VC03 - Mortal Grace (41 page)

The room with the waterbed and the barbell set and the pink vanity was obviously the master bedroom.

Behind him the sound of
Oprah
came up again, loud.

The room with the toilet was a no-man’s-land of dripping pipes and sweating walls.

The kitchen was a holding cage for flies.

That left one last door, a room with the shade down. He snapped it up and momentum took it whipping around the rod. Sunlight washed across an unmade bunk bed.

Mrs. Snyder came speeding, spinning after him. “Hey—I didn’t see your warrant.”

He flung open the closet door. He estimated two dozen pairs of women’s shoes in the rack—all of them scuffed, most of them open-toed. “I don’t need a warrant. You need a lawyer.”

Her face pumped with goggle-eyed rage. “I happen to be a paralegal with a top Wall Street law firm. My husband’s a certified public accountant. Bonded.”

“Then listen up. Eff Huffington is not just another recession-scarred trick-or-treater getting back in touch with his inner ape. He’s a one-man crime wave and if you protect him you’re both accomplices—and unlike Eff you’re not juveniles, at least not legally, got it?”

Her shoulders writhed inside her Mostly Mozart T-shirt. He braced, not sure what was coming. Her hands yanked the shirt up.

“See?” she screamed. “See what that crazy little shit did to me?” A breast exploded free. She lifted it to show him a colorless three-inch track crosshatched with pink stitching. “He’s a maniac—a monster—I could tell you things about that kid—”

“No, you couldn’t. Put it away.”

She pulled Mozart back down. “He threatened to kill us. Alvin’s a wreck. I’m a wreck.”

“Why’s he going to kill you? Even Eff has a reason.”

“If we ever tell…” She sank onto the bunk.

“Tell what?”

“He doesn’t live here. We haven’t seen him in four months. He said if we ever tell anyone…” She sat wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “You don’t know the things he’s done. He cut a girl’s ear off, that little girl Juanita out in our living room.”

“Where is he now?”

“All he said was”—her words fought through what seemed to be an asthma attack—“in case there was an emergency—”

“Believe me, this is an emergency.”

She pulled a piece of newspaper from a wallet in her hip pocket. Seven barely legible digits had been scrawled in the margin. “He said call this number.”

A woman answered on the second ring. “Pierre Strauss’s office. May I help you?”

What do you know.
“Is he in?”

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Vince Cardozo, Twenty-second Precinct.”

A moment later Strauss came on the line, all phony jocularity. “Yes, Vince.”

“So you take messages for Eff Huffington.”

“I represent Francis Huffington, yes.”

“Why would you want to handle a reptile like that?”

“Every accused person is entitled to a defense.”

“I appreciate the constitutional lecture. I’d appreciate it even more if you’d tell me where your client is. I need to talk to him.”

“Any communication you have for Mr. Huffington can be sent right here, care of my office.”

“He raped a woman.”

“Just give me the time and place of the arraignment, and rest assured my client and I will be there.”

“The lady hasn’t brought charges. She hopes she won’t have to.”

“Fine. Then my client doesn’t have to appear.”

Cardozo slammed down the phone. Rage was running so hard in him that his toes burned from wanting to kick.

He closed his eyes and turned a full circle in his swivel chair. He ran it through his mind and it didn’t make sense.

Pierre Strauss was a high-powered high-ticket civil liberties lawyer. He defended left-wing causes and billionaire gonefs. Eff Huffington wasn’t in either category.

Cardozo went to the computer in the squad room. The amber logo of the resident software glowed out of the blue-green monitor screen.

Greg Monteleone sat dunking a cheese Danish into a paper cup of Pepsi. Cardozo had never understood Greg’s taste in flavor combinations.

“Hey, Greg, mind if I use the computer?”

“Be my guest.”

Cardozo jabbed a finger at the keyboard. A menu appeared on the monitor. He selected the
criminal records
option. He typed the name
Francis Huffington
and pushed
enter.

Eff’s record scrolled up the screen. He had pleaded guilty to two felony charges. In February three years ago there’d been a breaking and entering. In March the year before last there’d been possession of a deadly weapon.

Juvenile Court had suspended both sentences and Eff was currently on probation. The file listed Sy Jencks as the probation officer.

“How about that,” Cardozo said. “Jencks.”

“Who’s Jencks?” Greg spoke through a mouthful of compost.

“He was Pablo Cespedes’s probation officer too.”

Sy Jencks opened the manila folder that contained the probation file on Eff Huffington. “Doesn’t make sense.” He leafed slowly through the sheets. “I can’t believe Eff would mug a priest—and say so. Of all the admissions the kid could possibly make, this one is suicide. Did you actually hear him say this?”

“Not personally,” Cardozo said. “He confessed to a friend of mine.”

“Could I ask what makes you believe your friend?”

“My friend’s a priest.”

“So we’re talking what now—two priests?” Jencks looked up. His pale wry eyes seemed to weigh and then dismiss the possibility that Cardozo was putting him on. “That’s even weirder. The terms of probation are, Eff can’t go near a priest.”

“Why’s that?”

“Clergy used to be his target of choice.” Jencks’s blunt-tipped fingers played with the edges of the file. “Since age twelve he’s been shaking down pedophile priests—and priests who weren’t pedophiles but who were scared of that kind of accusation.”

“This priest was a woman.”

Jencks’s face registered confusion.

“An Episcopal priest. He raped her.”

Jencks sat shaking his head in low-key wonder. “Christ, he barely got acquitted of murdering the last priest he tangled with.”

“Run that by me again?”

Jencks slid the folder across the desk top. “Father Charles Romero.”

“Chuck Romero—over at St. Veronica’s in Queens?”

“You knew him?”

“I spoke with him once.”

“Very popular man with his parishioners…did a lot of work with troubled teens…a real loss to the community.”

Cardozo scanned pages dense with dot-matrix print. “I heard Romero was killed, but I didn’t know there was a sex accusation.”

“It was given very little publicity. The D.A. persuaded the judge to keep the media out of pretrial. The D.A. looks out for the diocese. So do a few of our judges.”

Cardozo turned a page. “I see Eff pleaded self-defense.”

“He was always pleading self-defense. The priest could be ninety years old and in a wheelchair—Eff would still have to fight for his honor. He claimed Father Romero made advances and when he refused, Romero threatened his life.”

“And the jury bought it?”

“The jury never got a chance to buy it. The state dropped charges after three days of pretrial. Eff pleaded guilty to possessing a deadly weapon.”

FIFTY-TWO

C
ARDOZO FOUND THE NUMBER
in the D.A.’s roster and punched it into his phone. A woman answered. “Yes?”

“Counselor Fairchild?”

“I seemed to be, the last time I walked past a mirror. Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Vince Cardozo, Twenty-second Precinct. I’m running a homicide investigation. Eff Huffington’s name has come up.”

“Only his name? Lucky you.”

“According to the records, you prosecuted Eff for the murder of Father Chuck Romero.”

“I tried to.”

“After three days of pretrial, you moved for acquittal. Why?”

“It’s hard to give a short answer to that.”

“I’ve got time for the long answer.”

“I haven’t. Besides which, I’m not at liberty to discuss details of the Huffington-Romero case.”

“Someone had better discuss the case—because Eff Huffington seems to think it’s open season on anything in a clerical collar.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Huffington had that notion long before he murdered Father Romero.”

“Let me update you. Since you dropped that murder charge and let Eff go, he’s blinded one Episcopal priest and just this week he raped another.”

Silence pulsed across the line.

“This is a joke,” she said.

“Wish it were.”

“We’d better meet. There’s a restaurant bar on Franklin called the Donegal. Think you can find it?”

“It looked open and shut: vicious juvenile victimizes kindly priest, and kills him. I was certain the state was going to get a conviction. But two days into pretrial, Eff changed his testimony.”

Assistant District Attorney Deborah Fairchild had pale blue-green eyes, pale blond hair, pale taut skin. She also had a habit of speaking a little too rapidly. “Have you heard any rumors about the so-called communion killer?”

“Not yet,” Cardozo said.

“I’m not surprised—no one wants the story getting out.”

She looked at the table across the aisle and then behind her. The Donegal was a bright art deco blare of etched mirrors and black-and-white wall and floor tile. A fifties jukebox lent a glowing dash of amber. Someone was playing mid-century rock ʼn’ roll. “Sh-boom, sh-boom” sounded loopy and optimistic, riding the even roar of all the voices around them.

“There’s a rumor going around about a series of murders—dismembered bodies found in public places with communion wafers in their mouths.” She was wearing a jacket of crushed linen and she kept pushing the sleeves up. “This is exactly the kind of case that the department wants to keep under wraps.”

“Why?”

“The D.A.’s office has a gentleman’s agreement with the Church. Whenever anything heinously criminal pops up in confession, the priest passes it on.” She flicked him an arched glance. “That’s how the D.A. built a case against John Gotti. Whenever a priest gets into trouble that could embarrass the Church, the D.A. hushes it up. And if it can’t be hushed up, the D.A. still won’t prosecute.”

“How does this connect to Eff’s case?”

She hesitated. “A patrolman heard screams in the Pennsylvania Railroad yard. They were coming from a Toyota van parked under an overpass. He shined his light in. Father Chuck was dying in the front seat and Eff was halfway out the passenger door. He had the murder weapon tucked in his belt—a straight-edged razor.
Murder weapon’s
the wrong word. Eff claimed self-defense.”

“Naturally.”

“He said Father Chuck had invited him into the van—heard his confession—gave him communion.”

“In the van? What was this priest supposed to be doing, riding around with wafers and wine in the glove compartment?”

“Hear me out. According to Eff, Father Chuck then made sexual advances. Eff refused.”

“Oh, sure. A kid like Eff would fight for his honor.”

“Father Chuck threatened him, said he’d had sex with two dozen children and young people—and killed three of them, a girl and two boys. Eff went into what the defense called homosexual panic. He shoved a razor into Father Chuck’s stomach and killed him. None of the forensics backed up Eff’s story, but the D.A. instructed me to move for acquittal.”

“What grounds?”

“That Eff acted believing his life and bodily integrity were endangered.”

“Did you believe Eff’s story?”

“The department believed portions of it and I’m a member of the department.”

“That’s a crock. Eff routinely accused priests of making passes. That was his M.O. You people bought it and let him get away with murder.”

“Come off it, Lieutenant. You say you’re a cop, but you sound like an outraged TV sleaze-show host.”

“Just for the record.” Cardozo flipped open his shield case. “I know why I’m drawing my salary, Ms. Fairchild—why are you drawing yours?”

“Look, Lieutenant. I’m willing to believe you’re a decent person. I know I am. Which means you and I are on the same side. So please hold your fire. I’ve had a lousy week and I’ve got a rotten headache.”

She cooled her coffee with a little more milk from the metal pitcher. Her hand trembled as she lifted the cup. “Let’s say for the sake of argument there really
is
a communion killer and the D.A.’s been trying to keep it out of the press and off the talk shows. Let’s say the D.A. heard Eff’s change of testimony, which by the way was in chambers and off the record. The D.A. would have realized there was no way Eff could have that information unless Father Chuck actually
was
responsible for the killings. It boiled down to the perfect disposition of the case: the killer was identified and disposed of, and there was no need for the public ever to know. Which would be reason enough to give Eff a deal and shut him up.”

“You’re telling me this is what happened?”

“I’m only conjecturing.”

“Do you personally have any knowledge of a communion killer case?”

“Like everyone else in the prosecutor’s office, I’ve heard rumors. They’re not especially credible.” She glanced at her watch. “Coffee’s on you. I have to run. I’ve got a date with the D.A. five minutes ago.”

“Take my advice and be ten minutes late. This concerns your boss’s ass.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but the look on his face dropped her back into her seat.

For the next five minutes or so Cardozo told her about the basket killings and Martin Barth’s three lost confessions. By the time he finished, the ashtray in front of Deborah Fairchild held a small array of half-smoked lipstick-stained filter tips.

“The system is losing records all the time,” she said, “but this is a little
too
bizarre.”

“Officially, the killings were investigated as unrelated crimes. But there was a unified investigation.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re going to laugh. Someone spilled coffee on the files.”

She didn’t laugh. Her eyes were a troubled green.

“I had the lab check it out. It was the same coffee, the same spill on all four files. Two weeks ago those files were stacked on the same desk in the same office.”