Until Judgment Day (25 page)

“I sorta came to the same conclusion.” Miller nodded. “Besides, the County changed storage facilities twice in twenty years. There's no indexing system and occasionally we purge evidence from cases after they're disposed—return what we can to the owners, burn the drugs, send guns to Sacramento to melt down. If a Python still exists we'd never find it. Forget it. As for the cell phone calls, I don't give a shit if he placed them or not, wouldn't necessarily prove he killed anyone.”

“Thank God for that.” Nelson sighed deeply. “Now what, Sheriff?”

“We investigate the names in the yearbooks, see who turns up. If the killings stop, we'll probably never know for sure, and that's fine with me.”

Nelson looked at the others. “Is there anything we can do to help Dave's mother?

Fields flicked his tongue over his lips. “I asked her what I could do.”

“What'd she say?”

“That I'd done enough.”

Miller looked at his friend sadly. “You didn't deserve that.”

“I understood. As I was leaving, she said, ‘Were you really my son's friend?' I told her I was, and she says, ‘There
is
one thing you can do for me.' ‘Name it,' I told her. ‘Prove my son
isn't
a murderer,' she says.”

“What'd you say to that?” Miller asked.

“I promised I would.”

“You oughta be more careful what you promise. Nobody can prove he didn't murder those priests—because he prob'ly did.”

“I know, but couldn't bring myself to tell her so.”

Nelson jutted out his chin. “Even if every shred of evidence that exists points to Dave—even if he actually
did
kill those priests, he didn't know what he was doing or remember that he did it. That means he didn't have the necessary malice aforethought, so it wouldn't have been murder.”

“I feel your pain, Doc.” Miller's head wagged skeptically. “But I'm not sure I can buy that.”

“The tumor induced epilepsy and seizures that caused blackouts and loss of memory.”

“You said the blackouts are momentary.”

“I said they're
usually
short-term. But status epilepticus seizures last for hours. They're unusual but not unheard of.”

“Not likely though, right?” Miller prodded gently.

“No. But a brain tumor that big could've induced a deep psychosis that caused Dave's rational, justifiable hatred for the priest who molested him, Thompson—and the one who covered it up, Benedetti—to metastasize into an irrational, unjustified hatred for
all
priests.”

“Explaining why,” Fields filled in, “if he was the shooter, he didn't stop after getting even with the two priests associated with his own molestation.”

“Precisely,” Nelson confirmed. “Of course, the last three killings could've been copycats as well. But if it was Granz, in his condition killing those priests would've seemed reasonable. Unless someone proves otherwise, and no one can, it adds up to reasonable doubt in my mind that he
knowingly
murdered anyone.”

“
T
HANK YOU FOR BRINGING
me clean clothes.”

Kathryn had dug through the overnight bag while Escalante told her of Mr. Granz' death, then they had both cried as Escalante related to her the ugly story of the sexual abuse her husband had endured as a boy. The catharsis of mutual grief made them feel better for the moment.

Kathryn slipped on clean underwear, tugged her Belly Basics cotton stretch pants over her hips, and buttoned up the matching knit maternity shirt.

“And thanks for driving Emma to school this morning,” she added. “She thinks you're the greatest.”

“The feeling's mutual.”

“How did she seem when you dropped her off?”

“Grieving and worried about you.”

“She hadn't left my bedside since Monday night. Getting out of this dreary hospital was the best thing for her.” Kathryn managed a small, sad smile. “How can a girl her age be so strong?”

Escalante perched on the edge of the bed. “I'm worried that
you're
strong enough to leave.”

“My doctor can't do anything for me in the hospital that she can't in her office.”

“I meant strong enough emotionally.”

“I can't hide in the hospital.”

“I wouldn't call a couple of days in the hospital
hiding
.”

Kathryn fingered the bandage on her forehead. “I've got to take control of my life.”

“What about the baby's condition?”

Kathryn sat in the chair and slipped on her flat-heeled shoes.

“Doctor Burton says my lowered blood pressure probably diminished the baby's oxygen supply long enough to cause brain damage.”

“I'm sorry, Kathryn.”

“She also said your quick action and the paramedics' might have saved him. There's no way to be sure until he's born.”

“Did she suggest—”

“Yes, but I can't abort Dave's son.” Kathryn leaned over the sink, applied her makeup, and studied herself in the mirror. “God, I look terrible.”

“Even if I agreed, you have good reason.”

“You're always so diplomatic.”

Kathryn stuffed the dress, bra, pantyhose, and shoes she wore Monday night to The Shadowbrook into a plastic laundry bag, held it out at arm's length, reconsidered, pulled it back, then held it out again tentatively.

“Seems like I wore these clothes in another lifetime,” she said. “The dress has blood on it.”

Escalante took the bag. “I'll have them cleaned for you.”

“Thanks,” Kathryn said. “I'd like to go home now.”

O
N
F
RIDAY
,
J
ANUARY
17,
Kathryn and Emma Mackay flew to San Diego, where Emma met her grandmother for the first time at the funeral of Chester Granz. Mass was celebrated at St. Didacus Parish by the Very Reverend Michael Robinson, an old family friend. Immediately following the ceremony, the three rode a taxi to Lindbergh Field and caught a flight to San Jose.

The next day, James Fields stood on the altar platform inside Holy Ascension Catholic Church and delivered a eulogy to his friend David Granz. Afterward, Mary Enid Granz kissed Fields on the cheek and whispered in his ear. Whatever words she spoke brought tears to his eyes, but he never shared them with anyone.

It was a gorgeous, warm day outside following the private service, the kind that makes you check the calendar to be sure it's still winter, and the ocean shimmered like a blanket of jewels in the distance.

The sun glinted brightly off the polished-brass trumpet when Sheriff James Jazzbo Miller, in full-dress uniform, played “Taps” on the steps of the church and laid the memory of David Granz to rest.

At eight
A.M
. Monday, DA Chief Inspector James Fields announced his retirement after thirty-one years' service as a police officer.

That night, Jazzbo Miller fulfilled a commitment to play at the Jazz Club. He opened with a solo instrumental rendition of “When I Fall in Love,” which he dedicated to Donna Escalante. They sat together talking quietly over a glass of wine after the combo finished playing and he asked her to marry him.

She said “yes.” The next morning she made reservations at Las Hadas Resort in Manzanillo, Colima, Mexico for their honeymoon.

Miller decided that instead of cementing over the Sheriff's conference room windows, he would pay for weekly cleanings out of his own pocket. Later he had the floor carpeted, walls painted pastel blue, replaced the beat-up furniture, and hung No Smoking signs around the room in prominent spots.

Mary Granz put the house where she and her husband had lived for forty years and raised their son up for rent. She moved into Kathryn's condominium, which was being converted to a rental since Kathryn and Emma moved into Dave's house following their marriage. Mrs. Granz said she wanted to be near her grandchildren.

 

Miller and Escalante's continuing investigation led, through multiple layers of corporations and holding companies, to a retired University of Nevada mathematics professor and his wife, a statistician and computer programmer. They operated Roulette-On-Line from a spare bedroom in their Elko, Nevada, home on a Compaq server fed by three phone lines, running self-written gambling algorithms.

Phone company records disclosed several long-distance calls to the Monterey Diocese at the approximate times Bishop Jeffrey Davidson received telephone death threats. The Bishop declined to press charges.

Under Sheriff Miller's close supervision, his Internal Affairs Officer identified seventeen male Sheriff's deputies who admitted having been molested as boys by Catholic priests, in addition to one female deputy's husband, a CPA. None of the murdered priests was accused of being the violator.

Seized yearbooks yielded four men in Santa Rita and adjacent counties who attended Saint Sebastian High School and played football during Father John Thompson's tenure. Due to the passage of time, most could not account for their precise whereabouts at the exact times that each priest was murdered, but none had criminal records and could not be tied to any crimes. All four were eventually cleared as suspects. None admitted to ever having been sexually molested by a Catholic priest.

No more priests were murdered. Although never officially closed, after months of dead ends the “Holy Homicide Probes”—so dubbed by the media—were placed on the back burner in favor of more urgent investigations.

S
ATURDAY
, N
OVEMBER
29
P
ARIS
, F
RANCE

“
L
ET
'
S TAKE A TAXI.
”

“No way, young lady, if you want to ride the
grande roue
Ferris wheel, we're walking.”

“You're riding it with me!”

“The only time I plan to be two hundred feet in the air's on an airplane.”

“Chicken.”

“You bet I am.”

They slept late the morning after they flew into Charles de Gaulle Airport. When the baby woke them, Kathryn ordered a room-service breakfast of coffee, milk, juice, croissants, pains au chocolat, and fresh fruit. It was served on an ornate silver tray with scrolled, arching handles.

Emma sat in a deeply padded high-backed chair, swung around from the table that held the food, holding her baby brother on her lap and swallowing the last of the pains.

“Emma, you ate all the chocolate pastries.” Kathryn lay in a robe, back propped against the headboard of the bed with her ankles crossed, sipping coffee from a china cup and watching her children.

“They're my favorites.”

“Mine too, thanks a lot!”

“Too late.”

The baby kicked furiously at the bottom of his sleeper, broke loose a couple of snaps, then gazed into his sister's eyes and cooed.

“You're a strong little guy,” Emma told him, brushing back his hair. “Just like our dad. But sit still so I can feed you breakfast.”

She mashed a banana and spooned a taste into his tiny mouth. He gummed it and smacked his lips, swallowed, then bounced up and down, waving his little arms and clenching his fingers, demanding more.

She wiped his chin with a napkin and he laughed. “He sure is a happy baby.”

“Happy, hungry, and healthy,” Kathryn said, then thought,
Thank you, God.

She spun the top off a jar of Gerber's cereal that she'd immersed in hot water in the bathroom sink, tested the temperature on her tongue, and handed it to Emma. “Feed him this before he fills up on fruit.”

“He likes bananas.”

“He sure does, but he's got to eat other food.”

“I don't see why you've gotta be too stingy to pay for a taxi,” Emma complained, changing mood and direction in the startlingly abrupt manner reserved strictly for teenage girls.

Kathryn smiled to herself, slid off the bed, grabbed a croissant, refilled her coffee, and padded barefoot across the deep paisley carpet to the window.

The maroon-bordered, floral-patterned tapestries were gathered at the middle and tied to the window sash with a thick, maroon felt rope, causing the drapes to hang in an exaggerated
K
.

The morning light leaked past a thin, streaky cloud cover that portended a cool rather than wet day, and filtered through the gauzy curtains, decorating the floor with delicate patterns drawn of hazy shadows.

Emma spooned cereal into her brother's mouth. He pushed most of it out past his lips.

“Cold out there, huh?” she asked her mother.

“We're walking,” Kathryn said.

“It'll prob'ly rain too.”

“No taxi.”

Kathryn walked over and wiped cereal off her son's face and lifted him into her arms, sending him into a squirming spasm of delight, followed by frantic but futile sucking.

“What if rain gets on Davey's face?”

“Nice try, Em. I arranged with the concierge for an all-day loan of a baby carriage. Go shower while I change your brother's diaper, then we'll take a walk and see the sights.”

“Me and Davey'd rather see the sights from the backseat of a taxicab.”

“Davey and I
would rather see the sights from the backseat of a taxicab,” Kathryn corrected.

“I'm glad you see it our way,” Emma said and grabbed the phone. “I'll call one.”

Kathryn laughed and set the phone back in its cradle.

“Cheapskate,” Emma accused.

“If we've gotta walk all the way to—” Emma leaned over the table and traced a forefinger across the map, “Tuileries Gardens, be sure you dress Davey nice and warm.”

The concierge greeted them in French, then disappeared into a back room and returned pushing an old-fashioned baby carriage with removable rattan basket and red-and-white polka dot fold-up top. It had fat rubber wheels and a shelf underneath onto which Kathryn loaded a diaper bag.

He held the door for them and told Kathryn what she believed equated to “have a nice day.”

It was overcast but reasonably comfortable outside and the sweet air smelled of baking bread, fresh-brewed espresso, and distant rain.

Emma checked the baby. He was sleeping with his thumb stuck in his mouth. She fiddled unnecessarily with his blanket, as dictated by her budding maternal instincts, then claimed her usual right to push the buggy.

They strolled down Rue de Rivoli to Rue St. Florentin, then jogged toward the water through the east end of Place de la Concorde.

Beyond the Obélisque and upstream they could see the Seine, swollen and brown with muddy runoff from the past week's storm, roiling angrily around the pilings that supported the Pont Alexandre III bridge.

A maze of concentric circles connected by metal bracing that radiated from the motor-driven hub, La Roue de Paris rose from the concrete pad of Place de la Concorde like a spindly white spider web. A Saturday morning crowd was lined up to buy tickets to ride the self-proclaimed “largest wheel on the continent.”

At two hundred feet high, it towered above the landscape, the lone remnant of a decorative Ferris wheel promenade that had bordered the Champs Élysées during Paris' 2000 millennium show.

Kathryn sat on a cast iron and wood bench on the bank of the Seine, humming and rocking the baby, pondering the mysterious cycle of life and death, while Emma bought her tickets. She rode the Ferris wheel three times in a row.

Afterward, they ate sandwiches at a sidewalk café and walked the length of the Champs Élysées, a spectacularly wide, spotlessly clean thoroughfare lined by quaint cafés, ritzy theaters, and upscale shops. It was
the
place Parisians went to see and be seen as much as to shop, eat, and be entertained.

They toured Place Charles de Gaulle and the Arc de Triomphe, built to greet Napoleon's soldiers as they returned home victorious after the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805.

By late afternoon Davey became restless and grumpy, and jet lag sapped their energy, so Kathryn and Emma took turns pushing the buggy back to the hotel. It seemed uphill but wasn't. They ate dinner at the Brasserie.

Over crème brûlée, Kathryn said, “I love you, honey.”

“I love you, too.”

“Did you have a nice day”?

“Yes but I'm tired. What are we doing tomorrow?”

“Something special. You remember what tomorrow is?”

Emma turned serious. “It's my dad's birthday.” She thought for a moment. “And Davey's dad, too.”