The Pope's Suicide

by Steve Richer

  Donnie took the paperwork from her and didn’t even mind the pizza stain on it. After two phone calls and ten minutes, they discovered that Butterfield had inherited his grandmother’s small house in Brooklyn. It was now listed for sale.

  This had to be where he was holed up.

  Chapter 28

  The NYPD’s SWAT component was called the Emergency Service Unit and in a city like New York it was rarely idle. In fact, ESU performed patrols twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year, always ready to jump into action.

  As the sun went down, Emergency Service Squad Seven had taken the lead here in Flatbush, but the operators involved were part of the Apprehension Tactical Team, the A-Team. By all accounts, it was the single best SWAT team in the US and they saw the most action.

  Donnie especially hoped that they were the best. He had never really doubted it, but he was on pins and needles as he watched from behind his car.

  The street had been cordoned off and a number of patrol cars were standing guard, their corresponding officers doing the same, hands near their holsters even though it would be unnecessary to draw their weapons.

  Perry Butterfield was in the house up ahead. It was a small split-level typical of the area, dating back at least fifty years. Movement had been detected inside. The suspect was in the house and ESU was about to take him down.

  This is almost over, Donnie reflected, flexing his fingers nervously.

  He wished he smoked because it would give him something to do. As it was, he was feeling useless. It was like watching the Yankees leading by two points in the ninth inning. You were pretty sure it was a done deal, but you couldn’t rule out the opponent making last minute a comeback.

  Emma was fidgeting next to him, just as anxious as he was.

  “Is this your first time?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes. Juvenile Division, remember?”

  “You mean you don’t ever send a SWAT team after nine-year-olds?”

  She didn’t find the comment funny and for a moment they stood silently as they watched the team of special operators in dark tactical gear making their way to the house. Carbines were pointed at the ground for the men at the rear. The one in front held a bulky ballistic shield while the second man had his weapon aimed forward, covering him.

  “Couldn’t we just talk to Butterfield?” Emma said.

  “This is considered a high-risk situation and it’s out of our hands.”

  Tactical control was assumed by the ESU lieutenant. If he said his team was necessary, then it was.

  “If Butterfield knows that he’s surrounded, we can get him to surrender. It’s logical, Donnie.”

  “You don’t know the mindset of these people. They don’t react logically, okay? You knock on the door, you try to be a nice guy, and boom, you end up as Casper the Friendly Corpse. No chitchat, just a bullet in the head. Come on, Emma, they taught you this at the Academy.”

  “I don’t buy it. We haven’t even tried to talk him out.”

  Her fidgeting worsened and Donnie felt sorry for her. This violence was all so new to her whereas he was jaded after a career of dealing with the worst that this city had to offer.

  “It’s okay,” he said gently. “You have to stop thinking like a nun. It’ll be over in couple of minutes.”

  “I’m not thinking like a nun,” she said. “I’m thinking like a human being! I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”

  “It’s not our call.”

  “If Butterfield is shot, we might never get any answers about Pope Callixtus.”

  They were fifty yards away from the house, but still had a great vantage point. Seconds stretched into hours as they observed the A-Team get ready to breach the door.

  A man from the rear hurried to the front. In his hands was a black battering ram. Everybody got into position, the leader gave the go-ahead, and the officer slammed the heavy metal tube against the door, making it swing in with a loud thud.

  “Police, NYPD!” one of them shouted as they charged in.

  Donnie was so focused on trying to listen to what was happening that he hadn’t noticed Emma walking ahead of him. She was going toward the house.

  There were muffled yells followed by gunshots.

  “No…” Emma murmured.

  At once, she sprinted forward. She reminded Donnie of a mother rushing after her child in danger. What was she doing?

  “Jesus Christ, get back here! You’re gonna get yourself killed!”

  But she didn’t stop running. Donnie didn’t have a choice, he had to do something. He took off after her.

  “Emma, stop.”

  Within seconds, they found themselves in the yard. A couple uniforms followed them, but they kept their distance. Emma slowed down. There were no more gunshots, but they could hear people running inside the house.

  Donnie had drawn his pistol and was coming closer, following Emma toward the side of the house.

  “Goddamn it, Officer Aldridge! Get back to the car, it’s an order.”

  “We can stop this peacefully,” she implored.

  Right then, the exterior basement access door was thrown open and Perry Butterfield himself crawled out. He was surprised that Emma and Donnie were there. There was a small silver revolver in his name.

  Donnie aimed at him. “Don’t move, Butterfield!”

  The man didn’t look like a killer to him. He was in his 50s, out of shape. On the other hand, killers rarely looked like killers.

  “We just want to talk to you,” Emma said evenly.

  “Put the gun down, sir. Everything’s gonna be all right, okay? It’s like she says, we just wanna talk.”

  “I didn’t do nothing,” Butterfield said, wavering.

  “We can talk about that. First you gotta put the gun on the ground, all right?”

  Butterfield was twitchy, but Donnie could swear that he was about to comply. He was realizing that he had no way out. Shit, the nun had been right!

  That’s when all hell broke loose.

  Two ESU officers appeared from behind the house, their boots heavy on the ground. “Drop it, motherfucker!”

  Startled, Butterfield turned to his right. In the process, his arm rose and the disaster was inevitable.

  Donnie turned to the tactical guys. “No, it’s okay!”

  But his words weren’t fast enough and the ESU members had been trained to follow procedure. The moment the revolver was facing them, they both opened fire.

  “No!” Emma screamed with horror.

  She and Donnie looked on helplessly as six shots were fired at Butterfield, all landing center mass, in his chest. The weapon fell from his hands and half a second later he was on the ground. He was dead.

  “Suspect down,” the ESU officer said into his radio.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  The aftermath was a great reminder of why Donnie preferred detective work. Contrary to what was portrayed in movies, shootings were rare occurrences during investigations.

  So even though he had done nothing wrong, the next two hours were spent giving statements to Inspector Galfy as well as Internal Affairs, not to mention everyone else on the task force.

  The house was treated as a crime scene, but for the moment they wanted to make sure that the shooting had been righteous. Donnie had no worries about that. As much as he would have preferred to end things differently, he saw that the protocols had been followed.

  Reporters were everywhere and for some reason they were much closer to the house than he would have believed, considering the perimeter. A captain from the 63rd Precinct gave a statement in front of the cameras, but it wasn’t enough.

  A woman from Channel 3 News spotted him and waved her microphone. “Detective, Detective! Do you think this concludes the investigation into the Pope’s death?”

  Another reporter, this one from the Daily News jogged over. “Was this the Pope’s murderer, Detective?”

  Donnie barely glanced at them and went to Emma who was standing straight with her arms crossed
, deep in thought. The camera filmed them, but he figured they’d give up soon enough.

  “Are you okay?”

  “This is my fault,” she said.

  “What are you talking about? Come on…”

  “If I hadn’t interfered, maybe they could have taken him down without killing him.”

  “Emma, listen to me. The only person responsible for Butterfield’s death is Butterfield, okay? You don’t wave a weapon at a cop, even kids know that. That’s why he got shot, there’s no other reason.”

  She looked up at him, but didn’t appear convinced. This had to be the worst day of her life and she would blame herself for a long time. In situations like this it happened to every police officer, Donnie knew.

  He wanted to comfort her with a hug, it seemed like the right thing to do, but he wasn’t sure if it was appropriate or not. Instead he opted to give her a pat on the back which felt inadequate.

  “Detective Beecher?” a pudgy officer said as he approached. “Chief Cashin wants to see you.”

  He pointed to a car down the street and walked away. Shit, what now? What did the Chief of Ds want with him?

  As he got closer, he noticed that there was a man standing next to him, an old guy in a black and red robe. He recognized Cardinal Quigley, the Archbishop of New York. Great, more political interference. Somebody else who wanted to know if the Pope’s murderer had been brought to justice.

  “Beecher, who authorized you to launch this assault on Butterfield?”

  “With all due respect, Chief, this is my task force and Butterfield was a person of interest.”

  “You killed a man for no reason, Detective!” Cardinal Quigley spat. “If only you had spoken to me first…”

  “Excuse me, Cardinal, but the NYPD doesn’t take orders from the Church.”

  Cashin bristled at that. “Beecher!”

  “What? Our evidence led us here. Motive, opportunity, I’m just doing my job here.”

  Quigley took a step closer. “I got him his position at the nuncio’s house, Detective. I knew Perry very well. He was a friend of mine.”

  “What?” Donnie said weakly, thinking about that amicus ecclesia thing in his file. “You got him the job?”

  “I did. I personally did. I reached out to him after the abuse scandal, meeting him in a support group after he’d moved to New York, before I became Archbishop. I helped him in his battle with addiction, we played cards together. Most of all, I helped him find his faith in God again. He couldn’t have killed the Pope.”

  “Wait a minute! I found matchbooks with violent threats against the Church written in them.”

  “I know about those, Detective. He wrote those many years ago and showed them to me. He kept them as a reminder of what a life without faith looked like. It wasn’t the man he had transformed into.”

  Donnie didn’t know what to reply and he felt like a child in Catholic school when the Cardinal pointed a finger in his face.

  “You – the police – have killed an innocent man!”

  Chapter 29

  It was getting late and instead of going home, Donnie returned to One Police Plaza. The one saving grace was that he was driving against traffic. Hey, anything to put an optimistic spin on this shit show. Emma came along even though he told her she didn’t have to.

  He parked and they took their time going upstairs. She was crestfallen, shuffling her feet, and he didn’t fare much better. This whole thing had been a huge disappointment. He’d come to within one inch of his goal only to discover it had been the wrong goal.

  “I hope you understand now that none of this was your fault, Emma.”

  “Yes, I know. You told me.”

  “If anything, it was my fault.”

  She perked up at this and frowned. “How do you mean?”

  “I led everybody on the investigation in the wrong direction. If I hadn’t been so convinced about Butterfield, we wouldn’t have been at his place and right now he wouldn’t be lying on a slab at the morgue.”

  “Yeah, I guess…” she said.

  This actually shocked him. He was expecting her to put up a fight, to take this on her shoulders like before. Yet she didn’t. Did that mean she agreed that the only person who was to blame for this fiasco was him?

  Christ, Donnie groaned silently. If a nun actually blamed him then there really was no hope. He truly had screwed up, big time.

  After he had shaken off Chief Cashin and Cardinal Quigley, Donnie had returned to the house to tear it inside out. There had been no evidence of his involvement in the assassination.

  Butterfield had most likely produced a weapon out of habit when the police showed up. It wasn’t because he wanted to fend off an attack. A neighbor even said that Butterfield had been seen putzing around the yard all day so it couldn’t have been him at the Crime Lab.

  Donnie had definitely fucked up.

  And that was why he was going back to the task force. They were back at the beginning thirty-six hours after the assassination. Heads would roll, there was no doubt about that. His only chance to get off scot-free was to find the real killer, and at the moment he didn’t even know where to begin.

  So for the next hour Donnie wanted to write his report, get it over with, and at the same time see if it sparked any new lines of thinking.

  “There you are!”

  It was not the best way to be welcomed into the task force conference room. The man coming toward him was US Attorney Reggie Chauvin. He looked like a tiger who hadn’t had enough steak today.

  “Sir.”

  “You want to tell me just what the hell is going on? A shootout with a suspect and then I learn that your task force is ruling him out for this?”

  “If you give me some time to sit down at a computer, you’ll get to read the report like everybody else.”

  “Don’t jerk me around, Beecher!”

  The guy was practically foaming at the mouth and it had been an eternity since Donnie had wanted to slug someone as much. Yes, he felt the urge more than he had with his wife’s lover last night.

  He was coming toward him, the fancy suit his one distinguished feature, setting him apart from everyone else in the room. It was hard to tell if he was genuinely mad or if he was putting on a performance.

  “This has become political, Detective.”

  “It’s a homicide investigation. It’s what I do. So I would kindly ask you to step off, okay?”

  “It’s not a homicide investigation,” he snapped. “It’s an international incident! I have the Attorney General breathing down my neck to solve this thing. The State Department is in a frenzy. The military is on high alert and all our ambassadors are working overtime to appease our allies. The balance of power is on the tipping point right now, Beecher, and it’s my job to keep you in line.”

  “Keep me in line? Are you fucking kidding me? When I want a babysitter, I’ll go on Craigslist. Now let me do my job.”

  “You don’t have the faintest clue how politics work, do you?”

  Donnie stepped closer, his anger rising. “I’m not a politician, sir.”

  He always hated the US Attorney job in general. It wasn’t about justice for these guys, it was about career advancement. They wound up governors, FBI directors, and secretaries of justice. They wanted their names in the paper as much as possible. The Southern District of New York was an especially important steppingstone for greater things.

  “You can’t stall anymore, Beecher. You have to fix this now or I’ll find someone who will.”

  Not able to stand it any longer, fatigue getting to him, Donnie went up to his face. “You have no goddamn idea how to conduct a homicide investigation. While you sip your country club martinis and try to build cases against stockbrokers who you will never prosecute anyway, me, my people, are doing the legwork.”

  “You watch your tone,” Chauvin muttered through clenched teeth.

  “What are you going to do? Get me off the case? Fire me? I’m just waiting for you to do it,
buddy.”

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  “And it will be my pleasure as well to go to the press with this. This pretty girl from Channel 3 News practically begged to interview me earlier. How awesome would it be for me to tell her the truth, that cops like me are being bullied by politicians? How would the people react if they knew politicians wanted people railroaded just so they can have their fifteen minutes of fame?”

  “You’re way out of line…”

  A hand grabbed Donnie’s elbow, tugging him back. “That’s enough now, Detective.”

  He resisted for a moment and then turned to see who was touching him. It was Assistant US Attorney Simon Lambright, his wife’s lover.

  Emma recognized him and gasped, having had no idea who he was at the time. He had a black eye, his cheek was swollen.

  “You mind your fucking business, Lambright.”

  “It’s time for everybody to relax.”

  “And we all know how you like to relax, don’t we? Seducing other people’s wives and whatnot.”

  Chauvin was puzzled. “What is he talking about, Simon?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Does it have anything to do with what happened to your face?”

  “Yeah, why don’t you tell him what happened to your face,” Donnie said with a malicious grin.

  “What? You want me to tell everybody how you’re an exemplary father?”

  “You son of a bitch…”

  “You want me to tell everyone here how you can’t be relied on?” Simon added. “Oh I know, how about I tell everyone that I had to bail your daughter out of jail this morning.”

  Donnie’s face fell. “What did you say?”

  At that, Simon felt powerful and his face took on a smug expression. “It’s because of me that Sierra isn’t being arraigned right now for second degree possession. So the situation is really simple. You solve this homicide as fast as you can with no other screw ups. You have until tomorrow night. After that, somebody else gets a chance at the bat and you’ll be dispensing parking tickets until your pension kicks in.”

  Simon looked at his boss, nodded to him, and they both stormed out.