All the Dead Fathers (30 page)

It was a large event, certainly, but the cathedral could have held three or four times the number of guests, and they were all being ushered up to the pews in the front, near the altar. The place hadn't been closed to the public, though, and there were maybe twenty other people—people not dressed for a wedding—scattered around the rear section, kneeling or sitting. Kirsten had been in here before, and she immediately noticed one group that was
not
present. Obviously evicted for this event was the usual assortment of shabbily dressed—often rather pungent—street people.

Now what? Was Polly Morelli a wedding guest? Did the note mean seven
P.M
. or seven
A.M
.? Or had it just been something to make her go away from his house? She moved to the wall on her left and then forward along the aisle. About five rows up from the back she slipped into an empty pew and sat down. She waited, listening to a gentle Bach cantata on the organ and watching elegant people be ushered forward to their seats. She had no idea what Polly Morelli looked like. No one looked back at her. No one paid any attention to her at all.

At five after seven the music faded and the sudden silence caused the murmuring crowd to grow still. A group of three priests came out from somewhere and stood at the front, facing down the center aisle. The one in the middle she recognized as the cardinal. Even from this distance he didn't look especially happy, and she wondered how often he thought about the little flock of priests who had disgraced his church and now wouldn't go away.

The priest to the cardinal's right gave a nod and the organ, joined by a trumpet, launched into a ceremonial piece familiar to Kirsten from other weddings. She couldn't have cared less about this event, but the bridal party was about to start down the aisle, and she automatically shifted around to watch.

“Come with me, miss.” The soft voice and the tap on her shoulder made her heart stop.

“What?” Twisting around.

“I said come with me.” It was a tall, black, female police officer.

“This is a public place of prayer,” Kirsten whispered, “and I'm not going anywhere.”

The uniformed woman glanced this way and that, obviously startled by the response, then leaned in. “If you came in here to pray, then fine. If you came for something else, let's go.”

51.

Kirsten got up and followed the officer toward the rear of the church. Past the final pew and just short of the door out to the vestibule, the cop turned sharply to her left and headed to an open stairway—marble steps and brass bannisters—leading down. Kirsten walked behind her and when they reached the bottom she saw, about fifteen feet in front of her, an identical stairway that led back up to ground level on the opposite side of the church.

The cop turned and Kirsten followed her down a short, carpeted corridor, between the men's and women's restrooms, to a closed door. The cop opened the door and, when Kirsten passed through into a brightly lit room, she came in behind her and pulled the door closed. She did a thorough search of Kirsten, using an electronic wand that had been leaning against the wall just inside the door. Finally she went through Kirsten's handbag—the Colt was safely back at home—and then turned and left, taking the wand with her.

Kirsten was alone in a carpeted classroom with fluorescent lights and no windows, set up as a day care or a Sunday School, with two teacher's chairs sitting side by side, and about a dozen kid's chairs arranged in a semicircle in front of them. There were a couple of tricycles and a plastic ride-around automobile, and shelves full of smaller toys and games and books and videos, and a TV set on a rolling cart.

She waited maybe a minute and, when nothing happened, turned to leave. The door she'd come in by was locked. There was another door at the other end of the room and just as she started that way it opened and two men in tuxedoes came in. One had to be the bodyguard, thin and young and slick-haired. His broad forehead sloped backward above nervous, bulging eyes, and he reminded her of a snake. No, she decided, a lizard.

The lizard closed the door the two had come through and stood with his back against it, the jacket of his tux hanging open to show the butt of his pistol. The other man was square-jawed and still handsome, though obviously into his seventies. Deeply tanned, five-ten, maybe thirty pounds overweight, he wore black-framed, amber-tinted glasses. His hair, combed straight back from his forehead without a part, was thick and too black to look natural for a man his age. A sign of human frailty, Kirsten thought. A sign she was happy to see.

His demeanor was calm, almost gentle, while at the same time his eyes were strangely cruel and menacing. He called her by her name and she shivered when he said he hoped Dugan's law practice was flourishing, and hoped she was doing well and had finally found her niche since leaving the police department.

“You're Polly Morelli?” she asked.

He didn't answer, but busied himself arranging the two larger chairs to face each other. “Sit down,” he said, gesturing toward one of the chairs. She sat, and so did he.

“Must be a new day,” she said. “Trusting a woman to perform a search.”

He just stared at her, and when she didn't say anything else for a few seconds he looked at his watch, then pointed upward. “The bride's the granddaughter of a dear friend. So…” He stood up.

“Wait,” Kirsten said. “I have something to ask.”

He smiled. “Ah,” he said, and sat back down. It was a mean smile.

“Your nephew, Carlo, he gets out of Pontiac on Wednesday.”

The smile faded, but he said nothing and she decided that, despite the search that surely would have picked up any wire she was wearing, he meant to be careful about what he put into words.

“You want Carlo,” she said. “I think you'll have someone there to meet him when he comes out.” He merely shrugged, and she went on. “I want him, too. And I can use him to get to the one you want even more.”

This clearly surprised him, but he recovered quickly and shrugged again.

“The one you really want is Debra, more than Carlo. Otherwise, you and I wouldn't be sitting here.”

“Debra?” he said. “Who even knows if she's living or dead?”

She could tell he was more interested than he was trying to appear. “She's alive, all right,” she said. “I mentioned earlier today that I'm in touch with her. But it's more accurate to say that she's been in touch with me. She intends to kill me.”

If that meant anything at all to him, he didn't show it. He stood up and walked away from her, toward his bodyguard and the door. She wanted to call him back, but though she'd disregarded Cuffs's advice and asked Polly Morelli for help, she wouldn't go so far as to beg him. She said nothing.

He didn't leave, after all. Instead, he whispered to the lizard, who left the room and closed the door behind him. Polly came back and sat down. “Okay,” he said, “tell me what you're talking about. And include what's in it for me.” With him suddenly speaking more openly, she wondered if maybe the lizard was the one who was wired.

“You have a big score to settle with Debra. You know she's far more responsible for anything she and Carlo did than he is. But you have no idea where she is, and no real hope of ever finding her.”

“And you do?” Behind his phony blank expression she sensed excitement, anticipation.

“Debra wants revenge against me,” she said, “and killing's not enough for her. She's toying with me. Sending weird messages. She hopes I'll freeze up. Instead, I'm going after her.”

“So? How does Carlo fit in?”

“Carlo's the one person Debra cares about in this world,” she said. “I'll use him to draw her out into the open.”

“Really. And why would he cooperate?”

“Because I'll be offering him an alternative to you, the uncle who hates him. Once you make sure he doesn't know where Debra is—and we both know he probably doesn't—Carlo's life is over. He's not very bright, but even
he
knows that.”

Polly didn't bother to deny it, but said, “I still say why would he trust
you,
the one who lost him his leg and sent him to prison?”

“Because you'll help me create that trust.” She went on to tell him what she had in mind for the day of Carlo's release. When she finished she said, “If it's done right, he'll be thrilled that I showed up.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But you haven't said yet how you'd actually catch Debra, after you ‘draw her out,' as you say. And what about the cops?”

“This will be my party. No cops invited. Not you, either. In fact, wherever she is, if anyone follows me I won't go.”

“Which means,” he said, “that there are complications, that there's a lot you're not telling me. Right?”

“Wrong.” But in fact she wasn't telling him about Dugan, or her plan to trade Carlo for Dugan, or that capturing Debra would be a bonus she didn't have high hopes for. “It's not complicated at all. It's simple. It's just that it's gotten to be … a personal thing.” Something this psychopath might relate to. “Between her and me.”

He seemed to consider that for a moment. “My niece,” he finally said, “is a formidable woman.”

“Uh-huh, but so am I. And I'll never be able to walk down the street in peace until I get her out of my life.”

“If you kill her,” he said, “you'll deprive me of a certain … satisfaction. So, like I said, what's in it for me?”

“I'm not out to kill anyone. I'll use Carlo to make her careless, to get her to show herself.” She's the one who was lying now, but she knew no other way. “When she does, I'll grab her.”

“And then?”

“Then, after I've shown her who's more … formidable, I'll hand her over to the cops. That's the part they'll play, in answer to your earlier question.”

“And that's what's in it for
me?
” He shook his head. “I don't think so.”

“You'll know where she is. You can … follow up however you like. You didn't seem to have a problem getting close to Carlo in jail.”

“That's not enough,” he said.

“It's what I can offer.”

He stared at her in silence for a few seconds and then said, “I'll play the game the way you suggested, and let you take Carlo. And then, if you
do
capture Debra, you'll bring her to
me,
not the cops.”

“Sorry,” she said. “You know I can't—”

“That's the first alternative. And because, like I said, there's a lot you're not telling me, here's the second alternative. If you
don't
capture Debra, then you'll return
Carlo
to me.” He was watching her, and maybe he saw something in her face, because he said, “And if you don't bring one of them back, and you're still alive? Then I'll deal with you in a way that would make Debra proud. I guarantee it.”

“Look, you can't—”

“Take Carlo or don't,” he said. “You decide. And oh … by the way, his release date has been moved up from Wednesday. It's Monday now.”

“What?”

“They made an error in calculating the days to chop off for good behavior. I had a lawyer check the date, and he caught it.”

“The day after tomorrow? I don't—”

“The wedding,” he said, “it's taking place during Mass.” He stood and pointed up toward the church above them. “And I don't like to miss taking Holy Communion.”

52.

Kirsten called Cuffs's number the minute she got home from the cathedral. She didn't want to. Right then she probably hated pleading with Cuffs more than Cuffs hated pleading with Polly Morelli. But she needed him.
Dugan
needed him. What she got was his voice mail.

The message said he'd be away and unreachable for a few days, but to leave a name and number after the beep and he'd return the call when he got back. Then, after the beep, a disembodied female voice said, “This mailbox is full.”

She forced herself to eat something. And to slow down her mind and think. It hadn't been sixteen hours yet since that morning's phone call, and Debra said she'd call again “in a few days.” Cuffs was right. If she was holding Dugan against his will she couldn't take a commercial flight, and chartering a plane seemed equally unlikely. So she was almost certainly driving. It would have taken her this whole day to get from Asheville to Chicago, and it would be about the same to Detroit. And a couple of hours more to the farm—if that's where she was going.

The farm was the best bet, Kirsten thought, and surprise was her best weapon, so she would go there, too. She'd have Carlo with her if things went her way—which meant she'd have her own transport-of-prisoner issues, so she called Leroy Renfroe at home. It was Saturday night and he was out, but her message was one he couldn't ignore, and he called her back about midnight. He obviously wished he hadn't when he heard what she wanted.

“The car's one thing,” he said. “And the shotgun I can arrange for you to pick up. But the Panther baton, that's a real problem. I keep some on hand for testing purposes, but they're—”

“By tomorrow afternoon, then?”

“The problem is their use is legally restricted, and—”

“Leroy, listen to me. I
need
this.” She went on to lay a little guilt on him, and he finally agreed. “And about the car,” she added, “how long will it take your guy to disengage the thing? And to make sure it can't be reconnected somehow … or opened some other way?”

“Forget about my
guy.
It'll be Sunday afternoon and I'll have to do it myself. An Impala? Fifteen minutes, I guess. But Jesus, a rental car?”

“You can reverse it before I take it back,” she said. “And if you can't, I'll buy them a
new
goddamn car. I can't tell you why, Leroy, but it's that important. Really.”