The Halo Effect

10

As he walked through the bedroom of the hotel suite, Noah took it all in: the unmade bed, sheets pulled back, pillows indented. Nothing violent. Nothing alarming about the scene. The rest of the room was relatively undisturbed. A bottle of mineral water was next to the bed. A glass was partially filled with clear liquid.

The television was set to an all-day news station, and a familiar reporter was talking about a suicide bomber in Israel who had blown himself up, along with seventeen others, in a supermarket. It happened so often, Noah realized, that you became inured to it, and you could walk by the TV and not stop to listen.

Not right, Noah thought, and for a few seconds, he did stop and then said a silent prayer for the people who had died at the hands of an overzealous lunatic.

And then he walked on, toward the world of another madman, the sound of the newscaster fading into the background.

Her back was to the bathroom door, and she was on her knees in front of a makeshift shrine. A plastic Jesus on a cross nestled in the niche of the soap dish. It was a crappy plastic religious artifact. Not like the heavy and sacred gold cross in the cathedral at home that the priest touched with reverence and that gleamed in the soft lights of the church.

This one glared.

Like the woman who had preceded her, she was wearing a nun’s habit. That much was obvious, even though it was pulled up and exposed her bare ass as she prayed at the tub, her head bowed.

Noah didn’t rush. She was past saving.

The perfect pale skin of her back was streaked with the dark red of dried blood. The marks were not random smears but crosses. Finger-painted crosses all over her back, her buttocks, the backs of her thighs and the soles of her poor feet.

Of all the horrors, it was the sight of her feet that made Noah sad. The wrinkled soles were small. There was something so fucking innocent about the woman’s feet. He wished he could wet a towel and wash them off, clean them of the offending finger-painting of a devil.

Something was moving between her legs.

No. That wasn’t possible. He focused. Even before he consciously figured it out, memory informed him of what it was going to be. He should have been prepared, because it had been there at the first bloodbath.

Like a reptile, like a living thing, the rosary dangled between her legs, half stuffed into her vaginal cavity, half exposed, and dripping with the poor whore’s blood.

It was the constant trickle that caused the holy prayer beads to sway to some rhythm that Noah did not recognize from anything he had ever played.

No one would have listened.

Down each bead of the rosary, down over the medallion of the Virgin Mary, down over the Christ figure on the cross, drops of blood fell to the floor, where they pooled on the white tiles.

Like Mrs. Rodriguez, the maid in the hotel on Fifty-sixth Street, Noah subconsciously intoned a prayer: Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.

Taking a few steps forward, he stood as close to the dead woman’s body as he could without contaminating the crime scene and looked down into the oversize bathtub. Its gleaming silver taps reflected her face, with its closed eyes, back at him.

On the bottom of the tub were ten fifty-dollar bills, soaked in blood, laid out in the shape of a cross.

The photographer had arrived and Noah stepped out of the bathroom to give him room to do his job. Noah and his partner talked to the uniformed cop who had arrived first on the scene, asking him questions and listening to his detailed answers.

“She checked in last night at 10:00 p.m.”

“Not dressed like a nun, I’m guessing,” said Noah.

“The desk clerk who was on duty isn’t here. But I’ve got his name and home phone number. Do you want it?”

“We’re done,” the photographer said, coming out of the bathroom. “She’s all yours.”

Tibor Mercer, the M.E., took over then, making a preliminary examination before moving the woman. He was a middle-aged, overweight man with curly red hair and had been with the department for his entire career. After being an expert witness in an important televised trial, he had become one of the most trusted M.E.s in the country, appearing on crime shows and being quoted in newspapers. But even with all his experience, he had never become hardened by his job, which earned him the respect of many of the people who worked with him. Including Noah Jordain.

Finally Mercer pulled her away from her porcelain prie-dieu.

“How long do you think she’s been dead?” Noah asked.

“Probably died shortly after midnight.”

Noah watched the man do his job. A few minutes passed.

“Look at this.”

Noah knew Mercer well enough to not like the sound of his voice. “What?”

“See for yourself.”

The M.E. held the prostitute’s mouth open with his plastic-sheathed fingers. Noah peered in and saw a communion wafer.

No. That wasn’t what it was, damn it.

On the corpse’s tongue, the same shape as a wafer blessed by a priest, was a perfect, carefully placed, pristine and unused condom, still coiled and flat. A circle of pale, translucent latex.

As if in the hour of her death, she was taking communion.

After all, it was Sunday morning.