SIREN'S TEARS (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 3) by Lawrence de Maria Page A

Perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this, but Father Zapo, that’s what everyone in the parish calls him, came to the priesthood late, from a background that may have inclined him to be suspicious.”
    “I don’t understand,” I lied.
    Barilla then told me about Zapo’s military experience, as I tried to look interested.
    “Amazing story,” I said.
    “So, you understand Mr. Rhode, he may see things that are not there.”
    “Isn’t it just as likely that, with his background, he sees things that others can’t?”
    “The deaths were many months apart, Mr. Rhode. Doesn’t that argue for happenstance and coincidence?”
    “Perhaps. But it’s not unusual for a serial killer to space his murders so as not to attract suspicion, or for psychological reasons only he knows. Look at it this way. If they were close together, we’d be able to call it a massacre.”
    He was flabbergasted. I was really pushing it, using “serial killer,” “murders” and “massacre” in one paragraph. I was trying to shake Barilla’s tree, hoping something, anything, would fall out. Father Zapo told me he’d already burned his bridges.
    “There are still the questions of proof, motive and opportunity,” Barilla said, trying to recover. “All lacking. Surely, someone like you understands that.”
    The good Monsignor had obviously been watching too many TV cop shows.
    “Perhaps he heard something that he can’t repeat. Maybe several somethings. Then put two and two together. He did hear confessions, didn’t he?”
    Barilla looked aghast.
    “I won’t go there, Mr. Rhode. And I would urge you to drop that line of questioning. The Seal of the Confession is one of the most sacred tenets of the Catholic faith. Your client confidentiality pales in comparison.”
    “So Zapotoski wouldn’t confide something like that with you?”
    Barilla now looked genuinely offended.
    “Never!”
    He would have said the same thing if Zapo had told him anything. Still, I couldn’t imagine the old priest breaking the Seal with anyone. I decided to move on.
    “I’m sorry. I respect your position. It is an honorable one,”
    He seemed mollified.
    “What could I do, Mr. Rhode? I heard him out. I looked at the clippings he had. I even went so far as to speak, as delicately as I could, to the widows of the men involved. But only in generalities. None of them harbored the least doubt that their husbands had died natural deaths. But that wasn’t enough for Father Zapo. He went over my head to the diocese. Then to the police. He has apparently stirred up a lot of people. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
    I smiled enigmatically and wrote something else down. I was working on the Bronx Bombers’ outfield now.
       

CHAPTER 10 – WIDOWS
     
    I left my house Friday morning in a cold drizzle quite sure it was going to be one of the most miserable days of my life. And the weather had nothing to do with it. I’d arranged to see all three of the widows whose husbands’ deaths had aroused Father Zapo’s suspicions. The only break I caught was the fact that none of the widows had children still living at home.
    My first stop, at 10 A.M., was at a house on Murray Street in Richmond Valley, a small town just west of Tottenville. Naomi Clifton, widow of John, answered the door. As with all the widows I’d called, I told her that I was investigating the possibility that some recent deaths on Staten Island had been caused by something in the environment. That was a story that anyone in the borough, a dumping ground for the city for years, would buy. I rationalized the lie by telling myself that if there was a killer at large, he or she could be considered part of the environment. All the women asked me who I represented. I told them that was confidential but hinted strongly that I was on their side. I might have dropped the phrase “class action” as well.
    After we settled in with coffees at her kitchen table and finding out that she “was doing as