Back in the squad room the detectives hit the phones.
An hour later Ben hung up and looked at Ed over the rubble on top of his desk. “We got one Father Francis Moore in the Archdiocese. Been here two-and-a-half years. He’s thirty-seven.”
“And?”
“He’s black.” Ben reached for his cigarettes and found the pack empty. “We check him out anyway. What have you got?”
“I’ve got seven.” Ed looked down at his neatly detailed list. Someone sneezed behind him and he winced. The flu was going through the station like brushfire. “A high school teacher, a lawyer, a clerk at Sears, a currently unemployed, a bartender, a flight attendant, and a maintenance worker. He’s an ex-con. Attempted rape.
Ben checked his watch. He’d been on duty just over ten hours. Let’s go.
The rectory made him uncomfortable. The scent of fresh flowers competed with the scent of polished wood. They waited in a parlor with an old, comfortable sofa, two wing chairs, and a statue of a blue-robed Jesus with one hand raised in benediction. There were two copies of
“Makes me feel like I should’ve polished my shoes,” Ed murmured.
Both men were conscious of the guns under their jackets, and didn’t sit. From somewhere down the hall a door opened long enough to let out a few strains of Strauss. The door closed again and the waltz was replaced by footsteps. The detectives looked over as-Reverend Francis Moore walked in.
He was tall and built like a fullback. His skin was the color of glossy mahogany and his hair was clipped close around a round face. Against the black of his priest’s robe was a white sling. His right arm was in a plaster cast riddled with signatures.
“Good evening.” He smiled, apparently more curious than pleased to have visitors. “I apologize for not shaking hands.”
“Looks like you’ve had some trouble.” Ed could almost feel his partner’s disappointment. Even if Gil Norton had been off on the description, there was no getting around that cast.
“Football a couple of weeks ago. I should have known better. Won’t you sit down?”
“We need to ask you a few questions, Father.” Ben drew out his badge. “About the strangulation of four women.”
“The serial killings.” Moore bowed his head a moment, as if in prayer. “What can I do?”
“Did you place an order with O’Donnely’s Religious Supplies in Boston last summer?”
“Boston?” Moore’s free hand toyed with the rosary at his belt. “No. Father Jessup is in charge of supplies. He orders what we need from a firm here in Washington.”
“Do you keep a post office box, Father?”
“Why, no. All our mail is delivered to the rectory. Excuse me, Detective…”
“Paris.”
“Detective Paris. What is this all about?”
Ben hesitated a moment, then decided to push whatever buttons were available. “Your name was used to order the murder weapons.”
He saw the fingers on the rosary tighten. Moore’s mouth opened then closed. He reached out and gripped the left wing of a chair. “I-you suspect me?”
“There’s a possibility you know or have been in contact with the murderer.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Why don’t you sit down, Father?” Ed touched him gently on the shoulder and eased him into the chair.
“My name,” Moore murmured. “It’s hard to take it in.” Then he laughed shakily. “The name was given to me in a Catholic or-phanage in Virginia. It’s not even the one I was born with. I can’t tell you that one because I don’t know it.”
“Father Moore, you’re not a suspect,” Ben told him. “We have a witness who says the murderer is white, and you’ve got your arm in a cast.”
Moore wriggled his dark fingers, which disappeared into plaster. “A couple of lucky breaks. Sorry.” He drew a breath and tried to pull himself together. “I’ll be honest with you, these murders have more than once been a topic of conversation here. The press calls him a priest.”
“The police have yet to determine that,” Ed put in.
“In any case, we’ve all searched our souls and strained our minds trying to find some answers. I wish we had some.”
“Are you close to your parishioners, Father?”
Moore turned to Ben again. “I wish I could say yes. There are some, of course. We have a church supper once a month, then there’s the youth group. Right now we’re planning a Thanksgiving dance for the Teen Club. I’m afraid we don’t pack them in.”
“Is there anyone who concerns you, someone you might consider emotionally unstable?”
“Detective, I’m in the business of comforting the troubled. We’ve had some drug and alcohol abuse, and an unfortunate case of wife beating a few months ago. Still, there’s no one I would even consider capable of these murders.”
“Your name might have been pulled out of a hat, or it might have been used because the killer identified with you, as a priest.” Ben paused, knowing he was stepping onto the hard-packed un-movable ground of the sanctified. “Father, has anyone come to you in the confessional and indicated in any way that he knew something about the murders?”
“Again I can be honest and say no. Detective, are you certain it was my name?”
Ed took out his notepad and read from it. “Reverend Francis Moore.”
“Not Francis X. Moore?”
“No.”
Moore passed his hand over his eyes. “I hope relief isn’t a sin. When I was given my name and was old enough to learn to write it, I always used the X for Xavier. I thought having a middle name that began with X was exotic and unique. I never got out of the habit. Detectives, every piece of identification I have uses my middle initial. Everything I sign includes it. Everyone who knows me, knows me as Reverend Francis X. Moore.”
Ed noted it down. If he’d gone with instinct, he would have said good night and gone on to the next address on the list. Procedure was more demanding and infinitely more boring than instinct. They interviewed the three other priests in the rectory.
“Well, it only took us an hour to come up with nothing,” Ben commented as they walked back to the car.
“We gave those guys something to talk about tonight.”
“We put in yet another hour of overtime this week. Accounting’s going to hit the roof.”
“Yeah.” Ed smiled a little as he eased into the passenger’s seat. “Lousy bastards.”
“We could give them a break, or we can go see the ex-con.”
Ed considered a moment, then pulled out the rest of his trail mix. It should hold him until he could get a meal. “I’ve got another hour.”
There were no fresh flowers in the one-room apartment in South East. The furniture, what there was of it, hadn’t been polished since it had been bought from the Salvation Army. A Murphy bed no one had bothered to tuck back into the wall took up most of the room. The sheets weren’t clean. The unpleasant odors of sweat, stale sex, and onions hung in the room.
The blonde had an inch of brown root showing in her frizzed mop of hair. She opened the door with the slow, wary stare of the knowing when Ben and Ed showed their badges. She wore snug jeans over a well-shaped rear, and a pink sweater that was cut low enough to show breasts that were starting to sag.
Ben gauged her to be about twenty-five, though there were lines already dug deep at the sides of her mouth. Her eyes were brown, and the left one was set off by a bruise that had rainbowed into mauve, yellow, and gray. He
