Chapter Fifty-one
The next day, Lee, Nelson, Chuck, and Detectives Butts and Florette sat in Chuck Morton's office, discarded coffee cups littering the surfaces of the room. The five of them now comprised the officially appointed members of the mayor's "elite task force." Butts and Florette also had a couple of sergeants and patrolmen at their disposal, as needed.
Nelson had responded to Chuck's phone calls-and, without apology or explanation, had turned up at the meeting, looking tired and thinner, but sober.
"What's with this whole 'elite task force' business?" Butts said, biting deeply into a sugared doughnut. "And why does it rate a press conference?"
"Politics," Chuck replied. "The mayor wants to let people know he's in control and on top of things."
"All right, so what about the instant messages the killer sent to Lee?" Nelson asked. "Any chance of tracking them?"
"Nope," said Chuck. "It's a cold trail. According to the computer whiz kids in the Computer Crimes department, the address and information on the account were bogus."
"He certainly knows what he's doing," Florette remarked with a frown. He was dressed elegantly as usual, with a gray silk tie over a striped blue and white shirt with French cuffs.
"What about leaving a trail from where he logged on?" Lee suggested.
"Holyman logged on from different locations all over the place, including public libraries," Chuck answered.
"So he's used every means available to protect himself," Florette said.
"Yep," Chuck agreed. "And so far it's worked."
"So our guy is basically a ghost," Butts remarked. "A face without a name."
"Okay, what about the online conversation between this guy and Lee?" Chuck said. "Did anyone have a chance to study it?"
"I did, yes," Nelson said.
"Does it tell us anything?"
"I don't think it adds anything to the profile, other than he's educated and articulate-but we knew that already. He's ballsy, but that's not news either."
"Right," Florette agreed. "Even if he knows his way around a computer, he has to know he's taking a chance getting in touch like that."
"The guys in Computer Crimes were reluctant to admit defeat. They wouldn't even tell me exactly how he did it," Chuck said. "Said they don't like to give out that information."
"Maybe they don't want people knowing there are ways of getting around their tracking techniques," Florette suggested.
Chuck indicated the series of crime scene photos spread out on the large poster board that had been set up in his office.
"All right, what about the placement of Sophia's body?" Chuck said. "Any thoughts on that?"
There was a silence as they studied them; then Nelson said, "I know what he's doing. It's so obvious-I can't believe I didn't see it immediately."
"You want to share it with us?" Chuck said. He sounded irritated; Lee didn't think he'd entirely forgiven Nelson for his long unexplained absence.
"It's the Via Dolorosa-the Stations of the Cross," Nelson replied.
"The what?" Butts said.
"There are fourteen Stations of the Cross, each representing a moment in Christ's final hours. The idea is to meditate on the major moments in Christ's suffering and death. It's especially popular among Roman Catholics, and it's also called the Via Dolorosa, or Way of Sorrow."
"How do you figure that's what's behind it?" asked Butts, the fat wrinkles on his forehead folding over each other. His face never resembled that of an old bulldog so much as when he was looking thoughtful.
Nelson pointed at the wide-angle shot of her leg, in which the stained-glass picture of Death was clearly visible. "The first station of the cross is Christ being condemned to death." He pointed at the second photo, in which Sophia's arm was placed underneath the cross at the back of the church. "The second station is Christ receiving the cross. And this," he said, pointing to her other leg, which was positioned on a set of steep stairs leading down to the basement, "this is the third station, in which Christ falls for the first time."
"And this one?" Florette said, pointing to the final series of photographs, in which Sophia's other arm had been placed at the feet of a pieta.
"That's the fourth station," Nelson replied. "Jesus meeting his mother on the way to his death."
"Jesus," Chuck said, wiping sweat from his forehead, even though the room was quite cool. "What does this tell us?"
"Well," Nelson said, "the good news is that as his rituals get more bizarre and obsessive, his daily behavior may start to draw attention to itself. The bad news is that the killing is more frenzied, and that makes him more dangerous."
"I still think there could be two offenders at work here," Lee commented. "This new twist in the signature-"
"Oh, come on, Lee! If you learned anything from me, it's that a signature is perfectly capable of evolving!" Nelson interrupted irritably.
"I know," Lee answered. "I just think-"
"Do you think he had something to do with Laura's disappearance?" Nelson said, changing the subject.
"My instinct tells me no. Because of the five-year gap, and also because it would be just too strange a coincidence."
"But then how did he know about the red dress?" Florette asked.
"Maybe he knows the guy who did it?" Butts suggested.
"Okay, let's shift focus," Chuck said, turning to Florette. "Have you dug up anything on the churches?"
"I checked with the volunteer programs at all the churches, and none of the volunteers are screened. Some of them have a sign-in sheet, but they don't really check up on anyone."
"Sign-in sheets," Butts said. "Does that include names and addresses?"
"Optional," Florette replied. "But I thought it might be useful to have a look at these."
He pulled a pile of papers from his briefcase. "Now, here are the sign-in sheets for the past few weeks-or at least all the ones I could get hold of. Fordham doesn't keep theirs for more than a few days, but Saint Francis Xavier does, and Old St. Patrick's adds the names to their mailing list. We got lucky at St. Patrick's-they hadn't yet updated their mailing list, so they hadn't thrown it out yet."
He spread the sheets, half a dozen crumpled pages, stained and covered with handwriting, out on the desk.
Lee looked over the first sheet of names, from Saint Francis Xavier Church. Nothing stuck out. It was about evenly divided between men and women, most of whom did not include their addresses or phone numbers. He picked up the second sheet. At the bottom, someone had signed in as "Samuel Beckett."
He handed it to Nelson. "What do you make of this?"
Nelson peered at the list and frowned. "Very funny."
"Can I see that one for St. Patrick's, please?" he asked Butts, who was studying it.
"Okay," Butts replied, handing it to him.
Lee looked at the list. The names were different from the one for Saint Francis Xavier, except for one name: Samuel Beckett. Same handwriting, delicate and almost feathery. Not "manly" handwriting. Maybe the handwriting of a mama's boy?
He handed the sheet to Chuck.
"Samuel Beckett, like the playwright?" Chuck said. "This guy trying to be funny?"
"That's what I was wondering," Lee answered.
"This is definitely strange," Florette agreed. "I was wondering what you'd make of it."
"If this is our guy," Nelson said, "it would fit it with the whole idea of this being a game to him. He'd get a kick out of signing in as a playwright known for his gloomy existentialism."
"Waiting for Godot," Florette murmured. "That's sort of what we're doing."
"Yeah," Chuck agreed.
"So he could be using this volunteering to look for victims," Butts said.
"Right," said Nelson.
"I'll run the name through VICAP, see if we come up with anything," Chuck said.