ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) (34 page)

Detective Miller came back with a manila folder and gave it to Renzi, who took out some color photographs and spread them out on the table.

“
Do you recognize these women?”

The sinner studied the photo array. “No, I don’t think so. Should I?”

“
How about these?” Renzi set more photos before him, matching them with the others. Before-and-after shots of Lynette and Dawn and Patti and Melody, naked and pathetic, lying in their beds with identical looks of horror on their faces. He flashed on their final moments, recalling how they struggled, thrashing their arms and legs in a futile attempt to free themselves as the light faded in their eyes.

He raised his head and met Renzi’s implacable gaze. “I knew Melody Johnson, but not the others. I saw their pictures in the paper, though. The shots when they were still alive.”

Renzi clenched his fists and half-rose from his chair. “You monster.”

“
Frank,” said the other detective in a warning tone. Leaving his spot against the wall to step closer to the table, he said, “What happened to your knuckles? Looks like someone scratched you.”

Involuntarily, he touched the fading scratches on his neck.

“
Would you be willing to take a polygraph?” Renzi asked.

“
Why? You’re the liar, saying you’ve got evidence when you don’t.”

Renzi locked eyes with him. “We’ve got DNA.”

He looked away, smiling at the black detective. “I saw you on TV.”

“
Yeah? Outside the home of which poor defenseless woman you murdered?”

“
No. Outside the J-J-Jefferson house,” he stammered, eyes blinking.

“
Someone saw a Toyota Camry,” Renzi said, “leaving the scene after you firebombed her house.”

He felt sick, his legs weak and rubbery as though he’d just carried a refrigerator up three flights of stairs by himself.

“
There are lots of T-T-Toyota Camrys. I didn’t f-f-firebomb her house.”

Stop stammering you idiot. It makes you look guilty.

“
Rona Jefferson can’t begin to imagine how evil you are,” Renzi said, “but I can. I know you.”

“
No you don’t. If you knew me, you’d know it’s futile to drag me down here and browbeat me with these ridiculous questions.”

Renzi cracked his knuckles, popping them one by one, gazing at him with his implacable dark eyes. “Stress is a funny thing. It builds, you know? Builds and builds and builds. Sometimes it makes people do stupid things. When I was in Wahoo, I had a nice chat with your father.”

He summoned every ounce of restraint he could muster to stop himself from smashing his fist into Detective Frank Renzi’s gloating face.

“
He told me to say hello next time I saw you.”

Liar! My father doesn’t give a damn about me.

“
I’ve had a difficult life,” he said.

“
How sad. Next you’ll be telling me that you were sexually abused.” Staring at him with those voracious panther-eyes.

“
There are many victims in the world. Not all of them are dead.”

Renzi leaned forward over the table, visibly angry. “I don’t give a fuck about your unhappy childhood, and I don’t give a fuck about your sexual issues with men and women. I don’t give a flying fuck about your psyche. All I care about is getting you off the street so you can’t kill anymore women. We see the victims. We have to deal with their bodies.”

“
Have you ever loved someone, Detective Renzi?”

Renzi looked at him, startled. After a moment he said, “Of course.”

“
I hadn’t, until last night. Loving someone changes everything.”

“
Nothing changes the horrible things you’ve done.”

The ceiling fan chirped a measured rhythm into the silence.

He locked eyes with Renzi and smiled. “They say it’s never too late for a happy childhood.”

“
It’s too late for Dawn and Patti and Melody,” Renzi said, his gaze relentless. “It’s too late for Lynette Beauregard.”

“
This is getting tiresome. May I go now?”

“
We’re going to get you. It’s only a matter of time.”

“
I’m free to go, then?”

“
I can’t stop you.” Renzi held his gaze. “Yet.”

“
You should use some Grecian Formula on your sideburns,” the sinner said. “Going gray’s no big deal. Grecian Formula would cover it.”

Renzi blinked and looked startled, which pleased him. He wanted to laugh, but he didn’t.

“
Actually,” Renzi said, flashing a smile, “my lover likes the gray.”

The sinner pushed back his chair, got up and went to the door. He had his hand on the doorknob when Renzi said, “Are you going to run?”

“
Why should I run?” He beamed Renzi a smile. “Really, Detective, think about that Grecian formula. No need to let yourself look old.”

_____

Frank paced around the table, too angry to speak, too wired to sit.

Miller settled his butt on the table and ran a hand over his head. “Fucking creep. What’s up with the Mickey Mouse watch, I wonder?”

“
Who knows? Did you hear him stammer? Did you see the panic on his face when I said someone saw his Toyota?” He slammed the palm of his hand against the wall. “Timothy Krauthammer is the Tongue Killer, dammit. He tortured those women and then he killed them.”

“
You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack, you don’t watch out.”

He whirled on his partner, angry beyond measure, on the verge of losing control. “The son of a bitch is guilty and I’m going to nail him.”

Miller looked at him, eyes wary. “Okay. Shall we tell Norris?”

He rotated his shoulders to ease the tension and breathed deep, down to his diaphragm. “Not till we’ve got evidence. You know Norris. He’ll go off halfcocked. I don’t care what Krauthammer said. Something spooks him, he’ll run.” He checked the time. “We better get out of here. Captain Dupree’s due back from that luncheon at two.”

“
Right.” Miller smiled faintly. “So, about that Grecian Formula . . .”

He laughed, punched Miller’s arm and went to the door. “Come on, wiseass, we’re out of here.”

They went out and got in their cars. Miller zoomed off immediately, but Frank just sat there in his Mazda, thoughts in turmoil, enraged and sickened by his latest encounter with Father Timothy Krauthammer.

Krauthammer was the Tongue Killer, he’d bet his life on it.

Years ago a reporter had asked if he felt guilty about a man he’d shot and killed in the line of duty. He gave her the standard line: It was a matter of survival; if he hadn’t taken action, the man would have shot him. But later he had ruminated over her question. He’d taken no pleasure in killing the man, not the way serial murderers took pleasure in killing their victims, but he hadn’t felt guilty, either. Replaying the incident in his mind reminded him of a National Geographic show he’d seen on television: quick cuts between an antelope grazing on an African plain and a leopard hidden in the underbrush, silent and still, intent on its prey, gathering its muscles before it sprang. Then came the chase. The leopard twisted and turned as the antelope, agile and swift, dodged between clumps of brush. The leopard gained ground. Finally, in a gigantic leap the leopard landed on the antelope’s hindquarters and brought it down for the kill.

But the man he had killed up in Boston was no innocent antelope, the man was a vicious criminal with a long rap sheet who’d shot at him while resisting arrest. Afterwards he’d felt giddy. Euphoric. He was alive.

Further reflection raised darker issues, however. He knew plenty of cops who had never fired their weapon at a live target. Why did he place himself in such circumstances? Why did he take the dangerous assignments? To test himself? To test his courage and his ability to defend himself?

That’s what Evelyn thought: “You’re so macho, Frank. You’ve got to prove you’re tougher than everybody else.”

Wrong. It was the risk he sought, and the challenge. Frank Renzi loved the hunt, loved matching wits with killers, analyzing their twisted psyches in order to anticipate their next move, because that was the only way to stop them and save someone else from becoming a victim.

But what if he couldn’t stop the killer? It happened often enough. Sometimes men got away with murder. You knew they were guilty but you couldn’t prove it. Sometimes the system failed, and that raised the inevitable question: Would there come a day when the object of his hunt was about to go free and his instinct took over? Was the death of a killer justified if the possibility existed that the system might fail, freeing him to kill again?

With a weary sigh, Frank cranked the car, thinking, forget the brooding self-analysis. Get the goods on Krauthammer and convict the bastard.

CHAPTER 22

Tuesday 6:30 P.M.

Frank carried a can of Coors and a hefty FedEx package upstairs to the extra bedroom that doubled as his office. His ass was dragging and his head felt like a tennis ball, bouncing between the Tongue Killer and Sampson’s missing daughter. Earlier, he’d phoned the lawyer that managed Lisa’s trust fund. The lawyer said he’d wired a money order to Lisa on Monday for two thousand dollars. The trust allowed her to draw two grand twice a month.

Consequently, he’d revised his strategy and spent the afternoon showing Lisa’s picture at every upscale hotel, bar and clothing boutique in the French Quarter. No one had seen her, but when he got home Lieutenant Paul McGuire’s FedEx had been propped against his door. He wasn’t having much luck finding Lisa. He hoped the FedEx would yield the crucial evidence he needed to nail Timothy Krauthammer.

He studied the timeline he’d taped to the wall to give him the big picture, each case printed in concise form on 4x6-inch lined note cards.

2 years ago: Kitty Neves, 35, prostitute, escaped a john who tried to

cut off her tongue; the john was white, possibly a priest.

6 months later, Vic 1: Cheryl Richard, 20, clerk at Victoria’s Secret,

Lakeside Mall; left hand amputated (accident, age 10); prosthesis

3 months later, Vic 2: Suellen Mathews, 19, college student; Caught

necking with a priest in high school; shunned by her family

2 months later, Vic 3: Lynette Beauregard, 21, college student;

Troubled background (pregnant?); seen at Lakeside Mall with

Father Timothy Krauthammer the day before her murder

5 weeks later, Vic 4: Dawn Andrews, 20, Hollywood Video clerk;

One leg shorter than the other (limp). NO TONGUE TAKEN

4 days later, Vic 5: Patti Cole: 20, waitress at Bennigan's restaurant;

Severe overbite. DNA obtained from matter under fingernails

3 days later (the day Kitty’s story ran in Rona’s column); Kitty

Neves murdered (prostitute, age 35) NO TONGUE TAKEN

4 days later (7 days after Vic 5), Vic 6: Melody Johnson, 25,

radio announcer, WCLA Large hematoma disfigures her cheek

The chart showed a classic pattern of what FBI profilers termed escalation, the intervals between kills growing shorter and shorter, the last four, including Kitty, within twelve days. The killer was losing control.

You’re the liar, saying you’ve got evidence when you don’t,
Krauthammer had said, and he was right. They had no evidence to tie him to the murders.

Frank settled onto the swivel chair at his desk and rubbed his eyes, which failed to ease his headache. All the victims lived alone: young, white, single, and Catholic. None of them knew each other. The only distinguishing link, he believed, was a fatal weakness: a physical flaw or an emotional vulnerability that the killer showed an uncanny ability to exploit.

Except for Kitty. Kitty didn’t fit the victim profile. She was a prostitute, older than the other victims, and the MO was different. After clubbing her head, the killer had jammed a sharp object into her ear canal, which pierced her brain and killed her. No signature tongue mutilation, body not posed. Alerted by Rona’s column, the killer had murdered Kitty to stop her from identifying him. But that was only a theory; he couldn’t prove it.

I knew Melody Johnson. Not the others. I saw their pictures in the paper, though. The shots when they were still alive.
An evil comment from an evil man.

The killer murdered young women in their own homes, a big risk if they had husbands or lovers, roommates or pets. A snarling pit bull would make for a nasty surprise. He had to get to know them first, enough to discern their living arrangements anyway, enough so they let him inside. Then he blitzed them with mace and tied them up naked on their beds.

No evidence of physical torture, no bite marks, no objects forced into the vaginal or anal cavities, no mutilation of the breasts or genitalia. Psychological and emotional abuse motivated this killer.