Butterfly Knife

by Larry Matthews

Chapter Thirty-Three

  Sid was a little drunk. He kept a bottle in his desk and it was no secret that if he was working after six in the evening his breath had a bite to it. It was well after six and Sid had downed a good amount of the bourbon, along with several cups of strong coffee. The combination had rekindled his desire to light up thin, black cigars, the type favored by gangsters in dinner jackets in old movies. He walked to a cigar shop nearby and bought a dozen of them, lighting one as he strolled back to his office. He had always liked the way a blend of drink and smoke could bring him a sense of peace and contentment, which he sought on this cold winter night. But it was not a night for such things and found he himself chewing on the cigar as he thought about Elena, Dave, and the murders of the priests. It occurred to him that he had been covering stories about mad killers for decades and had even seen some of their work firsthand, but never had he had to breathe their foul air as he was doing now with this mess.

  Sid had come to believe that Captain O’Neil was either corrupt or incompetent or on somebody’s payroll. This business at the farm was a farce of the first order and not the work of professional, in Sid’s opinion. How on earth one man could find and capture Elena, who, presumably, was in a safe place protected by cops was beyond him. He approached the lobby to the building where Now News was headquartered and threw the cigar into the street, causing a young woman to yell something about the environment as she pointed to the cigar rolling in the gutter. Jesus, he thought. It never ends.

  Dave was waiting in his office, sipping some of the bourbon from a plastic cup. “Can I borrow your car?”

  “Nobody borrows my car. My insurance won’t allow it. Why?”

  “I’m feeling trapped here. What if I need to go somewhere if something comes up?”

  “Maybe you should have a car of your own.” Sid was glad to be having a normal conversation.

  “I had one but I never drove it.”

  “Then sticking to renting. Right now, it’s late. Go home. Get some rest. The cops are going to issue an update in the morning and I’ll need you there.”

  “Are you sure you want me to cover this stuff? I’m part of the story.”

  “I’m not sure what I need, Dave. I got a call from the U.S. Attorney’s office saying they’re considering declaring you a material witness and shutting you up. I’ve got our lawyers working on it.”

  “What would that do?”

  “It would keep you from reporting on what you know. There’s nothing they can do about what you already reported but I gather they’d rather you just went home and locked the door. You’ll probably be called before a grand jury at some point. You and all of the other guys down at the farm. They’ve got everybody else buttoned up. I’ve been trying to get hold of Frank to get something from him about his little surveillance operation but I got nowhere.”

  “O’Neil told me they had them somewhere for questioning.”

  “What do you think they’re asking?”

  “My guess is it’s something along the lines of ‘what the hell happened?’”

  “Do you have any theories?”

  “I don’t, not right now. I wonder what O’Neil’s role in this is. How much did he know? How much did the F.B.I. know? Who else knows what? These guys know who killed the priests and they just waited for him to come to them. Is that good police work? Are they working another agenda? Makes you wonder, you know.”

  “I think O’Neil’s got some secrets that he’s not sharing with anyone. I think he’s ass deep in this Warriors of Mary group and he’s protecting them. These cops from New York, the ones who botched the security at the farm, they’re in it too. Frank, a so-called federal contractor, has to have some connection. This killer is also in it and my bet is O’Neil is playing both sides. I’d also guess he’s not alone and there are other law enforcement types protecting the home front. I have no proof of anything but that’s the angle I’d work if I were on the street.” Sid leaned back and lit another cigar in clear violation of the laws of the District of Columbia against smoking in office buildings and against the express policies of Now News, which Sid himself had written. At this moment, he could not care less.

  “I had dinner with O’Neil tonight. Well, kind of. I got pissed off when he tried to get me to close down my reporting on this and I left him.”

  “Did he have anything new? How about the car, that MG? Have they found it yet?”

  “Shit! I got something about that. A guy in Arlington took me to a house where some renter is driving a red MG. I took a peek and wrote down the plate number. O’Neil left me the plate number that a guy got on I-66 last night.” Dave took a small piece of paper out of his pocket and placed it on the desk. He called his voicemail and checked his messages, replaying the one from O’Neil. He stared at the paper as he listened to O’Neil and Dave’s fell pale. “Give me your keys. Now! Goddam it, she’s in Arlington.”

  Sid stood up. “Let the cops handle this.”

  “Yeah, like who should I call? O’Neil? I need your keys.”

  Like Father Darius, Sid’s vanity was his car. He was not fond of classic roadsters. He was drawn to Detroit’s biggest, referred to as “boats” by critics. Sid drove a Lincoln Town Car, the longest car built in the Western Hemisphere, at over eighteen feet. He saw the size of his ride as equal to the size of his life and he thought he was living a large life as the chief of a Washington news service. He associated size with comfort and his car was like a rolling living room with a premium sound system that blasted Motown Classics, Dave Brubeck, and Frank Sinatra’s Capitol Records hits. It was true that he never allowed anyone else to drive it, not because his insurance company wouldn’t allow it, but rather he couldn’t stand the idea that someone else would be behind the wheel of the big machine. He paused for only a moment and handed his keys to Dave. He wanted to say “be careful” but he knew it would sound trite under the circumstances, so he remained silent as Dave ran out the door to the basement garage where Sid’s pride and joy was parked.

  The rush hour was over and the streets were clear of heavy traffic as Dave raced the big car down to K Street and over to the Whitehurst Freeway for the access to Key Bridge, avoiding the Georgetown traffic on M Street. The bridge was busy, as usual, but traffic was moving as he made his way to Ft. Meyer Drive and up the hill to Wilson Boulevard and south to Glebe Road. An Arlington cop was sitting at a light near the courthouse and Dave slowed to avoid attracting unwanted attention. He briefly considered waving down the cop and telling him that Elena was being held in a nearby house but he was suffering from a lack of trust in all law enforcement, so he kept going. He had no trouble finding the neighborhood and he drove by the house where the MG was parked in the garage and saw that a light was on in a front room. He pulled to the curb and briefly wondered which way the MG would go if the man who held Elena made a run for it. He would later lament that he did not block the driveway.

  An age-darkened concrete walkway led past overgrown evergreen bushes to a set of concrete stairs that time had separated from the small stoop at the front door. The stairs listed to the left and there was a gap of a few inches where they had pulled away. Dave saw it as evidence that no one cared about the house and probably had no concerns about what happened inside. It was the ideal rental for someone up to no good. There were leaves piled up against a rusting railing where the wind had gathered them in the fall and where they had been left without anyone bothering to clear them away. A porch light was dark but Dave could see that its glass cover was missing and a bare bulb was hanging at an angle and he assumed that it was burnt out.

  He stood at the front door and it occurred to him that he had no plan. Should he knock or try to break down the door? Could he do it if he tried or would he just injure himself? Did he have any idea what he was doing? He recalled his rough days as a boy in the Tennessee mountains and the scrapping and fighting that was part of growing up there and his confidence began to rise. He pulled open the aluminum screen door and noted that ther
e was no screen, only the metal frame. The front door was wood and had three small diamond-shaped windows placed diagonally high up, making it impossible for someone standing outside to see what was happening in the house unless they were standing on something. Dave looked around and saw nothing he could use as a platform to see into the house, but the stoop was small and the railing was only a couple of feet from the door, so he climbed up on it and placed his hands against the rough brick face of the house and leaned forward, hoping he wouldn’t slip off and fall on his face. He had trouble getting an angle into the front room. The window that was closest to him was also the highest on the door and only allowed him a view of the ceiling. The middle window was lower down but farther away and he had to press his hands against the door frame and lean far forward to see inside but could only glimpse a closet door and a small section of the room. The lowest window was his best chance of looking inside but it was on the opposite side of the door and he strained to lean far enough to see and nearly fell. He could see only a section of the room and he pressed his face closer to the glass to get a better view.

  Elena was sitting on a sofa wearing a man’s clothing, eating something out of a Styrofoam container, looking disheveled and frightened. He caught a glimpse of a man sitting in a chair, watching her and smiling. The man was holding a knife. Dave nearly called out her name before he caught himself and then nearly fell off the railing before he could climb down and approach the door. His plan was simple. He would knock on the door and shout to Elena that he had come for her. This, in Dave’s mind, would confuse the man holding her by dividing his attention between the man at the door and his hostage, possibly giving her time to run out the back while he came through the front door. Dave was not experienced in this sort of thing and the pros and cons of his plan were not apparent to him, other than he thought it would be better to do something than nothing. The idea of calling the police was lost on him.

  He stood in front of the door and took a deep breath, then he pounded on it with the side of his fist. “Elena! It’s me, Dave. I’m here for you! You, the guy holding her, open this door right now!” He hoped his pounding would rouse the neighbors. He pounded on the door for a full five minutes without reaction from inside. He shouted at it. He threatened. He pounded some more. All the while he stood directly in front of it, ready to attack when it opened. He was so occupied with the door that he did not notice the man stepping up behind him with a towel soaked with ether and chloroform until the cloth was pressed against his face. Dave was much bigger than Elena and it would take more time for the chemical to work, so he had nearly a minute before he blacked out. He had taken martial arts classes for several years when he was younger and although he was out of shape and out of practice, some of it came back to him. He raised his left foot and raked the back of his heel against the Father Darius’s shin, causing him to yell out in pain, but it was not enough to force the man to release Dave. He tried to get his foot behind the man’s leg to trip him, but Father Darius was too fast and pulled back.

  Dave could feel his attention fading and he was breathing hard from the struggle, so his time was running out. He remembered a move that one of his instructors had told him would always work against a man. He moved his right hand down and behind him, grabbing Father Darius’s testicles and squeezing as hard as he was able. The priest cried out and moved back, tripping and falling down the short flight of stairs into the yard, where he lay in pain for a few seconds. Dave wanted to jump down and overpower him but he was too woozy from the ether and chloroform and exhausted from the struggle, so he leaned forward with his hands on his knees, breathing in the clean air and waiting for his senses to return, and that was enough time for Father Darius to gather himself and run to the garage. Dave went after him, but was slow in his movements and confused about what to do. The MG raced down the driveway and into the street. Dave could hear the engine screaming as it headed north in the direction of D.C.