ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel)

by Susan A Fleet

  “Her mother didn’t mention any boyfriends.”

  “No. She said Gloria was the shy type, didn’t date much in high school. Devout Catholic too, went to Mass every Sunday. It’s not obvious in the crime scene photos, but her left arm was deformed and she had only two fingers on that hand. It was a birth defect.”

  Another victim with a physical flaw, a shy girl who didn’t date much.

  “Seems like they didn’t get much from her girlfriends, either.”

  “The lead detective said they claimed they didn’t know her that well. She kept to herself a lot, I guess, didn’t confide in them.”

  “Maybe Gloria had a secret boyfriend and didn’t want to tell them. Or Mom and Pop.”

  “Yeah, well, everything’s hearsay when the victim can’t talk.”

  “Any letters or emails?”

  “She didn’t have a computer. Lots of people didn’t, back then. No letters, either, and no diary. Pretty much a cipher, it seems like.”

  “Any messages on her answering machine?”

  “She didn’t have one. This girl was a real technophobe, like me.” McGuire’s chuckle turned into a hacking cough. “I hate answering machines, and voice mail? Fucking forget it! I like the Caller-ID, though. Let’s you screen out calls you don’t want.”

  “I hear you on that one.” He hesitated, reluctant to ask McGuire for another favor. “The guy I’m looking at attended Georgetown University. Timothy Krauthammer. I’d like to get hold of his college file, but that might be tricky. You know anybody over there?”

  “I’ll check around, tap my contacts. You think he’s your killer?”

  “Let’s just say this is an odd coincidence, and I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “Me neither,” McGuire said. “I’ll get back to you soon as I can.”

  Frank hung up and scratched his jaw. Two things about the Smith case stood out: no forced entry and no evidence of sexual assault. The lead detective’s theory: Gloria was the victim of a random attack by a deranged killer. A naïve young woman had opened her door to the wrong stranger.

  He disagreed. He believed Krauthammer was the killer, but, once again, he had no proof. The priest appeared non-threatening and personable with his boyish good looks and charming smile. He had stuttered as a child, a serious impediment to social interactions.

  The killer had printed SINNER in pink lipstick on each victim’s bathroom mirror. To imply that he was punishing them for their sins? He had inked another message on Patti Cole’s body: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN. A taunt or a cry for help? PUNISH ALL SINNERS on Melody Johnson’s torso, another ambiguous message. Did the killer include himself the universe of sinners?

  Frank did. Every killer was the product of his upbringing, the events of a lifetime, and the people who had shaped him. According to the Wahoo librarian, Tim had no friends as a child, and his relationship with his father was problematic at best. Krauthammer wore a Mickey Mouse watch, a kid’s watch. Strange. He’d stuttered as a child and had been sexually abused. From the FBI courses he’d taken Frank knew that many serial killers had been sexually abused as children, but every victim of sexual abuse didn’t turn into a killer. In fact none of these facts proved that Krauthammer was a killer.

  He needed evidence, a DNA sample. Something. Anything.

  Every day, every hour, every minute counted. The clock was ticking.

  The Tongue Killer was overdue for another one.

  _____

  At nine-thirty he told Marie he had to leave. Lord knows he was pushing it, leaving Monsignor Goretti to watch television alone two nights in a row. He’d better think up a good excuse on the way back to the rectory. He glanced at Marie. To his horror, she was crying, tears running down her pudgy cheeks, smearing her mascara. He glanced down the bar. The barmaid was watching them. When he frowned at her, she turned away and busied herself, drying glasses with a cloth as she removed them from the dishwasher.

  “I’m so pathetic,” Marie said, wiping her eyes with a cocktail napkin.

  Fearing she would make a scene, he took her arm and guided her past the men at the bar, easing her toward the door.

  “Can you drive me home?” she asked, leaning her head against his chest. When he didn’t respond, she tilted her head and smiled at him. “Please?”

  “Okay,” he said, dreading what lay ahead.

  She was staying at a motel so he drove her there, feeling nervous and edgy, fearing what might happen. The Evergreen Motel was five minutes away, a U-shaped two-story building on the same commercial strip as The Cockpit but farther from the airport. Marie’s room was on the first floor around back. She told him to park beside her rental car, a white Ford Focus with Mississippi plates.

  Then, not looking at him, hands clenched in her lap, she said, “Would you like to come in?”

  Not on your life.

  “I don’t believe so. I’m not the sort of man who expects to go to bed with a girl on their first date.”

  She looked at him, eyes glistening in the moonlight.

  “I respect you, Marie. Let’s wait till we know each other better.”

  She gave him a brilliant smile. “That’s the nicest thing any guy ever said to me, Tim.”

  His heart pounded. Please get out of the car. I don’t want to kill you.

  “You don’t know who I am, do you?” she said.

  “No. Should I?”

  “Well, I have to confess, I told you a fib.” Smiling to placate him.

  His stomach clenched in an iron fist. Lying was not acceptable. He gripped the wheel with both hands to stop himself from strangling her.

  “My daddy isn’t dead. He’s live and in living color on TV.”

  “What?” She wasn’t making sense. Too drunk, probably.

  “That old guy on TV last night, begging people to rat me out. I ran away. He wants people to call the cops and tell them where I am.”

  A shiver ran down his spine. Marie was running from the cops. What an insane coincidence. How could this be happening to him now?

  She reached over and touched his arm. He flinched.

  “Don’t be scared. It’s no big deal. I’ve done it before, but this time he can’t stop me, see? Last week I turned eighteen so I don’t have to do what he says anymore. I don’t have to beg him for money anymore either.”

  Money. That got his attention. “Why’s that?”

  “Years ago when my crack-smoking Momma went to jail, her parents set up a trust fund for me so she couldn’t blow all her money on drugs. Most trusts make you wait till you’re twenty-one, but Daddy didn’t want to look after his Cross To Bear any longer than he had to, so they made it eighteen.” She flashed a smile. “Now the money’s mine to do with as I please.”

  His instinct was to get away from her fast. Too needy. Daddy on TV. Cops hunting for her. Don’t kiss her off, said the voice. She might be useful.

  True. He’d visit the library tomorrow and search the newspapers for a story about a runaway girl. Maybe it would say how much money she had.

  “What a brave girl you are, Marie. I wish I could stay, but . . .” He faked a yawn. “I’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn and go to work.”

  Her face registered disappointment.

  “Will you be staying here long?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said listlessly, eyes bright with tears.

  He gave her his thousand-watt smile. “Tell you what, Marie. Let’s get together soon. Have you got a cellphone?” When she nodded he said, “Give me the number so I can call you tomorrow and work out the details.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Wednesday

  First thing when he got to work Frank ran another check on the Sampson girl’s credit cards and hit pay dirt. Little Girl Lost had used her Visa card Monday afternoon at Doc’s Econo-Car Rental on Airline Drive.

  Pumped up, he left the station and drove there. The owner, an unpleasant man with smoker’s breath and yellow teeth, said Lisa wanted to pay cash, but he didn’t ta
ke cash from girls with out-of-state licenses. Frank studied the signature on the rental contract: lots of curlicues and a childish circle to dot the “I” in Lisa. The handwriting of an immature girl.

  “I ran the charge on her Visa right away,” Yellow Teeth said, adding defensively, “you wouldn’t believe the damage these kids do to my cars.”

  Frank spent the day on Airline Drive, a long commercial strip lined with funky dives, cheap restaurants and tawdry motels, including the infamous London Lodge, a room-by-the-hour, no-tell motel where televangelist Jimmy Swaggart had been caught frolicking with prostitutes back in the ‘80s.

  At four-thirty he parked beside a beat-up Volkswagen Bug outside The Cockpit, number eleven on his list of drinking establishments, and stifled a yawn. He’d been going nonstop all day, his adrenaline high long gone. The cop shows on TV made police work look exciting. Wrong. Try ninety-eight percent tedium, two percent gut-wrenching fear. But if Captain Dupree wanted him to devote his entire day to the Lisa Samson case, he wasn’t going to complain. It beat desk duty.

  The Cockpit interior was cool at least, a shadowy rectangular room lit mostly by neon beer signs and smelling of stale beer. A twenty-foot bar with a dozen barstools ran along the wall opposite the door. Bar-height tables occupied the remaining space, all of them vacant. Two men at the bar nursed beers in plastic cups, their eyes fixed on the television screen above the bar.

  He slid onto a stool and the barmaid approached him. She had on a yellow shirt with THE COCKPIT stenciled on the front, her name below it in smaller letters: Yvonne. She brushed strands of dark hair away from her face.

  “Hi, what can I get you?”

  “Information, I hope.” He flashed his ID and saw apprehension invade her dark brown eyes. She looked to be in her forties, plenty old enough to be leery of cops. He set Lisa Sampson’s photograph on the bar. “I’m looking for this woman. Have you seen her?”

  Yvonne studied the snapshot. Frowned. Gnawed her lip.

  “Is she in trouble?”

  His heart sped up. The barmaid had seen her, no doubt in his mind. “No, but I need to talk to her. Has she been in here?”

  “Uh, I think so. Maybe. Last night, I think, and the night before.”

  Last night. His heart broke into a gallop. He was closing in on Lisa.

  “She’s that girl that’s missing, right?” Yvonne said.

  “What makes you think so?”

  A flash of annoyance lit up her dark eyes. “I don’t want to get mixed up in something that’s got nothing to do with me. I need this job.”

  “Relax, Yvonne. You won’t get in trouble. Her father’s worried about her. It would help if we knew she was in here. And when.”

  “The last two nights for sure.” She bit her lip, frowning. “Maybe one time before that. It gets busy, you know, and I’m by myself.”

  “Do you have security cameras?”

  “Yes.” She made a discreet gesture at the entrance, and he nodded. He’d spotted the cameras mounted in both corners of the ceiling.

  “One covers the door,” she explained. “The other one covers the bar and the customers.”

  And the register with the money. “That’s it? Two cameras?”

  “Uh, in the bathrooms, too. We don’t want no drug deals in here.”

  “Someone monitors the videos?” He doubted it, but he had to ask.

  “No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “We don’t watch them. We just keep them in case, you know, the police come in saying a drug deal might—”

  “How long do you save the tapes?”

  She tilted her head back and forth. “Depends. On slow-speed the tapes are good for six hours, but sometimes I forget to change them and . . .” Recognizing his annoyance, she said, “A week tops, and we tape over them.”

  “Can I see the tapes for the last two nights?”

  “Okay.” She motioned him to follow, leading him past the bar to an alcove beyond the restrooms, saying, “She might have been here before. Before I recognized her, I mean. I noticed her because she was young and it looked like she was trying to pick up a guy.” Yvonne stopped at a door and gave him an earnest look. “Not like she was a hooker. I’d have thrown her ass out of here right away if I thought that.”

  “She looked needy?” he said as Yvonne unlocked the door.

  “Yes, that’s it. Needy. Needy and sad.”

  She opened the door and let him into a storeroom, eight feet square, no windows, cartons stacked against the walls with various brands of liquors and liqueurs: Jack Daniels, Cutty Sark, Crème de Menthe. In the cramped space Yvonne’s lavender perfume was intense. On a shelf above a computer desk were videotapes with dates and labels on the spines: BAR, DOOR, RRF, or RRM. He assumed the last two were the restrooms.

  Yvonne took down two tapes labeled BAR. “These are the recent ones. I don’t remember when she first came in. I didn’t pay that much attention to her until she came in the second night and sat with the guy.”

  “A guy?” His antenna went up. “Could you describe him?”

  “He didn’t cause no trouble, a young white guy, nothing special about him.” She smiled. “He ordered a Virgin Mary, but later they switched to Bloody Marys.”

  “Great. I’ll need to take these.” He reached for the videos. When she frowned, he dug a five out of his wallet and gave it to her. “Here. Use this to buy some new ones.”

  “Thanks.” Yvonne frowned and gnawed her lip. “You think it’s her?”

  “I’m not sure.” He didn’t want her starting rumors. “If she comes in again, call my cellphone.”

  He gave her his card and went out to his car, energized by the discovery, but before he could drive away his cellphone rang.

  “Hi, Frank, it’s Dana Swenson.”

  “Glad to hear from you, Dana.” Glad? He felt like he’d just hit the lottery: a solid lead on Lisa Sampson and now a telephone call from Dana.

  “How’d you do? Did you win the gold?”

  She laughed. “No, dammit. I missed it by half a point.”

  “Well, at least you got the silver.”

  “Not even that. There’s only a blue ribbon, but I’ll get it next time. You’ve been on my mind since we talked last Saturday.”

  You’ve been on my mind, too, he thought as she said, “I reviewed my notes and decided to fly to New Orleans. My husband and I used to come here before the divorce. I just checked into the Hotel Monteleone.”

  Dana Swenson. Divorced. Here in New Orleans at a hotel this very minute. His pulse accelerated and his mind raced with possibilities.

  “I was hoping we could compare notes over a beer,” she said.

  He loved her low, throaty voice. He wanted her to keep talking so he could listen to it, but another part of his mind was thinking: What’s so urgent that she had to fly to New Orleans? Whatever it was, he wanted to hear about it. Hell, he was thrilled at the mere prospect of seeing her again. He could watch the Cockpit security videos at home later.

  “Where shall I meet you?” he asked.

  “How about Harry’s Bar on Chartres Street?”

  “Great choice,” he said, surprised that she knew it. Harry’s was a local joint where residents of the French Quarter hung out, the perfect place to talk without attracting attention. “I’ll be there by six-thirty.”

  _____

  When he walked into Harry’s she waved, smiling at him, the same sexy lopsided smile that had captivated him in Omaha. Seated on a tall stool at a table by a window, she wore a white sleeveless jersey that contrasted with her arms, tanned and muscular from riding. Today, her long sable-brown hair was pulled into a ponytail, exposing gold studs in her ears, an attractive intelligent woman, a respected psychotherapist who wore a wedding band even though she had no husband. Why was that, he wondered.

  He pulled a stool around the table and sat beside her, telling himself this would facilitate the exchange of sensitive information.

  Bullshit. He wanted to be closer to her.
/>   “I’ve got a helluva nerve,” she said, “expecting you to meet me on short notice. Thanks for being flexible.”

  “I’m good at improvising. I played trumpet in my college jazz band.”

  To his surprise, this elicited a squinty-eyed stare. “You play trumpet?”

  “Yeah. Why? Does that make me a monster?”

  “Not at all. Sorry, Frank.” She touched his arm and flashed a smile that didn’t quite ring true. “My brother was a trumpet player.”

  He got the feeling she didn’t want to talk about her brother. “The service is slow here,” he said. “Let me go to the bar and get us a drink. Want a beer? Wine? A mixed drink?”

  “A beer would be good. Draft is fine.”

  When he returned with two foaming mugs, she set hers on the table untouched. “I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me last Saturday, Frank, but when I re-read my notes it hit me right away.”

  He glanced at the crowded tables nearby. The funky jazz on the sound system would cover their conversation and if it didn’t, the convivial banter and hoots of laughter from patrons relaxing after work would. Still, the sharing of sensitive information gave him an excuse to lean closer, close enough to inhale the cinnamon scent of her perfume. “Tell me about it.”

  “After months of therapy I finally got Tim to talk about his childhood. He said one day after Nanny tortured him—his word, not mine—he found a wire trap in the cellar. His father used it to catch raccoons in the woods around their house. Tim baited the trap, went out and set it up in the woods. When he went back the next day a squirrel was in the trap. He poked it with a stick and the squirrel went crazy, trying to escape.”

  She paused, gazing at him, somber-eyed. “Then Tim went and got the garden shears. And cut off the squirrel’s tail.”

  The hairs rose on his forearms. He rubbed his arms, appalled by the deliberate cruelty. “Animal torture is an early warning sign of—”

  “Of serial killers. I know. I’ve read the criminal psychology books.”