He paused before adding, “She was smiling.”
Morgan grimaced. “Smiling?”
“Radiantly.”
“Did she say anything?”
“She asked if Billy was really dead.”
“And you told her he was?”
“Of course.”
“How did she react to that?”
“She said, ‘Let’s hope he stays that way.’ Honestly, it gave me the shivers.”
“God,” muttered Morgan. “Did she provide you with funeral instructions?”
“Only that there was to be no embalming, no obituary, no visitation hours, no service of any kind.”
“Did she make any other requests?”
“She said she needed a couple of days to decide on a location for the burial, and she asked me to keep the body here until then.”
“And that was it?”
“Not quite. She wanted to pick out a casket immediately. I keep a limited selection in a display room downstairs. She picked the cheapest one. Then she insisted that I place the body in it, at that moment, while she watched. I would normally refuse such a request. But I was desperate to be rid of her, so I did. It was awkward, unsanitary, and unprofessional. The clothing of the deceased was still wet in places where there’d been bleeding.” Peale sighed and shook his head.
Slovak looked appalled.
Morgan leaned forward in his chair. “What happened then?”
“I had removed some personal effects from the pockets of the deceased’s jeans and sweatshirt—a nearly empty wallet, a phone, a car key—and I suggested that she take them. But she said no. Absolutely not. She demanded that her stepson’s body be left just as it was. She was adamant.”
Slovak looked confused. “Did she say why?”
Peale continued to speak directly to Morgan, as if underscoring a preference for addressing only the highest-ranking person in the room. “She said she wanted everything he had to rot in his grave with him. Rot in his grave. Her exact words.”
Morgan asked Peale if he put those belongings in the casket with the body.
“Yes. I laid them on the body, dressed just as it was—in the bloodstained hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. I closed the casket. I latched it. I rolled it into the refrigerated storage unit. I shut the door. And finally, thank God, I was able to bid farewell to that woman.”
“And the next time you visited the embalming room? When was that?”
“When you called me an hour ago and asked me to check on Tate’s body.”
Morgan appeared to be struggling to assimilate everything Peale had said. Eventually, he turned to Gurney. “You have any questions?”
About a dozen, he thought. But this was not the best time to ask them.
12
After leaving Peale, Gurney, Morgan, and Slovak went down to the embalming room, where Kyra Barstow was supervising the work of the two Tyvek-clad evidence techs Gurney had observed that morning on the lawn of the Russell estate.
Morgan asked if Barstow could come next door for a meeting at headquarters. She said that she’d join them in a minute; first, she needed to give her team some additional instructions for the examination of the casket.
True to her word, she arrived in the conference room just as Gurney, Morgan, and Slovak were taking their seats. Morgan ran his fingers over the satiny tabletop and gestured at the room’s thick carpeting and mahogany paneling. “Just like our old precinct house,” he said, making an obvious joke.
Gurney forced a smile at the memory of the stained floor tiles, cheap plastic chairs, and scarred tabletop in the detectives’ meeting room in the converted tenement building with its noisy pipes, temperamental heating system, and ubiquitous mice. He might have smiled more easily if he didn’t interpret the comment as an attempt to remind him yet again of their history together, its inescapable debt.
Morgan turned to Barstow. “Anything of interest in Peale’s embalming room?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Plenty of fingerprints, shoe prints, fibers, hairs, bloodstains. I’ll get the lab to work through the night. By tomorrow morning we should have some results in hand.”
Morgan looked pleased, or at least less worried. “Let’s take a few minutes to assess what we learned from Peale and prioritize next steps. Who wants to start?”
Slovak raised his hand like a schoolboy. “Detective Gurney has been really quiet. I’d love to hear his thoughts.”
“You and me both,” said Morgan. “Dave?”
“You mentioned there’s a video of Tate’s accident, taken by a witness.”
Morgan nodded. “It’s been downloaded to our evidence archive. You want to see it?”
“Very much so.”
Morgan began manipulating an app on his phone. A burnished wood panel in the conference room wall slid open, revealing a large monitor. After a few more swipes and taps on his phone, the big screen came to life, showing a nighttime image of a white church facade, illuminated by a streetlamp at the edge of what Gurney recognized as the village square. The steeple of the church was framed by a black sky.
Gurney’s attention was attracted by a shadowy figure on the sharply pitched roof next to the base of the steeple. The camera began to zoom in slowly. The shadowy figure—in black pants and a gray hooded sweatshirt—moved closer to the edge of the roof and became illuminated by the streetlamps below.
Slovak leaned toward Gurney. “That’s Billy Tate.”
Gurney could see that Tate was holding a can of something in one hand and grasping the corner of the steeple with the other.
Three flashes lit up the sky in rapid succession, followed by a long rumble of thunder.
Tate began moving the can in a curving motion along the side of the steeple.
Two blue-white flashes lit the sky, more brightly this time, followed by louder thunder.
A still-brighter flash created an eerie silhouette of the steeple and the hooded figure next to it. The flash was followed almost immediately by the crashing of thunder, and a few seconds later by another flash and another crash.
Slovak pointed at the screen. “It’s coming now . . . right after this next wind gust.”
Bits of debris, leaves, and dust were roiled up into the air and whirled past the front of the church. Tate stepped in closer to the steeple, bracing his body against it.
“Watch,” said Slovak excitedly. “Here it comes . . .”
A blinding lightning bolt blasted Tate away from the steeple and over the edge of the roof. With a fast downward sweep, the camera followed the body’s fall to the ground.
Gurney flinched, not just at the sight of the impact but at a sound embedded in his memory—as vivid at that moment as the day he heard it, while he was still a probationary officer in the NYPD. An addict had jumped from a sixth-floor apartment window and struck the pavement less than ten feet from where Gurney was standing. The stomach-turning sound of the body hitting the ground had stayed with him for three decades.
While the camera remained on Tate’s inert form, two uniformed officers rushed into the scene, followed by Slovak, followed by Morgan—both in civilian clothes. Slovak knelt next to the body and went through an extended check for vitals. One of the uniformed officers initiated CPR, shouting at the same time for a defibrillator. Slovak could be seen taking out his phone.