SISTER (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 4) (12 page)

“I haven’t gone to Chicago yet, but from what I know, the murder of Variale fits the pattern.”

“What pattern?”

“All the victims were killed in locations that could easily, and quickly, be reconnoitered. I don’t think our boy sticks around too long. He’s just passing through. Like you said, these women here lead a structured life, almost right down to the minute. Our killer would know that a postulant would be tending the garden, and when. It’s all about timing with him. He wants it quick. No sex. No mutilation. I don’t think he cares who he is killing, as long as they’re clergy.”

***

I drove back into Denver. I’d asked Delaney for hotel and dining recommendations. We’d both skipped lunch, and while it didn’t seem to bother the string-bean Delaney, my stomach sounded like an approaching thunder storm.

“It’s a little pricey, but you can kill two birds with the same stone at the Brown Palace Hotel. Its Ship Tavern has great food.”

The hotel turned out to be a green-awninged, red-brick, triangular building at the corner of Tremont and 17th Street. It looked like a shorter version of the Flatiron Building in Manhattan. Inside, a huge lobby was surrounded on three sides by a soaring atrium. The decorations, carpets and furniture were from another era. I felt like I’d stepped into an Edith Wharton novel.

After dropping my stuff in my room, I headed to the Ship Tavern, ready to eat a bar stool. The bartender talked me into the house specialty drink, a Johnny Walker Manhattan. I have nothing against Johnny Walker, but a Manhattan made with scotch shouldn’t work. But this one did. The second one worked even better. I ordered another local favorite, the Grand Range Buffalo Burger, with all the trimmings. The burger came on a house-made bun and was large enough to explain why buffaloes almost became extinct, if you didn’t know the real reason.

The bartender was chatty. He asked me if I would be in town long.

“Just the night.”

“Where you headed?”

“Chicago.”

“What’s in Chicago?”

“A dead brother.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, pal.”

It didn’t seem worth it to clear up the misunderstanding. There was an attractive woman sitting next to me at the bar, sipping something green in a martini glass. She leaned toward me. I smelled lilacs. She was wearing a strapless white chiffon cocktail dress with a wide black belt and sling-back shoes to match.

“I couldn’t help but overhear,” she said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She had blond hair and little freckles on her cute little nose. As she leaned forward, I also noted some freckles in her cleavage. I caught a whiff of honeysuckle. Donna Karan? Alice sometimes uses that perfume.

“Were you close?”

She had a wide, pleasant face. I wondered if she was a hooker. That didn’t mean her concern wasn’t genuine. Hookers have hearts.

“Didn’t even know him,” I replied. “We had different fathers.”

“Well, it’s nice that you’re going to the funeral.”

“Different mothers, too,” I said.

She and the bartender looked at me.

“That’s really fucked up,” she said, and they both left me alone after that.

CHAPTER 19 - CHICAGO

When I landed at Chicago’s O'Hare International Airport the next morning, I called the city cop I’d previously been in touch with, a homicide detective name Danny Bett. 

“Things have changed, pal,” Bett said. “Be a waste of your time and mine to get together. I’m not being a prick. Just go talk to the F.B.I. guys. They’re all over this serial killer thing. Everything we have, they have. Everything we get, they get. If I caught the creep while he was boning my wife, they’d take the credit. For the collar, and the boning.”

He gave me a name and directions to the Chicago office of the F.B.I. and said he’d call over there and let them know I was on the up and up. I thanked him.

“Don’t forget to get a haircut and polish your shoes,” he added.

As I drove across the bustling city, I recalled the first lines of Carl Sandburg’s famous poem:

Hog Butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
      Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
      Stormy, husky, brawling,
      City of the Big Shoulders

To which I could have added:
City of Traffic Jams
. But I finally reached the F.B.I. building, a modern glass-and-steel, 14-story edifice on West Roosevelt that looked like a cross between a Lego set and a Rubik’s Cube. An all-too-perky receptionist in the lobby took my name, perused my I.D. and asked me what I wanted.

“I would like to speak to someone in the I.R.S.”

“This is the F.B.I., sir.”

“I know,” I said, looking around. “I was just making an observation about how my tax dollars are spent.”

“How can I help you, sir?”

Slightly less perky.

“I’d like to see Special Agent Joseph Loccisano.”

“What’s this in reference to?”

“The Lindbergh kidnapping. I know who did it.”

Her eyes widened.

“Just a moment, sir.”

***

“The Lindberg kidnapping?” Loccisano said, laughing, when he ushered me into his small fourth-floor office. “It will be all over the building in an hour.”

“Wait until they start Googling it,” I said.

Loccisano was a tall, good-looking guy with a thick head of black hair.  

“You know, some people still believe Bruno Richard Hauptmann was railroaded into the electric chair,” he said. “Even J. Edgar had his doubts.”

The “Richard” impressed me.

“It didn’t help Hauptmann’s case that they found $15,000 of the ransom money in his house,” I said

“Yeah. I wish we had something like that in this clergy case. I read the stuff the Worcester cops sent over.” He pointed at a folder on his desk. “I’m a little unclear exactly what your part is in all of this, Rhode.”

I told him what I had been doing, and why.

“That’s tough about your old girlfriend. But it doesn’t sound like you’ve made much progress.”

“Have you guys?”

“No,” he admitted.

“What about your crackerjack profilers? On TV they can figure out what a serial killer’s shoe size is by the second commercial.”

“I hate those shows,” Loccisano said. “They raise the public’s expectations to unreasonable levels. Our guys are not having much luck on this one. If there’s a pattern, other than the religious thing, they can’t see it.”

I mentioned Mac’s hypothesis about the first murder, on a Wednesday, being atypical because it was probably done close to the killer’s home.

“The others were on weekends,” I said. “Combine that with the reality that the killer moves from city to city and probably doesn’t stick around. It has to mean something.”

Loccisano shook his head.

“I heard about the airline thing, from those cops in Worcester. They suggested we should look for a left-handed airline pilot who was in Denver, Chicago and Boston on the dates of the murders.” He laughed. “We actually did it! We narrowed it down to pilots flying out of San Francisco, near where the first murder was. Came up with a couple of names. Who had rock-solid alibis.”

That might have been the craziest thing I ever heard. But the fact that the F.B.I. was willing to go down that road was an indication of how desperate they were.

“Tell me about the Prospect Heights murder.”

Loccisano leaned back in his seat and put his hands behind his head.

“Brother Alfred Variale lived in a retirement home run by his order, the Brothers of the Cross, or Traicerian Brothers, which apparently comes from the Latin for the word cross. He had only gone into the home a few months before he was killed, after a long teaching career that included postings in Africa and South America. In the United States he had taught biology and physics at high schools in Maryland and Ohio. We checked everything we could. Not a black mark anywhere against the man. No scandals, no enemies. Not much in the way of family. A couple of nieces and nephews, all in their 60’s, none within a thousand miles of Chicago.”

“I’m having a hard time believing no one saw anything, remembered a stranger, anything. How busy could the place be? I don’t imagine old clergy have that many visitors.”

“That’s what I thought, at first. But the home doesn’t only serve brothers from his order. They take in brothers and priests from other orders as well. And Sunday is a busy day. Local schools send kids in to interact with the residents and keep them busy. Parish groups like the Rosary and Altar Society also stop by with cookies and stuff. Our guy could just walk around and pick someone at random and be gone before anyone noticed. I mean, who goes into a nursing home to kill people who are almost dead?”

Random. There was that word again. What kind of serial killer kills so randomly, basically picking targets of opportunity? I asked Loccisano if he had ever come across anything like that.

“It’s a pattern of sorts,” I said.

“A random pattern, Rhode. Jesus. That’s even better than a left-handed pilot serial killer.” He smiled. “I heard that you were doing this on your own dime.”

“That’s right.”

“You may be overpaid.”

I thanked him and drove my rental car to Prospect Heights, about 30 miles northwest of city center. On the way I reflected on that fact. All the murders seemed to be at a drivable distance from major cities: San Francisco, Denver, Chicago and Boston. Like everything else, I didn’t know what that meant. If anything.

I assumed it was a waste of time, but I wanted to visit the nursing home where Brother Variale was killed.

I knew Prospect Heights was a tony suburb, but I wasn’t prepared for the splendor of some of the homes. The All Saints Home and Hospice was on Euclid Avenue, just down the block from the Memory Gardens Cemetery. Convenient. The home itself did nothing to detract from the neighborhood. It looked like a small castle. All it lacked was a moat. The separation of church and state in the United States doesn’t extend to the tax-free status all religions enjoyed. I always wondered about that.  Well, I suppose it helps a few soup kitchens.

No one stopped me when I walked in, and I roamed the halls at will. I was a bit surprised by that. Variale’s murder hadn’t been that long ago. But I guess it was back to business, or dying, as usual. I looked in several rooms. Several older men looked up expectantly and smiled, obviously hoping I was there to visit. When I moved on, I could see the disappointment in their eyes. Lonely, they might have even welcomed me if I was brandishing an ice pick. Others just stared at me vacantly, or were asleep.

For whoever killed Variale, it would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Was he asleep? Or did he look up with a smile trying to place his visitor. Not that it mattered. A quick, sharp thrust and it was over. No sound. Little, if any, pain. But I was sure compassion had nothing to do with it. For the killer, it was all about escape.

***

I had hoped to catch a late flight out of O’Hare, but a major Midwestern storm, which produced tornado warnings as far north as Illinois, had backed up flights by four hours. Mine was finally canceled. I grabbed a bite standing up at a crowded airport Chili’s and managed to get a room at a nearby Motel 6. I fell asleep listening to the orgasmic sounds of a couple in the next room.

The weather, my bad luck and unhealthy eating continued the next day at O’Hare. I didn’t get back to Boston until almost 6 P.M. Friday, a full day later than I expected. I considered picking up my car at the Long Wharf Marriott and heading home. But by now my valet parking bill was so large it made another night’s stay seem more reasonable than driving back to New York in the frazzled condition I was in. I probably would have fallen asleep somewhere in Connecticut. So, I checked in again and walked to Faneuil Hall.

I found a small cafe in the marketplace that served Sam Adams in tankards. I sat outside and ordered a dozen oysters and a crab cake sandwich and tried to decompress. The marketplace was crowded and I watched excited young couples walk as I ate. I thought of Alice, and wished she was with me. I also thought of Ronnie, and wished I had done a better job. If there was a better job to be done. Then I walked back to my hotel and watched the Mets pounding the Red Sox at Citi Field in New York. I found some solace in that, although I would rather it had been the Yankees doing the pounding. But it was inter-league play and the Mets pitcher, a kid named Harvey, was the real deal. He mowed down the Bosox with a combination of 98-mile-an-hour fastballs, 90-mile-an-hour sliders and an 82-mile-an-hour change-up that had some Boston sluggers screwing themselves into the ground because they swung so early. At one point, David Ortiz looked like he wanted to swing twice at the same pitch. I fell asleep in the sixth inning. 

I had another dream.

I was swimming toward Ronnie again at Silver Lake. This time I reached her. But she went under. I dove after her, but couldn’t see anything in the dark waters. Then I looked up. There she was, drifting toward a bright light shining through the surface. I rose after her and could almost touch her feet.

Then I woke up. A shrink would probably say that my dreams about Ronnie represented my inability to find out who killed her. To me, it seemed like she was telling me to let her go. We’d probably both be wrong. It might have just been a bad oyster.

I couldn’t get back to sleep right away. I had a sense of foreboding, recalling that my first dream was on the same night I later learned was the night she was murdered. Finally, I nodded off about 5 A.M.

My cell phone went off at 7 A.M. I groggily assumed it was the wake-up alarm I had set on the iPhone. It took me a few seconds to realize it wasn’t the alarm. It was Cormac.

After I answered groggily, Mac said, “Jeeze Louise, you don’t sound so hot. Rough night? Wait a minute. I forgot you went west. Where are you? What time is it?”

“It’s 7. I’m in Boston.”

“That’s OK then.”

“It’s still early, Mac. The sun’s not even up. Please don’t tell me you’re at work.”

“Irene is in one of her housecleaning frenzies. I’m safer at the office. What do you mean the sun’s not up? Open the blinds.”

“Mac, for the love of God.”  

“Well, I was catching up on the obituaries from yesterday’s
Advance
, checking to see if I was in them, and came across the name Spigarelli. Elizabeth Spigarelli. Veronica Frost’s aunt.”

I knew old people died, but except for her hip and the arthritis Aunt Betsy didn’t seem to be in too bad shape when I spoke to her.

“You sure it’s her?”

“What? You think Staten Island is crawling with people named Spigarelli. It sounds like a pastry. Of course, I checked. Wake up, will you?”

I had a bad feeling.

“How did she die?”

“The paper said she was found dead in her house after an apparent fall.”

I shook off most of the cobwebs.

“Can you get something more specific?”

“I’ll see if I can get a glance at the death certificate. You think something is fishy?”

“I don’t know. Do you? Why did you call me?”

“Thought you should know. The old lady is being waked at Casey Funeral Home on Slossen. They didn’t list any survivors. Sad. Thought you might want to go if you’re back.”