Virgin (42 page)

Emilio climbed
into the cab next to Decker and slapped the dashboard. "Let's go."

"Any
trouble?" Decker said as he nosed the truck into the street.

"Not
really," Emilio said.

Mol snorted.
"Like hell!"

"What
happened?" Decker said.

"I'll tell
you later," Emilio said. "Just drive."

He wanted
Decker cool and calm for the drive back past the police and through the crowd,
but he needn't have worried. The police waved them by, and even made a path for
them through the horde of Mary-hunters.

Once they were
free of the crowd and rolling toward the FDR Drive, Emilio allowed himself to
breathe a little more easily. And he'd breathe even more easily when they
ditched this rig and switched the body to the Avis panel truck he'd rented
earlier. But he knew he wouldn't be able to relax fully until they had it
aboard the
senador's
waiting jet and were airborne over LaGuardia.

She is gone!

Kesev violently
elbowed his way through the crowd near St. Joseph's, leaving a trail of sore
and angry Mary-hunters in his wake. Let them shout at him, wave their fists at
him, he didn't care.
He had to reach the church, had to know if his suspicion
was true.

During the past
hour he had felt a dwindling of the Mother's presence, and then suddenly it was
gone.

Finally he
reached the front of the crowd, but as he squeezed under the barricade, two
blue-uniformed policemen, one white, one black, confronted him.

"Back on
the other side, buddy," the white one said.

"You don't
understand," Kesev told him. "She's gone. They've stolen her."

He heard the
crowd behind him begin to mutter and murmur with concern.

"Now don't
go starting trouble, mister," the black one said. "The lady's fine.
We've been out here all night and nobody's been in or out of that church."

"She's gone,
I tell you!" Kesev turned to the crowd and shouted, "They've stolen
the Mother right out from under your noses!"

"You shut
up!" the white policeman hissed in his ear.

But Kesev
wrenched free and began running toward the front of the church.

"Come!" he shouted to the crowd. "Come see if I'm
not telling you the truth!"

That was all
the crowd needed. With a roar they knocked over the police line horses and
surged onto the street, engulfing any cop who tried to stop them.

The lone
policeman stationed in front of the church backed up to the front doors but
decided to get out of the way as Kesev charged up the steps with the mob close
behind him. A few good heaves from dozens of shoulders and the doors gave way
and they flowed through the vestibule and into the nave.

And stopped
with cries of shock that rapidly dwindled, finally fading into horrified
silence.

The altar was bare. And near the end of the center aisle two
figures huddled on the floor. Kesev recognized them immediately--the nun and the
priest from the El Al plane back in July.

The priest was kneeling in a pool of red, weeping, his deep,
racking sobs reverberating through the church as
blood from a scalp wound trickled down his
forehead to mingle with his tears. In his arms lay the limp, blood-soaked form
of the nun.

Kesev, too,
wept. But for another reason.

chuck Scarborough
:
"This just in: the object in
St. Joseph's church in Lower Manhattan,

believed by many to be
the remains of the Virgin Mary, has been stolen. Sister Carolyn Ferris,

beloved by the
thousands who have visited the church since the object first appeared there,

was killed
during the robbery, apparently while trying to prevent the theft. The devotees
of the

object, known
as Mary-hunters, have gone on a rampage in the area around the church,

demanding
immediate capture of the killers and the return of what has come to be known as

the Manhattan Madonna.

A camera crew
is on the way to the scene and we will bring you live coverage as soon as it is

available.

To repeat . .
."

"Do you
remember me?"

Dan forced his
eyes open. He was cold, he was sick, he was emotionally drained and numb; his
head was pounding like a cathedral gong, and his scalp throbbed and pulled
where it had been stitched up. But the greatest pain was deep inside where no
doctor could see or touch, in the black void left by Carrie's death and the
brutal, awful, finality of her dying.

He looked up
from his seat in the Emergency Room of Beekman Downtown Hospital. For a
rage-blinded instant he thought the black-bearded man with the accented voice
standing over him was the bastard who'd shot Carrie. He tensed to launch
himself at him, then realized this was someone else. Just as intense, but much
too short. He'd seen this man before but his grief-fogged brain couldn't recall
where or when.

"No,"
he said.
And I don't care to.

"At Tel
Aviv airport last summer . . . I was questioning your nun friend and you--"

Now Dan
recognized him. 'The man from the Shin . . ." He fumbled for the word.

"Shin Bet.
The name is Kesev. But I'm here unofficially now."

"I wish
we'd never gone to Israel," he said, feeling a sob growing in his chest.
"I wish you'd arrested us and jailed us. At least then Carrie would still
be alive."

Carrie . . .
dead. Dan still couldn't believe it. This had to be a dream, the worst
nightmare imaginable. A dream. That was the only logical explanation for all
these fantastic, unexplainable events, the most unbelievable of which was
Carrie's death. Life without Carrie ... a Carrie-less world . . . unthinkable.

But it had
seemed so real when he'd held her limp, cold, blood-drenched body in his arms
back there in St. Joe's.

So
real!

"So do
I," Kesev said. "For more than her sake alone. There are other matters
to consider."

"Yeah?
Like what?"

Dan heard the
belligerence creeping into his tone, into his mood. What right did this Israeli
bastard have to come up to him here in the depths of his grief and start
bothering him about Carrie? What did anything matter now that Carrie was dead?

"We must
find the Mother."

"You
find her! She's brought me nothing but grief."

He started to
rise but Kesev restrained him with a surprisingly strong hand on his shoulder.

"If we
find the Mother, we find the killers."

Dan leaned back
into the chair. Find the killers . . . wouldn't that be nice? To wrap his
fingers around that big bearded bastard's throat and squeeze and squeeze, and
keep on squeezing until--

"Father
Fitzpatrick?"

Dan looked up.
One of the homicide detectives who'd questioned him before was
approaching--Detective Sergeant Gardner. He carried a black plastic bag in his
hand.

What did he
want now? He'd told him everything, given descriptions of the killers, the
sound of their voices, anything he could think of. He was tapped out.

He noticed
Kesev slipping away as the detective neared.

"They're
shipping her body uptown," Detective Gardner said.

Dan lurched to
his feet. "Why? Where?"

"S.O.P. To
the morgue. They're going to autopsy her right away."

"So
soon?" Hadn't Carrie been through enough? "I'd've thought--"

"The
pressure's on, Father. We've got a big, mean, unruly crowd outside your church,
and from what I hear, the commish has already heard from the Cardinal, the
mayor, Albany, even the Israeli embassy. Everybody but everybody wants these
guys caught and that relic returned. The commish wants a full forensic report
on his desk by six
a.m.,
so
they're going to do her right away."

"Can I see
her before--"

Gardner shook
his head. "Sorry. She's gone. Saw her off myself." He held out the
black plastic bag. "But here's her personal effects. You want to return
them to the convent? If not . . ."

"No,
that's all right," Dan said. "I'll take them."

Detective
Gardner handed the bag over and stood before him, awkward, silent. Finally he
said,
"We'll get them, Father."

Dan could only
nod.

As the
detective hurried away, Dan sat down and opened the bag. Not much there: a
wallet, a rosary, and Carrie's Ziploc bags of the Virgin's clippings and nail
filings.

For an insane
moment Dan thought of cabbing up to the morgue--it was up in the Bellevue
complex, wasn't it? . . . First Avenue and Thirtieth . . . he could be there in
a couple of minutes. He'd sneak into the autopsy room. He'd sprinkle the entire
contents of both bags over Carrie's body and . . .

And what? Bring
her back to life?

Who am I
kidding? he thought. That's Stephen King stuff. Carrie's gone . . . forever.

Without
warning, he broke into deep racking sobs. He hadn't even felt them coming.
Suddenly they were there, convulsing his chest as they ripped free.

A hand touched
his shoulder. He fought for control and looked up. The man called Kesev had
returned.

"Come,
Father Fitzpatrick. I'll take you home. There are things we must discuss."

Dan nodded
absently. Home . . . where was that? The rectory? That wasn't home. Where was
home now that Carrie was dead? He didn't care where he went now, he just knew
he didn't want to stay in this hospital any longer.

He bunched up
the neck of the plastic bag and followed Kesev toward the exit.

Dr. Darryl
Chin, second assistant medical examiner for New York City, yawned as he pulled
on a pair of examination gloves. This is what you get, he supposed, when you're
down-line in the pecking order and you live in the East Village: They need
somebody quick, they call you.

"Could be
a lot worse," he muttered.

He looked down
at the naked female cadaver supine before him on the stainless steel autopsy
table, dead-pale skin, breasts caked with blood, dark hair tangled in disarray,
jaw slack, dull blue eyes staring lifelessly at the overhead fluorescents. The
murdered nun he'd heard about on the news tonight. Young, pretty, and fresh.
The fresh part was important. Only a few hours cold. He might get some useful
information out of her. Better than some stinking, macerated, crab-nibbled
corpse they'd dragged out of the Hudson. And this was a neat chest wound, not
some messy gut shot. They'd be through with this one in no time.

If
they ever got started.

Where the hell
was Lou Ann? She was supposed to assist him tonight. She lived in Queens and
had a longer ride, but she should have been here by now. Probably had to put on
her face before she came in. Joe had never seen her without two tons of eye
liner and mascara.

Vanity, woman
be thy name.

No use in
wasting time. He could get started without her. Open and drain the thorax at
least.
These chest wounds always left the cavity filled with
blood.

He probed the
entry wound with his little finger. Looked like the work of a 9mm slug. Good
shot. Right into the heart. Poor girl probably never knew what hit her.

He reached up
and adjusted the voice-activated mike that hung over the table. He gave the
date and read off the name of the subject and presumed cause of death from the
ID card, then reached for his scalpel.

Time to open
her up. Get the major incisions out of the way, drain and measure the volume of
blood in the thoracic cavity, and by then Lou Ann would be here and they could
start in on the individual organs.

He poked his index finger into the suprasternal notch atop
the breast bone, laid the point of the blade against the skin just below the
notch, and leaned over the table to make the first long incision down the
center of the sternum.