Prayer (18 page)

“A
re you confessing to us now because you feel guilty about it?”

“In a way, yes. I’m not strong enough to do God’s bidding without feeling the human weakness of remorse. I don’t want to have any more deaths—I mean I don’t want to have his death on my conscience.”

I stopped the tape. “She said ‘any more deaths.’ Plural.”

“She did, didn’t she?” said Helen. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“That perhaps she prayed for more than one death? Yes. Peter Ekman, perhaps? Clifford Richardson.”

I told Blunt about the other cases we thought might somehow be connected.

Blunt listened patiently and then said, “You don’t actually believe any of her bullshit, do you?”

“That she killed Philip Osborne with prayer?” I said. “No. But surely you’ll concede that prayer is prima facie evidence of intent to kill. Just because she says that it was prayer that killed Osborne doesn’t mean that’s how he died. There may actually be a guilty act that we simply haven’t yet discovered.”

“You’re chasing shadows,” said Blunt. “One thing I’ve learned in Homicide is that it’s the obvious suspect who’s nearly always guilty. You catch a guy with a smoking gun in his hand, it’s dumb to go and check and see if Colonel Mustard has a fucking alibi.”

“Perhaps,” I conceded. “But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in Domestic Terrorism it’s that it’s in the nature of conspiracies to seem improbable.”

“It’s a pity we have to let her go,” said Helen. “I don’t think she wants to be released.”

“Do we have to let her go? I don’t know.”

“What?” Blunt was horrified.

“According to your own polygraph, she’s not lying.”

“Sure, she believes she’s telling the truth. A lot of crazy people do. I could convince myself that I’m fucking Napoleon, but who would believe me?”

“The polygraph is only inadmissible when a defendant objects to it or when it violates a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to obtain favorable witnesses.” I shrugged. “I can’t see how Gaynor Allitt could object to it since it proves she’s telling the truth.”

Blunt read my mind.

“Oh, no,” he said. “Not me. If you think I’m going before a judge to explain why I want to keep this crazy bitch in custody, you’re even more deluded than she is.”

“She said she doesn’t want to go home,” argued Helen. “She’s clearly frightened of something. Or someone.”

“So am I,” Blunt said. “I’m frightened of my wife falling on top of me from a height of more than two feet. I’m also frightened of going into court and being made to look like an asshole by some smart-aleck lawyer. Look guys, Gaynor Allitt has already been charged with the traffic violation. So there’s no reason to hold her for anything else. And now that I’ve heard what she’s got to say, I want that woman out of my store within the hour.”

“What about a court order for emergency protection, Gil?” Helen said, ignoring him.

“Against what?” I shrugged. “There’s no domestic violence here.”

“A mental health warrant?”

“She doesn’t strike me as constituting a risk to herself. All the same, we might persuade a judge to issue an order into custody for a mental illness examination. The polygraph result could only help to make the case.”

Blunt was still shaking his head.

“Why not?” I asked. “You said yourself she’s crazy.”

“People look and sound crazy right up until the moment they get into court, then they always manage to keep their shit together while you end up looking like a fucking Nazi.”

“Yes,” I said. “But all you have to do to obtain the court order is show reasonable cause. After that, she can be held for up to twenty-one days.”

“The only way you’ll get an MO for that woman is if she cooperates. And she didn’t strike me as the cooperative type.”

“He’s right, Helen. If she opposes the order, there’s no way a judge is going to consider that she’s crazy enough to be detained in a mental hospital.”

“She might cooperate,” said Helen. “That is, if she really is frightened.”

“Yes, she might. And then what happens?”

“She’s a goddamned liar,” said Blunt. “And that comes back to bite you in the ass.”

“Sometimes you have to lie in order to tell the truth,” said Helen.

“Oh, that sounds good,” said Blunt. “Did they teach you that at Quantico, honey?”

“We could interview her again,” said Helen.

“You’re wasting your time,” said Blunt. “Jesus, I wish I had the caseload you people seem to have. Maybe you’ve got nothing better to do. Me, I’m going downstairs to sign a release form. And then I’m going home to enjoy what’s left of Sunday.”

Then he went out of the interview room, leaving Helen and me alone.

“So what do we do now?” asked Helen.

“Let her go.”

“What happened to getting a court order?”

“Oh that.” I grinned. “I was using Detective Blunt to help me with a small experiment. I wanted to see if there might be a way that any of this doesn’t sound completely crazy.”

“And there isn’t, is there?”

“If I was to telephone the FBI counsel and try to explain all this, he’d probably have my badge.”

“It’s Sunday. Maybe he’s at church. Maybe he even believes in God. In which case he might just believe that there is something in Gaynor Allitt’s story.”

“I never met a lawyer yet who didn’t put evidence ten yards ahead of belief. Me included, by the way. Not for a minute do I think that Philip Osborne was killed by that woman’s prayers.”

“So, we let her go.”

“Yes. But it’s a Sunday. Which is fortunate for us.”

“Why?”

“If you were a Christian fanatic, where would you go on a Sunday?”

“Church.”

“Precisely.” I absently applied a little more hand gel to the palms of my sweaty hands, filling the air with a sharp clinical smell. “I think I’d like to find out a little more about what kind of church she goes to and the company she keeps there. Wouldn’t you? You know, there might be other Christian fanatics like Gaynor Allitt who think the same way as she does.”

W
e waited for Gaynor Allitt and then drove her home; it seemed the best way of keeping an eye on her. The house was just outside downtown in Houston’s greater east end and was part of a small gated community of two-story town houses only a couple of minutes east of Minute Maid Park. I pulled up in front of the double garage that constituted the ground floor and switched off the engine.

“Well, thanks for the lift. And for trying to help.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, and took out my wallet. “Here’s my card.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she said. “About Philip Osborne?”

“It’s not that we don’t believe you,” I said. “It’s just that our superiors won’t believe us. My career’s in enough trouble as it is without retailing your story, Gaynor.”

“I guess it does seem a little far-fetched.”

“Just a bit,” I said. “Perhaps if you gave us something a little more concrete to go on.”

She smiled bitterly. “Perhaps I will give you something concrete. I mean really concrete, that you can’t ignore. Only not right now. Later, perhaps. After spending the night in that police station, I feel like I need to take a bath.”

“Of course,” said Helen.

“Look,” said Gaynor. “You’ve both been very kind. I appreciate the fact that you took me seriously. Unlike that jerk back at the police station. Blunt.” She opened the car door. “I’ll pray for you. I’ll pray for you both.”

We watched her climb a little flight of steps at the side up to the front door and go inside the house.

“I’m not sure how to take that, in the circumstances,” I said.

“I think she meant it kindly.”

“Let’s fucking hope so, in view of what she maintains happened to Philip Osborne. God might be pretty pissed at me.”

I started the engine and moved the car just around the corner onto Cline Street, from where we could still watch Gaynor Allitt’s front door.

“Why should God be any different?” said Helen. “These days everyone sounds like they’re pissed at you.”

“Define everyone.”

“Your wife, your father-in-law, Chuck, Doug Corbin, Gary Greene.”

“Greene? What’s his fucking problem?”

“I don’t know. He told me you’ve been ducking him.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“I saw him yesterday morning and he was asking for you. Said you’d promised to speak to him and Vijay Persaud, but that you’d ducked them then.”

Greene was the ASAC in charge of the Cyber Crime Task Force.

“He said he’d tried calling you at home, with no result.”

“Like I told you, I don’t live there anymore. Besides, if it really was urgent, he’d have called me on my cell phone or on my office BlackBerry.” I frowned. “Wait a minute.”

I took out the BlackBerry.

“I was out of range until you called me, Helen. Since then I’ve had it switched off because we were interviewing Gaynor. Shit. It looks as though he called me three times.” I sighed. “The one day I take a day off and everyone wants to get hold of me.”

I pressed a button to return his call.

“He’s on voice mail. Gary? It’s Gil Martins, returning your call. I moved out of my house, which is why I didn’t pick up your message until now. Get back to me.” I dropped the BlackBerry back in my pocket.

For a while we sat in silence—or as near to silence as could be achieved in that area. From time to time, a Harris County Sheriff’s patrol car would put on its siren and move noisily up Clinton Drive.

“I can keep an eye on this one if you want to lie down. We could be here awhile. I’ve got ten bucks that says she’s in there until this evening, at the earliest.”

“Look, you heard her. She said she was going to take a bath.”

“When a woman says that, she means she’s going to bed. She didn’t want you thinking she was a lazy slob, that’s all. If you knew the first fucking thing about women, you’d know that.”

“Are you saying I don’t know anything about women?”

“You know shit about women—sir.”

“Come on, Helen. This woman is not just a Christian soldier, she’s one of God’s Navy SEALs. At least that’s how she thinks of herself. And God’s special warriors do not go to bed on a Sunday morning.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

“Okay. Ten bucks. Look, Helen, I’ve got nothing better to do. But you. I don’t figure it. Shouldn’t you be climbing walls at the rock gym or modeling bikinis for the CIA?”

“Maybe I wanted to tell you when you got to Coney Island this morning that a man without a nose could have smelled the liquor on your breath.”

“I spent last night in Galveston. You should try it sometime. There’s nothing else to do in Galveston except drink and watch TV. And by the way, yesterday was a Saturday. Last time I checked I wasn’t on duty.”

Helen nodded. “My dad liked to drink. A lot. So there are two things I can smell a hundred feet away, Martins. Bullshit and booze. You may have lost your religious faith and your wife, but just make sure you don’t lose your self-respect and then your career.”

“You know, I like the way you run me down, Helen. I almost think you give a shit what happens to me.”

“Yes. That’s probably true. And it’s always like this with me, Martins. When I do give a shit about someone, I usually hand out an accompanying lecture. Just promise me you won’t do any more solo drinking.”

I nodded. I was on the edge of making another joke when I saw Gaynor Allitt coming down the little flight of stairs at the side of her house.

“Looks like the first drinks are on you,” I said. “That’s ten bucks you owe me.”

Gaynor opened her garage door to reveal a maroon Ford Explorer; but it wasn’t the car she’d been driving when she’d had the accident that had brought her to the attention of the HPD; that was still in the repair shop. It wasn’t unusual for Texans to own more than one car; except, perhaps, when they were living alone.

“Didn’t see that coming,” admitted Helen.

Gaynor closed the garage door and drove quickly to 59. On the Explorer’s bumper was a sticker that read D
ON’T FOLLOW ME, FOLLOW
J
ESUS
. She stayed on 59 for about ten miles west until she reached 610, where she turned north. At the Galleria shopping center, she drove down the ramp into the underground parking lot. We followed.

“This may be the largest mall in Texas,” said Helen, “but last time I looked there wasn’t a church in here.”

We parked the car and followed Gaynor Allitt into the mall. With nearly four hundred stores and restaurants and a couple of hotels, the Galleria was the air-conditioned mecca for people from as far afield as Louisiana. Tiffany, Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Valentino, Versace, YSL—they all had stores in the Galleria, and although it was Sunday, all of them were open and looked like they were doing good business. For many Houstonians, a Sunday-afternoon trip to the Galleria was something of an institution, but for someone like Gaynor Allitt, going to the shops on the Lord’s day would have been a sin. I’d described Gaynor Allitt as God’s Navy SEAL; and it was like discovering that a Navy SEAL couldn’t swim.

The two of us stood on an escalator and followed her up to level one. It was like being inside a cathedral—a real Texas cathedral, with a proper glass atrium and thousands of worshippers. In my father’s house there are many mansions and mostly these belonged to big fashion houses selling overpriced accessories.

“Who buys this stuff?” I asked, as we came past Burberry and then Valentino, both of them empty of customers.

“Women, of course. Women who want to look good.”

“Those are the six most expensive words in the world.”

“Maybe she’s going to the Microsoft store.”

But Gaynor Allitt kept on walking, past Giorgio Armani, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Bulgari; and both of us were surprised when she went into Yves Saint Laurent.

“It costs nothing to look,” said Helen.

“That’s what I say.” I took an ostentatious glance at Helen’s bare legs and nodded.

“You’re pathetic.” But she was laughing while she was peering through the YSL window. “Maybe the St. Joanna routine was an act.”

“If it was, then I’m kind of interested to see the next one, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I’m ten bucks down. There’s got to be something in this that’ll help me pull it back.”

Standing in the Ralph Lauren store opposite YSL, we fought off a determined sales assistant with polite negatives and, when these didn’t work, with Bureau ID. Helen explained to the perma-tan blond who persisted in trying to engage us in sales conversation that we were keeping a suspect under surveillance; finally we were left alone and spent the next half hour looking out of the store window, which must have been strange for those who paused to look in.

“I still don’t figure it. You saw what she was wearing at the police station. I’d have bet you she couldn’t even spell Yves Saint Laurent.”

“And she’s a court reporter, too. That’s ten bucks I could have won.”

“Why don’t you take a look through the window and see what she’s doing?”

Even as I spoke, Gaynor Allitt came out of the shop, but she wasn’t wearing the dress she had been wearing half an hour before. Now she was wearing a belted dress with a bold jaguar print.

“That’s quite a transformation.”

“It certainly is,” said Helen. “And by the way, that’s a three-thousand-dollar dress she’s wearing, if my memory serves, and it usually does in these matters.”

Gaynor Allitt paused and then turned to her left. She went only a few yards however and then walked into Jimmy Choo.

“Good call,” said Helen. “Now she needs some better shoes.”

“How much better?”

“Eight or nine hundred dollars.”

“This is turning into quite a Sunday.”

Another thirty minutes passed before a noticeably taller Gaynor Allitt came out of the shop. This time she was wearing a pair of black rhinestone-encrusted sandals with what Helen assured me were four-inch heels.

“Oh, I do like those,” she said. “Those shoes are a thousand dollars.”

“For shoes?”

“The less shoe there is the more they cost. Not only that, they’ll make her easier to follow.”

“How do you make that out?”

“Obviously you’ve never tried walking in four-inch heels.”

We followed Gaynor through the Galleria again. “She’s all dressed up,” I said. “What she needs now is somewhere to go.”

We went back to the parking lot and then tailed her out of the Galleria. She drove onto 59 and went east for about seven miles before turning north on Polk Street and then into the Hyatt parking lot.

It wasn’t difficult to remain unseen in the Hyatt: the hotel’s twenty-nine-story atrium, one of the highest in Texas, was the size of a small airport.

“She seems to be checking in,” said Helen. “And without luggage.”

“Isn’t that the man’s job? Checking in?”

Helen looked pained. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Martins. You’re assuming her lover is a man when it might just as easily turn out to be another woman.”

“Come on,” I said. “It stands to reason that someone like her could hardly be gay. She probably thinks all gay people should be stoned.”

“The Bible doesn’t say anything about gay women,” said Helen. “Just gay men.”

“Look, I know what the evangelical people of Texas think about gays, male and female. Until recently I was one of them.”

“Well, I know, too.”

“You’re not evangelical.”

“No, but I am gay.”

I felt my breath stop in my chest for a moment. “What?”

“I’m a lesbian.”

“What?”

“I’m a lesbian, Martins.”

“Well, Jesus, Helen. What the fuck?”

“I had to tell someone sometime. You’re my boss and my friend, so I thought it ought to be you. I thought that maybe you could tell some of the other guys at the Bureau.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. Is that a problem?”

“No. I’ll tell people if you want. Sure. No problem.” I paused. “Hey, the desk clerk just handed Gaynor a key.”

“You know what I think? That maybe she wasn’t exaggerating. She is afraid to be home on her own.”

Gaynor Allitt walked across the floor of the lobby into an elevator. Her new heels on the marble floor sounded like a pianist’s metronome. Then we watched the car ascend to the twenty-sixth floor.

“So what do we do now, sir?”

“I’d suggest we go up to the Spindletop revolving restaurant and get a cup of coffee, but I’m already feeling a little turned around by your recent revelation.”

“You sound a little disappointed, Martins.”

“No,” I insisted. “Maybe a little. But I’m not disappointed in you, Helen. In fact, I kind of admire you for just spitting it out like that. That’s a hell of a thing to keep to yourself all this time. It can’t have been easy.”

“Comes with the territory,” she said.

I glanced at my watch. “I guess that’s that. I’ll take you back to your car.”

We returned to the Hyatt parking lot. It took a little while to get out because the ticket machine wasn’t working and the attendant had to come and take my money in person, which meant that it was another fifteen minutes before I was turning right onto Polk Street. We had to wait again, to allow emergency services to pass before turning onto Smith: a fire truck, a couple of ambulances, and three patrol cars.

“Wonder what that’s about?” said Helen. “Maybe we should follow.” Helen turned around in her seat. “They’re stopping in front of the Hyatt.”

“False alarm. We’ve just come out of there and everything was okay.”

“We are on the scene.”

I cursed, but I was already turning the car around and putting the cherry on top.

I pulled up next to a cop who was already stringing out a line of crime-scene tape. I dropped my window and flashed my badge.

“Hey, buddy,” I said. “What’s happening?”

The cop glanced at me and then at the Spindletop. “Woman jumped from the top of the Hyatt,” he said.

“Jesus.” I glanced at Helen who returned a rueful look. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Of course.”

I stopped the engine and we walked the length of the Hyatt’s façade until, at the foot of the atrium’s “window,” we came upon a scrimmage of cops and paramedics. Behind them on the ground was a length of plastic sheeting screening something unspeakable. One of the cops turned to face me.