Kiss of Evil (30 page)

“And?”

“It was.”

Paris processes the information. “Do you have a sketch of the business type or the redheaded woman?”

“Nothing yet. We’re still canvassing on this, Jack. It’s still officially a suicide.”

“They left the bar together. . . .”

“Yeah,” Galt says. “These two guys wrote them off as gay, of course. They work at a fuckin’ sewage treatment plant and neither of ’em could figure out any other reason as to why they were shut down.”

St. John the Evangelist, the imposing cathedral on East Ninth Street and Superior Avenue, is nearly empty at this hour, with just a handful of widely spaced penitents in the afternoon gloom. Paris walks through the vestibule, steps inside. The echo of his footsteps in the enormous church recalls the other times of his life, the times that being a Catholic had been important to him, the times that seemed to elate and frighten and entrance him all at once, the times during which he had leaned on his faith for strength.

But that all changed on his third night as a police officer. All of that changed the night he saw three young children—ages four, five, and six—blasted apart with a shotgun in a stifling third-floor apartment on Sonora Avenue. Besides the torn flesh and the sea of gore, Paris’s lingering memory—the remembrance that has led him to deny a benevolent God for so many years—was the Etch-A-Sketch he had seen, still clutched in the hands of the four-year-old; the Etch-A-Sketch sheened with blood that had borne the half-drawn
Happy Birthday Daddy!

It was the little girl’s father, insane with seventy-two hours of methamphetamine and fortified wine, who had placed the barrel against her head and pulled the trigger.

No. No God would allow this to happen, he had thought at the time, and it has been that conviction that has shielded his heart and mind and memory from the abundance of horrors he had witnessed since.

Until today. For some reason, the need has returned.

He selects an empty pew.

Mercedes Cruz, nearing her deadline, had gone home to write the first draft of her story, having argued with Paris for nearly an hour about the possibility of accompanying the task force on the raid later that night. It is, of course, entirely out of the question. But still she pressured him. In the end, Paris had said that he would call her later that night, regardless of the time, and give her an exclusive. It wasn’t what she was lobbying for, but it was the best he could do.

And then there is the image of Evangelina Cruz, covered in blood and feathers.

Paris thinks about the ceremony in Evangelina Cruz’s basement, how foreign and violent and pagan it seemed. But Catholicism certainly has its rituals, he concedes, looking around him. Odd-seeming ceremonies that people of other faiths might find bizarre.

Willis Walker. Fayette Martin. Isaac and Edith Levertov.

Mike Ryan.

Sarah Weiss.

He leans forward, kneels. Automatically, his hands find each other, a loose tenting of fingers, a long unutilized mainstay of his Catholic upbringing.

Yes, he thinks. I am. After all these years I am praying again. I am praying for every Fayette Martin out there. I am praying for Melissa. I am praying for all the little girls who will one day grow up, dress like a woman, and say yes to a man with sorcery in his smile.

Dolores Ryan’s outgoing phone message had stated that she and her daughter Carrie would be out of town for the New Year’s holiday, and to please call them at a Tampa, Florida, number. Not the smartest move, Paris had thought, considering the world as it is these days, but it was common knowledge that the patrols on this stretch of Denison Avenue were a little more frequent in the past few years. Widows of cops killed on the job rarely had to worry about break-ins.

On the other hand, there is no need to advertise. After Paris had called in his location, then made his way around back, through calf-high drifts of snow, he noticed the note pinned to the doorjamb, a note from Dolores to her newspaper carrier, instructing the carrier to put the newspapers into the covered wooden box near the back door: a bright beacon of invitation to any burglar who happens to come by. Paris takes Dolores’s note down, shoves it in his pocket, makes a mental note to call the
Plain Dealer
circulation department and tell
them
to tell the carrier.

Then, not without a sliver of guilt, Paris acts like a burglar himself.

He looks three-sixty.

And knocks out a pane of glass.

The storage bay is an icebox. He had waited for the glass repair company to arrive and replace the pane, paying the man in cash, then had retrieved the key from the corkboard in Dolores’s kitchen. He is once again standing in front of Michael Ryan’s desk in bay number 202, not really certain as to why, not really comfortable with the desperation that had settled over him of late.

He finds a suitable rag and cleans off the dust-covered dial on the small floor safe.

Then, in the dim light of the single overhead bulb, he looks at Demetrius Salters’s scrawlings on the
Time
magazine, even though the page numbers had stalked the edge of his conscious thought for so long he knows them by heart.

15, 28, 35.

It had occurred to him somewhere in the middle of a daydream. Carla’s creepy crawler. The one who used to carve numbers into the foreheads of his victims.

Combinations
are six numbers.

Before he can talk himself out of it, he hunkers down, spins the dial.

Fifteen, right.

Once around. Twenty-eight left.

Thirty-five right.

Paris takes a deep breath, grabs the cold iron handle on the door to the safe, absolutely certain the door will not open, thoroughly convinced that a sequence of numbers circled in a cable TV guide by a retired cop with Alzheimer’s could not
possibly
be the combination to a safe that has been sitting in—

The door swings open.

Paris’s stomach flutters as he looks inside and sees two dog-eared manila folders. He removes them. The first one contains an old charcoal police-artist sketch of a teenaged boy. High cheekbones, long dark hair, wraparound sunglasses. Paris flips it over. On the back is glued a one-paragraph newspaper article from the
San Diego Union-Tribune
: H
ILLSDALE GIRL
, 4,
VICTIM OF HIT
-
AND
-
RUN DRIVER
. The article is about Carrie Ryan’s accident.

Paris looks at the sketch again.

The hit-and-run suspect?

He opens the other folder. This one contains an old police file. On top is an aggravated assault complaint by a woman named Lydia del Blanco sworn out against her former spouse, Anthony C. del Blanco. Paris notices that it is a photocopy, not the original.

But that’s not what makes his mind spin.
That
dizzying feeling is courtesy of the fact that Anthony del Blanco lived at 4008 Central Avenue. Anthony del Blanco lived in one of the rooms in the Reginald Building, not more than fifteen feet from where Fayette Martin’s body was found.

The arresting officer that day was Michael P. Ryan, then a rookie patrolman. And Paris sees the mistake right away. The wrong address is on the search warrant. Michael had typed in 4006 Central Avenue. The room
next
to Anthony del Blanco’s room. And it was in 4008 that the investigating officers found Anthony’s clothes, covered with his ex-wife’s blood, the evidence needed to prosecute him.

Also in the safe is a news clipping, a small
Cleveland Press
article about how Anthony del Blanco was released from prison after spending only ten months in jail on a ten-year stretch, having been sprung on a technicality.

The body in the parking lot
, Paris thinks.

Paris looks again at the bottom of the arrest report. He is not surprised to find that Mike Ryan’s partner that day was Demetrius Salters.

He flips a page, reads on. Lydia del Blanco had two children: a boy and a girl. There are two photos. One, taken of the crime scene where Lydia del Blanco was beaten, tells one story. The woman is not in the photo, just the huge Rorschach of her blood. There is also a book lying on the kitchen floor, near the refrigerator.

The old man’s mantra.

The other photo is one from happier times, a color-faded photo of the woman and her two children at Euclid Beach. Pretty woman, white-rimmed sunglasses, white dress. Her daughter, sitting on her lap, is maybe six or so; the little boy a toddler.

Is this little girl Sarah Weiss? Paris thinks.

And what about the little boy?

Paris is no linguist, but he knows enough German and Spanish to know that Weiss equals White. And that White equals
Blanco
.

Mike Ryan’s murder had nothing to do with a deal gone bad, Paris thinks, his hands trembling slightly with the knowledge. Nothing at all.

Mike Ryan was executed.

54

She stands in the lobby of the Wyndham Hotel, the box under her left arm. She is wearing a short platinum wig, tinted glasses, a Givenchy suit. She looks at her watch for the hundredth time in the past ten minutes, cocks her right foot out of her shoe for a moment, giving her toes a break. Her gray pumps are a half-size too small.

At three-ten, the young man in the Ace Courier jacket enters the lobby, looks left and right. He sees her—his eyes giving her body a quick twice-over, once he realizes that the silver hair is attached to a shapely young woman—then approaches, smiling, clipboard in hand.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hello,” she replies.

“Are you Miss O’Malley?”

“Yes, I am,” she says. “I’d like to have a package delivered.”

55

Five O’clock. Paris checks the White Pages. Zero. He runs a computer check on
del Blanco
. Nothing. He runs an Internet search for Ohio and gets nothing. Not a single del Blanco in Ohio.

At five-ten, Paris learns that two agents from the Cleveland field office of the FBI are meeting with all unit commanders. Paris had expected it, although it means he will soon be a back-bencher on this case. There is evidence of serial murder here, plus a lot of forensic material with which the lab at the Justice Center is ill equipped to deal.

And what to do with what he found in Mike Ryan’s safe? Was Mike Ryan killed for messing up a search warrant? Is this enough to activate the investigation into Mike’s murder? And wouldn’t producing a stolen police report that was in Mike Ryan’s possession just smear his name further?

On the other hand, how could the fact that Anthony del Blanco once lived in the Reginald Building be coincidence?

Five-thirty. The photographs of the victims, along with all the other players, and potential players, are in a loose square on the floor in Paris’s office. As are all of the sketches. Furniture has been pushed to the walls. Paris circles the pictures, stalking the clue hidden there.

A grim spectacle stares up at him. Faces of the dead.

Sarah Weiss.
Burned to death in a car
.

Michael Ryan.
Shot in the head
.

Willis Walker.
Bludgeoned and castrated
.

Isaac Levertov.
Strangled
.

Edith Levertov.
Broken neck
.

Fayette Martin. Paris pauses, as he has every time he has looked at her picture, and considers those innocent eyes. Someone had looked deeply into those eyes, seen the life there, and then slaughtered her.

And then there is Jeremiah Cross.

If the little girl in that photo is Sarah Weiss, then she is central to this. And if Sarah Weiss ever had an advocate, literally and spiritually, it is Jeremiah Cross.

Paris asks himself: What do we know about Jeremiah Cross?

We know that Jeremiah Cross just
happened
to appear like magic on the Cleveland high-profile defense scene when Mike Ryan was killed. We know that Jeremiah Cross blames the department for his client’s suicide. We know that Jeremiah Cross has a hard-on for Paris every time they see each other. We know that Jeremiah Cross could easily fit the general description of the hot dog vendor. We know that Jeremiah Cross shares a last initial with the man, “Mr. Church,” who had called before Christmas and warned Paris of the
ofún
.

Church.

Cross.

Religious terms.

But, if Sarah Weiss changed her name from Blanco, why Cross? Why would he pick that name? What is Cross in German?

No idea.

And what about Spanish? What is Cross in Spanish?

No, Paris thinks. Don’t
even
go there.

He looks once again at the photograph of Lydia del Blanco and her two children. Knowing it’s a long shot, and deciding to keep it to himself for the time being, he picks up the phone, punches Tonya Grimes’s number. Tonya is one of the two investigators on duty.

“Grimes.”

“Tonya, Jack Paris.”

“Hi, handsome. What can I do you out of?”

“Two things. One, I need a full workup on a Jeremiah Cross, local attorney.” He spells it. “All I have is a PO box in Cleveland Heights.”

“That’s it?”

“Sorry.” Paris gives her the box number.

“No sweat. Don’t need more than that when Tonya is on ya.”

“That’s why we call.”

“And you need it . . . when?”

“Any time this year,” Paris says, treading lightly.

Tonya laughs. “
Boy
are you lucky that law enforcement is my first and only love.”

“We love you on six, Tonya. You know that.”