“So, in other words, Beka didn’t tell you anything about herself to unburden her soul.”
“Beka told me things were not”—he stumbled on the words—“turning out as she planned. She was Gabriel’s objet d’art, or a doll, I think was the word she used.”
“Did she tell you any specific incidents?” Loch asked.
“If she got so much as a flu-bug, he would make her sleep in the guest room until she was well. It also had become an obsession for him to be making molds of her body. I am an artist as well. Gabe’s techniques intrigue me—casting, mold-making. He was very successful.” Hans’s English was awkward and his accent made it even harder to understand, but Lochwood was slowly following the monk’s meaning. “He had her pose and then wrapped some sort of thing on her legs or arms—I am not sure how to call it, but he was trying to capture an essence of movement.”
“That doesn’t sound like grounds for murder, though,” Gary mumbled.
“No,” Hans agreed.
“What about her hair? Would she have cut her hair to anger him?” Loch asked.
“Possibly.”
“You think she cut it out of grief?” Gary asked. “Doesn’t cutting hair mean something in Zen?”
“Ah, to renounce one’s attachment to vanity and worldly things. I do not think Beka was ready for such an act.” He smiled. “She liked being beautiful.”
“So, you don’t think it sounds like a murderer’s last statement before dying?”
“Perhaps.” Hans was too noncommittal for Loch’s liking. “But Beka would not kill a mosquito, why would she kill a man?”
“Perhaps the man bothered her more than a mosquito.” Loch was starting to get the hang of monk-speak.
“To kill, who can fathom what it would take?” Hans stopped, then shut his eyes and added, “She was very angry at him. “
“Why?”
“There was a mold. I’m not sure how to say … I am a carver. Gabe likes to cast … It was like plaster sculpture, in the barn, that made her mad. She was so upset.”
“When was this?”
“A few days ago. She told me she had just destroyed something Gabe had made that was not art.”
“What was it exactly?”
“The question you should ask is who.” Hans sipped his coffee and waited.
Loch waited for the monk to continue. He looked as if he had slipped into deep contemplation, though, and wasn’t about to answer anything unless he was asked the correct question. “Okay,” Loch finally asked, “who was it?”
“Ah, who, that is the question. Someone she’d known years ago. Todd something.”
Devon and Frank loaded the vials of blood samples into a tray and walked them over to Hematology precisely at eight a.m. Murray Wu was waiting with a cup of coffee in one hand and a clipboard in the other. “How many vials?” he asked.
Devon stared at his head.
“Twenty,” Frank answered.
“Shit, sounds like a real mess.”
“It was.” They began the paperwork to verify his receipt of the samples while Devon reached out and touched Murray’s hair.
“What gives?” He backed up and looked at her suspiciously.
“Murray.” Her voice was soft and sexy.
“Help me, Frank.” Murray looked at the older man pleadingly.
“Can I have a sample of your hair?”
“What?”
“Just an inch or so.” She pulled out a pair of scissors from her back pocket.
“What’s this crusty old stuff?” Murray asked, holding up a bag and trying to ignore her.
“I found it way up inside the hilt of a samurai sword, one of the weapons at the scene.”
“Cool—old samurai blood?”
“Or Chinese,” Frank suggested.
“Not as cool, but hey, it could be some white guy’s, too!” Murray winked at him.
“Can you tell how old the blood is?” Devon asked.
“Sure, might take a while, but it’d be fun to find out.”
“You’re so sick, Murray.” Frank signed off on the form and handed the tray over.
“No sicker than you folks.” Murray took the tray from the detectives. “Okay, I’ll get with you tomorrow morning. The older samples may take longer to run. What are we looking for?”
“Anything identifying,” Devon said.
“Type, illnesses, diabetes … the regular run-through?” He moved away from her again. “Back off, Halsey.”
“It’s for a good cause.”
“All the specs,” Frank assured him. “Thanks, Murray.”
“Frank, don’t leave me alone with her.”
Frank ducked out the door as Devon made her move. She snipped a chunk out of his hair and slipped around the counter before he could feel the hole she’d made in the back of his head.
“Halsey!” She fled.
Devon returned to the Crime Scene lab and pulled out the scissors she had bagged from the zendo. She held up Murray’s hair and compared it with the hair Hans had found at the Buddha and inside the zendo. She had already verified that it was Beka’s hair in both places, but she was interested in something else and that was the way the hair follicle had been cut. What bothered her was the cut seemed dull, not crisp and sharp like Beka would have wanted. Even if she was cutting her hair off in grief, Devon could not see her friend making it a hack job—yet that’s what this was.
She studied the angle of the cut on Beka’s hair, then snipped Murray’s donation in the same direction and slipped it into a slide. There was a slight difference but she wasn’t sure it was something to base a case around. She had used the same scissors—actually, she assumed she had used the same scissors. Maybe there was another pair somewhere; she asked the secretary for her pair and repeated the experiment. The secretary’s scissors were much sharper than the zendo pair she had first used to cut Murray’s hair, but both scissors gave his hair an almost clean edge, while Beka’s hair seemed frayed and split. She cut a piece of paper with both pairs of scissors and studied the trim—the zendo scissors were definitely dull, covered with wax from cleaning candlesticks and cutting incense sticks in half. The secretary’s scissors cut clean and sharp.
“You got anything?” Frank asked.
“Yeah, plenty of nothing.” She got up from the microscope and went to the evidence locker. If she couldn’t solve the case that way, she would solve it another. “I’m heading into New York; if you see Loch, tell him I’ll be at Gabe’s loft around five or six.”
“Try to have a good time, Dev.”
“I’m going to work,” she reminded her partner.
He smiled at her. “That’s what I meant.”
She dialed Loch’s cellphone as she headed for her car and left a message for him. “I’m on my way to the city. I can’t believe you let me get sandbagged by Houck. Call me later on my cell and let me know if you’re coming in so I can kill you in person. Remember, honey, never mess with a Crime Scene detective. We know how to get away with murder.” She paused, trying to decide if she should say anything else, then clicked send and returned the phone to the breast pocket of her blue Crime Scene jacket. She threw her backpack in the front seat, complete with her portable crime-scene kit, toothbrush, and a change of clothes. Devon had a motto, one she and Beka had adopted during the ’80s: Always carry a toothbrush, you never know where you might spend the night (or with whom). Since then, Devon had amended the motto to include her crime kit, because you never knew when you were going to find a nice crime scene. She pulled out of the precinct parking lot and headed west to the city, instead of east.
Hans walked into the zendo as usual. There were no hairs on the altar, a relief after yesterday’s surprises, and he set about sweeping with his usual concentration and focus. Deep inhalations, deep exhalations, he counted his breaths with his broom strokes. At seven-thirty a.m., the door to the zendo opened and Jenny O’Doherty arrived to take on the role of Jikido for the morning service. They bowed to each other a
nd Hans left the rest of the preparations for service to his acolyte, then went to get dressed in his robes and kesa.
The gongs began the moment he walked through the door. Everyone bowed three times in unison as he knelt in three full prostrations before Buddha.
“The Great Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra,” the Ino intoned. The Makugio began to beat the hollow gourd that kept their chanting in perfect time while Hans began the series of rituals that always cleared his mind, if not his heart.
“O Sariputra, all things are expression of emptiness …” The congregation sounded sleepy at first, but soon their voices cracked into the smooth timbre that made Hans’s bones vibrate. His own voice resonated through the room. “… not born, not destroyed, not stained, not pure, neither waxing nor waning …” Hans thought of Beka—destroyed? Beka—gone or eternally recycled in the karmic flow of reincarnation—who or what would she come back as? “… supreme, perfect enlightenment …”
He usually achieved a deep level of meditation while chanting, but this morning, as he bowed and carried the incense around the shrine of Buddha and bowed again in gassho, he found his eyes checking the chanters around him. Could one of them have so much hate in their heart as to kill Beka and her husband? He wasn’t even sure why he would think such a thing, but from the questions Loch and Gary had asked he had gotten the feeling they weren’t completely sure what had happened or why her hair had been left as an offering at the zendo. “… by which all suffering is cleared. This is no other than truth.” It made more sense, in Hans’s opinion, to look for a murderer rather than to assume Beka was guilty, but then he knew Beka. She was like a daughter to him. His voice bellowed deeply across the room as he felt the emotions of his loss rising to the surface. “Set forth this mantra and proclaim: Gate, Gate, Paragate Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha! Gate, Gate, Paragate Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!”
The group grew silent as the Ino began to recite, “The absolute light, luminous throughout the whole universe, unfathomable excellence, penetrating everywhere …”
Hans pressed his head into the floor and raised his hands above his head, as if propelling the universe to take away his burdens and answer the unanswerable.
“We especially pray for the health and well-being of …” The Ino read the same list of names from the zendo rolls. Hans knew each of the names by heart, some of whom had been on the list for a year, all of whom he had written down himself. “Edna Harmon, Leonard Peltier, Rena Gelissen, Devon Halsey, and …” The Ino paused so each member could quietly name the person in their thoughts to whom they wished serene health, perfect enlightenment.
Hans almost forgot what he was doing. What was Devon’s name doing on the list? And who had written it there?
The service was over; everyone bowed to Buddha, then turned to face each other, bowing as Hans made his way out of the zendo. Ten seconds later, he was back inside the chamber and looking at the dedication. “Did you write this, Peter?”
“No, Roshi.” Peter, the Ino, looked at the handwriting at the bottom of the list. “I always let you add the names.”
“Jenny?” Hans asked.
“No, Roshi. I know who Devon is, but I didn’t think she needed our prayers.” He held up the list so the others could see it; everyone shook their heads.
Hans nodded, stared at the way Devon’s name had been scribbled, and acknowledged, “This is not my writing.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Buddha-way is supreme; I vow to embody it.
—THE FOUR VOWS IN ZEN
Lochwood explained who Todd Daniels was to his partner as they traversed from Northwest Woods through Sag Harbor and up to Scuttlehole Road. Yellow police tape still encircled the perimeter of the Imamura-Montebello house, and would until Loch gave the okay to have it removed, but he wasn’t going to do that yet. He and Gary drove up the driveway and parked the car on the periphery of the scene, then signed the roster so their presence could be recorded. He was pleased to see local authorities following precise protocol procedures—he’d been nervous about leaving the scene open to snooping neighbors, but because of the location of the estate and the holidays, regular rubberneckers had been kept to a minimum.
“How you guys doing? Quite a scene here, eh? It’s our fourth stabbing—hell, I guess its our fifth, too—in thirteen years.” Aside from being overly chatty, the duty officer seemed to be doing his job.
“Crime is up,” Gary mumbled.
“So it is. Exciting. Course, you boys get all the fun.”
Lochwood wasn’t sure how much fun he was having, but knew what the guy meant. He could never spend his day kicking pebbles around and watching tape flap in the wind. Being stationary for too long drove him crazy, that’s why he didn’t like to sleep.
“A lot of history to this place. Folks been wanting to get on the premises for years. Lots of strange happenings. You know, artist types.” Loch didn’t answer in hopes that silence would discourage his monologue. “You going to check out the house again?”
“We’re heading up to the barn,” Gary told him.
“Ah, that’s the artist’s studio.” He pointed. “Right up that hill. You can’t miss it.”
“We’ve been here before. Thanks for the directions.”
“Sure, anytime, glad to be of help. Anything you need just whistle. I’m on night duty, every night.” No wonder the guy couldn’t stop talking. Loch excused him with a brief nod.
The chalk lines where Beka had breathed her last had soaked almost completely into the dirt, and Lochwood stopped to study the shape of the fading lines one last time. The lines sans the body almost formed an arrow, as if she had been pointing to something besides heaven.
“I can’t see Halsey hanging out with these people.” Gary was looking across the compound.
“Why not?”
“It’s like the guard says, weird artists.”
“I think Beka had the same thing to say about Halsey hanging out with us.”
Loch headed toward the end of the barn and looked out the back door. There were uninterrupted fields softly rolling to the west lined with forest on both sides that seemed dense and untampered. He remembered Devon telling him that Gabe and Beka were considering donating the land to the Nature Conservancy, but there was a large realtor’s sign posted in the middle of the acreage so it could be read from the road—sixty-five acres, zoned for development, with the realtor’s name and number underneath. Loch wrote down the information.
“What about that trash bin?” Gary pointed out. “It doesn’t look like it’s been dumped in a while.”
“Your idea. Your search.” Loch held out his hands for a leg up.
“Prick.” Gary ignored Loch’s proffered hands and stepped up to the garbage bin to look inside. “Looks like a lot of crap.”
“That’s because it is crap. Get in it and stop acting like a pussy!”
Gary sighed, climbed over the rim, and stood on the trash heap. “Look, more crap!”
“Whatta surprise.” Loch watched as Gary gingerly went through the motions of a search through garbage.
“Wait a minute, here’s something.” He held up a slightly flexible Plasticine that looked like it’d been cut in pieces.
“I bet that would hold a print,” Loch suggested, but he wasn’t sure what the print would mean if they couldn’t put it into context. “Any plaster in there?”
“There’s some very wet and mushy stuff at the bottom. Looks like nasty mashed potatoes. Here’s another strip.” Gary pulled out two more pieces of the material that seemed to hold some kind of shape and crawled out of the dumpster. “Everything else is garbage and this probably is, too, but what the hell.”
They lined them up on the ground and looked at them, then Loch turned them over. “Look at that indent and crease, that’s an eye.”
Gary turned over another piece. “You lookin’ at it backwards, or inside out?”
“Both.”
“That would make this a chin?”
“Looks lik
e it. Do they belong together?”
“No telling without the missing parts.” Loch glanced at his partner. This time he would help.
Together they pushed away some lumber resting on top of the heap. “Got something!” Gary held up a partial chunk of plaster. It was pocked slightly from where the snow and sleet had pelted it, but the form was unmistakable—it was someone’s face. “You think this is what she broke?”
“Only Halsey can tell us for sure.”
Fifteen minutes later they had found only two more pieces of Plasticine and a number of smaller pieces that were too torn to make much sense of, but Loch wanted all of it. “We’ll put Halsey or Landal on this when we get back.”
“Who knows, it might be something.”
Loch paused to think for a moment and Gary let him alone. “Why would Gabe do a sculpture of a missing kid?”
“Maybe he was jealous.”
Gary put the pieces into an evidence bag and looked at his watch. “We should get hold of Jenny O’Doherty again, find out if she knew whether there had been any legal separation proceedings, and if so, who instigated the separation.” Lochwood was still staring out at the fields, so Gary punched O’Doherty’s number into his cellphone and continued talking to his partner while the phone chirped. “Then let’s swing by that exercise studio and find Beka’s partner, Edilio.”
The path from the barn led past a pond, frozen and austere in the early morning air. On the other side of the water, probably a half mile away, was a road. “Did we check around the pond and the road on the other side of the pond for any tire marks or footprints?” Loch asked.
“A local team was over there yesterday morning.”
“What did they find?”
“Deer tracks.”
Gary stopped speaking as O’Doherty picked up. Lochwood headed back down the path and started to sign them out. A scrap of red moved behind the mountain-laurel hemming the pond shore, then darted back into the trees. “What was that?” he wondered out loud.
The Weeping Buddha Page 13
