The Judas Child

by Carol O'Connell

  “I want a warrant to search Oz Almo’s house.” Rouge Kendall was moving toward the door, and he was angry.

  “Hold it, Rouge.” Costello’s voice was all authority now. “It’s over. All that’s missing are the bodies of the kids.”

  “Mortimer Cray didn’t confess, did he?” Rouge walked back to the desk, planted his hands flat on the wood and stared at Costello. “And you don’t think that old man is the one—do you.” This was not a question, but an accusation. “I want to search Oz Almo’s place. If you want, I’ll go to Judge Riley’s house myself and get the warrant.”

  Marge caught the captain’s eye, and now she was nodding, pleading Rouge’s case. Let him do this?

  Costello turned away from her and addressed his rookie investigator. “No—not today. I’m telling you for the last time, you’ve got no probable cause for a search warrant. All you’ve got is an old grudge match, Rouge. I know it and you know it. Nobody goes off spinning their wheels until we find the bodies. I want you to go over everything on Sorrel’s desk. But first, stop by the medical examiner’s office and try to get something out of him. I still think Chainy’s holding out on me.”

  Marge could see that Rouge was about to come back at the captain with another argument. Costello also saw it coming and shook his head. “No warrant—no way. Now get moving.”

  Arnie Pyle trailed Rouge out the door. As the two men headed across the squad room toward the stairs, Ali Cray stared after them, looking very much like the leftover child who was not chosen for the baseball team. She drifted out of the office and gently closed the door behind her.

  On the sidewalk below the window, the silent crowd had doubled—no, tripled in size. Their numbers spilled into the street, and the slow traffic moved around them. Perhaps she should mention this gathering of weird mutes. Ah, but what would she say? Excuse me, Leonard, but the body-snatching pod people are here. The captain had seen that movie; he would know how to deal with them.

  Marge faced him now. “So you want me to tell the uniforms to stop digging up the hazelnut tree in the postman’s atrium? It’s Christmas, they’ve all got—”

  “Yeah, pull them off.”

  “And can I tell them why they were digging up the postman’s tree? Their dick supervisor won’t tell them anything. They want—”

  “No. You keep that to yourself. That’s all I need right now is another damn leak to the press. I just hope they don’t find out about the kids’ jewelry. There were a lot of troopers there when—”

  “You treat every cop in uniform like an idiot.”

  “I can’t afford a leak!” He slammed the flat of his hand on the blotter, and plastic dinnerware rattled in the take-out boxes at the edge of the desk. “I’ve got those bastard reporters on my neck, demanding a dog and pony show for the tabloids. And the people who read that trash are just as bad. The press scum and the public scum—they’re all the same.”

  “You really don’t think the shrink did it. Even with all that evidence? Was Rouge right?”

  Costello nodded. “The kid has real good instincts.”

  “Then why couldn’t you give him his lousy warrant?”

  “Marge, you know what Rouge wants to settle with Oz. From what I’ve heard, that old bastard really took the Kendall family for a ride. Milked them out of a lot of money when he turned private, and God only knows what else he did to those people before the trial was over.”

  He looked up at her, softening now. “So, pull the boys off the postman’s tree, but don’t tell them squat about mushrooms or truffles, all right?”

  She turned her eyes back to the window. The snowfall had ended, and the crowd had grown. She saw no more stragglers; they were all assembled now. Of course. It was high noon, the hour of the showdown in Western movie lore.

  And now it began.

  One person held up a bright candle, and then another and another. Some had cigarette lighters and matches. All the tiny flames shot straight up, unwavering in the dead calm air.

  So that was it. Didn’t these people know that the candlelight vigil was traditionally held at midnight?

  Ah, but the world is upside down today.

  Sheets of paper were being pulled out of pockets and purses, and held up to the illumination of the candles. These were Harry Green’s posters, portraits of the two little girls. Even from this distance, she had no trouble reading the bold lettering of the simple message, repeated perhaps a hundred times.

  To the man behind her she whispered, “Oh, the public scum you mentioned? They’re here.”

  He joined her at the window. “My God.”

  Marge looked from the crowd to the slack face of the captain. If only these people had made some noise, chanting for justice or shouting in anger, she knew he could have handled that. But there was no protocol, no department-approved response to this silent begging. Two of the village children were missing, and their people were asking quietly, so politely, could he find the lost girls and bring them home—please?

  What could the captain do? He closed his eyes.

  “Maybe you’re giving up on the kids too soon?”

  “Marge, don’t.” He turned his back on the window, and his voice was husky when he said, “There’s something else you can do for me.” He lowered the blinds over the glass on his office door. “I’m going to get stinking drunk. If anybody calls, you have no idea how to reach me, okay?”

  She nodded and left the office. The door closed behind her, and then she heard the sound of the lock.

  It was three o’clock when she looked up from her computer again. She had not been scheduled to work on this holiday. Her only reason for remaining was dead drunk on the other side of a locked door. The captain would have passed out by now, if she was any judge of his capacity for alcohol—and she was. Marge didn’t know three women, or even many children, who couldn’t drink Costello under the table. She walked over to his office door. Pressing one hand to the wooden frame, she leaned close to the pane of glass and whispered, “Merry Christmas.”

  Then she scribbled a quick note on her yellow pad, a reminder to pick up a few items from the deli on Harmon Street, the only source of groceries on Christmas Day. Oh, and she should stop at the captain’s summer house to pick up a clean shirt and his shaving kit. He would need them in the morning. Over the past ten years of their love affair, she had also gained access to his underwear drawer, and now she added socks, underpants and a T-shirt to her list of one quart of milk and a jar of mayonnaise.

  Agent Arnie Pyle stood close to the shoreline and away from the company of cops. If they knew what a talented liar he was, they might learn to mistrust him again.

  He had located a federal judge at his country home, where the famed slave master was known to keep a cadre of law clerks working on his caseload through every holiday. Over the cell phone, Arnie gave his sworn, generally untruthful statement into the judge’s tape recorder. And then he was left alone on the phone in a living hell of accordion polkas played for the enjoyment of callers on hold.

  He covered the receiver with his hand to kill the music, and now he listened to the racket of nature, the slap and receding suck of water on the rocks, the wildlife on the lake. A city dweller all his life, even Arnie knew the ducks should not be here in winter. One bad snowstorm and their little tails would be locked in solid ice. He looked up to see a white bird against the gray clouds, wings spread, soaring—another migratory creature who had missed the last bus to Miami.

  He always fell short of poetic ideation, for this required the soul he had peddled too many times, illegally doubling and redoubling the price for something he had not owned in years. He had just sold it again to a gullible judge as payment for a warrant. Every time he did this, he saw his father’s pacific blue eyes beholding a disappointing son—a Quaker with a gun and a liar. But then Arnie went on to lie again, and worse. Oh, the things he did for truth, justice and ten-year-old girls.

  The law clerk was on the line again. Arnie listened for a while
, then turned toward Rouge’s car, making a thumbs-up gesture as he walked back to the private driveway.

  “It’s a done deal, kid.” Arnie Pyle closed his cell phone and slid into the passenger seat of the old Volvo. “You got a trunk warrant—good as paper in the hand. If Almo has a fax machine in there, we can pull the paperwork right off the judge’s desk.”

  The car’s windshield was a spectacular panorama of the large Victorian house, rolling wooded hills, a good portion of the lake and, with a pair of field glasses, a clear view of the boathouse—the crime scene. “Rouge, if you come up dry, my ass is in a sling, and you lose everything. If I find hard evidence of extortion, we’re home free. If I don’t, then the search warrant is tainted. No matter what you find in there, you can’t use it in court.”

  Left of the front door, a window curtain parted to reveal a worried-looking man with a bald scalp and a moon-shaped face. Oz Almo was staring at Rouge’s car and the lineup of three more private cars belonging to Makers Village cops. On the other side of the driveway were troopers seated in four more vehicles marked by the State Police logo. All the cherry lights were spinning on the cruisers, and a siren was squealing as one last car screeched to a halt.

  Agent Pyle counted fifteen men in the entourage behind them. “How’d you get the cavalry together so fast?”

  “Costello’s been locking them out,” said Rouge. “They’re pissed off and looking for action. All the local cops wanted in, but one of them had to show up for patrol with Chief Croft.”

  Arnie put his hand on the passenger door. “You wanna get this show on the road?”

  “No, not yet,” said Rouge. “Give Oz a few more minutes to sweat.”

  “And destroy the ransom?”

  “He won’t do that. Too greedy. He might move it, though. I’m counting on that. Wait till he leaves the window. Then we’ll give him another two minutes of lead time.”

  The window curtain closed again, and Arnie watched the second hand of his wristwatch drag itself twice around the dial. “Time.”

  They left the car quickly and took the stairs to the porch two at a time. Rouge tried the knob and found it locked. He pounded on the door. “Open up, Oz. Police!”

  A voice inside the house shouted, “Just a second, kid. I’m pulling on my pants, okay?”

  Apparently this was not okay. Rouge put both hands on the brass knob, forcing it to turn with muscle and a hard twist. The metal gave. The door would not open yet, but now there would only be a bolt to keep them out. The young cop stepped back and kicked the center panel. The door slowly swung inward on its hinge, and Rouge was entering the house, saying, “That lock’s a piece of crap, Oz.”

  When they cleared the foyer, they found the man fully dressed and standing at the foot of a staircase. His mouth hung open as the room quickly filled with large men in dark leather jackets, uniforms and guns. Oz Almo wore a sickly smile. “Hey, guys.” His eyes darted from trooper to village cop, one man to the next, as they fanned out around the room in a living wall between himself and the front door.

  There was soot on the man’s fingertips, and Arnie wasn’t the only one to notice it. Rouge Kendall’s eyes met those of another cop. Phil Chapel nodded, saying, “I counted four chimneys on the roof. We’ll check ’em all.”

  Arnie Pyle stood in the next room, a small den filled with office furniture, hunting trophies, glass display cabinets of guns and metal cabinets of files. He hovered over the credenza until a fax machine spat out his warrant. Now he walked back to the front room and displayed both his paperwork and his shield to Oz Almo. “Just a few questions, sir—while we’re waiting.”

  Oz Almo turned to see two village cops going up the stairs. “Hey, you guys, where are you—” He turned to Arnie Pyle. “What’s going on here?”

  Arnie made himself at home, sitting down to the old rolltop desk that dominated this room. The slots and small drawers were filled with odds and ends, small bits of junk accumulated in catchall fashion. The top drawer contained larger unrelated objects of the same species. The more functional desk would be the one in the den where the file cabinets were. So this antique was his first choice for hastily concealed items. He pulled a heavy ledger from a lower drawer. On the cover were telling traces of ash from Oz Almo’s dirty fingers; this had not been the suspect’s first priority in hidden items. “Mr. Almo, I understand you quit the force right after the little Kendall girl was found dead.”

  Oz whirled around to see a state trooper kneeling by the fireplace and poking an iron up the chimney. Another man squatted beside him, saying, “Light a fire. See if it’s blocked with anything.”

  He shouted at their backs. “What the hell are you guys looking for?”

  Agent Pyle’s voice was calm, even pleasant. “You left the State Police after Susan’s body was found? Is that right, sir?”

  Oz was staring at the ceiling now as cops walked over his head with heavy feet.

  “Sir?” Arnie prompted. “About the Kendall kidnapping?”

  “Yeah, I quit after we found her.” He watched the agent flipping through the pages of the ledger. “What do you—”

  “So that was after you delivered the ransom money?” This produced the desired effect, the fear in the man’s eyes as he turned to Rouge, pleading, “I did that as a favor to your old man. He gave me his word of honor—”

  “Oh, by the way,” said Pyle. “There’s nothing about that ransom in the police reports. And, of course, no mention of you personally delivering it. You convinced Bradly Kendall that you could only find the girl alive if you worked alone. Later, you told him a planted transmitter failed. Is this an accurate account of your conversation with the dead girl’s father?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Damn transmitters—they don’t work half the time. I lost the bastard.” Oz’s eyes were following the search of the closet. “Now what’s going on?”

  “Just tying up a few loose ends.” Arnie found a ledger page he particularly liked, and he smiled at Rouge to let him know that the warrant was now bona fide. A lot of the figures matched with Rouge’s financial data, but these were in Almo’s handwriting. “I understand the search party never got through all the rooms in this place.” Arnie turned to a trooper standing by the door. “Isn’t that right, Donaldson?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the uniformed officer. His partner stood beside him, an older, more experienced cop, but not by many years. “We only got through a few rooms on this floor, sir.”

  Oz seemed to be catching his breath as the sweat trickled down his face. He shifted his weight from leg to leg, all but dancing out the Morse code of a confession. Newspaper was crackling in the fireplace, and he whirled around to watch it burn. “I didn’t want to waste their time. The search party had a lot of ground to cover. Two kids were missing. Time was—”

  Rouge stood beside Officer Donaldson. “Did Oz do anything suspicious? Did he deliberately try to steer you away from the search?”

  Both men were nodding. “He stalled us,” said Donaldson. “Then we caught a radio call and had to leave.”

  “But we came back,” his partner was quick to add. “Same bullshit that time too. And we put that on our log—we never marked this place for a completed search. Finally, one of the dickhead investigators crossed it off the list. He said we wasted valuable time on the second trip. Asked us what we used for brains.”

  Arnie Pyle was holding the ledger open in his hands as he stood up and walked toward Oz Almo. He was not smiling anymore.

  Oz stared at his account book. “You got no right to look at that. I know the law.”

  Arnie Pyle pretended puzzlement as he glanced back at the open desk drawer. “Oh, you didn’t read your warrant, did you, sir? You’re probably thinking about the restrictions on the house-to-house search. Captain Costello figured it would be easier to get signed consent if the cops couldn’t look in underwear drawers and read people’s mail.” Arnie held the ledger up to tantalize the man. “Now with a warrant, I can look in spaces a kid’s body
can’t fit into. This is an unlimited search for evidence of extortion.”

  Oz Almo looked at Rouge. “And you’re part of this? After everything I did for your family, you turn on me like this?”

  Arnie Pyle ran one finger down a column of figures and looked up at Almo. “I know what the out-of-state wire transfers are for. But can you explain these amounts for cash payments? The ones with the letter D after each entry?”

  One of the uniformed officers kneeling at the fireplace was saying, “There’s a good draw in this chimney, Rouge. Nothing up the flue. We’ll check the furnace in the basement.” They were rising, passing through the open doorway to the hall, when a village cop with a very dirty face raced down the stairs. “I got it! I got it!”

  The patrolman opened the soot-caked suitcase, and money spilled over the carpet in a cascade of bound packets and loose bills. “It was stuffed up a chimney. There’s two more bags like this one!” The young officer’s eyes were bright jewels in a raccoon’s mask of ashes. He was excited; he was pumped, jazzed. They all were. And this was not lost on Oz Almo, who stood alone in a sea of adrenaline—the room reeked of it. Some of the men were focused on the money, but other pairs of eyes were turning on Oz, staring at him as fresh meat—the next meal. They were gathering around the suspect now, so close, and Arnie wondered if Oz could hear the muscles flexing beneath the leather jackets.

  Arnie picked up a magnifying glass from the rolltop desk. He knelt down on the carpet beside the suitcase and picked up a loose bill. He took his time comparing it to the sample Rouge had given him, pretending to match the engraving lines. A documents expert would have to do the real examination with a clean unmarked bill, but what were the odds that this was not the ransom? He nodded. “It’s a match.”

  “You’re under arrest.” Rouge nodded to the troopers standing on either side of Oz. They each twisted one of the man’s arms behind his back and manacled his wrists. “The charge is conspiracy to kidnap and murder Susan Kendall.”

  “Ah, Rouge? You forgot the extortion.” Arnie turned to watch the prisoner squirm for a few more seconds. “And I think we can come up with more charges—lots of ’em. Unless of course, the suspect wants to cooperate with the federal government. Mr. Almo? Shall we dance?”