“I think, um, that is—” She took a deep breath. “I think you should take a look, Father. There’s no easy way to describe this.”
“Forgive me, I shouldn’t stand here like a spare part.” Mazzare began to walk over. This seemed all wrong. He had lost count of the deathbeds and sickrooms he had attended. The places where people came in their time to the ends of their lives. Somehow it was easy to give comfort, to be the calming presence, in places like that. Violent death was harsher. Bad enough when it happened in the street, or was carried into the emergency room. To find it like this, in an almost domestic context—Mazzare had never tried to wear what he thought of as his professional face in such a situation. This was something the police did. For the first time in years, he felt himself resist the first step forward. The prayer for strength was almost wordless. Our Father, who art in heaven—and then mute appeal.
Forward he went, feeling his face set into the serenity of his office. Around the chaise, to see the scene that Sharon had found. There was scarcely more to see than Buckley’s form, face-down on the floor, dark and shiny stain around him. A dark and shiny puddle, as the candlelight flickered and reflected in it. Red.
“This is how we found him, more or less.” Sharon’s voice was cool as could be.
Mazzare did not look at her. Felt, somehow, that even so slight a touch as his gaze would cause her composure to collapse. His own didn’t feel too strong. Strange, after seeing so many battle-corpses. The context made so much difference.
“Have you determined a cause of death?” He realized as he said it that it was pure cop-show. The urge to giggle was fortunately faint.
“Someone really wanted to make sure.” Sharon’s voice was flat now, as if the familiar routines of second-rate scriptwriters made the thing seem somehow homey. “I think he died of strangulation, this cord around his neck here. But then they bashed in his skull at the back here and cut him across the belly. They . . . did a lot of other things, too. There are multiple traumas.” She put a sleeve across her face and breathed in, deeply.
Mazzare wished she hadn’t. The smell was overpowering. He closed his eyes, tried to breathe shallowly through his mouth, to ignore the smell of the corpse and the final stinking indignity of Buckley’s death. “How do you know?”
“That he was dead first?”
“Yes.”
“If they’d cut him before they killed him, there’d be more blood. He’s draining, not bleeding.”
Mazzare opened his eyes, looked up a moment. The words. He concentrated a moment, to bring them to mind. Somehow, he didn’t want to speak the Latin over this one. It had to be the up-time version. “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace.”
“Amen,” said Sharon.
“Aye. Amen,” added Taggart.
Mazzare nodded, once. Taggart was stoutly Presbyterian, and made no secret of his dislike of popery. But, a good man to the core, he would not begrudge the dead the right words by the lights of whoever chanced to speak them. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Thank you, Sharon. I think we should see that Mr. Buckley is attended to, yes? Lieutenant, can you have one of your men find someone—”
Before Mazzare could say anything further, Sharon interrupted. “Uh, Father. I’d rather we didn’t do anything. Not until Ruy—Ruy Sanchez, I mean—gets here.” She glanced at Taggart. “I asked the lieutenant to send for him.”
Ruy Sanchez? Mazzare drew a blank for a moment. Then he placed the name. The factotum—to use a polite term—for Cardinal Bedmar, the special ambassador from the Spanish Netherlands. The old Catalan soldier—to use another euphemism—whom Sharon had been spending so much time with these past few weeks. Mazzare was still completely mystified by the relationship.
“Ah. Why Sanchez?”
Judging from the expression on her face, Sharon herself was a bit mystified by her relationship with Sanchez. For just that moment there, she seemed like a confused little girl. Quite unlike her normal self. As a rule, Sharon Nichols exuded a level of poise and composure far beyond what you’d expect from a woman in her early-mid twenties.