Fiddlers (13 page)

Actually, he didn�t give a damn one way or the other, one priest more or less in this vale of tears, especially a guy had to be a hundred years old.

�But I have to ask a few questions, if you feel up to it,� he said.

The nun nodded, whimpering into her beads.

�What time was it that you found the victim� by the way, what is his name?�

�Father Michael Hopwell,� she said.

�I understand you came out here into the garden to lock the gate

�To see if it was locked.�

�And was it?�

�I didn�t check. I found Father Michael and ran right back inside.�

�So if it�s unlocked now, it would have been unlocked then,� Ollie said.

�Or vice versa,� Sister Margaret agreed, nodding.

One thing he couldn�t stand was a smartass nun.

�You went inside�� he prompted.

�Yes, and immediately called the police.�

�Knew he was dead, did you?�

�Knew he was hurt. All the blood��

She shook her head.

�See anyone when you first came out here in the garden?�

�No. Actually, I�d hardly stepped outside when I saw him lying there. I turned right around, ran right back in again.�

�Hear any shots before you came outside?�

�No.�

�When�s the last time you saw Father Michael alive?�

�When Father Joseph arrived. I took him back.�

�Took who back?�

�Father Joseph.�

�Back where?�

�To the rectory.�

�And Father Joseph is?�

�An old friend of Father Michael�s. He�s retired now. He comes here often.�

�What time did he get here tonight?�

�Around eight o�clock.�

�And left when?�

�A little after ten.�

�You saw him leave?�

�No, I heard them exchanging �good nights.�

�But you didn�t hear any shots?� Ollie said, surprised.

�No. I went into the chapel to say complin before I went to bed.�

�Complin?�

�That�s the last prayer of the day.�

�Didn�t hear any shots all that time?�

�The chapel walls are thick.�

�Tell me about this Father Joseph.�

�They were priests together at Our Lady of Grace, in Riverhead.�

�They get along?�

�Oh yes. Get along? Of course. They�re old friends.�

�Where is he now, this Father Joseph?�

�He lives in the community center on Stanley Street.�

Ollie looked at his watch.

It was ten past midnight.

He wondered what time priests went to bed. Well, retired priests. He wondered who paid for a priest�s retirement. He wondered who�d shot Father Michael here.

�Who�s got these other Glock murders?� he asked Monroe.

�The Eight-Seven,� Monroe said.

�Well, well, well,� Ollie said.

* * * *

In the middle of the night, he woke up screaming.

She sat up, yelled, �Chaz! What is it?�

�A nightmare,� he said.

But he was doubled over in bed, clutching his abdomen.

He lay beside her, trembling. He felt cold to the touch. She held him close. In a little while, he got out of bed and went into the bathroom. She heard the water in the sink running. He was in there for five minutes before he came back to bed.

�Tell me the dream,� she said.

He hesitated, thinking. Then he said, �It was in Nam.�

He was still holding his belly. The chills seemed to be gone, though.

�This woman and her baby are sitting on the hood of a Jeep. We�re supposed to transport them back to where an interpreter is waiting to question the woman. Well, the girl, actually; she�s no more than nineteen. The sergeant thinks the girl is a spy for the Vietcong, I don�t know what gave him that idea.

�The sergeant is driving the Jeep. He likes to drive. I�m riding shotgun. M-1 in my lap. The girl is sitting on the hood of the vehicle. Baby in one arm, holding the baby tight. Other arm extended, stiff, hand clutching this like sort of handle on the hood, so she won�t fall off with her baby. The road is rutted and bumpy, these mud roads they had over there, between the rice paddies��

He began trembling again.

�I don�t remember the rest of it,� he said.

When she got up to pee later, he was sound asleep.

She kept thinking about his dream. After she�d washed her hands, she opened the door to the medicine chest over the sink.

There were five bottles of prescription pain relievers in there.

She wondered if he�d had a nightmare at all.

* * * *

It certainly had been very nice to fall into two gratuitous drug busts while investigating a pair of homicides. But these windfalls hadn�t brought them any closer to learning who had killed the blind violinist, or the cosmetics sales rep, or even the university professor. Nor did it much endear them to Connors and Brancusi, the two Narcotics cops who now had Internal Affairs to deal with because some punk nightclub manager was making noises about having greased them for protection. The things a desperate ex-con would say to avoid taking another fall!

And now, to make matters worse, a dead priest had turned up last night in the Eight-Eight.

And guess who�d caught the case?

�Now the usual thing that would happen here,� Ollie explained to the assembled detectives of the Eight-Seven that Friday morning, �would be if a person caught a body that he later learned had been shot with the same pistol used in three previous murders another squad had been investigating - fruitlessly, I might add - since the sixteenth of the month

This was now the twenty-fifth day of June. The clock on the squadroom wall read 9:10 A.M.

�The usual thing that would happen would be for the responding detective to cite FMU, and then run the paper over posthaste to the squad that originally caught the squeal, in this case yours precisely, the Famous Eighty-seventh.�

He paused to have his droll sarcasm appreciated.

�But it so happens that my plate at the moment is both literally and figuratively empty

He did not expect any of the cops here in this room to understand or appreciate such literary terms, but the fact was that there�d been a dearth of murders in his own precinct and besides he was on a diet, hence the empty plates all around�

�� and so I�ve decided to join forces with you, so to speak, and take upon myself the investigation of the priest�s murder, whose name happens to be Father Michael Hopwell, should this be of any interest to you. And also to lend whatever assistance I may deem myself capable of, ah yes, in the ongoing investigations of the Geezer Murders you are already pursuing.�

The Eight-Seven detectives did not know whether this was a blessing or a curse.

�Thank you,� Ollie said, �don�t bother standing, no applause necessary,� and executed a slight but difficult bow with one hand on his still quite ample middle, empty plate or not.

Ollie�s idle comment notwithstanding, the tabloids spread on Carella�s desktop that Thursday morning were still calling the string of homicides �the Glock Murders.� Now that Ollie was on the scene, would the murders be remembered from this day to the ending of the world as �the Geezer Murders�? Carella hoped not.

But look at the facts.

Four murders thus far, all committed with the same automatic pistol. Two of the vics in their fifties. One in her sixties. And now one in his seventies. These were not youngsters, Maude. These were people getting on in life, you might say. Given your average life span of what -seventy, seventy-five, eighty tops? - this put middle age somewhere between thirty-five and forty. Yes, kiddies, face it. You were rounding the bend at thirty, and middle-aged at thirty-five, imagine that. Fifty was fast approaching old age. Sixty was, in fact, old. Seventy was decrepit. Eighty was ready for the box. None of these victims had been skipping off to kindergarten with a lunch pail in one hand and a box of crayons in the other. In all truth, the ages of the victims made the case sort of boring. Like watching Woody Allen kissing a beautiful blonde in one of his movies. If someone�s about to die soon, anyway, what was the sense of going to all the trouble of killing him? Or her?

Well, you couldn�t say the two fifty-something-year-olds were exactly at death�s door. In fact, Alicia Hendricks had been a damn good-looking woman, in excellent health - and sexually active when she was younger, don�t forget. And whereas the wandering violinist had been blind, he was otherwise in pretty good shape and certainly not rushing out to buy himself a burial plot. But aside from those two, the others seemed unlikely candidates for termination. Ho hum, let nature take its course was what most citizens of this city were thinking as they turned the pages of their newspapers to sexier stuff like the killing and torture of Iraqi prisoners of war.

Not that the tabloids weren�t doing their best to make the murders sound as sexy as possible. The first thing they did was suggest that the Glock Murders were in fact serial murders, and then they quoted various FBI profile statistics common to most serial murders.

Never mind that until the murder of the priest last night, there had been only three killings�

(A serial killer is someone who usually kills more than five people.)

Never mind that the now-four murders had been committed in the relatively short space of six days�

(A serial killer usually slays over a longer period of time, sometimes even months or years, allowing a so-called cooling-off period between each murder.)

Never mind that the victims here were a mixed bag: a blind musician, a cosmetics saleswoman cum dope dealer, a university professor, and now a priest.

(A serial killer�s victims are usually of the same type - prostitutes, hitchhikers, postal employees, what have you, but always easily categorized.)

Never mind that all the victims here were shot in the face at close range with an automatic pistol.

(Most serial murders are committed by strangulation, suffocation, or stabbing.)

One of the tabloids suggested that the serial killer here was trying to obliterate his victims� faces, a supposition with which a PD profiler actually agreed. All of the tabloids agreed that the primary motive of a serial killer was sexual, whether or not any sex had actually taken place before or after the murder. They also agreed that most serial killers were white males between the ages of twenty and thirty, which description fit half the stockbrokers downtown.

The detectives looking at all these statistics saw only two converging characteristics that might have marked their man as a serial killer: his victim�s ages and their race: they were all getting on in years, and they were all white.

It was Fat Ollie Weeks who came up with the notion that three of the murders might be simple smoke-screen murders.

�Maybe he was only after one of them,� he said. �Let�s say the priest last night, for example. Maybe the rest were just to throw us off the track. No connection at all between them.�

�Among them,� Willis corrected, though he had to admit Ollie might have a point here. Aware that Eileen Burke was watching him, waiting for his further response, he merely said, �In which case, which one?�

�Was he really after, you mean?�

�You kill four people, you�re really after each and every one of them,� Parker said.

�I�m inclined to agree,� Byrnes said, surprising Parker. �A smoke screen isn�t usually this prolonged. Too much danger here of us closing in.�

�I don�t see the danger yet,� Eileen said. �We haven�t found any connection, so maybe Ollie�s right.�

�In which case, which one was he really after?� Willis insisted. �Who was the real victim?�

�Far as I�m concerned,� Byrnes said, �they�re all real victims, and he was after each and every one of them. Stay on all of them,� he advised. Or warned. �And bring me something!�

* * * *

Parker caught up with Ollie on his way out of the squadroom, and asked how things were going with his little Latina dish.

�Or do you plan on marrying her?� he said. �Is that it, Ollie?�

�Well, no. I mean, the subject hasn�t come up. We�ve only seen each other a few times, whattya mean marry her?�

�Is exactly what I�m saying. But if there are no wedding bells on the horizon, then when do you plan to make your move?�

�I don�t know what move you mean.�

�Ho-ho, he don�t know what move I mean,� Parker said to the air. �I mean getting in her pants, sir, is what I mean. When do you plan to attempt this?�

�I didn�t make any plans for that,� Ollie said.

�Then start now,� Parker said. �When are you seeing her again?�

�Saturday night.�

�Tomorrow night?�

�No, next Saturday night.�

�No,� Parker said.

�Whattya mean no? That�s when I�m seeing her. July third, next Saturday night.�

�Wrong,� Parker said. �Saturday night is wrong, July third, July whenever. She�ll know what you�re planning, she�ll��

�I ain�t planning nothing.�

�She�ll think you�re planning something. Saturday night? Of course you�re planning something! She�ll be on High Alert, she�ll put up a Panty Block.�

�A what?�

�These Latinas, they call themselves, they know all kinds of ways to cut off a man�s dick and sell it to a cuchi frito joint. It�s called a Panty Block. If she suspects for a single minute what you�re planning��

�But I�m not��

�� she�ll throw up a Panty Block like you never saw in your life. Here�s what you gotta do,� Parker said. �If you wanna get in this girl�s pants, you first gotta create an ambulance.�

�A what?� Ollie said.

�An ambulance. In French, that means like a setting.�

�I always thought an ambulance

�Yeah, I know, but the French are peculiar. To them, ambulance means lighting, music, mood, the whole setting. Ambulance, is what they call it. They know about such things, the French. Saturday night is out. Any Saturday night. What�d you plan to do that Saturday night?�

�I told her to come over around seven. I told her I�d cook dinner for her.�

�Oh boy! High Alert at once! Panty Block, Panty Block!� Parker said, and threw up his hands in alarm. �You want my advice?�

�Well��