Kiss Of Evil jp-2

by Richard Montanari

  The arresting officer that day was Michael P. Ryan, then a rookie patrolman. And Paris sees the mistake right away. The wrong address is on the search warrant. Michael had typed in 4006 Central Avenue. The room next to Anthony del Blanco’s room. And it was in 4008 that the investigating officers found Anthony’s clothes, covered with his ex-wife’s blood, the evidence needed to prosecute him.

  Also in the safe is a news clipping, a small Cleveland Press article about how Anthony del Blanco was released from prison after spending only ten months in jail on a ten-year stretch, having been sprung on a technicality.

  The body in the parking lot, Paris thinks.

  The mutilated man with the barbwire crown.

  Paris looks again at the bottom of the arrest report. He is not surprised to find that Mike Ryan’s partner that day was Demetrius Salters.

  He flips a page, reads on. Lydia del Blanco had two children: a boy and a girl. There are two photos. One, taken of the crime scene where Lydia del Blanco was beaten, tells one story. The woman is not in the photo, just the huge Rorschach of her blood. There is also a book lying on the kitchen floor, near the refrigerator.

  The Secret Garden.

  The old man’s mantra.

  The other photo is one from happier times, a color-faded photo of the woman and her two children at Euclid Beach. Pretty woman, white-rimmed sunglasses, white dress. Her daughter, sitting on her lap, is maybe six or so; the little boy a toddler.

  Is this little girl Sarah Weiss? Paris thinks.

  And what about the little boy?

  Evil is a breed, Fingers.

  Paris is no linguist, but he knows enough German and Spanish to know that Weiss equals White. And that White equals Blanco.

  Mike Ryan’s murder had nothing to do with a deal gone bad, Paris thinks, his hands trembling slightly with the knowledge. Nothing at all.

  Mike Ryan was executed.

  54

  She stands in the lobby of the Wyndham Hotel, the box under her left arm. She is wearing a short platinum wig, tinted glasses, a Givenchy suit. She looks at her watch for the hundredth time in the past ten minutes, cocks her right foot out of her shoe for a moment, giving her toes a break. Her gray pumps are a half-size too small.

  At three-ten, the young man in the Ace Courier jacket enters the lobby, looks left and right. He sees her-his eyes giving her body a quick twice-over, once he realizes that the silver hair is attached to a shapely young woman-then approaches, smiling, clipboard in hand.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Hello,” she replies.

  “Are you Miss O’Malley?”

  “Yes, I am,” she says. “I’d like to have a package delivered.”

  55

  Five O’clock. Paris checks the White Pages. Zero. He runs a computer check on del Blanco. Nothing. He runs an Internet search for Ohio and gets nothing. Not a single del Blanco in Ohio.

  Shit.

  At five-ten, Paris learns that two agents from the Cleveland field office of the FBI are meeting with all unit commanders. Paris had expected it, although it means he will soon be a back-bencher on this case. There is evidence of serial murder here, plus a lot of forensic material with which the lab at the Justice Center is ill equipped to deal.

  And what to do with what he found in Mike Ryan’s safe? Was Mike Ryan killed for messing up a search warrant? Is this enough to activate the investigation into Mike’s murder? And wouldn’t producing a stolen police report that was in Mike Ryan’s possession just smear his name further?

  On the other hand, how could the fact that Anthony del Blanco once lived in the Reginald Building be coincidence?

  Five-thirty. The photographs of the victims, along with all the other players, and potential players, are in a loose square on the floor in Paris’s office. As are all of the sketches. Furniture has been pushed to the walls. Paris circles the pictures, stalking the clue hidden there.

  A grim spectacle stares up at him. Faces of the dead.

  Sarah Weiss. Burned to death in a car.

  Michael Ryan. Shot in the head.

  Willis Walker. Bludgeoned and castrated.

  Isaac Levertov. Strangled.

  Edith Levertov. Broken neck.

  Fayette Martin. Paris pauses, as he has every time he has looked at her picture, and considers those innocent eyes. Someone had looked deeply into those eyes, seen the life there, and then slaughtered her.

  And then there is Jeremiah Cross.

  If the little girl in that photo is Sarah Weiss, then she is central to this. And if Sarah Weiss ever had an advocate, literally and spiritually, it is Jeremiah Cross.

  Paris asks himself: What do we know about Jeremiah Cross?

  We know that Jeremiah Cross just happened to appear like magic on the Cleveland high-profile defense scene when Mike Ryan was killed. We know that Jeremiah Cross blames the department for his client’s suicide. We know that Jeremiah Cross has a hard-on for Paris every time they see each other. We know that Jeremiah Cross could easily fit the general description of the hot dog vendor. We know that Jeremiah Cross shares a last initial with the man, “Mr. Church,” who had called before Christmas and warned Paris of the ofun.

  Church.

  Cross.

  Religious terms.

  But, if Sarah Weiss changed her name from Blanco, why Cross? Why would he pick that name? What is Cross in German?

  No idea.

  And what about Spanish? What is Cross in Spanish?

  Cruz.

  No, Paris thinks. Don’t even go there.

  He looks once again at the photograph of Lydia del Blanco and her two children. Knowing it’s a long shot, and deciding to keep it to himself for the time being, he picks up the phone, punches Tonya Grimes’s number. Tonya is one of the two investigators on duty.

  “Grimes.”

  “Tonya, Jack Paris.”

  “Hi, handsome. What can I do you out of?”

  “Two things. One, I need a full workup on a Jeremiah Cross, local attorney.” He spells it. “All I have is a PO box in Cleveland Heights.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Sorry.” Paris gives her the box number.

  “No sweat. Don’t need more than that when Tonya is on ya.”

  “That’s why we call.”

  “And you need it… when?”

  “Any time this year,” Paris says, treading lightly.

  Tonya laughs. “Boy are you lucky that law enforcement is my first and only love.”

  “We love you on six, Tonya. You know that.”

  “Doesn’t that sizzle my slippers on New Year’s Eve. What else?”

  “I need you to cross reference a homicide by the victim’s name.”

  “Who’s the vic?”

  “Anthony C. del Blanco.”

  “Got it.”

  “Thanks, Tonya. Call me.”

  “On the case, detective.”

  Paris hangs up, glances back at the mess on the floor.

  All right. Where is the straight line from Mike Ryan to Fayette Martin to Willis Walker to the Levertovs?

  Before the line can begin to be drawn in his mind, Paris hears Greg Ebersole’s heels clicking down the hall. Fast. Greg grabs onto the doorjamb, pokes his head into Paris’s office.

  “We’ve got physical,” Greg says, out of breath.

  “Lay it on me.”

  “Just walked in the front door.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just got a package via courier. Inside was a leather jacket. The delivery kid said he picked it up from a woman in the lobby at the Wyndham. He’s with a sketch artist now.”

  “You think it’s the jacket Fayette and the killer talked about online?”

  “I’m betting on it.”

  “Why?” Paris asks.

  Greg finds his wind, says: “It’s covered in blood.”

  Paris stares at the jacket on the lab table, trying to think of a single reason why it doesn’t look exactly like the jacket Rebecca wor
e when he had seen her at Pallucci’s, the jacket that had felt so sexy in his hands. This jacket is a motorcycle type, studded and multizippered. So was Rebecca’s.

  But there are millions of them, right?

  When Greg had said “covered in blood” he meant, as many cops do, that there was trace evidence, not that it was blood-soaked. There certainly is not a great deal visible to the naked eye, but as Paris watches the lab techs work, he sees that they are retrieving samples from all over the jacket, inside and out.

  At seven-forty P.M., December 31, the break comes. Buddy Quadrino, head of the CPD’s latent print unit, is standing in the doorway to Elliott’s office. Paris and Carla Davis hold down the chairs.

  “Have good news, BQ,” Carla says, wearily. “Please have good news.”

  Buddy holds up a sheaf of paper, grinning broadly. “We’ve got patterns,” he says. “If he’s anywhere in anybody’s database we’ll have him in four or five hours.”

  Paris and Carla high-five, then bolt for the door.

  Captain Randall Elliott picks up his phone, slams a button, and barks a command he’d held inside for the past six days: “Get me the prosecutor’s office.”

  56

  The South Euclid library, the splendid, multilevel stone building that was once the William E. Telling estate on Cleveland’s far-east side, has an archive of back issues of the Plain Dealer, as well as the long-defunct Cleveland Press.

  Mary sits down at one of the microfilm readers, loads the film, her heart accelerating with the whirring of the reels. Days, weeks, months fly by in a blur of light gray. So many stories. She zeroes in on the date. It hadn’t taken her long to find it. What had Jean Luc said that night?

  It takes place a few years ago. I was barely a teenager. If I remember correctly, the Indians beat the Minnesota Twins that day…

  After a little digging, and a little math based on Jean Luc’s age, she finds only three likely dates. The first two produce nothing. She forwards to the day after the third date and feels her skin begin to crawl when she finds the small article in the Metro section.

  CLEVELAND MAN FOUND BEATEN,MUTILATED.

  The dead man’s name was Anthony C. del Blanco.

  She follows the story for the next five weeks, checking every page on which a follow-up story might be run. Nothing. It seems the investigation just evaporated. No arrest, no suspects, no justice for the dead man. Even if the dead man was a pig.

  Jean Luc and his sister had simply gotten away with murder.

  On page B-8 of the current Plain Dealer, she finds another story of interest, one that tugs at her heart. It is accompanied by a photo of Jack Paris standing next to a tall, fair-skinned guy. She reads the caption. The event was a benefit for Max Ebersole, six. A Fraternal Order of Police benefit that raised more than twenty-nine hundred dollars.

  She looks into Paris’s eyes, at his smile, the way his presence just fits so perfectly in this setting, a benefit for someone else. She looks at his big hands, recalling them on her body and how protected she had felt, how good.

  And knows, without question, that it is over.

  57

  The cauldron is full. I can watch the recording again. I put my coat on, cross the living room, hit Play.

  “This was a cold-blooded killing of a police officer in the line of duty,” the man in the old video begins. “I think the evidence will show that the defendant, Sarah Weiss, pulled the trigger… Mike Ryan was a good cop… Mike Ryan was a family man… a man who woke up every day and chose-chose-to strap on a gun and jump into the fray… Mike Ryan died in the line of duty protecting the people of this city… So the next time you find yourself picking through a pile of garbage, or hiding in the bushes like some pervert, or running down the street with a forty-pound video camera just so you can invade the privacy of a heartbroken ten-year-old girl in a wheelchair, I want you to stop, take a deep breath, and ask yourself what the hell it is you do for a living… Mike Ryan took a bullet for the people of this city… Mike Ryan was a hero.”

  This is where the woman reporter asks a question I cannot hear.

  But I hear the man’s response. Loud and clear and full of arrogance. I have heard it every ten minutes, like maddening clockwork, for a very long time. As I listen, my silence momentarily gives way to the sound of a beast, stirring in its nap.

  “Sometimes, the monster is real, people,” the man says. “Sometimes, the monster has a pretty face and a perfectly ordinary name. This time, the monster is called Sarah Weiss.”

  58

  Ronnie’s Famous is fully lighted, empty. Paris had called Ronnie earlier in the day and asked him to put together two dozen doughnuts and coffee for the stakeout team. And damned if there aren’t a pair of bulging white bags on the counter, right next to the register, right next to a tray of large white foam cups and one of Paris’s Thermoses. Even on New Year’s Eve. Paris had said he would be by at nine-thirty, and he is right on time.

  Paris makes a U-turn, parks in front of the shop, grabs his empty Thermos, steps inside, his mind afloat on the increasingly bizarre facts of a case that is starting to look like it began twenty-six years ago when a woman named Lydia del Blanco got beaten nearly to death by her ex-husband, a man who once lived at Fortieth and Central.

  Is this why Fayette Martin was lured to the Reginald Building?

  Is this why Michael Ryan was murdered?

  If God is doling out luck this New Year’s Eve, he will begin to get some of these answers in the next few hours. One way or another.

  Paris looks around Ronnie’s. No customers at the short counter. No one behind the glass. Paris can hear the whine of a vacuum cleaner in the back, the sound of a television.

  “Ronnie?” Paris yells.

  Nothing.

  “Ronnie?”

  Just the mewl of a motor and some kind of sitcom. Paris grabs everything on the counter, drops a twenty, then turns to leave before Ronnie Boudreaux can come out of the back room and object.

  “Happy New Year, Ronnie!” Paris yells, but he is certain the drone of the vacuum has drowned him out.

  As Paris approaches his apartment building he sees two men standing by the front door. Two familiar shapes. Bobby Dietricht and Greg Ebersole. At his apartment.

  A first.

  Something must be going down. Why hadn’t they called?

  Paris parks on East Eighty-fifth Street, grabs his Thermos. “Hey guys,” he says, climbing the steps, letting the surprise register on his face. “What’s up? We have a name?”

  “Hey,” Bobby Dietricht says, reading the surprise, ignoring the question.

  The three men step inside the lobby of Paris’s building as an icy gust wraps around the building. “What’s goin’ on?” Paris asks, checking his watch. He is due at the Westwood stakeout in thirty-five minutes. “We starting a doo-wop group?”

  Greg laughs a little too hard. Although he is on the task force, he is not part of the raid team. Early that evening, amid Greg’s violent protests, Captain Elliott had taken one look at him and ordered him off duty.

  Bobby Dietricht reaches into his overcoat and pulls out a manila envelope. “Full lab reports are in.”

  “What?” Paris says. “Why the hell didn’t someone call me?”

  “This is it, Jack,” Bobby says. “This is the call. I just got the report ten minutes ago.”

  “What’s Elliott’s take?” Paris asks.

  “He hasn’t seen them yet.”

  Wrong answer, Paris thinks. Wrong, wrong answer. Why not? “Talk to me, Bobby.”

  “We’ve got matches. All over the fuckin’ map. Blood, prints.”

  “No shit.”

  “None. Most of the blood is Fayette Martin’s. But there was also trace evidence of Willis Walker’s blood, too.”

  “What about the prints?”

  A look passes between Greg and Bobby. “Yeah. We’ve got a match. And we’ve got it a half-dozen times.”

  “Do we like someone? Please tell me we like someon
e.”

  “Yes and no,” Bobby says. “Mostly no.”

  “What the hell are you saying? We have a hit on the prints or not?”

  Bobby nods.

  “Great,” Paris says, his stomach starting to centrifuge with tiny needles that soon work their way down to his groin, where the real fear lives. And he knows why. “We’ve got the connection.”

  “Not so great,” Greg says, a look of distilled heartbreak on his face.

  “The prints,” Bobby says, cop-stare locked in place, cold and unnerving. Paris had never been on this side of it.

  “What about them?” Paris asks.

  Bobby: “They’re yours.”

  59

  The fifth time she texts Jesse Ray she stops, halfway, defeated, her tears no longer an enemy. No one is going to save her. No one is going to wave a magic wand and keep her out of prison. This had gotten so bad, so fast, that everything she had worked for in the past two years seemed to be slipping away. If she had just been able to get the money into a trust for Bella, to show her father that the little girl’s future was secured, she might have had a life.

  Jean Luc had told her to call no one, to stay inside her apartment until he came for her.

  But she knows that if she can just get to her car, she will find the courage to drive down to the Justice Center, walk inside and start talking before she can stop herself.

  She puts on her navy wool parka. In her right pocket she slips her Buck knife. In her left pocket is her pepper spray.

  Keeping the lights off, she crosses the apartment, tiptoes through the small foyer, sidles up to the door. She checks that the security chain is on, the deadbolt turned. She looks through the peephole: just the fish-eye view of the hall, exactly the way it looks every time she gets paranoid and peers through it. Quiet, empty, monastic. She puts her ear to the door, listens. Nothing. Not even the hum of the elevators. She looks through the peephole again, then takes a step back, turns her deadbolt to the left and silently rotates the knob, opening the door an inch.