of the workings of the most complex homicide investigations in the city.
“Mike says you know this place fairly well.”
“Social visits and a few funerals.” The cornerstone was laid in 1892, but even to this day the construction of the great building was barely two-thirds completed. Its design was the customary cathedral shape of a cross, crowned at the crossing by a towering spire, with a main altar surrounded by seven Chapels of the Tongues to represent the growing immigrant masses in nineteenth-century New York. Despite early financing by wealthy trustees like J. P. Morgan, the ambitious project ran out of funding somewhere along the way. “Saint John the Unfinished is what my mother calls it.”
“I’d laugh, Alex, but the scaffolding around the base of the church serves too well to conceal anybody who wants to lurk around here at night. It’s dark and massive, and it’s sheltering in ways that I don’t think the Good Lord had in mind.”
I spotted Katie Cion thirty feet ahead, holding court with one of the ME’s death investigators and a few of her ESU colleagues.
“Scrape up that gum,” Peterson shouted to a detective who was using the toe of his highly polished leather shoe to poke around a patch of damp sod. “Get on your knees and bag that chewing gum, Gonsalves. You got a good dry cleaner, the grass stains will come out.”
“It’s a friggin’ playground, Loo. You want DNA from the gum? We got a vat full already. We got a whole kindergarten class ready to upload in the databank. The saliva of a future generation of moguls, memorialized in the city lab. You think we need more?” The dapper Benny Gonsalves bent down and probed at something with his pen.
“If I don’t see dirt on your pants by the end of the day, don’t even think about putting in for overtime.”
Mike had passed the lieutenant and walked directly over to Katie Cion, who was explaining what had happened as we caught up to him.
“A pack of five-year-olds, you know what I mean? A couple of the moms were off to the side, yakking about Botox or something serious like that.” Katie paused to greet me but kept right on talking. “One of the kids got frisky and started to climb into the bowl of the fountain while nobody had an eye on her.”
It was still too cold and windy for the four strong heads of the fountain to be opened for the spring season. Then, they would shoot steady streams of water into the air to cascade over the pedestal, merging and foaming into a maelstrom meant to evoke the primordial chaos of the earth.
Rainwater, dirt, and small bits of garbage had pooled in the base of the giant sculpture. “The kid didn’t mind stepping in this muck,” Katie said. “She had her eye on that backpack.”
“Was it just sitting there on the edge?” I asked.
“Nope. It was out of reach, beyond the wooden gate that was erected around the inner circumference, probably for the purpose of keeping people away. She got her skinny little arm right through the slats and pulled it close. Got enough of a glimpse to scream bloody murder.”
We were losing the late-afternoon sunlight to the west, behind the tall buildings. The enormous wings of the sculpted figure above our heads cast a bizarre shadow.
“Who’s the flying dude?” Mike asked as Katie’s gloved hands reached to unwrap the backpack, which was covered with a tarp, under the watchful eyes of the death investigator and the ESU team.
“The Archangel Michael,” I said.
“Ah, leading the heavenly host against the forces of evil. The Bible told me so. Guess he was asleep at the wheel last night. Show me what you got, Katie.”
I was nervous, averting my eyes from the tarp and studying the figures on the sculpture that rose above the fountain, remembering from my youthful visits that its many images celebrated the triumph of good over evil.
“It’s not a coincidence our killer picked this church, either,” I said.
Mike had gloved up, too, and was crouched next to Katie, ready to look at what she had. “What do you mean?”
“That’s the Archangel’s sword,” I said, pointing at the weapon extending from his hand, and following the tip of it with my finger. “He’s vanquished his enemy.”
“Keep it coming, Coop,” Mike said, parting the zippered pouch of the backpack to look in.
“Satan. He’s just decapitated Satan. There’s the devil’s head, dangling beneath the crab’s claw.”