Until Judgment Day Page 2

  “Nope. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. I’m going home.”

  “If those head blows caused intracranial swelling or bleeding, you might not make it to the hospital again in time.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen.” Granz pointed at the IV and nodded at Nelson. “Take the IV out, Doc.”

  Nelson shrugged in exasperation and started to disconnect the monitors and tubes.

  “Morgan!” Mackay implored.

  “Can’t keep him against his will, Katie, you know that. If I don’t disconnect him, he’ll do it himself.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Granz said, “I’m gonna drive back up Highway Nine and pick up that free-range bird I ordered special from Felton Market, then we’re gonna feast on turkey, stuffing, gravy, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. I ordered a surprise for Sam, too—a big bone with lots of meat on it.”

  Sam was the yellow Lab Dave had bought Emma as a companion after her father’s death. “Can’t let it go to waste.”

  He winked at Emma. “That work for you?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “Doctor Nelson said you might be hurt really bad. I think you should do what he and Mom tell you.”

  Mackay started to join in, but he held his hands up, palms out, in a “stop” gesture. “I’m not staying in the hospital tonight—I’m okay.”

  Mackay knew that when her husband made up his mind, there was no changing it and the more she tried, the more he dug in. But she could sometimes cut a deal with him. “Just to make sure, will you at least let Morgan schedule an MRI for Friday?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Friday’s a holiday, too.”

  “Jesus Christ! How about Saturday?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Going Christmas shopping.”

  “Dammit, you’re being macho and stubborn.”

  “No, I’m being practical. Doc’s just being overly cautious—prob’ly afraid I’ll sue him for malpractice if he doesn’t do an MRI.”

  He glanced at Nelson. “Just kiddin’.”

  Then he looked back at Mackay. “And you’re being overly protective.”

  “I’m being your wife.”

  “I know, but I’m fine.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “Look, make you a deal. If I don’t feel a hundred percent better by the time the holiday season’s over, I’ll think about it.”

  Chapter 4

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 22

  IN ORNATE RED AND GREEN letters bordered by multicolored bows, green holly boughs, and red berry clusters, the white canvas banner hanging above the double oak doors of the community room read:

  WELCOME TO SACRED HEART CATHOLIC CHURCH ANNUAL CHRISTMAS BENEFIT RAFFLE FOLLOWING THE 10:15 A.M. MASS

  A flyer posted beside the doors listed the prizes: autographed books by local authors; Annieglass; matching men’s and women’s Trek mountain bikes; six box-seat tickets to a Sharks hockey game; a week in Maui; a round of golf for four at Pebble Beach; champagne brunch on the seventy-foot Chardonnay II; watches, jewelry, and dozens of less valuable items.

  The announcement in the Religion Section of the City Post, a weekly tabloid, said that at noon, Reverend John Thompson would personally draw the final ticket and present the grand-prize winner with a check for $10,000.

  He stood for a few seconds at the back of the hall and watched the Monterey Diocese Finance Officer spin the wire-mesh basket, pluck out a ticket, and ceremoniously announce another winner’s name.

  He checked his watch: 11:45 A.M.

  “Just in time,” he muttered to himself.

  Then he swung the oak door open and slipped quietly outside, walked around the corner of the community hall, pulled an Advil bottle from his pants pocket, popped a couple of tablets in his mouth, and swallowed them without water. His rapid, shallow breaths came out in a thick fog that rose lazily into the cold, clear air and slowly dissipated.

  He strode quickly toward the rectory, stepping over small cracks in the old concrete path that connected the community hall to the front door of the detached stucco structure that had served as the parish priests’ home, office, and sanctuary for more than seventy-five years.

  Through the window, he saw Reverend Thompson sitting at a huge oak rolltop desk.

  The priest was tall and wide with a thick shock of salt-and-pepper hair and was smoking an ornately carved briar pipe. A steaming coffee mug sat beside the ashtray on one corner of the desk. On the other corner, a thirteen-inch color TV was tuned to a San Jose State—Notre Dame football game.

  Thompson drew on the briar, inspected the bowl, tamped the tobacco, relit it, then leaned back in the leather high-backed chair and blew a perfect smoke ring at the ceiling.

  He rapped on the rectory’s heavy wooden door.

  “Who’s there?” Thompson’s voice was deep and powerful, the result of many years’ sermons designed to reach the rear pews, where the people who most needed to hear them usually sat.

  “Reverend, there’s a problem with the raffle. May I come in?”

  He heard Thompson tap the briar pipe in the ashtray, then a desk drawer opened and closed.

  “Enter, please.”

  He twisted the knob. It wasn’t locked. Stepping inside, he closed the door behind him and engaged the dead bolt.

  Thompson snapped the top onto an air-freshener can and rotated his chair to face the entry. “Nasty habit, smoking—wasn’t expecting company.” He stared at his visitor quizzically. “You look familiar. Are you a member of my parish?”

  The room was expensively but sparsely furnished, with thick beige cut-pile carpeting. Besides the matching desk and chair, there were glass-fronted oak bookcases, a set of straight-backed visitor chairs, and a huge ancient leather sofa that looked like it had heard more than its share of church secrets.

  “We were acquainted years ago.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Thompson took a noisy sip of his coffee and cupped the mug in his big hands. “So, what’s the problem?”

  “You.” He crossed the room in two quick steps.

  “Excuse me?”

  He reached under his coat and pulled out a pistol, then felt the front of his pants tighten. He looked down, horrified to discover a throbbing erection.

  He jammed the muzzle against Reverend John Thompson’s forehead, and squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 5

  THE FIRST THING DA Kathryn Mackay spotted when she rounded the corner onto Paseo Delgado at 1:15 P.M. was a green coroner wagon parked in front of the small lawn between the Sacred Heart Church community hall and the main church building. At the back of the lawn, recessed slightly from the street, sat the rectory building, its front door slightly ajar.

  Yellow crime scene tape was stretched from the corner of the community hall across the lawn and sidewalk, to the railing of the stairs that led to the church’s main entrance.

  A sheriff’s patrol car was parallel parked in front of the coroner; two unmarked detective units and the CSI van angled in toward the curb nose-first, rear ends sticking into the blocked-off street.

  Mackay parked her Audi and greeted the uniformed deputy who stood sentry outside the crime scene. She was wearing a simple black dress and a gray cashmere jacket. Her makeup was still fresh, her hair still perfectly in place.

  The deputy recognized her and lifted the tape so she could pass. She ducked under and, walking up the concrete path, nodded at the two deputy coroners who stood by with a gurney, talking quietly, waiting for the go-ahead to remove the body from the crime scene. She pushed the rectory door open. A lone investigator was hunched over a tripod-mounted Pentax camera whose macro lens was aimed at the dead priest.

  “Oh, God, Charlie.” Mackay crossed herself. “That’s Reverend Thompson.”

  Sergeant Charles Yamamoto, head of the Sheriff�
��s Crime Scene Investigation unit, glanced up. “Ms. Mackay.”

  Yamamoto was a solemn man and a meticulous investigator whose expertise Mackay greatly respected and appreciated. “You knew him?” he asked her.

  “I’ve attended mass at Sacred Heart a few times but I didn’t know him personally. I do know he was beloved by his parishioners. Where’s the rest of your CSI team?”

  “Small room, gotta work here alone.”

  Mackay nodded. “Where’s Sheriff Granz?”

  “Not here yet. County Comm not get hold of him till five minutes ago.”

  “What detective got called out?” Mackay asked. “Big boss. Miller. In community hall interviewing witnesses.”

  “Is it okay for me to come in?”

  Yamamoto shook his head. “Haven’t vacuumed yet.”

  “Okay, I’ll stay out.”

  Mackay examined the body from a distance. Thompson’s lifeless hands held a coffee mug, but it had tipped over and dumped its contents onto his lap. His head was slumped onto his left shoulder, and except for open, vacant eyes and a hole in the center of his forehead, he looked like he’d fallen asleep in his chair.

  “What can you tell me?” she asked.

  “Single shot. Close range. That door in wall by desk go into church, behind altar. Locked. Front door unlocked when RO get here.” Yamamoto was referring to the responding officer, the patrol deputy who was dispatched initially by County Comm. “No forced entry,” he added.

  “So, how’d the perp get in?”

  He pointed at the window beside the entry door. “Dirt wet under window, no prints. Look like walk right through front door.”

  “Hmm.” Mackay was thinking out loud. “Someone the reverend knew, or was expecting.”

  “I’d say so.”

  “Find any empty cartridge casings?”

  “No.”

  “Meaning the shooter used a revolver.” She was thinking aloud again.

  “Could be automatic, perp pick up ejected brass before he take off.”

  “True.”

  Yamamoto shot a few more frames and disassembled the camera, then removed a battery-powered vacuum from a case and switched it on. He vacuumed the floors, furniture, window ledges and other flat surfaces, emptied the contents into a bag, sealed and initialed it, and set it aside.

  The bag would be turned over to the Department of Justice laboratory where a DOJ criminalist would log it in to maintain the evidential chain of custody, then examine the contents under a microscope in hopes of identifying bits of fiber, hair, or other particles that could be traced to a specific origin.

  Yamamoto motioned to the two coroner’s deputies. They rolled the gurney in, wrestled the heavy corpse into a thick black plastic bag, and zipped it tight. Yamamoto helped them hoist it onto the gurney. When they had rolled it out to the waiting wagon, Yamamoto ran the vacuum over the floor where the body had been, dumped the contents into another bag, and stored the vacuum.

  “How about the Woods Lamp?” Mackay referred to a special handheld infrared light that illuminated microscopic fibers snagged off a perpetrator’s clothing, usually on doorjambs, furniture edges, or rough fabrics.

  “Room not dark enough. Seal crime scene, come back tonight when Woods Lamp be effective.”

  Yamamoto fidgeted, a sign he wanted to get back to work gathering evidence, but he was too respectful to tell her.

  “Thanks, Charlie,” Mackay said. “I’ll go to the community hall, check in with Lieutenant Miller.”

  Miller was sitting at a folding table interviewing an elderly man, jotting down notes on a yellow legal pad. When he finished, he thanked the witness, stood, and walked over to where Mackay was waiting.

  The antithesis of Yamamoto, Miller was personable and talkative, with a perpetual smile. Tall, with a florid complexion and bushy red beard, he wore blue jeans and a 49ers T-shirt. His nickname, Jazzbo, resulted from his avocation as trombonist-saxophonist in a jazz band.

  “Afternoon, Kathryn.”

  “Any witnesses that can tell us what happened?” Mackay asked.

  “Everyone was inside at the raffle.”

  “Anyone hear a shot?”

  He shook his head. “Apparently it was a pretty boisterous crowd. They were raffling off some expensive prizes.”

  “So, we don’t know what time the reverend was murdered?”

  “He delivered the ten-fifteen mass. Sometime between when it ended at eleven-twenty and noon, a parishioner went to the rectory to get Thompson for the grand-prize drawing and found his body. We’ve got more people to interview, but I doubt they’ll be able to add much.”

  When Mackay walked out, the bright sun blinded her, and she didn’t see Sheriff Granz climbing out of his unmarked car. He called to her and waved.

  When her eyes adjusted, she smiled and waved back.

  He kissed her. “How long’ve you been here?”

  “About ten minutes. I got paged out of noon mass and dropped Emma off at Ruth’s on the way here.” Ruth was a friend who’d been her daughter’s sitter for years. Mackay hesitated, then said, “Emma and I missed you at mass.”

  “Kate—”

  “You’re Catholic, Dave. I don’t understand why the three of us can’t go to church together as a family, and neither does Emma.”

  “I stopped going to church when I was a teenager, and don’t want to ever go again. I don’t expect you to understand,” he told her.

  “If you’d explain your reasons to me, I’d try to understand.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “As usual.” She knew a crime scene was neither the time nor place to pursue the touchy personal issue further, and let it drop. “You said you were going to catch up on some work this morning. I tried to call your office before we left for church, but you weren’t there.”

  “I think I had to go out for a while.”

  “You think?”

  “You know what I mean. What’s up here? County Comm said there’s been a murder.”

  She quickly filled him in on the skimpy details she’d gleaned from her conversations with Yamamoto and Miller.

  “Someone just walked past a couple hundred people into the priest’s office, shot him in the head, and walked out without anyone noticing?” Granz asked.

  “Apparently. Miller’s team is still interviewing. Maybe they’ll get lucky and find someone who heard it, tell us exactly what time Reverend Thompson was killed.”

  She glanced up and noticed him staring absently at the sky. “Dave?”

  “Huh? What?”

  “Did you hear me?”

  “No, sorry. What did you say?”

  “I said your detectives haven’t finished interviewing witnesses yet.”

  “Why don’t I check in with Miller, wrap things up here, then meet you at the morgue.”

  “Sure. Are you okay?”

  Without answering, Granz turned and walked away.

  Chapter 6

  MACKAY RODE THE ELEVATOR to the basement of County General Hospital and unconsciously wrinkled her nose as the doors swished open into the hallway of the morgue, anticipating the unmistakable stench of formaldehyde and death.

  At the far end of a spotless tile-floored hall, double doors opened to a loading dock where coroner wagons backed up to discharge their lifeless cargo. An adjacent door accessed the cold storage vault where an assistant called a diener cleaned, weighed, measured, photographed, X-rayed, and stored bodies before autopsy. The door on the opposite side of the hall opened into an atmospherically self-contained isolation unit called the VIP Suite. There, bodies harboring contagious diseases or those in advanced stages of decomposition were examined while powerful extraction fans sucked up noxious or offensive gasses, forced them into a high-temperature incinerator, and neutralized them.

  Mackay sucked in a deep breath, then hurried down the corridor past several doors that opened into various autopsy suites. Each suite was, she knew, equipped with an autopsy station that com
prised slanted stainless steel tables, scales, sinks, and sluices enclosed in booths so the pathologist could dictate notes.

  One of the doors stood open. Inside, lying on its back on the table, she saw a sheet-draped body that she assumed had once been Reverend John Thompson. She diverted her eyes and knocked on Nelson’s office door.

  “C’mon in, Kate.”

  Not much bigger than a walk-in closet, the room contained a desk, a bookcase full of dog-eared medical references, and wall shelves stuffed with diplomas, awards, newspaper clippings, and forensic journals. One shelf held specimen jars filled with human brains and tissue samples preserved in formaldehyde.

  Nelson sat at his desk wearing freshly laundered surgical scrubs.

  “You X-ray the body yet?” Mackay asked.

  “Yep, the diener just finished.”

  “And?”

  “Bullet’s lodged in the brain, probably a small caliber. The slug from a larger weapon would’ve exited and taken the back of the head with it unless it was loaded with wadcutters or dum-dums.”

  “Loaded with what?”

  “Wadcutters are flat-nosed target ammo with low muzzle velocity. Dum-dums are soft bullets designed to flatten and fragment on impact, causing extreme internal damage. We’ll know for sure after I open the head.”

  Nelson glanced at his watch, a stainless Oyster Perpetual Rolex that, along with a new BMW, were the only luxuries he indulged. “Where’s Dave?”

  “Checking in with his detectives. He’ll be here soon.”

  “We’ll wait.”

  She smiled. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.”

  Several years before, Granz was almost killed by a serial killer the press had dubbed the Gingerbread Man. That experience triggered a fresh appreciation for the tenuousness of life that, for him, a trip to the morgue invariably threatened.

  “How’s he feeling?” Nelson asked.

  “He swears he’s fine.”

  “Maybe, but he’s got to have an MRI, Kate. Is he having headaches?”