ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) Read Online Free PDF Page B

was perfectly positioned to allow Norris to keep his back to the wall and keep an eye on his troops in the main room. He waved them inside and pointed at two padded folding chairs facing his desk.
    Frank took a seat and studied a large framed photograph on the wall: a beaming Norris at the Marietta Country Club, holding a big shiny golf trophy. Norris was married, but no family albums graced his desk. The only photo featured Norris at the country club, mounted on the wall opposite the door where no one could miss it.
    “ Absolutely, sir,” Norris said, his forehead creased in a frown.
    The mayor, Frank wondered, or the governor? Desperate to get the killer off their streets, the politicians were hounding the man tasked with this responsibility. Norris looked the part: a square-jawed six-footer in his fifties, iron-gray hair and steel-blue eyes, a commanding presence to face the media.
    Norris jutted his chin, a quick reflex motion to free his jowls from his too-tight collar and necktie. “Yes, sir, I’ll make that clear at today’s briefing.”
    Watching him, Frank had a hard time reconciling the man’s uptight behind-the-scenes demeanor with his assured public persona.
    “ Yes, sir. I’ll be in touch.” Norris slammed down the phone. “Jesus, I got every damn politician in Louisiana hassling me. After the Baton Rouge case, you’d think they’d understand that it takes time to find a serial killer.”
    During the 1990s several women in the Baton Rouge area had been brutally murdered. An FBI agent profiled the killer as a white male in his mid-thirties who had problems relating to women. But later, Derrick Todd Lee, a black man known to be a womanizer, had been convicted of the crimes after DNA evidence linked him to the murders.
    “ The families upped the reward to fifty grand,” Miller said. “Maybe that will get us a lead.”
    “ It better, because right now we got zip.” Norris raised his chin, jutted his jaw. “Two of my agents grilled the man who found Dawn Andrews, but he stuck to his story.”
    “ Which was?” Frank said. Quit teasing and give us the fucking details.
    Norris smirked at him. “Mario Pellegrino, Mr. Italian with chest hair and chains.”
    Ignoring the jibe at his Italian heritage, Frank maintained a deadpan expression. Norris didn’t know about the Irish side of his family. They had short fuses, too, shorter than the Italians.
    “ Pellegrino said they had a date,” Norris said, “but when he called around ten, she didn’t answer. He went there anyway, found the door ajar, went inside and saw the body. A message on her voice-mail lines up with his story: Mario called and said he’d pick up a pizza and be there in ten minutes. We let him go, but we’ll keep tabs on him.”
    Be there in ten minutes . The killer was there when he called, Frank thought, watching Norris paw through the paperwork strewn over his desk.
    During the silence, the sound of ringing telephones in the main room bled through the glass partition into the office. Norris found what he was looking for, a police report, eyeballed it and said, “Our UNSUB left the usual message on the bathroom mirror. He’s one of those mission killers, thinks these girls are sinners. No tongue mutilation this time, though.”
    “ The phone call interrupted him before he completed his ritual,” Frank said. And he knew enough about serial killers to know that incomplete meant unsatisfactory, which meant the scumbag would kill again, soon.
    “ Is that your theory?” Norris hefted a three-ring binder crammed with paper and dropped it on his desk. “We got plenty of theories. What we don’t got is evidence. No leads, no witnesses, no semen, no hairs or fibers. Christ, it’s like a fucking ghost did them. Four women murdered in their apartments, no forced entry, so they either knew him or trusted him. I think we’re looking at some kind of authority figure, a cop maybe, or someone posing as one. And let’s not fall for the