp so I switched it on.
The Bible was a rather ancient one, and as big as a desktop PC, with an ornate leather binding that belonged in a horror movie; the rosaries were mostly silver and ebony; on the wooden walls was a cheesy picture of God and a text from the epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans: WHO SHALL LAY ANY THING TO THE CHARGE OF GOD’S ELECT? IT IS GOD THAT JUSTIFIETH.
I opened the Bible. Inside its heavy pages was a neatly printed list of names. The list had a one-word heading. The word was “Prayers.”
I glanced down the list of names. Most were names I didn’t recognize; but I had no problem with four of them and three of these—Clifford Richardson, Peter Ekman, and Willard Davidoff—had been crossed out; the fourth name was that of Philip Osborne. Presumably Gaynor Allitt hadn’t had the time—or, given her feelings of guilt in the matter, the inclination—to cross his name off the list like she had the other three dead men’s names.
This list was the clearest evidence yet that these four deaths were somehow related; and yet the heading wasn’t likely to convince anyone—least of all the Houston Bureau’s Chief Counsel—that there was some kind of case to answer. Police Inspector Blunt’s attitude to Gaynor Allitt’s confession had been salutary in its skepticism. It was one thing to pursue an investigation into four sudden deaths; it was something else again to look into the deaths of four men on the basis that these had been brought about by the prayers of an emotionally disturbed woman who had committed suicide. Real evidence of the kind you could put in a plastic bag and hand to a jury was needed here. I photographed the list with my phone and then put it into my pocket; having checked that the picture was legible, I photographed the interior and exterior of the prayer cabinet—if that’s what it was; then I collected Gaynor’s laptop and carried it out to the car.
From there, I drove to the Northwest Freeway and the RCFL, where I filled out some paperwork and left the laptop for Ken Paris to take a look at. Then I went to the office, where I logged the prayer list as evidence before calling Gary Greene; and this time I got him, although I regretted doing so immediately.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
I told him I’d been obliged to move out of my house and then spend the morning interviewing a sub who’d subsequently killed herself. These sounded like reasonable explanations to me, but Greene wasn’t having any of it.
“Your ass stays right where it is,” he growled. “I’m coming in.”
“Can’t this wait until tomorrow, sir? It’s not exactly been a great day. I’ve still got blood on my shoes.”
“Nope. This can’t wait. But you can. And your day’s about to get a lot fucking worse than just a bit of blood on your damn shoes.” And then he hung up.
Gary Greene was tall—taller than I was—and black, with a head like a bowling ball and the manners of a mechanical pinsetter. Around his mouth there was a light gray beard and a mustache and, on the end of his nose, he wore a pair of heavy framed glasses that added a strong touch of disbelief to the way he regarded me. I had been summoned to his office minutes after his arrival in the building. Vijay Persaud was also there from DCS Net.
The Digital Collection System is the FBI’s dedicated surveillance system and allows instant access to all cell phone, landline, and SMS communication anywhere in the United States—and, for all I know, abroad. How it works is classified, but it runs on the Windows operating system and makes wiretapping as easy as buying something on Amazon.
“We’ve been trying to put your slippery ass in that chair since Frida
y evening,” he said.
I started to explain, but Greene didn’t look as if he was interested in hearing my side of things. He waved a hand in front of his face as if he were trying to get rid of some gas—his own, probably.
“You’re busy. I get that. Everyone in this building thinks his shit is more important than the next guy’s. But we’re busy, too, Martins, and given that I should be taking my daughter to Sunday school, you’ll appreciate that maybe I wouldn’t be here now if you’d made time for us on Friday night.”
“Gisela said she’d speak to you.”
“Oh, and she did. But it wasn’t Gisela we wanted to talk to, Martins. You see, we didn’t want to talk to you on Bureau business but in your capacity as a witness.”
“A witness? Me? To what?”
“At last you begin to see.”
“Maybe you’d better just cut to the chase, sir. I certainly wouldn’t like to waste any more of your valuable time.”
“You know Bishop Eamon Coogan, is that right?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Mind telling me how?”
“I don’t mind. Before he became a bishop here in Houston—strictly speaking he’s an archbishop, but it’s an emeritus position, so it’s not like he’s a real archbishop, which is one stripe below cardinal—before that he was a friend of my parents in Boston. He trained to be a doctor. My father taught him at med school.”
“So you’re a Catholic?”
“Used to be.”
“But you’re still the bishop’s friend.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Close friends?”
“That all depends on what you’re about to accuse him of.”
