Nothing interesting until William Wallace arrived in Boston from Missouri and joined the church. Wallace had brought in a Pentecostal flavor to the congregation. Some of the members liked it; some didn’t. Rabbitt was an early convert. Subsequently, there had been a substantial shakeup in the membership. Those that remained either embraced the new dogma or at least didn’t find it offensive. The others moved on.
Rabbitt became an enthusiastic Hell and Damnation preacher. From the interviews, he might have had some “undue influence” with some of the younger women in the congregation. Dooley smelled incipient cult and I agreed.
The congregation went through another winnowing at this point. Those who didn’t accept Christ, and Rabbitt, as their personal savior left. Rabbitt was in charge and Wallace his right-hand man.
“Why did Wallace stay homeless?” I asked Dooley as we put this all together.
“I have no idea.” He leaned back and looked over the whiteboard where we were listing all of these events. “It doesn’t make much sense.”
Tim Rabbitt was still connected to the homeless shelter network. He trolled funding parties for new and wealthy cult members. This is where he met Oscar Plante.
At this point, we went back to Sandy. Sandy had been finishing her dissertation when she was my roommate. She finished it shortly after I met David. She moved out west and joined up with a firm in Silicon Valley doing something with electron microscopy and chip inspection—I never got an answer out of her I understood. Apparently, there had been a messy divorce from someone named Robby, or Robo, or Roberto. Sandy used all three names as a synonym for “fucking asshole bastard.” Most of the IPO money went to the divorce. She attended an industrial conference in San Jose to find comfort sex.
Plante performed at the same conference. He saw Sandy (who must have looked more like she had in college) and the rest, as they say, is history. Plante planted Sandy and persuaded her to come to Boston. Subsequently Sandy planted Rabbitt. Rabbitt persuaded her that his cause was just and good. Sandy invested what was left of her meager IPO winnings in the Church of the Living Christ. She may or may not have had breast cancer and Rabbitt may or may not have cured her. I did manage to get Sandy to tell me the name of the diagnosing physician who, upon subsequent investigation, proved not to exist. No one named “Emilio Gonzalez” practiced medicine in a rundown warehouse over in the waterfront district. I smelled fraud. If I ever found him he might just accidentally fall down a flight of stairs on his way to a hearing. Regardless, Sandy had been sent by Rabbitt to the Brigham to see if his “healing” had been successful. After Sandy allowed me to see the records, they showed what I suspected. She had no diagnosable cancer—and had likely never had any such thing.
It’s amazing how stupid people can be when they’re in love.
At some point Sandy put on all the weight. Maybe the disorder was caused by what Rabbitt and Wallace had put her through (not to mention Plante) or maybe it was just another indication of poor Sandy’s disintegration. But it was all in service to Rabbitt’s plan: gather enough followers, enough money, and move south. Sandy thought she had persuaded Rabbitt that Missouri was a good place.
But Wallace didn’t plan to leave.
Wallace began hanging around the Kennedy shelter. This was not in keeping with Rabbitt’s plan. Wallace was converting people but, according to Rabbitt via Sandy, they were the wrong people. They were homeless people who couldn’t pay for their own place to live, much less Rabbitt’s. There were many arguments.
Then, last week Wallace was murdered. The day after that, Plante was murdered. Rabbitt told Sandy to help me (ME?) and then disappeared himself.
If you neglected my connection with everything, Rabbitt was looking more and more like the villain in this story. Even Dooley said so.
Chapter 2.6: Tuesday, October 26
The next day was overcast and rainy. Not a nice warm rain. This was October and the rain was a frigid foretaste of November. I could have flown in anyway—visibility was sufficient—but it would have been miserable flying. Even though the flight bubble kept out the rain, it didn’t keep out the cold and the damp any more than it kept out oxygen. Not to mention the rain on the roof when you take off and the rain on the roof after you land.
I put on my rain coat, sweater and hat—I will never get used to Boston weather—and caught the Mission Hill bus. It made me think of the bus that went by Heath Square—right where Wallace used to sit and sing. The thought of Wallace’s dead corpse brought the day low. Remembering that Wallace, Rabbitt and Plante had spent their spare time following my every move brought it lower. Recalling David’s involvement burned the day into a deep red glare. Only the thought of Peet’s warm coffee near the station drew me to work.
Fortified with powerful stimulants from a cup the size of my head, I entered the BPD headquarters and made my way to my desk. Dooley was already there, reading an examiner’s report.
“A filthy habit,” I said as I took off my coat. “Police porn.”
“Don’t you read NTSB reports?”
“That’s completely different.”
“So you say.” He put the report down. “Hickey wants to talk to us. Something to do with this.” He tapped the report. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re working together. Seeing the medical examiner without you would be rude.”
“Yeah. I meant why does he want to see us? Why not Hoffman and Rush?”
“They’re busy right now preparing for the Sabado interview Thursday.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. I just looked at him.
He looked away. “Well, they told us they expect us to analyze any information and report to them. We’re just holding onto it for a little while. To help. We’re not keeping any secrets.”
I didn’t say anything.
“We’re not keeping them for long, anyway,” Dooley said defensively.
“What does Hickey want to tell us?”
“If I knew that why would we have to go down there?”
Hickey’s office was on Albany Street near Boston City. I half expected we’d have to meet in the morgue and for him to haul out dead bodies in some nasty show and tell. But he was already over here and met us downstairs. He just had pictures.
“Remember I said the wounds on Plante and Wallace were identical?”
“Yes,” said Dooley. I nodded.
“I was right. And I was wrong.” Hickey held up two pictures showing the wounds. There was an angle of entry drawing printed over the picture. “The wound is identical: same instrument. Same accuracy. Same force applied. But the angle of entry is different. Here on Wallace’s body—” Hickey pointed to one picture. “The angle is high. On Plante’s body the angle is lower.”
I looked at the pictures. “What does that mean?”
“It means the perpetrator was standing at different heights at the two murders.” Dooley picked up both pictures.
“Wallace and Plante were both seated when they were killed,” I said. “Could that make the difference?”
Hickey shook his head. “If anything, that would make less of a difference in angle. In men, most of the difference in height derives from the legs. Seated, the two men would be nearly the same height.”
“Okay,” said Dooley. “What’s your opinion?”
“I haven’t got one. If it weren’t for the solid evidence of the wound itself, I’d say that we had two perpetrators: one taller than the other. But both the force applied to the wound and the location of the wound indicates just one.”
“What if the murderer was stooped over? Or kneeling?”
Hickey shrugged. “Maybe. I wouldn’t have thought so—stooping or kneeling would make a difference in the force applied in the strike and change the nature of the wound itself rather than just the angle. But who knows?”
We left Hickey and went back upstairs. We were alone on the elevator. “What does it mean?”
“Beats the hell
out of me. Maybe Rabbitt has one leg shorter than the other and strikes differently depending on where he’s standing.”
“And you thought my ideas were far-fetched.”
“Speculative, Loquess,” Dooley said carefully. “Speculative. As in complete fiction. Far-fetched just means it’s a complete wild-assed guess.”
“Maybe Hoffman and Rush can figure it out. After all, they’re detectives.”
“You hurt me, Loquess. Hurt me deep.”
oOo
“Your fingerprints are all over this case,” said Hoffman in a low, ominous rumble. Rush sat next to him. Dooley had stepped outside to take a call.
It was bad news, bad news, good news. Bad news that Rush and Hoffman were acting like they might really think I was a suspect. Bad news that Dooley wasn’t here to give me moral support. Good news that Hoffman hadn’t said a word until now. It meant they didn’t really know what to make of it.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You’ve got to have an opinion on this?”
“I think God has a sick sense of humor.”
Hoffman raised his eyebrows. “You think this is all coincidence?”
I shook my head. “No. But I don’t know what’s driving it. Maybe they all were part of the famous Where’s Katelin? phenomenon.”
Hoffman shook his head. “Kohl wasn’t listed.”
“She’s the only one.”
“Yeah.” Hoffman stared at me for a long minute. “If I thought you were in this, I’d take you out back and beat you with a tire chain. But you can’t be. Kohl was in California two years ago. Wallace was in Missouri. And there’s no connection between you and Rabbitt except these people.”
“There’s Sabado,” said Rush suddenly.
“He’s got no connection to Rabbitt,” Hoffman said sourly.
“He doesn’t need one,” Rush insisted. “He lived with Loquess. He slept with Kohl.”
“I didn’t say that,” I said hotly.
“Oh, please,” said Rush. “It’s obvious you think so. Sabado has a connection to the two of them. They have a connection to everyone else.”
Hoffman looked at Rush. “You think Sabado killed Wallace and Plante? For what?”
Rush smiled. “I didn’t say he killed anybody. I’m saying he’s at the center of this. Whatever this is.”
“And what do you think this is?”
“I don’t know.” His smile turned cold and nasty as a barracuda. “But I can’t wait to ask him.”
Hoffman chuckled. “Yeah.”
I left the conference room looking for Dooley. He was nowhere to be found. I found a note on my desk saying he was checking out a lead but nothing more than that.
At loose ends, I sat down and tried to think like Hoffman and Rush. Rush could be right. All of this could be centered on David. But Rush was biased. Being a cop, he didn’t want to think about a fellow cop in trouble. At least, not in any legal trouble. I suspected that neither Hoffman nor Rush would ever lose sleep if I suddenly resigned from the department.
I remembered something Sandy had said about the night I met David. Okay, maybe they had slept together. Both had said it hadn’t happened. But Sandy had pursued him and if he got away he’d be the first. Even if it hadn’t happened that night, David and I had been apart for two years. Who knew what had happened between them since? I hadn’t even known Sandy was in town.
Sandy had a carnivorous streak. She’d said back then she’d wanted to own a piece of him. Could someone have been thinking of using Sandy’s impulse to get to David? Of course, once the weight had set in she wouldn’t have been worth much as a femme fatale.
Or would she? I looked down at my own thin frame.
The spirochete wandering of my mind twisted further. To be completely honest, I stood as much chance of being at the center of this as David did. Sure, maybe David slept with Sandy back in college. I certainly slept with David. Sandy was my roommate for better than a year, and that was perhaps a stronger connection to me than an abortive one-night stand with David.
I shook my head. The problem was this case had no structure. You had to have a model of a case, a theory, something to hang the facts on, a solution. She killed her husband because he was sleeping around. He killed his brother over money. The shopkeeper died because it was a robbery gone wrong. Elementary stuff: method, motive and opportunity. Here: two murders by a cult leader who killed his right-hand man and one of his chief donors.
It didn’t make sense.
The phone rang and I answered it. “Loquess.”
“Find Dooley and meet us at Rabbitt’s church.” It was Rush.
“What did you find?”
Rush snarled over the phone. “Tim Rabbitt.”
oOo
I called Dooley. No answer. I left a message to meet me at the church. Then, I ran up the stairs, checked in with dispatch and sailed off the roof at a dead run. It was a short flight at that speed. Fast as I was, I could see down on the street I was racing the WBZ and WFXT camera vans. I barely had enough time to check out with dispatch before I was in my descent and landing in the alley next to the church. I had time to tell the uniforms to set up a perimeter to keep the inevitable press out of the soup. Then, I went inside.
Rabbitt was lying backwards in a pool of blood. It looked as if he had been kneeling, was stabbed and fell backwards with his ankles beneath him. He looked uncomfortable, thin as a knife and worn out. Being on the run hadn’t agreed with him.
Not that Hickey wasn’t there crawling over the body. He beckoned me over.
“Yeah?” I said, squatting next to him.
He used a probe and gently pulled back the torn cloth over Rabbitt’s heart. The wound was small but thick with blood.
“See? Same weapon. Same targeting. Different angle.”
After three murders, I could see it even without Hickey’s contributing expertise. “Rabbitt was kneeling. Could that make a difference?”
“Maybe that’s it.” He returned to his examination.
I walked through the main hall, in the back, through the living quarters. Nothing had been disturbed from the last time I’d been here.
Returning to the front hall, I saw Sandy coming in the door, a uniform on either side.
Hoffman and Rush didn’t see her immediately. I walked quickly over to her.
“Thanks, Officers,” I said. They nodded and went back outside.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed.
“I saw the camera lights,” she said dully, staring at Rabbitt’s body. “Is he dead?”
I glanced back at Rabbitt’s body, twisted and bloody, motionless beyond any possibility of life. “Yes.” Sandy looked stricken. I took her arm. “You had nothing to do with this.”
She looked at me blankly. Smiled. “You were always looking out for me. Funny the way I turned out as soon as you went away.”
I held her shoulders and gently shook her. “You got mixed up in something you didn’t understand. When this is over, I’ll take you home. All the way back to Columbia. It’ll be all right. I promise.”
She nodded.
Behind me, I could feel Hoffman’s presence.
“Miss Kohl was here to see what all the commotion was about,” I said to him.
“Was she now,” Hoffman said.
I stood out of the way and he looked down on the both of us.
“How long have you been here, Miss Kohl?”
“She just got here,” I interrupted. “I saw her enter.”
Hoffman swung towards me. “That’ll be all, Loquess. I’ll get back to you if I need your help.”
He turned back to Sandy and started to lead her away. I grabbed his arm.
“Detective Hoffman,” I said in a low voice. “A word.”
Surprised, he let me pull him away.
“What the hell—”
“Listen, Hoffman.” I glanced back at Sandy. “Leave her alone.”
“The day I let you—”
“She’s the only person
we have left that had any intimate connection to Rabbitt. Everybody else is either out of town or dead. She’s really fragile. If you and Rush pound on her you’re going to break her into little tiny pieces. From then on she’s going to be useless. Leave her alone and we might get something from her. Use your usual ham-fisted approach and we’ll get nothing.”
Hoffman stared at me for a good half minute. “You know, Loquess,” he said slowly. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were thinking like a cop.”
He left me and motioned to one of the uniforms, then turned to Sandy. “I’m sorry you had to see your friend this way. You go home and take care of yourself. Officer,” he paused, glanced at the name tag, “Schmidt here will stay with you and make sure everything is all right. Got that, Schmidt? You stay with her until tomorrow and make her feel safe. We’ll talk then.” Aside, he said to me, “You’re not averse to making sure she stays around, are you?”
I shook my head. Knowing Sandy, I knew what would make her feel safe. I hoped Schmidt wasn’t married.
oOo
Dooley didn’t answer the phone all while I was walking up the street and looking for witnesses. I must have interviewed a dozen people on either side of the church. After three murders it was like we were all reading from the same hymnal: Did you hear anything? Nope. Didn’t hear a thing.
That night I turned on the television in my room and flipped between the Boston stations like a football junky. They had lots of pictures of the church, milling crowds, milling policemen controlling said crowds and long shots of what little of the crime scene they could see through the door. No good pictures of me.
The Herald front page trumpeted the Conclave Ripper, forever tying the Conclave and murder together. The organizers protested. The Herald, as usual, ignored them. There were no good pictures of me. I looked through the Globe as well. I saw a few gray blobs in the background, any one of which, or none, could have been me. Still safely anonymous. So far.
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