by Harker Moore
It had been unavoidable. Agnes Tuminello, who worked seven days a week at the rectory, had come onto the crime scene unexpectedly. She had seen lights on and the police cars outside the church, when she arrived at five to start her day. She had gone immediately over to St. Sebastian, gaining entrance through a little-used door the police had failed to seal.
She had seen Lucia Mancuso hanging above the crèche. The girl’s body moving ever so slightly, trapped in that falsely beatific pose by the tension of twin monofilament threads. The white wings spread wide but dead in the air.
“Mrs. Tuminello, can you think of anyone who might have done this?” Rozelli asked.
She shook her head violently.
Rozelli reached over and patted the woman’s hand. He gave her another moment. “Mrs. Tuminello, we think it was Lucia the killer was after, and that Father Kellog was murdered because he surprised the man.”
She looked up, interest in her eyes.
“But we still have to explore every possibility,” Johnson said.
Mrs. Tuminello waited.
“Is it possible that someone might have wanted to kill Father Kellog?” Johnson asked.
“No.” The word almost strangled her.
“I know how you feel, but this person has killed before, Mrs. Tuminello.” Johnson said her next words carefully. “But until last night, his victims had all been men … homosexual men.”
There was a sharp intake of breath and Mrs. Tuminello’s eyes went wide, her face growing red as the implication about Father Kellog registered.
“Get out! Get out of my house.”
“Mama, please.” Connie Venza bent and placed her arms around her mother. “I told you I didn’t want her upset.” She looked over her shoulder at the two detectives. “Please wait in the hall.”
In a few minutes Connie Venza appeared. Her face seemed older in the yellow light of the hallway. “A few days ago Mama gave me something. I didn’t know what to do with it. Until now.” She reached into a manila envelope. “Here, I want you to have this.”
Rozelli and Johnson stared at the eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph.
“Mama took that picture from Father Graff’s darkroom.”
Outside the cutting room Sakura glanced at his watch. There were fifteen minutes before this afternoon’s autopsies were scheduled to begin. Linsky always arrived on time and liked to get to work immediately. The bodies would be ready for him, transferred from the storage lockers by an attendant and whoever on the staff was assisting with the procedures. Sakura went in, pushing through black aproned doors.
The remains of Lucia Mancuso and Father Andrew Kellog occupied two tables in the center of the green-tiled space, the priest’s ruined skull looking even more ghastly in the cold overhead light. Lucia’s injuries were also more apparent, and except for the marked lividity in the lower limbs, and the indentations made by the monofilament, her wounds appeared identical to the first five victims. Sakura was as certain as Darius that a single mind had conceived these murders. But what kind of sick fantasy could include both homosexual men and an eight-year-old schoolgirl?
Rigor had long passed, and Lucia Mancuso, more than any of the dead he had seen, really did appear to be sleeping. She was a very pretty child, and unbidden came the image of her winged body hanging above the crèche. It had taken an enormous amount of planning and athleticism to suspend her from the support beam in that church. It seemed more certain now that the ritual element of these deaths was posing, a statement that the killer felt compelled to make for himself.
Was that what he was doing here? Making a statement as well? He felt shame at the death of this child. If there were any true victims in this world, then surely they were children.
Had he not once been vulnerable, his life and happiness at the mercy of what he believed his father’s whims? Certainly, the upstate New York boarding school, with its lonely prospect, had seemed to be the nadir of his journey when he arrived. But he had done well there, arriving to a fall and winter as cold as the ones he had known in Hokkaido. He had made friends. Excelled academically. Gained a measure of control.
His visits home were few, thanks to the face-saving distance. His father called regularly. Elizabeth wrote. He learned to bear his Christmases in California and was rewarded with summer vacations in Japan, where for that short span of time he was once again Akira. Even without his grandmother, these summers were his touchstone, an assurance that in a successful adjustment to America he would not lose himself. He had become content, with only the cloud of his father’s expectations of what course he should pursue in college. But that, too, resolved itself.
In his senior year a girl from the nearby town had been brutally murdered. Two students, fellow seniors, were accused and arrested. The boys were not his friends. In fact, he disliked them both, superficially socialized, corrupted by the money of their parents. He could easily imagine them guilty.
Like everyone else in the school, he’d been gripped by the sheer proximity to tragedy—an attraction like gravity, bending objects in space with the mere force of its mass. He was fascinated with the procedures of police work, with the detectives who came to interview them all. The Tao was a web as well as a road, and this death had placed him in the path of his fate. Circumstances made his involvement in the investigation inevitable. His role in the crime’s solution set the course of his life. Despite his father’s predictable disappointment, and Susan’s obvious satisfaction with his choice of career, he had never considered after that time that he would become anything else but a detective with the police.
He stared at the girl on the table. Oblivious, Lucia Mancuso slept on, her lively hair and lashes dark against the marble of her cheeks. As he looked at her now, her father’s face in all its pain came back to him, and he considered what the man had said today about his sister’s husband, Tony Paladino, the man who had taken the Halloween photographs. He had real doubts that there would be anything more to Mr. Mancuso’s suspicions than the bad blood that apparently existed between the two men. Still, they would have to take a look at him. And at someone else who interested him more.
An eight-year-old female victim had hit like an ace dealt from the bottom of the pack. But what if what the bartender at Marlowe’s had told him was true, about the comic who’d gotten arrested for exposing himself in the park—the star who’d blown a series in which Geoffrey Westlake had had a featured part? As soon as the autopsies were finished, he’d head back to the office. A call to Hanae to explain why he’d not be home tonight, and then he’d put somebody on tracking down Byron Shelton—the one person who’d surfaced in the investigation with a link to at least one gay victim and a proven predilection for little girls.
CHAPTER
14
It was the meeting from hell, Sakura concluded, as he walked down the hall to the relative peace and security of his own office. Yet if he were Lincoln McCauley, he would have been spitting fire too. His own emotional state was marginal.
What the fuck’s wrong with you, Sakura? McCauley had bellowed. Your Japanese stoicism is wearing thin.
He hadn’t gotten even mildly angry at the racial slur but had focused instead on the chief’s use of the word stoicism. McCauley’s vocabulary was usually less expansive.
His self-control had to do with preempting McCauley’s interference. At this juncture containing the chief of detectives meant keeping the three suspects, especially Thomas Graff, under wraps, until the investigation turned up something solid. On a deeper level his apparent passivity was an attempt at Zen posture—to live precisely in the moment. To block a thousand future moments from rushing backward into the present. When you wash the dishes, think only of washing the dishes.
The Post headline had intruded: NO ONE SAFE! GAYS TO LITTLE GIRLS! McCauley had thrown the newspaper at him, complete with lurid cover. Find the fucking leak, he’d shouted, his face ballooning above the starched collar of his shirt. And haul this bitch’s ass in for questioning. For all
we know, she might be in contact with the killer. It wouldn’t be the first goddamn time.
The bitch was Zoe Kahn, the reporter whose byline hung with the Post exclusive, and a couple of other stories that suggested Ms. Kahn was on the receiving end of a very accurate pipeline. For an instant he entertained the thought that her source for this latest story might be Dominick Mancuso. He had shown the man a picture of his daughter, a photograph that closely matched the drawing on the cover of the newspaper. Had told him about the wings on the other bodies. Had Kahn gotten to Mancuso? He hoped not, but she was capable of anything.
Whoever had fed Kahn information had seen crime scene photos, or had been inside St. Sebastian Church that night. And this person knew about the wings. How else to connect Lucia to the other victims? He opened the door to his office, avoiding the light switch, walking over to the hot plate. He needed a cup of tea. Some downtime to think. He felt sure Mancuso wasn’t Kahn’s source. The leak was closer to home.
Coming to attention, Detective Walter Talbot did everything but salute as Sakura, with a thin folder tucked under his arm, walked into the interrogation room, authoritative and neat in his dark suit and tie. As with most interrogations this one was pure theater, misdirection away from the fact that any suspect not actually under arrest could simply get up and walk.
This morning’s improvisation had been hurriedly scripted. The relationship in the city between the Department and the Catholic Church had evolved from a time when the hierarchies of both had been packed with Irish. Although that had changed in the last few decades, the rituals of reciprocal back-scratching remained. This initial session, Sakura knew, might be their only chance to shake Father Thomas Graff before the higher-ups on both sides got involved.
He remained standing as Talbot closed the door. “Lieutenant Sakura”—he identified himself to the priest—“I’m in charge of this case. I’d like to go over a few things in your original statement.”
Graff had been picked up very early this morning at the rectory, then made to wait in this room with a grim-faced Walter Talbot, who’d declined to explain why it was necessary to retape the formal statement that Graff had provided on the night of the murder. The priest was studying him carefully, apparently undecided whether complaint or cooperation was the quicker way to end this.
“Is there some problem, Lieutenant?” he asked finally.
Sakura smiled reassurance. His words left doubt. “I hope not.”
The priest settled stiffly in the standard-issue chair. “What do you want to know?” he said.
“What made you go to the church Saturday night?”
It was old ground. Graff rolled his eyes to emphasize this. But he answered. “I noticed Father Kellog’s door was open.”
“Was that unusual?” Sakura asked.
“Yes. The rectory is a barn. Father always closed his door to keep the heat in.”
Sakura nodded. “What happened exactly?”
“I was curious.” The priest shrugged. “When I looked in, I realized that Father’s bed was empty. That’s when I saw through the window that a light was on in the church. I thought it was odd.”
“So you went to check?” Sakura prodded.
“Not right away. But when I started to take my coat off, I realized how cold it was. Father Kellog would not have gone out unless it was an emergency.”
It had certainly been cold that night. Sakura remembered the iciness of the air that had greeted his leaving his apartment after the call, remembered thinking that it would snow before Christmas. Graff was remembering too. His eyes beat rapidly beneath lowered lids, as if the progression of events in his mind had moved beyond simple recall. He opened his eyes as Sakura watched, cutting the process short.
“I understand you knew Lucia Mancuso?” Sakura said now.
“I know her family.” Graff’s face registered sorrow. “It was such a shock that night. I don’t know what was worse, seeing her hanging up there, or Father—”
“What is the Church’s position on homosexuality?” Sakura cut in, fast-forwarding the script.
There was a moment of confusion when Graff’s face closed in. His lips twisted. “Holy Mother Church says it’s okay to be born gay, as long as you don’t do anything about it.”
Sakura sat down on the edge of the table, inches from Graff’s chair. “I would think it would be very difficult for a person to be denied the expression of his sexuality.” He watched the wariness in the priest’s eyes give way to calculation, a thousand sums and decisions on how, and how not, to react. In the end he said nothing.
The manila folder had remained beneath Sakura’s arm. He set it down now on the table, opening it. In the room’s dreariness, in the harsh light, the shiny black-and-white photograph seemed garish, the glistening male flesh doubly obscene.
Rage blanked out every other emotion on Graff’s face. “Stop that thing.” He glared toward the camera, at the technician.
Sakura ignored the demand. “We did not search your rooms.” He cut off further objection. “You could say that this particular photograph fell into our hands. We only got a warrant this morning.”
Graff swallowed visibly, holding the anger in. He spoke again, calmly, almost with contempt. “I want to make a call.” An almost Buddhist imperturbability had taken over his face. What Sakura did not see was guilt.
Sakura did not watch much television, had never seen the man who was now sitting across from him in the interrogation room. But apparently there had been a time, before his fall from grace, when Byron Shelton’s rubber face and trademark shock of red hair had been familiar to anyone who watched the late-night talk shows.
At the far end of the table sat Walter Talbot. Shelton, smoking, slouched in his metal chair. A fair interpretation of a man with nothing to hide.
“So you just look,” Sakura responded to Shelton’s last statement.
The comic-turned-actor gave him a slow smile, a performance that was at least in part for the camera he’d agreed could record the interview. “That’s what I said … I just look.”
“At prepubescent girls?”
“Yeah. My analyst says I’m attracted to their ‘apparent sexual neutrality.’ At least he used to say it when I was shelling out the hundred and fifty an hour.” Shelton’s laugh was unpleasant. “I just like the idea of invisible cunt. I don’t touch them or anything.”
“That’s not what your girlfriend said at your hearing,” Talbot spoke up.
“That bitch.” Shelton cocked his head slightly in Talbot’s direction, crushed out his cigarette viciously in the ashtray that was filling up. “Sheila was pissed because I dumped her. I never laid a hand on that brat of hers. Just once or twice I got her to undress for ‘Uncle Byron.’”
“Ms. Davis insisted it was more than that,” Sakura said.
“Ms. Davis is a liar.” Shelton looked at him. “The charges she filed got dropped.” He shrugged. “The network still canceled us.”
“I thought the show was canceled because of your arrest on the park incident,” Sakura said.
“The little girls? Oh, that all came later. I guess I went a little crazy.” The smirk turned on itself.
“The television series”—Sakura went back to it—“… Geoffrey Westlake was in it?”
Shelton’s eyes lit up. “Westlake … that’s what this is about? You think … Christ!” He was looking down now, shaking his head. He seemed genuinely amused. “I saw the papers this morning,” he said, “before your guys hauled me in. That little girl …” He lifted his face to Sakura. “You’re adding two and two and getting five.”
“Geoffrey Westlake was in your series?” Sakura returned to his question.
Shelton sighed, shrugging again. “Lenny, the next-door neighbor,” he said. “Kid was pretty good.”
“You kept in touch with Mr. Westlake?”
“You kidding? I’m a pariah in this town. Nobody from the show would even talk to me.”
“That make you mad?” The questio
n from Talbot.
Shelton snorted. “What do you think? I’m wired a little weird, so I’m stupid?” He looked at Sakura. “What do you expect me to say, Lieutenant? My career’s in the shit can, so I took out Westlake and a bunch of other queers, threw in a priest and the girl for good measure … fuck.” He reached for his cigarettes.
Sakura’s hand was quicker, covering the pack. “I expect you to tell us the truth.”
Shelton drew back, flopped against the chair. “Nobody in this town gives a rat’s ass about the truth.” He spread his hands. “Look, Lieutenant”—the pale eyes oozed charm—“you know and I know that I don’t have to answer your questions. And I’m thinking that I shouldn’t till I have a chance to talk to my lawyer. Okay?”
Sakura nodded and stood. “Give Detective Talbot the name of your attorney. Have him call me first thing tomorrow.” He handed Shelton his card.
“He’s a she. Name’s Linda Kessler.” Shelton took the card and put it in the pocket of his jacket. Smiled and walked out.
Sakura left Talbot and the technician to deal with the recorder, joining Willie and Kelly in the observation room, where they’d been watching through the one-way window.
“What do you think?” Kelly asked him.
“I don’t know, Pat. We don’t have any real evidence that Shelton ever got physical with any of the little girls.”
“No,” Kelly said. “But it looks like he’s capable of violence. Sheila Davis claims she’s got the emergency-room records to show he liked to smack her around. And get this … it wasn’t another woman he left her for.”
“A man?” Willie asked.
“Yeah,” Kelly said, “one of the sitcom’s producers. Seems Shelton could swing either way if there was profit in it. Used to joke that the casting couch wasn’t marked ‘women only.’”