Butch Karp: Bad Faith Part 12

Aronberg shook his head. "I would love to, but I'm afraid there's not much I can say," he said apologetically. "I'm sorry, Ms. Ciampi, but I'm sure you'll understand that I cannot discuss a patient's medical history, not without a subpoena."

"I'm an attorney, so I do understand privileged information," Marlene replied. "I was just hoping that because he died, you'd be able to tell me."

"Again, I'm sorry, I truly am, because there's plenty I'd like to say."

"Well, can I ask you a few general questions about astrocytomas, which were the cause of death for Micah Ellis according to the New York Medical Examiner's Office?" Marlene asked.

"By all means," Aronberg said, and gave her a brief explanation of the disease and the general course of treatment.

When she was finished asking medical questions, Marlene said, "Does the name C. G. Westlund mean anything to you?"

Aronberg shook his head. "Not that I can recall."

"How about the Reverend John LaFontaine?"

The doctor's eyebrows shot up. "Now, that name I recognize. A year ago, maybe a year and a half, a Memphis police detective came by the office. He said he was investigating the death of one of my former patients' fathers. He didn't tell me much, but he asked if I'd heard of LaFontaine. I'm afraid I wasn't much help; I didn't know the name. However, the interesting thing about your bringing it up now is that patient also stopped coming in for treatment and is deceased." The doctor stopped talking and frowned. "You think there's something up with this LaFontaine character?"

"He was apparently the minister who talked Micah's family into forgoing medical treatment for faith healing," Marlene replied.

Aronberg furrowed his brow. "I don't like it, and it's so reckless when dealing with a child's life," he said. "But it's not against the law to preach, I guess."

"Maybe not," Marlene said. "But if you don't mind, I'd rather not discuss Westlund's, or LaFontaine's, criminality, or lack thereof, until I know for certain what I'm talking about. Do you recall the detective's name who asked you about LaFontaine?"

Aronberg opened a drawer in his desk and after a brief search took out a business card and handed it to Marlene. "I have no idea why I kept this," he said. "Dumb luck I guess."

Marlene smiled as she read the card. "Or divine intervention. Detective Willie 'Wink' Winkler? Wink? He goes by his nickname?"

The doctor smiled. "Y'all are in the South, and we sometimes are a little different when it comes to naming our babies."

Marlene laughed and got up to leave. "Thank you for your time. It's been a genuine pleasure to meet you."

"The pleasure was mine," Aronberg said, also rising and extending his hand. "I wish there was more I could do. If you have any questions I can answer within the bounds of my oath, please call."

"Thank you, doctor, I will."

As Marlene turned to head for the door, Aronberg added, "Ms. Ciampi, get that subpoena and I'll be more than happy to speak about Micah."

19.

"BRUCE, THERE'S SOMEONE HERE TO SEE YOU."

Knight glanced at the intercom and then looked at his watch. It was almost five, and he was exhausted. Meeting with a Russian a.s.sa.s.sin in the morning and then calling the district attorney and asking for a meeting will do that to you, he thought. "I'm sorry, but I'm busy," he said. "Would you please ask whoever it is to make an appointment and come back tomorrow?"

"He says to tell you that David wants to see you," Danielle replied.

A chill went up Knight's spine. The images of one man choking to death, another twitching with arrows protruding from his body, and a third spurting blood from his slashed neck had not left his mind for very long, waking or asleep. Now Grale had sent Warren, or one of his other followers, to summon him to his lair. He sighed and got up from his desk.

To his surprise when he opened the door to his reception area he didn't find Warren but Grale himself. He was dressed like any other casual New Yorker in blue jeans, a green T-shirt, a light jacket, and running shoes. His long brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, his beard and mustache were neatly trimmed, and in spite of his too-pale skin and sunken eyes, he was still a good-looking man. He was happily chatting up Knight's secretary, who giggled at something he said.

Grale looked up and smiled. "Hey, Bruce," he said, "I know you're busy, but would you have a minute?"

"Sure," Knight replied. "Danielle, you can go. I'll lock up."

Danielle looked disappointed for a moment and she glanced at Grale, which caused Knight to experience a twinge of jealousy. "Well, if you're sure," she said. "I do have to take my mom grocery shopping and she lives in Brooklyn."

"You have to like a girl who's good to her mother," Grale said. "But be careful, Brooklyn can be a dangerous place for a young woman."

So says the serial killer, Knight thought.

Danielle beamed. "I was raised in Brooklyn, and I'm pretty tough."

"I'm sure you are." Grale smiled.

"Uh, good night, Danielle," Knight said. "David, please come in."

"Nice girl," Grale said when Knight closed the door behind them.

"Yes, she is," Knight replied as he took a seat behind his desk. Then, without knowing why he said it, he added, "And I want to keep her out of all of this. These are dangerous people we're dealing with-"

"And by that, you are including me," Grale finished, sitting down across from his friend.

"No, I meant, well, I uh ..."

Grale laughed, a lighter version than the last time Knight had seen him, with Kazanov's blood dripping from his knife. "It's okay, Bruce," he said. "I am a dangerous person, some times more than others, especially when the darkness is on me. But today the sun is shining, on me and in my soul."

"That's good," Knight replied. Not knowing what else to say, he sat silently.

Grale looked at him for a moment before sighing and nodding his head. "I'm sorry I put you through that the other night. It was unfair, and frightening, I'm sure. All I can say is that Kazanov and his henchmen were evil men whom the law has been unable, or unwilling, to deal with. And while it would hardly seem possible given Kazanov's atrocities, Nadya Malovo is even worse, or at least her deeds are done on a grander scale."

"It was still murder," Knight replied. "And now I'm an accessory to murder. But even more than that, I believe in the justice system. I believe that every man, or woman, no matter how heinous we believe them to be, deserves a fair trial and to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt before a sentence is pa.s.sed, and that the sentence should be handed down by a judge, not an executioner."

Grale's eyes narrowed. "What about the victims of these killers? The law had plenty of opportunities to do something about Kazanov. The same thing with Malovo. But what's your vaunted justice system going to do to her? ... Give her a whole new life, that's what."

"I'm not arguing that the law never fails," Knight said. "And it fails miserably in cases like Kazanov and Malovo. But where does it stop? Who decides? You?"

"Yes," Grale said. "Sometimes I decide. And someday I may have to pay for that when your beloved system, which allows people like those two to commit their crimes and get away with it, catches me and puts me on death row."

As he spoke, Grale's voice hardened and his dark eyebrows knitted. But then his face softened and he leaned forward to look Knight in the eyes. "Look, old friend, I do understand where you're coming from, and I don't expect you to countenance what I do. But I'm asking you, pleading with you, to help me keep track of what Malovo's saying and doing. I don't think, and I can't believe that anyone who is aware of her past thinks, that she has turned over a new leaf, even just to get out of prison. She's planning something, and that means innocent people are going to die. I won't involve you again in any of my exploits, and I will never ask you to compromise your ethics again when this is through. But I need your help now."

Knight thought about it and at last nodded his head. "I'm already in, David, and I do owe you my life." He then told Grale what Malovo had said about Kazanov. "Apparently there was something planned for the Halloween festivities in the Village. She says she was trying to stop it."

"If she was, it wasn't out of concern for anyone but herself," Grale said. "But go on."

"Well, I don't know what to make of it," Knight said. "But she also seems to think that the district attorney, Butch Karp, is tied up with some nefarious group called the Sons of Man."

"Ridiculous," Grale interjected.

"That's essentially what I said," Knight agreed. "But she brought up what on the surface sounded like good points ... that he and his family appear to have been targeted, or at least involved in any number of events that would seem on their face to have little to do with his being the district attorney of New York. And at the same time, nothing happens to them."

"G.o.d does favor that family," Grale agreed. "Which is part of the reason I've taken a particular interest in watching out for them."

"Well, I found it far-fetched, but that's what she was saying."

Grale nodded and then appeared lost in thought as he pursed his lips and stroked his beard with one hand. "Was there anything else?"

"Yes, she asked me to set up a meeting tomorrow morning with Karp," Knight said. "She says she's going to confess to the charges against her, including multiple counts of murder."

"What?!"

"That was my response," Knight said. "I mean, if she cooperates with the feds she's not going to have to worry about the local charges. But still, why hand Karp her head on a silver platter?"

Grale frowned. "This is what I mean," he said. "She's up to something. Something to do with this Halloween parade and Karp."

"What about her comment that Karp is in bed with this other group?"

"I don't-" Grale started to deny the accusation but then stopped and suddenly looked worried. "I have a hard time believing it, but on the other hand ..." He stopped talking for a moment and then added, "I need to think about some of this."

A few minutes later, when Grale and Knight exited the office, they found Danielle still sitting in her seat. "I thought you were going home," Knight said.

"I had a little more filing to do," she replied, glancing at Grale.

"Good help is hard to find," Grale commented, making the young woman blush.

"Apparently, I'm very lucky," Knight said with a laugh, which caused her to blush further.

"Well, I need to run," Grale said. "Don't be a stranger."

"I won't," Knight answered.

"Nice guy," Danielle said when they were alone. "He married?"

Knight fought the urge to respond jealously. "You have no idea how nice," he said with a sigh. "But he's one of those guys who's sort of married to his job."

20.

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN MARLENE LEFT DR. Aronberg's office. A thunderstorm had blown up since she'd entered the building, darkening the sky, and she barely made it to her rented SUV before marble-sized hail began pelting the parking lot and everything in it.

As she waited for the storm to pa.s.s, she pulled Detective Winkler's business card from her purse and called, but only got his voice mail. "h.e.l.lo, this is Marlene Ciampi," she said. "I'm a private investigator from New York City, and I'm in Memphis looking into the activities of a Reverend C. G. Westlund, who you may know as the Reverend John LaFontaine. Dr. Aronberg gave me your card. I'd like to talk." She gave her cell number and hung up.

Lightning flashed overhead and was immediately followed by a crash of thunder that made her jump. Settle down, Marlene, she told herself as she typed an address Nonie Ellis had given her into the car's GPS system. This weather's got you jumping around like a cat at a dog show and you need to concentrate.

A map popped up and she put the car in gear. Moments later she was driving through a pouring rainstorm to East Memphis and into a neighborhood of ill-kept yards bearing clapboard houses in desperate need of paint, hammers, and nails. She pulled up in front of one particularly dilapidated house whose roof had sagged toward the middle so badly that a waterfall of rain poured down in front of the steps leading up to the door. As she waited for a break in the rain before getting out of her car, she thought about meeting Nonie Ellis the night before.

Sitting in a nook at the Housing Works Bookstore in Manhattan, Nonie described how Westlund, known to her at the time as the Reverend John LaFontaine, had gained her trust and wormed his way into her heart. "I was blind with fear for my son," she recalled. "The chemo and radiation treatments were horrible, bad enough that Micah begged to die."

"Wait a minute," Marlene had interrupted. "Micah was treated. You knew he was sick enough to need chemotherapy and radiation?"

Nonie had hung her head and told her about Dr. Aronberg and the astrocytoma diagnosis and treatments before continuing. "Then when everything seemed darkest and Micah was hanging on by a thread, Westlund showed up at the door. He seemed to know so much without our telling him-that we had a sick boy in the house; that he had brain cancer; that he'd been treated with chemo, which he called 'Satan's poisons'; even that David and I weren't real regular at going to church. He seemed sent from G.o.d, and when he offered to pray for Micah ... well, I would have believed in anything if it saved my son, and even David, who was skeptical, came around. And it seemed to work. I mean, Micah's health improved to the point where he seemed like a normal, healthy little boy again by the time we moved to New York. By that point, I would have done just about anything for Westlund."

Nonie Ellis had broken down and started to cry, and it had taken her several minutes to pull herself together. "My husband was a good man," she said, sniffling and dabbing at her tears. "He knew that Micah needed more than prayers, but he went along with it because of me. I don't know if you've been told, but David was going to plead guilty. He left me a voice mail message that I didn't get until it was too late. He didn't come home that night, said he'd been walking around thinking. ... He thought I was having an affair with Westlund."

"Were you?" Marlene had asked.

Nonie shook her head. "No," she said. "Looking back, I know now that some of his suggestive remarks and the hugging-even offering me a place to stay at his loft after David was shot-were attempts to seduce me," she said. "I am pretty sure though that he was having s.e.x with Kathryn Boole."

Nonie stopped talking again for a moment and sighed heavily. "I know that Kathryn killed my husband and even tried to kill yours. But I just feel sorry for her, especially because it was my fault she met Westlund in the first place. She was just a lonely depressed woman who'd lost her husband and wanted to feel loved and needed again. Westlund knows how to feed on that."

Her last statement made Nonie laugh bitterly. "I know the feeling," she said. "No, I wasn't having s.e.x with Westlund, but maybe what I let him have was worse. He couldn't have my heart-I lost that when Micah died and was too devastated to remember I owed David my love, too. But I gave Westlund my soul; I made a deal with the devil because I thought he could save my son. David and your husband are right: we were guilty of killing Micah. Me more than my husband."

Nonie had handed Marlene a letter from a life insurance company. "David found this," she said. "I think it was the final straw."

As Marlene quickly read the letter, Nonie explained how shortly after the family moved to New York, Westlund had appeared at their apartment door with his "church accountant," Frank Bernsen. "He had Frank talk to us about taking out a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar whole-life policy on Micah," she said. "Frank said that someday it would pay for Micah's college and that he might find it difficult to get life insurance when he was an adult if his disease returned. It actually made sense. Then he asked that we consider not just taking out the policy but signing over the death benefits to Westlund and the church just in case 'G.o.d calls Micah home as a child before the policy matures.' Westlund called it an act of faith and said that if Micah had to die because it was G.o.d's will, then at least some good would come of it. That's when David balked. He didn't say anything to Westlund, or to me really. He was probably afraid I'd defend Westlund; I was pretty hard on him about things like that. But I could tell he was disturbed by it, and he wouldn't agree to take out a policy."

Nonie bit her lip. "That's when Westlund was at his best. He didn't get mad or stop coming over to pray for Micah. I could tell he was hurt, or I should say putting on a good act of being hurt, but he dropped the subject. Instead he talked a lot about how his ministry was suffering because there wasn't any money and how he might have to go back to Tennessee. I was desperate to keep him here, so I asked him how I could get David to sign a policy. He said he didn't think it was possible because David lacked faith. Then he suggested that I take out the policy and that Frank would forge David's signature."

"You didn't have a problem with that?" Marlene had asked.

Nonie shook her head. "He said that G.o.d would understand that I did it to further His Word," she said.

"What about the insurance company checking on Micah's medical records?" Marlene asked. "They wouldn't have issued a policy if they'd known he was being treated for astrocytomas."

"I asked about that, too," Nonie replied. "But he said that the Lord would blind the insurance investigator because it was for G.o.d's work. He even convinced me that it wasn't really lying to say that Micah didn't have any medical problems because we did not believe in doctors or their diagnoses. And it never came up. They didn't find Micah's records in Memphis. They gave me the policy and Frank pretended he was David and signed it."

"That's fraud," Marlene pointed out.

"I know, but ..." Nonie hesitated and then looked up into Marlene's eyes. "I'm sure you think I'm nuts ... that I went off the deep end ... and I guess I did. I just don't know how to explain how a guy like Westlund can get inside of you. You want to believe so bad that everything he says is gospel. He said that even David would someday thank me when we could use the money for Micah's education. So I went along with his plan."

Marlene held up the letter from the insurance company. "But then they sent this, saying they weren't going to pay until after the outcome of the trial," she said. "So Westlund needs you both to be found not guilty in order for the check to be cut."

"I know he was surprised that the district attorney charged us," Nonie said. She leaned forward and grabbed Marlene's hands. "I think he's done this before and nothing happened to the parents."

"He needs to be stopped," Marlene had replied. "You need to talk to my husband and tell him all of this."