Yates was smart enough to put two and two together.
I logged off the message board, closed the browser, and then turned off the computer.
I didn’t bother heading home to pack. It was only a two-hour flight, and I expected to be home tonight. If I needed anything, I’d buy it there.
I grabbed my overcoat from the rack near the door, and then proceeded to arrange myself. I put my shield in the inner pocket of the coat, my cell phone in the hip pocket, and my keys in the opposite pocket. I placed my wallet in the front pocket of my pants, but not before removing my bank cards and putting them in the other front pocket along with my spare house key. It was a ritual I’d adopted back when I was a teenager: a friend and I had gone into the city to catch a Broadway show, and we’d been mugged. Since then, I’d put my possessions in different locations so I wouldn’t lose everything if it happened again.
The last thing I did before leaving the station was to head down to the armory and get my weapon back.
Chapter Five
And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms
and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants.
–Book of Enoch 7:1-2
I hated flying.
It wasn’t the screaming babies, cramped seats, stale air, or surly flight attendants. It wasn’t the turbulence or the thought that there was nothing but air keeping us from plummeting to the ground. I hated flying for the simple reason that I wasn’t in control. At least, if I were a passenger in a car, I could reach over and grab the steering wheel if I had to; I could even take my chances and jump. In a plane, if anything went wrong, I was completely helpless. There was nothing I could do except wait for the inevitable.
I spent the two hours from O’Hare to JFK grinding my teeth and gripping the armrests as if I were holding on to a life preserver. I tried reading through a document Yates had sent to my cell phone—the Book of Enoch—but though I’d read it a few times in the past week, I still felt there was more to the tale than what was there. I always felt unsettled after reading it. With the turbulence of the flight, I found I couldn’t concentrate on the tiny words on my screen, and put my phone back in my pocket.
If I was rude to any of the other passengers or attendants during the trip, I don’t recall. I don’t think I had a clear thought until the moment the tires hit pavement on the landing.
Disembarking, I resisted the urge to fall to my hands and knees and kiss the ground.
I didn’t expect to spend more than the day here, so I didn’t have to wait for any luggage to be unloaded and delivered—I didn’t even take a carry-on bag. I couldn’t get out of the terminal fast enough.
Outside, I flagged the first taxi I spotted and hopped in the back.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked.
I told him which precinct, and he put the car into gear.
By the time we got there, it was well after lunch, and the only thing I’d had all day was a bag of chips and a chocolate bar from the vending machine in O’Hare. My stomach rumbled, and I knew I needed to eat something before going into the station.
As expected, there was a food cart just down the street, and I ordered a hot pretzel and a coffee to wash it down.
I sat on a concrete ledge and wolfed down my breakfast, swearing when a large glop of coffee spilled square on my lap.
* * *
After ducking in to the men’s room in the precinct to wash the stain from my pant leg, I went out to the main desk and introduced myself to the sergeant sitting behind a Plexiglas window.
“Captain Armstrong expected you here an hour ago,” the harried man said, but I didn’t get the feeling he was rebuking me. I imagined every officer in New York was on pins and needles after hearing about the murders.
“Got here as fast as I could.”
The sergeant handed me a visitor pass through a small porthole, and buzzed me in. “Down the hall, last office on the left,” he said.
I nodded to him as I went in and headed in the direction he’d indicated.
As I made my way, several heads popped up to look at me, but no one stopped me to ask any questions. Everyone looked swamped; answering phones, searching databases, compiling reports, and conferring with other officers.
Though the captain’s door was open, I knocked on the frame as I poked my head in. A silver-haired, broad-shouldered man sat at the desk.
“Captain Armstrong?” I asked.
“You must be Hollingsworth.” He stood up and came around the desk to shake my hand, though he didn’t smile. “Glad you’re here, though I can’t say I’m happy that you had to come.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice low. “Has he said anything?”
“Not since he dropped your name.” The captain pressed a button on his desk phone. “Alice, can you track down Officer Alders? Hollingsworth’s here.”
“Yes, Captain,” a voice came through the speaker, and then there was a feedback squawk as Alice hung up.
To me, the captain said, “Someone told me you started out in the NYPD.”
I didn’t want to talk about it. Inevitably, he would ask me why I left, and the thought of reliving the memory wasn’t appealing. If I evaded the question, the captain would get curious—that’s what cops did—and he’d track down my work history.
Steeling myself, I nodded. “Yeah.” I cocked my head. “My career path wasn’t what I’d wanted, so I made a change.”
As if sensing my reluctance to go into detail, he asked, “Why’d you decide on Chicago?”
“I like the weather there better,” I said with a straight face.
He laughed at my answer. Before he could follow up, a very young woman in uniform appeared in the door.
The captain looked up and said, “Ah, Alders. You’re here.” He pointed to me. “This is Detective Frank Hollingsworth.”
I extended my hand to shake hers, but she kept her arms at her sides.
Her voice was flat. “I know who he is.”
She gave me a hard look, bordering on hostile.
The captain, as if unaware of her demeanor, said, “Hollingsworth, this is Officer Patricia Alders. She was the first officer on the scene of the killing involving the priest, and she made the arrest. It’s her collar.” He asked her, “Will you take him down to the interview room, please?”
With her eyes fixed on me, she gave a slight nod of acknowledgement to her captain. I felt a cold chill going through me.
What was her issue? Did she think I was going to take the case away from her? I didn’t have any jurisdiction in New York. I had no more authority than a private citizen did.
Her eyes flashed one more time before she turned on her heel and strode away. I glanced over at the captain, but he was picking up his phone, working on the next piece of business.
* * *
I was never one to mince words. As I followed the young officer down the hall, I asked, “Are we going to have a problem, Officer Alders?”
She stopped short, and I just about ran into her. Facing me, her eyes narrowed, she said, “You have no idea who I am, do you?”
Her question caught me off guard. “No, should I?”
I hadn’t been back to New York in twenty-five years and had never even spoken to any NYPD officers in that time. As far as my memory served me, I couldn’t remember any case I’d worked on besides Father Putnam that crossed jurisdictions either way. I strained to think how I’d managed to piss off this rookie.
Staring at me, her eyes mere slits, she curled her lip. “I guess there’s no reason you would know me. After all, you couldn’t care less about the people whose lives you’ve destroyed.”
Now I was really confounded. I was being accused of something, but I had no idea what that was.
“Really?” I asked, my voice taking on an edge. I didn’t like being tried and convicted wi
thout having a chance to defend myself. “And whose life is it that you think I’ve destroyed? Yours?”
I gave her an appraising look. She seemed healthy and fit; with a high profile arrest like Putnam’s, she’d get noticed by the brass and would be well on the way to a promotion.
Through clenched teeth, she hissed, “Yes.”
That surprised me. It didn’t make sense. I’d never had any interaction with her before. I couldn’t think of any way that my presence here would impact her career; if anything, getting Father Putnam to talk would only help her and anyone else involved in the case.
I snorted. “So tell me, what did I do to destroy your life?”
Her whole body vibrated as she stared daggers at me. “Because of you, my father was killed when I was a kid. His name was Scott Goodwin, or don’t you remember?”
* * *
If Officer Alders had taken out her service gun and shot me, I wouldn’t have been any more surprised.
I could only gape at her.
In all these years, it had never crossed my mind to check up on Goodwin’s family.
I knew he’d been a newlywed. At the funeral, I’d approached his wife to offer my condolences, but if she held any animosity toward me then, it never showed. It was possible she’d been too distraught at the time; I knew I was beside myself the entire week after the killings.
The rest of my time with the NYPD, I’d been so preoccupied with my own tumultuous emotions, I hadn’t given a thought to anyone else. Once I left for Chicago, I never looked back, and had tried my best to put New York out of my mind. On those rare occasions when the cold fingers of guilt reached for me, I’d fight them off with a fifth of scotch, which usually did the trick.
Over my long career, I’d witnessed the collateral damage caused by criminals and their activity, but my involvement had always been at arm’s length. A cop couldn’t let themselves get personally involved; that was a vortex that would suck you down so far, you’d never come back.
It was an excuse, but at the same time, it was a defense. Without maintaining a certain amount of detachment, an officer would not be effective in the field.
Now, however, I had no choice but to face the consequences from my first day on the job.
Officer Alders’ words had stunned me, but I was a veteran of a thousand confrontations. I recovered from the shock quickly and matched her glare.
“Yes.” I kept my voice low and steady. “I remember him. I’ll never forget him.” It was all I could do to keep my emotions in check. “There was nothing I could do. It happened so fast. The board of inquiry agreed.”
Alders’ entire body was vibrating. At first, I thought it was because of her growing anger toward me, but then I realized all the years of grief and loss were welling up inside her.
I softened my tone. “It was one of the worst days of my life,” I said. “I was young and inexperienced. I couldn’t deal with it. The only way I could put myself back together was to leave New York.” Putting a hand on her shoulder, I said, “I’m so sorry that you and your mother had to go through this all on your own. If I could—”
Abruptly, Alders jerked back from my hand. Her eyes flashed. “If you could do what? Go back and save him? Trade places with him?” She threw her hand up to stop me from replying. “Save it. You’re just like everyone else. You refuse to accept any responsibility, and sweep everything under the rug.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You know, after they let you off the hook, they determined my father broke procedure. They dumped the blame for the entire mess on him. That made my mother ineligible for any death benefits. You have no idea what we had to sacrifice just to survive.
“She was pregant with me and desperate, so she married the only man who’d take her. Tomas Alders was a vain, cruel man; he wouldn’t let my mother give me my father’s last name, and officially adopted me to make sure of it, all to spite her. The bastard was a horrible drunk who beat her so bad, he almost killed her before he drank himself into an early grave before my tenth birthday.”
“I’m sorry—” I started to say again, but Alders wasn’t having any of it.
“Oh, you can apologize until you’re blue in the face, but the one person who might have given you her forgiveness is gone. My mother worked cleaning houses for the past twenty years. You know what inhaling the fumes from bleach and other chemicals can do to a person over that long?” She gave me a feral grin. “Lung cancer takes its sweet time before it kills you. Funny thing, if you’d have come back to New York sooner, you could have given your apology to my mother. I buried her last week. Now, there’s no one left to forgive you.”
Chapter Six
And they became pregnant, and they bore great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: Who consumed all the acquisitions of men.
–Book of Enoch 7:2-4
Before I could think of a response, Alders turned on her heel and stalked away from me. She was heading to her original destination: the interview room on the other side of the building.
With a heavy sigh, I followed a few seconds later, but at a somewhat slower pace. I didn’t want to catch up to her. The encounter had me frazzled. I needed to push the thoughts out of my mind. I had to be at the top of my game when I talked to Father Putnam.
By the time we got to the room where they were keeping the priest, I had collected my wits.
When Alders finally stopped her angry march and turned around at the entrance to the interview room, she seemed to struggle to keep her emotions down and act professionally.
“He’s stated he wants to speak to you alone,” she said, “but we’re recording the session.”
“Of course.” I nodded. It was standard procedure; there was no way around it. “Has he asked for a lawyer?”
Alders shook her head. “He keeps saying he doesn’t need one; that he’s innocent.” She snorted. “It’s almost as if he thinks he’ll be freed by some kind of divine intervention.”
I hadn’t spent much time with Father Putnam, but from what Chase and Riley had related to me, the priest was a true believer. I never spoke my thoughts to the others—mostly because it wouldn’t make a difference to them—but I figured his mad pursuit of power was a means to an end, not the end itself.
His motivation, however twisted and misguided, was to rid the world of the Watchers—the priests’ name for the two-hundred fallen angels. That he was willing to sacrifice the lives of over a dozen of his fellow priests only proved that he was touched with madness.
I was going to have to be very careful interviewing him. The last thing I wanted was for him to start to get preachy or prophetic about the Watchers, or let anything slip about Sam Lancaster and the others. With Alders listening in, such talk would only lead to uncomfortable questions that I couldn’t answer.
Alders gave me a puzzled look, and I could imagine she was wondering why I was hesitating to go in.
Casting a humorless smile at her, I opened the door and went inside.
A small room, the only furniture was a metal table and two chairs. There was a one-way mirror on the near wall, and a closed-circuit security camera mounted beside it, pointing at the table.
It was odd seeing a priest in handcuffs. The cuffs were joined together by a long chain wrapped around a thick metal loop firmly attached to the table. Father Putnam wouldn’t be able to stand without wrenching his arms.
He looked up and smiled when I entered, as if greeting a long-lost friend.
“You came!” He wriggled in his seat, as if he wanted to come over and shake my hand. “You need to help me. There’s a man we need to find. It’s of the utmost urgency.”
“Let’s get something straight right off the bat,” I growled. Leaning over with one hand on the edge of the table, I pointed at him with the other. “I hate New York. I never wanted to come back here. And to make matters worse, I was enjoying being on leave, working on a two-week drunk, which you and your crazy antics have interrupted.”
Putnam’s smile froze on h
is face. He cocked his head, as if he didn’t quite understand me.
I said, “I’m not in the mood for any bullshit. I read the report. You ran into that squad car moments before the officer was executed. If you didn’t set that up, then what the hell were you doing there? And what do you mean, ‘This is only the beginning. There will be many more deaths to come’? How many more of these killings are you planning on?”
A look of confusion came over Putnam.
I slapped my hand down on the table. “Answer me!”
He held my stare for what seemed like an eternity, and then said, “The end is near, and you know what end I’m talking about, don’t you, Detective Hollingsworth?”
I knew exactly what he was talking about, but I didn’t want him talking about it, not with so many ears on the conversation. I was sure the video would be patched to the captain’s computer, and there could be any number of other people listening in. This was one of the highest-profile cases in recent NYPD history.
Changing my tactic, I pulled the chair out and sat down, facing the priest.
“Enough of your religious rhetoric, Putnam. I’m not here to be converted. I’m here to find out why you ran into that police car moments before the officer was killed … and don’t tell me you’re innocent, and that it was just an accident.”
Putnam’s voice cracked. “Don’t you get it?” he asked. “All that is unimportant. You’re unimportant; I’m unimportant. The sacrifice of dozens or even hundreds is nothing. Unless we stop them, they’ll destroy the world.”
“Is that a fact?” I asked, trying hard not to glance at the one-way mirror or at the camera. Anyone with a keen eye might pick up on my unease.
“You know it is,” Putnam hissed.
“Let me guess.” I leaned back in the seat, made myself appear casual. “The devil made you do it?”
The priest blanched at my words. For the briefest moment, I thought I’d pushed the wrong button; that he’d go off in a lunatic rage … but then he smiled.
“You want answers.” It wasn’t a question. He cocked his head. “I require your assistance,” he said, lifting his shackled hands an inch.
The Complete Book Of Fallen Angels Page 83
