MASS MURDER (25 page)

Tony sat on his knees above Grosvner who lay prone on the floor with his eyes closed.

Giorgio glanced at
the dog with little enthusiasm.

“What is it?”

“He plays dead.”

“He did it on his own,” Marie interjected.
“Tony just said bang and he dropped down like he was dead!”

She clapped her hands and Grosvner came to life, wiggling his way into her lap.

“You guys should get ready for bed.
Which one of y
ou wants to take a bath first?”

“I’ll go,” Tony said.
“C’mon, Grosvner!”

The children raced out of the room
with
the dog hot on their heels.
Giorgio watched the canine heft his way up the stairs in lumbering pursuit.
He smiled in spite of his black mood until a quiet voice interrupted his thoughts.

“A small bottle of perfume or a little necklace wou
ld have been more appropriate.”

Angie stood looking down on him, her eyes devoid of their normal luster.
The light at the desk had been turned off and her bills put away.

“What d’you mean?”
Her reprimands confused him.
They always had.

“You missed Marie singing in the choir.
The dog doesn’t make up for that.
And it doesn’t make up for your boorish behavior this morning.”

She turned to leave
but
he stood and grabbed her hand.

“Angie, I’m sorry.
I
told you, I got the dog for you.
I
thought
it would make you happy
.”

 
She pulled her
hand away before turning back.

“You don’t get it, do you Joe?
I don’t care about the dog.
What I care about is that you don’t want this baby.”

With that, she left the room.
He was about to go after her when the phone rang.
It was Swan calling with the preliminary report from the coroner.
Giorgio listened, torn between the information he needed to solve a murder and the retreating image of his wife.

“Mallery Olsen was strangled sometime between
four and nine o’clock last night
,” Swan reported.
“There was no evidence of a struggle
,
but Chloral Hydrate was found in her system along w
ith a small amount of alcohol.”

Giorgio’s interest was piqued.
Chloral Hydrate was a knock out drug
.

“What about the ligature mark?”

“According to the coroner
,
her assailant
had to be several inches
taller and strangled her from behind.
A small bone in her neck was actually fractured.”

“Nothing under her fingernails?”

“Like I said
-
no signs of a struggle.”

“Okay, thanks.
I’ll see you in the morning.”

Giorgio hung up and went to the refrigerator for a glass of milk.
The fact that Mallery Olsen’s assailant was much taller wasn’t surprising.
She probably didn’t stand much over five feet
tall
.
The narcotic found in her bloodstream proved more interesting.

The children’s laughter
floated down from the floor above
,
and h
e threw the dirty glass in the dishwasher and climbed the stairs.
When he opened the bathroom door
,
a s
uffocating burst of s
team enveloped him.
T
he wrangling bodies of Marie and Tony
were barely visible,
draped over
a stoic
Grosvner
standing in the middle of the bath tub
.
A
lthough soapsuds covered his back and slid down one ear
, the dog seemed sublimely happy
.
W
ater
blanketed
the tiled floor as Tony and Marie busily worked at rinsing him.
Grosvner turned towards Giorgio, his rear end moving from side to side with the rhythmic motion of his tail.
His eyes said it all.
He was home.

Giorgio knew he should scold the kids for m
aking such a mess, but instead
told them to
skip their own baths and
dry off
the dog.
He found Angie already in bed with the lights out
,
images of the
intimate
night before fading lik
e so many high school memories.
Since
Angie
never retired before ten o’clock, he recognized this for the message it was.
He
returned to the bathroom where
Tony was
working
on
Grosvner with a
plush towel
while Marie wiped up the floor.
Always neat and tidy that Marie.
Just like her mother.

“
Good enough.
You kids get in bed.”

“
But Dad, it’s too early,” Tony groaned.

“Close enough.
You have school tomorrow.”

“
Who gets Grosvner?”

A
lways the equalizer
that Tony
.
Everything had to be fair and Giorgio anticipated future struggles over the dog.

“I do.
I have to go back to work.
I’ll take him with me.”

Tony threw a disappointed look over his shoulder and
finished rubbing down the dog.
With a scowl, he gave Grosvner a hug and
disappeared down the hallway.
Five minutes later, Giorgio was kissing the kids good night.
Grosvner accompanied him, licking each small hand.

“Is Mama mad?”

Marie was tucked beneath her pink butterfly comforter with only those brown eyes to tell him she suspected more than she should.
The question made him pau
se as he reached for the light.

“I think she’s just tired.”

“I don’t think she likes the dog.”

She turned over and disappeared into balloons of colorful, tufted cotton.
He looked at the spray of honey brown hair across her pillow thinking she wasn’t much younger than Angie when they first met.
Angie was eleven.
He was twelve.
The two
had
met at a church social when they reached for the same meatball on the buffet table.
The coincidence made them giggle helplessly until they were forced to hide themselves in a corner.
They spent the rest of the evening talking about baseball.
Soon, they began walking to school and doing their homework together.
They were inseparable
, at least
until Giorgio was old enough to date.
Then, whenever Giorgio called, Angie was busy.
Giorgio spent most of his teens confused about Angie.
Yet, w
hen h
is
father was killed at a police standoff
when he was sixteen,
Angie sat with him all night
after the funeral
looking through family picture albums, allowing him to s
ort
through a mixture of sadness and anger.
She was the one person who had never made him feel inadequate or foolis
h
.

Six months a
fter his father’s death,
Giorgio’s mother
extracted a p
romise
that he w
ould enter the priesthood
after college.
Begrudgingly, he allowed her to believe in that dream until
he was eighteen and getting ready to select a seminary school.
Instead, he decided to
become a policeman
like his father
.
He made a special trip to Angie’s apartment
to
tell her
and was
shocked
when she ran from the room crying.
It would be ten years before she confessed she shared his mother’s fear of losing him the way he’d lost his father.
Thinking back to that moment, he realized
Angie’s sensitivity balanced his lack of it.
Now, when she needed him most, he’d failed her, and it was eating him up.

He turned off Marie’s light and closed the door.
Stealing only a quick glance at the master bedroom, he descended the stairs
, checked to make sure Grosvner was dry enough to venture outside,
and decided to head back to the monastery.
Perhaps by the time he returned, Angie would be in a deep sleep and he could slip into bed unnoticed.

H
e parked down t
he hill from the retreat center
and left
Grosvner in the car while he
trudged
up the drive
in a growing mist
.
Several cars were parked at the front entrance, including a stretch limo decorated with white streamers.
They’d released
all but the back hallway and closet
earlier in the day, allowing a scheduled event to take place.
Looking at the gathering fog, it seemed like an odd night to be getting married, especially on the heels of a murder.

Giorgio cut through the staff parking lot in the direction of the flower garden thinking he’d map the grounds at night in an attempt to see things as the killer had.
He climbed
the short path
and
stopped near an ivy-covered trellis
to look
back at the building, noting again how little light there was around the grounds.
Only a low wattage bulb hung above the kitchen door and the short walkway lamps that marked the path around the building were practically useless.
None of the other paths were lit
.
T
he mass of trees, bushes and statues that filled the gardens and planters obscured everything, a fact probably not lost on the killer.