Boyfriend from Hell (30 page)

“Ms. Delaney, let me work on it. See if I can pull some strings, move this along.”

“How long would you say?”

“Several weeks, and that would be a miracle.”

“And several weeks is how many weeks?”

“Let me see. I’ll look into it.”

“I’d also like to talk to my childhood priest.”

“You should.”

“Maybe he could do it right away.”

“If he’s qualified. And he’d still need permission. Let me get started. You’re going to get through this fine,” he said. “You have the power of God on your side.”

“I haven’t been around that sentiment in a long time,” she said. “Thank you, Father.”

She placed a call on her cell phone to Father Connolly in the Bronx.

“Saint Christopher Church,” a woman answered.

“Hello. My name is Veronica Delaney and I’m looking for Father Connolly. Is he in?”

“This time of day he plays chess with the youngsters in the park. Should be back in about an hour.”

“If he comes in, would you tell him Veronica Delaney is on her way to see him? And could he wait for me, please? He knows me.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Appreciate it.”

She couldn’t find a taxicab and headed toward the subway. She reached Lexington Avenue and was about to enter the station. She saw him in the mix of pedestrians on the other side of the street, a winged presence in with the crowd. She stopped walking, closed her eyes, her heart pounding; waited, hoping this would pass; and looked again and saw an ordinary-street scene. He was gone. He had not been smiling this time. He seemed to Ronnie to have been studying her, or possibly just checking in.

She emerged from the station at Fordham Road and Jerome Avenue in the Bronx and walked toward Saint James Park, located near the church. This was her childhood park. She had not been in this place for years and when she entered she remembered being a little girl here, being pushed on the swings by her mother, and yes, her father, dancing around a maypole with other children to mark the start of spring, walking hand in hand with her mother; the memories an intermingling of the joyful and the achingly sad.

The chess tables were in an area behind a recreation center building and Father Connolly sat with an African American boy of about eleven, the two engrossed in their game. Father Connolly had grown older in the service of his faith since she had last seen him. He was a small, white-haired man, seventy-eight, five feet four, unimposing but for the face, and she nodded her head affirmatively seeing that face again, a wrinkled face with soft brown eyes, a countenance of endless empathy. He looked up as she approached the table.

“Father, it’s Veronica Delaney.”

“Veronica, my dear. Tony, we’ll finish tomorrow, all right?” The boy nodded and Father Connolly came to her.

“It’s so good to see you, Father.”

“What brings you here?”

“I’m not good. I’m not good,” and she began to sob. He held her until she subsided and then guided her to a patio table and chairs near the chess area and helped her sit. She told him her story—Richard, the signs of possession, the Satan manifestations—and he appeared to draw the pain unto himself.

“An exorcism? You must understand, it doesn’t always work, Veronica.”

“And sometimes it does. Father McElene said purity of faith was a main requirement for the exorcist. He’s talking about you.”

“I’m not the person for this.”

“You are to me. If you could call, they could give you permission—”

“Veronica, do you really believe in your heart of hearts that the Devil is in you?”

“I don’t know anymore. But even if it’s all psychological, which is what the therapist says, I’ve read that an exorcism can still help on that level, if the person believes it will help. I believe it will and that you can help me.”

“During the Second World War when I was a chaplain I did several exorcisms. The results were mixed. There were demons of war, as much as anything. Years later, a young woman in my parish claimed she was possessed. I wanted her hospitalized. I believe Satan
is
present in our world. I did not believe it for this woman. My superiors pressured me to perform an exorcism. It wasn’t successful. Soon after, she died in a drowning. I don’t know if it was an accident. I never performed an exorcism again.”

“But I want to live. That’s why I’m here.”

“I can’t do it for you, Veronica. I can’t take the chance if it’s the wrong remedy.”

“It’s my chance, not yours.”

“No, I would be very much involved.”

“Would you call Father McElene? At least tell him we spoke.”

“I’ll call him.”

“And would you please think about it? He said ‘several weeks.’ Can I hold myself together ‘several weeks’?”

“Stay here with us for a while in our convent. We’ll exorcise your demons with prayer and guidance and counseling.”

“You see how little good counseling did for me, Father. As for prayer, when my mother was dying, I prayed. It didn’t help.” She wrote her phone numbers down for him on a piece of paper. “You’ll think about it? You’ll call me?”

“I can’t let you just go like this.”

“I’m fine when I’m fine.” She patted him on his hand. “This is what I need. And you can do this. You’re a kind man. I trust you.”

She found a taxicab on Fordham Road and went back to the apartment. Bob came over for a dinner Nancy prepared and he was as upset as Nancy at the notion of Ronnie soliciting an exorcism. He blamed Richard for everything; “a terrible guy who turned you upside down.” Nancy was concerned with details, was Ronnie going to continue seeing Kaufman while her exorcism was in the works. Ronnie hadn’t given it any thought, but as she considered it she decided until she went through the exorcism, therapy might be counterproductive—two different belief systems. They managed to arrive at something of a compromise, she would consider returning to therapy, but only after the exorcism was performed.

As Bob was leaving he said to Ronnie, “I wish we could do more.”

“You’ve
done
more.”

Like a sleepwalker Ronnie arose from her bed. She put on her jogging outfit, sneakers, placed a few dollars in her pocket as she usually did before leaving for a run, and left the apartment to go jogging. She went past the sleeping doorman and jogged along the street toward Riverside Park. She was running, eyes open, oblivious, unconscious, at three thirty in the morning.

She was unaware of a figure in a car parked across the street. As she left the building the person made a call on a cell phone.

She entered the park and stopped to sit on the ground with her back against a retaining wall. She remained there awhile, drifted into sleep, then her eyes opened, she stood, and began to run through the deserted park, her face devoid of emotion. A few yards in front of her something was moving in the darkness. Her trancelike state lifted and she became aware of the movement. A man was in her path facing her menacingly. By the light of a lamppost she saw the man’s face. It was Randall Cummings. He had a lifeless expression, the walking dead. She tried to run past him, around him, but she had come upon him too quickly and he tripped her with his leg, sending her sprawling to the ground. As she turned to get up, he lunged at her with a knife. She spun out of the way and with a rapid swipe of her arm knocked the knife out of his hand. She was on her feet and now he came toward her, his hands outstretched to choke her. She ducked under his grasp, got to him first, her hands at his throat, and began choking him, pushing him backward, choking the air out of him as he gasped, pushing him as she choked hard, and then he tripped on a tree stump and as he fell back she saw it wasn’t Cummings at all, it was the man in the cardboard box. He was the reality, not Cummings. He fell away from her, tumbling down a hill that sloped from the walkway, screaming at her from the bottom, “You crazy bitch, you goddamn crazy bitch!”

In a panic she ran fast in the direction she had come, back toward the apartment, but in her path, swarming in front of her, were several howling, hissing black cats. She turned in the other direction to run and a few of them scampered across her path, howling as she ran faster, as fast as she could along the walkway to get away from the creatures until, finally, she was beyond them, the sound of the cats descending, and she was by herself running in the night. She ran at full speed in her panic until she was out of breath, and sprawled onto a bench on her stomach, gasping, bewildered, horrified—she nearly killed someone, nearly strangled him to death. The next thought was more than she could bear—did she kill Randall Cummings?

On a promontory in the park above the walkway was a figure who had been observing the near-strangling and Ronnie’s terrified run, watching with a look of amused satisfaction as if it were his entertainment for the dead of night. It was Richard.

S
HE AROSE IN THE
morning, her body aching, and made her way out of the park. She had to get to Father Connolly. She couldn’t wait on the bureaucracy. She knew that she was dangerous and losing her hold on reality. If he refused to perform an exorcism, at least he promised her haven in a convent. The sisters and their symbols of faith might help until the church worked through their procedures and found someone for her.

She had a few dollars in her pocket, she bought a newspaper to get change and dialed information at a pay booth. The church was listed, Father Connolly was not. She called the church, receiving an outgoing message; no one was in the office to take her call. She didn’t have enough money for a taxicab to the Bronx and went to the nearest subway station. She was going to sit outside the church to wait for someone to arrive. Proximity to the church seemed to her a better idea than being in the city at large.

Shortly after 8:00
A.M.
she arrived at the simple gray brick Roman Catholic church. She rang the bell for the office, located in a small annex adjacent to the main building. No one answered. She sat on the church steps, in despair over the events of the night.

She was unaware that out of her line of sight, watching her down the street, was Richard, who had followed her.

Rourke asked Santini and Gomez to come into his office, where Maria Sanchez, a uniformed officer in her twenties, was seated.

“Maria—” Rourke said, prompting her.

“We got a call a few minutes ago,” she told them. “Guy said a crazy woman tried to strangle him last night, middle of the night in Riverside Park. He was sleeping in ‘his apartment,’ he said, referring to the park, so it must have been some homeless guy. Said he was letting us know to spare ‘future victims.’ The woman was young, he said, in jogging clothes. He thought maybe he scared her in the dark, but he said that was no excuse. She choked him like she wanted to kill him. He tripped and fell down a hill and she lost her grip and ran away. That’s all he wanted to say. Didn’t want anything to do with the police. Just wanted us to know so no one else gets hurt. He was moving away. Didn’t want to be in any neighborhood where crazy women tried to kill you.”

“Can’t blame him for that,” Rourke said, “but here’s the kicker. Tell them where he said it happened.”

“Riverside Park around 113th Street.”

“Is that a fact?” Gomez said.

“Yes. And the Delaney girl lives?” Rourke asked.

“On 111th. Right near the park,” Gomez answered.

“Same MO as Cummings. Right near her apartment. Let’s bring her in.”

Nancy didn’t see Ronnie in her room when she awoke and assumed she went jogging early. She checked and when Ronnie’s jogging shoes weren’t in the closet, confirmed for herself this was the case. She left for a dental appointment prior to going to work and was not in the building when Santini and Gomez arrived looking for Ronnie. The doorman, who came on at seven, said that he had seen the roommate leave. He hadn’t seen Ronnie that morning. They buzzed up and when there was no answer Santini asked for the superintendent of the building. A muscular man in his forties appeared wearing work clothes. When he heard they were from homicide and needed to talk to Veronica Delaney, he got very excited. His cousin was a cop, he told them, and he opened the door with a key Ronnie and Nancy had left in case of emergency; not the emergency they had in mind.

When the detectives saw Ronnie was not there they went back down. A search of the apartment was not their priority, they had to find the suspect quickly. They spoke with Carter and Greenberg, who had arrived, and who were going to position themselves outside the building and intercept her if she appeared.

Gomez asked the superintendent and the doorman where in the vicinity Ronnie might be at this time of the morning, did they know if she had a favorite breakfast place? They didn’t know of any. A gym where she worked out? She jogged in the park, the doorman said. She jogged. They knew that. The detectives had Nancy’s work address from their earlier interrogation and needed her for Ronnie’s whereabouts.

First, they drove through the park, hoping to spot Ronnie, and when they did not they headed downtown for Nancy. They arrived at the Hawkins Literary Agency a few minutes after nine. Nobody was at the office yet. They were going to wait for the business day to begin and for Ronnie’s roommate to appear.

During this time, a picture of Ronnie taken from a magazine head shot was printed with her vital statistics under the line, “Wanted for questioning in the murder of Randall Cummings” and sent out as a police bulletin to all precincts. Rourke was furious when someone leaked it and this appeared on the cable channel New York News, a tip-off to the suspect and an invitation to flee. Ronnie, however, was not going anywhere. She was sitting on the steps of Saint Christopher Church in the Bronx, out of range of this activity, desperate, waiting for someone, anyone, from the church.

A few minutes after nine a robust African American woman in her forties approached the door leading to the church office. Ronnie quickly came over to her.

“At last.”

“Did you want to see Father Flynn? He’s out of town.”

“Father Connolly.”

“Father Connolly? He’s semiretired, you know. If he’s coming in today, won’t be until much later.”