Friday 2:06 A.M.
They took a short break and came back and got final details from Tresca. His visit to The Last Gasp and Gulp Coffee Shop had been to give the police all kinds of other suspects to look into. He’d been the one to plan and carry out the attack on Mrs. Talucci. Tresca had said, “I knew she was the one scaring all the other people. Everybody was looking for a big, bulky guy. It was dark. I wore a heavy coat and a big hat.”
Fenwick hadn’t been able to control himself at that point. He’d sneered. “Getting even with a ninety-year-old woman. How brave and tough you are, you son-of-a-bitch.”
Tresca had replied, “She was the one with the shotgun.”
By the time they were done with Tresca, bedlam reigned inside and out of Area Ten. The chaos inside was well-ordered with lawyers in suits with desperate clerics and a politician whose career was in as many ashes as the Abbey.
Desperate deals were being attempted among numerous parties. The police personnel spent another couple hours playing the tape for the Cardinal, the Abbot, and the Papal Nuncio and their attorneys who wrangled, fought, and argued. The detectives took statements. Attorneys negotiated and offered deals.
Turner could feel the adrenalin of satisfaction of very, very rotten people taking the fall they so richly deserved. Precisely who was going to jail for how long wouldn’t be worked out for a while. Turner didn’t care. Down was down. He knew once you won, there was no need for a victory dance in the perpetrators face. He’d celebrate wildly if he thought the arrest of this group of fools wouldn’t be replaced by another group of fools when they came into the station for their next shift.
After they’d sat at their desk writing for half an hour, Fenwick asked, “Who are these people? None of these guys strikes me as very spiritual. Guys filled with hate and pettiness, worried about job protection. They throw around words like Holy Mother Church, but they don’t strike me as holy. But they are all kinds of mother-fucking assholes.”
Turner said, “They may be all that. I also think this has to do with their being sad, limited, short-sighted human beings, as are we all, at least some of the time.”
“He was a triple fuck asshole murderer.”
“That too.”
Turner said, “I feel sorry for Graffius.”
Fenwick nodded. “He got his wish and perhaps some measure of revenge.”
Near the end of wrapping up the paperwork, and as dawn was breaking, Fenwick tried to get Molton to agree to a perp walk with all the assembled prelates and Drake. Molton vetoed this. He thought perp walks for the press’s benefit were stupid showboating. The Commander said, “They’re all going to jail, or at the least, they’re all going to lose everything they ever had. Their lawyers may save them, although Kappel had everything on them, and if not everything, a whole lot, and he’s dead. It’ll take a lot of legal time to sort everything out, but we have the murderer. We’ve got a solution. That’s enough for me.”
As Turner drove away from Area Ten, he saw the television lights out front as reporters made their remote broadcasts to all the early newscasts.
Paul parked the car and grabbed his stuff. He saw Mrs. Talucci approaching down the sidewalk. She supported herself with her cane in one hand and held a wrapped gift box in the other. He got out of the car and went to her. When he got close, he could smell the contents of the box.
Mrs. Talucci said, “I thought I’d make chocolate chip cookies for my own personal pawn of Satan.”
“Fenwick will feel bad for not getting any.”
She smiled. “I made another batch for him. You can pick it up for the station later. I saw on television you solved the case. Your tape was more criminal than mine, although, I’m not sure, mine might have been more fun.”