Dead Wrong Page 20

  Every ounce of logic would demand that there be some purpose, some goal, some reason, something to gain from this.

  If it was some pathological, insane killer, why the month? He could have killed her on any one of the early dates.

  If he had wanted to string the encounters out to gain her confidence so he could have sex with her, why hadn’t he? According to DeFalco, Agnes was indeed ready, primed, for romance on that last date. If he wanted sex he could have had it for the asking.

  But no. He didn’t. He killed her in as cold-blooded a manner as possible.

  The consensus of the members of Squad Three was that the killer had wanted something from Agnes Ventimiglia. There was no way of telling whether he had gotten it.

  He killed her either because he got what he wanted and was done with her … or because he did not get what he wanted and was frustrated and furious with her.

  A check of resorts in the state revealed no reservation in either the name Arnold or Ventimiglia. A further check revealed a few names of people who had checked in together in two separate rooms. But the follow-up led only to a dead end. On investigation, most of the couples registered had legitimate reasons for their stays … and in every one of those cases the woman involved was still very much alive. In the remaining few cases, the rooms had been paid for in cash at the time of check-in; the phone numbers and addresses given were spurious, and in any case, none of the employees even recalled any of the couples. Koznicki believed Agnes had told Rosemarie the truth. Probably Arnold had convinced her it would be wiser not to use her real name. By that time, Koznicki concluded, Agnes undoubtedly would have done anything he’d asked.

  Which probably applied to whatever it was the killer had really wanted from her. Koznicki believed that the killer had gotten what he was after, then killed her.

  They checked for insurance, but the only policy they found was one that had been taken out years before, naming her parents as beneficiary. They checked her bank accounts, but there were no out-of-the ordinary withdrawals. She had had no jewelry outside of the usual—a string of simulated pearls, a few pins and bracelets, a couple of gold-filled necklaces, some earrings—all clip-on, her ears were not pierced—a high school ring, a Mexican silver ring, two watches, one the Timex that she wore daily to work, the other a Longines that was on her wrist when she was pulled from the water.

  To the best of Rosemarie’s knowledge—and her grieving parents confirmed this—Agnes Ventimiglia had possessed nothing worth killing her for.

  They checked with Joe Beyer, proprietor and customary maître d’ of the Pontchartrain Wine Cellars. Joe did not keep a record of reservations running weeks back. Nor did he or any of his staff recognize the photo of Agnes Ventimiglia, nor the description of Peter Arnold.

  And, according to the declaration of Agnes herself, they never went to the same restaurant twice. So the Wine Cellars was not the only restaurant checked, but the investigators came up empty on all of them.

  However, that said something to Koznicki. Of all the restaurateurs in the Detroit area, no one took better care of his patrons, paid more attention to them and remembered them better than Joe Beyer. It was natural for the killer to save the Wine Cellars—one of the best—for last. But he would not chance going there more than once with the likelihood that Joe Beyer would remember him and his date. And for the killer to know that, he had to know Detroit and its restaurant scene intimately. Or so ran Koznicki’s line of reasoning; probably the killer was a Detroiter, possibly a native Detroiter.

  It wasn’t much. But they didn’t have much to go on.

  This killer was a professional in every sense of the word. He was a man of mystery. He entered from nowhere. He used someone else’s identity. He was known to one person and one person alone. And he killed her. Before that, he took her out on dates. But no one could remember seeing them. His victim had one close friend, and only one. Yet, even though Agnes confided in her friend Rosemarie, DeFalco had only the vaguest notion of what this man looked like. Finally, he simply disappeared. No record of any kind. No fingerprints. No footprints, for that matter.

  In an investigation such as this, the more time that elapses the less likely the case is to be solved.

  The critical time in this case had not yet passed, but leads were growing thin. The police were perilously close to an “open murder” charge, at which point they would move on. Although Davis assured Koznicki that no murder case is ever closed. As long as anyone maintains an interest in it, it lives.

  AGNES VENTIMIGLIA was to be buried tomorrow. Koznicki decided he would attend the funeral. One never knew; it was always possible a suspicious person might attend, of average height and weight, with dark, brushed-back hair clinging tightly to a patrician head, with heavy eyebrows shadowing riveting eyes.

  One never knew.

  C H A P T E R

  21

  ST. URSULA’S PARISH was tucked away in a heavily compact neighborhood on Detroit’s near east side. Within its boundaries was a cemetery and Detroit City Airport, and the aroma of the potato chip plant across Gratiot wafted over its streets and sidewalks. Its population was approximately 40 percent Italian, 40 percent Polish, and 20 percent black. Most of the Italians and Polish were Catholic; most of the blacks weren’t.

  At one time the neighborhood had been nearly 100 percent Italian. It had been known as—and was still called by some—Cacalupo, an ambiguous Italian pun that Father Robert Koesler never bothered resolving.

  This was Father Robert Koesler’s third parochial assignment in five years—considerable shifting about in a day when assistant pastors usually lasted five years per parish.

  This would be his second Christmas at St. Ursula’s, an occasion that brought pastor Robert Pompilio’s bosom buddy, Father Joe Farmer, to the parish to help out with seasonal confessions and Masses.

  The three priests were at dinner. As usual, Koesler felt odd man out. He was quite tall, they were quite short. The two older men had been close friends for many years; Koesler had known Father Pompilio only a little more than a year and had been in Father Farmer’s company only occasionally during this time. Koesler, with a still-youthful appetite, ate rapidly; his companions ate at a leisurely pace. Koesler was eating steak; the other two were eating smelt.

  Pompilio had caught the smelt in a fast-running Canadian stream. When he caught the fish, he was garbed in a present from Joe Farmer—a sleeping bag that, when properly folded, became a water-resistant ski suit. And, when properly unfolded, turned back into a sleeping bag.

  The two buddies were inveterate gadgeteers who were constantly giving each other odd contrivances. Half the fun was trying to figure out what if any purpose such contraptions served.

  Father Koesler reflected that the separate but unequal dinner they were eating was not nearly as bad as it might be. Early on, it had been established that he did not care for smelt. He could eat the fish—he could eat most anything—but smelt was far from his favorite dish.

  There must have been thousands of the little devils in the rectory’s freezer. Pompilio had the housekeeper prepare masses and masses of smelt for him; out of consideration for his young assistant’s taste, steak was served for Koesler.

  That, in those days when it was a seller’s market, was an extremely thoughtful gesture on the part of the pastor—far, far better than the treatment accorded one of Koesler’s classmates, whose pastor regularly ate steak while his assistant was served hot dogs.

  Despite the preparatory seminary’s insistence on submissiveness to one’s pastor, mortal flesh can absorb only so much harassment no matter how inadvertent it might be. So, one day, the assistant stated he would no longer tolerate such manifest second class treatment. The pastor, in his own way, agreed: Henceforth, the pastor dined on his steak while the assistant continued to be fed hot dogs—but they ate at different times.

  Such was the state of the Church in those days.

  Koesler felt fortunate indeed.

  Father Pompili
o cut a tiny portion off the minuscule fish. He put the knife aside, stabbed the small bite, squeezed a bit of lemon juice on it, dabbed it in the tartar sauce, put it in his mouth, and laid the fork on his plate while he proceeded to chew the morsel. This routine would be observed, in agonizing repetition, for the length of the meal.

  Koesler, nearly done with his supper, thought he might go mad.

  “Say,” Pompilio said, “I heard a good one today. Seasonal too.”

  Farmer grinned. “Let’s have it.”

  “Seems that”—some people are described as having an ear-to-ear grin; Pompilio had it almost literally—“a Dominican and a Jesuit priest died and went to heaven—”

  “This has got to be fiction,” Farmer interrupted. “They don’t let those guys into heaven now, do they?”

  “C’mon, Joe, let me finish.” Pompilio cut an infinitesimal piece of smelt. “Anyway, St. Peter asked them what, in all of history, they wanted to see. They talked it over and finally agreed that they wanted to see the original Christmas, the way it really was.

  “Well, sir, they got whisked off and there they were, right there at the original, authentic Christmas—Mary and Joseph and the baby and the shepherds and the animals.

  “Well, sir, the two priests fell down on their knees in adoration. And that’s where they stayed for a good long time.” He laid the lemon slice down and dipped the morsel in the tartar sauce.

  Koesler, having finished both steak and potatoes, lit a cigarette.

  “Finally,” Pompilio said, “the Jesuit got up and went over to St. Joseph, and tugged at his sleeve. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he says, ‘but have you given any thought to the child’s education?’”

  Koesler chuckled. Farmer laughed generously. Pompilio chewed on the current morsel with great and evident satisfaction.

  “That’s pretty good, Pomps,” Farmer said. “It reminds me of another Christmas one.”

  “Yeah, Joe, yeah.” Pompilio, knife and fork both resting on his plate, was not even sawing off another bite of fish.

  Koesler decided he would try not to count the mounting number of cigarette butts in the ashtray. It was too discouraging, what with his trying to cut back. Since the housekeeper apparently was not going to empty the ashtray until it overflowed, Koesler decided to take the drastic step of emptying it himself.

  “The way I heard it…” Farmer began to chuckle.

  Koesler decided to concentrate on Farmer’s story. Toward the end of every joke he told, he had the tendency to break himself up. In a way, it enhanced the humor. It also made it nearly impossible to make much sense of the punch line.

  “The way I heard it,” Farmer repeated, “the Holy Family was in the stable with the animals and the shepherds. And Joseph was standing there with his brow all furrowed. Mary asked, ‘What’s wrong, Joseph?’

  “And Joseph said, ‘I was just thinking. I was trying to think of a name for the baby’ Just then, the three wise men arrived. Well, the last of the three, Melchior, was very tall, and when he entered the stable, he banged his head on the low door frame. He rubbed his head and mumbled, ‘Jesus!’ And St. Joseph said…” Farmer began to laugh so hard Koesler feared he might be choking on a morsel of food. But he was just convulsed with his own punch line.

  “And St. Joseph said, ‘That’s it!’” he finally concluded, between gasps of laughter.

  “What? What did he say, Joe? What did he say?”

  “That’s it!’ ‘That’s it!’”

  Even Koesler thought it funny… sort of blasphemy in reverse.

  The laughter subsided. Farmer finished eating. Pompilio cut off another slice of the microscopic fish. Koesler stubbed out his smoldering cigarette and wondered if Pompilio had discovered the secret of multiplying fishes. “By the way,” Koesler said, “while we’re all over the subject of Christmas, have you seen what the choir is getting up for the carols before Midnight Mass?”

  “No, I haven’t caught that. What’s going on?” Pompilio dipped the fish fragment in the tartar sauce, put it carefully in his mouth, placed the knife and fork on his plate, and recommenced his contented chewing.

  Farmer spoke from an abundance of unassimilated experience. “What could be different about that? You heard a few Christmas carols, you heard ’em all.”

  “It’s not the carols,” Koesler said, “it’s the staging.”

  “Staging?” Pompilio repeated.

  “The way the organist has it set up,” Koesler said, “he has spotlights all over the church, and he’s getting them programmed to light up what he thinks is an appropriate picture or statue to go along with each carol.”

  “I’m not sure…” Pompilio fumbled. “The ‘appropriate statue’?”

  “For instance,” Koesler explained, “when the choir sings ‘Away in a Manger,’ the spotlight illuminates the manger scene that’s mounted on the Communion railing.”

  “That sounds pretty good to me.” Pompilio sipped from his glass of white wine.

  “Yeah, it does,” Koesler seemed to agree, “but we don’t always have an appropriate painting or statue.”

  However, the interior of St. Ursula’s church came close to having a representation of nearly every saint imaginable. It was an iconoclast’s dream come true.

  Apparently with this in mind, Pompilio asked, “Who don’t we have?”

  “Well, for one, the Archangel Gabriel. When the choir sings the ‘Ave Maria,’ the organist wants to shine the spot on Gabriel—who announced to Mary she’s going to be the mother of Jesus. After all, half the words of the ‘Ave Maria’ are Gabriel’s.”

  “So we don’t have Gabriel,” Pompilio said. “Who does he shine the light on?”

  “Michael,” Koesler answered. “He’s the only archangel we’ve got.”

  Farmer, trading on his former statement, said, “You seen one archangel, you seen ’em all.”

  “Not quite,” Koesler responded. “While the choir sings the words of the gentle angel who humbly asks Mary if she will consent to be the Mother of God, the spotlight reveals an archangel in battle gear, with his foot crushing the serpent-devil and his arm raised to strike the serpent with a huge sword.”

  Neither Pompilio nor Farmer seemed to find this tableau either humorous or ridiculous. “You seen one archangel, you seen ‘em all,” Farmer repeated.

  “They’ll never notice,” Pompilio promised.

  Koesler did not wish the congregation’s Christmas piety to be punctured. But he did hope they would notice.

  Later, as Christmas Midnight Mass neared, Koesler would, somewhat sadly, come to agree with both Farmer and Pompilio.

  The pastor gave every indication that he had finished dinner. There were no more little smelt to be found anywhere. Until he saw it with his own eyes, Koesler had given serious consideration to the possibility that the fish really weren’t dead: that they were propagating faster than rabbits and that forever—morning, noon, and night—there would be smelt in the serving dish and Pomps would be eating them into eternity.

  Pompilio rang the little silver bell. Sophie entered, cleared away the dishes, returned with coffee and cookies, glanced at the overflowing ashtray, and left the room.

  Koesler lit another cigarette. What would coffee be without a cigarette?

  “Would you like me to take that funeral tomorrow morning?” Farmer asked.

  “No!” Pompilio said emphatically. Then, more softly, “No.”

  Koesler smiled inwardly. There was some chemistry going on here. His pastor was not the most secure person Koesler had ever known. Pompilio had difficulty believing that everyone, including himself, recognized that he was, indeed, the pastor of this place.

  There would be a funeral at St. Ursula’s tomorrow morning. This funeral was out of the ordinary in that the deceased was a murder victim. Agnes Ventimiglia was to be buried from St. Ursula’s because her parents were parishioners, at least nominally.

  Everyone who knew Pompilio—as Farmer certainly did—knew that his self-confi
dence was flimsy. An occasion such as tomorrow’s funeral, which undoubtedly would be turned into a media event, was a rare and signal moment to make one thing perfectly clear: that he, Father Robert Pompilio, was definitely in charge.

  Farmer must have been joking, thought Koesler, in offering to take the funeral. The two old buddies did that sort of thing between themselves with some frequency, Farmer more so than Pompilio.

  “She was a graduate of our school, wasn’t she?” Koesler asked.

  “Yes …” Pompilio sighed. “She graduated before my time—my time as pastor, that is.”

  Pompilio had been an assistant at St. Ursula’s years earlier under a most severe and uncompromising pastor. That might have been part of his problem—trading the image of subservient assistant for the role of pastor.

  “What do you think happened to her?” Pompilio threw out the question for general comment. “Who do you think did this to her?”

  Joe Farmer dunked his cookie in his coffee. Koesler concentrated on the smoke curling from his cigarette. He hated to watch dunkers. The process was so messy.

  To date, the police had released only the information that the body of a young white woman had been found in the Detroit River; that she hadn’t drowned, she’d been bludgeoned to death; that she’d been killed on or about November 30; and that she’d been identified as Agnes Ventimiglia.

  In a later item, not related to the investigation, the announcement of her funeral arrangements appeared in the paper.

  It was definitely a media event.

  Local news media—TV, radio, and the press—had been replete with statements and photos of the deceased’s friends, co-workers, neighbors, and, last but by no means least, her pastor.

  The police had not mentioned the name Peter Arnold because the real Peter Arnold had amply proved that he’d had no knowledge of Agnes, let alone of the crime.

  Farmer leaned forward, elbows on the table, and in a savant-soaked tone, said, “Personally, I think it was a boyfriend. Happens all the time nowadays. It’s the result of all this steady dating. Not good old-fashioned courtship like there used to be, with parental supervision and all. You hear confessions from young people that age and what are they doing? Necking, petting, fornication—what do they call it?—making out. Sin, mortal sin! And what do they care? One confession and it’s all wiped away; they can start all over again. The Ventimiglia girl and her boyfriend were probably making out and he got carried away and—”