Until Judgment Day (10 page)

“Bishop, I advise you—” Scalisi interrupted, but was silenced by a quick shake of the Bishop's head.

Davidson kept his eyes riveted on Mackay even as he spoke softly to his lawyer. “Gerald, there can be no harm in my answering that question honestly. Perhaps if I do, Ms. Mackay will be satisfied and drop her witch hunt.”

Davidson crossed himself. “Ms. Mackay, I give you my sacred word as a Christian and Bishop that neither I nor the Monterey Diocese of the American Catholic Church has
ever
received a complaint alleging sexual misconduct on the part of Fathers Thompson, Benedetti, or Duvoir.”

“I believe you,” Mackay said softly, “but I'm still convinced that they have something in common, and if we don't figure out what it is soon, there'll be more dead priests. Are you willing to risk their lives?”

“If necessary.”

“You'll go to jail until you decide to cooperate, no matter how long that takes,” Mackay promised. “Jail's not a nice place.”

Davidson smiled benevolently. “As a divinity student in the sixties, I marched with Martin Luther King and spent a month in a Mississippi jail cell eating cockroaches and hominy grits—I don't know which was worse. In the seventies,” he continued with a wry smile, “I boycotted the grape fields beside Cesar Chavez. Valley jails are nicer than Mississippi's but they're no picnic.

“In the eighties, I was arrested a dozen times outside abortion clinics from San Francisco to San Diego. In the nineties, it was Bosnia. I've spent more nights in jail than many felons, and a few more won't hurt me.”

Mackay shook her head. “If I recess the Grand Jury now, they'll take off for the New Year's holiday and won't reconvene before next Monday—maybe later.”

“I understand,” Davidson answered.

“Are you always so stubborn?”

“Yes, he is,” Scalisi interjected. “In fact, he's being cooperative today.”

“I'll arrange for Sheriff Granz to put you in Q,” Mackay said, then explained, “Q is the security unit where a high-risk inmate can be isolated and protected from the jail's general population.”

“I don't want to be isolated or protected.”

“Our jail's full of criminals who'll slit your throat for the gold in your cross and ring, not to mention gangbangers—there are members of the Hispanic Norteños and Sureños gangs in custody all the time. You might not live till next Monday.”

“Hispanic gang members are Catholics, Ms. Mackay. They won't harm a Catholic Bishop, and they'll see to it that no one else hurts me, either. I'll be safer in jail than walking from my rectory to my church.”

“See what I mean?” Scalisi asked Mackay.

“You worry too much, Gerald.” Davidson stood. “Now, if you lawyers are finished, I'd like to go to jail.”

M
ONDAY
, D
ECEMBER
30, 11:30
A.M.
O
FFICE OF
S
HERIFF
G
RANZ

“
I
BELIEVED
B
ISHOP
D
AVIDSON
when he said none of the three priests were sex offenders,” Mackay said.

Escalante made brief eye contact with Granz, Miller, and Mackay. It was cold in Granz' office and she tugged her jacket tight over her chest. “Then, they must all be part of the gambling problem. Every parish has computers with Internet access.”

“How do you know that?” Mackay asked.

“Bishop Davidson told me as I was walking him to the jail,” Escalante answered. “And to gamble on-line, they would have to download casino software.”

“Hard drive searches would tell us if they did,” Mackay observed, checking her wristwatch. “It's two-thirty. I'll catch Keefe in chambers. He wants to be a law 'n' order judge, he'll issue a search warrant to seize all three priests' PCs.”

“What do priests use computers for?” Miller asked, then added, “Besides layin' down bets.”

“They post mass schedules, current events, parish news,” Escalante told him. “Shut-ins can go on-line to request and offer prayer.”

“How 'bout absolution?”

“Some parishes heard on-line confessions until the Vatican banned it.”

“Pity. You coulda logged on, asked forgiveness, said a few Hail Marys,” Miller told her.

“For what?”

“Locking up the Bishop.”

“I was just following orders.” Escalante's voice rose an octave.

“Lighten up, Chiquita, I was joking.”

Miller fingered an unlit Camel, rolled it between his palms, and blew loose tobacco on Granz' office floor. “If three priests have gambling addictions, there's prob'ly more.”

“I'm not so sure,” Mackay said, turning to her husband. “Why would Davidson give up Duvoir but go to jail to protect Thompson and Benedetti?”

Granz stared out the window.

“Dave?”

“Huh?”

“I asked why Davidson would testify that one priest had a gambling addiction but go to jail rather than admit there are others.”

“To avoid acknowledging how widespread it is,” Granz speculated, gnawing his lower lip until he winced in pain. “One gambling addiction's an illness; two's a cancer; three—call the Centers for Disease Control, you've got an epidemic.”

“So, he's buying time to find out how far the disease has spread?”

“And to cure it on the q.t.”

“You might be right,” Mackay agreed. “At the hearing, Scalisi told Woods the Diocese hired an investigator. That means they want to get to the problem before the cops do.”

Miller swiveled his chair back and forth and stopped when it pointed in Escalante's direction. “If they hired a licensed PI, we could lean on him, but that could take a while.”

“And he might not know anything yet anyway.”

Escalante made a note in her spiral-bound, slid a color printout across Granz' desk, and gave copies to Miller and Mackay.

“Downloaded off the web,” she explained. “This on-line casino's run by Cassava Enterprises Limited, an Antigua-Barbuda, West Indies corporation. It looks like an aboveboard gaming operation, but there are dozens more whose web sites don't say where they're located.”

Miller checked the printout. “How'd you get it?”

“Easy—I typed
casino
in my laptop's search engine, and got a couple pages of hits. They all had one thing in common.”

“What?” Granz asked.

“They accept VISA and MasterCard wagers.”

“So?”

“I have a—an old friend who's a VISA-MasterCard fraud investigator.”

Years before, the friend had tracked credit-card charges to find escaped murderer Robert Simmons. When Mackay had asked how she got such prompt results, Escalante had said, “I made him a promise I won't mind keeping.”

“I'll ask him to find out where R-O-L does its banking,” Escalante volunteered now. “Maybe we can track them down that way.”

“Do I know this wannabe-cop VISA investigator?” Miller asked.

“I doubt it.”

“Then I'll go along as backup.”

“Not necessary, I can handle it.”

“That's what bothers me, Chiquita.” Miller crushed the mutilated Camel and stuffed it back in the pack.

Granz leaned forward in his chair, rested his elbows and forearms on the desk, and squeezed his shaky hands together. “Jazzbo, run an NCIC computer search for similars, and check the Secretary of State's corporate database for R-O-L.”

“Will do. Other states, too, in case Escalante's hotshot doesn't come through. If it's a U.S. corporation, it's chartered someplace.”

Escalante ignored the pointed comment. “A lot of them are in the Caribbean, like OnLineCasino-dotcom. Not only that, but anybody can operate a web casino out of any place with electricity and a phone line—they can be anything from a one-man scam in a bedroom or garage to a legitimate, tax-paying international consortium at Monte Carlo or Las Vegas.”

“Check FBI and Interpol organized crime units,” Granz told her.

Mackay was shaking her head. “Casino fraud or not, I still don't buy it's a paid hitter.”

“Why not?” Granz challenged.

“MOs are too different.”

“Pros adapt.”

“Maybe, but why torture Benedetti and Duvoir instead of executing them quick and making a clean getaway?”

“The casino's sending a message—don't welch on bets or you'll get the same. And if they think someone besides Thompson, Benedetti, and Duvoir stiffed them, and if they
did
contract out a hit, there's going to be more dead priests if we don't ID the shooter damn fast.”

Escalante agreed. “I'll contact the IFCC.”

“The what?” Mackay wanted to know.

“Internet Fraud Complaint Center—the FBI and National White Collar Crime Center—set up a cyber-crime clearinghouse. Victims log on, submit complaint information, IFCC evaluates it and disseminates cases to the proper jurisdiction for investigation and prosecution.”

“Why don't the Feds prosecute?”

“Cyber-crooks are several steps ahead of Congress—most Internet offenses aren't federal crimes yet.”

“How do they decide whose jurisdiction a crime occurred in?” Mackay asked.

“It isn't easy. The game's web server can be in one state or country, but controlled by a perp at a second location, even from a laptop or cell phone, while the victim's in a third jurisdiction.”

“Jesus! I just figured out how to e-mail my kid and wire-transfer child support payments to my ex,” Miller complained.

Then he added, “I oughta retire while I'm smart as the bad guys.”

“You're too young to retire.” The corners of Escalante's mouth lifted a little. “An Internet perp can run the con, pull down the web site in seconds, and vanish without a trace. With IFCC, victims can report crime the same way it occurred—on-line, at the speed of light.”

“What good's that do us?”

“IFCC keeps cyber-crime stats and patterns in a central repository available to law enforcement. If similar Internet scams or e-mail threats have been reported, they're most likely in IFCC, not NCIC or Interpol. I'll check it out before you waste time chasing dead ends.”

“Anything else?” Mackay asked.

No one spoke up.

“I'll call Menendez, see what DOJ came up with on evidence recovered at the crime scenes. You free to run out to the lab with me tomorrow morning, Dave?”

Granz' vacant, glazed eyes stared out the window. He was chewing furiously on nothing, as if someone had slipped him a piece of old shoe leather instead of a T-bone.

“Dave?” she repeated.

He continued to stare.

She stood and touched him on the shoulder. He jerked, blinked his eyes, and ran the back of a hand over his lips. “Did you say something?”

“Are you all right?”

“What—sure. I was thinking.”

“One more thing,” Miller said. “In an orange jail jumpsuit Davidson looks like all the other scum-bags. Some fudge packer claims him as a punk and he beefs, you'll have a dead Bishop in your jail.”

“The Bishop won't fight back.” Granz leaned back in his desk chair and pressed the heels of his hands into both temples. “Have him put in Q before lockdown,” he ordered Miller.

“You got it.”

When Miller and Escalante left, Mackay stood behind her husband's chair, massaged his shoulders, and felt his forehead with her fingers. “No fever. What's wrong?”

“I don't feel well, must've been what I had for lunch.”

“What did you eat?”

“Miller, Fields and I went to Sophia's for burritos, beans, rice and chips.”

“That'd do it to me.”

“I think I'll lie down for a few minutes.”

“Good idea, Babe. As soon as I get done with Keefe, I'll stop by.”

M
ILLER POKED
E
SCALANTE'S
shoulder playfully as they headed down the elevator. “I'll drive you to San Jose to see that VISA investigator.”

“I told you I can handle it.”

“And I told you that bothers me.”

“You sound jealous.”

His ruddy face reddened. “I'm playin' a gig tonight at Bo's Alley Jazz Club, maybe you'd like to stop by and listen.”

“Are you asking me for a date, Lieutenant Miller?”

“You ain't heard a trombone till you hear mine.”

“I'm not sure it's a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“We work together.”

“I asked you to listen to me play trombone, not to bump uglies.”

“You've got a real way with words.” She thought about it. “What time?”