The heavy marble altar was magnificent, its splendor only serving to heighten the gloom he felt as he approached it. The CSI team was already there, moving about the church with their usual efficiency, dusting for prints, scanning the pews for any stray scrap of evidence. He approached the little group around the pulpit. Chuck Morton was there, still wearing his overcoat, which was cream colored and looked pricey. Chuck's wife, Susan, had a knack for buying clothes that weren't expensive but looked like they were.
When Chuck heard Lee approach, he looked up.
"Thanks for coming out on such short notice."
Lee looked at the body draped over the altar.
The victim in this attack was eerily similar to the one at Fordham-young, with dark curly hair and a decidedly Irish look about her. This time, however, the crime scene showed evidence of a frenzied attack. Several hymnals had been ripped from their racks in the front choir loft surrounding the altar and lay scattered about, their pages ripped and spattered with blood. A large blue and white flower vase lay a few feet from the victim's body, broken in two, its contents strewn over the thick carpet covering the floor of the altar. Yellow roses-ironic, Lee thought, since they were the symbol for friendship.
But what he couldn't take his eyes off were the words carved into her chest.
Hallowed be thy name.
The cuts were deeper than last time, the slashes cruder-the e in Hallowed bisecting her right nipple so deeply that it had almost come off. There was more blood, too-a lot more blood. He thought about what the pathologist at the morgue had said about postmortem injuries-and these injuries did not appear to be postmortem. He turned away, sickened.
Hallowed be thy name.
The phrase circled his brain rhythmically, mockingly. Hal-low-ed be thy na…
"Jesus," Lee muttered. He had another horrifying thought. The Slasher was only two lines into the prayer-not even a quarter of the way through it.
"It's him-it's the same guy," Chuck sighed, coming up to stand next to him. "You were right about one thing: he isn't going to stop."
"And there was less than a week between these two killings," Lee pointed out. "The last time he waited a month, but this time-well, he's either more driven, more confident, or both. What do you have on the victim so far?"
Chuck looked down at the girl. "Poor kid. Name's Annie O'Donnell." He indicated a nearby detective interviewing a middle-aged Hispanic man in a drab green uniform, who appeared to be distraught. "Even the janitor recognized her-said she attended this church. Apparently she's fairly quiet, but he says he has an eye for pretty girls." Chuck glanced over at the man. "He's not…is he?" he asked.
"Too old, wrong race. The Slasher is younger, and probably white. Interracial sex crimes aren't unknown, but they're rare, and this guy seems to be a preferential killer."
"Meaning-?"
"He targets a specific kind of victim."
"Yeah, okay," Chuck said, with a glance at the technicians quietly dusting for prints, gathering and bagging evidence. "The CSI team is doing what it can, but I wouldn't expect much."
"No," Lee agreed. "If he covered his tracks last time, he will this time too. He knows what he's doing. On the other hand, this time there is evidence of a struggle, so it's always possible-"
"Lee," said Chuck, "do you think that John Nelson would consider…"
"What?"
"Well, you guys are pretty close, right? So I thought maybe you could ask him if he would-if he would like to consult?"
"Yeah, sure."
"I mean, no offense, but we could really use all the help we can get, right?"
"Sure," Lee said. "When it comes to criminal psychology, he's the guy. There isn't anyone better outside of Quantico."
The detective who had been talking to the janitor had finished with him, and walked over to where Lee and Chuck stood. He carried a small notebook, an essential tool for any detective, and was dressed in the usual "uniform": a tan raincoat over a somber suit, black shoes, dark socks. Lee wondered why the man was dressed this way on a Saturday afternoon. It seemed a little out of the ordinary on a weekend, but maybe he was already on duty when the call came in.
Chuck made the introductions. "Detective Florette, this is Lee Campbell. Lee, this is Detective Clyde Florette, Brooklyn SVU." SVU was short for Special Victims Unit, which dealt exclusively with sex crimes.
"How do you do?" Clyde Florette reached for Lee's hand. His grip was firm and assertive without being aggressive. He was the physical opposite of Detective Butts: a tall black man, slim and elegant, with slicked-back graying hair. His features were too aquiline to be conventionally handsome, with thin lips and a long nose, but with his neatly trimmed graying beard and luminous eyes, Lee guessed that women went for him, especially the ones who liked the professorial type. His voice was low and cultured, with a hint of an island lilt-from Haiti, perhaps, or Barbados.
"Captain Morton tells me that you're working on a multiple, and that this is his second victim," Florette said. "Multiple" was police shorthand for "multiple homicides," and like a lot of cop jargon, it fell stiffly on Lee's ears. It seemed to him the lingo itself was an attempt to distance cops from the things they encountered in the line of duty.
"That's right," Lee answered, "except that it's his third victim."
Detective Florette raised an eyebrow and looked at Morton.
"We haven't yet determined that," Chuck said, an edge of irritation in his voice.
"Well, whether this is his second or third," Florette went on, "he somehow managed to get in and out of here without anyone seeing him. I got zip from the janitor, likewise the chaplain, who says he was in his office for part of the afternoon." He nodded in the direction of the dead girl; a team from the medical examiner's office was bending over her. "She's only dead three, maybe four hours, according to the body temp, when the janitor found her."
Since body temperature fell one to two degrees Fahrenheit per hour after death, on average, undoubtedly one of the first things the ME team had done was to measure the girl's temperature.
Lee said, "That means he brought her in here in broad daylight, and yet no one saw him."
Florette frowned. "How could he do that? Wouldn't someone have seen him?"
Lee considered the question. "Somehow, he must have found a way to sedate her."
"For a while," Florette added. "She obviously struggled once he got her here."
"Maybe she didn't even look like a person at all," Morton suggested. "Maybe he brought her in a bag or container of some kind."
"That would make sense," Lee agreed.
"I'll do a complete sweep of the building and see if we can come up with anything," Florette said. "I also want to talk to your primary on the Bronx girl… what's his name? Detective Butts?"
"That's right," Chuck said. "We tried to reach him, but his daughter says he took his wife to a matinee, and he's turned off his cell phone."
"Well, give him my number and tell him to call me as soon as he can."
They all looked at the dead girl, her skin already turning bluish white as the blood drained away. The carved words stood out against the pale skin. Hallowed be thy name. The wounds were the color of dried rust.