All the Dead Fathers (22 page)

She forced herself to watch some of the media coverage, too, not because she needed validation of her efforts, but to learn what she could about public response. There was no mention of anyone mourning the dead priests, of course. Everyone knew they were animals who preyed on children. People knew, also, that they were lucky
someone
had the courage to treat those men as they deserved, as God willed.

There was no talk, either, of the order she was following. What the media stressed was that the victims were narrowly targeted, so there wasn't the general panic there'd been with the D.C. snipers, nor the outcry that would have put hundreds of police out looking for her. This time it wasn't fear that held the public spellbound, but blood and body parts, and morbid curiosity about the sexual misconduct of those priests. People were so weak, so easily drawn to sordid, sick details.

For her part, confident of God's help and with just two to go to reach the fullness of seven, she would play her cards carefully, but she would not be afraid to play. Locating Stieboldt in the hospital and catching Truczik out in the open were both the result of careful surveillance, then swift and courageous action. God helps those who help themselves.

Each purging brought its own rush of excitement and satisfaction, and she would have liked more opportunity to savor them. But she couldn't take the time. Carlo was coming out in nine days, a week from Wednesday.

It seemed so long ago, that night she'd had to run and leave him behind. That had torn her apart, and though she hadn't seen him since, everything had been for his sake. The struggle to get to Sicily, submission to the clumsy pawings of
la capra
in his compound there, the painful plastic surgeries. Then coming home, and the loneliness of hiding out. Everything was for Carlo.

No one would see her, but when Carlo came out she would be watching, and she hoped to be able to gather him up at once. But she dared not contact him with advice, and he had never been smart the way she was. If he let himself be taken she had a plan. She would risk everything to save him, and with the help of God the two of them would be together again. He had never been able to function without her. She would have to protect him—and now even walk for him and talk for him. She would love him as though he were whole.

*   *   *

Debra drove on through the darkness, north of Chicago on I-94, the Tri-State Tollway, past the exit she always used for the seminary. Then, past the final toll booth, she exited and headed west. There were still farms up here that hadn't fallen under the developers' bulldozers.

Debra knew something about hiding out in the country and about using an alias. You couldn't create a new identity simply by moving to a new place, a rural place owned by a cousin with a different name than yours, and then calling yourself by the cousin's name.

“No,” she said, “that's not enough.” She was alone in the van, driving past a mailbox with the name
CHRISTOPHERSON
on its side, but she spoke out loud. “There's much more to it than that, my dear Father Ettinger, as you will learn.”

Beyond the mailbox a driveway led up to a well-kept farmhouse. A light shone behind drawn curtains in one ground-floor window. And then, as she drove past on the road, she saw something else. Drawn up beside the house and visible in the glow of a tall, backyard pole light, sat a late-model, light-colored, four-door sedan. Not your ordinary farmer's vehicle, she thought. More like a car signed out from the pool of some governmental agency.

She cursed out loud and pounded the steering wheel with the heel of her hand … and drove on. But before very long she calmed herself. This setback, too, God would somehow turn into a blessing.

39.

On Monday morning Kirsten left town in the rented Impala and drove east into Indiana, then on into Michigan, headed for Detroit. It was at least a six-hour drive, and she'd struggled with whether to go that far away or not, with the killer still at large and Michael in danger. But she couldn't think of how her staying around Chicago was going to make him or the others any safer.

Besides, for them and for herself, safety lay in eliminating the source of danger, and she couldn't just sit around and hope the cops would do that. Or wait for more postcards or painted targets. Nor would she settle for calling someone three hundred miles away on the phone and hope he'd take the time to answer her questions, hope he'd open up to someone he'd probably think had gone off the deep end herself.

But she hadn't. She had spent Saturday and Sunday working out the possibilities, and had rejected the idea that the crazy who was killing priests and terrorizing her was someone completely unknown to her. First, that seemed so unlikely as to be barely possible; and second, if that were the case, and given the scarcity of evidence, there'd be nothing to do but lie back and wait … which was unacceptable.

So she had thought and rethought, made her list and scratched out names, logged onto Web sites, exchanged phone calls and e-mails, and became convinced it was Debra Morelli she was looking for. Born in Detroit, Debra had lived there until she moved to Chicago with her brother, Carlo. So Detroit was the place to start looking, even though it was in Chicago that Debra had dropped off the face of the earth.

*   *   *

It had happened four years ago. Kirsten was hired by, of all people, Larry Candle, for what seemed a simple task—find the witness who could exonerate Larry and keep the Supreme Court from pulling his law license. But Larry hadn't told Kirsten quite everything, and she and Dugan found themselves one night in a life-and-death battle with Debra and Carlo. When Debra fled, leaving Carlo behind, they didn't chase after her. She was armed, after all, and they weren't. Besides, her neck and face had been slashed and she was bleeding so badly everyone assumed she'd surface in an E.R. soon enough. She didn't, though. She never turned up anywhere. So people made another assumption: that she was dead.

Meanwhile, Carlo—the brother for whom Debra had shown a weird, domineering, sexual affection—hadn't run anywhere, because in the struggle that night he took a bullet in the thigh. Later, in custody and awaiting trial, he lost the leg in surgery. He'd still been in the hospital attached to Cook County Jail, learning to walk on crutches—or should have been—the night all hell broke out in the jail, and Carlo's throat was slit.

The feds had been trying to turn him. They were after his mobbed-up uncle, Paolo Morelli. Paolo was called “Polly”—no one joked about that in his presence more than once—and Carlo and Debra had been cheating him in a poorly concocted drug scheme, the darker side of Larry Candle's “simple” case. The scheme failed, and the feds thought Carlo might like to help send Polly on vacation. He should have been safe in the hospital while the Justice Department jumped through the necessary hoops to get him transferred to federal custody, but a guard took him across into the jail itself. Interestingly, the guard was the only one killed that night.

Carlo survived his razor wounds, but never again spoke above a hoarse whisper. The feds didn't take him and he eventually cut a deal and went to state prison. Meanwhile, Polly Morelli continued to thrive in his mansion in Forest Park, and Debra Morelli remained among the missing.

*   *   *

Kirsten stopped for a sandwich in Ann Arbor and only then remembered she'd gone into the eastern time zone and it was an hour later than she thought. By the time she got to Detroit and found the police station on Clinton Street she was afraid she was too late to catch the detective she wanted to talk to. His name was John Frontera, and he was waiting for her.

“And,” he said, eyeing her with frank admiration, “I'm so glad I waited.”

He was a handsome, heavyset, ebony-skinned man, with a shaved head and a tiny diamond in one earlobe. The appraising look he gave her would have been offensive from anyone else, but his tone and his smile were so engaging she couldn't get properly pissed off.

After Debra fled that night in Chicago and couldn't be found, Frontera and his partner had been assigned to see whether she'd show up in Detroit. Kirsten had spoken with him on the phone several times to follow up, the last time about two years ago. He had the deep resonant voice of an opera singer, and he always sounded easygoing and charming—even flirtatious. He was cooperative, too, even though he knew she wasn't a cop. That's why she'd called and left word that she was coming to Detroit and would appreciate a meeting.

“I got your message,” he said. “And if I'd been here, sugar, I'd have told you it's no sense driving clear over here if it's about Debra Morelli.” He called her “sugar” easily, as though they were old friends, and she followed him to an interview room where the walls were a dirty gray and the table between them was bolted to the floor.

“Thanks for seeing me, anyway,” she said. Besides the fact that a personal visit made almost everyone open up more readily, Frontera in particular was clearly the sort who enjoyed giving attention to—and getting it from—the ladies. “I'm sure if you had any news about her,” she said, “you'd have notified Chicago.” He nodded, and she added, “But they wouldn't have told me.”

“Hey, you don't think I'd have called you myself? Just to get to talk to you?” He smiled. “Anyway, there's been no sign of her. Of course no one's
looking
for her, either. We're not short on things to do here.”

“I understand,” she said. “And all I'm asking is for you to maybe point me in the right direction, and … well … I'd like to keep what we talk about quiet, between you and me.” His eyes widened slightly. “That is,” she added, not wanting to lose him, “if I say something you
need
to talk about, you talk. I understand that.”

“Right,” was all he said, but she could tell he was intrigued.

“I'm reaching here,” she said, “with nothing solid to back up what I'm thinking. It's about the murders of those Chicago priests, and when I mention it to the cops at home all they do is roll their eyes. In fact,” and here she lowered her voice, “if it comes out I'm poking around in this, after a couple of asshole FBI agents warned me
not
to…” She spread her hands out, palms up. “Well … you know. It's probably a cage in Guantanamo for me. No lawyer, no bail.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I know what you mean.” She had his total attention now. Cops love to hate the FBI.

“I have this belief.” She shook her head. “No, really just a suspicion. I think Debra Morelli may be killing those priests.”

“Ho-ly Christ!” he said. “I mean … when we were watching for her I read every old report I could find that had anything to do with her, and let me tell you … if that woman's alive, she's fucked up enough for anything.”

“Right. Enough to kill her own father, I understand.”

“No proof, but she did it all right. Jump-Joe Morelli. She got hold of a sawed-off somehow and blew his head from here to Windsor, and never batted an eye the whole time our people pushed her on it. And she wasn't but fifteen back then. That brother of hers … Franco, was it? He—”

“Carlo.”

“Yeah, Carlo. Equally fucked up. But a couple years younger and under her thumb. Word was the two kids were gettin' it on together.”

“I saw them together,” she said, “and it looked that way to me, too.”

“Anyway, the dicks figured Carlo as an accessory, but not the shooter. Of course, no one gave much of a shit about the victim. They called him Jump-Joe because he'd jump any female in sight … even his own little girl, I guess. The guy was an animal, and he died like one.”

“The mother's dead, too, right?”

“Liver cancer. Around a year later. I guess she was a trip, too. She—” Something beeped and he stopped to check a pager at his belt. “They're after me, and probably need this room,” he said, but he didn't make a move to go anywhere. “So tell me, sugar, what is it you want, in particular?”

“Two things. Everyone seems convinced Debra's father abused her. But I wonder if there's any evidence of sexual abuse by a priest, too. That's one thing. The other is any suggestion about where she might be hiding if she's around. I mean, did her family have property, like a house? Does she have relatives somewhere? Anything at all. Maybe I could find something in those reports you mentioned that—”

“No way. I'm not gonna dig out any reports and hand 'em over. It'd be my ass if I did. Not unless you got proof this whacked-out bitch is alive and can pin a string of murders on her, and you wanna give me the arrest.”

“I don't have that,” she said. “All I have's an idea. But if I
do
turn up something—and it's around here?—I swear you'll be the first one I go to.”

“Yeah, well…” He stood up and opened the door and yelled at someone that he'd be a few minutes longer, then closed the door again and sat down. “As to priests? There
is
something. A couple of years after her father tragically lost his head, Debra was wanted in Cincinnati for questioning in connection with a homicide there. The victim was a priest named Lasorda. I guess the killing was all over the papers in Cincy. Guy was cut up pretty bad.”

“So what happened?”

“With Debra? Nothing. She gave a statement. She was about seventeen then, and she came in voluntarily. No fuss about its being an out-of-state warrant. They wanted to talk to her because the priest was known to have been a friend of the Morelli family when he was in Detroit—weird in itself for a priest. And it seems he was shipped off to Cincinnati after rumors started spreading of him messing around with little girls here. Anyway, they asked Debra and she said the rumors were ridiculous, that everyone knew he was a holy man. That was it. She was never officially a suspect. Do you think—”