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“I’ve also emailed you the photographs of the dagger. You know a couple of collectors in the DC area who might know where it came from or how old it is.”
“I’m assuming there’s a good reason why you and the Doc are on the case instead of the locals. What’s my time frame here? It’s getting late.”
“All you have is a lonely couch to go to. You might as well work.”
Carver sighed again. “Good point.”
“I need it as soon as you can get it to us. We don’t want to spend the rest of our honeymoon buried in chest cavities.”
“That’s a lovely image. Thank you for that.” There was another rapid-fire click of keys and Ben said, “Leon Stein. Married to Maria Sophia Castile, and they celebrated their seventieth wedding anniversary last December. Whew, she was fifteen and he was thirty when they married back in 1945. That’s a little icky. But I guess it’s worked out for them okay. They’ve got eight children. Thirty-two grandchildren. And I can’t even count all the great and great-great grandchildren. But I’ll send you a comprehensive list along with financials.”
“Great,” Jack said. “And do me another favor.”
“I’m going to hate this one. I can tell by the sound of your voice.”
“There’s a Father Fernando at the local Catholic church. He’s the one who discovered the body, and he didn’t particularly think it was necessary to find out who killed Stein. See what you can find on him as well.”
“Dude, you know it’s all kinds of wrong to be doing background searches on priests.”
“Yep, which is why you’re going to do it. You love the wrong stuff. Check Father’s DeCosta and Xavier while you’re at it.”
“Fine, but the least you can do is get me seats behind the dugout at a Nationals game.”
“You’re not a baseball fan,” Jack said.
“No, but I can sell them to Special Agent Drummond for an exorbitant amount of money. He’s a dumbass like that.”
“Fine, but I need answers as soon as you get them.”
“When I get them you’ll have them. But it might be tomorrow on the knife. Not everyone dances to your tune like I do.”
“I appreciate it, Carver.”
“I know you do. And I’d also appreciate a long weekend away with my wife. To somewhere tropical. And a babysitter to keep the kids.”
“That could probably be arranged too. And just think, you’ll be sitting behind a desk the whole time for this case. You won’t get shot at or banged up in a car crash.”
“It’s the only reason I’m helping you out. I’m getting too old for this shit. There’s a reason I never worked in the field.”
“Because you could never pass the shooting requirements?”
“That too. Catch you later.”
Carver hung up and I knew we were in good hands. If there were secrets to find out Carver would have them before too long. No one could keep a secret from him.
Chapter Seven
“He wouldn’t havelived more than a few months past his birthday,” I said once I’d completed the autopsy. Or at least the parts that I could.
My supplies were limited and I didn’t have on site testing capabilities, so the samples I’d taken would go to the mainland. What they did with them was up to them. But it didn’t take sophisticated equipment to see that Leon Stein’s body was riddled with cancer.
“He had a few blockages in his heart, but not at the critical stage yet. But the cancer in his lungs would’ve shut him down before too long. We should probably check with Doctor Hizumi to see if he was being treated. But official cause of death was caused by the dagger to the heart. It pierced the anterior wall of the left ventricle. There were no other signs of struggle.”
Jack had rigged up a white board next to Joe’s desk. While I’d been looking at Leon’s internal organs, he’d been making a timeline of events and running background checks and financials on Leon’s family.
“So time of death is narrowed down to somewhere between four and four-thirty. That’s not a lot of time to make the kill and pose the body. According to Joe’s notes, they keep the doors to the courtyard blocked after Mass so the priests can go back to the clergy house and pray and rest between services. So no parishioners followed the priests in that direction. And all three priests said the same thing. They walked back to the clergy house together and no one was in the courtyard when they passed through.”
“That’s all fine and good about parishioners not be allowed to go through to the courtyard after Mass, but Leon Stein was in that service and you’re telling me no one noticed that he walked back there?”
