The scarred walnut-colored door to the apartment building opened and out walked the former Father Stanton. Along with his defrocking, he had been officially demoted to just Mr. Stanton. The church leadership had argued that this was a punishment worse than excommunication, because it was permanent, whereas an excommunication lasted only as long as the person was committing the sin. I wondered if his victims and their distraught families agreed with the church’s assessment, considering he was still a free man walking around and living his life as if nothing had ever happened, while they remained tortured by the psychological aftermath of his perverse predations.
He was still handsome, his hair a little grayer at the temples, age starting to pull at the corners of his eyes. In a dark dress shirt and jeans, he looked like a television news anchor on his way to do the evening news. He walked east down North Avenue, dropped a dollar in the cup of a man in a wheelchair selling Street Times, then walked into the Hollywood Grill. I turned the van around and drove farther down the street and parked across from the diner’s windows. I slid into the back of the van, which I had specially retrofitted with reinforced steel, cameras, and an observation scope that vented from the roof. I adjusted the camera lens, then increased the magnification. Stanton sat at a small colorful counter. I could practically read the print on the newspaper sitting on the table next to him.
A stout woman wearing a red checkered apron and white hairnet slid him a plate filled with an egg-and-cheese omelet, three strips of overly cooked bacon, and a pile of hash browns. He sipped from his coffee as he read through the Sun-Times, starting with the sports section at the back of the paper. An old man hunched on a cane walked by and gave him a friendly tap on the shoulder before sitting down two seats away. Stanton acknowledged him with a quick nod.
Stanton got through most of the Sun-Times, ate almost all his food, then got up and walked outside. He stood near the door, pulled out a cigarette, and smoked half of it before flicking it to the ground and returning inside. He picked up the Chicago Tribune next, then leafed through the entertainment section. He read it while finishing most of what was left on his plate. The woman refilled his coffee, and he went through the same routine—three spoons of sugar and two creamers—then back to his paper. After fifteen minutes, he placed a small pile of bills on the counter, left his papers folded next to his empty plate, waved at the old man, then walked out of the diner.
I jumped into the driver’s seat and started the van. Stanton continued walking north for several blocks, then ducked into a sliver of a barbershop with the name THE FINER THINGS painted across the window. I watched him sit in the chair, smiling and laughing with the barber, admiring himself in the mirror; not a care in the world. Yet his victims were scattered across the country, some of them hooked on drugs, unable to form relationships with people, blaming themselves that he had violated them. The barber ran the razor up Stanton’s throat, and I couldn’t help but think about how much justice there would be if I could push it right into the side of his neck and watch his carotids pump blood onto his ironed shirt until it pooled on the floor. I longed to see that arrogance wiped from his face and replaced with the look of fear at knowing that death was imminent. His victims and their families deserved to see his face twisted with dread and agony.
Once his cut was finished, Stanton paid, said something to the barber that made them both laugh, then walked outside to the corner and boarded a bus heading downtown. I looked at my watch and wrote down the time. It had been exactly sixty-nine minutes since he walked out his door. I needed to know his routine precisely. When the time was right, there would be no room for error.
A FULL TWENTY-FOUR hours had elapsed since Violet Gerrigan had walked into my office and dropped an overly generous retainer check on my desk. The critical seventy-two-hour window of discovery had closed, but that didn’t mean Tinsley couldn’t be lucky and beat the odds. I would have to move quickly and keep pressing. I drove to my office with the windows down and took in the clear September morning, one of those days when summer had pushed its last gasp, the leaves were starting to change colors, and a light jacket was enough to fight the early chill.
Part of me wanted to be out on the course working on bringing my club face closed on the downward part of my swing, but I needed to push forward on locating Tinsley. So, I found myself sitting and thinking in the quiet of my office while I looked across Grant Park at the whitecaps rolling in from Lake Michigan. Several small boats crossed each other on the open water. There was nothing like Lake Michigan on a clear day. Sitting there and watching it shiver was hypnotic enough to make you fall asleep.
My cell phone rang. It was my father, the eminent
