Entombed

21

The four of us stepped out so Kirby and his client could confer.

"Does he know that Dr. Ichiko is dead?" Mike asked.

"He didn't seem to when he walked in the door," McKinney said. "Unless he came in here to set up the perfect alibi for himself. 'Me? I was cooperating with the police when Ichiko went over the falls. Just ask them.'"

"Yeah, well, nice job, Pat. You did everything except get what we really need-the name of the guy who killed Aurora. The person who hated her enough to brick her up behind a wall, still breathing. Solve Scotty's case for him."

"Take your best shot, Mike. Guidi told me before you two showed up, right off the bat, that he didn't know anything definite. All he can do is guess. Everyone in the rehab group was students or had once been enrolled in the university. They were each told to use nicknames so no one could make any official connection between them and the school."

"You got a nickname?"

McKinney looked at his pad. "Monty. He told me the guy who might have wanted Aurora dead used the name Monty."

That fit with the nickname Emily Upshaw's friend, Teddy Kroon, had told us. Mike and I knew that, but McKinney wasn't familiar with the details of the Upshaw investigation, so the name Monty didn't seem to have any significance to him. Mike looked at me and winked.

"What does Guidi know about Monty? Anything else?"

"That he was in a graduate program-something to do with literature. Guidi thinks he was a poet or a writer."

"And the police-did Guidi ever tell the police about Aurora back then, when she disappeared?" I asked.

"No. He says he was too whacked out on drugs. She vanished and most of the kids figured she just either left town or she got caught up in some drug sweep and went to prison for a while."

Fifteen minutes later, while Mike worked the phones to set up meetings for the next day, McKinney was summoned into the room by Roy Kirby. Whatever agreement they reached, Scotty, Mike, and I were not privy to it. McKinney came out to ask Taren to set them up in the interrogation room with the two-way glass, so that Taren could watch the rest of the conversation without being seen by Guidi. McKinney's excuse for excluding Mike and me was that Guidi was uncomfortable with so many investigators surrounding him.

After McKinney went inside with the witness, Taren waved both of us into the darkened cubicle so we could observe the interchange alongside him.

Gino Guidi had started to explain what he knew about Aurora Tait and the man known as Monty.

"The program we were in-SABA-was set up on the twelve-step model of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know what that is?" Guidi asked.

"I've got a pretty good idea. Why don't you be specific," McKinney said.

"The first thing is just to admit that you're powerless over alcohol and can no longer control your life. The second step is to acknowledge your belief in a higher power that can help restore your sanity. Next you agree to turn your life over to God-whatever your understanding of him is-and then to make a soul-searching inventory of yourself," Guidi said, still smoking as he talked.

"We got to the fifth step and that's where Monty started to choke."

"What do you mean?" McKinney asked.

"I think the way it goes is that you have to admit to yourself, and to God, and to another human being the exact nature of your wrongs. Most of us had hurt the people we loved, stolen money to buy drugs, hocked the family jewels-that kind of thing," he said, crushing his cigarette in an ashtray on the bare table in front of him and shaking his head.

"And Monty?"

"I was sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, waiting for a meeting to begin. I didn't even know the guy except for an hour a week in a church basement, listening to him talk about getting kicked out of boarding school and being an orphan and that kind of shit. Next thing I know, he's telling me he'd been having weird dreams."

"Dreams?" McKinney asked.

"Yeah, nightmares. Said he had visions that he had killed someone."

"Did he tell you who?"

"Not by name. I mean, I didn't know it was Aurora Tait. He told me he kept waking up in the middle of the night, thinking he had murdered a girl. Some chick, he told me, who had betrayed him. He said he'd had a summer job doing construction work-this was where he got especially weird-and that he'd used materials from his work to bury her behind a wall."

"And what did you do about it?"

"Do about it?" Guidi asked, looking puzzled.

"Who'd you tell?"

"I just assumed he was back on the blow, Mr. McKinney. Dreams and visions and blackouts were nothing unusual to any of us. I just chalked it up to the fact that he was using crack again, hallucinating and being paranoid. I knew firsthand what that was like."

"Do you know whether he-this, this Monty-told anyone else?"

"No idea."

"Can you give me the names-the nicknames, that is-of the other people who were in the SABA group with you?" McKinney asked.

Guidi looked over at Roy Kirby before he answered. "No. No, I can't."

"Or won't."

"I said I can't. Twenty years is a long time."

Mike whispered to me and Scotty, "Why's McKinney going soft on him? Give me ten minutes in the room with Gino and I bet we'd have names and social security numbers. He's too smart not to know."

Scotty agreed. "Yeah, but he's got too much on the line. I guess Pat'll shake a little more out of him in front of the grand jury."

McKinney stood up and shook Gino Guidi's hand. "Well, I'll get in touch with Roy if we need anything else from you. A deal's a deal."

"What's the frigging deal?" Mike asked.

I walked to the door and waited for McKinney to step out of the interrogation room. "What did I miss? What do you mean by 'deal'?"

"The reason Kirby offered to let Guidi talk to me just now is that I agreed not to subpoena him, because of the privileged communication."

"Privilege?" I asked. "Are you talking about Dr. Ichiko? Doctor-patient?"

"No, no, no. The clerical privilege."

"I must be confused," Mike said. "Where's the priest? Who's got a collar here?"

"Kirby's worked on a case. He just let me read it. Westchester County. He made law in the Second Circuit, getting them to treat Alcoholics Anonymous as a religious entity. There's a clericcongregant privilege that protects communications made even during unconventional forms of religious expression," McKinney said, talking down to Mike with his newfound legal knowledge that Roy Kirby had imparted. "Like disclosing one's 'fearless moral inventory' to God and your fellow A.A. members."

Mike was muttering under his breath and making the sign of the cross. "Monty didn't confess to a priest, Pat. He was talking to another goddamn junkie on a park bench."

McKinney called out to Kirby, "Miss Cooper doesn't trust your interpretation of the law, Roy. Want to show her that copy of the opinion in the Cox matter?"

"I'm going to say this very quietly, Pat, because now that Roy Kirby has made a fool out of you once tonight, I don't need him to do it again. Just like Monty, Mr. Cox-Kirby's client in that Westchester case-didn't make his confession to murder for the purpose of getting spiritual guidance."

McKinney screwed up his nose. "So? I don't follow you, Alex."

"So the decision was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals a year later. It helps, Pat, if you read the slip opinions every now and then."

McKinney reddened and bit his lip.

"You've just let Gino Guidi off the hook and now we'll never truly find out how much he knows about Monty and any other people who might be able to identify him." I was steaming. "You let Guidi bargain to stay out of the grand jury when he might also have the names of disgruntled group members or former patients who didn't want Dr. Ichiko to go public tonight. Way to go, McKinney. Way to go."