"Even back then you looked a little sad."
I set the picture down, turned around, and accepted the glass of Diet Pepsi she handed me.
"I didn't care much for my mother," Ellie said. "She went out a lot on my father, and it eventually broke him. Spiritually, I mean. He was always sure she would change someday but she never did. I guess some of his sadness rubbed off on me."
That didn't fit in with what I'd been told about Ellie's mother being super-religious. Or maybe it did. Maybe she'd punished Ellie so harshly to assuage her own guilt. And maybe Ellie had done the same to her children.
None of this was anything I could ask about.
"Just what we need," Bob Wilson said. "More psycho-babble. Didn't you get enough of that with Father Daly?"
He'd obviously been listening. He was also obviously unhappy.
He wore a white button-down shirt, V-neck brown sweater, tan chinos and white running shoes. He carried a drink the color of honey. Scotch, I assumed.
"Ellie loves drama," he said. "She can never get enough of it, can you, dear?"
"Just the way you can never get enough of bimbos, I suppose."
He laughed. "We're giving you a taste of our home-life, Payne. But believe me, it can get a lot rougher than this." He went up and put a fond arm on Ellie's slender shoulders. "I need women in my life, and she needs grief. We're a perfect match."
"I'll leave you two alone," she said, sliding out from his heavy arm. "I'll talk to you later, Robert."
When she was gone, he said, "The first thing I want to do is apologize for the scene I made in the restaurant. I'm a total ass sometimes. You want some scotch?"
"No, thanks."
"Let's sit down."
We sat in facing leather armchairs and he said, "You don't have anything in mind where my wife's concerned, do you?"
"You mean like sex?"
"I mean exactly like sex."
"She's a beautiful woman."
"And that translates to what? That you're going to try and spear her?"
"Such an elegant way of putting it."
He'd been wrong about himself. He wasn't an ass sometimes. He was an ass all the time. He was perfect for heading up a parish committee. Such posts usually go to pious hypocrites like him.
"I'm not here to talk about your wife, Wilson. I'm here to find out what the hell you were doing in Father Daly's motel room the other night."
"That's a damned lie. I wasn't anywhere near there."
"I've got an eyewitness who says you were. An eyewitness any district attorney would love to put on the stand."
Right, I thought. And just pray Tommy Hubbard didn't bring up his association with the Rangers or mention the fact that he probably hadn't been gainfully employed for several years.
Wilson sipped his scotch and stared at me.
Then, quietly, he said: "You're not bluffing, are you?"
"No, I'm not."
"It was that sonofabitch two doors down, wasn't it? Some old deadbeat, right? I saw the bastard out of the corner of my eye. I just kept on walking."
"Why were you there?"
"None of your business."
"Legally, you're right. I don't have any authority to make you explain yourself to me. But I can always call the police."
He waved a thick angry hand. "For her. For Ellie. Why the hell else would I go out there?"
"Why for Ellie? Why did she need help?"
"She wasn't going to see him anymore. She couldn't take the way he was obsessed with her. They never slept together or anything like that — she wouldn't let it go that far. But she was pissed at me for one of my little escapades and so she started seeing him as a counselor and then one thing led to another and he was in love with her."
He shook his head. "They're all fucking crazy at that rectory. Father Ryan yells at people in the confessional and Father Daly wasn't happy unless he was getting parish women to fall in love with him, and even your friend the Monsignor—" He stopped himself.
"What about my friend, the Monsignor?"
He shrugged. "He's a piss poor leader. Only reason the Archbishop gave him the gig is because he used to be such a big deal in sports - Steve Gray, I mean. All the talk going around about priests being fags and child molesters, the Archbishop figured it'd be a good thing to have a sports hero for a Monsignor. Strictly PR. Your friend Gray couldn't run a fucking one-pump gas station, let alone a big parish like St Mallory's. I run the god-damned thing. And even he'd tell you that if he wanted to be truthful."
"You didn't finish telling me why you were in Father Daly's room the other night."
He sipped some more scotch then sat back, visibly relaxing as he did so. He must have felt in control again.
"He called her early in the evening, Daly did. I picked up and listened to them talk."
"There's nothing like privacy."
"Hey, the guy's trying to fuck my wife. Why should I give him any privacy?"
"You think Ellie listens in when your bimbos call?"
He sulked. Nobody had treated him this badly in a long time.
"Look, asshole, what I do is my business. You understand?"
"What did Father Daly say on the phone?"
He sighed. "Said he needed to talk to her. Said he just wanted her to come out for a little while. To the Palms. The room he usually had. Anyway, she did. She felt sorry for him. He gave her a whole raft of shit about how he'd leave the priesthood and run away with her, if she'd agree to divorce me. The sonofabitch was so pathetic, he got her to give him one of her earrings. As a memento, he said. She got home and I confronted her and she told me everything and I decided to go out and pay him a visit myself. Which I did. I wanted to tell him to keep away from my wife, or I'd call the Archbishop of the Hilton diocese - this diocese - and Father Daly would be out."
"And he said what to all this?"
Another sigh. "He didn't say anything. He was dead when I got there."
"Describe the scene."
"What?"
"Tell me exactly what you saw when you got there."
He told me. Nothing much had changed from what I'd observed when I'd met Steve Gray out there.
"Then what did you do?"
"I went and had a couple of drinks at a bar. I was real shook-up and confused. Then I just drove home."
"Why didn't you call the police?"
"Are you crazy? I didn't want to get involved."
"You have any idea who killed him?" I said.
"None."
"Maybe Ellie killed him."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"It's always a possibility," Ellie said, coming back into the room. Her glass was filled with the same amber liquid her husband was drinking.
She came over and sat on the arm of his chair. "I could have killed him, Bob."
"Could have. But didn't."
She caressed his hand. "Or maybe you killed him."
"I was mad enough to but I didn't."
She took his hand and set it on her very nice thigh, his big possessive bear paw of a hand, and when I saw them sitting there like that, I once again felt like a rube, because there was something that I profoundly didn't understand about their relationship. For all her complaints, she clearly got some kind of satisfaction from being with him; and for all his faithlessness, he was still caught up with her.
Or maybe there was some kind of spiritual S&M that I didn't want to know about in their relationship.
"I didn't kill him, Payne," Wilson said. "Just to put your mind at ease."
"And I didn't kill him either, Robert," Ellie said in her nice, quiet, polite voice.
"I don't think he believes us, dear," Wilson said, and then let out with one of his looming laughs.
I set down my glass and stood up.
"I'll be going."
"He's pissed," Wilson said.
"Bob, you've goaded him enough," Ellie said. "Then: "Let me walk you to the door, Robert."
"No, thanks," I said.
I
started walking.
"Or maybe I did kill him, Payne," Wilson said from behind me. "Maybe I was drunk and I just don't remember killing him.
The booming laugh again.
"Oh Bob, for God's sake," Ellie said. But there was fondness and tolerance in the voice, not derision.
I closed the front door behind me and walked out into full star-scattered night.
I could still hear him in the house, laughing.
Suddenly, the air up here didn't feel anywhere near as clean as it once had. This was a family with some secrets I probably didn't want to know about. Maybe being a rube sometimes isn't so bad after all. Maybe it's a form of protection.
And they'd succeeded in getting me too riled to remember to ask why Wilson didn't take the earring with him the first time he was there.
I'd need to do some more thinking about that. Right now I didn't want to ask.
Chapter Seventeen
I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to get in an argument with Felice. I didn't want to see Vic again, or be shushed because he was sleeping.
I went to my office at the law firm, got out a yellow legal pad, and started doing what I was trained to do. On paper, this time, not on the computer.
I was going to create a psychological profile, that wasn't going to be worth jack shit because I couldn't get my hands on a tenth of the information I needed.
One murder. Father Daly.
Father Daly was a womanizer. Steve told me he'd had affairs with two women. Women he was counseling, which made it a violation of two different codes of ethics.
Other people had told me about more women. Ten or twelve. Or more ass than a toilet sees.
I'd never know how many women he'd been with. I doubted he knew himself.
Father Ryan heard him on the phone with a woman about 11:00 P.M. Daly was still home at midnight. He checked into the motel shortly after midnight.
Who'd been in his room? Ellie Wilson. Bob Wilson. And probably somebody else. Maybe several somebodies else.
Ellie's earring was there. Her husband didn't take it the first time he was in the room. He took it after I'd seen it, and Steve had seen it. Why?
How did he know Steve would be called at all? For all he knew, the police might have been first on the scene. If they were, then he wouldn't stand the chance of a snowball in hell of ever getting the earring back.
Why didn't it matter if the police saw the earring, but it did matter if Steve and I did?
Well, that made sense. He didn't know me, but he knew Steve, and Steve might recognize the earring.
The other earring falls out of her purse. Wilson grabs it from me and puts it back in the purse. He knows I've seen both earrings and doesn't care, so long as I didn't actually have them in my custody.
Were there two earrings?
Or was this the only earring, and did she and her husband both want me to think it was two earrings, so she dropped her purse on purpose?
Why?
Because Bob Wilson was the murderer, and the earrings — or earring — were supposed to make me think Ellie had done it, and then after I'd told the police and Ellie had been arrested, Ellie was going to pop up with a perfect alibi?
Because Bob Wilson had left the earring there on purpose to suggest to the cops that a woman was the killer?
Then why would it be okay for the cops to see the earring . . .
I shook my head. I was thinking in circles.
Back up.
Tawanna Jackson was stabbed to death in Bowker Park. Her eyes were gouged out. She occasionally attended services at St. Mallory's with her family; her mother had been a devout worshipper there.
Ronald Swanson was stabbed to death behind a bar. His ear was cut off. He was the father of three children. He went to church at St. Mallory's . . .
Father Daly was stabbed to death in a motel room. His tongue was cut out. He could have been the father of some natural children — it wasn't impossible, but nobody had mentioned it to me, and amidst all the other scandal I had been told about him, somebody would have mentioned it. But he was called Father.
He was a priest at St Mallory's.
He was a counselor. But neither Jackson nor Swanson had been in counseling.
No. But it was inevitable that at some time, they had visited the confessional . . .
What was Tawanna Jackson not supposed to see? Or, alternately, what had she seen that she shouldn't have seen?
What was Ronald Swanson not supposed to hear? Or, alternately, what had he heard that he shouldn't have heard?
What was Father Daly not supposed to tell? Or what had he told that he shouldn't have told?
The confessional.
He wasn't allowed to tell anybody what he had heard in the confessional.
But whoever killed Ronald Swanson, whoever killed Tawanna Jackson, might not trust him.
He had known something that he couldn't be allowed to tell.
And recently, somebody had bearded him in the cabin about it, and he and that somebody had quarreled. He'd said — what was it Kevin Ward told me? — This is insane. This is really insane. Don't you know that? Don't you realize what you're doing?
He knew who had done the other killings. Had quarreled with the killer at the cabin. But wasn't murdered there. Why? Who would have known he was at the cabin?
Father Ryan. Steve. Jenny? Bernice?
Ellie Wilson? Bob Wilson?
And what about Michael Grady, who had drowned? Was he a piece of this puzzle or a piece of another puzzle altogether?
Did Father Daly just collect clippings about people he knew?
Or — and this is rare, but not unheard of — did I have two serial killers working together, using different methods of operation?
Or two serial killers working at the same time but not working together?
And Father Daly knew about both of them?
This was stretching too far even for a hypothesis. Except — the confessional. What might Father Daly have heard in the confessional? I kept going back to that.
All right, say it was two people working together.
Say it was Bob Wilson and Ellie Wilson . . . They were screwed up enough, that was for sure. But why, and how — and which one of them did the screwy murders and which one did the ordinary ones?
Ellie Wilson could not have cut out a man's tongue. Of that, I was sure. Bob Wilson could have, but was his mind screwy enough to dream that up? I didn't really think so. A simple bashing - yes, he was capable of that. But this murderer — or these murderers — were too subtle for that.
There are things you learn from what you see at the crime scene. There are things you learn from what you don't see at the crime scene — and this concept is hard for a lot of people — even cops — to understand.
This killer would be, in some ways, the Ted Bundy type: intelligent, suave, charming, probably living with his family or in some other settled lifestyle. Probably he'd been harshly disciplined in childhood, but the results of it wouldn't show on the surface. This profile looked more and more like it was fitting Ellie — except how would she have come across the other victims? By their serving with her husband on the parish council? Even so, why would she have killed them?
He — or she — or they — would get along well in the real world. The crimes would have been planned, not impulsive. The crimes would be the result of a situation.
He might be chosen by God to wipe out all Catholics, or he might be trying to cover up some other crime, but the reasons would make sense to him. And to anybody else who accepted his logic.
He'd be likely to return to the crime scene. He'd be likely to get along well with the investigators, to offer whatever information he had or wanted the investigators to think he had, maybe even to call the police himself (but each body had been discovered, and reported, by someone different).
And he — or she — had some very strong connection with St. Mallory's, and specifically with the rectory. Which meant that was where I was going no
w.
Fast.
Before he invented a fourth wise monkey: know no evil. And that wise monkey, come to think of it, might turn out to be me.
Chapter Eighteen
I'd start with Jenny, I thought, because of all the possibles she fit the profile the least. She wasn't suave. She wasn't mentally well-organized. She'd be more likely to kill out of impulse than to plan. She hadn't been placed at any of the crime scenes even once, much less twice. So she could, perhaps, answer some more questions for me.
Of course, she was the only one who had tried to stab anybody. I'd better keep my wits about me.
I parked in back of the rectory and went up the walk on the side and knocked on the back door.
Through the glass, I could see Bernice talking to Father Ryan. He was drinking a can of 7-Up. She was shrugging into her coat.
At my knock, she walked over to the door, peered out, saw me, and opened up.
"Just in time for a late dessert," she said. "I made the Fathers an apple pie, which is my specialty. If I do say so myself."
The kitchen was a friendly place, warm and well-lighted against the falling darkness. The linoleum was old and faded but the appliances were shiny new.
"She's being modest," Father Ryan said. He wore a plaid shirt and jeans. "Her apple pie is world-class."
She winked at me. "He has to say that if he wants me to make another one tomorrow."
She glanced around the kitchen. "Well, everything seems in shape here. I guess I can go now. Jenny is here if you need anything, Father."
Those were her words. Her meaning, given the tone of her voice, was that Jenny was a poor substitute for the real thing, that being Bernice, of course.
"Night, Father."
"Night, Bernice. Thanks for everything."
"My pleasure, Father. Night, Mr. Payne."
"Night, Bernice."
After she left, Father Ryan said, "I was just about to call the Monsignor down for a piece of pie. Care to join us? There's plenty"
"Thanks, anyway, Father. Actually, I came to talk to Jenny, if that's possible."
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