Let the Dead Bury the Dead

by David Carlson

  “Good heavens,” Father Fortis exclaimed.

  “Bill said he pushed the pages back toward her and told her he didn’t want anything to do with her. He said he hated her and that she was driving him crazy. She just laughed.”

  “That’s when you came back here, my dear?”

  “That’s when we both came in, Bill and I,” she said. “I know I should have been grateful for that, but it felt horrible. It was the second week of December, and it was like Bill had given up. Bill is a true scientist, Father, and doesn’t have a high regard for religion.”

  “But he came with you. That strikes me as significant,” Father Fortis said.

  Mrs. Nichols nodded. “Our meeting went better than I’d hoped. I guess Bill so desperately needed to talk to someone that he forgot Father Spiro was a priest.”

  “Did Father Spiro promise to do anything?” Worthy asked. He could imagine the old priest realizing that the Nichols’ crisis was escalating. Had he decided to intervene in some way? Had a woman willing to kill her husband decided instead to turn her wrath on the meddling priest?

  “He told us to both go see the dean and report what the woman had written. He wanted me to go with Bill so the university would know Bill wasn’t covering up something. He said the university had to take responsibility, and he expected they would. He also asked us to trust him.”

  “What did he mean by that?” Worthy asked.

  “He wanted to know what the woman’s name was. I’m pretty sure he said he’d keep it in a safe place,” she added.

  Worthy looked at Father Fortis. That was it. The book must have been where he kept names and matters he didn’t want others to find. But why keep it at all? Then Worthy thought he understood. No doubt the old man was forgetting things. The book was his memory bank.

  “And so you told him the name,” Worthy said. “I’m going to ask you to do the same with us.”

  Mrs. Nichols nodded as if she’d been expecting the request. “Peggy Hagarty. Bill asked him what he planned to do with it. Father said part of his vocation was dealing with evil.”

  Worthy’s heart skipped a beat. “That’s the way he put it? Dealing with evil?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Too close to the chapter in the Jewish book and Rabbi Milkin’s comments to be coincidence, he thought.

  “Anything else, my dear?”

  “He told Bill he intended to do something harmless to everyone but the woman. He intended to pray for her by name. I remember Bill laughed, and Father laughed too. It was like he knew Bill wasn’t mocking him.”

  He did more than pray for her, Worthy thought. At least after he talked it out with the rabbi.

  “Bill and I slept better that night than we had in weeks. Strange, isn’t it? That’s what I remember.”

  “So when did the two of you go in to see the dean?” Worthy prompted.

  “The next day. Bill laid it all out and mentioned he might be getting a lawyer. The dean suddenly seemed more understanding and said he’d arrange a meeting with the college lawyer that afternoon. We walked out with the dean’s assurance, in writing, that Mrs. Hagarty would be barred from his classes.”

  Tears flowed freely down her cheeks. “It felt so clean. Bill took Andy and me out to some kid’s restaurant. The food was terrible, but Andy liked the puppet show.” She shook her head and gave a weak smile. “Bill felt so good that he talked about staying at Allgemein.”

  “And that was all before the Christmas holidays, Theodora?” Father Fortis asked.

  Mrs. Nichols nodded and cried softly. “We thought with the semester ending that the problem was over. We’d have the holidays, and then Bill wouldn’t have to see her again. But,” she said, then paused to collect herself, “but then we got a call from Andy’s nursery school right after New Year’s. He goes there two mornings a week. They said someone had broken into the school and vandalized the kids’ finger paintings. I couldn’t make any sense of it until the secretary said the person had only vandalized his.”

  He looked down at her son. “It still didn’t make any sense,” she added, and Worthy could see that she believed that. “How can you vandalize a finger painting? But they asked us to come in, and we did. When we got there, a policeman was waiting for us. I want to show you what we had to look at.”

  She reached into her bag, pulled out a folded piece of art paper, and handed it to Father Fortis, who spread it out on his desk. Worthy stood and looked down at the swirly shapes and the designs. At the top, someone had written “Die” in ink and underneath had drawn a crescent moon with a star in it.

  “How odd,” Father Fortis said. “Terrifying and odd.”

  “The secretary at the school told the policeman that she’d seen a woman come into the school the afternoon before. She thought she was a mother who’d come back to get something. She also said she thought she saw the woman talking and making gestures, as if someone else was in the room.”

  “You’re saying it was Mrs. Hagarty,” Father Fortis asked.

  “They didn’t have a good enough description, but I was sure. That was two weeks ago.”

  “And so you came back here,” Worthy said.

  Mrs. Nichols’ shoulders sagged. “Yes. That was just a day before Father was killed. He was interested in the moon and stars in the drawing. He asked if there were any dots placed around the stars. I didn’t know, and then he died. But I looked this morning. He was right.”

  “I don’t follow,” Worthy said.

  “It’s an old witchcraft sign,” Father Fortis said. “How did Father Spiro react to what you said?”

  “He volunteered to call a lawyer from the church. Bill said the college had already done that, but Father Spiro insisted. He said we needed an independent one. I don’t know if he did that before he died,” she whispered.

  “What are your plans now, my dear?”

  “We’ve got boxes all over the house. You see, we’re leaving. We’re going to live with my folks for a while.”

  There was motive here, Worthy thought. And with that he could explore the question of opportunity. But there was one question he still needed to ask.

  “Mrs. Nichols, you said you were in church that last Sunday. What did you make of Father Spiro’s problem?”

  “I didn’t understand it at all. Andy was fussy, and we’d been in and out of the service to the cry room. All I remember is feeling so sorry for Father. His face went white just before he stopped, then his face turned red when he started to chant again. I thought he must have been terribly embarrassed.”

  “Could you tell if he was looking at you?”

  “At me? I don’t think so. Why?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  A silence followed, a silence Worthy had come to understand well over his career. It was the silence that followed a witness having said everything that she or he had come to say. It was the silence of someone who suddenly felt empty and was not used to the feeling. It was the silence of a child who had turned over a problem to an adult and now wanted to think of something else.

  Worthy thanked the woman for coming, as did Father Fortis, who asked that she call him if there was anything he could do.

  As Worthy walked Theodora Nichols to the door, he could feel his mind beginning to race. He gave her his card and asked when the Nichols planned to move. He knew he needed time to put the pieces in order before he asked the couple to return to St. Cosmas to confirm his suspicions. But what she had told him made him feel better about the case than he had since the altarpiece was stolen from St. Michael’s. And he finally had a clue to the case that was important enough to help him forget the chasm that had opened up again between Allyson and him.

  He watched the Nichols’ car drive away from the church before returning to the office. As he reentered the secretary’s office, he was surprised to see Henderson waiting for him. The secretary handed him a note, saying Captain Betts had called and asked him to return her call as soon as possible.

  No ques
tion what that’s about, he thought. But with Theodora Nichols’ testimony, he finally had something he could use to push back on Sherrod’s robbery theory.

  He looked up from the note, expecting to see Henderson’s mask of boredom; instead he saw a shy smile on his partner’s face. Henderson stepped forward, and like Santa at a Christmas party, brought something out from behind his back. It was the missing book with the leather corners.

  Chapter Eleven

  Worthy walked briskly toward Captain Betts’ office, the book tucked securely under his arm. He noticed as he passed that Hubie, the precinct desk sergeant, kept his eyes down. Several others, however, gave him knowing looks. He could guess what they thought they knew.

  What he knew, and they didn’t, was that Henderson had found the missing book. While the discovery posed an initial problem of it being in Greek, how big a problem would that be for Father Fortis, who was fluent in Greek?

  The story of the book’s discovery was incredible, as much for what it said about Henderson as the book itself. Mrs. Hazelton had already checked, to use her words, “everywhere, absolutely everywhere,” but Henderson had found it within an hour of looking.

  He had begun by inspecting the men’s bathroom, believing that Father Spiro might have not simply hidden the book, but hidden it especially from his secretary, the one person who knew best his haunts and habits. But when he’d found nothing there, Mrs. Hazelton had admitted that there was another area in the church that was off limits to her.

  “She told me that she was never allowed to go into the altar area,” Henderson had told Worthy after the discovery. “And she sure didn’t want me in there without the new priest’s permission, but I went right in. I didn’t find anything important for the first half hour. But then I noticed this small niche in the back of the altar.”

  “Ah, that’s where relics are housed,” Father Fortis had explained to both of them while Worthy was still at the church, sharing that every altar contained relics of one or more saints. Addressing Henderson, Father Fortis had said, “I’m quite sure if you had asked my permission to open that, I would have refused.”

  “Good thing I don’t always follow the rules,” Henderson said, glancing knowingly at Worthy.

  Worthy had paused before Captain Betts’ door, feeling confident of the importance of the find, when the door opened from within. He stood face to face with Sherrod. For a second or two, Sherrod looked embarrassed before a cocky grin appeared on his face. As he passed by Worthy, he left a whispered, “You’re making this way too easy” in his wake.

  “Come in, Lieutenant, and shut the door behind you,” Captain Betts said. She stood behind her desk, peering at him over her half glasses.

  Little wonder why Sherrod is here, Worthy thought. He gripped the book in his hand. This case isn’t over yet.

  “Lieutenant Worthy, we need to pow-wow. When we first met, you seemed agreeable—mainly, that is—to what I asked. But whenever you leave my office, things seem to go haywire.”

  Worthy decided to wait until his captain had finished her tirade before speaking. The nasty taste left by McCarty’s article couldn’t stand up to Henderson’s discovery. And in addition to that, Mrs. Nichols had offered more evidence that Father Spiro was not going senile but was preoccupied with serious issues in the parish.

  Captain Betts shook her head. “It seems that my predecessor didn’t give me the full scoop on you. He told me about your finer points and added a bit about your loner tendencies, but he didn’t prepare me for this. Do you remember what we talked about last Friday?”

  “Sure. We agreed that I was to go talk to Henderson, and that from now on the two of us are to work this case together. When we’re at the projects, we’re both there. Same with the church.”

  “Did I miss something in our little talk—say, about your right to take time off without permission?” She pointed down at an open newspaper on her desk. “I mean, for God’s sake, this stunt of yours. Are you this stupid, or do you want to lose this case?”

  “I didn’t pull any stunt. The reporter did it to make me look bad.”

  “Well, she sure as hell succeeded.” Betts paused a moment to gaze again at the damaging article. “If you’d gotten the phone calls I have this morning, Lieutenant, you’d know that when one of us looks bad, we all do.”

  Try that out on Sherrod, Worthy thought.

  “Look, I met with that reporter last week,” he said. “She asked for something impossible, and she didn’t like it when I said no.”

  “A reporter well regarded by Superintendent Livorno, I might add.”

  “She made that perfectly clear. But it was still a stupid request.”

  Captain Betts removed her glasses and let them dangle. “And it didn’t cross your mind that the best, not to mention most respectful, thing to do would be to run that by me? If what she asked was so stupid, I could have backed you up, or did you just assume that I’d side with Livorno?”

  Worthy’s jaw dropped. “To be honest, I never thought about telling you.”

  For a moment, Betts just stared at him. “That’s quite a revelation, Lieutenant. No wonder your colleagues accuse you of being a loner.”

  Worthy could sense color rising on his face as he heard Captain Betts echo Allyson’s comment.

  “Now, is it true what’s in the column, that you spent the weekend at your cabin?”

  “I spent the weekend with my daughter, someone who hasn’t had much time for me since my divorce. And I only did that after I made sure everything was covered.”

  “Explain everything being covered, Lieutenant.”

  “Okay. On Friday, I met with Henderson and worked out the new arrangement.” Worthy paused and decided not to explain that the empty weekend was Henderson’s choice. “With Bales in the hospital, the only thing we could have done over the weekend was interview a person of interest from the church. But then Father Fortis, the priest, said this person asked to see him.”

  “Are you telling me that you asked the priest to cover for you?”

  Worthy didn’t know whether to panic or laugh when he understood how low her trust in him had sunk.

  “No, of course not, but we both thought that my tagging along would make our person of interest clam up.”

  Betts studied him for a moment. “Go on.”

  “It turns out that the guy did spill some things to the priest. Nothing that’s going to break the case right away, but Henderson and I are going to follow up on it.”

  “And that’s enough to put you in a good mood?”

  “No, but this is.” He handed the book across her desk.

  Opening it, she looked up. “What is it? It’s all in another language.”

  “It’s in Greek,” he said and explained the trail from the photo to the book’s recovery.

  “I take it this is the missing book that you mentioned in one of your emails. Where’d you find it?”

  “Henderson found it.”

  Betts’ eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

  She’s thawing, Worthy thought. “I’d never have found it, but he looked somewhere I’d have missed.”

  “Are you telling me that Sherrod forgot to check it?”

  Worthy was in a magnanimous mood. “Sherrod and I both missed it. Even the secretary never thought of looking there.”

  She opened the book again and turned the pages. “But how do you know it’s important? Are you telling me you read Greek?”

  “No, but the new priest does. And I’m betting that all the recent sensitive problems at the church are listed in there. As you can see, the dates cover the last four months.” Worthy decided to go out on a limb. “In a few days, we should know what was troubling the priest at the end.”

  “And the projects?” Captain Betts asked.

  “I’ll interview Bales with you whenever he’s ready.”

  The captain closed the book and leaned back in her chair. “There are a lot of ‘ifs’ in your theory, but I think I understand your good mood
. Now, help me recover my own good mood. Are you saying Henderson is working out?”

  “Like I said, he found the book. So yes, I guess he is working out.” Worthy stood. “Any way that I can stop bumping into Sherrod every time I come in here?”

  “He works here too, Lieutenant. And that makes him one of my officers.”

  Worthy reached over and retrieved the book. “He’s poaching, Captain. He’d already been over to the Catholic church.”

  “And he found something.”

  “I know about the brick.”

  Betts gave Worthy a sharp look. “But do you know it’s from an old construction site behind the Suffolk projects?” She paused before continuing, “And Sherrod’s not your only problem. There are some higher-ups who are asking if your investigation has any direction.”

  “Well, what does this prove?” Worthy posed, raising the book.

  “Okay, but that could mean nothing. Part of your reputation, Lieutenant, is that you tend to complicate matters. People are wondering if that’s what is happening again here.”

  Worthy could feel his face redden. “Okay, I’ll make you a deal. After we interview Bales, if you still believe he could be behind this crime, then I’ll charge him. Detroit can have its quick result, the newspapers will be happy, and we’ll let the courts decide if we’ve got the right guy. But if Bales doesn’t fit, which I don’t believe he does, then you send Sherrod the hell back to Siberia, and let me investigate the case my way.”

  The room was silent for a moment. In a calmer voice, he added, “You and I both know that most murders aren’t simple. I don’t ‘complicate’ cases for the fun of it. I simply recognize when they’re not simple, and most of the time,” he added, “I solve them.”

  He strode to the door, knowing that the interview with Bales would reveal to both of them if he’d just been bluffing.

  At the end of a long Tuesday, filled with hours checking and rechecking the details of the coming memorial service while at the same time trying to make sense of the book that Father Spiro had hidden, Father Fortis felt hung over from the cumulative fatigue. And he needed to be alert, given the group already gathered down the hall in the library. He hoped Mr. Margolis would take charge and not count on him to lead the memorial subcommittee meeting.