by Thomas Laird
She reached across the table and clutched my hand in a painfully strong grip.
‘You are not going to go maudlin on me, Daddy. We all made our peace with Momma, I thought.’
She kept on squeezing my hand, but the pain didn’t seem to bother me. It was as if my hand was detached from the rest of me.
‘This is all because of what happened to Michael, isn’t it.’
‘Not all, Big Girl. You’re in there in a big way too, you know.’
‘I know you love me. Never been in doubt, Daddy. And I’m not mad at you for missing a recital or a volleyball game —’
‘We never get them back, Kelly. We never get back the day you walked into Confirmation in that white dress and veil. Down that aisle at St Pat’s. You were a heartbreaker then and you’ll do it all over again when I have to give you away.’
‘You’ll never give me away to anybody, Daddy. Quit being such a romantic.’
‘Me?’ I grinned. ‘Jesus, I never been accused of that one before.’
‘It wasn’t your fault. It was the priest’s. Don’t let him throw it all on your back, Daddy. Don’t let him get away with that, too.’
Out of the mouths of babes. But Kelly was far from a child. I thought of her at her Confirmation again, with all those other little girls in cloud-white dresses, and I choked up and couldn’t stop the streams that erupted onto my cheeks.
Kelly squeezed my hand even harder.
‘Jesus! You pumping steel at the U?’ I grinned.
I commanded my waterworks to cease and desist.
‘It was not your fault, Lieutenant Parisi. Sir. Daddy. It was not your fault.’
I took her hand, this time, and I kissed it. She blushed at the buss.
Then she gave me that snaggily-assed grin of her mother’s, and she went back to finishing her lunch.
*
There was nothing to do but go after murderers. It was what I did.
Jack told me he was looking into credit card personnel, since The Count had already made use of someone else’s Visa. It didn’t seem likely he’d hold a federal job since they do screen people. You would suppose a white-faced Goth wouldn’t have much chance working with a federal agency, but we would check around anyway.
There had to be some place The Count was finding these women. It was a serial thing now. A series, even though it was still at two. Two was enough. At some point their lives intersected — although it was speculation that The Count had done them both.
What we had was that both vics lived within four miles of each other. And that was where any similarity at all ended. Two very different women, except for their disconnected lives. No families. Few friends. No current lovers. Both had dwelt in tiny efficiency apartments. How was he finding them? It was like gnawing on a canker sore in your mouth. You knew it would hurt to test it, but you did it any damn way.
Where was common ground for young women?
Hair stylists? Health clubs? Analysts?
We would have to look into it right away or there would be another dried up, bloodless young female duct taped to her mattress inside her one bedroom efficiency. That much I thought I could predict about The Count. And Mary Headley’s murder resurfaced. We’d see if there was any connection to Jennifer Petersen.
*
I took Michael to the gym where we recently purchased a membership. I was supposed to be using the facilities to lose weight, and Mike was into the weight room. But tonight we decided to play one-on-one basketball.
Which turned out disastrously for me because I’m terrible at hoops and my son isn’t bad, as I said before. So after I take three straight pastings in the one-on-one, we decide to cool off in the pool. We changed into our suits and went into the water for about a half hour. I was becoming a lot more accepting of joining a health club about the time my overheated, sweaty guinea ass hit the cool of that club water. I felt relaxed for the first time in an age as I side-stroked a lap or two in the four-foot-deep pool.
I sat in the shallow end, on the steps, submerged to my chest. Mike did about ten laps effortlessly. He was a better swimmer than I was too, but I was better in the water than I was on the hardwood court. I lettered in high school for our swim team. Even had a school record in the freestyle.
Mike waded toward me as I soaked myself on the steps that lead into the pool.
He sat beside me on those steps. There were only three other swimmers here with us.
‘I heard you had a talk with Kelly,’ Mike said.
‘Talk?’ I asked.
‘She said you talked with her ... about me and Father Mark.’
I watched the other three swimmers do laps without pausing for rest.
‘I talked to her about you. Yeah.’
‘She said you said you felt like responsible for what the priest did to me.’
‘Yeah. It’s the way I do feel, Mike.’
‘Then don’t.’
‘I wish it were that easy, bud. I know it was Father Mark’s fault. I know I can’t be with you wherever you go.’
‘Then you shouldn’t feel responsible —’
‘I am responsible for you, Mike. That’s what being a father’s about. Being responsible when no one thinks it’s your fault. I used to get up in the night to see if you and Kelly were breathing. I was terrified of that SIDS business. Or I thought you’d get tangled up in something in the crib and ...
‘Well your mother broke me of it. One night when I came back to bed, I found her lying face up with a grimace on her face that told me she wasn’t breathing. I kept calling her name, but she wouldn’t unlock herself. But when I finally touched her, she blew out a load of air and started laughing at me. I was really pissed at her, but I remember how relieved I was when she let go and started mocking me. ‘She was showing me instead of telling me.’
‘Showing you what, Pa?’
‘That I couldn’t be there for every breath all of you took. I couldn’t be on surveillance for you all for twenty-four-seven. Your mother was a master teacher, padna.’
I splashed him with some water.
‘There’s nothing you could’ve done, Pa.’
‘You can talk and talk. You can even remind me of your mother’s lesson for me. But you’ll never convince me. If she couldn’t, neither can you, Mike. You’re just going to have to learn to live with me, the way your mother did.’
He watched me for an extended moment. Then he splashed me in the face with a wave of his own.
‘You aren’t gonna lose any weight sitting on the steps in the shallow end, Pa. C’mon. It’s getting late. Do a few laps.’
My son Michael went back into his previous lane and began the freestyle. He moved well in the water. Smoothly.
I got up and watched him go, for a while, and then I dove back in and headed toward the far end of the pool.
*
The better part of a month passed, and we had nothing new on either case. But we probed everywhere we could. Nothing shook loose.
*
Both of The Count’s vics were members of the same health club — Women’s Fitness. It was on the Northwest Side. The computers downtown came up with a winner, finally.
Kelly was back at the university. Michael was in high school. And my mother Eleanor ran herd over our two toddler daughters. Natalie was busy with her own full caseload.
We drove up to the entrance of Women’s Fitness and parked the Taurus. Jack was driving. It was now in the middle of November and Indian summer was history. It smelled and felt like it might flurry.
When we got to the receptionist, I asked for the manager.
Her name was Wendy Carrigan. She seemed very fit, herself. Jack gave her the usual onceover that didn’t disappear simply because he was a married man.
‘We’d like a look at your personnel files,’ I explained to Wendy.
‘Those documents are confidential,’ she replied.
‘This is a homicide investigation,’ I told her.
That seemed sufficient for he
r. She led us into her office. We sat down as she retrieved the personnel jackets.
‘Is there someplace we could look these over?’ Jack asked her.
‘Just use my office. I’ll leave you alone,’ she smiled.
Very pretty manager.
‘Christ, this shouldn’t take long,’ Jack grimaced. Women’s Fitness must have been a pretty lucrative venture. We had thirty files apiece.
*
It was about fifteen minutes in when Jack found him.
‘Albert Finnegan.’
No one I had looked over had even resembled the Goth described by the women at the O’Hare restaurant where he’d been sighted.
The photo didn’t show him in pancake or whiteface. But it did display a pale thin young man that fit the rendition our department artist had drawn. Dead ringer.
Twenty-six years old. Not married. Lived in the New Town district, not far from some of those Goth / vampire bars we’d scoped out.
Jack went through the other four files he had remaining, but Albert was the only winner in either of our personnel jackets.
‘Get us some help, Jack.’
I meant back-up. He took out his cellphone and called the downtown office. They were sending a few uniforms to Albert Finnegan’s address in New Town.
By the time we got to the site, it was flurrying and it was dark. Late afternoons in November strike me as eerie. Odd. Out of sorts. Something that I can’t lay my finger on. This time of year the sun disappears early.
It must have been Albert’s favourite time on the calendar, I thought. He lived in a three flat. Top floor apartment. No one was home in the bottom two flats, but there was dim wattage apparent from his front window.
The uniforms had still not arrived. We heard a crashing noise from above, where Albert lived. We couldn’t wait for the back-ups, now. The Count might be bleeding a new vic while we waited, I thought. We went to the entrance, but we didn’t ring Finnegan’s bell. We did it the illegal way. Jack jimmied the entrance door’s lock with a tool that Wendkos had borrowed from Doc when Gibron went on leave.
‘The door was already opened,’ I told my partner.
‘That’s the way I saw it too,’ he grinned.
‘We have probable cause?’
‘I think so, Lieutenant.’
‘There it is,’ I responded.
And we started up the stairs.
There was loud music blaring inside Finnegan’s apartment. We knocked and Jack called out, ‘Police!!’ two or three times. And then Jack put his foot to the door.
It was no deadbolt, so the door exploded inward. We had our weapons drawn. I had the Bulldog out because it was far superior to the Nine in stopping power. Jack carried a Colt. 45 automatic which was not standard weaponry at the CPD. But he also carried a nine-millimetre Beretta that was kosher. You carried an extra gun in this business because there were occasions just such as these.
The wattage was indeed dim in the living room that we’d entered. No one was here, at least in this room.
‘Take the bedroom. I’ll check the kitchen,’ I told my partner.
He nodded and headed toward the door to what was apparently the bedroom.
There was only the hallway toward the kitchen that remained in this small flat.
I passed Jack on my way toward the back. Jack waited until I got by, and then he opened the door slowly.
I was in the kitchen, then. No lights. I tried to adjust to the dimness, but my eyes were too slow. Just as I reached for the nub of the kitchen light switch, I felt the slash and the electricity of the blade that cut into my left forearm. I had the .44 in my right hand, and I fired a round blindly into the blackness of the kitchen. The loud music still blasted from somewhere in the living room as I saw the kitchen door flung open and a black figure bolt through the exit on his way out. I let loose with another deafening round, and by this time Jack was racing toward me. He flipped on the kitchen fixture overhead and saw that I was bleeding heavily.
‘Go! Go, go!’ I yelled at him.
But he stood still and began looking about in this grungy kitchen. He found a dishcloth and he made a tourniquet and expertly cut off the little shower of blood I was making on the grungier grey tile on the floor beneath us.
The uniforms arrived too late to lay hands on Albert.
‘You should’ve gone after the prick,’ I bitched. But it was a half-hearted complaint
because we both knew Jack might’ve saved my life. Albert had cut me to the bone and nicked an artery, and I might’ve run dry like Albert’s two victims.
‘No sir,’ Jack declared. ‘We’ll find that little cheesedick later. You’re going to the hospital, Lieutenant,’ he told me.
CHAPTER SIX
I was lucky that Jack knew how to use tourniquets. I could’ve bled to death if he hadn’t shut off the flow, the ER surgeon let me know when I was released from the hospital.
I went home to a wife, two very noisy and small daughters, and a mother who could barely restrain herself from anger. But Eleanor had been the wife of a Homicide — my father Jake — and she knew how to control her emotions. My father had been shot twice in his career, but neither wound had been life threatening. My cut could’ve been worse if Jack hadn’t been there with his first-aid magic, but I have never been shot, like my old man.
‘You can go home, Ma, if you’re tired,’ I told Eleanor. She looked at me with dismissive eyes.
She knew this family was hurting. Michael was at school now, but he would come home with his demons still intact because he had only begun his therapy with the counsellor Natalie had set him up with.
‘I’m in this until the termination,’ my mother smiled tiredly. It was her World War II V for Victory grin.
Natalie was holding my good hand.
‘This guy cut you?’
‘Yeah. That’s why I’ve got all the funny wrapping paper,’ I told her.
She tried to show me some teeth, but it was too much effort.
‘Well, I’m home for a few days.’
‘You have to stay home?’
‘Medical orders. The Captain says I can’t come play at Homicide for four or five days. Have to have a doctor’s release, Natalie.’
She reached over and touched my good right arm.
‘What’s going on, Jimmy? It’s like there’s a black cloud over us.’
‘Yeah. Looks that way, doesn’t it.’
Then I felt tired enough to collapse.
‘But we shall persevere. Those two little females of ours, and the two bigger ones, have needs.’
‘Yes, Jimmy.’
‘Eleanor’s on top of everything. Don’t worry.’
‘I hate to have her do all this work. It’s not fair —’
‘She loves those kids. All four of them. And only two demand her constant attention. Anyway, I can spell her. I still have one good hand to lay the wood to them.’
Now Natalie smiled. She knew I’d never hit any of my children. Ever. Erin hadn’t used corporal discipline and neither had I. Natalie was just as much the non-physical kind of parent that my first wife was.
‘I’m tired, Red. Any room for me in this bed?’
She grinned raggedly and sat on the bed with me. It was a queen-sized mattress, so there really was enough space. I lay down next to her with my clothes still on, my left arm in a sling. I felt her cool hand on my forehead, and then I didn’t feel anything else. My lights finally went out.
*
The four days passed, and I felt much better.
Michael was still visibly shaken by those near-incidents in junior high.
On the fourth day, the day before I was to return to the job, I visited St Catherine’s. Father Mark hadn’t been there for several years, but I thought I might pick up some information regarding his current whereabouts. My previous inquiries at that church had fallen on deaf ears, it appeared. There had been no word from them.
*
My arm was out of the sling, but the stitches were b
arking at me. The family doctor told me to take Tylenol or some over-the-counter painkiller for the irritation. I wasn’t to scratch at anything, the doctor explained. The stitches might be coming out in a few more days, so I was ordered to endure.
We still had no leads on the whereabouts of Albert Finnegan. We had no clues about the guy who did Arthur Ransom. We tried to look up Joellyn’s father without success. Jack had informed me about our caseload over the phone only after I had made the call. Wendkos was sincerely trying to let me rest.
I drove up to the entrance of St Catherine’s in the family van. Eleanor was again watching the baby girls and Michael was off to school and the big girl Kelly was on campus at the U.
Father William Kelly was the pastor of our church. He was a fine homilist — never went past the eight minute mark — and a generally decent human being, it seemed to me in the few encounters we’d had previously.
His secretary, Agnes Tilson, walked me to his office, here in the St Catherine’s rectory.
She shut the door behind me.
Father William looked up from his desk.
‘Jimmy Parisi?’
He didn’t look too certain.
‘Yes, Father ... I came here because you didn’t return my calls.’
‘You called here?’
‘Several times.’
Kelly had that flaming red nose that you’d associate with lifetime drinkers. But I’d never heard anything about this priest being a juicer.
‘I’m sorry, but I never heard that you’d called, Jimmy. There. Have a seat.’
He motioned for me to sit across from his desk. His thin blond hair was wispy and he sported the long strand of hair across a basically bald pate. So Father William suffered from vanity, just as most of the rest of us did.
‘I’m here about my son, Michael.’
A light seemed to come on inside him.
