Lieutenant Sanchez ushered Singe and Dill to the center aisle and turned them over to the waiting Chief of Detectives John Strucker. It was the first time Dill had seen Strucker in uniform. He was impressed with how well the chief wore it and with the uniform itself, which had been meticulously tailored out of what appeared to be tan linen, although it didn’t wrinkle enough for linen. Under his left arm Strucker had tucked his garrison cap, which had a lot of gold braid on its bill.
“We’re all the way down front,” Strucker murmured and led them down to the front row on the right. A man rose from the left front row and moved toward them. He was an older man, in his sixties at least, and Dill finally recognized him as Dwayne Rinkler, the chief of police. It had been years since Dill had last seen him and the chief’s long narrow face seemed to have lengthened; the frigid blue eyes appeared to have grown even colder, and the thin lips had finally disappeared, leaving only a wide straight ruled line. Rinkler also had lost most of his hair and acquired a deep tan. He wore his uniform almost as well as Strucker. There was even more gold braid on his cap.
Strucker made the introductions and Chief Rinkler shook hands first with Singe and then with Dill. “We’re deeply sorry, Mr. Dill,” he said in his rasping bass, “all of us.”
“Thank you,” Dill said.
“She was a fine woman,” Rinkler added, nodding as if to reconfirm his own assessment. Still nodding, he turned and went back to his seat. Strucker joined him. Dill and Singe took their places across the aisle.
When seated, Dill examined the casket for the first time. He really couldn’t see the casket itself because it was draped with a large American flag. On either side of the casket, six tall stalwart policemen in immaculate summer uniforms stood at motionless parade rest. Dill wondered how long they had been standing like that.
Somewhere, a mixed choir began to sing. Dill followed the sound, turned, and looked up. In the choir loft twelve very young male and female police officers were lifting their unaccompanied voices in a slow somber rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” They apparently intended to sing all four verses as the church filled up. Dill thought they sang quite well and wondered if Felicity would have objected to the hymn. She might have once, he concluded, but she doesn’t now.
When the hymn was over there was the usual amount of rustling and throat-clearing and half-stifled coughs. The young-looking minister made his appearance and mounted slowly to the pulpit, where he surveyed the gathering with sad eyes from behind earnest horn-rimmed spectacles.
“We are here today,” he said, “to mourn the death and pray for the soul of someone who was not of this church or of this faith, but one who chose a life of public service that protected both this faith and this church. We are here to mourn and pray for Detective Felicity Dill and to thank her for her all too short life of dedicated service to this community.”
He went on like that for another five minutes — a deadly dull young man, Dill thought, apparently devout and obviously sincere. When the young minister uttered the inevitable words “in vain,” Dill quit listening as he always did when anyone spoke those words. They always came right after “sacrifice,” another word that sent Dill’s attention wandering. Someone murdered my sister, he thought, as the young minister’s voice rose and fell. If Felicity didn’t die in vain, I don’t know who did.
There was a new sound and Dill realized the young minister had finished and the police choir was singing yet another hymn. The dozen fresh-scrubbed young policemen and women were giving out with “Amazing Grace,” a hymn that Felicity Dill had particularly detested. “Read the words sometime, Pick,” she had written him shortly after Jimmy Carter let it be known that “Amazing Grace” was his favorite hymn. “I mean really read them and then you’ll understand why people still put up with all the shit they put up with.” Dill listened to the words now, really listened, but they meant absolutely nothing to him, although he thought the police choir sang them very well indeed.
After the hymn was over, Dill assumed the services were too, but they weren’t. The young minister had already descended from the pulpit and now someone else mounted it. The someone else was Gene Colder, Baptist deacon and homicide captain, looking neat and melancholy in a dress uniform that seemed as finely tailored as the chief of detectives’. Colder gripped the lectern, not out of nervousness, but with the air of an experienced orator who has something important to say. His eyes examined his audience, beginning with those in the back and ending with Dill in the front row, to whom he nodded slightly. Colder then picked out the mourner he intended to talk to — who seemed to be about halfway back — and began.
“I have been asked to say a few words about Detective Second Grade Felicity Fredricka Dill (God, how she hated Fredricka, Dill thought), not only because she was in my division, homicide, but also because we were friends.” Colder paused and added. “Very good friends.” Now everybody knows they were sleeping together, if they didn’t know before, Dill thought.
“Detective Dill was what I would call a cop’s cop,” Colder continued. “She won her promotions, and they were indeed rapid promotions, because of her hard, often brilliant work. I do not hesitate to predict that had she lived and pursued her career with this same determination and brilliance, she could’ve become this city’s first female chief of detectives and, it is not at all inconceivable, its first female chief of police.” Captain Colder smiled slightly. “It goes without saying that she would have made captain.”
After that, Colder talked about what a wonderful person Detective Dill had been. He praised both her mind and her bravery. He had nice things to say about her sound common sense and her uncommon compassion. He described her loss as tragic and her legacy as everlasting, although Dill didn’t know what he meant by that. Colder failed to mention the dead detective’s two hundred and fifty thousand dollar life insurance policy and the yellow brick duplex, which were also part of her legacy, but not an especially everlasting part, in Dill’s opinion.
Finally, Colder said, “I can only repeat the highest compliment we can pay her: she was a cop’s cop, and we shall miss her. All of us.”
The deacon now gazed out over his congregation, for that was how Dill had come to think of it, and asked them to join him in the Lord’s Prayer. Dill watched as the honor guard’s heads snapped down and they prayed together at parade rest.
When the prayer was over, the police choir burst into song again. Dill, no churchgoer, thought this one was “Abide with Me.” He glanced at Anna Maude Singe, who reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Think of it this way,” she said in a low voice. “Somewhere she’s laughing.”
“Sure,” said Dill, who didn’t at all believe it. He turned to meet the approaching Captain Colder, who shook hands first with Singe and then with Dill. “I appreciate what you said, Captain,” Dill said.
“I meant every word of it.”
“It was very moving,” Singe said.
“Thank you.” He looked at Dill. “Everything work out all right — the limousine and all?”
“It’s been perfect. I want to thank you very much.”
“Well, I’ll escort you back out to your car. It’ll be right behind Felicity.” Not behind the hearse, Dill noticed, but behind the still uninterred Felicity. Colder smiled reassuringly. “The graveside services are very brief, very formal. Shall we go?”
As they walked up the aisle, Dill looked for someone he knew — for some old family friend he could nod to or smile at — but there was none. She has friends here, he thought, but you don’t know them because that ten-year gap between your ages was almost unbridgeable. He did notice the section of out-of-town policemen who sat together, spruce and correct in their varied uniforms, and eyed him curiously and with sympathy as he walked past.