by Robin Cook
She did call out to him, but he was not to be deterred. His goal was to get the cigarette just as soon as he could and crush it into harmless cinders. As he got to the door, he threw Luke aside, grabbed the doorknob, ripped open the door, and started down, all in the same motion. Unfortunately, a huge ball of exploding gasoline vapor seeking lower pressure rocketed upward and immediately seared off his eyelashes, eyebrows, and most of his hair. Within seconds the old wooden house with its hundreds upon hundreds of pockets of air within its aged walls was a flaming inferno, and the fact that the only insulation in the building was crumbled period newspaper caused the fire to spread even faster. Seconds later, the heat flux soared over the thirteen-hundred-degree flash point such that objects within the building, including people, spontaneously burst into flame.
Sana and Shawn, although on fire, did reach the front door, only to find it impossible to open.
Fifteen minutes later, a neighbor, noticing the glow coming from outside his house, looked out and then frantically called nine-one-one. Eleven minutes later the first fire trucks appeared, but by then the only possible thing to save was the chimney.
Epilogue
7:49 A.M., THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2008
NEW YORK CITY
Since Jack wasn’t doing autopsies for the week, he didn’t make it a point to arrive at the OCME particularly early, and today he arrived at seven-forty-nine. On normal days by that time he surely would have already picked out what he considered the best cases and would already be down in the autopsy room with Vinnie Amendola, giving him a hard time or vice versa. Instead, Jack was content to be locking up his bike at the side of one of the intake garages in full view of security. When he was finished, he gave security a wave, comforted by knowing the guys would keep an eye on his bike.
Since Shawn and Sana were not expected in until ten or thereabouts, Jack decided to finish the paperwork on all his outstanding cases if possible, so that when he went back to doing autopsies he’d be starting out with a perfectly clean slate, something he’d not experienced in the thirteen years he’d been there. Wanting to get a coffee as well as a sense of what was generally happening in the morgue that morning, Jack went up to the ID room, where he knew one of the better MEs was on duty for the week, Dr. Riva Mehta. She had been Laurie’s office mate for many years and was a dedicated, intelligent, and hardworking colleague, which was more than Jack could say about too many others on the staff.
He could smell the coffee even before he got there. Although he teased Vinnie mercilessly about most everything else, Jack never teased him about making the coffee.
Vinnie had it down to a science, and by not varying his technique, the coffee was not only good for institutional brew, it was also consistent. After a half-hour bike ride, it always hit the spot.
“Anything particularly interesting?” Jack asked Riva, squeezing behind her where she was sitting at the desk to glance over her shoulder before turning his attention to the coffee.
“It’s about time, you lazy bum,” a husky voice announced.
Jack looked up from the coffee machine to see his old friend Lieutenant Detective Lou Soldano toss Vinnie’s Daily News aside and struggle to his feet. As usual, when Lou appeared early in the morning, it looked as if he’d been up all night, which he had been, with his tie loosened, his shirt’s top button unbuttoned, and his broad cheeks and neck stubbled. To complete the picture, the dark bags under his eyes hung down like a hound dog’s to intersect with his tired smile creases, while his closely cropped hair, which was never particularly combed, was standing up on end near his cowlick. It looked like he hadn’t been home for a week, not just overnight.
“Lou, old friend,” Jack said with true affection. “Just the man I want to see.”
“Yeah, how’s that?” Lou asked warily, as he sauntered over to join Jack at the coffee machine. They briefly shook hands.
“I never apologized for the ridiculous conversation I forced you to have. Remember? It was about chiropractic.”
“Of course I remember. Why do you think you have to apologize?”
“I was on a mini-crusade, and I think I carried it all a little too far for a couple of people, yourself included.”
“Bullshit, but if you want to apologize, fine! You’re forgiven. Now apologize for coming in here so late. I’ve been here for forty-five minutes thinkin’ you’d be coming through the door any second.”
“I’m off autopsies this week.”
“Christ! Wouldn’t you know! How about letting me know next time?”
“I would have let you know this time if I thought you cared. What’s up?”
“It was a busy night last night, besides the usual mayhem. There was an arsonist’s fire in the West Village, which burnt up three people, two of whom the archbishop tells me you knew.”
“Who?” Jack demanded, although he had a sudden painful feeling he already knew, especially it being the West Village, with the archbishop involved. “Was it on Morton Street?”
“Yeah, it was. Forty Morton Street. How well did you know them?”
“One more than the other,” Jack said, catching his breath. He suddenly felt weak-kneed.
“Good grief,” he added, with a shake of his head. “What happened?”
“We’re still piecing it all together. How did you know them?” Jack handed Lou the coffee he was holding and then poured himself another. “I think we better sit down,” he said. When they had, Jack told the story about Shawn and Sana Daughtry, and that he had known both Shawn and the archbishop in college. Until he knew more from Lou, he didn’t mention the ossuary. “I was at Forty Morton Street last Saturday night for dinner.”
“Lucky you weren’t there last night,” Lou said. “It was a typical arsonist’s blaze. The accelerant was gasoline in the basement, but not a lot of help was needed. The house was an eighteenth-century wood-frame firetrap.”
“Have you made IDs on the three victims?”
“Reasonably, but we’re hoping for confirmation from the OCME. We’re quite sure two of the victims are the owners of the house, but we need to corroborate. Everybody is burnt up to a cinder. The third victim was more difficult to identify. We ended up finding some of his belongings, and he is now the prime arson suspect. His name we believe is Luke Hester, and it turns out he’s one of these religious nuts who lives upstate at a monastery with a dubious reputation that is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. By contacting the monastery, we learned he was on some kind of assignment to the archbishop of New York, who we then roused out of bed. From the archbishop we got the story. Apparently, this third victim, who truly is supposed to have been some kind of religious fanatic, was temporarily living with the Daughtrys. It’s the archbishop’s fear that the religious guy killed both himself and the couple as a kind of martyrdom to keep them from publishing anything negative about the Blessed Mother, Mother of God. Can you believe this? I tell you, only in New York City.”
“How was the archbishop when you spoke with him?” Jack asked. He could hardly imagine what James was thinking. Jack was sure he must be devastated.
“He was not a happy camper,” Lou admitted. “In fact, he was devastated,” he added, as if reading Jack’s inner thoughts. “Right after I told him, he couldn’t talk for several minutes.”
Jack didn’t respond but rather just shook his head.
“Well, I came over here to watch you do the posts,” Lou said. “Just in case some unexpected information becomes available, which you, in particular, are famous for.”
“Who’s doing the three burned cases?” Jack called over to Riva.
“I am,” Riva answered. “But if you want one or two or all three, just let me know.”
“No, thank you!” Jack responded. He had already made up his mind to help James rather than Lou by gathering up all the evidence of the ossuary affair and getting it into James’s hands. “There you go, Lou,” Jack said to his detective friend. “Dr. Mehta is one of the best. I’m certain you will find her more c
harming than I, and even a bit faster.”
“When are you planning on starting, honey?” Lou called over to Riva. Jack cringed.
Riva didn’t like to be called “honey” by chauvinistic policemen, as evidenced by her not bothering to answer. With his back toward Riva, Jack stepped between her and Lou and made a motion of drawing his finger beneath his chin as if cutting his throat. “No honey or darling or anything like that,” Jack whispered, for Lou’s benefit.
“Gotcha!” Lou voiced with immediate understanding. He rephrased his question and got an immediate response: fifteen minutes.
“I got a last bit of advice,” Jack said. “Don’t waste a lot of time on this investigation. It’s nothing more than a sad, regrettable tragedy in which everyone was doing what they thought they had to do.”
“I’d pretty much gotten that impression talking with the archbishop,” Lou countered.
“The monk had no criminal record whatsoever. The most curious aspect, though, was how professional he behaved, except at the end, getting burnt up himself. Our arson investigators were impressed. Not only did he use an accelerant, gasoline, but he knew how to vaporize it maximally and also how to use trailers in the basement to take the fire to all areas of the cellar in the quickest time. He even axed a few vent holes to make sure the fire rose through the house quicker than it would have done otherwise. The man was a natural arsonist.”
“I have my cell phone,” Jack said, shaking Lou’s hand again. “Right now I’m going to run over to the archbishop’s and console him. He’s probably blaming himself, since he’s the one who introduced the parties. I can’t understand why he didn’t call me.”
“You’re right about him blaming himself,” Lou said. “He said as much to me. I’m sure he’d like to hear from you.”
“Longer than I’d like to admit,” Jack said. Confident he was leaving Lou in terrific hands, Jack reversed his direction and proceeded back down to the basement, on his way to the office of the motor pool. Although he had some mild concern about irritating Calvin after the fact, Jack had it in mind to borrow a white medical examiner’s transportation team (METT) van with a driver for thirty to forty minutes. When he walked into the motor pool, he wasn’t concerned any longer. All five drivers were sitting around having coffee. Five minutes later, Jack was riding shotgun with Pete Molina driving. Pete had been one of the night drivers with whom Jack had gotten acquainted but who’d recently been moved to the day shift.
They drove quickly up to the OCME DNA building, where Jack had Pete pull into the loading dock and wait. Running inside, Jack had security open the lab the Daughtrys had been using. Locking the door behind him, Jack did not waste any time, lest Lou’s investigative team learn of the lab before Jack could remove the relics. Jack had a sudden urge to see that everything went back to its rightful owner, a job best done by James.
Back into the ossuary went everything: bones, scrolls, even the remainder of the samples Sana had been working on within the laboratory itself. When that was all in place, Jack added two more objects: the codex and Saturninus’s letter, which Shawn had brought from his office two days previously. Jack then loaded the ossuary onto the cart that Shawn had used to bring up all the glass panes.
After checking a second time to be certain he had everything, Jack pushed the cart back down to the service elevator and then to the loading dock. Luckily, Pete was still exactly where Jack had left him. If a delivery had come in, he would have had to move. After showing his ID to another member of security, Jack carried the ossuary onto the METT
van and made sure it was properly secured.
“Okay,” Pete said, starting the motor. “Where to?”
“The archbishop of New York’s residence,” Jack said.
Pete looked at Jack. “Am I supposed to know where that is?”
“Fifty-first and Madison. You can turn left on Fifty-first off Madison and pull over to the curb. You’ll be dumping me off. You don’t have to wait.” Jack didn’t elaborate for two reasons. One, he wanted the least number of people to know what he’d done, and two, he was already deep in thought of what he was going to say to James. Jack knew that had the roles been reversed, he would have been feeling cataleptic.
Once Pete had navigated the crosstown traffic and turned onto Madison, the drive up to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was slow but steady. It took a bit less than thirty minutes by the time Pete was able to pull over to the side of the road next to the residence. As soon as they’d come to a stop, Jack hopped out, slid open the van’s door, got the ossuary over to the edge, and then lifted it. By then Pete had come around, and he closed the slider.
“I appreciate the help, Pete,” Jack said over his shoulder.
“No problem,” Pete said, eyeing the stark, gray stone residence.
Jack hauled the ossuary up the front stone steps and, balancing it on a bent knee, gave the receiving bell a good pull. Within he could hear the chimes. Always mindful of possible imminent disasters, Jack could suddenly see himself dropping the awkward ossuary down the stone steps, where it would certainly shatter and dump the bones, scrolls, glass panes, codex, and Saturninus’s letter out onto the concrete. As a consequence, Jack gripped the stone more tightly and was even contemplating putting it down when the door was swept open by the same priest who’d welcomed him to lunch.
“Dr. Stapleton,” Father Maloney commented. “What can I do for you?”
“It might be nice to invite me in,” Jack suggested, with a touch of sarcasm.
“Yes, of course, come in!” Father Maloney stepped back to give room. “Is the cardinal expecting you?”
“He might be, since he knows more about what’s been going on than I, but I’m not certain. Why don’t I wait where I waited last week?”
“That is a superb idea. The archbishop is meeting now with the vicar general, but I will let him know you are here.”
“Very good,” Jack said. On his own, he’d already started down the hall, clearly remembering where the small private study was located. Father Maloney sprinted ahead and held the door ajar by the time Jack arrived. The first thing Jack did was place the ossuary on the floor. He was careful not to damage the flawless surface.
“Is there anything I can get you while you wait?”
“If you sense it is going to be a while, a newspaper might be nice.”
“Would the Times suffice?”
“That would be fine.”
Father Maloney closed the door behind him. Jack looked around the ascetic room, noting the same details he had on the previous visit, including the strong but not overbearing odor of cleaning fluid and floor wax. Already starting to get warm, he pulled off his leather jacket and tossed it onto the small club chair. Then he sat down on the mini-couch exactly as he’d done when he’d come for lunch, making him acknowledge how much a creature of habit he was.
Contrary to his concern, he did not have long to wait. Within just a few moments of Father Maloney’s departure, the door burst open. Dressed like a simple priest, James stepped into the room. After closing the door behind him, he rushed over to Jack and mimicked their greeting the week before with a brotherly hug. “Thank you, thank you, for coming right over,” James managed. It was then that he caught sight of the ossuary.
As if a schoolboy, James let go of Jack and clapped his hands in appreciation. “You already brought the ossuary! Oh, thank you! You have answered a prayer that the ossuary would come back to the Church. Tell me, is everything back into it?” James had his palms pressed together as if in prayer.
“Everything is in it,” Jack said. “Bones, samples, all of the scrolls, even Saturninus’s letter and the codex it came from. After what has happened, I felt I wanted to get it into your hands as soon as possible.”
“What did you think of this tragedy?”
“I was blown away,” Jack said. “I learned about it only an hour or so ago. I was told by a friend, Lieutenant Detective Lou Soldano.”
“I met him last night,” Ja
mes said. “He was here at the residence.”
“He told me,” Jack said. “He’s a good man.”
“I sensed that.”
“Why didn’t you call me as soon as you learned what had happened?”
“I don’t know. I thought about it, but I’m so confused. Jack, I don’t know if I’m guilty or not.”
Jack looked askance at James. “What are you talking about? What do you think you might be guilty of?”
“Murder,” James said. Unable to maintain eye contact with Jack, he looked away. “I don’t know if I didn’t suspect in the hidden corners of my mind that there was a chance this might happen. When one plays with fire, pardon the pun, one can get burnt. I knew the person I was asking for would be unbalanced, maybe even to the extent of feeling he could use sin to fight what he considered to be a bigger sin. Luke called me yesterday morning to tell me that Shawn was about to change his mind and not publish. He said he was confident of success, and it was more due to tactics than argument. I should have known then that a tragedy was about to unfold, but instead I was so pleased plan B was going to work, I didn’t question what Luke meant by the word tactics. Obviously, in hindsight he meant this horrid martyrdom.”
“James, look at me!” Jack demanded, holding on to both of James’s shoulders and giving them a gentle shake. “Look at me!” Jack insisted. James’s face was an agony of torment, with injected eyes awash with tears and slack skin. Slowly his brimming, blue eyes came up to meet Jack’s. “I was part of this almost from day one,” Jack continued.
“Never once did you have any wishes of physical injury, much less thoughts of death toward Shawn or Sana. Never! Your goal was to find someone passionate and persuasive about the Virgin Mary, which you did. To go beyond that and scheme of killing someone is something your mind or my mind is not capable of doing. It’s only after the fact that we are able to consider it. Please don’t magnify the tragedy by trying to take responsibility. The responsibility was in the mind of the perpetrator, which we will never understand. Something set him off. Probably we’ll never know what, but something.”
