Step on a Crack (Michael Bennett 1)

“ ‘Collar the mopes’?” I said with a faint grin. “ ‘Jacked’?”

“So I watch NYPD Blue now and then,” Seamus said with a fantastic roll of his eyes. “Is it a sin?”

So the Monday morning after the funeral, I arrived back at my desk inside Manhattan North Homicide in East Harlem. Harry Grissom, my boss, and the rest of my squadies were irritatingly supportive and polite. Who would have ever thought that you’d miss being the butt of practical jokes? Soon enough, I thought, knocking the dust off my mouse.

I put in calls to Paul Martelli and Ned Mason. And I learned that nothing really new or promising had been discovered. Every square inch of the church’s granite, marble, and stained glass had been searched and dusted for latent prints, but there had been nothing. These criminals had been extremely tidy.

There had been some excitement when a hijacker’s body was found in the archbishops’ crypt under the altar, Martelli told me, but it ended when it was discovered that the man’s hands and head, along with any chance at identifying him, had been removed by his cold-blooded partners.

No traces of explosives had been discovered in the church either, so it seemed that Jack’s threat about blowing everyone to smithereens had been just a bluff. Another hand he had won.

I found a Post-it on my computer to call Lonnie Jacob, the NYPD CSU investigator working the car dealership where the sedan had crashed. Around noon, I lifted the phone and dialed the fingerprint lab at One Police Plaza.

“Mike,” Lonnie said after he answered. “I was just about to call you. I just did it.”

“Did what?” I said.

“It wasn’t easy, but by sodium hydroxiding our John Doe’s hands, I was able to dry them out and peel off the top layer of his charred skin. The second dermal layer is harder to ID because there’s this kind of doubling of the ridges, but at least we have something. I already spoke to my contact down in Latent Prints at the FBI. Should I fire it down to DC to cross-reference?”

I told him yes, and he told me he’d call me back with the results. These criminals had gone nutso about covering their tracks—which could only mean they were definitely trying to hide something.

Chapter 105

THE FOLLOWING DAY, word got back to us that when the police commissioner heard the meager results of our investigation at St. Patrick’s he had a simple response: Do it again. Do it better.

First, the Emergency Service Unit guys returned to the cathedral and repeated exactly what they had done to stabilize the crime scene. They even checked for booby traps and hazmats again.

NYPD detectives, along with the Crime Scene Unit—CSU, not CSI—did another thorough search for evidence like latent prints and fibers. Everything was swabbed down a second time for DNA. A check was made to see if any religious relics had been defiled—anything that might provide a psychological or behavioral clue.

Everything that could be checked was examined a second time.

Bloodstains.

Hair, fibers, and threads.

Loose glass—from windows, bottles, eyeglasses.

Firearms.

Tool marks, evidence of flammable liquids.

Controlled substances found anywhere, but especially in the archbishops’ crypt, where the hijackers hid out before the attack.

Two patrolmen were stationed at St. Patrick’s solely to act as messengers to get any evidence to the labs as quickly as possible.

And after three more exhausting days, the end result—not a clue about Jack and his team.

Chapter 106

I FELT TOO COOPED UP sitting in the squad room, so I decided to go for a ride one morning. I smiled, looking out at the chaotic hustle and bustle of loud vehicles and even louder pedestrians surging around St. Patrick’s when I pulled up on Fifth Avenue in front of it. Our city had survived riots, blackouts, 9/11, Mayor Dinkins, and now this, I thought as I headed up the cathedral steps.

The church was closed to the public for repairs. The uniformed Midtown North cops stationed at the door stepped aside when I showed them my tin.

I walked up the center aisle and genuflected before sitting in the front pew.

I sat looking out on the solemn, austere, empty church. You’d think I’d be sick of churches by this point, but for some reason, I felt comforted just being there in the candle-scented darkness. I felt oddly consoled.

My high school graduation from Regis had taken place here. I smirked, remembering how wretched at Greek and Latin I’d been. One thing, though, perhaps the only thing I’d picked up from the Jesuit priests who taught us was their stress on the importance of reason. Time and again, they preached the necessity of using our God-given rationality in order to cut through to the essence of things. I guess it was the reason I chose philosophy as my major when I went on to Manhattan College, a small, very fine school in the Bronx. And the ultimate reason I had become a detective. The need to get at the truth.