A Cruel Season for Dying (42 page)

He went on, speaking each of the more than twenty statements carefully, finishing softly with the last two. “I have no castle;
I make Immovable Mind my castle. I have no sword; I make No Mind my sword.”

He was still sitting, silently now, in the chair, when Talbot, long past his shift, appeared at the door.

“I thought you’d called it a night, Detective. What are you still doing here?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.” Talbot drifted in and sat down. “I’m hoping we get lucky at the lineup tomorrow,”
he said in a moment, echoing Sakura’s own earlier thoughts.

Talbot picked up the folder of Graff’s photos, which lay at the edge of the desk where Willie had left them yesterday. He
set the file on his lap, flipping idly through the stack of nude shots.

Sakura could see the detective thinking, watched his concentration sharpen as he flicked several of the photographs back.
He picked up a black-and-white print, stared at it, and nodded.

“I’ve seen this….” He was looking at Sakura now, pushing the print toward him on the desk, his finger jabbing at the image,
at the dark and irregular blemish that ran out from the hairline like a stain.

“I know I’ve seen that birthmark,” Talbot said. “And I’m pretty sure that I remember where.”

Dreams had always plagued Michael Darius. His first conscious memory was of his mother snatching him up screaming from his
crib, comforting him from some nightmare. His wails had been a child’s, but not his understanding. Even in his crib his waking
thoughts had been sharp and coherent, in contrast to his dreams. It was the sharpness that allowed him to remember so near
to the beginning of his life.

An old soul, Margot had called him, smiling as she’d said it, regarding it as a good quality, one of many she had once claimed
to find in him, before those days were gone.

It had become clear to him over the years that his marriage, like everything else in his life, had been doomed. That the happy
days of his youth, punctuated as they were with his claustrophobic dreams,
had been but a warning of the time when life and nightmare would merge into a seamless hell. His sister’s murder had been
the trigger of that melding but was not its cause. His own impotent rage, his parents’ inevitable decline, the short reprieve
of his marriage, were symptoms of some poison greater than his sister’s death. Her senseless murder but a focus for what remained
forever inchoate but potent in his dreams.

He had shut down completely after Hudson, had begun to believe that withdrawal was at least some protection against the poison
that had leached into his life—the darkness from his dreams, which had claimed both his sister and his parents, would inevitably
threaten anyone he got close to.

Was he crazy? A police department shrink might say so. Willie might say so. In the end it didn’t matter. Crazy or sane, the
threat remained. From himself, if not the poison.

He was dreaming now—though as the nightmares went, he’d had worse. Although not his waking self, he was at least recognizably
the protagonist of the jumbled and fragmented scenes that spooled from his unconscious. A chameleon self that shifted and
changed, slipping in and out of personae, like discarded layers of clothes.

For a time the impression persisted of his own eyes laughing at him from the faces of these strangers, as if the dream were
a mirror, and the mockery an answer to a question he hadn’t asked. But the screen went blank and was gone.

He was nothing. Centered on an apprehension that built on nothingness and flowered into sudden understanding. One brief instant
he was light and unbound, but the certainty of the next moment was already a huge and hungry blackness. The agony of the plunge
no less terrible for his knowing it would come.

He jerked awake and sat up in bed, sucking air like a man drowning. His throat had dried in the artificial heat of the apartment,
and he ran his tongue reflexively over his mouth. There was a bitterness in the sweat that dotted his upper lip, the flavor
of a memory that evaporated like the moisture from his body.

He was thirsty. He needed a glass of water. He turned, looked around the room. Where …? Walls not white, but colored dark
like
decaying roses. The bed. Too high off the floor. He missed the odor of raw wood.

He remembered now. The restaurant. They’d both gotten a little drunk. He had taken her back to her apartment in the Village.

She was sleeping on her side. Turned toward him. A series of soft undulating curves under the thin sheet, her black unruly
hair shadowing half her face. And the scent he inhaled was the smell of spent sex and Wilhelmina French.

T
he week’s nasty weather in temporary retreat, the morning of Lucia Mancuso’s funeral dawned like a blessing. By eleven a crisp
sunniness had peaked in the cold air, to glint and sparkle in the granite facade of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. The
local and cable broadcasters milling across the street seemed to catch this exuberance—reporters chatting briskly to their
satellite pickups; shoulder cams patrolling the police lines like tigers, to flash and zoom on the mourners who gathered on
the wide stairs of the church.

A delivery van stopped short of one of the barricades. “Flowers for the Mancuso funeral,” the driver said, and the uniformed
cop waved him through. Turning into a driveway located between the church and rectory, he parked in a paved area adjacent
to a rear garage and got out. Opening the van, he unloaded a small potted fir tree decorated with teddy bears and bows. Walking
back toward a side entrance, he removed his baseball cap before entering the church.

The driver looked around. The church was already three-quarters full. There wasn’t much time, since Mass was scheduled to
begin at any minute. Keeping his head down, he moved toward the central aisle, where floral offerings were being amassed to
the right and left along the Communion railing. He stopped, giving the little tree a prominent place near the sanctuary. Then
turning, he walked briskly down a side aisle, toward the confessionals at the rear.

Stepping inside, the driver took a deep breath. First untying the Nikes, then removing the khaki jumpsuit. The driver would
have
preferred to have worn a suit instead of pants and a blazer, but the borrowed uniform had made that impossible. However, the
soft leather bag had fit comfortably enough across the chest. Now the driver opened the bag and removed shoes. The pins holding
the hair flat came out next. A few quick strokes with a brush. Dark glasses in place. The uniform and joggers would have to
be left behind. Straightening the lapels of the jacket, the driver thought that if everything continued to go as smoothly,
the hundred-dollar bill was a small enough sacrifice to have bribed the original driver of Wonderland Flowers.

Zoe peeped out from between the confessional’s heavy drapes. The coast was clear. Walking up the same side aisle she’d come
down, she found a nearly empty pew midway, slid in as far as she could toward the center aisle, and knelt. A buttery smell
came to her of candle wax mixed with fresh pine.

She looked through the ombré haze of her sunglasses. Near the front was a string of high-ranking clergymen, solid in black
cassocks and capes. Magenta the only relief in a somber sea of dark. Close by were Sakura with Lincoln McCauley, along with
representatives from the D.A.’s and mayor’s offices. On the opposite side of the aisle, several rows were roped off. Dressed
in the navy and white of a Catholic-school uniform were students of Immaculata. Their small faces pale against the white of
their starched collars. Their eyes grave and frightened. Lucia’s classmates, bussed in from St. Sebastian parish. Come to
say good-bye.

In the front nearest the aisle was Lucia’s teacher. Her back ramrod straight in the pale dove gray of her habit, her disciplined
eyes on the altar, rosary beads pinched between long fingers.

Rozelli was nowhere in sight. Maybe he was outside, working the crowd. She’d spotted another florist van as she’d driven in,
this one allowed to park near the entrance to the church. Surveillance taking pictures no doubt. Interesting that the task
force was still actively seeking suspects. Which could mean Sakura wasn’t completely confident that Graff was the killer.
Or the lieutenant was just being scrupulous.

She looked around. Near the rear on the opposite side was Agnes Tuminello. In a dark hat, with a veil pulled over her face,
she knelt
praying. Zoe could just make out a slight movement of the house-keeper’s lips. She turned quickly, securing the dark glasses
on her nose. As far as she could tell, there were no members of the press among the mourners. She would be way out front with
an exclusive on the funeral. But what she really wanted was something more sensational. A follow-up on her “priest porno”
story. Except for the search of the rectory—and those results were still a big question mark—the riverbed had run dry. She
needed to burst the dam.

The tower bell began to toll. Zoe stood with the congregation. Then, like a catch of breath in the air above their heads,
the organ breathed, then boomed its opening notes. Zoe turned to the back of the church, where a trio of altar boys was leading
the funeral procession. The first, a little ahead of the others, carried a large golden cross. Behind the boys came three
priests. And next, pallbearers with Lucia’s small flower-covered coffin.

The Mancuso family followed. Mr. Mancuso supporting his wife. The other daughter, eyes down, walking beside them. An older
woman shrouded in black, a mantilla covering her head, moved slowly between two young men. One reminded her of Johnny, Italian
handsome in his dark suit and even darker expression. A trail of aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Soon enough Mass began. Zoe sat and knelt and stood, mentally taking notes. Inside the leather bag a recorder was running.
She’d have all the speeches verbatim, though she wished for a copy of the slide show that was presented in lieu of a eulogy—photographs
of Lucia chronicling her brief little life. And nothing could replace film for family reaction shots, though she just wasn’t
close enough for that, even if she could have gotten away with a camera. She knew for a fact that MSNBC had been turned down
flat on a live telecast of the funeral.

Time for Communion. Mr. and Mrs. Mancuso went up to kneel at the rail. Then the older daughter, Celia, her hands out to receive
the Host, placing it inside her mouth as she turned. There was only the slightest hesitation, her eyes dark in the too white
flesh of her face. A sidelong glance at the small coffin of her sister, stolen as though in secret. Then her lids shutting
tight as she made the sign of the cross.

Zoe stood as her pew emptied for Communion and moved to the side aisle. She walked to the back of the church, still haunted
by the look in Celia’s eyes, as Lucia’s little classmates began to sing:

Let there be peace on Earth

And let it begin with me.

Let there be peace on Earth,

The peace that was meant to be….

It was way more than enough. She walked through the lobby, glad to push through the huge wooden doors to the outside. But
the sunny morning had disappeared, given way to a leaden afternoon.