MASS MURDER (4 page)

“When?”

“About nine o’clock.
A woman
was strangled and h
ung by her bra in a supply closet.”

Rocky shoved his hands into his coat pockets.
“Jesus, Jo Jo.
Not many murders at a Catholic monastery.
Can I tag along?
Maybe I could help.”

Giorgio sighed
knowing he couldn’t avoid this one. “Yeah.
Let me tell Angie.
We’ll take Rocky’s truck.”

“There’s one more thing,” Maxwell said, glancing a second time at Samson. “The tip of her little finger was cut off.
We can’t find it.”

This information was met with a long moment of silence.
Giorgio
felt
a deep chill settle into his bones.

“We’ll meet you up there,” Giorgio said briskly.

Samson nodded
,
and the two officers returned to the squad car while Giorgio went to relay the disappointing news to his wife.
He’d known Angie since before Junior High School, and she’d endured a lifetime of sleepless nights while he labored over hopeless and sometimes grisly murder investigations in New York City.
The last case had nearly killed him with a bullet wound to the chest.
He’d promised things would change.
The move to
California
was part of that promise.
But he didn’t have a good feeling about this one making him wish he could blow it off and go for ice cream instead.

Angie got out
of the car as he approached
and switched to the driver’s side, a look of solemn resignation on her face.
He
reached in and quickly unlocked the glove compartment
to
remove his gun and his badge and then
caught up to
Angie
as she
climb
ed
inside.

“I hope it won’t be too late.”

“I won’t wait up.
I teach Sunday school tomorrow.”
She offered her cheek for a quick kiss and then slid behind the wheel.
“Just be careful.”

Her brown eyes impaled him with reproach
. With a flick of her wrist,
the car’s engine roared to life
,
and she backed out of the parking space.
Giorgio watched his family drive away in the direction of the only restaurant in town open this late
,
knowing the bloom of his perf
orman
ce would be dulled by morning.

H
e
started
for
Rocky’s truck
just as
a heady gust of wind
force
d
its way through the t
rees like a runaway locomotive. A
metallic clinking
sound caught
Giorgio’s
attention
. H
e turned
to
squint
into the wind
. A
small object rattled its way down the walkway.
When it reached the curb, it flipped off the sidewalk
and landed
at his feet.
Curious, Giorgio bent over and picked it up.
It was an antique brass button encrusted with age, its rounded edges battered and bent.
One side was polished smooth with fo
ur hollow eyes for thread holes. T
he image on the other side caused gooseflesh to crawl up his arms.

It was an elaborate Latin cross.
The kind usually displayed at Catholic churches.

Chapter Three

The deed was done.
From recognition, to planning, to implementation, it had all taken less than
ninety
minutes to eliminate a threat, secure his identity
,
and craft a coded message that would reach the other side of the country.
Not bad.
Not bad at all.

He’d slipped in and out of the closet with the dead girl flung across his shoulders.
No one had even noticed.
Then he’d made it back to his room, stashed the disguise
,
and returned to his previous activities without a question from anyone
.
Fucking amazing.
Now, he waited patiently to be interviewed by the police and continue the charade.
Life was good.

Occasional voices echoed at the far end of the hallway
, t
hen faded to silence.
What the hell was taking so long?
The time spent cooling his heels had all but dulled his senses.
Frankly, it was pissing him off.
He stood up and rolled his neck in frustration.
H
is blood began to flow
again
, bringing his muscles back to life.
It was a far cry from the buzz he’d felt after killing the girl.
After that, he’d been forced to dance around the room to use up excess energy.
He couldn’t afford to appear manic when the body was found.
Manic might have put even these idiots on alert.
So, he’d exhaled slowly
and counted
backwards.
Minutes later
,
he’d
rejoin
ed
the group downstairs as if nothing had happened.

He’d almost regretted the deceleration, because for him the risk of getting caught had become a drug.
It was all about the art of getting away with the deception.
The feints.
The parries.
The near misses.
In grade school, he’d taken great pleasure in setting up his classmates
by s
tealing from someone’s locker
, s
preading rumors
, or p
lacing blame
on someone else
for practical jokes.
Most of the time
,
no one knew who the culprit was,
not
even
his victims.
By the time he was in college, he’d used that cleverness to make a name for himself in the theater, feeding off the tension just before stepping onstage.
Would he drop a line?
Would the audience see past his disguise?
Or
,
could he defraud them once again and make them believe the lies?
Eventually, he’d entered law school and found he excelled at mock trials.
One of his professors had even nicknamed him “The Closer” because of the ease with which he could craft a closing argument from either point of view.
It was a gift he now took for granted.

When the girl’s body was finally discovered tonight, he was back downstairs giving a perfectly choreographed response, indistinguishable from the rest of the Greek tragic masks in the room.
When the police arrived, they’d quickly sent everyone to their rooms.
That was over an hour ago.
Now, h
e wanted back in the game.

H
e moved to the window
as a way to ignore
the
urge to open the door. H
is gaze f
ell
on the darkened shadow of the statue of Christ rising from the center of the garden below.
A bent figure sat
in the shadows
.
It was a monk, praying no doubt for the soul of the dead girl.
Or, perhaps he was praying for the soul of the monastery itself now that a murder had taken place there.

The solemn picture of the monk stirred fleeting images of his father on the steps of St. Anthony’s Cathedral when he was just seven years old.
It was a scene that played often in his mind.
His father
had been talking to the priest
when a
car
had
appeared out of nowhere, screeching around the corner and careening past the broken steps of the church.
A flurry of bullets had erupted f
rom a darkened window, rip
ping through his father’s chest
and slamming his body against the large cathedral doors.
Father Allejandro stood untouched by the carnage
,
but his
mother’s scream
as
she dropped to her knees
still reverberated in his ears
.
For one brief moment, his father’s eyes had fluttered open to search the nearby faces, finally landing on that of his only son.

“Il vostro
percorso ẻ scelto, Cato” he’d whispered.
Your path is chosen
, Cato
.

His father had used a family nickname to emphasize the words that would provide a roadmap for the next fifteen years of his life
.

H
e pushed off the wall and paced the floor
. He was on edg
e. In the closet was the
small padded envelope
with
the blood
-
soaked baggie and severed finger.
He remembered holding that delicate finger many years before, remembered it stroking parts of his body.
He flexed the muscles on the back of his right hand
at the thought
,
putting into motion the tattoo of an eagle.
Pity he hadn’t had time tonight to revisit the pleasures of his youth.
Pity there was no time now to satisfy the urge he felt at thinking of her.
But the voices next door signaled the police were close.
So as quickly as the thought arose,
he deflected it
.
Discipline
.
That’s what his uncle would reward.

When his uncle came to mind, he thought again about
the padded envelope.
It w
ould be mailed to
the Sierra Madre Police Department in the morning to create chaos.
His lips curled into a smile.
The police were no threat.
They were small town cops who were more used to handling domestic disputes than solving a homicide.
The envelope would serve as a diversionary tactic.
And it would send a message.
In the end, the case would go unsolved
,
and he
woul
d be able to resurface using this new identity.