Innocent monster

TWENTY-FIVE

Two days later, the world wobbled on its axis and roused me from sleep. The wobble came in the form of a phone call and its voice asked, “You remember John Tierney’s address?”

“Yeah.”

“Then get over here. Now!”

I threw on a sweat suit and an old pair of sneakers, and brushed my teeth. Even as I drove, the earth shook beneath the wheels of my car. The wobbling, apparently, had only just begun.

My estimate was spot on. It took me about ten minutes to get from my condo to John Tierney’s ass-end retreat in Gerritsen Beach. Only this time a cold, mocking sun was rising overhead and the street was lit up like a Christmas tree from all the spinning, whirling roof lights atop cop cruisers, crime scene vans, ambulances, and other assorted vehicles. My stomach churned at the sight of Detective McKenna standing alone and ashen-faced just inside the band of yellow tape surrounding Tierney’s house and property. He noticed me coming his way, but it wasn’t anger I saw in his expression. I wasn’t sure what it was, just what it wasn’t.

“What was that call about?” I asked as if I didn’t already know.

“He’s dead. Come on.” He held the tape up for me like a cornerman holding up the ropes for his boxer. As we walked, he handed me some latex gloves and Tyvek booties. “Put those on and be prepared. It stinks in there.”

We walked upstairs, the paintings of the bloody-eared, black-eyed saints staring at me accusingly as we went. In spite of the stench of feces, urine, and decay, the bedroom was alive with activity. John Tierney, the centerpiece of all the fuss, was quite dead. He was seated facing the door, his head pitched forward, a chunk of his skull and scalp missing. A big old Webley revolver lay on the floor at the foot of the chair. The way it landed made it look like a tear leaking from the black eye of the Christ-head Tierney had painted on the floor. Jesus wept. There was dried blood splatter all over the foil-covered windows, some of the foil shredded by shards of his skull and brain tissue as they flew away from the shock wave and bullet. There was a larger hole in the foil where the bullet had exited the house after exiting Tierney.

“Okay,” I whispered to McKenna, “he killed himself. How long ago?”

“A couple of days.”

“Is there a note?”

“Uh huh.”

“Where?”

McKenna pointed at the laptop, its screen also smeared and dotted with blood and tissue, but not overwhelmed by it.

“What’s it say?”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a little note pad. “It all runs together on the screen, but when you put in spacing, it reads: ‘My quest is over. My job done. I did it. I did it. I did it. Burned and scattered to the wind. Ashes to ashes. I did it. Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.. ’”

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee,” I mumbled. “Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…

“I thought you were Jewish.”

“I was married to an ex-Catholic for almost twenty years. And try and remember, Jesus’s last supper was a Passover Seder.”

He snorted and shook his head. “You’re just full of surprises.”

“Everybody seems to think so.” Then I asked the million dollar question: “Do you think he really burned her body?”

“Let’s go for a walk.”

We went back down the stairs, turned around the staircase into the kitchen, but when we stepped into the kitchen, a young detective, NYPD shield hanging out of his jacket pocket, put his hand up and said to McKenna, “Wait a second. Who’s this guy now?”

That set McKenna off. “This guy is the PI that gave me the lead that got us here. He’s the one who tracked Tierney down in the first place.”

“We’ll wanna interview him when you’re done.” He continued to talk to McKenna directly as if I wasn’t standing a foot away from him.

“That’s fine,” I said. “Now can I see what there is to see?”

The young detective jerked his head over his left shoulder. “Go ahead. I’ll be outside when you’re ready.”

The kitchen, like the living room, was a museum piece. The floor was a sheet of yellow and green linoleum-the real stuff-and the appliances were from, as my mom used to say, the year of the flood. The wallpaper, a green floral print, had been around since WWII. The table was green Formica with a fluted aluminum border and the chairs were bent tubular aluminum with jade green plastic cushions. We turned right at the ancient fridge and then right again to an open door. The door led down three rough-hewn wooden steps to a small combination root cellar/pantry. In a house built so close to the water, this was the nearest thing you could get to a basement. The room was on the opposite side of the house from the porch, so I hadn’t noticed it when I was here the first time. Windowless, it was dark in here even though the sun was peeking through the kitchen windows. There was a bare bulb overhead in an old ceramic ceiling fixture. McKenna pulled the beaded chain that hung down from the light.

There before us was a kind of makeshift altar and shrine. The altar, complete with a kneeling step for prayer, was covered in candles and old candle wax. Above the altar was a collage of images of Sashi Bluntstone. Most were cut out of newspapers and magazines and glued and lacquered to the wall. Not unexpectedly, Sashi’s eyes had been blackened and blood poured from her ears. But there were other photographs that sat on top of the altar and leaned against the wall. They were of Sashi Bluntstone, her hands and legs bound behind her like the arms and legs of the stuffed bear left in my car. In the photos, she was propped against a blank wall and nude except for panties. She was limp and her eyes shut.

“See those panties?” McKenna whispered, pointing at the photos. “They were on the altar when we found this room. They were bloody, Moe. It was dried blood.”

“Fuck!”

“It gets worse.”

“How much worse?”

“Wrapped inside the panties we found some small charred bones. Human bones. One of the guys thinks they’re from a finger, maybe a pinky, a child’s pinky.”

The world began wobbling so fiercely, it was all I could do not to throw up right there. I managed to make it outside to the water’s edge before giving up whatever I had inside me. Then I plunged my head into the icy cold water. Now the what-ifs weren’t McKenna’s cross to bear. They were mine. And the cold water would have helped only if I’d managed to keep my head under.