All the Dead Fathers

by David J. Walker

  And it did. With the pervert Stieboldt carefully wrapped in plastic in the back of the van, she’d had the time and opportunity to play with the woman’s mind again. She’d very nearly been caught, too, but even then she hadn’t been afraid. She would simply have killed the bitch on the spot if she’d had to. Of course, what a disappointment that would have been! One far greater than Father Stieboldt’s too-hasty death.

  Now, though, she had to drive home, feed the hungry hogs, and be all the way back by tomorrow morning. She had never felt stronger or more energized, and she would give these people no rest. Three priests still to go, and the woman, and time was growing short.

  25.

  At lunch Dugan started talking again about taking a trip somewhere, but Kirsten made it clear that whatever this “here I come” business was about, the issue had to be faced. “Besides,” she said, “I can’t run out on my clients.”

  “Clients?” Dugan shook his head. “Those priests? A bunch of despicable losers who hired you by default and—”

  “Stop, dammit!” She could hardly believe how angry she suddenly was. “Michael’s my uncle. Someone wants to kill him. Don’t you get it?”

  “No, I don’t ‘get it.’ For one thing, you said you’d bodyguard him, and you’ve got Cuffs doing that.”

  “But that can’t go on forever. Michael will never be safe until the killer’s actually caught.”

  “Which is why we have police. Meanwhile, if you’re so worried, send him to Idaho, or Ireland, or some damn place. I’ll give you the money.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. What would he do somewhere else? He wants to stay a priest. Here. That’s why he’s putting up with being almost in jail, for God’s sake, while he appeals to Rome. He wants them to let him act as a priest.”

  “Do you think he should act as a priest? Jesus, a child molester?”

  “He did a terrible thing. But how can you keep saying he molested a child? What he admitted was having sex with a—” She gave up. “Look, I’m going to help him, whatever you or anyone else thinks.”

  “Kirsten, your uncle and those others, they created the problem they have. But you have a problem of your own right now. And you don’t owe them, or your uncle, a goddamn—”

  “You have no idea what I owe Michael.” She should have woken him up in the car last night and told him about Florida. But right now she was too angry. “You just … you just don’t understand.”

  “Maybe I don’t,” he said, “but this business of someone sneaking into your office is serious. You have to—” He stopped, then reached across the table and took her hand. “Look, I didn’t mean to make you mad. You don’t have to do anything. Not for me. I just don’t want something to happen to you.”

  “I know.” She felt her anger fading, as quickly as it came. She withdrew her hand from his. “But nothing’s going to happen. I know how to keep my eyes open, watch my back.” She saw the expression on his face and quickly added, “Don’t say it! I know I didn’t see anyone follow me to Rockford Tuesday. But … maybe that’s because I was wrong. Maybe there wasn’t anyone.” She didn’t believe that for a minute. “Anyway, I’ll be careful, and I’m better off with someone else’s problem—like Michael’s—to worry about. To keep me from obsessing. Nothing bad’s going to happen. Believe me.”

  “I guess I’ll have to,” he said. “And I’ll also have to let you do what you do, because you’re never going to change. But…” He shook his head.

  “Yes?”

  “Just don’t expect me to like Michael … or any of those others.” He waved at the waitress, asking for the check. “I don’t even want to like people like that.”

  He clearly wasn’t looking for a response, and she didn’t give one. Those other priests, did she want to like them? She knew almost nothing about any of them. Only that they were priests who she had to assume had abused children … or minors, anyway. It was easy to despise them all. Of course, none of them had hurt her like Michael had. He should have told her what he’d done, right from the start, down in Florida. She could have absorbed it and then could have decided whether she still wanted to be his friend.

  But he’d kept it from her. And now, though she wanted to love him like she had before, she couldn’t. He’d been her hero, her friend, almost like a father. And now there was a gulf between them that couldn’t be crossed. She wished she could cross it. She wanted her uncle back.

  * * *

  They went to Dugan’s suite, and he gave her an empty office to work in temporarily because a crew from Renfroe Laboratories was already on its way to her own office. They’d check for signs of someone picking the lock, and they’d install a new one. They’d retrieve and examine her wayward magazine, and dust and comb and scrape the place for fingerprints, fibers, shoe residue … anything and everything. Renfroe even had some sort of new “sniffer” that might identify the scent. But she doubted he’d get anything more helpful than he’d get from the postcard she brought him earlier that day. Which, she was certain, would be nothing.

  She would do everything possible to protect herself, short of running. But still, she wouldn’t let her own concern distract her from Michael’s problem. She dug into the folder with the information he’d given her about the priests. It consisted mostly of his own handwritten notes. One sheet held the same two alphabetical lists he’d put on the chalkboard in his room at Villa St. George:

  VSG

  OUT

  Robert Carrera

  John Ettinger

  Anthony Ernest

  Stanley Immel

  George Henshaw

  Thomas Kanowski

  Michael Nolan

  Warren Klick

  Brian Rooney

  Gerard Montello

  Charles Smythe

  Charles Murgeson

  Carl Stieboldt

  Emmett Regan

  Aloysius Truczik

  Kenneth Rembert

  Robert Wren

  Curtis Wyeth

  She paused a moment, then drew a line through Carl Stieboldt’s name, too. The only question was when and where his body would surface.

  The Tribune article Michael had given her, the one that included Emmett Regan’s picture, reported that Regan had been accused of unspecified “sexual abuse” involving at least ten teenagers, all boys. That was all Michael’s notes said about him, too. Regarding Stieboldt, the notes said he had been accused of exposing himself to a twelve-year-old altar boy during a picnic. Stieboldt claimed he was merely changing into swimming trunks, and hadn’t known the boy was nearby.

  Kirsten thought a few minutes, then made a list of the victims:

  #1 — OUT — I-90 rest stop — shot dead, then stripped & slashed

  #2 — OUT — Minn cottage — tied up, then stripped & slashed

  #3 — OUT — Chgo apartment — slashed (tied up? stripped?)

  #4 — VSG — Waukegan hospital —?

  Clearly, the killer was choosing to do his work away from Villa St. George. Stieboldt might not have been in the number four position if he hadn’t been away from the retreat house. Since Regan was murdered Monday night or early Tuesday morning, the killer might have been following him when he visited Stieboldt at the hospital on Monday afternoon.

  Still, grabbing a patient from a hospital, even during the evening when there were probably more visitors and fewer staff, was a greater risk than the killer had taken up until then. The previous three locations—a highway rest stop in the middle of the night, a cottage on a Minnesota lake in autumn, a second-floor apartment with an unoccupied first floor—all of those were isolated scenes.

  She assumed the killer meant to search out the priests on the list and kill them all if he could. And though she didn’t know yet where they all lived, for now she also assumed that at least some of the remaining five OUT targets were more easily available than a hospital patient. So what was it about Stieboldt? Why make him next in line?

  There was also the matter of timing. The second murder
was a week or so after the first, although the body wasn’t discovered right away. Then Emmett Regan was killed late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. So, about a week between each one.

  Then Stieboldt was taken on Wednesday evening, less than forty-eight hours after Regan. This rush to the fourth victim could be explained by a concern that he might not be in the hospital, away from Villa St. George, very long. Okay, but then why wait until Wednesday evening? Why not Tuesday? Did the killer need the extra day to plan his strategy? Or was he occupied elsewhere?

  There were so many questions. But the most intriguing item was the woman who claimed to be “from the insurance company.” Howard Arnett, the hospital’s in-house counsel, had left word on Kirsten’s voice mail that his search hadn’t found Stieboldt, alive or dead, on hospital premises, and that the insurance claims people said they hadn’t sent anyone to the hospital about Stieboldt.

  So who was the woman? And why did she lie? Maybe she was a “chaser” searching out personal injury clients for a lawyer; or a thief, rifling through patients’ rooms; or an addict, looking for narcotics. On the other hand, maybe she was an accomplice—unlikely for a serial killer, even if this one didn’t fit Kirsten’s understanding of the profile in lots of ways. Or she herself could be the killer—which seemed even more unlikely. Female serial killers were so rare as to be nearly off the chart of possibilities.

  But the woman was certainly—

  “Hey, hey!” Larry Candle burst into the office, and if he noticed Kirsten looking around for an escape route, he didn’t mention it. “How ya doin’, beautifolio?” She shuddered at yet another of his nicknames. “You catch that peeler yet?”

  “Peeler?”

  “Hey, I understand.” Larry sat down in the chair across from her. “You gotta keep your business under wraps, kid. But I know you’re after the guy who peels the skin off priests. ’Cause Danny Wardell told me you talked to him.”

  “Uh … Larry, I’m a little busy here and—”

  “I mean, I called to remind him you wanted to, and he said you already did.” A satisfied grin spread across Larry’s pudgy face. “See? You need a little help, you just call on me. ‘Larry Candle, the lawyer for the little guy.’” Kirsten recognized the slogan—catchy, if not very sophisticated—that Larry used to run in his ads. “… pretty scared, huh?” Larry was saying. His expression was grim now, which was unusual for him.

  “What?” she said. “Why would I be scared?”

  “I didn’t say you, I said your uncle Michael, and the others, y’know? They gotta be peein’—I mean … petrified. You got Kanooski, Immel, Regan … and now Seebald.”

  “It’s Kanowski. And Stieboldt,” she said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. “Anyway, how do you know about—”

  “It’s been on the news. He disappeared from the hospital last night.”

  “Yes?” She could tell there was more coming.

  “I like to stay on top of things, y’know? And there’s this guy I know, works for the Waukegan cops. A civilian, y’know, but keeps his eyes and ears open. He told me what they found, and how they made the ID from the fingerprints.”

  “What … a body? They found a body?”

  “Not really,” he said. “Just a few of his fingers.”

  26.

  Kirsten chased Larry away and got on the phone to the Winnebago County Sheriff’s office. She waited a long time, but Sergeant Danny Wardell finally came on the line.

  “You heard about the missing fourth priest, Carl Stieboldt?” she asked.

  “I did. You got anything for me on Kanowski?”

  “I went up to those porn stores after I talked to you. Nothing new. Then I went to Bunko’s.” She paused, then asked, “Anyone report an incident at Bunko’s that night?”

  “What incident?”

  “Right,” she said. “Anyway, the bartender told me almost everyone in the place the night in question was a familiar face—including Kanowski. The only strangers there when Kanowski was there were some college-age kids and a woman who stopped for coffee.”

  “I didn’t hear about any woman. Told me no one paid any attention to Kanowski.”

  “This woman didn’t, either. Drank her coffee and left.”

  “Stopped at a shithole like Bunko’s for coffee?”

  “It happens, according to the bartender. Someone’s driving at night, gets drowsy, and stops at the next sign of life. Sign doesn’t say ‘shithole.’ Anyway, she was headed north, to Madison.”

  “And he knows that because…”

  “She told him,” Kirsten said.

  “Why would she tell him?”

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “Is that it?” he asked.

  “That’s all on Kanowski. I’ve been checking out Stieboldt, though.”

  “Already? How—” He was obviously surprised. “Anyway, what?”

  “Are you getting paper on all these killings? I mean, because they’re related?”

  “They’re possibly related. But yeah, and you know I can’t share that with you. What you got on Stieboldt?”

  “How about just the medicals? Off the record?”

  “I’ll think about it. What you got?”

  “First, a nurse’s aide, or an L.P.N. or something, named Clara Johns, says there was a woman near Stieboldt’s room looking for him not long before he disappeared.”

  “What woman?”

  “Told the aide she was from his insurance company. I talked to the hospital lawyer, Howard Arnett. He asked the insurance company and they didn’t send anyone.”

  “Jesus. A woman?”

  “Yeah. Then I found an R.N. named Irene Delgado who IDs Emmett Regan as— You know, Regan?”

  “I know, I know. Go on.”

  “Delgado IDs Regan from a photo as having visited Stieboldt in the hospital on Monday afternoon. The two of them were … friends, I guess. That’s the afternoon before Regan was—”

  “I know that, too.” Wardell’s impatience didn’t surprise her. “What else you got?”

  “What the hell?” she said. “Isn’t that a lot?”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “How about those medicals?”

  “You come up with anything else, let me know.”

  “Absolutely. I could even drive out there to pick them up. See your smiling—” She stopped. Smiling? “I just thought of something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s stupid, but…”

  “Lemme have it.”

  “Well, the bartender at Bunko’s couldn’t give much of a description of the coffee drinker. But he remembered that she smiled a lot.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And Clara Johns, the aide, couldn’t describe the woman she talked to very well, either. Just that she smiled a lot. I mean, could it be—”

  “Not likely. Is that it?”

  “Those medicals?”

  “I said I’d think about it.”

  * * *

  Kirsten planned to stop at Mollie’s desk on her way out. It never hurt to keep Mollie happy. She ran Dugan’s office, after all, even if Dugan sometimes lapsed into thinking he did. Mollie was efficient and gruff, and forever busy. But like everyone else, she liked to be noticed, stroked a bit. Plus she was a nice person when you got to—

  “Kirsten?” Mollie was already coming her way. “There’s a fax for you.”

  Kirsten used Dugan’s office fax number because there was someone watching his machine all day. The fax was from Leroy Renfroe, with an inventory of what they’d found at her office. Nothing.

  * * *

  At four-thirty Kirsten picked up her car and headed for the northwest side, around Belmont and Kedzie, where Emmett Regan had lived. By now the cops would have finished canvassing the block, and she’d give it a try herself. She told herself that surely someone heard or saw something.

  Yeah, right. Still, it’s what investigators do.

  As she drove she tried all the news stations she could find, b
ut there was no hard information about how Regan was killed, only that he was the victim of a “brutal attack.” The media finally had the three murders linked together, though. And the new “breaking story” was the discovery of severed fingers from yet a fourth child-molester priest, in a plastic bag left in a mailbox near Queen of Mercy Medical Center in Waukegan.

  She found Regan’s street in a neighborhood of older bungalows, an area that had definitely seen better days. Gentrification was on the horizon, with skyrocketing home values, and few of the present residents would be able to pay the increased property taxes. The rich get rich, and the poor move over.

  She found a place to park and walked to Regan’s block. Right away she saw the cops. Three detectives in sport coats and ties—two white males, one black—spread out and going door to door. No one she recognized. Had it been that long since she left the department? She waited at the corner, figuring she’d spot a fourth detective any minute. She was right. He came out of the house three down from the corner, on her side. And she recognized this one.

  “Yo, Barlow!” she called, hurrying his way. She’d worked with Harry Barlow, just briefly, when they were both assigned to Area Three. “Remember me?” She knew he would, if only from that afternoon he had held her feet and lowered her headfirst down into a deep, narrow construction ditch and pulled her out again … she bringing a screaming three-year-old up with her.

  He turned. “Hey, Kirsten.” He grinned. Barlow was good people, and good police. Everyone agreed he looked like Bill Cosby, only homelier.

  They exchanged how-are-yous and lied a little about how things would never be as good as they used to be. “So,” she said, spreading her arms to indicate the ongoing canvass, “still right on top of things, huh? This is Thursday. Didn’t this Father Regan buy it two days ago?”