Fairstein, Linda: Silent Mercy

A red-and-white station wagon was guided around the parked vehicles by one of the cops. Two men got out and were admitted through the gates, quickly mounting the steps to introduce themselves as fire marshals, Dan Daniels and Frank Russo. Both of them knew Mike.

“Who’s the deceased?” Russo asked.

“Don’t know,” Mike said.

“Any kind of ID?”

Bixby tore his eyes away from his BlackBerry and introduced himself. “I didn’t do a full exam. Didn’t want to turn her over until you gentlemen arrived. Have you got a camera?”

Daniels put his heavy case on the ground and opened it to get his equipment out. A camera and large flash attachment were on top. As he set up, I checked the progress of the uniformed cops, who were hanging yellow crime-scene tape to establish a wider perimeter on the sidewalk in front of the church, pushing back the ever-growing group of gawkers.

“Looks like they used straight-stream to put out the fire,” Russo said.

Mike had talked to the men on the truck that had first responded to the 911 calls of a blaze at Mount Neboh. “Said they had no choice. They didn’t know when they got here if whoever was under that blanket was dead or alive.”

The straight-stream nozzle was effective in dousing the flames quickly, but more destructive in dispersing the evidence.

“She must have been decapitated first, don’t you think?” I asked Bixby while Daniels finished dressing himself to move in and work on the body.

“I assume so.”

Something more interesting than my questions caught Bixby’s attention as his BlackBerry vibrated in his hand. His lack of focus was annoying.

Mike caught it too. “Hey, Doc, you with us, or do you plan to tweet your way through the autopsy?”

“Sorry. Trying to advise one of my colleagues.”

“She appears to be badly burned,” I said. “Can you tell how long the fire was going?”

“The body itself is part of the fuel load, Ms. Cooper. The clothing — or blanket, in this case — provides fuel; so does the body fat, and even the skin and muscle.”

A lanky black man, dressed in a pea jacket and jeans, was escorted through the gate and up to where the group of us was standing. “One of you, Detective Chapman?”

“You got me.”

“Amos Audley. This here’s my church. I’m the caretaker.”

He opened the jacket to reveal a large brass ring with more than a dozen keys on it. He sniffed at the strong odor while he sorted his stock to produce the two that would unlock the building.

“Go ahead, please,” Mike said. “I’ll follow you in.”

Audley turned the large dead bolt and unlocked the knob below it. “Not like the days you could leave a church open for the poor souls what needs it in the dead of night.”

“You’re not old enough to know those days.”

“I’ve been knowing this place since I was a boy, Detective. Be sixty-seven years come November. Used to be, whether the Lord’s lions or lambs came calling, doors was wide open and all was welcome twenty-four hours of the day.”

“This was a lamb, all right. To the slaughter, Amos. We’re going to have to bring her in now, if you don’t mind,” Mike said. “C’mon, Coop. Step inside.”

I paused at the entrance as Audley marched in the dark to the panel of light switches that illuminated the vestibule and this part of the church. When he came back to us to explain that he’d be going to the far end to turn on the rest of the lights, I extended my hand to introduce myself.

“I’m Alexandra Cooper. I’m an assistant district attorney. Sorry to bring you here for such an unpleasant mission.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said, head down as he walked up the nave. “You need to set yourself down and have a little prayer, young lady. That’s what you all be needing.”

“If you don’t mind, Mr. Audley,” Mike said, “I’ll have to ask you to stay close. We’ve got to look around the church before you touch anything, just in case the killer was in here.”

Audley narrowed his eyes and stared at Mike as though he was crazy. “Not likely, Detective. I won’t cause you any grief, but not likely. Not a fit place for a killer.”

From this point in the entryway, I could see enormous stained-glass windows in the ceiling of the sanctuary. It was streaks of moonlight from above that made me conscious of them, although it was still too dark for me to make out any of the images.

“You heard Mr. Audley,” Mike said. “Take a seat.”

“Well, since everybody’s here now, and both Bixby and Russo have done a visual and taken photos, why don’t you just take her straight to the ME’s office?” I asked.

“No can do.”

“Why not?”

“Her body’s going to be pretty brittle because of the fire.”

A blast of cold air blew in the doors that Audley had opened. I looked over my shoulder at Russo and some of the cops who were spreading another clean white sheet on the ground beside the victim.

“Brittle?” I said, shivering against the chill of the night and my thoughts of the deceased.

“Just the ambulance ride downtown could jostle things. Change the way she presents at autopsy. That sheet will capture any trace evidence that falls off the body. Keep her as intact as possible.”

Mike watched, too, and inched a few steps closer to the doors as the team took direction from Russo and moved in to lift the woman. I stood beside him. When he walked back out onto the portico to oversee the change in positioning to the sheet, I went along.

“Jeez, Coop. In or out,” he said, stooping as Bixby raised the woman’s left arm several inches away from her body. “Something there, Doc.”

I leaned over his shoulder as Mike used a pair of tweezers to lift what looked like a piece of blue silk fabric from the fold beneath the woman’s right arm. I gagged at the sight of her body and neck — closer up this time than I was before — and from the smell that intensified with the cold wind.

“Man up, Coop,” Mike said. “This is as ugly as it gets.”

He stood and offered the material around for the others to see.

Mercer motioned to me but I wasn’t moving. “I’m okay.”

“May be as close as we come to figuring what she was wearing before she was set on fire,” Mike said.

Dr. Bixby talked to me as he explained. “Even on the most badly charred bodies, fragments are protected in the flexures of the armpits or groins. Might help you later on.”

Russo asked everyone to step away from the sheet as he ran his flashlight across the section of the portico where the body had been. There was a glint of something sparkling on the ground.

“Mike,” I said, “see that?”

The men who were tending to the deceased looked around, too, as Russo’s beam fixed on the tiny object that caught the light.

“Coop could find a freaking nugget in a pile of manure, as long as it’s gold,” Mike said to Russo. “Take a picture of that, will you?”

“What is it?” I asked.

The flash went off several times before Mike lifted the paperthin object with the tips of his tweezers.

“It’s a star. A six-pointed gold star. One of yours, Coop,” he said. “A Jewish star.”

Bixby ordered the cops to hold up before folding the sheet over the deceased. He rolled her body gently to one side, examining the skin on her back.

“You can see the form of it here, Detective. And even the suggestion of a chain extending up from the star. The heat almost embedded it in her back. It may prove to be a chain she was wearing when — uh, before she was killed.”

When she had a neck, is what he started to say.

Russo photographed the faint outline of the tiny symbol that was etched in the skin of our victim. Then she was finally ready to be wrapped in the sheet and lifted into the church vestibule so the rest of the scene could be examined for evidence.