The Immorality Clause (27 page)

I gave him everything I knew. When I was finished, he whistled. “That’s some mighty fine detective work, Forrest…if it pans out. If not, we’ll look like the biggest conspiracy theorists in the police department.”

“It makes sense, Chief. This guy is an anti-droid religious nut who wants to stop the Pope from calling for the legalization of robotic sex companions to help end human trafficking.”

“I’ll talk to Judge Carlson
and coordinate everything through the Metairie Police Department. If we find anything, I’ll have to give Cruz credit for the case; you’re suspended.”

“I don’t care. I just want this guy stopped. He’s killed eight people that we know of, and tried to kill me twice. He has to be stopped.”

TWENTY: SATURDAY

I hung up the line with Alfonso Cruz and scratched at the three-day growth of a beard on my neck. It was really starting to bother me and I needed to shave it off before I went crazy.

I had no desire to endanger the Khalil’s or Teagan further, so I’d sat around my apartment for the past day and a half after I visited the home of Harold Wilson and spoke to his daughter. The sense of helplessness and lack of fresh air were starting to get to me. I wanted to be out on the case so I could nail the killer, but Chief Brubaker had specifically ordered me not to interfere with the investigation or to visit any of the places where I thought Wilson or the droid, Bobby, might show up.

My lifeline to the outside world was the updates that Cruz and Sergeant Drake gave me. Wilson’s home had been packed with computer equipment and a quick field-search of the files showed that he was potentially capable of hacking into both Cybertronic Solutions and Cooper-Smith Personal Services robots. There were multiple systems with several layers of security and it would likely take our tech guys a while to break into it.

What made Wilson the number one suspect—the only suspect—in the case was a transfer of fifty thousand dollars from his ministry account to an unknown source the same day of the deposit to Jacqueline Wolfe’s account and then it was transferred back into the ministry account from another unknown source within hours of her murder. We had a significant clue, but as of yet, no way to follow the money due to the encryption he’d used. The tech guys assured Cruz that was only a matter of time. Time that we didn’t have.

When combined with the temporary presence of a missing droid that may or may not have murdered Jacqueline Wolfe at his home and Wilson’s sudden disappearance, and I felt we had enough evidence against the guy to justify issuing a warrant for his arrest… The problem was that we couldn’t find him.

Despite what he’d told his family, the men’s retreat wasn’t occurring this weekend. There was one scheduled for next month, not this one. When presented with that information, Wilson’s wife defended him, saying that he must be away on a planning committee then, but was unable to contact him due to the ranch’s isolation. The state police were supposed to send out a patrol car to the ranch yesterday. Cruz hadn’t heard the results of that visit yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t bother to send anyone out to Hahnville; the Louisiana State Police were notorious for slacking on investigations where they weren’t the lead agency.

So that left me sitting around my apartment going stir crazy. Andi told me to go for a walk or to the gym to get out some of my frustration, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I wanted to be ready to go out to the place of arrest the moment it occurred.

After an unsatisfying meal of Chinese delivery, I took a shower and put on the most nondescript clothing I owned to help me blend into the crowd for the parade. The Pope was expected to travel through the French Quarter, following the same route as the Mardi Gras parade for the past forty years, and then follow St. Charles Avenue all the way over to the Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church in Uptown.

The parade wasn’t scheduled to be broadcast live, so I didn’t think Wilson would attempt the assassination today. I decided to attend the parade and then stop by the cathedral afterwards to get a feel for the Pope’s security. The NOPD’s resources would be spread incredibly thin tomorrow with both the Pope and the Secretary of Energy at different local venues, as well as canvassing Easytown to stop the murder that was scheduled down there. If there were any weaknesses in the security plan, I’d pass them along to the department.

“I’m heading out, Andi.”

“Alright. I’ll monitor all police frequencies, television and radio broadcasts and attempt to intercept any network traffic regarding the Pope’s visit. If Wilson is talking or if anyone notices anything out of the ordinary, then I’ll know.”

“Sounds good.”

“The hallway is clear, boss.”

The Ford took me to the corner of St. Charles and Martin Luther King Jr., dropping me off like a ten-dollar hooker on the curb. I was three hours early for the parade, but the crowd was already beginning to swell. I wanted to be in the area, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sit around with nothing to do, so I went to the National World War Two Museum, which displayed ancient tanks, planes and boats from a particularly heinous war in the twentieth century. The US teamed up with several other nations, including Russia, to attack Germany and Japan. It took four years of heavy fighting, but we were eventually victorious.

Interestingly, WWII was the first time a nuclear weapon was used in combat. The Russians, Chinese and Indians blew that little statistic out of the water in World War Three. They’d let so many nukes fly that whole swaths of the three countries would be uninhabitable for centuries. In the end, all three nations achieved their goal of population reduction.

The museum helped me waste two hours and concreted my belief that good people could overcome consummate evil, such as the Axis Powers. When I walked back outside, the crowds made it hard to move. I pushed my way through several knots of onlookers and eventually found myself about four arm lengths’ away from the barrier to the street.

It was the perfect vantage point to keep an eye on both the crowd and the Pope when he came by in the so-called “Pope Mobile.”

Above us, police and news network drones floated, scanning the crowds lining the avenue. The facial recognition software was likely running overtime with the sheer number of people waiting to see the Pope.

After another ten or fifteen minutes of getting jostled by the press of bodies, several dark hoverskiffs appeared overhead, advancing slowly in line with one another. A member of the famed Swiss Guard drove each skiff and an NOPD sniper rode in the crowd control seat behind the driver. They weren’t taking any chances.

More hoverskiffs appeared, flying in a loose oval above an enclosed white skiff, hovering less than ten feet off the avenue. Garish golden crosses adorned the corners of the Pope Mobile and a small trail of white smoke jetted in front of the vehicle. From the distance of a block away I could see that a man in white robes stood on the skiff waving to the crowd.

As they neared, I could clearly see that it was Pope John Paul. He looked older and more hunched over than he did on television and I wondered if they doctored all of the footage of him before it went public. The Pope waved and the crowd surged around me, jumping into the air to be seen by him. Small, handheld cameras appeared everywhere at once, as people recorded their encounter with the head of Earth’s second largest religion. Some of the scented smoke drifted over me as they passed and a woman beside me screamed as if she were at a concert. I guess this
was
a concert-like event for the devout.

It seemed like a lot of work to see a man in a floating glass box to me.

Then, just like that, he was past my point of view on route to the church. Several more of the Swiss Guard hoverskiffs glided soundlessly overhead as the papal rear guard. Men and women craned their necks to see the last remnants of the Pope on his skiff.

Once he was gone, people began to talk to one another excitedly and I moved through the crowd toward the rear. I’d seen the Pope and his high-tech security, but I wondered if any of it would do him any good tomorrow.

I scouted the St. Louis Cathedral before going home for the night. A sign out front said that the cathedral was open to the public until 7 p.m. so I slipped through the massive front doors.

The inside was huge. I wasn’t expecting it to be so large and open; I’d thought the inside would be more compartmentalized. If Wilson made his move inside the cathedral, the size and crowd of people would make things much more difficult.

The main room had row upon row of heavy wooden pews. I walked down the checkerboard marble floor between two angel statues, each holding a bucket with what looked like water inside. When I got to the nearest bench, I let my hand trail down to the wood. It was thick and sturdy; the pews would stop anything up to a 9-millimeter bullet.

I sat heavily near the aisle and thought about what I’d do if I were in Wilson’s shoes. He obviously wanted this to be as public as possible, so it wouldn’t be anything mundane like a simple gunshot assassination. No, if I were planning this, I’d make it a publicly viewed hostage situation and take advantage of the television cameras that were sure to blanket this place tomorrow. I’d bring my agenda into the home of every person with a television screen.

But, that didn’t quite fit with the little bit that I knew of Harold Wilson. He seemed to be a devout man, in his own way. What I knew of religious extremists came primarily from the department’s classes on antiterrorism. Someone who was a fundamentalist couldn’t be convinced of the error of their ways. They believed in a higher calling than anything on this earth—and they typically liked to be flashy about the things they did. My blood froze as I stared vacantly across the open sanctuary.

Wilson was going to use explosives to kill as many people as possible. I was sure of it.

A shadow darkened my periphery and I looked up to see a priest in a simple black outfit with a small white square at his throat.

“Can I help you, my son?”

I stared at him mutely, a vision of blood pouring from the pores of his face. I wanted to scream that everyone was in danger and that the priest of the church needed to tell the Pope’s security to change the venue. I wanted to turn him away from this place and to keep the church’s parishioners safe by cordoning off the building. I didn’t. Instead, I kept quiet so as not to incite panic.

The priest adjusted a knob on the small translator system on his belt and spoke again. I heard his voice ask me again if he could help me, this time in Spanish.

“I can speak English, Padre. I’m just thinking.”

“Oh, then by all means, reflect and contemplate all that you need to. I have to lock up, but you may stay as long as your need to speak to the Lord keeps you.”

“Are you excited that the Pope is coming here tomorrow?” I asked.

“Of course! We are ecstatic that the Holy Father chose our cathedral as the location for his speech tomorrow night.”

“Is he going to be speaking inside the church or out front?”

The priest stepped away from me slightly with a questioning look on his face. I pulled out my badge. “It’s okay. I’m a cop. I want to attend the speech tomorrow, but I’m trying to see if I should arrive early enough to get a spot inside.”

“Ah. He will be speaking from outside, with the cathedral as a backdrop. We have drones that will hold a giant tarp up high to keep the rain off the dais and not interfere with the scene of our lovely building.”

“
Hmpf
,” I grunted as I stood. “Makes it easier on me then. I’ll just arrive a few hours early to make sure I get a good spot.”

“You’d be better off spending the night. We expect a crowd of at least fifty thousand and we already have several hundred—maybe even a thousand—set up in Jackson Square.”

I’d noticed the people, but hadn’t given much thought to them.
What if Wilson is already here?

I stood and slapped the back of the pew in front of me. “I’ve got to go, Father. See you around.”

Before the priest could ask me any questions about the security of the facility or his parishioners, I made my way out of the cathedral. Once outside, I began to walk around the square, idly attempting to identify Wilson or the droid.

After a quarter of the way around the perimeter, I stopped. “This is pointless,” I muttered.

“What’s pointless, Zach?”

“Andi? What are you doing on the line?”

“You had me stay connected during the parade and we never disconnected the link after that.”

She
did
have a point. I never told her to hang up and go do…whatever it was that she did when I wasn’t around. It actually worked to my advantage.

“I need you to access the security cameras in Jackson Square. Target is Harold Wilson and the Cybertronic Solutions droid, Bobby.”

“Understood. Give me a moment.”

I made my way toward the center of the square so I could move in any direction once Andi gave me the results.

It didn’t take her long. “I’ve analyzed the last six hours of footage at Jackson Square. The killer does not appear to be in the area.”