Thursday 11:35 P.M.
At Area Ten headquarters two hours later the assembled prelates had clots of lawyers with them. A representative of the Mayor’s office stood with Molton. Those two drank coffee and chuckled.
Turner and Fenwick wrote reports, added bits to their spreadsheet.
Cardinal Duggan and Abbot Bruchard sat in separate interview rooms of the station. Turner eyed them both through the one-way mirrors. Duggan looked like he’d been rode hard and put away wet. He made demands and was ignored. For a prelate to be in a common police station must have been driving him just about nuts. Bruchard stood and stormed and stammered. Pelagius sat with his hands folded over his substantial stomach. A smile occasionally played across his face. Any time any person he did not know got into his presence, he began murmuring about diplomatic immunity.
They and their lawyers demanded to leave.
Drake and his cell phone seemed wedded to each other until his attorney showed up. They talked together at a furious pace.
Tresca sat alone in another interview room. He had his head down, his elbows on his knees, his hands gripped together. Other than his breathing, Turner didn’t think he moved more than an inch. Early on, Turner commented to Molton, “Tresca needs to be on a suicide watch.” The Commander had agreed.
Around eleven thirty, Ian called from outside. With the swarm of reporters around the front of the station, they met in their usual quiet spot in the Area Ten parking lot. As promised, Ian had a copy of his recording from the Abbey. Turner met him outside, took the copy and said, “Thanks for your help.” He handed Ian a zip drive, which contained a copy of their spreadsheet.
“What’s this?” Ian asked.
“You might want to get together with your friend, Tyrone Bruno. I emailed him so he expects a call. You’ll want to share what’s on that. It’ll keep his paper in headlines for a long time. It should give you a few as well, although I’m not sure there’s a major gay angle to this.”
“Ah. And I didn’t get this from you?”
“I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
“That would be your loss, I think.” Ian smiled. “Just to let you know, within a very short time, that tape is going to be on the Internet, and, I believe, CNN.”
Turner smiled then returned to the station. He and Fenwick played the recording for Molton first. Molton said, “This was taped by one of the people involved in the conversation, but with the consent of people involved?”
“It wasn’t taped by the people in the conversation.”
“They’re going to want to know who taped it.”
“Ian.”
Molton knew Ian. Didn’t like him but thought he was a good reporter. Turner said, “I think what it will do is give us leverage here tonight. In court? I’m not sure.”
Turner asked, “The whole question of admissibility will be kind of moot in a very short while.”
Molton guessed. “Ian’s going to blast it to the rest of the universe.”
Turner nodded.
Then they played it for a crowd of representatives from the offices of the FBI, Homeland Security, and the State’s Attorney.
Several people asked, “Is it admissible? Who did the taping?”
Molton repeated Turner’s notion. “At the very least, it’s leverage.”
Turner and Fenwick entered the interview room with Tresca in it. A representative from the State’s Attorney’s office, Jane Folbe, accompanied them. She stood to the side.
The priest’s lawyer, Judson Giles, was an old man in his seventies. The others all had teams of helpers, Tresca just the one.
“We should talk,” Fenwick said.
“I have advised my client to remain silent.”
Fenwick said, “You may want to rethink that. You might get a deal tonight you wouldn’t get tomorrow.”
The lawyer sneered. “I doubt that.”
Turner placed his laptop on the table. Fong had already made digital duplicates of the recording. Turner let the computer play.
“This was obtained illegally,” were the attorney’s first words when it was done.
Folbe outlined the deal they would offer Tresca for his testimony against Duggan and Bruchard, along with anything else he knew.
Giles said, “I recommend against it.”
Tresca muttered, “What kind of lies do you think it’s going to take to keep me from going to jail? I’ve lived a life of lies. This needs to end.”
They left Tresca and his lawyer alone to discuss the possible deal.
At their desks, Molton joined them with Barb Dams fifteen minutes later. They had a laptop with them set to the live CNN feed.
Turner, Fenwick, and the State’s Attorney interrupted Tresca and his lawyer to show it to them. Tresca started to cry.
They left attorney and client to talk. A half an hour later his attorney joined them in the hall. “You’ve got a deal.”
They reassembled in the room.
Tresca spoke mostly to the table top. “I didn’t mean for things to get so out of hand. Nothing bad was supposed to happen.”
Turner knew exactly what Fenwick would say at this point if they didn’t have a cooperating, confessing killer. His bulky buddy would say, “You asshole, you brought a baseball bat and planned to kill him. This is bullshit.”
Both detectives knew that with someone in the emotional state Tresca must be in, it was most important that the deal didn’t fall apart and that the confession be admissible.
Turner asked, “How did this all start?”
“Timothy was going to break up with me. He was going to throw me out of the condo. He fell for that fat freak.” Turner glanced at his over-weight partner. Fenwick didn’t bat an eye. He knew when a killer was confessing, it was time to swallow all comments.
“You knew about the other man?”
“I knew of him. I didn’t know his name. Timothy would never tell me.” Tresca drew ragged breaths as he talked, frequently pausing as if the emotions might be overwhelming him. Turner thought that perhaps they should have some EMTs on call.
“I was desperate. I had to do something. I knew Timothy had been doing all those investigations all those years, of course. I suspected he’d been cheating all those years, making money where he could. He also had his income from his books. I had nothing. He paid for guys. I couldn’t afford them. We’d go to Key West every winter. He’d go for four weeks. He let me come for two. Sometimes he’d invite me to join him with a cute guy or two.”
Fenwick said, “It wasn’t like the old days when you were younger.”
Tresca glanced at him briefly. “We were cute, hot, and discreet.” He actually smiled for a second. “I was happy then.” He sighed. “We’d get together and mock the others in the seminary, vicious drag queens arming themselves in cassocks and Christ to fuck with you, but we’d screw them, and they liked it.”
Turner was annoyed with his friend for getting Tresca off track. He asked, “How’d it all come to a head?”
“Timothy and I had some terrible fights. He said he’d moved on. He didn’t care that I’d have nothing. It wasn’t like we could get a divorce, and I’d get spousal support or alimony. It was all his money. I’d be stuck in that Abbey with all the other losers.” He pulled in several ragged breaths.
Giles, his lawyer, said, “Can we get him something to drink?”
Bottled water was provided. Tresca continued, “Both the Cardinal and the Abbot felt threatened. They came to me separately.”
“Neither one knew about the other?” Turner asked.
“No. I thought of a plan how I could use them both. I wanted recognition. I wanted my place. Bishop wasn’t good enough. Timothy was moving up. Pelagius promised him possibilities of the Curia in Rome. The Cardinal and the Abbot hate each other.” He glanced up. “I guess you probably figured that out. They wanted all of Timothy’s records on them. I would have what they had. I’d get what they wanted. They were frightened. I could use their fear. They wanted him out of the way.”
“What did he have on each of them?”
“For sure financial information. I think other things as well. The Abbot has bankrupted the Order. The Cardinal was involved in huge financial dealings in the diocese. Timothy had documents proving everything.”
Turner didn’t let on that they had all this information from Gorman.
“How did you wind up murdering him?”
“Duggan, Bruchard, and I met. They wanted him out of the way. I was losing everything. I didn’t see any other way out. I asked to meet him by the river. It’s where we had all kinds of assignations in the past. We knew how to get in. He came, expecting what I’m not sure. A resolution? A final fight? I told him I wanted us to part friends.”
“You acted alone?” Turner asked.
“I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to pay for making me miserable, for forcing me to take such drastic action.”
Turner kept his sigh to himself. The self-justifying killer, bishop or pawn, the tune didn’t change much.
Tresca looked up at the ceiling. “That night, I got there early. Duggan, Bruchard, and I hid. Timothy was late. He was always late. As if he was the most important one to a meeting. I got angrier and angrier. His being late always pissed me off. Here it was again, and all that he was doing to me just built.”
Tresca’s breathing was becoming labored. His lawyer leaned close, put a hand on his shoulder. “Do you want to stop? Take a break?”
Turner wanted to scream, “Shut up, you asshole,” but he remained silent.
Tresca shook his head. His breathing came under more control but wasn’t close to normal, but he continued, “It’s always dark there. My eyes got used to it. I saw him. He didn’t know we were there. I swung at him. I used every ounce of strength I had. He screamed and fell. He tried to get up. He couldn’t. I taxed him with all he’d done. He begged. He pleaded. I smashed the same knee. I shoved my hanky in his mouth to shut him up, but I knew it was a place where sound didn’t carry, where people weren’t around to hear. It never was.”
Turner thought, you were lucky no one else decided to use that as a trysting place that night. He reflected, sometimes killers did have a sort of luck.
Tresca continued. “He was squirming and gagging. I taped his arms and ankles. I’d brought tape. I wanted to make him listen to me, to all the things he’d done wrong. I gave him chapter and verse. He got quiet. I took the gag out. I told him if he screamed, I’d kill him. He didn’t scream. He begged.” His breathing became so ragged, this time Turner thought he might stop him, but Tresca held up a hand. “I let him beg. And I put the hanky back in his mouth. Then I smashed his other knee. The light was dim, but I could see enough to watch the fear in his eyes. And I hit him.” Thirty seconds of panting later, Tresca said, “I hit him again and again.”
“What were Duggan and Bruchard doing all this time?” Turner asked.
“They encouraged me as I hit him.”
“Did you bring the bat with you?”
“No, I planted it and the duct tape earlier.”
“What did you do with it?”
“Threw it in the river. It was covered in…” He hung his head for several minutes.
Turner asked, “Did they hold him down?”
“We duct taped his arms to keep him from thrashing around, but after the first blow, he wasn’t going anywhere. The first blow was a surprise attack. We tried to get him to give us more information. We didn’t know what he had or who he told or who he was planning to tell.” He sighed. “I think he was in it with Pelagius. That’s why the Nuncio was in town. I think their plans were ripe to destroy Bruchard or Duggan or both. I would have helped him, but he cut me out.” A few tears fell. “I would have helped.”
Turner felt no sympathy for the tears. Plus with the tape and this confession, they now had the Cardinal and the Abbot on either conspiracy or accessory to murder or both.
Fenwick asked, “Why’d you faint when we told you about his death at the condo?”
“I saw my world ending. I thought you were there to arrest me. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked.”
Fenwick asked, “Who was that phone call from?”
“The Abbot. He told me I was a stupid fool to have opened my mouth. He told me to get you both out of there and to get over to the Abbey before you could arrest me.”