SISTER (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 4)

by Lawrence de Maria

  “I don’t think I was a trial run, Sister. And I’m sure of it after reading her diary.”

  “Are you a Catholic, Mr. Rhode? I know you went to Holy Cross, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I was raised Catholic. Attended parochial schools.”

  “And now?”

  “I’ve fought in a couple of wars since then.”

  “I’ve heard that there are no atheists in foxholes.”

  “But plenty of agnostics come out of them.”

  “Somehow I don’t think you are a hopeless case, Mr. Rhode. I think I will pray for you.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  “Are you married, Mr. Rhode? Or been?”

  “No. But I guess you could say I’m in a serious relationship.”

  I don’t know why I said that. But Sister Barbara was just someone that you could talk to.

  “Does she know that you are investigating this?”

  “Yes. In fact, she insisted I do it.”

  “Sounds like a remarkable woman.”

  “She is. Now, if you don’t mind me getting in a few questions? Before I have to renew my license.”

  Sister Barbara laughed.

  “Of course.”

  “Did Sister Veronica ever mention her parents, or her brother?”

  “She told me that her mother was dead, and she hadn’t heard from her father in years. So sad. And until this moment I never knew she had a brother. I only knew about her aunt. Did he pass on, too?”

  “I don’t know. He may have. I didn’t know about him either. He seems to have disappeared.”

  “How very odd. She never mentioned him to you?”

  “No.”

  “If he’s alive, I’m sure he would want to know about his sister’s death.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll be able to track him down. In the meantime, I’ve taken up too much of your time..”

  I stood to leave, and so did she.

  “We all miss Sister Veronica,” she said. “Her death is a tragedy. We all felt a loss when she left. She was a mainstay here. Her relative youth and energy were hard to replace. There aren’t all that many of us left in our religious order. We can easily live on the top two floors of this building. We serve a culturally diverse community with a large number of new immigrants. Our English language and literacy classes for adults living in the neighborhood are on this floor. We currently have 48 students from 17 different countries. We also provide homework help and tutoring for local elementary school children. In the summer we run a camp for the kids and focus on reading, computers and art. We also provide rooms for meetings, and our back yard hosts neighborhood gatherings, barbecues and the like.”

  “It must be satisfying work.”

  “It is. We do what we can, but we are spread thin. None of us are getting any younger. And like many other service organizations, we have had to curtail some of our activities as government funding has shrunk. And the diocese has its own problems. But, thank God, many people in the community have filled part of the void. I don’t know what we would do without students from local colleges like Ann. And, somehow, we get donations. We must be doing something worthwhile, because it’s not a wealthy area.”

  I smiled. It was such an effortless pitch.

  “I don’t suppose you’d turn down a donation from me, would you?”

  “Catholic guilt is a gift that keeps on giving,” she said, matching my smile. “Just see Ann on your way out.”

  Sister Barbara put out her hand.

  “Good luck, Mr. Rhode. I hope you find who you are looking for.” She put her other hand over mine as well. “And what you are looking for.”

  When I got to the outer office, Ann of Wellesley was just putting down the phone, presumably having just been alerted by Sister Barbara about my impending donation.

  “I understand Mother Superior has worked her magic on you, Mr. Rhode.”

  “You two make a great tag team.”

  Fortunately, I still had much of the cash I’d brought on the trip. I gave her most of it. I could always hit an ATM machine later.

  “That’s very generous, Mr. Rhode,” Ann said.

  “Well, you can take the boy out of the convent, but you can’t take the convent out of the boy. I was taught by nuns, or rather, sisters, in grammar school. They were some of the best people I ever met. This place brings back some good memories.”

  “Here’s another one,” she said, standing up.

  She cast a quick glance at Sister Barbara’s closed door and then leaned across the desk and kissed me. It was quick but it wasn’t on my cheek. Then she looked in my eyes. And kissed me again. And not so quickly.

  “My name is Ann Moreau,” she said, breaking away. “If you ever become unspoken-for, look me up.”

  She shook her head.

  “Of all the convents in the world, you had to walk into mine.”

  CHAPTER 14– BOSTON

  Ann Moreau’s kiss was still fresh on my lips, and on my mind, when I got a call from Detective Broderson as I got into my car.

  “Looks like we do have a serial killer on our hands,” he said without preamble. “We checked those other three homicides. All the victims were killed by a thrust through the heart with a thin, rounded blade, probably an ice pick. The depth of the wound was the giveaway. All were about 150 millimeters deep, give or take a few millimeters.” That was about six inches. “And the angle was approximately the same, up and in, right through the heart. Just like Sister Veronica.”

  “Even accounting for height?”

  “Yeah. That’s the clincher in my mind. The victims ranged from five-six to six foot. But all the wounds were basically the same. So whoever did it knew what he was doing. He adjusted his thrust for height. A pro, maybe.”

  “Pros aren’t serial killers. Could be ex-military. Or for that matter, current military. But I like the ex, if he’s traveling around the country.”

  “You thinking airline pilot or something really weird? Why not long-haul trucker?”

  “If it’s either, it will be almost impossible to track him unless he has some connection to all four victims. Bill Gates would have to write the computer program to cross-check every plane and truck in the target cities on the day of the murders.”

  “Well, it’s what we’ve got. I notified the F.B.I.” He laughed. “The bastards wanted to know how we put it together. I didn’t tell them we got a tip from some nosy shoofly from Staten Island. They think we’re geniuses.”

  “I aim to serve.” I thought of something. “You said ‘right’ through the heart, Ted. Did that refer to angle, as well?”

  “Very good. No, it didn’t. In each case it looked like the blade went in at an upwards angle, left to right.”

  “Which, with a single wound, doesn’t prove anything.”

  “But with four wounds, in four different victims, we can infer, if not prove, that the killer was left-handed.”

  “Think the F.B.I. will infer that.”

  “Probably. But in the spirit of interdepartmental cooperation, I’ll give them a call.”

  “You just want to gloat.”

  “That, too.”

  After Broderson’s call, I knew I had a decision to make. I always think better after a stiff drink and with a good meal under my belt. Boston, where both could be had, beckoned. I love Boston and had visited many times, on business and pleasure. My knowledge of the city was augmented by reading about it, mainly in the Spenser novels by Robert B. Parker, which I considered the preeminent private eye series. I get hungry just fictionally traveling around the city with Spenser. Cormac said that I got most of my crime-solving tips from Parker. I told him that if he lost a hundred pounds, found a good tailor and lifted weights instead of donuts he could be my Hawk.

  In the later books, Parker’s publisher included a handy book-flap map of the city. On a couple of recent trips, I used it to find spots to visit in my spare time: Long Wharf, Boston Garden, the Swan Boats. Now, I set my sights on Lock
e-Ober, the city’s storied steak and seafood palace on Winter Street. I’d always wanted to eat there and once got as far as making a reservation that I had to cancel at the last minute. I parked on Tremont and walked over to the restaurant.

  It was closed. Not just for the day. Forever.

  “Since 2012,” a passerby told me as I stared into the bleak and black interior. My meals at Locke-Ober would now be restricted to rereading a Spenser.

  Fortunately, Boston is a city of spectacular culinary fallbacks. A few minutes later I was sitting, Absolute martini in hand, at the horseshoe bar in the Union Oyster House near Faneuil Hall. Close by the harbor, which any place with the word oyster in its name should be, it is allegedly the oldest restaurant in Boston. I seemed to be frequenting a lot of really old places lately. The very nice woman at the door who suggested I wait at the bar came by and said she had found the type of quiet booth I wanted. I don’t mind eating alone, but I prefer not to do it in the middle of a room surrounded by tourists and children. I have nothing against tourists or children, having been both at one time, but I wanted to think. To celebrate my seating good fortune, I ordered another martini, which the bartender said he would send over to my booth.

  “Would you follow me?” the pretty lady asked.

  “To the ends of the earth,” I replied.

  “How did you know where I’m putting you?”

  She was good. On the way, we passed a booth with a large plaque.

  “The Kennedy Booth," she explained. “J.F.K. always sat there.”

  There was a ‘Reserved” sign on the table. I asked her if that was out of respect, or someone was actually expected.

  “Both,” she said. “We don’t use it unless we know for sure someone from the family won’t be coming in. His birthday is soon by the way, May 29th. No one but family gets it that day.”

  “And November 22?”

  “Same.”

  “My dad told me that no one of his generation forgot where they were when they heard the news.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “I wonder who was sitting in that booth on that day. It would have been around lunchtime.”

  “God! I never thought of that. Of course, they might not have known he used it back then, if it wasn’t family or friends.”

  “But if they did ….”

  She shook her head.

  “What a memory that must have made.”

  I ordered the broiled seafood platter: swordfish, salmon, scallops, scrod and grilled shrimp, served with parsley new potatoes. It was all delicious, even the scrod, which I knew could be cod, haddock or some other whitefish. Someone once told me that “scrod” is merely an acronym for “seaman’s catch received on dock,” or, basically, the catch of the day.

  As I ate, I thought things out. The more I thought, the more I became convinced that the answer to Ronnie’s murder wasn’t in Massachusetts. Over coffee, I pulled out my phone. That was another reason I wanted a quiet booth away from the maddening crowd. I believe it’s rude to talk on the phone where someone eating can hear you. I quietly canceled my room in Worcester and reserved one at the Marriott at Long Wharf.

  After I finished my meal, I walked it off. Boston is a compact city and you can see a lot of it in an hour by foot. Toward the end of my tour I headed to the Parker House, perhaps the city’s most famous hotel. My parents had taken me there for the famous rolls. Given my experience with Locke-Ober, I was relieved to find out it was still open, although it was now called “The Omni Parker House.” I went into The Last Hurrah bar, where the city’s power elite gather to drink and, for all I know, scheme to close famous restaurants and change the name of hotels. I didn’t see Spenser, Hawk, Vinnie Morris, Susan Silverman, Rita Fiori, Quirk or Belson, but I stayed and had a brandy, anyway. I wished Alice was with me. I felt myself getting morose.

  “You’re an idiot,” I said to myself.

  “What was that?”

  It was the bartender. I guess I’d said it aloud.

  “I said I was an idiot.”

  “You came to the right place,” he said, nodding down the bar to where a bunch of local power brokers were laughing.

  I finished my brandy, walked back to my car and drove the few blocks to the Long Wharf. As I pulled up to the Marriott, I could see the winking lights of jetliners as they descended into Logan across the harbor. When I got to my room, I went over the information on the other murders similar to Ronnie’s and started making calls, setting up my itinerary for a trip west. I took out my iPad and booked a round trip flight to San Francisco, with stops in Denver and Chicago, the other murder sites, on the way back. I gave myself a week. Then I called the cops in each jurisdiction, setting up appointments. If I had to speed up or slow the progress of my trip, at least they would know I was coming.

  I wanted to give them time to call a caterer.

  CHAPTER 15 - SONOMA

  I had a 9:30 A.M. flight, so I set my alarm for 6 A.M. and headed to the gym in the Marriott. It had been a while since I’d worked out. Running around finding out nothing didn’t count. An hour later I was covered in sweat but feeling more human than I had in days. When I got back to my room I checked my iPhone, which I’d left behind. There was a call from Broderson.

  “Racking up the overtime,” I said when he picked up. “A man after my own heart.”

  “I’m sitting in my kitchen trying to decide between granola and bacon and eggs. My wife’s asleep. I don’t like the granola’s chances.”

  “You called me to vote on your breakfast choices?”

  “No, I called you to tell you that some Feebie puke leaked the story to the media. It’s in USA Today and probably everywhere. Goddamn glory hounds.”

  “Maybe they want to flush him out. Or warn the public. Could help.”

  “Could just as easily send him to ground. How are you doing?”

  “I fly out in a couple of hours. I have an appointment to meet the lead investigator on the Windsor murder this afternoon. He didn’t sound overjoyed to hear from me.”

  “Must be your sterling personality. Drop my name if you want, and if he gives you too hard a time I can give him a call.”

  Thanks.”

  After I rang off I started going through the copy of the USA Today that had been outside my hotel door when I got back from my workout. I found the story on Page 3:

  F.B.I. Believes Serial Killer

  May Be Targeting Religious

  By A.C. Shilton

  Associated Press

  Federal law enforcement sources have revealed that a series of four murders involving Roman Catholic clergy stretching across the country from California to Massachusetts may be the work of a single killer. The murders, in the city of Windsor in Sonoma County, CA; Denver; Chicago and Worcester, MA were all apparently committed with the same weapon and the wounds inflicted on the victims were almost identical. In each case, the victim was stabbed once in the heart.”

  The reporter than went into a description of each murder, giving dates and locations, and adding biographical information about each victim. There was nothing in the story that I didn’t know, but it was still jarring to see Ronnie reduced to just another lurid crime statistic. I skipped to the bottom of the story.

  What baffles investigators, the sources agreed, is the fact that there is no apparent connection between the victims, other than the fact that they were clergy.

  “There is no regular pattern in the times of the murders,” one Justice Department source explained. “The victims didn’t know one another. These weren’t sex crimes. There was no mutilation and they didn’t fight back. Whoever killed them apparently just stabbed them quickly and walked away.”

  This source said that even the F.B.I.’s vaunted serial-killer profiling unit was stymied, given the wide distance between the killings and the fact that two women and two men were victims.

  “Two nuns, a priest and a religious brother, all from different orders or vocations,” the source said. “Different ages. Diffe
rent everything.”

  The story ended with an appeal to the public for help, complete with a hotline. A hotline. I wished I had one. The Feds had all the fun.

  ***

  My flight out of Logan was on one of the new jetliners that had inflammable batteries. The problem had allegedly been rectified. I’m not normally a nervous flier but I was alert for any sniff of something burning and even though it was early I opted for some Jack Daniels over a free Diet Coke when the beverage cart made its way to me. We landed in San Francisco in one piece, so I guess the fix worked, at least on my plane. I rented a car and drove the 60 miles to Santa Rosa in just over an hour, arriving in late afternoon.

  The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office was on Ventura Avenue in a fairly new two-story, concrete block building that must have been built before California’s finances went into crapper. Not that it looked like they splurged on an architect. An information officer directed me to the Violent Crimes Investigations unit on the second floor. Once there, I asked to see Detective John Tyrone. I was told to take a seat and a few minutes later a uniformed black woman came out. She was obviously not John Tyrone. She held out her hand.

  “Detective Sergeant Jackie Noyce.”

  I had initially spoken to Noyce when I called. She had then switched me over to Tyrone.

  “I run the V.C.I. unit. Come on back to my office.”

  Her office was the last one down a long hall. We passed a few smaller ones but only one was occupied. A man was bent over a file cabinet with his back to us. Noyce stopped and leaned in with one hand on the door jamb.

  “John, your appointment is here,” she said. “I’m going to chat with him a minute, then I’ll send him in.”

  “Whatever,” the man said, without turning around.

  When we got to her office she waved me to a seat by her desk. I gave her my card, which she put on her desk. The only other thing on it were two silver-framed photos, of girls in their early teens. Noyce’s phone rang. She picked it up and swiveled away from me. She said something in mom talk. It was a personal call. I looked around the room. She had a window looking out at a parking lot. There were plaques and pictures on the window sill and on adjacent walls. She was in many of them, in a blue uniform, not the brown one she was now wearing. In many of the photos, she was standing next to someone else. I thought I recognized one of them. She hung up and turned back to me.