Vengeance Road Read online

The fifty-year-old building had been designed in the postwar modernist style. An enormous cross rose from the center section, which resembled a book standing with its covers open to embrace worshippers.

  Gannon parked down the street under the shade of a willow tree. Walking to the main door, he read the church’s outdoor sign, which gave mass times and other messages. He noticed that confessions were being heard today from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.

  His meeting was for 2:30 p.m.

  The church had a center aisle with pews on each side. Light bled through its stained-glass windows that depicted the Stations of the Cross. The walls were interrupted with alcoves sheltering statues of the Holy Family, the apostles and saints.

  At the front was the altar, graced by a massive crucifix suspended behind it and flanked by magnificent stained glass that ascended from the floor for several stories. The air held a mix of furniture polish, candle wax, incense and piety.

  The building was empty but for a few people scattered among the pews, or waiting to enter the confessionals. Others found unoccupied pews where they said their penance while rosary beads clicked softly.

  How egregious were the sins committed in this white-bread suburb? Gannon wondered as he went to a pew near the front right section, next to a replica of the pietà. The area was vacant. The bench seat of the wooden pew creaked when he sat down.

  This was where he was instructed to meet Tuesday.

  While he waited, he checked his phone.

  No messages.

  He set the ringer to vibrate and read his notes for several minutes, until his pew creaked.

  A white woman in her late twenties sat next to him. She was wearing a charcoal business suit and tank top. The ensemble flattered her figure. Her dirty-blond hair was pulled up into a bun held with a hair clamp. Her face had the pallor of a woman averse to daylight, a condition she’d compensated for by applying a little too much makeup. Her eyes were blue, and Gannon noticed the scent of roses when she nodded to him.

  “Are you Tuesday?”

  “I’d like to see some identification,” she said.

  He showed her his press ID from the Sentinel, which she studied for several moments. Then she took stock of the area. Satisfied they were alone in their corner of the church, she kept her voice low.

  “Lotta said I can trust you, is that true?”

  “Trust me with what?”

  “My life.”

  “Because of what you know about Karl Styebeck?”

  “I don’t want to end up like Bernice.”

  “I understand.”

  She looked around.

  “You don’t have a photographer hiding around somewhere with a big lens or anything?”

  “No.”

  “Swear to me that no one will ever know what I’m going to tell you came from me. Give me your word.”

  “I don’t reveal sources.”

  “To anyone?”

  “To anyone. No one will know we talked.”

  Tuesday searched his face. Whatever internal security screening she possessed, whatever defence mechanism she’d engaged, Gannon had passed. Her face softened a degree; she spoke in a hurried whisper.

  “After what happened to Bernie, my girlfriends and I read all your stories. You had the best information. Then things got weird.”

  “Weird? How?”

  Gannon took out his notebook. Tuesday looked at it, hesitated.

  “Do you have a hidden recorder?”

  “No. Look, you called me. How can I be sure that what you’re going to tell me is the truth?”

  “Because it is.”

  Now it was Gannon’s turn to decide if she was helping him, or playing him. That would depend on what she said.

  “Tell me what you know about Karl Styebeck,” he said.

  “He was down on Niagara the night Bernice vanished, and when the detectives came around we told them about all the wack jobs and creeps who were down there, including Styebeck.”

  “Styebeck was known to the girls?”

  “Big-time. But first there’s nothing in the papers about it. Even right after they found Bernice.”

  “I had it.”

  “Yeah, you did. A few days later, we all thought, Great! Yes! Nailed Him! And you were, like, a hero. This Gannon guy’s good. He prints the truth, you know.”

  Gannon didn’t say anything.

  “Then your paper prints a correction, retraction thing, like the stuff about Styebeck was all a big mistake, and we’re all, like, ‘what the—?’ Know what I mean? What happened?”

  “The paper was told that Styebeck was downtown that night doing some community-outreach work for a charity and wrongly got caught up in the investigation of Bernice’s murder.”

  “That’s a crock of shit.”

  “What do you mean? He goes down there to help, right?”

  “Yeah, right. This is what he does, every month or so. Styebeck comes down there and first he gets in our face. He calls us whores and wants to save us. We tell him to go f—,” Tuesday caught herself. “We tell him to take a hike.”

  Gannon took notes.

  “He goes away then he comes back, and it’s like his whole personality’s changed. He wants to date some of the girls, but he asks for girls who are shaved.”

  “Shaved?”

  “No hair down there because he likes them ‘young and clean,’ he says.”

  Gannon flipped quickly to a clear page.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “One girl said he once told her that he knew he was sick for what he was doing, and that he was that way because of his father.”

  “His father? Did he say any more about that?”

  “No, that’s all I’d heard,” Tuesday said.

  “What about the night before Bernice was killed?”

  “He was bothering Bernice that night. He was in her face. We told the detectives. And he was asking us about some stupid truck. Some of the girls said they saw it.”

  “What kind of truck?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It was in the news—a blue truck with writing on the door, or something.”

  “What about Jolene Peller?”

  “Who?”

  “Jolene Peller. She had a little boy and was trying to get out of the life.”

  “You talking about J.P. Got a boy named Jody?”

  “Cody,” Gannon said.

  “That’s her. Yes. I heard she left town.”

  “She was supposed to leave for Florida the night Bernice disappeared from the street. Jolene’s mother says she never got there and she hasn’t heard from her.”

  “Oh Christ, does anybody know what happened?”

  “No. Did anyone see her talking to Bernice that night?”

  Tuesday shook her head.

  “I can ask around.” She sifted through her bag for her wallet and then showed him a snapshot of her laughing with Bernice Hogan in front of Toronto’s skyline.

  “That’s us a few months ago. We went shopping in Canada. Bernie was like a little sister to a few girls on the street. She didn’t belong there. I mean, who does?”

  Gannon nodded.

  “I grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, where my family was a freak show. Got pregnant by my stepdad, who turned me out to his two friends for drugs. By the time I was sixteen, I’d had two abortions. One day, I stole all the cash I could find and just left on a bus to anywhere. We all make mistakes. We all mess up.”

  Tuesday’s eyes teared as she placed her photo back in her wallet. “Your job is to tell the truth, right?”

  Gannon nodded.

  “People think we’re garbage,” she said, “that we deserve the life we’re in, that we’re something you scrape off of your shoe. Nobody deserves what happened to Bernice. You’ve got to tell the truth about what’s happening with Styebeck, because if you don’t do it, who will? And if the truth doesn’t come out, who’s gonna stop him?”

  “I’m just a reporter.”

  “Yeah, well, what’s
that old saying about the pen being deadlier than the sword?”

  “Mightier.”

  “Mightier. Well, remember that, Gannon.”

  Tuesday accepted his card and left.

  When Gannon headed to his car, he noticed a sedan that had wheeled off a block away.

  It looked like an unmarked model used by detective units.

  21

  Harding Community Hall was in the heart of Ascension Park.

  Inside, on the entrance walls, there were large portrait-photos of laughing babies, smiling seniors and volunteers comforting people in tragic circumstances.

  Here was the work of the Street Angels Outreach Society.

  A blowup of an older news picture was showcased in a glass frame. It showed Karl Styebeck in the back of an ambulance, his face masked with soot as he looked over the stretchers bearing the children he’d just rescued from a burning house.

  The guy’s a god here, Gannon thought while he queued with well-attired strangers to buy tickets. He adjusted his suit, feeling his notebook and recorder in his breast pockets. He was ready to confront Styebeck with what he’d learned today.

  “How many, sir?” asked the woman seated at the ticket table outside the hall’s banquet room.

  “Just one,” he said.

  The lights were dimmed over some twenty formally set round tables that filled the room. Soft classical music mingled with cocktails and the conversations of some two hundred people.

  Gannon avoided everyone, weaving through the group for half an hour until he spotted Styebeck in the distance, making his way with others to the VIP table on the riser at the head of the room.

  Gannon found a seat at the far back of the hall with several older couples. He was careful not to reveal his name as they talked politics and art. No one broached the subject of Karl Styebeck, murder suspect, including Gannon.

  “I’m just a writer, and like everyone else, I’m here to do my part for the cause.” He smiled over dessert as Rona Nicole, the society’s president, took the podium. She began with the usual jokes and calls to applaud event organizers and catering staff.

  “Before we move on to achievements and our charity auction, we’re going to address something,” Nicole said. “As you know, Street Angels helps people who are facing the most difficult times in their lives. Well, now we’re going to put to rest an issue that has distressed a few people in this room. I’m talking about the unfortunate events involving my fellow board member, Detective Karl Styebeck.”

  Nicole smiled at Styebeck.

  “I’ve spoken with Karl and he would like to say a few words to you.”

  A quiet fell on the room, punctuated with nervous coughing and throat clearing as Styebeck leaned into the microphone and looked out to the gathering.

  “Thank you, Rona. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of my family, I want to thank everyone for their calls of support. These past forty-eight hours have been a trying time for us, to say the least.”

  He glanced to his wife who blinked back tears as he continued.

  “The fact is, I am assisting in the investigation of a terrible case, but I’m sure you’ll appreciate that I can’t say much more beyond that. However, through confusion, a painfully damaging allegation was made, one that has since been corrected. I want to apologize to the society for any undue anxiety its members may have experienced and assure you, there is a silver lining to this, as my special guest tonight will tell you. Nate.”

  Styebeck turned to the end of the VIP table. Gannon craned his neck and was incredulous at what he saw.

  Nate Fowler was moving to the podium.

  “Thank you, Karl. Everyone, I am Nate Fowler, managing editor of the Buffalo Sentinel.”

  Someone booed and Fowler smiled, held up his palms in surrender.

  “As you know, in the news business we’re under a lot of pressure to get the story. In this case, we succumbed to it without getting the facts. In rushing to beat the competition we got it wrong. That error hurt people, but it was corrected in today’s edition of my paper.”

  Applause rippled around the room as Fowler continued.

  “As some of you know, I sit on the boards of other charitable organizations with Karl Styebeck. I know Karl and can attest to his unimpeachable, altruistic character. Gosh, look at that inspiring news picture of Karl out front in the hall, taken by a Sentinel photographer, I might add.”

  A few people chuckled.

  “Folks, if we are to learn anything from this recent unfortunate situation, it is that anyone can find themselves in dire straits at any time. This only underscores the need for your group, the fine work it does and continues to do. So, Rona, before you move on to the auction, allow me, as a sign of good faith, on behalf of the Buffalo Sentinel, to present you with check for fifteen thousand dollars.”

  Amid the applause and ovation, Fowler raised his voice.

  “And my wife, Madeline, and I will personally add an additional five-thousand dollar-donation.”

  Dumbstruck, Gannon stood with the others, not to praise what had transpired but to convince himself that he’d actually witnessed it. He couldn’t believe it. Fowler had just crapped on his own paper like a guy campaigning for public favor.

  For the rest of the evening, Gannon struggled to sort things out while searching for the right moment to get Styebeck alone. It came when Styebeck was making his way to the men’s room. Gannon caught him before he entered.

  “Detective Styebeck?”

  His smile twisted into a scowl when he recognized Gannon.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I need to ask you a few questions for the record, given recent events.”

  Gannon extended his small recorder and Styebeck’s jaw pulsed, as if inviting Gannon to take his best shot.

  “What recent events?”

  “I understand there are people who witnessed you with Bernice Hogan the night before she disappeared from Niagara.”

  “Look, asshole, I don’t know who your sources are, but you’ve got things all wrong. I tried to help Bernice.”

  “So you confirm you had a relationship with her?”

  “I knew her and tried to help her.”

  “Help her do what?”

  “Get off the street. Get clean. Get a life. It’s what my group does.”

  “Were you with her the night she vanished?”

  “Yes, I just told you, I was trying to help her.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  Styebeck’s face was blank, void of emotion.

  “No, I did not kill her. Why the hell would you even ask me that?”

  “What about Jolene Peller? Do you know her?”

  “Who?”

  “She’s a former prostitute. Did the society help her leave Buffalo?”

  “Maybe. We help a lot of people.”

  “Did you ever meet Jolene Peller, or J.P., as she is also known?”

  “I don’t know where you’re going with this.”

  “Then I’ll tell you. Women who work as prostitutes in downtown Buffalo say you are known to them.”

  “So? Why would that be unusual? I’m a detective. I have informants who are hookers. Besides, we offer them support through our group. I admit knowing prostitutes. Is that headline news, Gannon?”

  “But sir, they’ve identified you as a client, a customer with special preferences. What’s your response to that?”

  “It’s bullshit.”

  “Is it? They seem to know a lot about you, that you prefer them young, clean, and that you specify that they be shaved. And you once called yourself sick and blamed it on your father. What’s up with that, Detective?”

  Gannon had crossed a line. Something slithered across Styebeck’s eyes.

  “They’re lying.”

  Gannon sensed a presence and turned toward a woman standing behind him. Other people had gathered behind her, concerned.

  “This is my wife, Alice. Alice, Jack Gannon from the Sentinel has paid us an
unannounced visit and seems determined to twist fiction into fact.”

  Undaunted, Gannon pressed on. “What did you say to Bernice Hogan the night before she was killed, Detective?”

  Styebeck’s gaze locked on Gannon.

  “I think you should leave. Now.”

  Styebeck’s anger bored into Gannon, and for the benefit of those who were watching them, he said, “Do you believe this guy? He’s supposed to be suspended. Yet he comes over here to continue to publicly humiliate me and my family. Do I have to seek a restraining order, Jack?”

  After Gannon glimpsed Fowler weaving through the crowd and nearing the scene, he left, throwing a parting glance over his shoulder.

  He saw Styebeck watching him, his wife rubbing his arm, while several other people stood behind them.

  Gannon drove around the city analyzing his read of Karl Styebeck. Over and over, he kept coming back to that split second when something cold had flitted across the detective’s eyes.

  Like a secret had been revealed.

  And a dark force had been unleashed.

  22

  Styebeck sat alone in his living room, tie undone, a glass of scotch and ice in his hand, the banquet reverberating in his head.

  It had been an hour since Alice had finally gone to bed after wrestling with her anger and fear over what had happened that evening.

  “I can’t believe the gall of that reporter! Karl, people told me we should sue him.”

  Styebeck had agreed with her, the scene had been upsetting, but sleep was the best thing for her right now, he told her.

  He’d get them through this mess.

  But would he?

  Gannon was getting close to the truth.

  The ice clinked in his glass as Styebeck sipped from it.

  He had to get a handle on the situation. Alice was a loving, supportive wife. Taylor trusted and idolized him. He’d worked so hard to build a good life and he would protect it.

  At any cost.

  Gannon was trying to pry the lid off the casket of secrets he’d buried.

  No one knew.

  No one must ever know that he was living his life in a constant battle with dark urges that arose from his past, urges that forced him to do the most despicable things with women.

  Not with Alice.