ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) (23 page)

If Daily was screwing his housekeeper, surely he must have committed other sins, something in his past that could be used to silence him. Daily had said he’d been ordained at Saint Paul’s Seminary in Minnesota. At Georgetown University he had taken classes with a man who now worked in the Saint Paul’s records office. They still exchanged Christmas cards.

Surely his former classmate would check the contents of Daily’s file. All he had to do was call and ask him.

_____

Fearing he’d be late, Frank broke all speed limits driving to the Eighth District station. At first glance Krauthammer appeared harmless, a clean-cut friendly young priest. But the nun had seen him talking to Melody forty-eight hours before she was murdered, and he had denied talking to her. Why had Krauthammer asked if he’d talked to Sean Daily? Did he know Lynette was Daily’s parishioner? Good thing he hadn’t questioned him about Lynette, or Krauthammer might think Daily had fingered him as a suspect.

All the evidence in the case pointed to an intelligent killer, intelligent and manipulative. Krauthammer was expecting questions about Melody, but the Patti Cole question had thrown him. There was a reasonable explanation for this. When questioned by the police after a well-publicized murder, many people got nervous and lied about stupid things. But the rapid eye blinks and the facial tick indicated that Krauthammer had once been a stutterer. The first episode had occurred when he’d asked if his parents still lived in Wahoo. Unable to articulate the word
father
Krauthammer had begun blinking.

Years ago while grilling a suspect, he’d seen a similar facial tick. During the interview he missed it, but caught it later on the videotape. He asked a speech pathologist to review the tape, and she said the suspect had probably stuttered as a child. Facial ticks often accompany stuttering, she explained, and even if therapy cures the speech disfluency, the ticks almost never go away, especially when the subject is stressed. As Krauthammer had been, reacting to a surprise question about Patti Cole.

The speech pathologist had also said that fricatives caused more difficulty than other consonants. As an example, she cited words beginning with the letter
F
, like Father, which caused more difficulty than, say, the letter
D,
as in Dad, which was how Krauthammer had referred to his father after the blinking episode.

Frank swung into the parking lot beside the station. The fact that Krauthammer had once been a stutterer didn’t make him a killer, but Frank found it significant, given his new victimology theory. Maybe the killer targeted women with physical flaws or emotional scars because he’d once had a flaw of his own. Stuttering had to have caused Krauthammer difficulty as a child, and, if it continued into his teens, problems with women. His father still lived in Wahoo. The priest hadn’t stated his first name, but how many men named Krauthammer would be working in the actuarial department of an Omaha insurance company?

He left his car and hurried into the station. His gut was urging him to go to Nebraska. Too bad it wasn’t telling him how to convince Captain Dupree to give him the time off to do it.

CHAPTER 15

Wednesday, 11:45 A.M.

“
I gotta hit the john,” Frank said to his desk-mate. “You can handle things for ten minutes, right?”

Officer Alicia Reyes gave him a long stare. She’d been on the desk for six months after breaking her leg in a street fracas that spiraled out of control. A light-skinned black woman with serious freckles, she had just turned forty and currently had no boyfriend. When they weren’t dealing with the lowlifes the patrol officers dragged in, she constantly moaned and groaned about this.

Now, she gave him the finger, and a sardonic smile.

“
Maybe I’ll find your soul mate in the can,” he said.

“
Eeeewwww!” Her cackling laugh followed him through a door with a frosted glass window and into the hall that led to the officers’ lounge, the restrooms, and Captain Roy Dupree’s office.

He tapped on Dupree’s door and heard him call: “Come in.”

A beefy man with a ginger-brown mustache and acne-scarred cheeks, Dupree had logged twenty-five years with NOPD, had made Captain by dint of hard work and a knack for keeping the top brass happy. But maintaining morale among the rank-and-file was important, too.

Dupree’s eyes grew wary as Frank approached his desk. He smoothed his moustache and attempted a smile. “Hey, Frank, what’s up?”

“
Roy, I hate to bother you, but I need a couple of personal days. Thursday and Friday, be back ready to go on Monday.”

“
Look, I know you hate riding the desk, but—”

“
No, no. It’s not that, I just—”

“
Frank, the desk duty wasn’t my idea. Norris badmouthed you to the Super. I’m just following orders. Give Norris a week to cool off and you’re back on the street. You’re one of my best detectives.”

“
I appreciate that, Roy. I know it wasn’t your idea. Norris can be a pain sometimes, but he’s catching a lot of heat. It’s just a case of, you know, kick the dog.” He grinned. “Woof woof, I’m the dog.”

Dupree laughed. “Exactly right, Frank. I knew you’d understand.”

“
The personal leave has nothing to do with the desk duty.”

Dupree’s smile disappeared. “So? What is it, then?”

“
It’s my daughter. She’s finishing med school up in Baltimore and she has to pick her specialty.” He pulled a long face. “Roy, I need to go up there and talk to my kid.”

“
Geez, I didn’t know you had a daughter in med school.”

“
She’s the smart one in the family. Smarter than her old man.”

Dupree laughed again, until Frank’s cellphone chimed.

He checked the caller-ID. “Sorry, Roy. I have to take this.”

Dupree looked at him, clearly not pleased.

He answered, heard Rona say in a voice tinged with alarm, “Where the hell is Kenyon? I called him four times. He’s not answering his phone.”

Aware that Dupree was listening, he said, “You got a problem?”

“
Some asshole sent me a dead bird and a nasty note. I’d call that a problem.”

“
Hold on.” He covered the phone so Rona couldn’t hear. “It’s my daughter, Roy. Mind if step out in the hall? It’ll only take a second.”

Dupree’s mouth quirked in annoyance. “Okay, but make it quick.”

He went out in the hall, shut the door, and said to Rona in a low voice, “Who else knows you got it?”

“
No one, but—”

“
Don’t show it to anyone. I can’t get away right now. Meet me at six o’clock.” Mindful of Norris’ admonition not to talk to her, he chose a clandestine location. “Top deck of the Lakeside Mall garage. Bring the bird and the note, and make damn sure nobody follows you.”

He punched off and stepped back into Dupree’s office, hoping the interruption hadn’t killed his chances for the personal days.

With a weary sigh, Dupree handed him a request form. “Get this back to me ASAP, and make sure you’re here Monday morning ready to go.”

“
You got it, Roy. Thanks a lot. I owe you one.”

_____

As soon as Sean left the rectory Aurora hurried to his office. She felt guilty, sneaking in here while he was out, but she was frightened. Sean, the love of her life, was wanted for murder. Sunday afternoon he had looked her in the eye and sworn he hadn’t done it. She believed him, but others might not. The federal warrant was still outstanding, Sean said.

She opened a desk drawer and found the sketch where Sean had told her he’d hidden it. It looked a lot more lifelike than the one in the newspaper, especially with the Roman collar. She went to the antiquated copier in the corner, turned it on and waited for it to warm up, hoping it would behave. The machine broke down more often than it ran.

When the green light came on, she lay the sketch face down on the glass and hit Start. After an interminable wait, the machine clicked and whirred and churned out a copy. She returned the original to its hiding place, took an envelope and a felt-tipped pen out of Sean’s desk, went to the kitchen and sat at the table beside the window.

According to Sean, Frank Renzi was the only one that knew about the sketch. Frank seemed like a nice man, but still . . . . Using Sean’s felt-tipped pen, she added tiny wrinkles at the corners of the eyes and darkened the hair. Now it wasn’t an exact copy of Sean’s. If she sent one that looked a bit different to Rona Jefferson, no one could blame Sean.

Sean said Krauthammer had threatened him, hinting he might tell the Archbishop about their relationship. Did the sketch really look like him, she wondered. The no-good priest probably murdered those girls, too. Maybe she should put his name on the sketch. It would serve him right.

_____

Iron-gray clouds loomed over the Lakeside Mall at six o’clock when Frank drove up to the roof of the parking garage. Rona’s lime-green Neon stood at the end of a row, vacant. He parked beside it, got out and leaned against his car, facing a Dillard’s entrance. His shirt clung to his back from the relentless heat and humidity. Maybe the storm would bring cooler air.

Rona pushed through a glass door onto the landing outside Dillard’s and descended the stairs, dressed in business attire, a turquoise blouse and gray slacks. She paused to light a cigarette, puffing it as she snaked through two rows of parked cars to meet him. Not happy, judging by her expression.

After a curt greeting, she unlocked her car and gestured for him to get in. The interior stank of stale cigarettes and fried food, crumpled Burger King wrappers on the console between the seats. She cranked the engine, turned the A/C on high and cool air blasted through the vents.

“
It’s back there.” She jerked a thumb at a trash bag on the back seat.

He put on latex gloves, pulled the trash bag onto his lap and took out a long white florist’s box, the type used to hold long-stemmed roses.

“
Who delivered it?”

She gazed at him, her large dark eyes grim and resentful. “I don’t know. Someone left it with the
Clarion-Call
security guard. Sam gave it to me when I left last night. He’s the night man. I didn’t open it till I got home.”

Frank examined the box. No name on the glossy white exterior. Taking care not to smudge any fingerprints, he removed the cover. A note sat atop green tissue paper, cut-out letters pasted onto a sheet of unlined white paper.

RONA JEFFERSON is a SINNER and a LIAR

The TONGUE KILLER is not a priest

He is the BLACK KNIGHT

No one can stop his BLACK MAGIC

BLACKBIRD sings BLACKBIRD dies

He analyzed the wording. Sinner, like the message on each victim’s mirror.
The Tongue Killer is not a priest
. An emphatic denial of Rona’s killer-priest theory. Was
Black Knight
a reference to race?

The last line was crystal clear:
Blackbird sings, blackbird dies

“
Black
bird,” Rona said angrily. “Get it?”

It was a blackbird all right, extra large with gobs of dried blood on its feathers. He didn’t need a forensic pathologist to tell him there was a bullet in its gut. “Rona, we have to give this to Norris.”

She plucked the note from his hand, killed the engine and opened her door. “Okay, you’ve seen the damn thing. Let’s get some air.”

He got out and leaned against the hood of the Neon, hearing the sound of distant thunder. Off to the southwest, lightning zigzagged across an ominous dark sky. After a moment Rona joined him, clutching the note in her hand. Her eyes were squinty and a muscle jumped in her jaw.

“
Norris needs to see the note.” He reached for it, but she backed away in a nervous shuffle, taking jerky puffs on her cigarette. She dropped the butt on the cement and squashed it under her shoe.

“
No way. Did you
read
the damn thing? Black magic? Black knight? Dead
black
bird? This just feeds into Norris’ black-killer theory.”

“
I don’t think the killer’s black.”

“
You think the killer sent it.” Her face was a dark, stubborn mask.

“
Don’t you?” he said, and flinched at a loud clap of thunder.

“
You think Norris is the only one in town that hates niggazzzz? Drive around and count the Confederate flags outside the houses. This isn’t the first hate mail I’ve gotten and it won’t be the last.”

“
Rona, the killer sent it and you know it. He cut the letters out of a newspaper. The forensic techs might be able to lift prints off the note—”

“
And they might not! Didn’t find any prints at the murder scenes, did they?” She set her jaw. “I’m not giving it to that redneck racist.”

He spread his hands in a disarming gesture. “Show me the note, okay? I don’t need to hold it. Just show it to me.”
Just come close enough for me to grab it.