Mas and Kaddouri arrived in his shiny new Land Cruiser and rolled to a halt at the police cordon, down the block from the Church of the Rebirth. The street outside the church was choked with squad cars, EMS vehicles, and two coroner’s vans. They lit up the surrounding buildings with a carnival of bright colors, flashing and rotating like there was a party going on, but the officers and the press who were clustered outside the church weren’t smiling.
Kaddouri had his phone to his ear, nodding his head as he listened, impatiently wishing that the guy on the other end would wrap it up and get to the damn point.
The cop at the cordon waved them through; he knew Kaddouri and he had seen Mas around at headquarters. Kaddouri saluted a thanks to the officer and idled forward, parking at an angle against the curb. He shut off the engine and they both sat a moment, looking through Mas’ passenger window at the flurry of activity just down the street.
They were monitoring the radio traffic on the way over, and they knew it would be bad. They had seen their fair share of bloodlust and mayhem over the years, but Kaddouri was getting worried about her and wanted to lighten the mood somehow before then went inside. He knew she hadn’t been sleeping, so the nap didn’t overly concern him, but she wasn’t her usual self on the way in to town. She used to be able to bounce back, but lately something was going on in that pretty head of hers. Something heavy was pressing on her heart.
Mas had always been guarded in one way or another; most attractive women were. Kaddouri could usually find a way around it, but there was something different about her, something he couldn’t puzzle out, and it was starting to keep him up at night. He realized that he was falling in love with her and wondered if she realized it, too.
The call was finally over, and Kaddouri stared at his phone. Mas wondered what was up. He slipped his phone in his pocket and took his keys out of the ignition before glancing at her.
“Nano was seen leaving a motel with Fareed the night before he jumped.”
Mas glanced at him in surprise. The image of the two of them together was somehow distasteful to her. Not because Nano was a man of the cloth – priests have always managed to have sex, one way or another – but she had a hard time imagining any man, or woman for that matter, frolicking with the likes of Nano. But more than that, she just had a nightmare about Fareed, and now the man’s bloated face and scorched eyeballs were lingering in her mind.
“They were... dating?” It was the only thing she could think of saying. She meant it as a euphemism, and Kaddouri got her point. He just cracked a wry grin and shrugged.
She didn’t grin back, and they got out of the car.
They walked together up the worn granite steps of the Church of the Rebirth, each one a gentle four-inch rise so that the sick and the feeble, the young and the crippled could easily enter the house of God. The baby steps felt awkward to them, frustrating the rhythm of leg muscles accustomed to a higher rise. Kaddouri thought in passing that it also made a parishioner slow down and contemplate where they were headed and what they were about to do.
As a Lebanese, he had been around Catholicism his entire life, but it still struck him as odd that a Muslim such as himself could be allowed to enter a house of God without removing his shoes or even washing his feet, and accompanied by a woman no less. Beyond that, not only was Mas wearing shoes, but she wasn’t wearing anything to cover her head. Not even a hat. His grandfather would have had a fit, may Allah rest his soul.
The cop at the door recognized them, and held it open so they could pass inside. Mas entered first without crossing herself or bowing her head. She wasn’t an unbeliever, exactly, but she was secular through and through.
Kaddouri, however, bowed his head in respect. It was a house of God, no matter who built it and whether they thought he was a believer or not. He silently breathed “Allahu akbar” as he crossed the threshold. God is greater. His non-Muslim friends thought the phrase was “God is great.” But no, the proper translation was, “God is greater.” Greater than anything you could possibly imagine.
Captain Thorrington was there to meet them under the low wood ceiling, in the vestibule beneath the choir loft. The church beyond him was lit up like a gymnasium. Not only had every light been turned on, but the CSI team brought their floods inside as well. The cold halogen glow chased away any spiritual ambience, leaving the statues and the icons and the worn wooden pews looking like a collection of forlorn thrift store bric-a-brac. The magic had been leeched out of the place; it was just a cold, dank warehouse of religious artifacts and tired church equipment now.
Thorrington said nothing, and Kaddouri realized that he had never seen him so ashen before. The captain turned and led them into the church, up the main aisle. The floor ahead was sticky with a large pool of blood.
He angled around it and they followed his lead. As they passed by, a large drop of blood dripped down from above and splashed into the puddle with an audible plop. Mas and Kaddouri paused and glanced up.
Above their head was a human leg, pale from the loss of blood, draped over the dusty wrought-iron chandelier. The limb had been torn from its socket; little bits of flesh and muscle dangled from the jagged stump, surrounding the top of the exposed femur.
They glanced at each other, and then they looked around. Thorrington patiently waited for them to absorb their surroundings. There was blood splattered everywhere, as if whoever tossed the leg up there had swung it around their head first, and beat several of the nearby pews with it for good measure.
When they were ready to continue, Thorrington resumed leading them up the aisle. Mas and Kaddouri were every bit as sober as he was. Up ahead of them, the same CSI team that worked the Fareed Aly jump site was gingerly examining the bodies of the four nuns lying before the altar.
Blood was on everything, and had run down the steps in dark sheets and rivulets. Body parts had been tossed around like toys, spewing trails of blood, some hacked off and some ripped by brute force from their sockets. Unsmiling and silent NOPD photographers roved the scene, their flashes going off as they methodically snapped morbid stills of whatever captured their attention, whatever might help make sense of the chaos.
Mas was about to go up the steps to the altar when she stopped in her tracks and looked to her left. A photographer had just snapped a picture of something, and for a brief moment the dazzle had rendered her eyesight useless.
An instant before, she had caught something in her peripheral vision, and as her eyesight returned the thing that she thought she saw came into focus, standing in sharp relief under the glare of the halogens. It wasn’t a trick of the eye. It all too was real, but it still took her brain a moment to catch up to reality.
Sister Nancy’s severed head sat on the silver collection plate, on the varnished mahogany pedestal beside the lectern. Her neck had been neatly cauterized so that not a single drop of blood, not even a smear, had leaked onto the polished metal. Her habit was still clean and black, and her collar was still a pristine white. The thin black fabric fluttered gently in the breeze wafting in from the cracked stained-glass windows. Her eyeballs were branded and her mouth was gaped open in utter surprise.
Kaddouri swallowed repeatedly to keep from throwing up. Beside him, Thorrington pursed his lips and cast his eyes to the floor. He’d already seen the horrific spectacle and didn’t need to dwell on it further.
Mas took a breath to steady herself and stepped forward, a trembling hand reaching into her jacket pocket. She withdrew her thermometer and slipped the end inside Sister Nancy’s mouth, under her purple tongue. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t get the thermometer to stay in position, so she had to use the tip of her finger to keep it in place.
She could see the others out of the corner of her eye, watching her. After what seemed to be an endless interval, she finally removed the thermometer and checked the reading.
Dr. Osborn was standing by the altar, watching her. She focused her eyes beyond the digital readout and caught the coroner’s gaze, then went up the steps and quietly conferred with him. The CSI team was busy nearby, but they kept sneaking glances at the two of them as they talked.
Kaddouri and Thorrington waited for her to return to them. When she did, Kaddouri glanced at the captain but Thorrington was still gazing at the floor. Kaddouri had never seen his captain like this, and it worried him.
“One oh two?” Kaddouri asked Mas.
She nodded, and then she glanced at Thorrington. Kaddouri did the same, and the captain knew that it was his turn to speak. He finally peeked up at Mas.
“All of them? One oh two?”
Mas nodded. “They’ve been dead for over an hour.”
She put her thermometer away. Kaddouri was still glancing side-long at Thorrington. The man looked like he had been beaten half to death. It was too much, Kaddouri knew, far too much. He wasn’t going to put the captain on the spot; he turned back to Mas instead.
“He’s off his M.O.,” Kaddouri theorized. “All these people are over forty. Could be a copycat.”
Mas shook her head. “He’s on his M.O.,” she told him. “These people just got in the way. No, it’s him. I can feel it.”
Kaddouri nodded, accepting her judgment. During her analysis Thor-rington began to tremble, and he was barely paying attention to her now. His eyes kept drifting to Sister Nancy’s head, then down to the floor. Kaddouri looked at him and so did Mas. The captain’s eyes were moist with tears. It rattled them; it was something they had never seen before.
“Cap’n...?” Kaddouri inquired. They waited for him to gather himself, and when he finally did he looked at them.
“Sister Nancy was my sixth grade teacher,” he told them. His voice was a hoarse whisper. “The woman was a saint.”
Kaddouri didn’t know what to say. Mas closed her eyes and breathed deep and slow to steady herself. When she finally opened them, she found that Thorrington was looking right at her.
“Do whatever you have to do, to put an end to this,” he told her. “The gloves come off, right here and now. So help me God, I’ll back you up all the way up to the Supreme Court if I have to.”
Mas nodded. Thorrington turned to the large crucifix over the altar, and only then did her eyes well with tears. Thorrington genuflected and made the sign of the cross, then gently tapped his breast-bone three times with his clenched fist. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa...
He remained sagged over his clenched hand a moment, and then he forced himself to stand. It was a slow and difficult process.
He finally stood erect, turned around, and walked back down the aisle alone, toward the front doors. He passed directly through the slow, steady drip of blood coming down from the leg on the chandelier above. It splashed onto his shoulder board, staining his gold stars.