Free Death Angel by Linda Fairstein Page A

Avenue.”
    “That’s right. Well, one of
his
great-greats—I don’t know how many greats, girl, but Big Logan, as we called him, was born in 1893—and one of his ancestors was a man named Epiphany Bateman, born in Tuskegee.”
    “Who gained his freedom before the Civil War.”
    “Long before that,” Vickee said. “Epiphany made his way to New York, where he established himself as a bootblack. He did well enough to buy one of the first lots of land, in 1825, in what became known as Seneca Village. Epiphany was a trustee of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church—”
    “Built right in the Park? Or what became the Park?”
    “Just where that playground is now on 85th. Dig down, you’ll find the pew that Epiphany Bateman sat in every Sunday. It’s all in the family Bible. The Mother AME Zion Church, Alex, was considered the wealthiest black church in America at that time. These folk even built their own schools for their kids. Colored School #3 is what it was called.”
    “And All Angels’?” I asked.
    “That was the third church in Seneca Village, built closer to 1850. The community was so upscale that whites began to move in, German and Irish immigrants mostly. All Angels’ was the only one of the three churches in the community that was integrated, so Epiphany moved his family over to worship there.”
    “Does Mercer know all this?”
    Vickee smiled at me. “Well, that depends on whether he listened to my father when he’d tell all those family stories. I got no guarantee of that.”
    “When these villagers were moved out of the Park, Vickee, did they set up another community? Are there lists of the family names in church or city records?”
    “So the dead girl is white. You’re looking to make the killer a scion of Seneca, are you, Ms. Alex?”
    “I’m looking for long shots, Vick. Are there names?”
    “The families all scattered, sadly enough. Some of my ancestors moved down to Little Africa.”
    I gave her a blank stare.
    “C’mon. Don’t you know? Little Africa was a small black community on Minetta Lane in Greenwich Village, but the people of color were later forced out of there. Some stayed on the Upper West Side, like the rest of my relatives, and some moved on to the Bronx.”
    “You started me on this track. The black angel, could it really be a relic from a church that’s now buried beneath Central Park?”
    “Columbia University anthropologists did a dig a few years ago. Talk to them. They found dinner plates and cow bones and teapots, and a few crosses from one of the churches. Of course there are relics. It was a vibrant community for the thirty years of its existence. Then it was just razed to the ground and covered with plantings and grasses.”
    Vickee’s phone rang, and she grabbed it. “Hey, babe. Everything good?” She listened while Mercer told her something and then she replied, “I’ll tell her. And Alex is real interested in Seneca Village. She thinks you ought to have the Rothschild anthropology team from Columbia look at the black figure—in case angels are part of the theme here, and in case one of my long-lost relatives is still wilding through the Park. See you tonight.”
    “What’s going on?” I asked.
    “So Mike’s just dropping off his mother after Mass. He’s agreed to spend the afternoon with Mercer, and he said he’ll open up about Jessica Pell. That’s all good.”
    “Thanks a million.”
    “And Mike said he forgot to tell you last night, but the autopsy was negative for any signs of trauma in the vaginal vault. No semen. Sexually active, it appears, and never pregnant. Plus, so long in the water, there’s nothing on the body for DNA. Dead end there.”
    “Mechanism of death?” I asked Vickee, whom I assumed had heard it from Mercer.
    “Depressed fracture of the skull.”
    A blow or blows of such force that the smooth outer bone of the vault was cracked and depressed inward.
    “Nothing from the canvasses, I guess,” I