ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) (47 page)

Renzi remained silent, hands clasped on top of his head.

“
He doctored that sketch to make it look like me.”

“
I don’t know anything about that, Tim.”

“
You’re a liar!!! I saw the sketch in his desk drawer.” The angry beast inside him came alive, raging like a wild thing. “Rona Jefferson hates me, too. I don’t know why. I never did anything to her.”

“
You firebombed her house. Where’s your partner, Tim?”

“
Partner? You mean Marie?”

“
Right. Where’s Marie? Is she okay? You didn’t hurt her, did you?”

The sinner gripped the Glock harder, felt his arms tremble. The gun was heavy and his arms were getting tired, holding them outstretched, aiming the gun at Renzi’s head. He settled his forefinger on the trigger.

A few more questions and then Mr. Righteous would die.

_____

Frank forced himself into controlled breathing the way he did when he bench-pressed weights at the gym: big breath in through the nostrils, a slow stream of air through the lips. Beneath the Kevlar vest, sweat trickled down his chest and back. He resisted the urge to wipe sweat off his forehead. Rule one of negotiations: When the bad guy’s got a gun aimed at your head, show no fear and make no fast moves.

“
What did I do to make everyone hate me?” Tim said petulantly. “You hate me, Renzi. I know you do. Why does everyone hate me?”

Because you murder innocent women in cold blood,
he thought, amazed that the man could be so clueless. “Why don’t we send Marie outside so we can talk about it, just the two of us.”

“
Fuck you!” screamed a high-pitched voice, and Lisa Marie Sampson popped out from behind a grocery shelve, screaming, “I’m not going anywhere, you cop motherfucker! I’m staying right here with Tim!”

Frank was wound so tight with tension he felt a giddy urge to laugh. This was right out of
Pulp Fiction
, Marie playing foulmouthed Honey-Bunny in the diner, only thing missing was the gun. But Marie was no movie star; she was a plump little moon-faced teenager with a pimple on her chin, wearing an over-sized white shirt hanging loose over her baggy blue jeans.

“
Me and Tim are together.” Her face scrunched in a frown. She smoothed her short dark hair and moved closer to Tim, gazing up at him with adoring eyes. “We’re a couple, right, Tim?”

Frank analyzed the interaction, trying to decipher the relationship. Was this a case of Stockholm Syndrome, where the hostage identified with the hostage-taker, or had Marie, in the course of three or four days, become so smitten with Tim that she’d fallen in love with him?

Tim glanced at her and then swung his gaze back to Frank, all the while keeping his finger on the trigger of the Glock 9 aimed at Frank’s head.

“
This is as good a day to die as any other,” Tim said in a weary tone.

Marie shook her head, frowning at her man.

Frank wished he could get inside her mind. He had to convince her to leave, but from the look of things that might not be easy. He studied Tim’s body language. His hands, gripping the gun, were shaking, and his eyes were enormous, pupils so dilated they were almost black.

This is as good a day to die as any other.

Tim was nearing the end of his rope. He had to get Marie out of the store. He took another step forward, inching closer to Marie, but all the while holding Tim’s gaze. “Maybe you should tell Marie who you are, Tim. And what you’ve done.”

The knuckles on Tim’s trigger finger whitened with tension.

He waited, heart thumping, biceps aching from the effort of keeping his hands on top of his head, knowing how little control he had over what would happen. And it was going to happen soon. He had no doubt of it.

“
I love you, Tim,” Marie said.

Marie playing Juliet now. And Romeo’s reaction shocked him. Tim lowered the Glock, held it by his side and shook his head at Marie, as if her declaration of love displeased him. Her shoulders drooped.

She’s disappointed, Frank thought. She wants a reciprocal declaration from Tim. Did she have any idea at all who the man was and what he’d done?

Tim turned toward the girl with a look of sadness and resignation.

Slowly and with great care, Frank lowered his arms to his sides, flexing the muscles to get the blood circulating. Tim was twelve feet away. The Kevlar vest offered a certain amount of protection, but the weight and bulk of it made him awkward and slow. No way could he close the space fast enough to grab the Glock, and he didn’t dare pull his weapon out of his ankle rig, not with Marie so close to Tim. Tim would compose the ending of this drama, holding the Glock by his side in one hand, not pointing it at him anymore, but not putting it down, either.

“
Tim’s not the man you think he is, Marie.”

Marie shot him a dirty look and returned her gaze to Tim’s face.

“
Do the right thing, Tim. Let Marie leave. If you send her outside, it might make them go easier on you for killing all those women.”

“
What women?” Marie said. “What’s he talking about, Tim?”

“
Patti Cole and Dawn Andrews and Melody Johnson. Why’d you do it, Tim? Why did you kill them?”

“
They were sinners,” Tim snarled through clenched teeth.

As if that explained everything.

“
No, Tim, they were fine young women with promising lives ahead of them, but you ended that when you killed them.”

“
You killed them?” Marie’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. “Why?”

“
For committing sins of the flesh! The sluts are everywhere. Look at that magazine you were reading, Marie, half-naked women on every page. And all those others, shamelessly flaunting their bodies on TV and in movies. Those singers on MTV are the worst, prancing around half-naked.”

“
The women you killed weren’t on TV,” Frank said. “They were ordinary young women—”

“
They were sluts, every last one of them!” Tim tried to smile but it was a caricature of a smile, a rictus of bared teeth. “I knew you were taunting me, you know, when you said you were a fan of Britney Spears.”

“
You don’t like Britney?” Marie said, still frowning, gnawing her lip.

Frank held his breath, his gut churning. Things were falling apart. He had to do something. “I’m really thirsty, Tim. Could I have a bottle of water?” He didn’t have to pretend, he was dying of thirst.

“
You want water?” Tim sneered. “When you were grilling me at the police station, I asked for water and all you did was lecture me about DNA.”

“
You’re right, Tim. That was mean.” He edged closer to Marie. “Maybe Marie will get me a bottle of water. What do you say, Marie?”

She gave a tentative smile and turned to Tim with a questioning look.

A loud noise filtered through the windows at the front of the store, helicopter rotors, Frank realized. Talk about bad timing.

“
My goodness,” Tim said. “Sounds like the air cavalry has arrived.”

Frank turned to look, but the setting sun cast a glare on the windows that prevented him from seeing whatever was going on outside.

“
Why look outside, Detective Renzi? Everything important is happening right in here. One more question and we’ll be done. How did you connect me to Marie? How did you know I was with her?”

One more question and we’ll be done
. Time was up. The game was over.

“
You were at the Cockpit,” he said, tensing his muscles, inching his arms away from his body, ready to explode into action if the need arose. “That’s where you met her, right? I saw you on the security video.”

“
It was dark in there. You couldn’t possibly have identified me.”

Recalling Dana’s comments in the car, he weighed the consequences and decided to go for it. “Your face wasn’t that clear, but we got a great shot of your watch. Good old Mickey Mouse.”

Tim’s eyelids fluttered in a spasm of blinking.

Inching closer to Marie, Frank said, “It was the watch, Tim. Mickey gave you up.”

Tim flinched and the skin around his eyes tightened. Tim was about to snap. Frank resisted an urge to go for his Sig.
One more
question and we’ll be done.
Tim had made up his mind to do something, but what? He had to get Marie out of here. No way could he let another innocent life go down the toilet.

He took one pace forward, then another, and another, slow and easy, five feet away from Tim and Marie now, close enough to smell Tim’s pungent body odor. He forced a genial smile and held out his hand to Marie.

Tim watched him, frozen in a rigid pose, neck straight, shoulders back, holding the Glock in one hand, but not aiming it at him.

He held his breath and waited. After what seemed like an eternity, Marie gave him an unfathomable look, reached out and took his hand.

He drew her toward him, surprised at how willingly she came, her face expressionless. He grasped her arm, drew her closer and put her behind him, shielding her with his body as he backed away, edging toward the door, tense and alert, eyes fixed on Timothy Krauthammer.

Tim held the Glock two-fisted now. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

Step by step, he backed Lisa Marie Sampson toward the door, ten paces, fifteen, then twenty, moving slowly when what he really wanted to do was pick up the girl and charge out the door and get her to safety.

Tim said nothing, frozen in his rigid pose, watching them, his face expressionless. But his eyes burned with rage.

Two paces from the door, Frank let go of the girl, half-turned and reached for the door, intent on getting her outside.

“
You’ve got nowhere to go, Marie,” Tim said. “That’s what your father wants, you know. We’ve had a magnificent adventure, you and I. We’ve been places together, even if it was only in our minds.”

Marie moaned, a low sound in her throat.

“
She’s got somewhere to go, Tim. She’s going home to her father.”

“
Well, I’m not going home to mine.”

With a grim look of determination, as if he’d been waiting all his life for this moment, Tim set the muzzle of the Glock against his neck and fired.

“
No!” Marie screamed. “No, no, no, no.”

_____

He marveled at how quiet everything was, all of his senses hyper-alert. Even the odors were sharp: a whiff of ammonia from the floor cleanser, the stench of the dead clerk, the faint smell of cigarette smoke. Maybe the gunslinger clerk had smoked a cigarette before they entered the store, steeling himself for the confrontation.

The absence of pain surprised him. He’d thought death would be difficult but it was just the opposite, thanks to his brilliant plan. They’ll want to preserve your brain and study it so you mustn’t shoot yourself in the head. Be smart. Put a bullet in your neck, sever the aorta and bleed out fast.

Dying was easy. One bullet made everything right.

And how ironic, to have been foiled by the watch Father had given him. Not the original. He’d destroyed that one in a fit of fury, but years later he’d bought another. Yes, how fitting to have been brought down by his morbid attachment to a gift that should have demonstrated his father’s love, but hadn’t. Father’s secretary, a woman he’d never met, had chosen Mickey.

That she’d bought the perfect gift was a quirk of fate that had nothing to do with love. Father’s love had been his own invention, an emotion he’d tried to conjure whenever he looked at Mickey: See? Father demonstrated his love for you with his gift of a timepiece. But time was something Father had never given him. Father had time only for mathematical formulas and statistical analyses, and Nanny.

He recalled reading that in Asian cultures the gift of a timepiece meant you wanted them dead. Time to go, Tim. Best wishes from Mickey.

And in a convenience store, no less. For once in his life, he’d done something convenient for everyone: Father and Nanny, Rona Jefferson, Sean Daily. The biggest favor, of course, had gone to Detective Renzi. Renzi had won the Live-To-See-Another-Day pass. Unless, of course, Marie actually meant what she’d said about killing someone.

But Renzi’s fate was no longer up to him. The fate of others was no longer his concern and how sweet it was, a blessed benediction, everything right at last. Heaven must be like this, like lying in front of a fireplace, basking in the cozy warmth on a cold winter day in Wahoo. He should say an Act of Contrition for his sins, but it would do no good. God would know he was unrepentant and consign him to Hell, not that he cared. The torments of Hell could be no worse than his daily existence.

He’d never felt so peaceful. This must have been what his sinners felt when their eyes faded to black: Free. And now he was free too, free of the ever-carping voice in his mind, free of Father Cronin’s maledictions and the menial tasks Monsignor Goretti assigned him, free at last of the insults and rejections from uncaring women who tempted him and then rebuffed him. Free of the incessant search for another girl and another and another that had made his life a living Hell.

In the end, it was as simple as dying in the same room with a girl that loved you. Poor Marie. He’d done everyone a favor, except for Marie. The way his head was tilted he could see her, standing there with Renzi, tears of grief flowing down her cheeks as Renzi tried to console her.