A Cruel Season for Dying (44 page)

“Milne gallery …? Is this about David’s murder?”

“Just routine.” The officer smiled. “Your name appeared on the gallery’s list of artists. We’re questioning everyone who might
be able to shed some light on how Mr. Milne got to be one of this killer’s victims.”

“I have no idea. The newspapers say he’s targeting gay men…. David was fairly well known.”

“Do you know if Mr. Milne knew any of the other victims?”

“No, I wouldn’t know that.”

“How well did you know Mr. Milne?”

“I knew David professionally. I’ve exhibited at his gallery over the years.”

The cop nodded, making notes. “Can you think of anything at all that might help us, Mr. Lovett?”

“No…. I thought someone was in custody.”

“Not in custody. But we do have a numero uno suspect.”

“That priest.”

“Like I said, I’ve missed you several times and I need to tie up loose ends.” Handy grinned. “You know how it is.”

“Yes, of course,” he said. “I wish I could help. I liked David.”

“Well”—Handy snapped shut the notebook, passed him a card— “call me if you think of something.”

He nodded, walking the policeman to the door. He could hear Handy’s heavy footfalls as he moved across the short landing down
the hall. Unconsciously, he’d been holding his breath, until he heard the swoosh of the elevator’s gears, carrying the cop
down to the ground floor.

Willie felt that the storm was inside her. Boundaries dissolving in explosions of lightning that boomed and crackled at the
high-rise windows, igniting the bedroom into flashbulb brilliance that faded as quickly to black. And Michael, silhouetted
above her, a shadow beating within.

She locked her legs around him, her hands against his chest, wanting to feel him solid. She felt his own grip tighten on her
shoulders, heard him cry out. As the pleasure, unstoppable now, exploded in her spine, like weightlessness taking hold. A
beast that shook her in its jaws.

For as long as she could, she lay still, waiting for a lightning flash to penetrate her lids, counting the seconds, listening
for the thunder to crash and roll away. It was a game to fill her mind till she was ready to move, easier than listening to
his breathing.

At the moment when she thought that he would reach for her again, she got up and walked to the chair where earlier she’d tossed
her purse. She fished inside it for the aspirin. The headache she’d been fighting throbbed behind her eyes.

She swallowed the tablets dry. She hadn’t looked at Michael yet, but she could feel him watching her from the bed, ready again
to make love, or whatever he called what they were doing. It was amazing, his ability to perform again and again, each time
with more intensity. Tempting to let herself believe that she was its inspiration.

Her clothes hung over the chair. She picked up her slip and pulled it on before she turned back to the bed. Michael was sitting
up against the pillows, smoking. The glowing tip of his cigarette moved slowly from his lips to his knee.

She sat down and switched on the lamp. She could see him better now. The blue eyes still startling in the Mediterranean face.

“Are you going back?” he asked her.

“You mean back to my job?”

“To Quantico. Yes,” he said.

“Are you asking me if I’m convinced this investigation is over?”

“I guess that’s what I’m asking.”

“Graff’s photo of the roommate links him at least indirectly to Pinot, and the bartender positively ID’d him as the man who
left Marlowe’s with Westlake.” She said it as an answer.

Michael took a drag on the cigarette. “The bartender wanted his face on TV.”

No arguing with that. Since the lineup today Trehan had wasted no time giving interviews to anyone who’d listen. And leaks
had begun to surface immediately that the man the bartender had identified as leaving with Westlake on the night of the murder
was one and the same “Porno Priest” of the
Post
’s earlier exclusive. Negotiations were still under way with the Church, but it was pretty much understood that Thomas Graff
would surrender himself to police custody sometime before the official announcement of his arrest was made. An announcement
that was now set for the press conference on Monday.

“The suits are getting ready to take their bows”—Michael was apparently reading her mind—“but it’s Jimmy who’s going to be
the scapegoat if another body turns up.”

She sighed. She had her own misgivings.

“Life in the NYPD is shit,” he said.

“You liked it once,” she said to him. “You told me that you became a cop because the street was closer to the action.”

“Yeah, battling evil.” He reached over and crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand. “Isn’t that what your
work at Quantico is all about?”

“I don’t think of it like that.”

“How do you think about it?”

There was a darkness in his eyes that had deepened. She tried to remember what he looked like when he smiled.

“Protecting people … stopping the killing,” she answered him.
“I’m hoping we’ll learn enough about the development of serial murderers so we can detect them while they’re still young.”

“You don’t actually think you can cure them?”

“Not cure, exactly. But if we could catch them in time. Break the pattern—”

“What if they’re just evil?”

“They’re sick, Michael.”

“Sick,” he repeated. “Don’t you believe in good and evil?”

She took a breath. How had they started this? “The universe is neutral,” she said. “Good and evil are human constructs.”

“So this killer we’re hunting isn’t
really
evil?” His tone antagonistic.

“Ethically speaking, he is, Michael. I’ll grant you that. But ethics only applies to human behavior. I don’t believe that
serial killers are fully human. Their brains don’t develop normally, don’t operate in the same reality….” She stopped.

“What is it?” he asked. He had heard the hesitation in her voice.

“It just occurred to me,” she said, “that LSD breaks down what we think of as normal consensus reality, that picture of the
world we all agree on more or less.”

“You told Jimmy that the killer was using the drug to try to re-create his fantasy inside the victims’ minds.”

“I still believe that. I’m just seeing
why
he’s doing it from a slightly different angle.”

He was waiting for her to explain.

“The killer’s fantasy is like an adaption,” she went on, “a substitute for the normal psychosexual models that develop in
a healthy mind. The serial’s way of relating to other human beings unfortunately involves killing them.”

“A hell of a relationship.” His words still caustic.

“Don’t you see how pathetic it is?” she tried again. “A serial knows by observing other people’s emotional responses that
something is missing in him. Our killer is intelligent enough to understand that he doesn’t really fit into our world. But
with the LSD he can try to bring some of us into
his.
”

“He’s killing people, for chrissake.”

“I know….” She fell silent. There was a void that trembled between them that words would never bridge. She turned off the
light and went back to join him in the bed.

The room was cold and full of shadows, but the storm that battered Manhattan was miles away, and enough moonlight seeped through
the curtained windows that he didn’t need the lamp to write. Thomas Graff stared at the blank sheet of stationery he had found
in the drawer of the bedside table, then dashed off the words. They seemed fuzzy on the page, indistinct. Not the bold scrawl
he’d intended. He turned the page on its side, preparing to tear it in two, to obliterate what was at best insincere, at worst
an unintended commentary on himself.

A picture flashed in his head. So clear. Kaitlyn speaking the fatal words.

I’m sorry, Thomas. It’s for the best.

He could still see her face as she’d put the ring in his hand. That perfectly flawless face, which he’d thought to be his
salvation. His mind had been racing as he’d looked at her, trying to figure it out, trying to understand who could have told
her. He had always kept that part of himself so scrupulously separate from his normal life. And that last affair with the
busboy had been over for a month.

“I’ve changed, Katie,” he said. “You’ve changed me. You’re my future.”

“I know you believe that.”

“It’s true. I love you.”

“I love you too. That’s why I’m doing this, Thomas.”

He hadn’t believed her then. He’d been too angry. But she had been right. Even Katie in all her perfection could not have
saved him. He understood that now, at least. He’d never learned who had told her. Maybe she had guessed that something was
wrong and had set out to find the truth herself. He had been too arrogant then to believe that his cover was not perfect.
So sure that his secret life was not his real one, its existence no more than an aberration to be controlled by an act of
will.

The years blurred after that. A graduate degree in philosophy from Loyola University had prepared him for little but teaching.
His secret life and all its dangers remained. From time to time he dated, but no other woman was Kaitlyn. They became his
excuse for having sex with men. He would loathe the women who were less than Kaitlyn, rather than loathe himself.

Finally there was the Church, actively recruiting priests, since vocations from God had been increasingly falling on deaf
ears among the faithful. It seemed to be the solution for the sterility of his life. Let the Church take Katie’s place.

Why did you become a priest?

To save my immortal soul.

That was the plan, though not very well thought out. For surely he had known that in the seminaries there were others like
himself. So the Church had not saved him, providing him instead with rationalizations. His little clique of seminarians had
been very good at that. Justifying with technical arguments, and ecclesiastical dancing upon the head of a pin, that having
sex among themselves did not constitute an actual violation of their vows.

He had allowed the arguments to seduce him, and had gotten along quite well. And then after the seminary, he had quit the
affairs cold turkey. He had been so proud of that. Chaste at last. Faithful to his vows. The photographs had been harmless.
An outlet.

And maybe that was just one more rationalization.

A sound, bitter, escaped his mouth. Walsh had warned him against agreeing to the lineup. But in his arrogance he had insisted.
Get it over with. Enjoy their stupid faces when he passed with flying colors. He was innocent, after all. How could he have
guessed that one of those nameless boys he’d photographed could be linked to one of the victims, or that he’d be falsely identified
as being in some bar with another?

And still it might have come to nothing without that locket. How had the Mancuso girl’s necklace turned up in the rectory
basement? It seemed that he was being framed. By God, if not the killer.

He looked at the clock. Edward Walsh had called and left a message. He was coming here tonight, and soon. Coming to tie down
the details for him to turn himself in.

He hadn’t been allowed to attend the Mancuso girl’s funeral today, nor Father Kellog’s services at St. Patrick. There was
still some talk of a defense, but the message was clear. The Church was giving him up. He’d run out of places to hide. He
unbuckled the belt at his waist and drew it out full length. Then he looked down at the note he’d let fall to the bed.
I’m sorry.
He’d let stand what he had written. Let them make of it what they would.