ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel)

by Susan A Fleet

  “Can you save him?” Aurora said in a shaky voice.

  Ornstein’s expression revealed nothing. “We’ll do our best. Our first goal is to lower the intracranial pressure and normalize his blood pressure. His skull is fractured, but it’s a linear break, not compound or depressed. He’s on a ventilator, and we’re using drugs to control his blood pressure. The Neuro-ICU nurses will monitor him round the clock.”

  “What are his chances?” Frank asked, struggling for an inner calm that eluded him.

  “It’s too early to say, I’m afraid. We’re most concerned with the brain swelling. We inserted a catheter to drain the fluid, which we hope will lower the intracranial pressure. The next forty-eight hours are crucial. If the bleeding doesn’t stop, we’ll need to operate.” Ornstein swept them with a look. “Someone will need to authorize that. Has his family been contacted?”

  Before Aurora could answer Frank said, “We’ll take care of it.”

  “Good. I’ll be in touch,” Ornstein said, and left the room.

  “Best I could do, spur of the moment,” Frank said to Aurora. With a discreet nod at the elderly woman in the corner, he said, “Let’s take a walk.”

  Halfway down the hall they found a deserted alcove. “It’s okay,” he said to Aurora, “Dana knows. She’s a doctor. A psychiatrist.”

  “I’m helping Frank with a case,” Dana said by way of explanation.

  But Aurora seemed not to hear. Her eyes glistened with tears. “I need to call New Hampshire and talk to Mary Peterson. She’s the mother of his son.”

  The notion startled him. His main concern had been to conceal Sean’s true identity from the medical staff, but Aurora was two steps ahead of him. He had given no thought to Sean’s son, a grown man who’d never met his father, a man who might meet his father on his deathbed.

  “You’re right,” he said. “His son should be here, in case—”

  He didn’t complete the thought, unwilling to upset her. But he could at least reassure her about one thing. “Aurora, I’m not going to tell the feds about Sean. No matter what happens, you can count on that. Go find a private spot and make the call. Want to use my cellphone?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve got my own.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “You’re a good man, Frank Renzi. I’ll call Mary now. If she feels it’s the right thing to do, she can tell Sean’s son.” Aurora locked eyes with him. “That priest did this, Frank. Father Krauthammer.”

  Her words and the angry look in her eyes erased any doubt in his mind about who had sent Sean’s altered sketch to Rona.

  “Come on, Dana. Walk me to my car so Aurora can make her call.”

  _____

  Dana waited until they were seated inside his unmarked police car to say, “Why is everyone so sure Tim attacked Father Daily?”

  “Tim threatened him. I don’t know how, but he found out Sean blew the whistle on him. Last night you said Tim wouldn’t hesitate to harm anyone who got in his way. I stopped at the rectory on my way to work to warn Sean and found him lying on the floor. It’s more complicated than that, but I don’t have time to explain. Tim’s on the run and we think he’s got a hostage.”

  “A hostage!” she gasped.

  “My teen runaway. Everyone’s looking for them, the taskforce, the State cops.” He massaged his throbbing temples, thinking of the man in the Neuro-ICU. “I should be, too, but I had to come here first to see how Sean’s doing. I’m really worried about him.”

  “This is a fine hospital, Frank.”

  “He’s in a coma. That’s serious. I should’ve called him last night.”

  “Don’t lay guilt trips on yourself.”

  He took her hand and stroked her palm, savoring the warmth and the strength, even the calluses. “If I’d gotten there sooner—”

  “Stop with the guilt trip.” She leaned closer, gazing into his eyes.

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her. When she responded hungrily he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer. Twenty yards away people were strolling along the sidewalk. If anyone recognized him and saw him necking, he’d be in big trouble.

  His cellphone chimed. Saved by the bell.

  With a wry smile Dana pulled free of his embrace. “You’d better answer. It might be important.”

  He punched on and heard Miller say, “A State cop in a cruiser spotted Krauthammer and the girl in the Ford Focus on the I-10, headed west. They’re running. He’s in pursuit.”

  “How long ago? Where are they?”

  “He radioed in two minutes ago. At that point they were about two miles away from the I-55 split. He said the girl’s driving, no way to tell if she’s complicit or Krauthammer’s coercing her.”

  “Thanks, Kenyon. I’m on my way. Keep me posted.”

  When he punched off, Dana said, “It’s Tim? With the girl?”

  He cranked the engine. “Yes, and I’m going after them.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No you’re not. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Please,” she said. “I need to come with you.”

  “It’s against NOPD regulations to have a civilian in the car when you’re pursuing a criminal.”

  “Dammit, Frank, I’m not some civilian asking to go on a joyride. I know Tim better than anyone else. I could help you understand him.”

  “Dana, please, get out of the car.”

  She set her jaw and color rose in her cheeks. “No. I’m going with you.”

  Conscious of the passing time and knowing every second counted, he slammed the car in gear and wheeled away from the curb. What he’d said was true; taking her along was against regulations.

  But in the course of this investigation he had already broken most every rule in the book. Why let one more stop him?

  Besides, what Dana had said was also true. As Tim’s therapist she had spent hours with him. She knew Tim inside out, knew what made him tick. Pick her brains and he might find a way to psych the guy out. Tim Krauthammer was the Tongue Killer and his murderous rampage was over.

  One way or another, he intended to put Krauthammer away for good.

  CHAPTER 27

  “This car is a piece of shit!” Marie said, her face scrunched in a frown.

  It certainly is, thought the sinner. The cop was gaining on them. They had turned north onto I-55, but they couldn’t outrun the cop forever. Forget St. Louis. Police cars had radios. They wouldn’t even make it into Mississippi.

  He couldn’t understand how the cops knew he was in Marie’s rental car. They had to know or the cop wouldn’t be chasing them. Marie had been a circumspect driver, staying within the speed limit, not changing lanes or cutting off other cars. He opened the glove box and took out the Glock-9.

  Marie looked over and saw it. To his amazement, she began to laugh.

  “What? I’m not going fast enough? Okay, I’ll go faster. You don’t have to pull a gun on me, Tim.” She stomped the accelerator.

  “You don’t understand. The cop isn’t after you, he’s after me.”

  “Whatever for?” she asked, eyes glued to the road, frowning in concentration as the speedometer needle hovered at eighty.

  “They’re saying I did something bad. They don’t understand.” He waved a hand dismissively. “It’s my punishment for being unloved.”

  “Your father?”

  “Yes.” Father and Nanny and all the rest of them.

  “Don’t worry, Tim. I won’t let them get you.” With a fierce look of determination, she gripped the wheel, white-knuckled. But less than a minute later he saw flashing blue lights spread across the highway ahead of them.

  “Roadblock,” he said.

  “I’m not stopping,” she said.

  He looked at her, trying to picture Marie as an ordinary housewife, baking cookies and watching TV like all the other zombie-women out there.

  Right. And maybe the ice caps would melt, and water would cover the land, and he and Marie would sail away on the Good Ship Lollipop.
But if this fairy tale was going to have a happy ending, someone was going to have to wave a mighty big magic wand.

  _____

  Frank drove up a ramp to the I-10, blew past two cars, floored the accelerator and settled into the middle lane at a steady seventy-five.

  “Tim’s just looking for someone to love him,” Dana said.

  “Well, he’s not getting any love today. Not from me.”

  “Frank, you can’t solve everything by force.”

  He looked over, saw her hand clench the hand grip, her calm expression belying her agitation. “He’s got the girl.”

  “Maybe she wants to be with him.”

  “Be serious, Dana. She doesn’t know he’s a killer. He knows how to charm women. That’s how he reels them in. Then he kills them.”

  His cellphone chimed and he grabbed it.

  “Krauthammer’s cornered at an I-55 rest stop with the girl,” Miller said, talking fast in a tight voice. “The State cops shut down I-55 and set up a road block, but the girl barreled through it and kept going. Couple miles later they hit the tire-spikes the Staties put down, kept going on the rims, rolled into a rest stop a half mile down the road. They tried to hijack a car from a woman pumping gas. She had two kids in the car.”

  “Jesus,” Frank muttered.

  “The mother was gutsy, kept her head, jumped in her car and took off. Good thing. Krauthammer shot at her.”

  “Christ! He’s got a gun?” He saw Dana flinch.

  “Looks like it. The mother and her kids are safe. We got five cars full of State cops, a SWAT team and a half dozen sharpshooters setting up around the rest area.”

  His heart surged, pumping him full of adrenaline. “Don’t let the cowboys get trigger happy. I’m on my way. Krauthammer’s therapist is with me. Tell ‘em to save me a vest.”

  “What about Norris?” Miller asked. “Does he know you’re—”

  “Fuck Norris. He doesn’t know this guy. I do.”

  He punched off and looked at Dana. Her eyes were full of dread.

  “Tim’s holed up at a rest stop with the girl. He’s got a gun.”

  _____

  The sinner took Marie by the arm and hustled her toward the Exxon convenience store. The rental car was useless, tires flattened by the spikes the cops had laid down in an attempt to stop them. But it hadn’t stopped Marie, who’d hit the spikes at eighty-five and kept going.

  Two cars at the gas pumps behind them were empty, which meant the drivers were inside. To the left of the store, a tractor trailer rig sat idling, also empty. That meant at least three people were inside the store, plus the clerk. Only one, he hoped. The Glock held eight bullets, and he’d wasted two on the woman driving off in her car.

  Another stupid move, said the ever-carping voice in his mind.

  He pushed through the glass door, dragging Marie after him. It was cool inside, bright-colored decor, fluorescent lights overhead, a faint coffee smell, aisles of groceries angling off to their left and right. Facing them, twenty feet away, a grim-faced man with brawny arms and menacing blue eyes loomed behind the counter of the checkout stand.

  The sinner looked down the aisle to his right, where telltale sounds and whispered voices told him the customers were leaving. He turned his head and looked at the clerk just as the man’s hands, hands that were previously hidden, came up from below the counter holding a gun.

  It was surprisingly easy to pull the trigger. The noise, horrific inside the confined space, made his ears ring. He cautiously approached the counter and leaned across it. The clerk was sprawled on the floor, lying on his back in a widening pool of bright red blood, eyes wide, staring at nothing.

  A familiar stench filled his nose, the stink of death when bowel and bladder control ceased. He hadn’t realized there would be so much blood, one of the many things he hadn’t quite thought through. Like whether some cop might get the make, model and tag number of Marie’s rental car. But it was too late to worry about that now.

  Marie stared at him, licking her lips, the picture of stunned disbelief. “Is he dead?” she asked, clutching the Bible he’d given her.

  It touched him that she treasured it so, bringing the Holy Book with her from the car. How fitting, a sacred accompaniment to his fateful act.

  “One shot and I dropped him. Too bad F-F-Father didn’t see it. I could never hit the squirrels. But clerks are bigger than squirrels, I guess.”

  Marie said nothing, eyes fearful, lips trembling.

  A furtive sound made him turn. At the far end of an aisle, below an exit sign, a red-faced man with a thick neck peered around a door frame.

  “Get out or I’ll shoot you, too!”

  When he was certain the man had gone, he let out an audible sigh, like the murmured “amen” after a prayer. He set the Glock on the counter and gripped Marie by the shoulders with both hands.

  “It’s too late for me,” he said, “but there’s still time for you to run.”

  She smiled at him, the same sad smile he’d fallen for when she’d said her father was a liar, the lost lonely smile that told him she was broken inside.

  “Tim, you’re my knight in shining armor. I knew it the minute I laid eyes on you. For the first time in my life I feel happy.”

  Then she threw her arms around him, holding him tight as she burrowed her face into his neck. She loves me, he thought in wonderment. A warm glow filled his heart. So this was how love happened. When you least expected it, when things seemed utterly hopeless, love blossomed.

  Thank you God. Thank you for Marie. For a moment, it felt as though everything would be all right. Deep down he knew it wouldn’t, of course. Happily ever after would take a bigger miracle than this.

  He wondered if Marie knew how to use a gun.

  _____

  “Just give him a chance,” Dana said. “That’s all I’m asking, Frank.”

  He pulled into the high speed lane and accelerated, partly due to haste, mostly from exasperation. “Tim didn’t give those women a chance. He stalked them and tortured them and then he killed them.”

  “You’ve already judged and convicted him.”

  He looked over and she met his gaze, intensity and passion written all over her face. It made him want her more than ever, but he couldn’t let it interfere with saving Lisa. He had to pick Dana’s brains, had to use her insights to persuade Tim to let Lisa go. Provided nothing happened before they got there to eliminate the need to negotiate. Provided the State Police Lieutenant in charge allowed him to go in and bargain for Lisa’s life.

  “Tim suffered horrendous traumas as a child.”

  “That doesn’t excuse what he did.”

  “Dammit, Frank, you don’t know he killed these women!” She glared at him, no warm fuzzies in those eyes now, just steely anger and resolve.

  He blew by a Dodge Caravan, the driver’s face a pale blur as they whizzed past, and checked the time. Four minutes since Miller’s update. Another fifteen to reach the rest area. A lot could happen in fifteen minutes.

  “Dana, if you want to save Tim, give me something I can use to convince him to let the girl go.” Provided he hasn’t already killed her.

  “Okay, you want talking points? Tim craves approval, something he never got from his father. He wants people to admire him. The best thing would be to flatter him. Appeal to his intelligence. That’s his greatest source of pride. In his mind, his intelligence makes him special.”

  Smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is. And that’s not his weak spot.

  “Tell me about the nanny, the horror stories Tim told you about.”

  “Tim was already verbal at eighteen months, but after his mother died, he stopped speaking, wouldn’t say a word. Mark hired the nanny to make him talk. Tim said she did, by torturing him.”

  “How? What’d she do to him?”

  “Withheld food until he talked. It worked, but he wound up with a terrible stammer. She used to make him say his name, over and over.”

  “Timoth
y Krauthammer. Tough, those fricatives at the beginning.”

  “What, now you’re a speech pathologist?”

  “No, but I consulted one once after I interviewed a suspect with facial ticks.” He branched right onto I-55 heading north and checked the time. Ten minutes to the rest area. Ten minutes to find Tim’s weak spot.

  “Did Tim ever attempt suicide?”

  Dana unscrewed the cap on a bottle of water and drank deeply. “He said he thought about it, but as far as I know he never attempted it. Mark said he used to throw temper tantrums, and he was a bed wetter until he was nine. I asked Tim about that once, but he didn’t answer, just stared at me.”

  “Yeah? When he stared at you, what was in his eyes?”

  “Good question. You’d make a good therapist.”

  “I’ve been a cop for twenty years. Homicide detectives get good at deciphering people. Tim’s eyes. What was in his eyes?”

  “Hate, I think. That was his dominant emotion, hate and the anger that hate generates, uncontrollable anger at times.”

  “That’s why he attacked Sean,” Frank said, thinking of the old man now, wondering how he was doing, hoping the brain swelling had gone down.

  “Probably. If he thought you and Sean were conspiring against him.”

  “But we weren’t. Sean didn’t know—”

  “Doesn’t matter. If Tim thought you were, it was fact in his mind. Tim has poor impulse control. As a child he was quite pudgy. Tim admitted he used to binge on chocolate sometimes. He felt ashamed about it. He’s very self conscious about his body image.”

  “He’s ashamed of his body?”

  “Not ashamed, but he envied men with better physiques.”

  So that’s where the Grecian Formula taunt came from. He checked the time. Five minutes to the rest stop, still no ammunition from Dana.

  “What else was Tim ashamed about? Latent homosexual tendencies, because of the Brother Henry affair?”

  “No. He worried about that for a while, but he was never attracted to boys. His problem was with women. Premature ejaculation.”

  “That fits with the pathology reports on the victims: no trauma to the vagina or the anus. He doesn’t penetrate, gets off by torturing them psychologically.”