ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) (17 page)

“
Okay, but what’s that got to do with the murder?”

Daily lit a cigarette. “Did you tell her mother abut the pregnancy?”

“
Not yet. I haven’t had time. Why?”

Daily gazed at him with a pleading look in his eyes. “Please don’t tell her. The poor woman has suffered enough, don’t you think?”

The priest’s take on Lynette’s troubled life was interesting, but he got the feeling that wasn’t the reason Daily had called him.

“
I can’t promise, Sean, but I’m inclined to let it stay buried, provided it’s not connected to the murder. Lynette told you she was pregnant more than a year before she was murdered, correct? ”

The priest appeared visibly relieved. “Correct.”

“
And you never found out who the father was, correct?”

“
Absolutely.”

“
So what’s the point of telling me all this?”

“
I felt sorry for the girl. I used to see her sometimes at the Lakeside Mall, talking to . . . boys.” He waved his hand, and ash from cigarette fell on the yellow legal pad. He mustered a smile. “Last time we spoke you asked about my childhood. What about you, Frank? Where did you grow up?”

He tried to quell his mounting irritation. This was turning into a wild goose chase. “Swampscott, Massachusetts, a little town near Boston.”

“
A little town on the coast.” Daily gave him a wistful smile. “I love the ocean. I’ve missed it, living in New Orleans so many years.”

He’s trying to tell me something, Frank thought, but what? On full alert now, he remained silent. Let the priest ramble, see where he goes.

“
I found some articles about you at the library. You’ve had quite a career. Your father must be proud of you. He must love you very much.”

Frank shifted in his chair, beyond irritated now. Daily must have found the articles about the Fuckup. The
Boston Globe
had been all over the story. Why was this priest prying into his private life? And why bring up his father?

“
I’ve got a son, too,” Daily said. “He’s a few years younger than you. Ralph’s thirty-five. I’ve never seen him and I probably never will.”

“
A son? You mean before you became a priest?”

“
I’ve never been a priest.”

Dumbfounded, Frank stared at him. The idea that someone might pose as a priest seemed bizarre. On the other hand, it confirmed his suspicion that Daily was hiding something. “I think you better tell me about that.”

Daily pinched the bridge of his nose and heaved a sigh. “If I tell you my real name, you’ll know part of the story. But not all of it.”

Weary of the fencing, he said, “Tell me everything, Sean. Don’t lie to me and don’t skip anything.”

“
The Lomax case. Hampton Beach.”

The words hit him like a one-two knockout punch. Judy Lomax. Right before he left Boston the
Boston Globe
had run a series of articles on an unsolved murder at a summer resort in New Hampshire. He studied Daily’s face, trying to match it with his recollection of the old news photo.

“
Don’t tell me you’re . . . ?”

“
George Dillon. But I didn’t kill Judy.”

He tried to reconcile the notion that the man across the desk from him was George Dillon. According to the
Globe
article, Judy’s elderly parents had hired a private investigator in a last ditch attempt to obtain justice for their daughter, but the PI had been unable to oblige. Dillon had been a suspect from the get-go, but the evidence against him was circumstantial. Back then there had been no DNA tests, and no other suspects.

“
If you didn’t kill her, why did you run?”

The man who called himself Sean Daily shrugged. “Stupidity. Fear.”

“
Does Aurora know?”

A look of anguish swept over Daily’s face. “She knows I’m not a priest. She doesn’t know my real name, but she knows I never killed anyone.”

“
Yeah? How does she know that?”

“
I’ve hurt some people, Mary Sweeney for one, but I’ve never killed anyone, Frank. Back then Mary was my steady girl, but we had a fight and split up. I didn’t know she was pregnant. Two weeks ago she sent me a letter, forwarded through my cousin. He’s the only person who knows where I am. Mary’s dying of cancer, and she wanted me to know about Ralph. In case I wanted to get in touch with him after she’s gone.”

Frank puffed his cheeks. This was worse than a bad soap opera. Real life trumped fiction any day. “How did you get away?”

“
I took off in a raging blizzard, figured the cops would expect me to head south, so I went west. They closed the Mass Turnpike so I had to use secondary roads to reach the New York State Thruway. After they closed that too, I stayed in a Red Cross shelter in Syracuse for two nights.”

Frank watched him puff his cigarette, staring into space, reliving his desperate flight as he spun the tale.

“
After the weather cleared I drove to Pennsylvania, holed up in a cabin and called my cousin. Leo owns the tavern in Hampton Beach where I used to tend bar. He said the feds were after me because I’d crossed the state line.” Daily looked at him. “Is there such a law?”

“
Yes. Interstate flight to avoid prosecution.”

Daily locked eyes with him in an unwavering stare. “I didn’t kill her, Frank. I took her out that one night. We had a few drinks. Okay, more than a few, but I never slept with her. She fluffed me off when I took her home. But the cops were all over me. I had no alibi. I didn’t want to face a murder rap.”

“
How’d you get to be a priest?”

“
I’m no priest. I’m an Irish mick
pretending
to be a priest.”

“
Well, you fooled me. How’d you manage that?”

“
I met an elderly priest in a little town in Wyoming, three feet of snow and the poor guy was freezing his ass off shoveling his driveway, so I did it. Father O’Brien. He liked my name.” Daily grinned. “I made it up on the spot—Sean Daily—got the fake ID papers later. Father O’Brien took a liking to me and let me stay at the rectory. After a week, he hired me to be his helper. I think I’ve done some good over the years.”

“
What about Aurora? How much does she know?”

“
You probably already figured out that we’re . . . more than friends. But Aurora doesn’t know about George Dillon, or the Lomax case.” Daily gave him a broad smile. “She thinks you’re great, Frank, and—”

“
The Lomax case is still open. And federal warrants don’t go away.”

Daily’s smile disappeared and a pall of silence fell over the room.

In the silence Frank’s cellphone chimed. He punched on and Miller said, “The bastard got another one. I’m at her house. The crime scene unit’s almost done, get here quick, you might get to see the body.”

“
I’m on my way.” He wrote down the address Miller gave him, punched off and stood. “I have to go.”

“
Wait! Don’t leave yet! I’ve got something important to show you. The day before Lynette was murdered I saw her talking to a priest.”

His heart jolted. “You saw her talking to a priest?”

“
Yes. The day before she was murdered. I was at the Lakeside Mall and I saw her talking to a young priest.”

“
Why didn’t you say so before? Who was he? Do you know him?”

Daily nodded, clearly unhappy. “If I tell you his name, are you going to tell the taskforce?”

“
Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“
Do you have to tell them where you got the information?”

Frank saw panic in the old man’s eyes. The man who wasn’t a priest was terrified that he’d be exposed as a fraud and taken into custody on an old federal warrant. “Who’s the priest? Tell me his name.”

Daily clamped his lips together and set his jaw. Stalemate. Daily was a tough old bird. He could give up the name, the first real lead in the Tongue Killer case, or he could withhold it and plead ignorance.

“
If you tell me his name, I might be able to keep my source confidential.” For a while, until Norris squeezed him for it.

With a heavy sigh, Daily handed him a photocopy of the front page of the
Clarion-Call
. It took him a second to realize that it was Kitty’s composite because the original sketch had been altered with cross-hatchings and heavy outlines around the features. Now it looked amazingly lifelike, especially with the addition of a Roman collar. “Who did this?”

“
I did,” Daily said. “I got to doodling on it and sketched in the Roman collar. It reminded me of this young priest I met a couple of years ago. He was fresh out of seminary, newly ordained. He told me he’d come to New Orleans the previous October when he was assigned to St. Margaret’s.”

“
What’s his
name
?”

After a brief hesitation Daily said, “Timothy Krauthammer. It was right after the first murder. Later I got to thinking about what he said. Everyone was talking about it, you know? About the tongue mutilation.”

His heart hammered his chest. Krauthammer’s arrival fit the timeframe. The john had attacked Kitty two years ago on a rainy night in October. The first victim had surfaced three months later.

“
What did he say?”

“
It seemed like he was blaming her. He’d seen pictures of the girl and criticized the way she dressed, as if she deserved to be killed. No one deserves to die like that. But some of these new priests are very judgmental.”

“
And he’s the priest you saw talking to Lynette at the mall?

“
Yes.” Daily gazed at him, his sapphire-blue eyes full of entreaty. “Please don’t make me talk to the FBI agents on the taskforce.” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “If I go to prison, I’ll die there.”

Conscious of the passing minutes and equally aware of Daily’s anguish, Frank felt conflicted. He respected the man for coming clean, and Daily had just given him the first break in the case. On the other hand, thirty years ago he had fled a murder charge, and a federal warrant never went away.

But this was no time to make a decision, not with a sixth victim awaiting him. “Thanks for the sketch and the name, Sean. I’ll be in touch.”

He hurried out to his car, exultant. Now he had the name and a decent likeness of a man who’d been in New Orleans when Kitty was attacked, three months before the killings began, a man seen talking to Lynette Beauregard the day before she was murdered, and that man was a priest.

_____

Exhausted by the encounter, Sean slumped in his chair, picturing Renzi’s stunned expression when he admitted that he was George Dillon. He hadn’t thought of himself as George Dillon in years, not even at night, alone in his darkened office with his guilty thoughts. He didn’t dare
think
the name lest he slip up and speak it aloud. He was Sean Daily. Father Sean Daily.

A hacking cough wracked him. He’d smoked too many cigarettes last night. Unable to sleep, he had slipped out of bed without waking Aurora, sleeping like an angel beside him, and crept downstairs to his office to think, tormented by doubt, trying to anticipate Renzi’s reaction when he gave him the sketch and told him about Father Tim, and his own years as a fugitive.

And now that the ordeal was over, what was the verdict? No verdict.

Renzi had rushed off to investigate another murder, judging by his expression after taking the phone call. Did Renzi believe his declaration that he hadn’t killed Judy Lomax? Lord knows, it was true.

But even if Renzi believed it, he was still a fugitive.

He rubbed his bleary eyes, thinking of Mary. She was dying, and there was so much he didn’t know. So much he
wanted
to know. Was Ralph an easygoing charmer like his old man? Did he look like his mother or his father? Was he married? If Ralph was married, he might have children.

A warm glow flooded his chest. Maybe he had a grandson!

The glow faded quickly. The federal warrant was still active. What if Renzi turned him in? Needles of panic prickled his spine. Maybe he’d go to the bank right now, withdraw what little money there was, get in his car and disappear. He had done it before and he could do it again.

Overwhelmed by the thought, he slumped back in his chair. The last time he’d fled he was twenty-seven, strong and healthy. Now he was old and weary and sick. And what about Aurora, his steadfast companion all these years? His lover and best friend. He couldn’t leave without saying goodbye. But if he told her about the Lomax case, she would make him go back and fight the charges. And if he went to prison, he’d lose her forever.

He looked down at his yellow legal pad. As the endless arguments churned through in his mind he had filled two lines with Frank’s name and two more with Ralph’s. If he ran off again, no one would respect him. Not Frank, not Ralph, and not Aurora. He couldn’t stand that.

And now there was another victim. That made six. Maybe his sketch would help stop these horrible murders. He took out the photocopy he’d made and studied it. He had taken an instant dislike to Krauthammer. The man was so self-righteous and sanctimonious. Over the years he’d come to realize that those who were overly pious often hid vices of their own. But he found it hard to believe that this handsome young priest was a killer.