It was a black and white dusk. The sky was overcast in a kind of gunmetal way and the buildings were silhouettes illuminated by the lights in the windows. Small patches of icy snow were tucked against the curbs. It was not the kind of day to lighten one’s mood.
“You ever think about moving to Florida?” O’Neil looked up at the sky.
“Isn’t that what all cops think about? Moving to Florida?” Dave watched the people on the sidewalks. The foreigners were dressed to the nines, even in the cold. The Americans, or the people who appeared to be Americans, were dressed like students in jeans and overstuffed jackets. The gay men wore scarves.
“Cops think about the day when they don’t have to deal with shit-bags every day. But Florida would be nice. Fishing and sitting in the sun. No dead priests washing up on the beach.”
“Speaking of dead priests, any news?”
“You first.” O’Neil gave Dave his most insincere smile.
“I got a package. A rosary with a tag that said ‘Father Phil’. It was waiting for me when I got back to my place this morning.”
“Did you think it might have been a good thing to call me?” O’Neil had put on his cop face.
“I thought it was a good thing to get some sleep.”
“Have you been handling this Rosary, saying your prayers with it?”
“Just when I took it out of the box. I put it back when I saw the tag. I have it with me. Now you.”
“We don’t have anybody we’re looking for right now. We’re checking to see if Father Phil had some personal issues, maybe a boyfriend or some things he didn’t want anybody else to know about. Whoever did him was pissed. A crime of passion, I’d say. Lots of stab wounds.”
“How about the other priest?”
“He’s a professor at Catholic. His name is Father Eduardo Pollis. His students called him Father Ed. He taught philosophy and theology. Forty-seven years old. Born in Newton, Massachusetts. He was considered very conservative on church issues, especially women and gays. We’re still working on a timeline for how and why he ended up dead in an alley. Other than the stab wounds, we don’t have a direct connection to Father Phil’s murder.”
“Sounds like a press release. What do you have that you haven’t given to every other reporter in the city?”
“None of this stuff is on the press release, except for the connection to Catholic.”
“I need more than the usual ‘police are investigating’ crap. You have an ideas on the killer?”
“Just between us girls, yeah. We have a person of interest. There’ve been similar killings in San Francisco, Chicago and New York. Cops there think it’s one guy who’s got some kind of religious weirdness involving knives and priests. We’re waiting for sketches and possible background info. You can’t use any of that right now. Maybe soon.” He pulled the car into a spot at 4D. “C’mon up and bring the Rosary. I’ll give you something you can use.”
4D was busy. A desk sergeant was being harangued by an elderly couple about a street robbery on Georgia Avenue, three handcuffed teenagers were sulking against a wall, a middle-aged man with a bloody nose was waving his arms and announcing that he was not drunk. A crusty-looking black man with leaves in his hair was nodding off as an arresting officer tried to fill out some paperwork.
“Welcome to the work of the people of your Nation’s Capital,” O’Neil said, waving his arm at the scene on the first floor. He led the way up the back stairs to Homicide. He slipped off his overcoat and suit jacket and sat on the corner of his desk. “Pull up a chair.”
Dave sat in an old wooden desk chair that listed to one side and made a creaking sound like a cat being tortured. “How long you guys gonna be here in this dump?”
“We serve at the pleasure of the chief,” O’Neil said. “We will be informed of our new digs in due time.” He raised his eyebrows as another detective snickered.
“How many cases are you working on right now?” Dave wanted to know how much time the cops could give to the priests’ killings.
“Depends how you define it. It’s safe to say the events of last night are a top priority right now. You can take that any way you like. May I see the Rosary?” He pulled a pair of medical gloves out of a box in his desk and put them on.
Dave handed it over and watched O’Neil as he opened the box and examined its contents. He handed everything to another detective, who left the room. “Did you touch it?”
“Yes, I took it out of the box and looked at it.”
“We’ll need to get your prints.”
“So, what do you have for me?”
“Do you know anything about the Rosary?”
“Catholics do it. That’s about it.”
“It’s a prayer ritual. For many Catholics it’s a mystical meditation and devotion. There are mysteries to meditate upon, twenty of them. There are joyful mysteries, luminous mysteries, glorious mysteries, and sorrowful mysteries. People who say the Rosary meditate on a different set of mysteries every day. These are spiritual mysteries, not the detective kind. We think our knife man might be working on a Rosary thing.”
“Why’s that?”
“Can’t tell you right now. It’s only a theory. You can’t use that but you can say that we believe we might be looking for a psychotic religious fanatic. How’s that?”
“Can I get you on tape?”
O’Neil looked at his fingernails for a long minute. “I’ll have to moderate what I say, but, yeah.”
Dave took out his recorder and got a two minute interview, most of which was boilerplate press release stuff about how the police were working on leads and asking for the public’s help in bringing the perpetrator to justice, the usual bullshit. But O’Neil did make a twenty-second statement to the effect that police were working on a theory that a form of religious fanaticism might be behind the killings. He would not confirm on tape that the murders in D.C. might be tied to such killings in other cities.