The Sacrifice

by William Kienzle

  “Then, you’ll excuse me, but why did you come to see me? You said you don’t want to confess. Did you want absolution for shooting your husband?”

  “No. I already said the bastard deserved at least that.”

  Careful, Tully reminded himself; she hasn’t asked for any advice. Not yet. Let her conscience be her guide. “Well, then, what can I do for you?”

  “I’ve been contacted by a literary agent.”

  “You’ve—! A book? You’ve been here only a couple of days. They want you to write a book?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t exactly write it. They suggested that I tell my story to Lowell Cauffiel and he would write it. He’s a terrific true crime writer. What I want you to tell me is, Do you think making money for shooting my husband is … uh … unethical?”

  “You may not have to concern yourself about that. I think there’s a law against profiting from a crime.”

  “If you’re found guilty. We’re figuring I’m going to be found not guilty.”

  “So … unethical?” Father Tully’s face wrinkled as he pondered this. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, that’s good news, Father. I already talked to Mr. Cauffiel once. I kind of sketched the story. I even suggested an illustration for the dust jacket.”

  “Oh? And what’s that?”

  “Well, when my husband was studying to be a deacon, all the would-be deacons’ wives had to take classes for a few weeks to learn what would be expected of us.

  “To make a long story short, we wives were supposed to be supportive and nonpublic. So, with that in mind, I suggested a picture of a jockstrap for the cover of my book.” She smiled. “What do you think, Father?”

  “It sounds like a grabber.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Father Tully realized he was guilty of a very bad pun. But it was too late to take it back.

  They agreed there was no absolution needed. Father Tully wished her well and blessed her, mentally shaking his head at her seeming lack of repentance for her deed. The two of them then left the room, he to return to his concern about an assassin, she to her cell.

  He took the stairs. They were a compelling alternative to one of the truly slowest elevators in Western civilization.

  On the way down he met another priest who was headed up the stairs. The pastor of downtown St. Mary’s parish, a neighbor of Old St. Joe’s, was eager to get the bombing story from the horse’s mouth. After all, the bomber might well have mistaken St. Joe’s for St. Mary’s. Crazier things had happened in Detroit.

  As they conversed, the Angelus sounded in St. Mary’s tower.

  It was just twelve noon.

  Leon Harkins continued to practice drawing his gun from its holster. He was getting quite good at it.

  Leon was about to leave for his appointment with destiny.

  Should he send one more message to his prospective victim, Father Tully? He debated with himself. Would it be overdone? Would it be inappropriate?

  He knew that Father Tully would not be at the rectory by noon. Probably he would be just about to leave the jail. The rectory answering machine would record any phone message.

  If Harkins were to fail in his deadly objective, he himself might well be killed. In which case Father Tully would live to hear his message. However, if Harkins were to succeed, Father Tully would be dead, but the message would survive, taunting the police, who would not be even close to figuring out who did it.

  He adjusted the device that would mask his voice. He dialed the rectory number. The phone rang five times before the answering device picked up. The recording detailed the Mass schedule. If this was an emergency there was an alternate number to call. If the caller merely wanted to leave a message, wait for the beep and carry on.

  B-e-e-p.

  “Father Tully …” Harkins spoke in a normal tone, knowing that the masking machine would slow the speed of his voice to the point where his identity would be well disguised. “You have had all the warnings I am going to give you. If you can hear this, I have failed. But others like me will follow in my footsteps. I have given you all the reasons why I have come for you. We need not go into them again. Farewell, Father Tully. We will meet again before God.”

  Hawkins hung up. He would say nothing to his wife. If she had the slightest idea of what he had in mind, she would do all in her power to prevent him from carrying out his plan

  No, nothing would stop him now.

  It was 12:02. Father Tully was still in conversation with his neighboring pastor.

  Koesler and Wheatley at long last emerged from the coffee shop. They were now standing next to Wheatley’s car in a nearby parking lot.

  “Would you like me to accompany you to the news conference tomorrow?” Koesler asked.

  “Thanks, but no, I don’t think so. I don’t want to trouble you. Goodness knows I’ve been through enough of these over the years. I’ll meet with the Cardinal beforehand. I imagine he’ll want to settle on a schedule for my ordination. I can give the media that information, anyway.

  “As far as anything else related to the bombing, I don’t really know all that much. I’m afraid what little I do know will not satisfy their curiosity. Sorry about that. But, as you Romans occasionally put it, ‘Nemo dat quod non habet.’”

  “Nicely said. It brings me back to my seminary days. We sneezed in Latin.” Koesler fingered the keys to his car. “Do you feel as creepy as I do about not knowing the identity of the bomber?”

  Wheatley nodded somberly. “Uh-huh. I hope it’s all over now. Still, it’s unnerving to know there’s someone walking around freely who wants—or wanted—to kill me. It makes me reflect on my own mortality. It’s unsettling, to say the least.”

  “Turning seventy did the same for me. Death is not all that real when you’re in your twenties—even your fifties.”

  “But if someone is trying to kill you, that does bring a measure of reality.” Wheatley fingered his key ring. “Trying to guess who that someone is has become an obsession with me. The closer that someone may be to me, the more frightening the whole thing becomes.”

  “‘Closer’? You can’t mean Alice or Ron!”

  Wheatley’s face was pained. “Just a thought. Touching all bases, as it were.” He hesitated, as if trying to decide whether he was putting an unwarranted burden on his fellow clergyman. Although Father Koesler was of a different background, and their friendship was of a more recent vintage than that of the majority of Father Wheatley’s Anglican cronies, still he had come to value that friendship, as well as trust Koesler’s judgment.

  “Don’t exclude Gwen,” George said quietly. “She would like me out of the way—out of Ron’s way.”

  Koesler looked puzzled.

  “Ron wants—badly—to be a bishop. Gwen wants him to be a bishop—as much or even more than Ron himself wants it.” He looked fixedly as Koesler. “What do you suppose his chances are now that his father is ‘deserting’ to the enemy?

  “No,” he said sadly, “my son and his wife are not happy that I may have cost him—them—their bishopric.”

  Koesler didn’t know what to say. So, as he usually did in such circumstances, he uttered a non sequitur. “On the brighter side, I’m beginning to look on whoever made that call as your guardian angel.”

  Wheatley winced. It was a momentary reaction, but Koesler caught it. “What is it, George? What’s wrong?”

  Wheatley hesitated. “Nothing. Just that if that was my guardian angel I hope he stays alert.”

  Wheatley climbed into his car and rolled down the window. “Thanks again for the offer to accompany me tomorrow. Let’s stay in touch.”

  It was twelve-ten.

  “Manj,” Lieutenant Tully shouted into the phone, “I was just going to call you.”

  “Zoo, I got somethin’ I gotta tell you—”

  “In a minute. We got the phone call! The guy who’s been calling my brother just phoned a few minutes ago. His name is Leon Harkins. Lives on the near east side.
Our people are talking to his wife right now.”

  “Good God, no! Zoo, your brother: We lost him.”

  “Zack? How could—?” Time enough later to fix guilt. Right now he had to find his brother. The assassin was on his way for the kill. “Where are you?”

  “Here at 1300. I’m in the elevator comin’ up to our floor. Geez, Zoo, everything was goin’ right on schedule. Al and I were parked out front. Father was supposed to leave here between twelve and twelve-ten. When he didn’t show, I left Al in the car and went in to look for him. The women’s guard said he left a bit early. Bottom line: I don’t know where he is.”

  Father Tully was growing antsy. The other priest was buttonholing him for all the details. Zack had no idea that while he was stuck in the stairwell, a massive search of the building was about to start.

  “Listen, Manj”—Zoo Tully was as close as he’d ever come to naked panic—”start a floor-to-floor search. Almost everyone here knows what Zack looks like. I don’t know what could’ve happened to him. I’m sure he didn’t try to lose you. Harkins is after Zack. I can’t think he’d be stupid enough to try to hit him in the station. He’s probably figuring on a confrontation at the rectory. I’m heading there now. Get on this end of it, Manj: Now!”

  If there were any speed records in the category of leaving HQ, jumping in a car, and heading for an emergency, Zoo Tully broke them all now.

  En route, he called the cops at the Harkins’s home. They were attempting to get additional information from Mrs. Harkins. She was trying to help. But she was too frightened to be of any real aid. However, they did have a description of Harkins, and several photographs. And Mrs. Harkins was able to tell them what her husband was wearing when he’d left the house earlier.

  “Okay, from what we’ve got, you’re looking for a male Caucasian, slender build, five feet nine, one hundred fifty pounds, wearing a herringbone fedora, trench coat, black trousers, and black shoes.”

  “Right.”

  Tully’s radio crackled. It was Mangiapane. “We got the whole building on it, Zoo. And we’re sending backup after you.”

  “Good. I’ve got the rectory in sight now.”

  “I don’t know if backup’ll get there in—”

  “There’s a guy on the front porch. It looks like he’s ringing the doorbell.”

  “If it’s him, you’re probably on your own, Zoo.” Mangiapane, normally cool and offhand, couldn’t keep the worry from his voice.

  “It’s the guy. He fits the description.”

  “No sign of your brother there?”

  “No. I hope to God he isn’t here. I’m going in.”

  “Good luck.”

  Tully was driving an unmarked car. He had not used the flasher or the siren. He might have been a parishioner with business at the rectory.

  He got out of the car and began to walk nonchalantly toward the porch. “Having trouble getting in?” he called out.

  Leon Harkins tilted his head sideways as if trying to recall who this familiar-looking man might be. Recognition crossed his face. “You’re the brother. You’re the cop.” He shrugged. “If I’ve got to get through you to get to him—so be it.”

  Harkins’s right hand was resting against the second button from the top of his trench coat. With a well-practiced motion the hand slid inside his coat. The fluid gesture continued as he drew the gun from its holster. In a split second the gun had cleared the coat and was being raised, pointing at Tully.

  It all happened in the blink of an eye.

  Tully cursed himself for not having drawn his gun the instant he got out of the car. It was a fatal mistake—he knew that the minute he saw the barrel of Harkins’s gun rising to aim at his chest.

  Though it was too late, Tully went for his gun anyway.

  Then a strange thing happened. Harkins didn’t fire. His gun remained pointed directly at Tully’s heart, as an odd combination of fear and fury suffused his face.

  In that moment, that fleeting instant, Tully fired. The sharp crack ricocheted and reverberated through the downtown canyons.

  Harkins toppled over the porch railing. His body lay motionless.

  The scene resembled a tableau.

  Then, Tully moved toward the inert body. At every step, he kept his weapon carefully aimed at the downed man. But Harkins would move no more.

  Tully went down on one knee. He slipped on a pair of plastic gloves. He felt for the carotid pulse. There was none.

  Damn!

  In all his years on the force, Tully had fired his weapon at a human being only twice. Each time, the shooting had been justified. And each time the shot had been fatal.

  From experience, he knew that it would take time to get over the shock of having taken a human life. And the fact that he’d fired in self-defense made little difference.

  Sirens sounded in the distance, loudening rapidly as they converged. The skirls punctuated into silence, as the blue-and-whites carrying Tully’s backup arrived and screeched to a stop. It was clear the threat was over. The officers gathered around the central scene.

  A sergeant squatted alongside Tully, who was still down on one knee. Both studied the dead man.

  “You okay, Zoo?” The sergeant spoke without moving his gaze from the corpse.

  Nor did Zoo look up from the body of his would-be killer. “I’ve been better.” No point in bravado here. In any case, it wasn’t Tully’s style. He had been badly frightened, and was still shaky. “I thought I was done for. He had me cold. He just stood on the porch with his gun pointed straight at my chest.”

  “Any idea why he didn’t fire?” For the first time the sergeant looked directly at Zoo.

  “Yeah, I got one now.” Tully pointed at the revolver lying harmlessly in Harkins’s limp hand. “Here … just above the hammer—the lock? The poor bastard probably forgot to release the lock. He didn’t fire because he couldn’t: The trigger was locked. For a while, I thought it might have been suicide by cop …” Tully was referring to cases where somebody wants to end his life but hasn’t got the guts to do it himself, so he points his weapon at a cop, forcing the cop to shoot him in self-defense. “The thought crossed my mind that he might’ve been doing that. But”—Tully shook his head—”he left me no choice. How could I know that trigger was locked?

  “Besides,” he added, “it all happened in seconds.”

  Another squad car pulled up. Mangiapane and his partner were the official occupants. In the rear sat a somewhat bewildered Father Zachary Tully. “We finally found him, Zoo,” said Mangiapane.

  Zachary took in the scene. Organized bustle. The small yard in front of St. Joe’s rectory was swarming with police, technicians, and bystanders. “What happened?”

  “You’re late,” his brother answered, with the shadow of a smile.

  “I got pinned down in the stairwell by my neighboring pastor. He wanted to know everything that happened here yesterday, and I mean everything. I couldn’t get away from him.” His half-grin was ironic. “And to think that I took the stairs because your elevator is so slow …”

  “Get down on your knees,” Zoo said, “and thank God for that slow elevator and that nosy priest. If they hadn’t held you up you would’ve gotten here on time. And if you had, you’d probably be lying here dead”—Zoo looked down at the body—”instead of this poor bastard.”

  For the first time, the priest looked carefully at the victim. “Leon Harkins,” he said in slow recognition. “The poor tortured soul. He lived for his Church, and died trying to save it from me.” Zoo looked up at his brother. “Actually, he was trying to save it from itself.”

  He made the sign of the cross over Harkins. “I’ll just step in and get the oils, and anoint him before they take him away.” He looked up at Zoo again. “If that’s all right?”

  Zoo nodded. Father Tully disappeared into the rectory so abruptly that Zoo was unable to say what he was thinking: Why are you praying for a dead man?

  A morgue attendant appeared. The technicians
were finished with the deceased. It was time for the autopsy. “Are you done, Lieutenant?”

  Zoo was about to release the body when he remembered his brother off in search of some oil. “No. Just a little while longer. I’ll let you know.”

  He turned to see his brother coming down the porch steps. His lips were moving, but no sound was coming out. He was praying silently from a pocket-sized book. As Zack stood over the body of his would-be assassin, Zoo leaned over to look at the book his brother was using. It was open to a section titled, “Prayers for the Dead.” Appropriate, thought Zoo.

  Once Zack had anointed Harkins’s forehead and closed his prayerbook, Zoo nodded to the attendant, who, with a partner, picked up the body and headed off toward the morgue wagon.

  Zachary looked fondly at his brother. “You saved me, didn’t you?”

  “You could say that. But it wouldn’t be the whole story. Something weird is going on.”

  “You got a minute to come in the rectory? We both need to wind down a bit … don’t you think?”

  Zoo hesitated. “Okay,” he said after a moment, “I’ve got some reports to fill out on this shooting. But I can spare a couple of minutes. Do you have anything to drink besides altar wine?”

  It was an inside joke between them. Zachary stocked nothing but inexpensive wine, and beer.

  “What’s wrong with altar wine? Ours is delivered by Catholic teamsters.”

  “Don’t worry about me. You’re the one who’ll need a little internal help.”

  They settled into the rectory parlor. Zachary took a bottle of red wine from a cabinet and poured a couple of fingers into a glass. Zoo waved off any wine. For the interrogations about to come, he wanted to be cold sober.

  He looked at his brother somberly, then slowly shook his head. When he finally spoke, it was almost as if he was thinking out loud. “ … by overwhelming odds you should be a dead man now.”

  The gravity of his tone prompted Zack to return to the bottle and add a little more wine to his glass.

  “I know you didn’t take this threat to your life very seriously. You should have reported those calls and letters. To me. And I don’t care whether you didn’t want to involve me or trouble either of us. Anne Marie is no namby-pamby shrinking violet—and I’m a professional—-a law enforcement officer—and your brother. You weren’t doing yourself—or us—any favors …”