by Mark Zubro
The detectives stopped outside the open door of the same room they’d interviewed Dere in minutes before. They could see him in the chair he’d been in. He didn’t turn to them. The other two must be in the chairs the detectives vacated minutes before. They listened to the three.
“What did you tell them?” Turner recognized Pelagius’s slight accent.
“Truth, something you wouldn’t know about.”
Dere began to cough. He lurched forward and fell to his knees.
Turner took out his cell phone, moved down the hallway a few steps, summoned paramedics, and backup.
When he returned, he heard Dere mutter, “I told them what you told me to tell them.”
“And how can we be sure of that?” Drake was screaming at the old man.
Dere’s railing cough echoed in the room.
“I’ve had enough,” Turner said. He rushed into the room. Fenwick followed.
Dere was on the floor gasping. Drake was on his feet. Pelagius was sipping from a large drink.
Turner knelt next to Dere. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” He coughed a long, agonizing cough and passed out.
Drake screamed, “Get out.”
Fenwick inserted himself between the priest and the commissioner.
Turner said, “Paramedics are on the way.”
Pelagius looked at the priest on the floor as if he was a cockroach that might need to be stepped on. Drake waved his fist in Fenwick’s face. From Turner’s spot on the floor where he cradled the head of the still-breathing old priest, he could see Fenwick’s implacable visage.
Drake got up to within three inches of Fenwick’s nose and bellowed, “This is what I knew you would do.”
Fenwick murmured, “Back up or I will arrest you right here and right now.”
Vern Drake tried to shove himself forward.
In his calmest tone, Turner said, “Aren’t you worried about Father Dere?”
Drake waved his fist and screamed at Turner, “You are a pawn of Satan.” The commissioner turned back to Fenwick and waved a finger in his face. “You are also a pawn of Satan. You are doing the devil’s work.”
Fenwick said, “Someone has to.”
Pelagius said, “None of this is very constructive. We should all calm down.”
Turner could hear car doors slamming and moments later the doorbell rang. Seconds later paramedics and blue-clad beat cops entered the room.
The paramedics hurried to the recumbent priest and ministered to him.
Drake pointed to Pelagius. “We’re leaving.”
Fenwick stood in his way. His ocean of calm met Drake’s volcano of anger. His voice was even softer than Turner’s had been. “If you try to leave, I will arrest your ass.”
Drake screamed, “You can’t do this to us.”
Several of the beat cops took up positions next to the commissioner and the bishop.
While the paramedics worked on the Fr. Dere, the others in the room remained silent. Mrs. Drabble rushed in and knelt next to the priest on the floor. In twelve minutes they left with him on a stretcher. Mrs. Drabble, the housekeeper, accompanied them out.
Molton strolled in a few moments after they left. He looked at his detectives and then Drake and Pelagius. He stood in front of his detectives and faced the interlopers. “Can I help you gentlemen?”
“We need to talk,” Drake said.
“I’d love to,” Molton said. “You can come with me to Area Ten headquarters, or we can arrest you.”
Pelagius stood up. “We’d be happy to help any way we can.”
“Excellent,” Molton said. He motioned to several beat cops. “My men will help you along.”
They left. Molton looked at Turner and Fenwick.
Fenwick said, “We got nothing.”
“We can’t arrest them?” Molton said.
“Not yet,” Fenwick said.
“Pity.” At the door Molton turned back. “I’ll let you know all the nothing they don’t tell me.”
THIRTY-THREE
Monday 9:58 P.M.
In the car Fenwick said, “Which one of us is the pawn of Satan?”
“I’m the gay guy.”
“I tell the worst jokes.”
“Maybe Dante missed one of the circles of hell,” Turner suggested.
“Which one?”
“The one where they have you on a loop telling the wrist joke. That would make you the pawn, king, and queen of Satan.”
“Does being a pawn of Satan come with health benefits? Maybe if it had a dental plan, I’d sign up.”
“You’ll have to ask Drake, or I suppose you could Google pawn of Satan. Or maybe pawns of Satan have their own web site, pawnsofsatan.com.”
“Everybody has a goddamn website. Do I get special powers being a pawn of Satan?”
“Depends on how much chocolate you eat that day.”
“I can eat a lot of chocolate.”
“You know,” Turner said, “this whole pawn of Satan thing could become a recurring theme.”
“Call it a motif,” Fenwick said. “That sounds classier.”
“It all sounds like crap.”
“Does that mean our kids are spawn of Satan?” Fenwick asked.
Turner groaned.
Fenwick added, “I’ve never been a pawn of Satan.”
“You’ve never been a pawn of anything. Except Madge.”
“Madge is queen.”
“Got that right.”
They sat in their parked car for a few moments in silence, then Turner said, “Let’s go to the crime scene.”
“For what?”
“I want to see what they saw. I want to see what Kappel was looking at when he was walking to his date with death. I want to see the problems the killers faced or didn’t face. I don’t have enough of a sense of place.”
They grabbed sandwiches at Millie’s. It was nearly ten when they got to the scene. They sat in the car and finished eating.
After his last bite, Fenwick said, “None of the streetlights are working.”
“Random chance or the bad guys put them out?”
Fenwick knew he wasn’t really expecting an answer. They were speculating, sharing observations. At times, such moments led to insights that helped solve a case.
Fenwick slurped the last of his diet soda, wiped his hands on his pants, and got out of the car. Turner grabbed a couple of heavy duty Maglites from the trunk.
They removed the crime scene tape from the gate and entered the junkyard. They walked to the far end. Turner shut off his light. Fenwick followed suit with his.
The ambient light of the city did not give them enough light to see their way.
“They had flashlights,” Turner said. “Something else to carry along with the baseball bat, and if they were carrying Kappel.”
Fenwick nodded agreement. “Kind of clumsy, if you’ve got a finite amount of time, especially if Kappel was struggling.”
“And the ME said he hadn’t found drugs.”
Still with flashlights off, they stepped into the undergrowth. A few feet in, Turner stopped, pulled out his phone. “Not enough light from this really to help them.”
“A herd of bad guys with phones out, carrying a baseball bat, moving along in some way with a person they were going to kill?”
Turner switched his flashlight back on. The path was now clear. “Okay, it was dark. They either stumbled along or had some way of lighting the scene.” Simple summary, but they were stuck with the basics, which often enough led to the obvious that solved a crime. Except when it didn’t. The ground squished under their feet from the rain earlier in the day.
After about five steps, Turner stopped. “Who could see these lights? How did they know someone wouldn’t see them and ask questions? Call the police?”
He had Fenwick stand where they were on the path with his light on and went back to the junkyard gate. From there he could see nothing. He walked slowly in. Once he passed the mass of junk, he beg
an to see a glow. When he got next to Fenwick, he turned on his light, but aimed it toward the ground. Fenwick followed suit.
“Okay,” Turner said, “if they were smart and careful, unless someone was watching, no one would notice anything.”
Fenwick said, “If we presume they were professionals, they’d be smart enough not to be having a laser light show in here.”
They found the scene of the crime. They stood next to where the body had been and turned off the Maglites. First they looked. The clouds had parted and the few stars you could see in the city made their feeble attempt to shed light. No outside light penetrated here. It wasn’t absolute dark, nothing outdoors in a major city really could be pitch black, midnight dark.
Fenwick asked, “Was this enough light to kill him?” Another rhetorical observation.
Turner shut his eyes. He heard the soft lapping of the river, distant sounds of the city. The wind rustled the leaves in the trees and undergrowth. He heard a few drops of today’s rain disturbed from their places on the leaves hit the ground.
He opened his eyes again. They tried using just one of the lights with the beam aimed to the ground. “It would be enough,” Fenwick said.
“Yeah,” Turner agreed. “They didn’t need enough light for brain surgery, just enough to bash his head in.” He put his still-on flashlight on the ground under the clump of densest vegetation about seven feet away. He aimed it back toward where they’d come. He stepped to the bank of the river. “They could aim it like that and no one would notice. No flashing lights. No dancing lights that might draw someone’s attention.” Looking across the river, neither of them saw any place lit up that would draw a person’s eye.
Fenwick said, “No killers returning to the scene to recover an accidentally lost clue.”
“We don’t get enough of those.”
“Have we ever had any?”
With their Maglites they examined the area around where the body had been. The examination in this light added nothing to what they’d learned in the daylight.
Fenwick said, “We could try frantically waving our lights around and see if anybody notices.”
“Yeah, in this day and age, everything is caught on some kind of camera.”
“No cameras here.”
Turner shone his light onto the river water. Other than more dark black, he got nothing. They left.
At Area Ten, Turner found an email on his computer from Jeanne D’Amato confirming her earlier diagnosis that the documents they’d gotten from the Cardinal were useless.
He and Fenwick did some paperwork, updated the spreadsheet, and called it a night.
THIRTY-FOUR
Monday 11:30 P.M.
Mrs. Talucci was on her porch. Paul stopped and filled her in about the case. She laughed nearly as hard as Fenwick at the pawn of Satan and excessive narcissism cracks. Paul finished with, “I also have information about the financial records we got from the Cardinal.” He told her about the data, and Jeanne D’Amato’s initial opinion, and the confirmation that had come hours later.
Mrs. Talucci said, “I am pissed. That is not a good thing.”
She rocked in silence. When she dropped a stitch, Paul knew she must be really angry. Finally Mrs. Talucci said, “I never bluff.”
Paul crossed the lawn to his own home. He was tired. First, he stopped at Jeff’s door and eased it open. As usual his son was asleep with the reading light on and a book open on his chest. Paul inserted a bookmark, shut the book, put it on a shelf, leaned down and kissed his son on the forehead, shut the light off. The boy stirred but did not waken. Paul left.
Upstairs, he noted that the light was still on in Brian’s room. He didn’t hear any noise, so he entered his and Ben’s room. Ben was emptying his pockets onto the top of his dresser. Paul sat on the edge of the bed to take his shoes off.
“How’s Brian?” Paul asked.
“Still not saying much. He went to his room early and hasn’t been out.”
Paul stood up and said, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Moments later he knocked softly on Brian’s door. He heard a faint, “Yeah.”
He entered.
Brian had his eyes closed and his arms crossed on his forehead. He wore sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt.
When Paul sat on the edge of the bed, Brian opened his eyes.
“Are you okay?”
Brian gulped. “I’m not sure.” But he said little more. The boy wasn’t ready for revelations.
Paul went back to their room. “I’m still worried about him.”
“Me too. It’s gotta be something.” But neither as yet had an answer. As they undressed, Paul filled him in on the case. Once again, he got laughter about the pawn of Satan and the excessive narcissism crack. It felt good to listen to laughter in his own home, in the room he shared with the man he loved. The world felt safe for at least a few moments.
After they crawled into bed, Ben reached for him and said, “Why don’t we find out how our pawn of Satan is doing tonight? Or we could even be a little excessive ourselves for a little while.”
It had been a long day, and he was tired, but Ben was smiling his most sexy smile, and his arms were around him, and they felt warm, and safe, and good. They pulled each other close.
THIRTY-FIVE
Tuesday 7:01 A.M.
Tired as he was, Paul got up Tuesday morning for breakfast with the family. Jeff was making vegetable-stuffed omelets. Paul didn’t mind the vegetables as long as there was no asparagus or zucchini. Jeff made Paul’s with onions, tomatoes, spinach, and potatoes.
After he finished making the last omelet, Jeff sat down to eat. He turned to Ben and asked, “How come you guys aren’t effeminate, irresponsible, unfunny guys like the gay guys on television?”
“What do you mean?”
“I watch some of those shows with gay characters on television. There’s always one really effeminate, totally unrealistic one. You guys aren’t like that.”
Ben said, “We’re just ourselves. That’s enough for us.”
Paul said, “I know you know television isn’t real.”
Jeff gave a mild snort while he reached for ketchup to put on his omelet. He said, “Yeah, but it sure seems strange.”
Both boys were a little quieter than usual. Paul decided to enjoy the calm.
THIRTY-SIX
Tuesday 10:47 A.M.
Turner wanted to get back to the station early to continue getting their mass of data organized onto his spreadsheet. He spent an hour and a half collating work on it as well as organizing who they were going to interview for the day. When Fenwick appeared at the top of the stairs, he lumbered his bulk over to their desks.
Fenwick asked, “Did you see the morning news shows, the newspapers, and the Internet?”
“I haven’t seen the TV, and I’ve only checked email on the Net. I didn’t go to the news.”
Barb Dams appeared at the top of the stairs and hurried over to their desks. She carried a laptop computer open to the Internet.
She showed Turner the headlines. “Drag Queen Cardinal.”
“What the hell?” Turner asked.
Fenwick said, “Do not piss off Mrs. Talucci.”
Dams set up the computer so all of them could see the screen. She called up a YouTube site. They watched a drag show. From the look of the audience members and the quality of the video, it looked like it might have come from the early seventies.
Dams pointed to an overweight dancer wearing a very short skirt and belting out Where Did Our Love Go. Dams said, “That’s the Cardinal.”
Fenwick said, “I don’t recognize him without his red robe. How could anyone prove it was him?”
Dams said, “Look closely.” She waited for several seconds, hit pause, then enlarged the portion of the screen that showed the dancer’s legs. “See the tattoo on the singer’s left ankle. It’s reasonably unique, a silhouette of Diana Ross. The Cardinal has one just like it in exactly the same spot.”
�
�How do we know that?” Fenwick asked.
“Pop culture,” Dams said. “The Internet. During some innocuous interview he gave seven years ago, he mentioned he had a tattoo. In the interview he was trying to ‘reach out’ to young people. He thought revealing he had a tattoo would mean he could relate to them.”
“You’re joking?” Fenwick said.
“When I try to be funny,” Dams said, “people actually laugh.”
“I am wounded,” Fenwick said.
Dams chortled. “I wish.”
“It’s really him?” Fenwick asked. “I’m not doubting,” he rushed to add seeing D’Amato’s sardonic look, “I’m just awed.” He looked at Turner. “Did you know Mrs. Talucci had this?”
Turner smiled.
“Did she tell you she was going to do this?”
“Mrs. Talucci has never asked me for permission to do anything. She wouldn’t telegraph this to me. She knows it’s connected to my job.”
“The Cardinal thought we were stupid,” Fenwick said, “and he thought Mrs. Talucci was bluffing.”
“She did say that,” Turner admitted.
“That what?” Dams asked.
Turner smiled. “That she never bluffed.”
Molton arrived at their desks. He and Dams walked over to the huge screen and the rows and columns of names, dates, numbers, explanations, and details.
Molton whistled, “Damn.”
Fenwick said, “This is not going to be an excuse to add another layer of paperwork to each case.”
Molton whistled again. He and Dams read and looked for a few minutes. Molton turned to Turner. “I’m impressed.”
Turner said, “I’d be more impressed if it led to an arrest and conviction.”
Molton asked, “Where the hell did Fong get such a huge screen?”
Dams spoke another CPD truism. “Do we really want to know?”
Fenwick asked Molton, “Did you learn anything from Drake and Pelagius last night?”
“They were quite miffed. Which one of you is the pawn of Satan?”
Turner and Fenwick pointed at each other and said, “He is.”
Molton and Dams laughed.
Molton said, “Drake was a fulminating fool, but that Pelagius, I don’t trust him. He just kept that superior smirk on his face. As if he knew something or knows something.”