This was not the crime scene.
He went farther, coming upon a tangle of marked cars, radios crackling, emergency lights washing a group of well-kept town houses in red.
Blood red.
Yellow crime-scene tape protected the yard of one of them. The place of death. People stood at the tape, craning their necks; others watched from their windows, balconies, and doorsteps as a uniformed officer waved Jason’s Falcon away from the building.
“Can’t stop here, pal.”
Jason showed him his press ID.
“Take it on down the street.”
After parking, he sifted among the newspapers and old take-out containers on his passenger seat for a fresh notebook and a pen that worked. He knew the anatomy of a homicide investigation, knew what to look for, and he took stock of the scene as he approached it. He couldn’t believe it. No other news types in sight. Not even Chet Bonner, the Channel 93 night stalker, the camera guy who only came out at night.
Where was everybody? Had the press pack missed this one?
Judging from the array of official cars, this party had started long ago. There were unmarked Malibus, indicating the homicide detectives were here, the Crime Scene Investigation Unit vehicle was here, even the King County Medical Examiner’s Office had its people on-site. He scanned the rubberneckers for a hint of someone who might have a bit of information. That’s when a flash from above caught his attention.
Second story. Southwest window.
There it was again. A small explosion of brilliant light filling the room. Then another one as silhouetted figures moved, then stood dead still. Flash. Then the shadows repositioned themselves. Another flash. That would be the crime-scene people, or the homicide detectives, taking pictures.
Photographing the body of a dead nun.
Sadness rippled through him as he gnawed on the fact, holding it long enough for it to turn into quiet anger. What kind of sub-evolved life-form kills a nun? The camera flashes spilled into the night onto the building next door and the window directly opposite, illuminating a figure who was watching the scene. Looked like a woman, an older woman, cupping her face with her hands.
Here we go, he thought. That lady’s got to know something.
The building was beyond the tape and not sealed. Patrol officers were coming and going. Some carried clipboards with documents that were likely preliminary witness statements, Jason judged from the glimpse he’d stolen.
“We’re done in this building, Lyle,” one officer said into his shoulder mike as he stopped Jason at the door with a question: “Do you live here, sir?”
“No, I’m a reporter with the Mirror, I’ve got business upstairs.”
“Reporter?” The cop eyeballed him, checking out the silver stud earring in Jason’s left lobe, then the few day’s growth of whiskers that suggested a Vandyke.
“Got some ID for me?”
Jason held up his laminated photo ID. The officer reviewed it just as his radio crackled. “ Bobby, can you -” Static garbled the call and the officer stepped away, speaking into his mike. “You’re breaking up. Can you repeat that?”
“Bob, we need you out back, now.”
Out back? Did they find something?
Jason had to make a judgment call. Go out back or get inside and attempt to get to a witness. At that moment, another officer approached, entered the building, and Jason caught the door before it closed. With the first officer distracted, Jason followed the second one into the building and, unopposed, made his way to the door of the second-story corner unit and knocked.
Several locks clicked before the door was opened by the woman he’d seen at the window. She looked to be in her late sixties, was wearing a long sweater and slippers. Worry creased her face.
“Yes?”
“Jason Wade, a reporter with the Mirror. ” He detected the thick smell of cats as he handed her his card. “Sorry to trouble you, but I was hoping you could help me with a moment of your time, please.”
“The press? Goodness, no. I don’t think I should say anything.”
“Please, ma’am. I need to get a few things clear for my story.”
“I’m sorry, dear.”
“Ma’am, you know how people are always saying we get it wrong, or make it up. I need to get it right, please.”
“I know, dear, but I just spoke to the officers and they told me not to talk to anybody until the detectives come by and talk to me.” She looked back to her large window and the camera flashes that were ongoing next door. “I hope everything’s all right,” she turned back to Jason. “I gather it was some sort of robbery at Sister Anne’s apartment. Probably those drug dealers. We’ve had some burglaries recently.”
Some sort of robbery? She doesn’t know what happened but she had a name.
“I’m sorry, you said, Sister Anne? And that’s who lives in that unit with all the activity?”
“Yes, she’s got a small apartment in the town house. Lives there with the other nuns. Saints, all of them. Devoted to the neighborhood. You know, they run the Compassionate Heart shelter downtown.”
Over the woman’s shoulder, through her window to the street, Jason saw the call letters of a TV news van. He didn’t have time, he had to push this.
“Look, ma’am, that’s the kind of information I need. Would it be okay for me to take some notes?”
“I shouldn’t, I’m not sure. The police-”
“They’ll probably tell us everything eventually but this will help.”
“I guess it’d be all right. Everyone knows about our nuns, but I can’t tell you everything I told the police.”
Jason nodded as he wrote quickly.
“I understand, but did you see anything going on at Sister Anne’s?”
As the woman pulled her hands to her face to consider his question, he glimpsed a car from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer roll to a stop outside, saw a photographer and reporter step from it while his source wrestled with a decision.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”
“Yes, I saw something strange.” The woman’s face intensified as the curtain rose on an insight. “It’s not a burglary, is it? Something’s happened to Sister Anne.”
Chapter Six
S ister Anne stared at the ceiling.
Blood laced her face and the graying streaks of her dark hair. It drenched her Seattle Seahawks sweatshirt and jeans. Her bathroom floor was submerged under the torrent that had hemorrhaged from her gaping neck wound. The tiny silver cross she wore had slid down into it. Her rosary was entwined around her fingers in a blood-caked death grip.
The room flared with another burst of white light as the crime-scene photographer continued recording the scene.
Her eyes registered calm, peace, even acceptance. They were not frozen in the wide-eyed disbelief that was common among homicide victims, Grace Garner thought, sketching the scene, taking notes, and wondering if, in the dying moment of her life, Sister Anne saw God.
“Grace?” Perelli called from a few feet away. Like her, he was wearing shoe covers and white latex gloves while taking careful inventory of the small, cell-like bedroom. “Look at this. What do you think?”
The sheets of her narrow, single bed had been twisted. Above it, the cross and painting of Mary had been pushed out of position. The wooden nightstand had been toppled; a King James Bible and a tattered paperback edition of The Agony and the Ecstasy were splayed on the floor, and pages torn from both books were scattered.
“I can’t believe nobody in this building heard nothing,” Perelli said.
Sister Anne’s small closet and her four-drawer dresser had been rifled, her personal papers and photographs strewn about the room. The air held the scent of soap, laundered linen, and something familiar.
“I smell cigarettes and these nuns don’t smoke,” Grace said.
“Could be from our suspect?”
Grace nodded, frustrated that they had no witnesses and no weapon. No suspect description to put out. No path of inquiry to take. They had a canvass going but so far it had yielded nothing promising. She knew that the first hours of an investigation were critical and that the chances for a break melted with each minute.