Brown picked up the ball.
"Was she having a problem?" he asked.
"No, no. She just felt like talking. We saw each other every few weeks. Either she'd come here to the convent for dinner or I'd meet her in the city.”
“So this wasn't an unusual visit.”
“Not at all.”
"Nothing specific on her mind.”
"Nothing.”
"No spiritual problems.”
"None that she mentioned.”
"Did anything at all seem to be troubling her?”
“She seemed her usual self.”
"Mention any threatening phone calls ... ?”
"No.”
"Or letters?”
"No.”
"Anyone lurking about the building where, she lived?”
"No.”
"Anyone unhappy with the nursing care she was giving?”
"No.”
"Perhaps a relative or friend of someone she was treating.”
"Nothing like that.”
"Anyone with a minor grievance ...”
“She didn't mention anyone like that.”
“... or petty annoyance?”
“No one.”
"Any idea what she was doing in Grover Park " ?”
yesterday.
"No”
"Did she mention she might be going to the park?”
"No.”
"Was it a usual thing for her to do?”
"I don't know.”
"Walk all the way cross town to the park? Sit on a bench there?”
"I can't imagine her doing that.”
"She didn't say she went there to pray or anything, did she?" Brown asked. "Or meditate? Anything like that?”
"No, she prayed at home in the morning. For half an hour to forty-five minutes, before leaving for the hospital. And she went to mass once or twice a week.”
"Where would that be?”
"The church?”
"Yes.”
"Our Lady of Flowers. I'll give you the address there as well, if you like. And the name of the parish priest.”
"Please," Carella said.
Annette rose majestically and swept across the room just as if she were still wearing the habit. She opened the drawer on a longi: rectory table, and removed from it a leather-bound address book. Over her shoulder, as she began leafing through the book, she said, "Please find who did it, won't you?”
It sounded almost like a prayer.
It was five minutes past three when they got back to the squad room and called the mother house in San Luis Elizario. The woman to whom they spoke identified herself as Sister Frances Kelleher, assistant to the major superior. She was shocked and dismayed to learn of Mary Vincent's death, and apologized for the absence of Sister Carmelita, who was in Rome at the moment.
"She's expected back in three days, if you'd like to try again," she said. Carella marked the date on his calendar: August 25. "Actually,”
he said, "we're trying to locate a next of kin we can notify. Would you have any information regarding her family?”
"I'm sure we do," Sister Frances said. "Let me transfer you to the records office.”
The nun in the records office answered the phone with a cheerful, "Louise Tracht, good morning," and then immediately said, "Oops, it's ten past noon already.”
"Good afternoon then," Carella said, and identified himself, and gave her much the same information he'd given Sister Frances. Again, there was the shocked reaction, though Sister Louise admitted she hadn't known Mary all that well. "Let me check her file," she said, and was gone from the phone for perhaps two or three minutes. When she returned, she said, "Both her parents are dead, but I have an address and phone number for a brother in Philadelphia, if you'd like that?”
"Please," Carella said.
Vincent Cochran was asleep when Carella reached him at three forty-five that Saturday afternoon. He told Carella at once that he was a stand-up comic and that he didn't get to bed till sometimes seven, eight in the morning ... "So what's this about?" he asked.
The man sounded annoyed and cranky. This was perhaps not the most opportune moment to tell him about his sister's murder. Carella took a deep breath.
"Mr. Cochran," he said, "I hate to be bringing you this kind of news, but .... “
"Has something happened to Anna?" Cochran asked at once.
Carella didn't know who Anna was.
"No, it's your sister," he said, and plunged ahead. "She was murdered last night in Grover Park here." Silence on the other end of the line.
"We were able to make positive identification only this morning." The silence lengthened. "We got your name and phone number from her mother house in San Diego. I'm sorry to bring you such news.”
Silence.
"Am I speaking to her brother, sir?”
“Once upon a time," Cochran said.
"Sir?”
"When she was still Kate Cochran, yes. I was her brother before she became Sister Mary Vincent?”
"Sir?”
"Before she became a nun.”
There was another silence on the line.
"Mr. Cochran," Carella said, "your sister's remains are currently at the Buena Vista morgue here in Isola. If you'd like to make funeral arrangements ...”
"Why would I?" Cochran said. "The last time I even talked to her was four years ago. Why would I want to see her now?”
"Well, sir ...”
"Tell her beloved church to bury her," he said.
"Maybe that way she'll get to heaven sooner." There was a click on the line. Carella looked at the phone receiver. "Is he coming up?" Brown asked. "I don't think so," Carella said.
Carl Blaney had violet eyes, somewhat too exotic for a medical examiner, perhaps, but there they were nonetheless, neither blue nor gray but as violet as Elizabeth Taylor's eyes were supposed to be.
Rather sad eyes as well, as if they'd seen far too many internal organs in far too many degrees of trauma.
He greeted Carella in the mortuary at ten to five that Saturday afternoon and had the decency not to mention that he was almost three hours late, their scheduled meeting having been for two. Carella instantly explained that he'd had to shlepp all the way up to Riverhead in ninety-degree heat on clogged roadways, and then had to make some phone calls when he finally got back to the squad room all of which impressed Blaney not a whit.
He told Carella that nobody here at the morgue was in any hurry, anyway, and besides he'd only just finished the autopsy on the woman who'd come into the morgue as an unidentified Jane Doe, had immediately been dubbed Jane Nun, and then Jane None, after a mortuary wag discovered she still hadn't been identified a situation now rectified or so Carella informed him.
Even Blaney's initial examination had revealed the extensive bruising characteristic of manual strangulation. The bluish-black fingertip bruises, oval in shape, somewhat pale and blurred. The crescent-shaped fingernail marks. But he had then raised the shoulders on a head block, eviscerated the body, and removed the brain, allowing the blood to drain from the base of the skull. When the blood flow from the chest also stopped, Blaney began his examination of the intact neck organs. He made his first incision just below the chin, allowing him clear and unobstructed scrutiny without the necessity of handling the organs before dissection.
"In manual strangulation," he explained, "fractures of the larynx are common. I was searching for the horns because those are particularly weak parts of the thyroid cartilage and therefore ...”
"The horns?”
"The ends of the hyoid bone. We'll sometimes find fractures of calcified hyoid bone in old people who've suffered a fatal fall or some sort of accidental blow to the neck. But usually the bone and cartilage fractures we see are caused by strangulation. That's not to say we don't get old people who've been strangled. Or even strangled and raped. Your nun was how old?”
twenty-seven. "Sure. Of course, fractures can happen during dissection, but then we don't find focal bleeding. However slight, hemorrhaging of the tissues adjacent to a laryngeal fracture indicates it occurred while the victim was still alive. We found blood. She was strangled, Steve, no question.”