ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) Read Online Free PDF

Rona’s hot tip wasn’t all that hot. Kitty’s story about the weird john seemed credible, but her description of the man, if in fact he was the Tongue Killer, was useless.
    The women came out of the room, arguing, Kitty saying to Rona as they joined him at the door, “I know he won’t believe me.”
    Rona gave him a look. “Yes he will. Tell him.”
    Kitty ducked her head, eyes fixed on the floor, and said in a low voice, “I think the guy was a priest. Before he ran off, he made a sign with his hand the way priests do, you know? Like he was absolving me or something.”
    _____
     
    To avoid the media ghouls, more frenzied than ever now that there was a new victim, Frank parked behind the command center. Miller was waiting for him, seated in the shade on the cement steps outside the back door, smoking a cigarette. Frank recapped the interview with Kitty, but skipped the part about the priest. A staunch Catholic, Miller had two kids in parochial school, and Kitty’s notion that the john was a priest was pure speculation.
    “ Can you get a sketch artist to work with her?” he asked. “Someone who’ll go to her house and keep quiet about it?”
    “ Sure. No need to say it’s related to the Tongue Killer. I’ll get Monica. She’s good and she’ll keep her mouth shut.” Miller smiled faintly. “How you doing with Rona?”
    “ Let’s hope she keeps quiet, too. She was pissed you weren’t there.” Adding with a sly grin, “I told her you had a hot date.”
    “ Like hell you did,” Miller said, laughing. “Right about then I was filing our reports on that three-hundred-pound sack of shit. He’s still in the lockup, caught a woman judge. She set bail at a half-mill, said he was a risk to the community.”
    “ Good for her,” he said, watching a dark sedan with two FBI agents pull into a reserved front-row spot thirty yards away. “Too many stalkers get out of jail and kill their target.”
    The FBI agents climbed out and headed their way, looking spiffy in their regulation dark suits. Miller saw them and rose to his feet. “We better go in. Norris wants to talk to us.”
    Damn. He hated one-on-ones with Norris and avoided them whenever he could. “Shall we tell him about Kitty?”
    Miller turned his back on the approaching FBI agents and said in a low voice, “Tell him about Kitty, we gotta tell him about Rona, and he’s no fan of hers, the way she roasts him in her column. Was this prostitute credible? Maybe she’s looking for a piece of the reward.”
    “ No doubt in my mind she was scared, but I’ll check her priors, see if she ever tried a scam like this before.”
    Miller stabbed his cigarette in a butt-filled urn and opened the door. “Right. Check her sheet, see how the composite turns out, then tell Norris.”
    _____
     
    A white Melamine board on the rear wall of the taskforce command center held timelines and significant data printed in blue Magic Marker above photographs of each victim. Dawn Andrews was the latest. Now there were four and the cavernous room vibrated with urgency, phones ringing, faxes humming. Separated by low partitions, taskforce members worked phones or gazed at computer screens. Ten FBI agents occupied the prime real estate beside the windows, eight from the New Orleans office. Norris had brought two more with him from Atlanta, along with a female media coordinator and a male staffer to supervise a 24-hour hotline monitored by local police.
    Frank saw the looks directed at them as they made their way to Norris’ office, a glassed-in cubicle in the far corner. Politics was the norm on any police force. The taskforce was worse, a volatile mix of FBI agents, local and state police detectives with oversized egos. Anyone getting a private audience with the head honcho was viewed with suspicion and envy.
    Visible through the glass, Special Agent Burke Norris sat hunched over a steel-gray desk that stood right-angled to the door, a telephone clamped to his ear. The desk