by Mike Markel
“And about Connie traveling with the debate?”
“It dawned on me, perhaps a year or fifteen months ago, that having Connie travel with us would be practical. She is a very efficient worker, and with her along, Arlen would not have to go to the trouble, the expense, and the risk of retaining an escort on the road. Connie understood the arrangement, and she is apparently content with it.”
“Apparently, yes,” I said. “And what is Connie’s relationship with Jonathan Ahern?”
“Connie assured me she is not intimate with Jon, and therefore there was no danger she would contract a disease that would infect Arlen. In fact, Connie agreed to my demand that she commit to celibacy—except for her relationship with Arlen, of course—and I have no reason to believe she has reneged on the agreement.”
“Did you know Jonathan and Connie are in love with each other?”
“No, I didn’t,” she said, uncrossing her legs and re-crossing them in the other direction, “but I’m pleased to learn that. Love is a beautiful experience when you’re young.”
That’s one of the perks of this job: you get to meet really interesting people. But Margaret was right, of course: love is for the young. The young don’t understand Newton’s first law of marriage: if you can fall in love, you can fall out of love. If you married the guy because you believed your love was special—he wouldn’t get bored, wouldn’t drift away, wouldn’t turn into someone so different that you not only didn’t love him anymore but couldn’t even imagine why you once did love him—well, that just shows you were too young to get married. Margaret’s way was a whole lot smarter: get your own money, form a partnership with another person who’s got his own money, and let him bring his mistress along so he won’t get the clap and have to cancel a gig because he’s pissing razor blades.
I looked over to Ryan, giving him a chance to ask Margaret any questions. He shook his head, the gesture appearing to capture his mood at that point. “All right, then, Ms. Hagerty, thank you very much for your candor. I hope we don’t have to disturb you again.”
Margaret Hagerty remained in her chair, her face telling me nothing as she watched me and Ryan leave.
* * *
Downstairs in the lobby, Ryan said, “Could you use a coffee or something?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s getting kind of squirrelly up on the second floor. How about right here at the bar? It’s on me.”
Ryan nodded, and I got us a couple of club sodas from the bartender, a fifty-something woman, hair dyed a red I’d never seen in nature, wearing too much turquoise eye shadow and Raggedy Ann rouge. The Courtyard had her in a starched white shirt, buttoned to the neck, with a shiny black clip-on bow tie. I had no idea what kind of tone she was supposed to be setting.
Ryan said, “Margaret’s a piece of work, huh?”
“Yeah, but I’ve seen weirder.”
“You’re kidding. She’s pimping out Connie to her husband, and she says she’s glad Connie’s in love?”
“That’s what you’d call irony, right?”
“No,” Ryan said. “That’s what I’d call sin.”
“Yeah, that, too,” I said. “The thing pissing me off is we’re not getting any straight answers from these people. They start out talking like they all come from Mayberry, then we confront them and they reveal a little more.”
“And they’re not even embarrassed or anything when they get caught lying.”
“Well, don’t ever expect that,” I said. “I guess if you’re the kind of person who’s pimping a girl for your husband, your natural reaction when someone calls you on it is to suggest they’re small town.”
Harsh light from the fluorescent bulbs in the tiny gift shop next door spilled over into the bar. The bartender was talking with a younger woman wearing the hotel blazer. She was leaning with her chin on her fist, elbow on the bar, the other hand lazily stirring her ginger ale, looking like she talked with this bartender just about every day at this time, and they’d run out of things to say a long time ago. The woman in the blazer looked at her watch, her break apparently over, and got up and left, waving halfheartedly to the bartender.
“So, what next?”
“I think we should talk with someone from Soul Savers who might be able to tell us who’s being straight with us.”
“Yeah, if anyone is. Let me take a look at the site again,” Ryan said, pulling out his laptop and booting it. “You want another club soda?” he said.
“No,” I said, draining off the remainder of my glass. “I’m good.”
“I’ll get the next one.” Ryan pulled up the site and clicked on About Us. “How about this?” he said, pointing to the link for the Board of Directors.
“Yeah, follow that,” I said. We scanned the list of the six members of the Soul Savers Board. There was an evangelical pastor, a priest, two presidents of church-related universities, a business leader, and the founder of Soul Savers.
“How about this guy: Archbishop Brian McManus?” Ryan pointed to the Chairman of the Board of Directors. We read the little bio after his name. A Doctor of Divinity from Notre Dame, Archbishop for the Archdiocese of Denver, covering all of northern Colorado. “He looks legit,” Ryan said.
“Google him, will ya?” Ryan pulled up the site for his archdiocese. “Appointed in 1999 by the Pope. He’s officially the Most Reverend Brian L. McManus, O.F.M. Cap., whatever that means. BA in Philosophy, Loyola Marymount; MA in Theology, Catholic University; Doctor of Theology, Fordham University. Pastor in Brooklyn; Scranton, Pennsylvania; Colorado Springs. Secretary and Treasurer for the Archdiocese, then the co-chancellor of the Archdiocese of Chicago, then Archbishop of Denver.”
Ryan said, “Look at this, will you? In Chicago he was Secretary of the Archdiocesan Commissions on Ecumenism and Human Relations, on the Chicago Conference on Religion and Race and the Interreligious Committee for Urban Affairs. Professor of Canon Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, a consultor of the Congregation for the Clergy.” Ryan scrolled down the page. “It just keeps going. National Conference of Catholic Bishops. All kinds of committees in Chicago, Denver, Rome. Four honorary doctorates, served on two Presidential commissioners, on race and on poverty.”
“Okay, I’ve heard enough. He’s the real deal,” I said. “Read me his phone number,” I said, rummaging through my big leather shoulder bag for my notebook. “I think he’s worth a call.” As Ryan was giving me the number, I remembered I’d gotten a call when we were interviewing Margaret Hagerty. “Wait a second,” I said, grabbing my phone and studying the screen. “Harold Breen called me. Maybe he’s got something from the autopsy. Let me call him real quick, then I’ll call the Archbishop and see if he’s got anything.”
I dialed the Medical Examiner at headquarters. “Harold, Karen. You got anything on Arlen Hagerty?” I listened for a moment. “Great, ten minutes,” I said. “Harold’s got some results for us. Let’s go back to headquarters. I’ll call the Archbishop, then we’ll see what Harold’s figured out.”
As we walked out to the Crown Vic, I got the first sense we were really going into winter. The wind had a kick to it. We could see it on the faces of the people we passed; they looked grim, hunched over, holding their coats shut, like winter had Montana in its teeth and was going to hold on tight and shake the life out of it for four or five months.
Back at headquarters, I settled in at my desk and dialed the archdiocese. I got caught up in phone tree—three different people before I could get someone who would talk with me about the Archbishop’s schedule. I explained it was in regard to the murder of Arlen Hagerty. The Archbishop was very busy, the woman said.
Why do they always say things like that? Do they think I expect the Archbishop to be flipping pennies off the edge of a table, trying to land them in a shot glass?
The assistant told me the Archbishop would be able to phone me in an hour and could give me ten minutes. The hour would give her time enough to check out if there was a Karen Seagate or a Rawlings Polic
e Department or, in fact, a Rawlings or a Montana.
“Okay,” I said to Ryan, “let’s see what Harold’s got.” We walked downstairs, past Robin’s crime lab to the ME’s office.
“Hey, kids,” Harold Breen said as he looked up from a microscope.
I loved Harold but hated his lab, with its tile walls and floor, the harsh, bright fluorescent lights, the astringent chemical smell that got up in your nose and stayed there for a couple days. Plus, there was usually a corpse or two lying on steel gurneys.
On a good day, the bodies were covered with sheets. Today was not a good day. Arlen Hagerty lay on a metal table, uncovered, his torso a huge empty red and purple cavity, the organs on a shiny steel tray on a cart next to the corpse. “What did you figure out, Harold?” I said to him, looking straight into his eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at the body.
“Well, I’m pretty sure it was foul play,” he said.
“Good, so we can rule out twenty identical sharp objects falling out of the sky?” Harold always started with the same joke, and I had to respond with a victim-appropriate “so we can rule out” response. Then he would answer me straight. I didn’t mind.
“Yeah, what happened was someone, probably right handed from the angles, used a reasonably sharp instrument, maybe a screw driver, to put twenty-four holes in your guy’s chest and abdomen. He bled out, but he would have died of multiple organ failure anyway because there were a bunch of significant lacerations to his heart, his lungs, and a handful of other important parts they told us about in doctor school. He was probably dead in ten minutes.”
“What have you got on the killer?” I said.
“As I said, right handed. Reasonably good strength: the weapon hit a bunch of ribs and took pretty big chunks out of them. And pissed. He was really pissed.”
“From the number of wounds?”
“Number and severity. If you were just trying to kill this guy, you’d’ve known after four or five stabs he was a goner. The blood would be geysering out of his chest. Let me show you something else over here,” Harold said, pointing to the steel tray next to Hagerty’s body.
“Show Ryan,” I said. “I’ll be waiting over here.” Ryan walked over to the cart, his heels tapping on the tile floor.
“Look at this,” Harold said to him, pointing to an organ on the tray. “Know what it is?”
“Well, it’s kidney shaped,” he said. “I have no idea.”
I was really starting to like Ryan.
“Very good, young man. Now see that slit in it?”
Ryan leaned in a little closer. “That’s a puncture wound. You saying the killer stabbed Hagerty in the back?”
“No, that’s the interesting thing. There were no entrance wounds on the back. The killer pushed the weapon in with such force it traveled a good twelve or fifteen inches and took out this kidney. I’m telling you, this guy was really pissed.”
Ryan said, “I’m going to write that down in my notes: ‘really pissed.’ Any defensive wounds on the vic?”
“No,” Harold said. “I did find some tissue under a couple of fingers on each hand. I got it to Robin, who’s following up on the DNA.”
“Anything else, Harold?” I said.
“Thank you for asking, Karen. There is one other thing. The murderer didn’t have to kill him. He was going to die anyway.”
Harold liked to save the interesting things for the end. “I didn’t go to doctor school, Harold, like you did, but aren’t we all going to die anyway?”
“Yes, Karen, that’s true, but not before the end of the year.” He paused, a tiny smile creasing his fleshy face, turning his eyes into slits.
“Really? What was his problem?”
“Dilated cardiomyopathy.”
“English?”
“Big sick heart.”
“How big?”
“Your heart is about the size of your fist. His was double that. It was huge, and the muscle was all slack. Which means it wasn’t pumping blood efficiently. So I opened it up. Look at this, Ryan.” My partner peered in. “The veins and arteries were clogged to about twenty percent of capacity. Watch,” he said, picking up a scalpel and making a two-inch incision along a big artery connected to the heart.
“What’s all that yellow stuff?” Ryan said.
“That’s the cholesterol. You know, you want to convince people to eat healthy, you’d open up a vein or artery like this.”
I’ve always wondered how Harold can understand the workings of the human body so well and still stay about three-fifty. Another irony, I guess.
“So to confirm the diagnosis, I opened up the lungs. Look here,” Harold said, making a small incision in one of the lungs. A pale, milky fluid oozed out. “As you may remember, lungs are supposed to be full of air, not fluid. This is another marker for DCM. And look at his swollen ankles. He was in end stage.”
“And that’s because of his size?”
“That’s part of it. He was carrying about an extra hundred and twenty-five, hundred and fifty pounds. So he was officially morbidly obese, which of course is a killer in itself. But I also checked his liver. Here, get this,” Harold said, pointing to a black organ on the tray. “It’s huge. And you see the pebbling on the surface? It’s supposed to be smooth, with a handful of little holes. You’re looking at advanced cirrhosis. So don’t drink.”
Ryan said, “I don’t drink.”
“What are you, a Boy Scout?”
“Pretty much. Mormon.”
“Good for you. I bet you’ve got a good-looking, smooth liver.”
“I get compliments.”
“I like your new partner, Karen.”
“Me, too. So, Harold, you’re saying there’s a good chance Hagerty would have died soon?”
“No, I’m saying it’s a certainty he would have died within two months, probably one month.”
“Did he know it?”
“Well, it’s pretty hard to miss you’ve got something really wrong. He’d have heart palpitations, shortness of breath, leg pain, chronic fatigue. People tell me fatsos have a lot of those symptoms,” he said, “though of course I wouldn’t know personally. Whether he went to a doc, I don’t know. Most of the tests for DCM are non-invasive. Some, like cardiac catheterization or endomyocardial biopsy, would leave scars. But with this guy sliced up worse than a Thanksgiving turkey at a homeless shelter, no way you’d be able to see anything.”
“All right,” I said, “so if you knew his medical condition and wanted him dead, all you’d have to do is wait.”
“Yeah,” Harold Breen said, “but if you also hated him and wanted him to know it, or you just flipped out—a good long-necked screwdriver sends s clear message.”
“Thanks, Harold. Ryan, you two boys can stay down here in the den and play. I wanna get back upstairs in case the Archbishop calls.” As I left, I caught Ryan asking Harold if he could try making a couple of cuts in an artery. I didn’t stay to hear Harold’s response.
* * *
I was glad to be out of Harold’s lab. I could use a few minutes away from Ryan, too. He seemed like a good guy. He was smart and didn’t seem to mind letting me be the senior detective. That in itself was something, because I didn’t think any of the four other detectives, all of them closer to my age or even older than I was, would tolerate it for a minute. But still, I didn’t know Ryan well, and—shit—he was closer to my son’s age than to mine.
I wasn’t sure how much he had heard about me. I assume he knew about my one-night stand with a uniform, which enabled my ex-husband to grab custody of Tommy and got me in trouble with the chief. Ryan had to know that. One thing I learned from my time in blue is that uniforms love to watch detectives screw up, that they keep score of everything, from gossip to bending regs to full-blown corruption. It’s a class system, as unforgiving as anything the British had devised. And the fact a uniform could become a detective—that all detectives started as uniforms but most uniforms would never become detectives—makes the resentment th
at much greater.
I sat there at my desk, waiting for the Archbishop to call, thinking about how good a Jack Daniel’s double would taste. I wasn’t counting on him calling. Big shots like him didn’t tend to pick up the phone and call small fry like me. Still, he might, if he thought the Hagerty murder would bring a shitstorm of bad publicity to an organization he was associated with. He might want to cooperate if only to help me get the story off the TV and the web. But if that was the way he was thinking, I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to call when his assistant said he would. Important people loved to be running a little late. It showed how much the little people needed them, and how gracious and compassionate they themselves were in granting them the extra little time they didn’t actually deserve but deeply appreciated.
I was starting to get really pissed off at this pompous asshole I had never met who would keep me from getting home on time. The phone rang. “Seagate,” I said.
“Detective Seagate, this is Brian McManus calling.”
Holy shit. One, he calls. Two, he uses his name, like he’s a human. “Archbishop McManus, thanks for calling.”
“My pleasure, Detective. This is about Arlen Hagerty, I assume?”
“Yes, it is, Archbishop. First, though, what should I call you?”
“How about ‘Archbishop’? We’re not at a barbeque, but we’re not at the Vatican, either.”
“Okay, great, Archbishop. I don’t want to take up a lot of your time, so let me get right to it. I called you in your capacity as Chairman of the Board of Soul Savers. I’m the lead detective in the Arlen Hagerty case, and I was hoping you could give me some perspective on the people who were here with the debate.”
“I’ll be happy to try, Detective, but you should know that as Chairman of the Board, my duty is to oversee the operations of Soul Savers, to make sure they are adhering to best practices in running a charitable and philanthropic organization. I might not know as much about the personalities of the Soul Savers leadership as you think.”
“I understand, sir, but let me ask a couple of questions,” I said. “About Margaret Hagerty. Could you explain her role in the organization?”
