ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) Page 3

“What brought you to New Orleans, Patti?”

  “I want to get into the nursing program at UNO, gotta save up the money first. Excuse me, but I have to bring out some orders.”

  She edged away from the booth, but he held her with his gaze. “Nursing is a fine profession. I admire women with ambition.”

  Patti shrugged. “Hey, hospitals need nurses and I need a better job, simple as that. I mean, waitressing is a job, but it barely pays the rent.”

  Rent. He sucked up Sprite through the straw, watching her hurry off with her serving tray tucked under her arm. It sounded like she had an apartment, but did she have a roommate? He waited impatiently, watching her schlep food to other diners. Fifteen minutes later when she delivered his Trout Almandine, he adopted what he called his serious look of concern.

  “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, Patti, but do you live in a safe area?”

  “I guess. My apartment’s two blocks off Veterans Boulevard, over near Best Buy?”

  He nodded. He often wandered the television aisle in that particular Best Buy, watching coverage of his Absolutions when it wasn’t prudent to do so at home. “Safe and convenient. And you probably have a roommate.”

  “Not me.” She grinned and covered her mouth with splayed fingers, but not quick enough to hide her buck teeth. “I’ve got five sisters. I never even had a room to myself, never mind a whole apartment.”

  “Five sisters! Goodness, that’s a lot. Are you Catholic?”

  She didn’t answer, gazing at his Mickey Mouse watch. “What?” she said, looking at him now with a puzzled frown. “Catholic? Yeah, are you?”

  “Yes.” He turned on his mischievous grin. “Let’s see if I can guess your name. You don’t look Italian. Maybe you’re Irish. How about Murphy?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “You’ll never guess. It’s Cole. Mom’s Irish, but my dad isn’t.”

  Patti Cole, living alone in an apartment near Best Buy. Excellent.

  “It must be lonely without a roommate. Have you got a pet?”

  “No pets allowed in my complex, but . . .” She covered her mouth with her hand, grinning now. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve got goldfish.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t tell a soul.”

  He got busy on his lunch. He hated fish and didn’t much care for garlic smashed potatoes either, but he aimed to please Patti so he cleaned his plate. When she brought his check, he said, “Nice chatting with you, Patti.”

  He left a big tip and strode down the aisle past the hostess station, past Roxy in her slutty dress. Forget Roxy. She was heartless like Nanny, Nanny and her calculated cruelties. Even now, twenty-seven years later, he could still picture that evil face, the pinched lips and those ice-blue eyes. How sweet it would be to punish Nanny.

  Propelled by the exquisite ache in his groin, he left the restaurant.

  He could hardly wait to hear Patti confess.

  _____

  Kitty Neves lived two blocks off the French Quarter in a tiny cottage with faded-pink siding. It reminded Frank of a dollhouse for discarded Barbies when he arrived at one o’clock. Rona was waiting for him across the street in the shade of an oak tree, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “How come Kenyon isn’t here?”

  “He’s covering our taskforce assignment. You’re lucky I’m here. We’re working our asses off, another murder to investigate.”

  She regarded him silently, irritation glinting in her large dark eyes. Then, in an abrupt decisive motion, she stepped off the curb and started across the street, saying over her shoulder, “You’re the lucky one, about to hear something that will crack this case wide open.”

  He hoped she was right, four hours sleep last night, another long day ahead. He waited on the sidewalk, swatting away a swarm of gnats as Rona mounted four steps and rang Kitty’s bell. The rickety stairs had seen better days, and grime streaked the tall windows on either side of the front door.

  A bottle-blond with a haggard face and wary eyes opened the door.

  “Hi, Kitty,” Rona said. “This is Frank Renzi, the investigator I told you about.”

  Not mentioning he was an NOPD cop, Frank noticed.

  “Pleased ta meetcha,” Kitty said in a voice husky from too many cigarettes. A raspberry-red caftan hid her body, but no amount of pancake makeup could hide the lines etched around her mouth or the dark circles under her faded-blue eyes.

  Rona had said Kitty was thirty-five. He would have guessed fifty.

  She led them into a dim-lit room with two Victorian settees done in ruby-red upholstery and dangling gold fringe. The air was cool but thick with incense. Black-and-white photographs lined the walls, black jazz musicians, nude women in provocative poses, and, oddly, a 1906 poster from the Grand Palais des Champs Elysees.

  “Y’all want some iced tea?” Kitty asked. “I got bourbon if you’d rather.”

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” he said, blown away by the décor. A floor lamp gave off reddish light, and a bowling-ball-sized globe of clear glass sat atop a crimson pillow on the table beside him. Another table in the corner held a Ouija board and Tarot cards.

  He took a seat on one of the matching settees facing the women.

  “Tell him about the weird john,” Rona said.

  Kitty pulled out a pack of Marlboros and a Bic lighter. Her nails were long and painted vermillion. She lit a cigarette, puffed hard and blew a cloud of smoke. “He was a bad hombre, I can tell you that.”

  Rona shot him a look that said: Wait till you hear this.

  Kitty appeared to gather her courage, tensing her neck as she gazed at him with hollowed eyes. “He picked me up in the Quarter and I brought him back here.”

  “When was this? Can you give me an approximate date?”

  “Two years ago maybe? My son’s five and it was right after his third birthday.” Her face softened. “Joey stays with my mom when I’m working. Yeah, right after his birthday in October. It was raining. Damn cold, too, as I recall. After we got here I asked if he wanted his fortune told.” She gave him an arch look. “I can do that, you know. Tell things by looking at people.”

  Just what we need, he thought, a witness thinking she’s psychic.

  “You don’t believe me, but it’s true.” Her eyes bored into him as she leaned forward and clasped his hand in an iron grip. “Somebody dumped you and you’re still not over it.”

  She released his hand, leaned back and gazed at him, somber-eyed.

  The hackles rose on the back of his neck. He was the one who could read people. Now Kitty was reading him. Was his lingering emotional turmoil that obvious? “Tell me about the john. What did he look like?”

  “He was a young guy, baby face, dark hair. A white guy.”

  Rona shot him a triumphant smile.

  “Was he tall? Short? Fat, thin?”

  “Taller than me and I’m five-six. And not fat. He was in good shape.”

  “Any distinctive marks? Scars? Birthmarks? Moles?” When Kitty shook her head, he said, “Okay, tell me what happened.”

  “He didn’t want his fortune told so we went in the bedroom. He’s hot to trot, so I undress, lie down on the bed and hand him a condom. But he don’t put it on, just hops on top and comes all over me.” She made a face. “I hate that, but I figure it’s an easy trick, so I say ‘Gee, dawlin, you’re a quick one.’ Then he got mad and called me a sinner.”

  Nothing new there, Frank thought. The sinner-message the killer left on the victims’ mirrors had been well publicized.

  “That’s when it got weird. He asks me how many men I’ve had sex with and did I enjoy it. I played along at first, but as soon as I answered, he’d ask another question.”

  Recognizing the telltale pattern, Frank leaned forward and locked eyes with her. “Like he was using a script?”

  “Sort of like that, yeah. And then he got another erection. Pissed me off. I told him it’d cost him for another round. That’s when the really weird thing happened.” Her hand t
rembled as she puffed her cigarette. “He told me to stick out my tongue.”

  The room went dead quiet.

  Kitty wheezed as she took a deep breath, a look of stark terror on her face. If she was making this up, she deserved an Oscar.

  “So I stick out my tongue and all of a sudden he’s got these motherfucker shears. I don’t know where the hell they came from. Then he tried to grab my tongue, scared the shit out of me. I rolled off the bed onto the floor. I got a good set of lungs, and I was screaming bloody murder, lemme tell ya.” She went silent, staring into space.

  “Did you ever see him again?”

  “No,” Kitty said, hugging herself with her arms to her chest. “Hope to God I never do.”

  “I’d like you to do an Identikit with a sketch artist.”

  “I ain’t talking to no cops.” She turned to Rona. “You promised. Last time a john beat me up the cops wouldn’t gimme the time of day. Worthless shits.”

  “I’ll have the artist come here,” he said, hoping Miller knew one that made house calls, one that would keep quiet.

  “Okay,” Kitty said, “but no cops. I don’t want nobody putting my name out there. If my name hits the news, I’m dead meat. He’ll kill me.”

  Frank gave Rona a stern look. “We’ll keep it quiet, won’t we, Rona.”

  “Of course.” Rona put her arm around Kitty in a protective gesture.

  Eager to escape the bordello-like atmosphere, Frank left the room, depressed by the dim lighting, the prostitute photos and the dank odor of incense, depressed most of all because Rona’s hot tip wasn’t all that hot. Kitty’s story about the weird john seemed credible, but her description of the man, if in fact he was the Tongue Killer, was useless.

  The women came out of the room, arguing, Kitty saying to Rona as they joined him at the door, “I know he won’t believe me.”

  Rona gave him a look. “Yes he will. Tell him.”

  Kitty ducked her head, eyes fixed on the floor, and said in a low voice, “I think the guy was a priest. Before he ran off, he made a sign with his hand the way priests do, you know? Like he was absolving me or something.”

  _____

  To avoid the media ghouls, more frenzied than ever now that there was a new victim, Frank parked behind the command center. Miller was waiting for him, seated in the shade on the cement steps outside the back door, smoking a cigarette. Frank recapped the interview with Kitty, but skipped the part about the priest. A staunch Catholic, Miller had two kids in parochial school, and Kitty’s notion that the john was a priest was pure speculation.

  “Can you get a sketch artist to work with her?” he asked. “Someone who’ll go to her house and keep quiet about it?”

  “Sure. No need to say it’s related to the Tongue Killer. I’ll get Monica. She’s good and she’ll keep her mouth shut.” Miller smiled faintly. “How you doing with Rona?”

  “Let’s hope she keeps quiet, too. She was pissed you weren’t there.” Adding with a sly grin, “I told her you had a hot date.”

  “Like hell you did,” Miller said, laughing. “Right about then I was filing our reports on that three-hundred-pound sack of shit. He’s still in the lockup, caught a woman judge. She set bail at a half-mill, said he was a risk to the community.”

  “Good for her,” he said, watching a dark sedan with two FBI agents pull into a reserved front-row spot thirty yards away. “Too many stalkers get out of jail and kill their target.”

  The FBI agents climbed out and headed their way, looking spiffy in their regulation dark suits. Miller saw them and rose to his feet. “We better go in. Norris wants to talk to us.”

  Damn. He hated one-on-ones with Norris and avoided them whenever he could. “Shall we tell him about Kitty?”

  Miller turned his back on the approaching FBI agents and said in a low voice, “Tell him about Kitty, we gotta tell him about Rona, and he’s no fan of hers, the way she roasts him in her column. Was this prostitute credible? Maybe she’s looking for a piece of the reward.”

  “No doubt in my mind she was scared, but I’ll check her priors, see if she ever tried a scam like this before.”

  Miller stabbed his cigarette in a butt-filled urn and opened the door. “Right. Check her sheet, see how the composite turns out, then tell Norris.”

  _____

  A white Melamine board on the rear wall of the taskforce command center held timelines and significant data printed in blue Magic Marker above photographs of each victim. Dawn Andrews was the latest. Now there were four and the cavernous room vibrated with urgency, phones ringing, faxes humming. Separated by low partitions, taskforce members worked phones or gazed at computer screens. Ten FBI agents occupied the prime real estate beside the windows, eight from the New Orleans office. Norris had brought two more with him from Atlanta, along with a female media coordinator and a male staffer to supervise a 24-hour hotline monitored by local police.

  Frank saw the looks directed at them as they made their way to Norris’ office, a glassed-in cubicle in the far corner. Politics was the norm on any police force. The taskforce was worse, a volatile mix of FBI agents, local and state police detectives with oversized egos. Anyone getting a private audience with the head honcho was viewed with suspicion and envy.

  Visible through the glass, Special Agent Burke Norris sat hunched over a steel-gray desk that stood right-angled to the door, a telephone clamped to his ear. The desk was perfectly positioned to allow Norris to keep his back to the wall and keep an eye on his troops in the main room. He waved them inside and pointed at two padded folding chairs facing his desk.

  Frank took a seat and studied a large framed photograph on the wall: a beaming Norris at the Marietta Country Club, holding a big shiny golf trophy. Norris was married, but no family albums graced his desk. The only photo featured Norris at the country club, mounted on the wall opposite the door where no one could miss it.

  “Absolutely, sir,” Norris said, his forehead creased in a frown.

  The mayor, Frank wondered, or the governor? Desperate to get the killer off their streets, the politicians were hounding the man tasked with this responsibility. Norris looked the part: a square-jawed six-footer in his fifties, iron-gray hair and steel-blue eyes, a commanding presence to face the media.

  Norris jutted his chin, a quick reflex motion to free his jowls from his too-tight collar and necktie. “Yes, sir, I’ll make that clear at today’s briefing.”

  Watching him, Frank had a hard time reconciling the man’s uptight behind-the-scenes demeanor with his assured public persona.

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be in touch.” Norris slammed down the phone. “Jesus, I got every damn politician in Louisiana hassling me. After the Baton Rouge case, you’d think they’d understand that it takes time to find a serial killer.”

  During the 1990s several women in the Baton Rouge area had been brutally murdered. An FBI agent profiled the killer as a white male in his mid-thirties who had problems relating to women. But later, Derrick Todd Lee, a black man known to be a womanizer, had been convicted of the crimes after DNA evidence linked him to the murders.

  “The families upped the reward to fifty grand,” Miller said. “Maybe that will get us a lead.”

  “It better, because right now we got zip.” Norris raised his chin, jutted his jaw. “Two of my agents grilled the man who found Dawn Andrews, but he stuck to his story.”

  “Which was?” Frank said. Quit teasing and give us the fucking details.

  Norris smirked at him. “Mario Pellegrino, Mr. Italian with chest hair and chains.”

  Ignoring the jibe at his Italian heritage, Frank maintained a deadpan expression. Norris didn’t know about the Irish side of his family. They had short fuses, too, shorter than the Italians.

  “Pellegrino said they had a date,” Norris said, “but when he called around ten, she didn’t answer. He went there anyway, found the door ajar, went inside and saw the body. A message on her voice-mail lines up with his story: Mario called and said he’d pic
k up a pizza and be there in ten minutes. We let him go, but we’ll keep tabs on him.”

  Be there in ten minutes. The killer was there when he called, Frank thought, watching Norris paw through the paperwork strewn over his desk.

  During the silence, the sound of ringing telephones in the main room bled through the glass partition into the office. Norris found what he was looking for, a police report, eyeballed it and said, “Our UNSUB left the usual message on the bathroom mirror. He’s one of those mission killers, thinks these girls are sinners. No tongue mutilation this time, though.”

  “The phone call interrupted him before he completed his ritual,” Frank said. And he knew enough about serial killers to know that incomplete meant unsatisfactory, which meant the scumbag would kill again, soon.

  “Is that your theory?” Norris hefted a three-ring binder crammed with paper and dropped it on his desk. “We got plenty of theories. What we don’t got is evidence. No leads, no witnesses, no semen, no hairs or fibers. Christ, it’s like a fucking ghost did them. Four women murdered in their apartments, no forced entry, so they either knew him or trusted him. I think we’re looking at some kind of authority figure, a cop maybe, or someone posing as one. And let’s not fall for the crap the profilers dish out: white male, mid-thirties, blah, blah, blah. Our UNSUB could be black. Sixty percent of New Orleans area residents are black.”

  Frank saw Miller straighten in his chair. The NOPD Superintendent was African-American, as were many high ranking officers and a number of the rank and file, but Miller and one local FBI agent, a female, were the only African-Americans on the taskforce, a situation that many leaders in the black community cited as unfair.

  Norris jutted his jaw, extended his neck and tugged at his collar with a forefinger. “Christ, we’re doing everything we can to find this guy. One of the families wants to bring in an outside consultant.”

  Frank stifled a smile. That’s why Norris was so hot under the collar. He didn’t want anyone to hire some big shot former FBI agent, didn’t want a serial killer expert grabbing the spotlight. Last month an FBI analyst from the Behavioral Sciences Unit had come down to consult on the case. Frank didn’t know the man, but he had graduated from the FBI National Academy ten years ago when he was with Boston PD. His NOPD boss had cited this when recommending him for the taskforce. But ever since the FBI consultant praised some of Frank’s ideas, Norris had either disregarded his theories or disagreed with them. Insecure people did you in every time.