ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) Page 9

  “Not any young punk! Any white punk!”

  “You okay, Miz Rona?” called the guard, ostentatiously placing his massive dark-skinned hand on the Glock.

  She looked over, gave him a tight smile. “Everything’s fine, Sam.”

  The security guard nodded but kept his hand on the gun and directed a menacing glare at Frank.

  “Norris wants to interview Kitty,” Frank said. “How are you going to feel if he holds her in a cell overnight?”

  For the first time he saw doubt in Rona’s eyes.

  “How can he? I didn’t use her name. You didn’t tell him, did you?”

  He let out a sigh of exasperation. “Rona, you don’t get it. He knows I talked to her. You said so in your column. He knows she’s your informant. If I hadn’t told him her name, he’d have hauled you in to get it. Be interesting to see how long you’d hold out. Kind of tough, writing your column in jail.”

  Her lips tightened and her eyes smoldered with resentment.

  “You put Kitty in danger.”

  “I didn’t use her name.”

  “You care more about your agenda than you do about Kitty. Did you forget about the john? If he’s the killer and he read your column, he’ll know she blew the whistle on him.”

  Rona looked at him, her eyes flat and emotionless. He wanted to shake her. For all he knew the killer might be targeting his next victim right now and he was wasting time on a renegade reporter with a racial agenda.

  He didn’t raise his voice but put an edge on it, leaning close to say, “You fucked me over, Rona. You used my name to lend credibility to your story. If you ever put my name in your column again, I’ll make sure no NOPD detective, no cop, no FBI agent ever talks to you again.”

  _____

  The next morning at eleven-thirty he parked in front of Kitty’s shabby little pink cottage. The adjacent house had royal-blue siding, spiffy white trim and intricate carved-wood shutters. Every house on the block looked better than Kitty’s, with its dingy peeling paint, shingles missing from the roof, broken slats in the shutters.

  A woebegone house for a wretched life.

  What had led her into prostitution, he wondered as he mounted the rickety steps. What did the neighbors think of the nameless, faceless men that went in and out of her house each night? Did they even notice? Did they care? Would any of them help her if she needed it?

  He rang the bell and heard chimes clang.

  A minute passed. Thinking Kitty might still be asleep after a long night’s work, he leaned on the bell and heard the chimes: clang, clang, clang.

  Behind him, a dog barked. He turned and saw a bearded man on the opposite sidewalk holding a leash on a powerful German shepherd. Ears pricked forward, the dog eyeballed him and gave a menacing growl. The owner jerked the leash and set off down the sidewalk with his dog.

  Frank put his ear to the door, hoping to hear footsteps, but he heard nothing. Apprehension roiled his gut. He walked around the house, recalling the interior layout, what he’d seen of it anyway. Heavy drapes and thick grime on the windows prevented any glimpse of the interior.

  Empty beer cans littered a small backyard with overgrown bushes and weedy grass. On the back stairs, dead palmetto bugs lay on their backs, legs tucked to their gut, crunching underfoot as he mounted the steps and tried the door. It was locked. He continued his circuit of the house and found nothing amiss. Maybe Kitty was out buying groceries.

  But his gut said no.

  He rang the bell again and tried the door. It opened. One step inside and he knew. The fetid stench of death was unmistakable. He drew his Sig-Sauer and approached the bordello-like room where Kitty had told him about the john. Visible in the dim light, she lay on the floor, one scrawny arm flung out to the side. He felt a stab of guilt and pangs of remorse. All that remained of her short tragic life was this forlorn figure sprawled on the floor in a gaudy red dress and silver sandals with three-inch heels.

  What would become of her little boy?

  An image of Janelle Robinson flashed in his mind, tears glistening on her face. His gut heaved and bile rose in his throat. He swallowed it down, stepped into the room, and felt the presence of evil. He should have done more to help Kitty, should have insisted that Norris protect her, should have known that this evil killer would be one step ahead of them.

  Careful to avoid touching anything, he inched closer. Beneath her head was a dark stain on the carpet, blood, he assumed. Her mouth gaped open, her tongue clearly visible, uncut. Of course. This time the killer had not sought his usual thrill. This atrocity was purely utilitarian: Snuff out a witness.

  Anger pooled in his gut, sour as swill.

  No sign of a struggle. The killer had taken her by surprise, blitzing her just as he’d blitzed his other victims. But if Kitty’s weird john was the Tongue Killer, why hadn’t she recognized him?

  He called NOPD dispatch and asked for three squad cars and a homicide detective, telling the woman to keep it low key, no lights and sirens, no Code-3 on the police radio. Then he called Miller and told him.

  “Damn it to hell!” Miller said.

  “My sentiments exactly. Now I gotta tell Norris.”

  _____

  Ten minutes later he was in the man’s office, face-to-face with Norris. “The killer saw Rona’s column. He killed Kitty Neves to shut her up.”

  “Bullshit.” Norris waved a dismissive hand. “Prostitutes get murdered every day. Her tongue wasn’t cut and she was fully clothed, lying on the floor, not posed naked in bed. Some guy got rough, slapped her around and went too far. End of story.”

  He clenched his jaw as Norris opened a folder on his desk and flipped through papers. The Eighth District homicide detective had voiced the same opinion. Frank hadn’t mentioned his own theory, or that he knew Kitty. His cellphone chimed. Irritated, he punched on and snapped, “Renzi.”

  “Hi, Dad? It’s Maureen. Have you got a minute to talk?”

  Her voice hit him like a flashbang. Of all the times for her to call. Panic seized him. Was something wrong with Evelyn?

  Norris glowered at him and tapped his wristwatch.

  Turning away, Frank said, “I’m in a meeting. Can I call you back?”

  “Oh. Okay. I’ll be around for an hour or so.”

  “I’ll call you.” He gripped the phone. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said, her tone listless. “Talk to you later.”

  He punched off and scribbled nonsense in his notepad, stalling for time to get his mind back on track. Focus on the case. Find Kitty’s murderer.

  Norris slapped a folder shut and gave him a hard-assed stare. “This bitch told you she foiled the Tongue Killer and you believed her? What a crock. She wanted the reward money.”

  “Kitty,” he said, picturing her, sprawled on the floor. “Her name was Kitty Neves and she’s dead. She’s got a five-year-old son.”

  “How’d that happen? She forget her condoms one night?”

  Frank wanted to slug him, wanted to break his teeth and cram them down his throat. Norris didn’t give a damn that Kitty was dead. He didn’t believe her murder was related to the serial killer, and that’s all Norris cared about. A dead prostitute meant nothing to him.

  He gritted his teeth and hit Norris with a dead-eye stare.

  “Save the fuck-you look for the criminals, Renzi. Don’t try to run your Boston tough-guy act on me.”

  “She’s a human being, Burke, and someone killed her.” Unable to sit still, he went over to the gray file cabinets along the wall to compose himself. He turned to face Norris. “What about the sketch? Will you endorse it?”

  Wide-eyed and incredulous, Norris opened a desk drawer, took out the sketch and waved it at him. “Endorse this? Are you crazy? I don’t know who the guy was, hell, I’m not even sure there was a guy, but if there was, his own mother couldn’t recognize him from this piece of dogshit! Bad enough the Jefferson bitch calls me a racist and writes up this prostitute’s fairytale. Th
en she says the killer’s a priest! CNN got me out of bed on that one. It’s all over the national news. Rona Jefferson is worse than the Black Plague. She’s turned this into a fucking circus!”

  He knew any further discussion was futile. “Do you want copies of the NOPD reports on the Kitty Neves murder?”

  “Yes, I want copies and I want you to stay away from Rona Jefferson. As of now you are off this taskforce, Renzi. Collect your things and get out.”

  Frank stared at him, shocked. “Burke, we’re shorthanded already—”

  “What, you think you’re indispensable? I’ll replace you like that.” Norris snapped his fingers. “I’ll tell your NOPD boss to take you off the Neves murder, too. You’re too personally involved to be objective about the case.”

  With a supreme effort, he maintained a neutral expression. He wanted to tell Norris exactly what he thought of him, but that would only bring bigger problems. No matter how much he despised the man, Norris had clout. Then, in a flash of insight, he put it together: Norris had intended to dump him yesterday, had only postponed it so he could bring Kitty in for questioning. Now that Kitty was dead Norris had no more use for him.

  Well, screw Norris. He could throw him off the taskforce, but he couldn’t stop him from working the case. He intended to find the man who murdered Kitty if it was the last thing he did, and that man was the Tongue Killer. He was certain of it.

  He left the office, went to his cubicle and began clearing his desk. A new thought hit him. Norris had overlooked a crucial detail. To Norris, Kitty was just another prostitute, but not to Rona. When Rona found out Kitty had been murdered, she would go on a tear, a volcanic eruption bigger than Mount Vesuvius, coming soon to the front page of the Clarion-Call.

  CHAPTER 9

  Friday 11:55 A.M.

  The sinner fixed himself a bowl of low-fat cottage cheese and celery stalks and took it to his room. His colleagues were devouring the disgustingly fat-laden pepperoni and cheese lasagna Sister Mary Joseph had prepared. He’d told her a dozen times he liked to eat a healthy lunch, but if Monsignor Goretti wanted a big meal at lunch and dinner, Sister Mary Joseph provided them. She knew who ruled the roost. At seventy, the Monsignor was set in his ways and no longer bothered to rein in his appetites. Given his corpulence, it appeared that he’d reveled in fleshly delights for years. Father Cronin was ten years younger and much thinner, but he had his own guilty pleasures: cognac and cigarettes.

  Cronin got all the cushy assignments, too, which left him with the dirty work: officiating at the early Masses, visiting elderly shut-ins, managing the obnoxious teenagers in the youth group. He considered such chores irrelevant. His was a higher calling. He demonstrated his devotion to God through his mission: hearing the confessions of sinful women and absolving them so that they might enter Heaven.

  Sending a message to all the other sluts.

  He locked his door, turned on the TV set on his nightstand and channel-surfed, trolling for news of the prostitute. After leaving her house last night, he had stopped at four different dumpsters, ditching one cowboy boot, then the other, the cowboy hat, and the string tie. To reward himself for a job well done, he stopped at a 24-hour Rite Aid, bought a big bar of Hershey’s chocolate and drove home. Inside the dark, silent rectory he had crept down the hall to his room and devoured the chocolate.

  He crunched a celery stick and tuned in the Channel-9 news. Nothing about a dead prostitute, plenty about the Tongue Killer. He rather liked the name. Many of the serial killers he’d studied had special names: Son of Sam, BTK, the Green Mile Killer. He was smarter, of course. The police would never catch him, and, unlike the others, he had a vital mission.

  The dark-haired anchorwoman’s expression grew somber as she said: “In her column today, Rona Jefferson repeated her assertion that the woman who foiled the Tongue Killer believed her attacker was a priest. For community reaction let’s go live to Dan Shepard. Dan?”

  Damn Rona Jefferson to hell!

  He shut off the TV, got down on the oval rug beside his bed and did ten push-ups. If that stupid columnist kept yapping about a killer-priest, she would ruin his mission. She didn’t understand how many evil women were out there, didn’t understand that he had to make an example of them. How could he do that if they viewed him with suspicion? If they didn’t trust him enough to let him into their homes, how could he persuade them to confess?

  His need was a wild beast, throbbing with a terrible urgency, hijacking his thoughts. He went to his armoire, removed a glass jar and studied the shriveled piece of flesh floating in the alcohol. The tongues usually aroused him, but Patti’s didn’t. Patti was the worst kind of temptress, leading him on and then fighting him. But there were plenty of evil women out there.

  It wouldn’t take long to find another one.

  _____

  Father Sean Daily doodled on his yellow legal pad as the plump young woman facing his desk rambled on about her wedding plans. These premarital counseling sessions tried his patience. Most young couples had unrealistic expectations. They had no idea of the drudgery that lay ahead, the financial concerns that came with raising children, the boredom that inevitably set in. Especially in the bedroom.

  “We’ve been looking at houses,” Kevin O’Rourke said, his eyes bright with dreams. He worked at a bank. With his pock-marked skin and pug nose, he was far from handsome, but he presented himself well in a dark suit and a red power tie. Gina Lombardi gazed at her man with adoring eyes, a pretty girl with dark curly hair framing her face, though her aqua-knit dress was rather snug around her waist and hips.

  “And the children?” he said. “You’ll bring them up in the Church?”

  “Absolutely, Father,” Gina said. “I plan to be a full-time mother.”

  He tried to picture them ten years from now: Kevin comes home frazzled after his boss chewed him out; Gina’s irritable after minding a passel of kids all day, more than plump now, snacking out of boredom, yelling at the kids to stop bickering in the other room.

  Gina beamed at him. “We’re so excited about the wedding plans. I come from a big family and so does Kevin.”

  With difficulty, he maintained a straight face. Of course they came from big families, Italian and Irish, staunch Catholics whose only approved birth control was the so-called natural family planning method. About as reliable as saying a Hail Mary.

  Half-listening, he contemplated the day’s chores. Fridays were always busy: answer his mail; begin drafting his homily; meet with the religious education teachers. His gaze went to the wall clock he’d hung on the wall opposite his desk so he could keep track of time without being obvious. Quarter to one. In five minutes he would wrap this up.

  As Gina burbled about wedding invitations Kevin remained silent. What was he thinking, Sean wondered. In five years he’d be bored silly by Gina’s blather. Some sexy bank teller would catch his eye and he’d take her to lunch, then find excuses to work late so they could go to a cheap motel on Airline Drive and rent a room for an hour.

  He checked the clock again—ten minutes to one—the time crawling by at a snail’s pace, unlike the evenings he spent with Aurora when hours whizzed by. His gaze shifted to the citations on the wall beside the clock, given to him by the youth groups. He loved working with teenagers. They were full of mischief, still had a sense of adventure. Beside the citations was a photograph of a lighthouse, sunlight sparkling on the blue-green sea as foamy waves crashed over jagged rocks. A memento of his previous life.

  “Father?”

  Gina and Kevin were looking at him expectantly. He showed them his pastoral smile. “You’re a fine young couple. Six weeks from now, you’ll be married, but a happy marriage takes work. I’ll do what I can to help you.”

  He ushered them out of the rectory and hurried down the hall to the kitchen. Aurora stood at the counter by the stove, sporting an amused smile.

  “How’s the devoted young couple?” she asked. “Starry eyed and pretending not to be horny?”

&nbs
p; He let out a belly laugh, took her in his arms and twirled her around.

  She kissed his cheek. “Don’t get too frisky. It’s time for lunch.”

  “Lunch,” he muttered. But his stomach gurgled as she ladled seafood gumbo into two bowls and brought them to the table.

  “Rona Jefferson thinks the Tongue Killer might be a priest.”

  “Is that so?” He didn’t want to hear about it, much less discuss it. He sampled the gumbo. Delicious, zesty and flavorful with Creole spices.

  Aurora dipped a piece of garlic bread into her gumbo. “Sean, I think you should tell Detective Renzi about that priest.”

  “Why? It will just cause trouble.”

  “It might save another girl from being murdered.”

  “You don’t know that. If I tell Renzi about him, it might get me in trouble. What if Renzi drags me down to taskforce headquarters? What if they check up on me and find out I’m not really a priest?”

  And if Renzi finds out I’m not a priest, he’ll find out I’m not the man I’ve told you I am all these years.

  She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “You can trust Detective Renzi. He’s a good man, I can feel it. Tell him you won’t talk to anyone else about it. Ask him to keep it in confidence.”

  “And what, pray tell, do I give as a reason?”

  “Sean Daily, I’ve known you for thirty years. You’re a good man even if you aren’t a priest. If you don’t tell him, it will be on your conscience forever.”

  On his conscience? He had plenty on his conscience already.

  Aurora’s eyes bored into him. “Sean, if you don’t tell him, I will.”

  A monstrous feeling of dread engulfed him. Aurora thought Renzi was a nice guy. He knew better. Renzi was a detective. If Renzi found out he was wanted for murder, he could wind up in jail. But when Aurora set her mind on something, it was impossible to dissuade her. Marveling at her chiseled beauty, he studied her face, her pliant lips and her warm brown eyes.