Truth Beat

by Brenda Buchanan

  It was the cue the crowd needed. Instead of ignoring the picketers—or pretending to—they began to shout down the shouters. Boos filled the morning air, along with impromptu chants from those who’d come to St. Ignatius to honor the dead priest. “GO HOME. GO HOME. GO HOME.” went on for quite a while, as did “WE LOVE FATHER PATRICK.”

  Bozco’s crew was no well-rehearsed affinity group. They were unsophisticated hotheads who quickly became frustrated when their own chants were drowned out. Several lost their cool when confronted by mourners who wanted them gone. The police clamped down as soon as punches were thrown, and inside ten minutes all the picketers except Bozco and a handful of mourners were under arrest. Peggy had retreated into the church with the bullhorn in hand. Bozco collected the handful of picket signs that his paddy-wagoned buddies had dropped on the sidewalk and stalked down the street. Some in the crowd applauded his departure. A few self-appointed marshals urged people to go inside the church.

  “This isn’t a sporting event,” one of them said. “We’re here to honor Patrick.”

  Rufe texted Joe before going inside himself.

  Show’s over. Will fill you in ltr. Stay put, little bro.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The picketing of Patrick’s funeral was over before I found my car keys, but I was dressed and my cowlicks had been tamed so I left my house anyway. I steered clear of the Rambler because the staff would surely tell Christie I’d been in and I knew how that news would go over. Instead I drove to the far end of Main Street and picked up a large coffee and an overly healthy sandwich at a little hipster joint I usually avoided.

  Traffic was light for a Monday, which told me Riversiders turned out in force for the funeral after all. I was sipping coffee and trying to suck the oat bran out of my teeth when I drove by St. Jerome’s to have a look-see in the daylight.

  Yellow crime-scene tape was wrapped around the whole place, though the only visible damage was on the side where the windows with the yellow-glow glass and the heavy door through which I’d made my save-the-day entry had been boarded over. At the end of the block I turned right, then right again, cruising between Stella’s house and the rectory’s fenced garden.

  When I approached the rectory itself I saw DiAngelo—instantly recognizable because of his height—standing on the steps. He was wearing a topcoat and a wide-brimmed hat.

  What was DiAngelo doing in Riverside? Why wasn’t he at the funeral?

  My foot moved to the brake but my gut told me to keep going. I turned right, then made the block again, this time slipping into Stella’s driveway as soon as I came around the corner. By the time I’d turned the car to face the street, the lanky priest was standing next to a van bearing the logo of a door-to-door-service car rental company, talking with two men. DiAngelo took a clipboard from one of them, scribbled something, picked up a medium-size suitcase and climbed into a dark gray Ford that was parked behind the van.

  Maybe the late-model Camry he shared with Patrick wouldn’t start? If so, why not take a cab to Portland? My dashboard clock said it was ten twenty-five. The funeral Mass had begun at ten, and DiAngelo was supposed to be on the altar. Then I remembered his words when I asked whether he would eulogize his friend.

  The bishop has other plans.

  Maybe his boss had decided to limit the speakers to other, more prominent people. Or perhaps DiAngelo was suffering lingering upset about the previous evening’s close call. But even if he was pissed at the bishop or rattled by the bomb, it was weird that he wasn’t at the funeral. Curious about where he was headed, I let a pickup truck pass before pulling out to follow his rented sedan so there’d be a vehicle to hide behind at the Main Street light.

  Leah had laid down her version of the law about me staying away from the funeral, but she didn’t say I couldn’t leave my house or suggest that I not show my face in Portland. If DiAngelo was headed for St. Ignatius, I’d cruise right back to Riverside. But if the stuffed-shirt priest who it appeared had a complicated relationship with Kathleen—perhaps even an intimate one—didn’t intend to show up late for the funeral, it might be useful to know where he was going.

  I stayed a few cars back on the road to Portland and banged my own turn signal the moment I saw his right blinker start to blink. He deftly shortcutted a series of traffic lights on the approach to Interstate 295, and caught lucky green on the unavoidable ones that marked the final stretch. He slipped up the on-ramp as the last in the series turned red. The old Buick I was using for cover skidded to an obedient stop, leaving me helpless until the light cycled back to green. I zipped up the short ramp, relieved to see a gap in traffic that allowed me to merge right away. I slid into the passing lane, foot steady on the accelerator, convinced I could catch up. I was flying along at 82 mph when I thought I spotted DiAngelo’s rental car up ahead. At the same instant something else caught my eye—a Maine State Police SUV, sitting in the median. Before I could tap my brakes, its blue lights were flashing at me.

  * * *

  A half hour later, hotshot speed racer tail tucked between my legs, I drove precisely the speed limit to the next exit and made my way back toward Riverside. The ticket was a personal worst for me—$216. I had no answer for the trooper when he asked what possibly had motivated me to drive twenty-two miles over the speed limit on the busiest road in Portland.

  Halfway home I tapped my Bluetooth speaker and voice dialed Roz’s cell.

  “Can’t give it a rest, can you Gale?”

  “DiAngelo didn’t show for the funeral, did he?”

  “Why am I not surprised that you couldn’t stay home in bed? What were you, hiding in the choir loft?”

  “I didn’t come near the funeral. But I left my house to get a little air. When I drove by St. Jerome’s I spotted DiAngelo in front of the rectory, getting into a rental car. I followed him long enough to see he was heading south on the turnpike. But my bad luck streak continued and I got stopped for speeding, which interrupted my pursuit.”

  “You’re not on a bad luck streak, Gale. You keep wading hip deep into trouble.”

  “Trying to do my job.”

  “Running headlong after the news, like your hero, Paulie Finnegan. How bad is the speeding ticket?”

  I told her.

  “No way Salisbury’s going to pay for that.”

  “He should. I was chasing a story. The priest who was Patrick’s closest colleague for decades—who clearly has a tangled relationship with Kathleen—bags the funeral and sneaks out of town while it’s going on. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

  “You’ve covered enough tragic stories to know how irrational people are when they’re grieving. Things that otherwise wouldn’t make a lick of sense seem absolutely logical when you’re in shock over losing someone.”

  “But why slink away when Riverside was a virtual ghost town?”

  “He wanted privacy, perhaps?”

  “Here’s another piece of the puzzle that I neglected to tell you in all the excitement last night. Kathleen fessed up on the way to Portland. It was DiAngelo who visited her house Saturday morning.”

  “No shit. He assaulted her?”

  “She says there was no assault, that she was drunk out of her mind and weeping. He slapped her—not hard, but slapped her—in an attempt to calm her down. She went berserk. Threw a glass of bourbon at him. He bolted, apparently didn’t shut the door behind him. After he left she slipped on an ice cube and whacked her head.”

  “That’s quite the tale.”

  “She was sober in every sense of the word when she confessed. I think she was telling the truth, more or less. But what I can’t figure out is why DiAngelo didn’t call the cops and own up to the fact he was her mystery caller that morning, especially when every news outlet in the state reported she was in the hospital after what appeared to be a home invasion.”

&n
bsp; “How do you know he didn’t do that?”

  “The cops still are investigating it as a home invasion, aren’t they?”

  “When I spoke with Booth this morning he confirmed they’re still trying to sort the whole mess out. But he didn’t use the term ‘home invasion.’ Called it ‘the situation.’ When I picked up on the distinction he mumbled something, which is what he does he’s holding back on me.”

  “Interesting. Match all this up with what Booth told you about Kathleen’s cheating ex believing that she was romantically involved with DiAngelo. Bells starting to ring in your head?”

  “Sure. But those bells could mean a lot of things.”

  I recounted Peggy’s early morning confession about the vulnerability that opened her up to Bozco’s blackmail. She made sympathetic noises and cursed not only Bozco but men who use women and then shame them.

  “Bozco’s on a big power trip with the demonstrations,” she said. “He was barking orders at the other guys who were picketing the church, like they were his minions.”

  “So what else went on? Did people remark on the fact DiAngelo wasn’t there?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “There was an empty chair on the altar, three over from the bishop. The priests must have been assigned their seats, and they didn’t regroup to make DiAngelo’s absence less obvious. I only heard a couple of whispers during the Mass, but his no-show was the main topic of conversation when I was working my way through the crowd to get outside. One woman was worrying out loud that he’d been hurt or killed.”

  “He looked fine to me when he was getting into the rental car.”

  “For all we know he was too upset to go to the funeral, needs a little time away from Riverside.”

  “Then why not drive his own car?”

  “You’re the hot-shot reporter,” she said. “I assign you to find out.”

  * * *

  Leah had made herself clear that I was on medical leave. Not only was I excused from work, there’d be trouble if I showed my face in the newsroom. I’d done my duty when I filled Roz in about everything I’d seen and heard recently. I had to hope Al Lombard was busy with some obscure task for which he was well-suited—analyzing the liturgy or something.

  I was imagining a bowl of ice cream numbing my aching throat when I saw Barb Wyatt turn into the Riverside PD’s parking lot and slide her midnight-blue Chevy Caprice into her designated spot near the building’s rear door. I figured the chief probably didn’t know or care that, technically, I was off the story. I pulled into the space behind hers. She pointed at a sign that said Official Vehicles Only. I turned off my ignition anyway and hopped out.

  “Jesus Christ, Gale. Word on the street is you’re supposed to be home getting bedrest.”

  I tried to generate sufficient saliva to soothe my scratchy throat so my voice would sound more or less normal. “I’m fine. Really. My colleagues covered the funeral, but I’m back in the saddle. Sorry I missed Bozco’s sideshow.”

  “The man’s a fool.”

  “A dangerous fool,” I said. “Not merely a rabble-rouser with a record, he’s an active blackmailer to boot.”

  That got her attention.

  “Blackmailing who? And about what?”

  Peggy had blessed me to share her story, so I leaned against Barb’s unmarked cruiser and told her the whole sorry tale, interrupted by only a couple of coughing jags.

  “Unbelievable that he victimized her twice—first with a brutal physical assault, then by extorting $500 a month to keep his mouth quiet about his own crime.”

  “The guy’s got brass ones all right.”

  “I feel sorry for Peggy, but good for her for turning the tables on his threat and outing herself. And she sure showed him up today on the church steps. It was impressive to watch her wrench that damned bullhorn away from him and use it to rev the crowd up against his gang and their tactics.”

  “I would have given a lot to see that,” I said. “It’s hard to imagine her as a prostitute. These days she’s a veritable pillar of the Church.”

  “Like a lot of criminals—the smart ones, anyway, Bozco knows how to read people. Peggy’s worked hard for her respectability. She must have been unable to hide her shock when he showed up. And the moment he saw her fear, he was in control. I’m glad she’s turning the tables now.”

  “Like I said, she’ll make a formal complaint. Is there any way she can contact you personally? She didn’t say so, but I think she’ll find it much easier to talk with another woman.”

  “Of course. You can even give her my cell number.”

  “My gut tells me you’ll eventually find evidence that Bozco’s at the center of all of this shit,” I said.

  “Off the record—and I really mean that—there’s no hard evidence tying him to the murder, the assault on the sister or the bomb inside the church last night. No fingerprints. No witness statements.”

  “He must have other people doing his dirty work.”

  “If so, eventually they’ll rat him out. But we don’t have any basis at this point to even bring him in for questioning as a person of interest.”

  Again I thought about Kathleen’s confession about the incident in her foyer. Even though it had happened on Booth’s turf, I didn’t want Roz’s former loverboy to be one up on Barb.

  “Kathleen finally came clean about what happened in Bangor yesterday.”

  I told Barb all I knew, including that a few minutes earlier I’d told Roz.

  “She’s tight with Detective Booth of the Bangor PD,” I said. “So he may know this by the time you call him.”

  “You think Kathleen was leveling with you when she told you this version of events?”

  “I do. She was sober, which allowed embarrassment to overtake mendacity.”

  “Thanks, Joe. I know it costs you to tell me stuff like this. I’ll buzz Mark Booth and set up a joint interview Father DiAngelo. If Kathleen’s story checks out, at least we’ll know we’re dealing with two crimes, not three, and both happened in Riverside.”

  I went home, fed Lou and checked email. Unsurprisingly, a missive from edgar222@hotmail was among the new items in my inbox. It reported that Peggy McGillicuddy was a “filthy whore” with multiple prostitution arrests in and around Philadelphia. Case numbers were provided, along with a couple of attachments. I look forward to you exposing this woman in your newspaper, edgar222 wrote. She’s not who she pretends to be.

  There’s a lot of that going around, I thought as I clicked on a jpeg link. A much younger Peggy looked back at me, a black-and-white booking photo from what must have been one of her arrests. Freckles were prominent on her nose. Her hair was longer and straighter. The look on her face was solemn, almost somber.

  The other photo was in color, a snapshot of a long-legged woman in short shorts and revealing top, leaning one hip against a park bench, big smile on her face. She could have been a college student on summer break. I don’t know what edgar222 intended me to feel when he sent me that photo, but it wasn’t judgment.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I would have denied it if Leah asked, but I was feeling wiped out by my morning’s travels. I was half asleep on the couch when Christie let herself into my kitchen.

  “Joe. It’s me. How are you feeling?” She carried a container emitting an aroma I immediately identified as chicken soup.

  “Good. Really good. Feeling much better than I thought I would.” I struggled to my feet, felt dizzy, started coughing and couldn’t stop.

  “Sit down. I’ll get you some water and put this in a bowl for you.”

  She’d left the diner in her staff’s hands for three hours so she could go to the funeral, and gave me the lowdown on the whole scene inside and outside the church. Partway into her account her cell rang. From the look on her face, I knew there w
as trouble.

  “That was the vice-principal. Theo’s not in school today. I went by the house on my way over here, and he wasn’t there, either.” She held up a hand and thumbed a message into her phone. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  A half hour later my soup was gone and we were still waiting for Theo’s response. Christie was fuming.

  “His phone is like a damn appendage. Ninety-five percent of the time he answers my texts within seconds. Where could he be?”

  “It’s three in the afternoon. Maybe he and some friends skipped school, they’re out shooting hoops and his phone’s in his jacket. Or maybe he’s with a girl, and she’s the complete focus of his attention.”

  When Christie’s dark eyes found mine hers were rimmed with tears.

  “That’d be the best-case scenario. But I’m worried he rounded up some buddies to throw sand in Bozco’s gears. He was simmering Saturday night after he and Rufe ran Bozco off my front porch. But after last night’s blast—especially when he found out you’d been taken to the ER—he was absolutely stomping around the house. I think he and his friends believe Bozco is the bomber.”

  “I hope he’s not going anywhere near him. That would be a really stupid move.”

  “My son is sixteen years old,” Christie said. “Stupid moves are his specialty.”

  She promised to call as soon as she heard from him and left me to nap, but my phone chimed before I could close my eyes. It was Kathleen, who’d jumped off the short-timer wagon. She wasn’t pouring-shots-from-a-bottle drunk, but lubricated for sure.

  “You didn’t miss much,” she said. “All those priests on the altar, you think one of them would have said something profound about my brother. But it was pious clichés from start to finish, with an amusing anecdote or two thrown in to make it seem like they really knew him.”