A Cruel Season for Dying (33 page)

He remained standing as Talbot closed the door. “Lieutenant Sakura”—he identified himself to the priest—“I’m in charge of
this case. I’d like to go over a few things in your original statement.”

Graff had been picked up very early this morning at the rectory, then made to wait in this room with a grim-faced Walter Talbot,
who’d declined to explain why it was necessary to retape the formal statement that Graff had provided on the night of the
murder. The priest was studying him carefully, apparently undecided whether complaint or cooperation was the quicker way to
end this.

“Is there some problem, Lieutenant?” he asked finally.

Sakura smiled reassurance. His words left doubt. “I hope not.”

The priest settled stiffly in the standard-issue chair. “What do you want to know?” he said.

“What made you go to the church Saturday night?”

It was old ground. Graff rolled his eyes to emphasize this. But he answered. “I noticed Father Kellog’s door was open.”

“Was that unusual?” Sakura asked.

“Yes. The rectory is a barn. Father always closed his door to keep the heat in.”

Sakura nodded. “What happened exactly?”

“I was curious.” The priest shrugged. “When I looked in, I realized that Father’s bed was empty. That’s when I saw through
the window that a light was on in the church. I thought it was odd.”

“So you went to check?” Sakura prodded.

“Not right away. But when I started to take my coat off, I realized how cold it was. Father Kellog would not have gone out
unless it was an emergency.”

It had certainly been cold that night. Sakura remembered the iciness of the air that had greeted his leaving his apartment
after the call, remembered thinking that it would snow before Christmas. Graff was remembering too. His eyes beat rapidly
beneath lowered lids, as if the progression of events in his mind had moved beyond simple recall. He opened his eyes as Sakura
watched, cutting the process short.

“I understand you knew Lucia Mancuso?” Sakura said now.

“I know her family.” Graff’s face registered sorrow. “It was such a shock that night. I don’t know what was worse, seeing
her hanging up there, or Father—”

“What is the Church’s position on homosexuality?” Sakura cut in, fast-forwarding the script.

There was a moment of confusion when Graff’s face closed in. His lips twisted. “Holy Mother Church says it’s okay to be born
gay, as long as you don’t do anything about it.”

Sakura sat down on the edge of the table, inches from Graff’s chair. “I would think it would be very difficult for a person
to be denied the expression of his sexuality.” He watched the wariness in the priest’s
eyes give way to calculation, a thousand sums and decisions on how, and how not, to react. In the end he said nothing.

The manila folder had remained beneath Sakura’s arm. He set it down now on the table, opening it. In the room’s dreariness,
in the harsh light, the shiny black-and-white photograph seemed garish, the glistening male flesh doubly obscene.

Rage blanked out every other emotion on Graff’s face. “Stop that thing.” He glared toward the camera, at the technician.

Sakura ignored the demand. “We did not search your rooms.” He cut off further objection. “You could say that this particular
photograph fell into our hands. We only got a warrant this morning.”

Graff swallowed visibly, holding the anger in. He spoke again, calmly, almost with contempt. “I want to make a call.” An almost
Buddhist imperturbability had taken over his face. What Sakura did not see was guilt.

Sakura did not watch much television, had never seen the man who was now sitting across from him in the interrogation room.
But apparently there had been a time, before his fall from grace, when Byron Shelton’s rubber face and trademark shock of
red hair had been familiar to anyone who watched the late-night talk shows.

At the far end of the table sat Walter Talbot. Shelton, smoking, slouched in his metal chair. A fair interpretation of a man
with nothing to hide.

“So you just look,” Sakura responded to Shelton’s last statement.

The comic-turned-actor gave him a slow smile, a performance that was at least in part for the camera he’d agreed could record
the interview. “That’s what I said … I just look.”

“At prepubescent girls?”

“Yeah. My analyst says I’m attracted to their ‘apparent sexual neutrality.’ At least he used to say it when I was shelling
out the hundred and fifty an hour.” Shelton’s laugh was unpleasant. “I just like the idea of invisible cunt. I don’t touch
them or anything.”

“That’s not what your girlfriend said at your hearing,” Talbot spoke up.

“That bitch.” Shelton cocked his head slightly in Talbot’s direction, crushed out his cigarette viciously in the ashtray that
was filling up. “Sheila was pissed because I dumped her. I never laid a hand on that brat of hers. Just once or twice I got
her to undress for ‘Uncle Byron.’”

“Ms. Davis insisted it was more than that,” Sakura said.

“Ms. Davis is a liar.” Shelton looked at him. “The charges she filed got dropped.” He shrugged. “The network still canceled
us.”

“I thought the show was canceled because of your arrest on the park incident,” Sakura said.

“The little girls? Oh, that all came later. I guess I went a little crazy.” The smirk turned on itself.

“The television series”—Sakura went back to it—“… Geoffrey Westlake was in it?”

Shelton’s eyes lit up. “Westlake … that’s what this is about? You think … Christ!” He was looking down now, shaking his head.
He seemed genuinely amused. “I saw the papers this morning,” he said, “before your guys hauled me in. That little girl …”
He lifted his face to Sakura. “You’re adding two and two and getting five.”

“Geoffrey Westlake was in your series?” Sakura returned to his question.

Shelton sighed, shrugging again. “Lenny, the next-door neighbor,” he said. “Kid was pretty good.”

“You kept in touch with Mr. Westlake?”

“You kidding? I’m a pariah in this town. Nobody from the show would even talk to me.”

“That make you mad?” The question from Talbot.

Shelton snorted. “What do you think? I’m wired a little weird, so I’m stupid?” He looked at Sakura. “What do you expect me
to say, Lieutenant? My career’s in the shit can, so I took out Westlake and a bunch of other queers, threw in a priest and
the girl for good measure … fuck.” He reached for his cigarettes.

Sakura’s hand was quicker, covering the pack. “I expect you to tell us the truth.”

Shelton drew back, flopped against the chair. “Nobody in this town gives a rat’s ass about the truth.” He spread his hands.
“Look, Lieutenant”—the pale eyes oozed charm—“you know and I know that I
don’t have to answer your questions. And I’m thinking that I shouldn’t till I have a chance to talk to my lawyer. Okay?”

Sakura nodded and stood. “Give Detective Talbot the name of your attorney. Have him call me first thing tomorrow.” He handed
Shelton his card.

“
He’s
a she. Name’s Linda Kessler.” Shelton took the card and put it in the pocket of his jacket. Smiled and walked out.

Sakura left Talbot and the technician to deal with the recorder, joining Willie and Kelly in the observation room, where they’d
been watching through the one-way window.

“What do you think?” Kelly asked him.

“I don’t know, Pat. We don’t have any real evidence that Shelton ever got physical with any of the little girls.”

“No,” Kelly said. “But it looks like he’s capable of violence. Sheila Davis claims she’s got the emergency-room records to
show he liked to smack her around. And get this … it wasn’t another woman he left her for.”

“A man?” Willie asked.

“Yeah,” Kelly said, “one of the sitcom’s producers. Seems Shelton could swing either way if there was profit in it. Used to
joke that the casting couch wasn’t marked ‘women only.’”

Sakura looked back through the glass to the interrogation room, where Shelton had sat coughing up smoke between answers. He
thought of the grappling marks that had been found on the support beam of the church, and tried to imagine the comic swinging
a metal hook thirty feet against gravity, then climbing the rope with the added drag of Lucia Mancuso’s body.

“What do you think, Pat?” He turned the question on the veteran.

Kelly made a noise. “The commissioner’s up McCauley’s ass for any kind of arrest. I think that sleaze was smart to lawyer
up.”

“This is Lieutenant James Sakura, shield number sixty ninety-eight.” Sakura looked directly into the eye of the video camera.
“Also present are …”

“Detective Walter Talbot, shield number seventy thirty-two.”

“Present is video technician Herb Dietz. Subject is Antonio Paladino.” Sakura nodded for Talbot to begin.

“Mr. Paladino, we want you to understand that you are under no obligation to answer any question. You are not accused of any
crime. We asked you to come today to determine if you have any information that could help us in our investigation of Lucia
Mancuso’s death.”

“I understand.”

“Did you come here of your own free will?”

“Yes.” He coughed, clearing his throat. For a handsome guy, Paladino looked terrible.

“Where are you presently employed?”

“Odyssey Lincoln Mercury. I’m a salesman…. I also do a little photography on the side. Mostly weddings.”

Talbot made a notation in his file folder. “Mr. Paladino, what was your relationship to Lucia Mancuso?”

“She is …
was
my niece.” He stared into the camera as if it weren’t there.

“How was she your niece?”

“I’m married to Barbara”—he looked back at Talbot—“Dominick’s sister.”

“Dominick Mancuso, Lucia’s father?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have children?”

“Two. A boy and a girl.”

“Would you say you were a close family?”

Paladino shrugged. “We got our troubles, like anyone else.”

“What kind of troubles, Mr. Paladino?”

“I like to work out. I come home from the gym and the wife thinks I been out with some chick.”

“Have you?”

“That’s none of your fucking business.”

“You’re right, Mr. Paladino, it isn’t.” Talbot made another note. “Any other problems … between you and your wife?”

“What does any of this have to do with Lucia?”

Sakura stood. “Mr. Mancuso spoke of some trouble between you and his sister over a neighbor’s child.”

“Dominick is an asshole.”

Sakura moved in closer. “Mr. Paladino, I know this is difficult, and I remind you that you do not have to answer any of our
questions. But I have to believe you want to help us find Lucia’s killer.”

“Yes …” He struggled with the word.

“Will you tell me about the neighbor’s little girl?”

He ran one of his hands over his eyes, a gesture that seemed to say he was willing to make a fresh start. “It was nothing.
I never touched that kid. Her and her mother were crazy.”

“Why do you think Mrs. Griffin lied about what happened?”

He squirmed in his seat, a man who had something bad to say, but didn’t know how. “I slept with the broad. One time, that’s
all. She was all over me after that. I told her I loved Barbara.”

“So you believe she made up the story to get back at you?”

“Yeah.”

“Does your wife know that you slept with Mrs. Griffin?”

Paladino shook his head.

Sakura moved away from the table, faced the one-way window. “Mr. Paladino, where were you Saturday afternoon?”

“At work.”

“What time did you arrive?”

Paladino hesitated, as if sensing some trap. “I was pretty late, if that’s what you’re asking?”

“Why was that?”

“I had a flat.”

Sakura had turned back, watching Paladino’s reactions. “And it took you almost two hours to fix it?”

“It was raining.” The man’s eyes shifted farther away.

“And Saturday night? Where were you then?”

“At a bar. Nick’s. Having a few beers—” He stopped. “Wait a minute … all these damn questions. You think I had something to
do with Lucia’s death? You think I killed her? Because of what that bitch said?”