ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) Page 8

  At last year’s convocation, Krauthammer had spoken to him again, this time about the first victim, saying the girl should have dressed more modestly instead of wearing such provocative clothes. Sean squinted at the sketch.

  It really did look like Father Tim, the man he’d seen talking to Lynette the day before she was murdered. Ridiculous, of course. The young priest might be a judgmental little prick, but he wasn’t a killer.

  _____

  At one-thirty the sinner parked outside The Sweet Spot, a local café featuring specialty coffees, overstuffed sandwiches and delicious homemade pies. Not that he’d come here for food. He hadn’t even been able to eat breakfast. How could he with Father Cronin ranting about the column in the Clarion-Call, saying, “That woman should never have brought the man to her house. She was asking for trouble.”

  She’s a prostitute! he’d wanted to scream. He hadn’t, of course.

  The column didn’t name the woman, but he remembered her. She didn’t know his name, but she could identify him. His stomach churned as he entered the cafe. He went to the counter, got a latte and wandered over to a policeman sitting by a window, eating a sandwich. Officer Charlie Malone was a gung-ho rookie cop, a big brawny Irish kid, twenty-two, with peach fuzz on his cheeks. Charlie smiled and gestured at the opposite chair.

  “How you doing, Father Tim? Have a seat.”

  “Not bad, Charlie. How about you?” In a voice tinged with sorrow, he added, “Terrible about those girls, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is, Father. We gotta get this guy. Folks are scared to death.”

  The sinner blew on his latte and took a careful sip. “Interesting column in the Clarion-Call today. Who’s the woman, I wonder?”

  Charlie glanced at the people at nearby tables and lowered his voice. “Lots of rumors floating around, Father. I hear she’s a prostitute.”

  “Really? Well, we mustn’t judge her. It’s a dangerous life, but God kept her safe.” He gazed at Charlie over the rim of his mug. “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”

  “Hard to say. Could be she’s angling for the reward money, but you never know. They’ll find out more after they interview her.”

  After they interview her. They hadn’t yet, but they would. Dangerous. He didn’t know her name, but he could find her easily enough. They’d met in the French Quarter and the route to her house was seared into his memory.

  Charlie gazed at him, frowning as if he were considering something.

  Come on, Charlie, tell me what you know. You’re dying to impress me.

  “Keep this under your hat, okay Father?” Charlie whispered, leaning closer. “That detective Rona Jefferson mentioned in her column, Frank Renzi? He called me, looking for information.”

  The notion stunned him. Why would an NOPD detective call a rookie cop? What information could Charlie possibly have that would interest Renzi? He smiled at the baby-faced cop. “Wow, Charlie, I’m impressed.”

  Charlie beamed. “Matter of fact, he asked me about a priest.”

  Wiping sweaty palms on his trousers, he gazed at Charlie, eyes wide with innocence. This was not the time to appear culpable; this was the moment to act like a blameless parish priest. “A priest? Whatever for? Who?”

  “Father Daily. Someone told Detective Renzi that I’m in his parish.” Charlie grinned, exposing nicotine-stained teeth. “I am, but sometimes I skip Sunday Mass if I work late on Saturday.”

  The sinner sipped his latte. He’d spoken with Daily a couple of times at diocesan conferences. On one occasion Daily had made a snide remark, something about the girls in his parish being thrilled to have a handsome young man for their priest. Later, he’d heard rumors about Daily and his housekeeper. His colleagues loved to gossip, especially about sex.

  A sudden shriek startled him. Three tables away, a red-faced toddler was screaming. The mother, a slut in a revealing halter top, jammed a pacifier into its mouth. The kid spit it out and screamed louder. Why didn’t she take the brat outside? How could he concentrate on worming information out of Charlie Malone with her kid screaming its head off?

  “Why was Detective Renzi asking about Father Daily?”

  “I don’t know, Father Tim. He asked how long I’d known him and was he well-liked in the parish, stuff like that. I couldn’t tell him much. I’ve never even talked to Father Daily.” Charlie gave him another broad grin. “He gives short homilies. I like that.”

  “Brevity is a virtue,” said the sinner, smiling to acknowledge Charlie’s joke. “I don’t want to sound judgmental, but I’ve heard rumors …” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Can we keep this between us?”

  “Of course, Father. I trust you, you can trust me.”

  “Someone told me Father Daily and his housekeeper . . .” He paused delicately. “Well, let’s put it this way: someone said they don’t exactly live together as brother and sister.”

  Charlie appeared shocked. “Really? I’ve heard that some priests—” Seemingly embarrassed, he added, “Not you, of course, Father. But those things happen, I guess.”

  Adopting a pious expression, the sinner nodded. “Sins of the flesh are difficult for some people to resist.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Frank stared with undisguised contempt at the television set above the bar as a reporter wrapped up an interview with Burke Norris. Miller nudged his elbow. “You’re a celebrity, got your name on CNN.”

  “Yeah, thanks to Rona I get my two minutes of infamy.”

  He drank some Budweiser and held the bottle to his temples to ease his headache. It had been a helluva day. Ten minutes ago at six o’clock he’d met Miller at the Twin Oaks Café, a local haunt featuring Creole cooking at reasonable prices and a relaxed ambiance, their usual hang when they wanted to avoid the media or other taskforce members. Now they occupied their customary stools at the end of the L-shaped bar, their backs to the wall.

  “Norris is smooth as snake-oil, you know, when the cameras roll, but get you in his office? He’s a badass.” Miller drank from a Coors longneck, lit a cigarette and blew a thin stream of smoke. “You worried about Kitty?”

  “I’m worried about a lot of things. Norris wants me to bring her to headquarters, but I can’t find her. She’s not answering her phone and there’s no voice mail. Rona hasn’t called me back, either.”

  He glanced around the bar at the ethnically mixed clientele, jammed with workers now, enjoying a brew before heading home, blue-collar guys mostly, and two attractive dark-haired Latinas perched on stools at the other end of the bar. When the CNN reporter announced his name over footage of him entering the command center, he’d feared someone might recognize him, but they hadn’t. By tomorrow, he’d be old news. If he was lucky.

  “What’s your theory on why he cuts the tongues?” Miller asked.

  “Something sexual, probably. The tongue can symbolize genitalia, male or female.” Miller winced and Frank laughed. “Or, as Freud said, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.’ Maybe the killer just doesn’t want them to talk.”

  “But the coroner’s report says he cuts the tongues after the women are dead. They can’t talk if they’re dead.”

  “It’s his ritual. This guy can’t interact with women in a normal way. He hates them, but he needs them. That makes him feel powerless so he gets off by terrorizing them, probably uses the tongue later to relive the crime while he jerks off. I saw a videotaped confession once where a rape-murderer described in graphic detail how he tormented his victims.”

  “You get all this from those FBI courses you took?”

  “Most of it. And the psychology courses I took in college.” He slugged down some beer. “That’s why Norris won’t listen to me. He’s afraid I’ll show him up.”

  “You’re way ahead of me. Only psych course I ever took was a class in child development at LSU. I got a B, quit while I was ahead.”

  “What, a psych course for jocks?” he said, jiving him. Miller had gone to LSU on a football scholarship, had played
varsity for three years.

  Miller drew himself up on his barstool, indignant. “I used it plenty when my kids were little.” He shook his head. “Man, this case gives me the creeps. People are terrified, gun shops raking in the bucks. Friend of mine wants to install a security system, got put on a waiting list. Six weeks, they said.”

  “All five victims were young, too trusting, maybe, or emotionally vulnerable.” He finished his beer, signaled the barmaid for the check, and dug out his wallet. “Some women need more love and attention than others.”

  Miller let out a mirthless chuckle. “They all need love and attention. No matter how much you give ‘em, it’s never enough.”

  “Tanya giving you a rough time?”

  “Not crazy about the overtime, for sure.”

  The barmaid, a dark-eyed woman in a black T-shirt, took the ten dollar bill Frank gave her, and told them to have a good night and come back soon.

  He turned to Miller and said, “This killer doesn’t just knock on their door. He gets to know them. He’s a con artist. Everyone thinks he’s a monster, but he could be the guy next door. I think we should interview the victims’ parish priests, see if we come up with anything.”

  Miller’s jaw sagged in disbelief. “You really think the killer’s a priest? Man, that’s deep. If this guy turns out to be a priest, be the biggest bombshell that ever hit New Orleans.”

  _____

  The moon was a big yellow disk hovering over the French Quarter as the sinner parked his car on Esplanade Avenue and killed the lights. Cloaked in darkness, he removed his shoes and pulled on the cowboy boots he’d bought at the Tex-Mex outlet. He’d grabbed a pair of size tens without trying them on. They pinched his toes, but it didn’t matter. He’d ditch them later.

  He had taken more care with the buckskin cowboy hat, choosing one a size too large. With the brim pulled down, his hair and forehead were hidden. He had also bought a gaudy string-tie, silver cords with dice attached to both ends. If anyone noticed him, they’d remember the details, not his face.

  With the cowboy hat in place, he left the car and turned the corner onto Royal Street. The boots made walking difficult and he took care to avoid jagged cement slabs in the sidewalk, heaved up by the roots of ancient trees. The air was hot and muggy, no hint of a breeze, and sweat quickly dampened in his armpits and groin. Tonight he felt none of the usual excitement, just grim determination.

  There would be no Absolution tonight.

  Hobbled by the cumbersome boots, he crossed several side streets: Barracks, Governor Nichols, and Ursuline. Nearing St. Philip, he heard loud music coming from the gay bar on the corner. Paradise Disco. The door and the windows were wide open and a voice called to him from the shadowy interior, clearly audible over the disco beat. “Hey, Tex, wanna hump?”

  The words brought memories of Brother Henry, the musky odor of sweat and slimy semen. Boarding school, seventh grade. He’d been so far from home, so lonely. Late one night his English teacher had come to him, slipping into the darkness of his room. He almost expected it: penance for his earlier sins. After that Brother Henry came to him twice a week. They never acknowledged this in class, but he thought about it constantly, the weight of the man, the sweet-smelling odor of his sweat, the dark liquid eyes that never met his own. He felt no hate, only shame. The affection Brother Henry had shown him was comforting, more than he’d ever received at home.

  “Come on in, Tex. We’ll have a good time.”

  The sinner ducked around the corner and hurried up St. Philip. One block away Bourbon Street was already audible, a throbbing jumble of blues and jazz and disco and rock issuing from the bars and strip joints.

  He turned left on Bourbon and there it was, a blinking pink neon sign, alternately pulsing PUSSYCAT and the outline of a woman with huge breasts and a gigantic rump. The bar where he’d met the prostitute. It was nine-thirty, early for Bourbon Street revelers, but with any kind of luck he might catch her with her first trick.

  Boisterous crowds overflowed the sidewalks and milled into the street: Texas oilmen with pinky rings, black-clad bikers, punk rockers with spiky purple hair, and baby-faced college students, all of them armed with plastic cups of beer or cocktails festooned with fruit. He’d forgotten the horrible smell: pungent body odor, acrid disinfectant, and the sickly sweet stench of the sewers—beer and booze fermented by the relentless heat.

  The crowd swirled him past the PUSSYCAT. From the dark interior came catcalls and piercing whistles, men whooping it up as bosomy women stripped to the bump-and-grind of a lowdown blues. One block later he managed a U-turn and drifted past the club again, in a holding pattern like a jet awaiting clearance to land at an airport, careful to avoid drawing attention. Police were everywhere: uniforms on every corner, others on horseback, still others in street-clothes, mixing with the crowd.

  At quarter past ten he saw her, nuzzling some poor sucker’s neck as they came out of the bar. He recognized her at once: stringy bleached-blonde hair with dark roots, heavy makeup on her face, a harlot in a scarlet dress with a short skirt. She might have been five-six; the john was shorter, a chubby man with thinning hair and a paunch hanging over his jeans.

  Lurking a half-block behind, he followed them toward Esplanade. Oblivious to him, they staggered along arm in arm, stopping every so often to smooch as the john ran his hands over her body. This end of Bourbon Street was residential, quiet and deserted at this hour. The sinner hung back, watched them cross the grassy median that separated north-and-southbound Esplanade Avenue, waiting until they reached the opposite side.

  He stepped from the shadows and started to follow.

  An ominous growl froze him in his tracks. A skinny young woman in a ponytail rounded the corner, holding a leash on the biggest dog he had ever seen: massive chest, yellow eyes, sharp gleaming teeth. The dog’s growl became a vicious snarl, and the sinner shrank back against the building.

  The woman yanked the dog into the street and kept going.

  His heart pounded as he hobbled across Esplanade, fearing he’d lost his quarry. Then he spotted her, halfway down a narrow street, the same street he’d taken to her house two years ago. A disastrous encounter.

  He should never have done it, but he was new in town and Bourbon Street beckoned. In the PUSSYCAT bar she stroked his arm, his thigh, his crotch, rousing him to a fever pitch, whispering in his ear: “Let’s go to my place, honey. A half-and-half’ll cost you fifty. All the way is a hundred.”

  Smiling at him with her vermillion-painted lips. Tempting him.

  Along the way his fantasies escalated, imagining her cry of ecstasy as she begged for more, his erection pounding with such a fierce ache he almost came. When they got to her house she wanted to tell his fortune and pouted when he refused. He gave her five twenties and she took him to her bedroom. In a frenzied rush he dropped his pants. She undressed and lay on the bed, exposing her breasts and a dark mound of pubic hair. His cock throbbed. She gave him a condom and told him to put it on. He threw it on the floor, climbed on top of her, and ejaculated on her thigh.

  “Ooooh, poor baby. You just couldn’t wait, could you?”

  And then she laughed at him.

  Flushed with shame, he stood there, hearing in his mind the high school girl, laughing at him. Rage clogged his throat. He’d fix her.

  He pulled up his pants, feeling the heft of the garden shears in the pocket, and feigned a smile. “The least you can do is show me your tongue. Come on, stick it out.”

  “Sure, baby.” Making goo-goo eyes at him, she stuck out her tongue. He grabbed the tip and took out the shears. With an ear-splitting screech, she jerked away and rolled off the bed, cowering on the floor. The next moments were a blur. Fearful and ashamed, he vaguely recalled crossing himself and mumbling an act of contrition. Then he had fled.

  Standing in shadows across the street, he watched her take the john into her house. Now he would have his revenge. How long would the man take, he wondered. Not that it mattered. He
could wait.

  _____

  “What did you think you’d accomplish, Rona? Writing a column like that?” Frank kept his tone reasonable. Save the big guns for later.

  Arms folded across her chest, Rona stood at a window in the lobby of the Clarion-Call, her narrow face a dark mask. On the way home from Twin Oaks he had driven past the newspaper office, spotted Rona’s Neon in the parking lot, went inside and persuaded the security guard, a formidable black man in a blue uniform with a Glock-9 on his hip, to call her downstairs.

  “It made Norris pay attention to Kitty’s story, didn’t it?” she said, belligerent now. “Maybe now he’ll get off his butt and find the killer.”

  “He’s already under the gun. Embarrassing him won’t make him try harder. Your column pissed him off. You made it look like I’m one-upping him. Not what I need right now.”

  She shrugged, her eyes boring into him as if to say: You think I care?

  He looked around the lobby, shadowy and deserted at this hour. Historic front pages were mounted in frames on the interior walls: a jubilant DAVID DUKE DEFEATED! on one wall, a black-bordered front page with a stark headline on another: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. ASSASSINATED.

  “I dug up a copy of Kitty’s rap sheet.”

  “Ancient history. She got stupid, did some drugs, a little dealing. But she hasn’t done drugs for two years. What did Norris say about the sketch?”

  “Nothing. And you better not tell anyone Monica did it, understand? Keep her out of this.”

  “Norris is a shit! Why won’t he endorse it?”

  Frank saw the guard step around the security desk and stand beside the doorway-shaped metal detector, twenty feet away now, ready for trouble.

  “Rona, the sketch is worthless. Nobody’s going to recognize anyone based on that mug. It could be any young punk in Louisiana.”