ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) (44 page)

“
Tell me about the nanny, the horror stories Tim told you about.”

“
Tim was already verbal at eighteen months, but after his mother died, he stopped speaking, wouldn’t say a word. Mark hired the nanny to make him talk. Tim said she did, by torturing him.”

“
How? What’d she do to him?”

“
Withheld food until he talked. It worked, but he wound up with a terrible stammer. She used to make him say his name, over and over.”

“
Timothy Krauthammer. Tough, those fricatives at the beginning.”

“
What, now you’re a speech pathologist?”

“
No, but I consulted one once after I interviewed a suspect with facial ticks.” He branched right onto I-55 heading north and checked the time. Ten minutes to the rest area. Ten minutes to find Tim’s weak spot.

“
Did Tim ever attempt suicide?”

Dana unscrewed the cap on a bottle of water and drank deeply. “He said he thought about it, but as far as I know he never attempted it. Mark said he used to throw temper tantrums, and he was a bed wetter until he was nine. I asked Tim about that once, but he didn’t answer, just stared at me.”

“
Yeah? When he stared at you, what was in his eyes?”

“
Good question. You’d make a good therapist.”

“
I’ve been a cop for twenty years. Homicide detectives get good at deciphering people. Tim’s eyes. What was in his eyes?”

“
Hate, I think. That was his dominant emotion, hate and the anger that hate generates, uncontrollable anger at times.”

“
That’s why he attacked Sean,” Frank said, thinking of the old man now, wondering how he was doing, hoping the brain swelling had gone down.

“
Probably. If he thought you and Sean were conspiring against him.”

“
But we weren’t. Sean didn’t know—”

“
Doesn’t matter. If Tim thought you were, it was fact in his mind. Tim has poor impulse control. As a child he was quite pudgy. Tim admitted he used to binge on chocolate sometimes. He felt ashamed about it. He’s very self conscious about his body image.”

“
He’s ashamed of his body?”

“
Not ashamed, but he envied men with better physiques.”

So that’s where the Grecian Formula taunt came from.
He checked the time. Five minutes to the rest stop, still no ammunition from Dana.

“
What else was Tim ashamed about? Latent homosexual tendencies, because of the Brother Henry affair?”

“
No. He worried about that for a while, but he was never attracted to boys. His problem was with women. Premature ejaculation.”

“
That fits with the pathology reports on the victims: no trauma to the vagina or the anus. He doesn’t penetrate, gets off by torturing them psychologically.”

“
That may be true of the killer, but it doesn’t prove it’s Tim.”

“
I think he uses a verbal script,” he said, ignoring her comment. “Something to do with sex. About his sexual prowess, maybe. Narcissists tend to be in denial about their faults. Mark said Tim had no girlfriends.”

“
Maybe because his first sexual experience was a disaster. Tim said the girls shunned him because of his stutter, so he bribed one of the popular girls to go out with him. He promised to share a bottle of Wild Turkey.”

“
Wild Turkey. Jesus,
he’s
the wild turkey.”

“
Don’t make fun of him!”

“
Okay. What happened on the date?”

“
They drove to a lover’s lane and started drinking. The girl told him to take off his clothes and stripped to her panties and bra. Tim got so excited he ejaculated all over her, and the girl laughed at him. Tim was humiliated.”

“
Just like the prostitute.”

“
Stop building a case against him!”

“
Stop defending him! You haven’t seen the corpses. I have. He ties them up and tortures them verbally. He hates women.”

Dana drank more water and methodically screwed the cap on the bottle. “Tim didn’t kill that high school girl, Frank. He took her home. The next day all the kids at school were laughing at him. The girl had told them what happened.”

“
Sad story, but not every guy that has a bad sexual experience turns into a sexual sadist. These crimes are about anger and power.”

He flashed his lights at a Saab poking along in the high speed lane, waited for it to move over, and accelerated. In less than a minute they’d be at the rest stop.

“
Did Tim ever wear a Mickey Mouse watch to his therapy sessions?”

Dana looked at him, surprised. “Yes, and when I asked about it he got furious. He said his father gave it to him. I asked why that made him angry, but he refused to talk about it. Emotionally, Tim was very immature.”

Like Lisa Sampson, he thought, recalling the childlike swirls and curlicues Lisa had made on the rental car contract. To a con-man like Krauthammer, Lisa was ice cream.

“
He’s arrogant, he’s vicious and he’s a sexual sadist. Tim thinks he’s entitled to kill these women. Face it, Dana. He’s evil, pure and simple.”

And if he hurts Lisa Sampson, I’ll kill the son-of-a-bitch.

_____

Seated on the floor with his back against the checkout stand, the sinner squinted into the slanting rays of the afternoon sun pouring through the windows at the front of the store, brilliance far less powerful and dazzling than the flashing dome lights on the police cars that ringed the building.

“
Let the girl and the clerk go,” called a mechanical voice.

A cop, using the bullhorn again. The sinner smiled. The clerk wasn’t going anywhere and neither was Marie.

He looked over at his Bonnie girlfriend, staying out of sight as he’d instructed, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside shelves of canned milk and instant coffee. Engrossed in a copy of
Glamour
magazine, she licked a finger and turned a page, gazing at pictures of half-naked women. He knew what was in such magazines, tarts and harlots flaunting their bodies.

The fact that he’d blown the clerk’s brains out had shocked Marie but hadn’t changed her feelings for him. Or so it seemed. He studied her weak chin, her blob of a nose, her beady brown eyes. Was she faking? He’d seen women do that, pretend to like him one minute, turn on him the next.

No, Marie was still naïve enough to believe that love made the world go round. She still thought it was possible for them to escape and run off somewhere and be Mr. and Mrs. Tim. Dense, dull-witted Marie.

Aware of his hollow stomach, he scanned the boxes on the low shelves in front of the counter and spotted the familiar yellow and red wrappers. Perfect! Slithering on his belly like a snake to keep his head below the windows at the front of the store, he grabbed the box of Mr. Goodbars, slithered back to his niche beside the checkout stand, opened a candy bar and bit off a chunk. Bliss. Or what passed for bliss, at this point.

Marie laughed, shaking her head at him. “Tim, you are so cool. A gazillion cops outside and you’re eating candy.”

“
I didn’t eat breakfast.” In fact, he’d eaten no lunch either, unless he counted the Hershey’s chocolate with almonds. Nanny would be appalled. Three candy bars, and no vegetables. Father, of course, would never have allowed it. “Do you know what Ted William’s best batting average was?”

She gave him a blank look. “Who’s Ted Williams?”

“
You don’t know Ted Williams?” he said, incredulous. “The greatest hitter of all time? Played for the Boston Red Sox?”

“
Oh. Baseball?” She returned her attention to the magazine and flipped a page. “I never watch baseball. It’s boring.”

Her casual dismissal took his breath away. If he’d said that to Father, the man would have killed him. Not literally, perhaps, but figuratively. Father would have humiliated him, would have browbeaten him into submission. “My f-f-father was obsessed with baseball statistics. He said I was stupid.”

She looked at him, mouth agape. “Really?”

She said nothing for a moment, staring at him. He glowed with satisfaction, pleased that he’d gotten her attention, knowing this was a contest: Who’s got the meanest, rottenest daddy in the whole world?

“
Your father’s the stupid one. Calling you stupid? Tim, you’re the smartest guy I’ve ever met.”

Proud warmth filled his chest. He was beginning to enjoy this.

“
My father used to call me The Cow.” She rolled her eyes.

Despite the eye-rolling, he could tell she expected him to commiserate so he offered a comforting smile. “You can’t let other people label you.”

Except when they label you, in all accuracy, the Tongue Killer
.

“
You’re quite lovely, Marie. He had no right to call you that.”

“
Well, he did, and I believed him. Whenever one of his girlfriends dumped him, he’d be mean to me.” She gave him her deeply-hurt-inside smile. “But not any more. Not while I’m with you, Tim.”

He leaned his head against the checkout station, running the comment through his mind:
Not while I’m with you
. What a sweet thing to say.

He looked over to tell her so, but she was gone. His heart pounded. Marie had deserted him! He should have known better than to trust her.

But then she was back, crawling down the aisle on her hands and knees, pushing a six-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper and a box of Eskimo Pies ahead of her. “I’m hungry,” she said, giggling. “You think I should pay for them?”

He rubbed his throbbing temples. Marie expected him to save her. She still thought it was possible to escape this nightmare, still thought they might drive off, buy new clothes, eat a nice dinner and start over. But their luck had run out. He had to do something.

Steeling himself, he crawled to the gate that opened into the area behind checkout counter, the clerk’s final resting place, his face the color of bleached bone. Sickened by the stench of bodily waste, the sinner took care to avoid the dark pool of congealed blood. The clerk’s hand was flung out to the side. Beside it was the snub-nosed revolver.

Mesmerized by the clerk’s eyes, vacant eyes that saw nothing, he reached for the gun. And felt cold clammy flesh as he accidentally touched the clerk’s arm. He jerked his hand away. Wracked by a shudder, he snatched the gun and retreated, scrambling through the gate to escape the horror. He opened the cylinder of the blue-steel snub-nosed .38 Special. It was fully loaded. Good thing he’d squeezed the trigger first. Better a dead clerk than him.

He crawled over to Marie and showed her the gun.

“
Do you know how to use one of these?”

She grinned. “No, but I’m a fast learner. Show me.”

CHAPTER 28

Frank slowed to a crawl and rolled into the I-55 rest area, an Exxon station with two bays of gas pumps and a glass-front convenience store. The name on the marquee, ON THE RUN, seemed ironically appropriate.

He parked outside the cordoned-off perimeter, feeling the jittery buzz he always got right before the action. Encircling the convenience store, SWAT team sharpshooters outfitted in black held rifles with high-powered scopes, and two dozen uniformed officers knelt behind police cars, their weapons glinting in the afternoon sun. Other than the hum of highway traffic and squawks from police radios, the rest area was quiet, but sizzling with tension, everyone waiting for something to happen.

He gathered himself, embracing the adrenaline rush like a sprinter at the starting block.
You’re so ready to put your life on the line, Frank. You don’t care about me and Maureen. It’s all about you and your macho need to beat the bad guys.

Evelyn’s taunt after he came home one night, wired after a bust.

He was no macho man, but he felt most alive in the face of danger, more alive than at any moment in his life, except when he was having sex with a willing partner. Okay, sometimes he did plunge into dangerous situations, but only when the stakes were life and death. Only when the guns were drawn and time crept by like a long slow freight train.

And now was that time. Lisa Sampson was not going to die.

A garbage truck roared by on the highway, jolting him out of his ruminations. He glanced at Dana, sitting beside him with her hands in her lap, outwardly calm, though the skin around her eyes was tight with tension. Wordlessly, she offered him a cigarette. He hadn’t had one since he’d told her about the little girl in Boston. Last night, he realized. It felt like eons ago. He was tempted: have a cigarette to quell the dragons devouring his gut. No, he’d have one later, if he got Lisa out alive.

He opened his door. “Let’s go find out what’s happening.”

They walked to a Louisiana State Police cruiser twenty yards away, four men in body armor clustered around the trunk, moving awkwardly, torsos bulked out, shirts damp with sweat from the oppressive heat and humidity, and the nervous tension.

Frank identified himself to State Police Lieutenant Murphy, the tactical leader, and introduced Dana as Krauthammer’s therapist. Murphy barely acknowledged her, clearly not happy to have a woman around. A six-footer with steel-gray eyes and thin bloodless lips, Murphy introduced the others: a State Police Corporal, a wiry black-clad sharpshooter, and the hostage negotiator, Ben Whitworth, an ebony-skinned man with a salt-and-pepper moustache and sorrowful brown eyes.