these details quiet was another filter for the lunatics.
‘Hugo Carr, Philadelphia Inquirer. You think the Human Torch has a previous history of arson?’
‘I’m sorry?’ It was Beradino, tight-lipped with anger. ‘The Human Torch?’
‘You know. The Fantastic Four?’
‘Is this some kind of nickname for the killer?’
‘If you like.’
‘No, Mr Carr, I don’t like. I don’t like at all. I don’t like giving some cutesy moniker to anyone who does what this man does. I won’t be calling him the Human Torch or anything else like that. Nor will anyone else working this case. If they do, they’ll be reassigned before they can draw another breath. Is that clear?’
Subdued: ‘Yes.’
Beradino gestured towards Patrese: Go on.
‘We’re interviewing known arsonists in the area, of course,’ Patrese said. ‘We’ve found indications of accelerant at both scenes, but nothing too sophisticated. Certainly nothing that would rule out, you know, anyone but an experienced firestarter.’
Nothing that would need advanced chemistry, either; but Sameera Bayoumi had told them that Mustafa had spent the previous evening with her, had left for Philadelphia first thing this morning, and wouldn’t be back till Thursday.
Patrese looked straight down the lens of the KDKA camera. He knew Pittsburghers would appreciate him addressing them through their own, hometown, channel rather than one of the national networks.
‘I’m asking you, the public, to help us on this one. The police can’t be everywhere. You can; you are. Be our eyes and ears. Please, if you’ve seen anything, heard anything, noticed anything unusual, ring in and tell us. Don’t worry if it seems too small or insignificant or irrelevant. Let us be the judge of that. You never know; your piece of information could be the one that makes the difference.’
That kind of logic – it could be you – got people buying lottery tickets, so Patrese figured it was worth a try here. He knew that too much information could, and often did, swamp homicide task forces, but better too much than too little. Given enough time, manpower and luck, you could always find the needle in the haystack.
But if the needle wasn’t there to start with, you had no chance.
For a man who’d presumably believed that earthly riches were a bar to the kingdom of God, Patrese thought, Bishop Kohler had sure hedged his bets.
He’d been to Kohler’s official residence on several occasions, but it was only now, with the time – and indeed the duty – to search every room from top to bottom, that he appreciated quite how lavish it was.
The house itself was double-fronted, finished in red brick and light gray stone with copper detailing long since oxidized to sea-foam green. Out back, a magnolia tree stood proud in magenta and mauve above perfectly maintained lawns and flowerbeds.
Inside, chandeliers sparkled in shards of silver crystal. Banisters were carved in dark oak and walnut. Intricate reliefs glided across four-square stone fireplaces.
It wasn’t just the quality of the house which struck Patrese, but its size too. Nine thousand square feet over three stories. Eleven bedrooms and six bathrooms, plus a library, a morning room, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen and a butler’s pantry. Patrese had stayed in smaller hotels than this place.
All for one man, living alone.
It seemed to Patrese a terrible waste – no, more than a waste; hypocrisy and cant of the highest order – for Kohler to have had all this to himself. Sure, part of his job had involved entertaining, and accommodating visitors to the diocese, but still.
Though it was a dull afternoon, the high ceilings and large windows meant that Patrese and Beradino didn’t need to turn the lights on just yet. Quiet draped across the house like a blanket; the city may have been all around them, but it had been reduced to a gentle, distant hum, no more.
They were looking for everything and nothing; something, anything, which might help them discover who’d killed Kohler.
They started at the bottom of the house and worked upwards.
In the basement was a makeshift gym with a treadmill, an exercise bike, and a rack of free weights. The bike’s crank arms were rusty, and a cobweb stretched across the treadmill’s display screen.
The adjacent wine cellar had seen more use. Patrese counted more than five hundred bottles, their racks labeled in Kohler’s copperplate: Goosecross Cabernet, Rutherford Merlot.
But there was nothing which could possibly be relevant to the investigation in either room; nor in the living room, the morning room, the dining room, the kitchen or the pantry.
It wasn’t just evidence towards the murder they lacked, Patrese thought, but evidence of Kohler’s life, full stop. If Kohler had read, it hadn’t been for pleasure; the only books on the shelves were religious ones. The TV set looked like it dated from the Cuban missile crisis. There were no videos, no DVDs. A handful of CDs, classical and choral music. No family photographs, of course; Kohler had had no family.
You couldn’t give your life to God and live among humans, Patrese thought, not if you wanted to do both properly. Making a man go so far from his primal urges wasn’t natural. It certainly wasn’t healthy.
They went into the library.
‘We’ll find something here,’ Beradino said. ‘Read your Agatha Christie.’
He was right. They did find something there; more precisely, in the top drawer of the antique bureau where Kohler had worked on his papers.
It was a photo of a young man, probably fourteen or fifteen, dressed in the College of the Sacred Heart football uniform. He was squatting on his haunches, his helmet dangling from his right hand, and he was smiling up at the camera.
It was a photo of Patrese.
Not just Patrese, when they searched the bureau further.
Hundreds of children. Patrese reckoned they ranged in age from eleven to sixteen, give or take. Many were in Sacred Heart school uniforms, purple blazers with an elaborate crest on the breast pocket. Some were in football gear; others wore choir surplices. Boys outnumbered girls by about two to one.
All of them were fully dressed. There wasn’t even a bare chest in sight, let alone any nudity, and certainly nothing which could be described as in any way sexual.
Beradino was silent, but even so Patrese could sense his relief. He remembered that Beradino, while arguing with Mustafa Bayoumi at the mosque a couple of weeks back, had dismissed abusive priests as bad apples. Beradino believed. It would have devastated him to discover that the bishop himself had been a pedophile; that the apples had been rotten not just to the core but to the top too.
‘You recognize these kids?’ Beradino asked.
‘Some of them, yeah. The ones who were there same time as me, sure.’
‘The ones you recognize; you guys were his favorites?’
‘I guess.’ Patrese riffled through a few prints till he found a couple of other guys in football uniform. ‘Kohler coached the football team. You played football, you were a bit…’ – Patrese sought the right word – ‘special. Yeah, special. We called him the Pigskin Padre.’
‘Pigskin Padre. I like that.’ Beradino laughed softly and let a stack of photos fall gently on to the desk, where they fanned out as though dealt by a croupier. ‘You have favorite teachers as a kid, so why can’t teachers