Mind Over Murder

by William X. Kienzle

  Returning his expectant look with one of consternation, she leaned back against the outer office door she had just closed. “I don’t understand it,” she said.

  “What? What don’t you understand?” Furrows began to form in Ankenazy’s brow.

  “They’re on an entirely different case.”

  “Lynch and Patrick?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to the Thompson case?”

  “It’s been farmed out.”

  “Where?”

  “Vancouver.”

  “Vancouver?” The cold fingers of panic clutched at Ankenazy. “What’s in Vancouver?”

  “A cruise ship… and someone named Lee Brand.”

  “A cruise ship. Which one?”

  “I don’t know. That’s all I could find out. The Homicide people are pretty close-mouthed. About all I can get for you are on-duty rosters or bits and pieces of conversations. Apparently, the Thompson investigation is continuing, and it is proceeding in due course. But today’s work is being done for us by the Vancouver police. It must involve someone aboard that cruise ship… Brand maybe.

  “Sorry, Bob, that’s about all I could get for you, at least for today.”

  Although the gods were no longer beaming on him, they were not entirely hiding behind a cloud. It was a nasty turn. Unless he was able to cash in on these scant leads, he would fall hopelessly behind the Free Press.

  Ankenazy became overwhelmed at the realization that, on the one hand, he had volunteered to take this story off Pat Lennon’s hands and, on the other, that he had then fought the objections of Leon London so that the News would pursue the story.

  If only I had left well enough alone, he thought. However, at this point there was nothing but to see if there might be a silk purse at the end of this sow’s ear.

  He thanked Terri reflexively and found a pay phone. Using the News’s credit card, he called an acquaintance at the Vancouver Tribune.

  “Paul Armbruster? Thank God you’re in! This is Bob Ankenazy at the Detroit News. Could you check something for us, Paul? How many cruise ships are docked at Vancouver today?”

  “Just a second while I check.” There was a several-minutes pause. Armbruster’s voice came back. “Just one: the Alaskan Queen.”

  So far so good, Ankenazy thought.

  “Look, Paul, do me a favor. Can you leave your office right now?”

  “For a good reason.”

  “I think I’ve got one. There should be a passenger named Lee Brand on the Queen. Board the ship and check with him to see if he’s traveling with a Roman Catholic priest—a Monsignor Thompson— from Detroit. Just to be certain, check the passenger manifest to see if Thompson or any other Detroit-area people are listed.

  “There’s a standard stringer’s fee with a healthy bonus in this. But time is at a premium. Whatever you find, call me at the News. I’ll be back there in a few minutes.”

  “Sure thing.”

  As Wednesday progressed, Ankenazy would learn that Mr. and Mrs. Lee Brand were the only Detroit-area passengers on the Queen. Armbruster, clued to the story and supplied with questions, was able to get an interview with Brand. After which, with Brand’s help, he was able to get a copy of the passenger manifest. He was also compelled to inform Ankenazy that this was by no means the only interview Brand had given this day. Earlier, Brand had spoken with a staff writer for the Vancouver Guardian who was stringing for the Detroit Free Press. Brand had also been questioned by the Vancouver police, who were acting on behalf of the Detroit police. Both the other reporter and the police had secured and teletyped back copies of the passenger manifest.

  Well, Ankenazy concluded, it was another day of good news and bad news. At least he could stay abreast of Joe Cox.

  But what the hell kind of magic did Cox possess that could give him an apparent advantage over even the police?

  Father Koesler, at least, was not working on any other homicide cases. So he decided, just before noon, to go golfing. Since St. Anselm’s lay roughly between downtown and St. John’s Seminary, he decided to stop at his rectory and change before using the seminary course. He had plenty of time before this evening’s Holy Day Mass.

  As luck would have it, there was a threesome warming up near the first tee as Koesler arrived at the seminary. Fathers Pat McNiff, Bob Morell, and Mike Dolan, all of whom Koesler knew. As he pulled his cart toward the practice green, Koesler reflected that at his age he now knew almost all the older and middle-aged priests. Only the very youngest were unfamiliar.

  Greetings were exchanged. Implicitly, Koesler was invited to complete the foursome. The conversation revolved around Monsignor Thompson’s disappearance. To date, it was not widely known outside the Police Department that Koesler was quasi-officially involved in the investigation. Which well-suited Koesler’s desire for a low profile; he would not volunteer the information.

  “What the pot,” said Mike Dolan brightly, “I think Thompson broke away for a quickie vacation. I mean, what’s all the commotion for? This is only the—what is it?—fourth day he’s been gone. Why, hell, back when I was in the Navy, I could lose four days on a really well-earned hangover.”

  The others laughed as they continued to limber up, taking practice swings with their drivers. Dolan, singularly, swung all four of his woods. He approached golf in much the same way others prepared for baseball.

  “Jeez, I don’t know, Mike,” said McNiff. “There were a lot of people didn’t like Thompson very much. In fact, I think you could say he must have been the most disliked priest in the diocese. And he did disappear under pretty suspicious circumstances.”

  “It was a bad combination.” Koesler swung more vigorously than the others. He was not yet warmed up, but sensed they were nearly ready to begin. “The only tool he had to work with was canon law, and nobody did him any favor handing him that. On top of which, he administered the law very strictly.”

  “Very strictly!” exclaimed Morell. “More by his whim, I’d say. But you’d have to look to the suburbs to find the people who are really sore at him. He didn’t bother us inner-city priests all that much.” He indicated himself and Dolan, pastors, respectively, of Sts. Theresa and Elizabeth. Very much core-city parishes.

  “What the pot he didn’t bother us!” contradicted Dolan. “What do you call what he did to poor Shanley? He damn near crucified him! “

  Koesler, aware that it had been he who had involved Shanley with Brand, felt a twinge of conscience.

  “Ah, yes, Shanley… how could I forget?” said Morell.

  “You don’t think Thompson could continue with his inner-city crackdown?” Koesler asked.

  “Not a chance.” Morell was confident. “Shanley committed the unpardonable sin. He witnessed the marriage of a couple of Very Important People. The people we marry you’re never going to read about in the paper. Not even an obituary.”

  “Say,” observed Koesler, “does it occur to any of you that we’ve been referring to Thompson in the past tense? As if he were dead?”

  “Nil nisi bonum de mortuis,” McNiff commented.

  “Then nil,” said Morell.

  “What’s happened to Shanley anyway?” asked Koesler, as they moved toward the first tee. As far as the eye could see, it appeared the foursome was alone on the course. “I haven’t heard anything about him since I read in the papers that he accepted the suspension.”

  “He’s disappeared, for all practical purposes,” said Morell. “None of us knows where he’s gone. He’s got till mid-September till his suspension is up. I wonder where the hell they’ll send him?”

  “A hospital chaplaincy somewhere,” McNiff opined. “Probably Mt. Carmel, where they can keep an eye on him.”

  Mike Dolan nominated himself as first off the tee. He wiggle-waggled very little. He simply stood and stared fixedly at the ball, which he had teed rather high. The muscles in his arms rippled as his animus toward the ball increased. Finally, he exploded with the fastest backswing in captivity. I
t was probable that at no time, once he began his swing, did he see the ball.

  “Where’d it go? Where’d it go?” Dolan scanned the skies, looking in vain for a small white dot.

  “It’s slicing, Mike, it’s slicing.” Morell’s eye followed the flight path. “Way up high, Mike, way up high! It’s slicing!”

  There was truth in this description. The ball was way up high and slicing. It descended on the other side of a tall maple and this side of the tennis courts. It would be in very tall grass. The chances of finding that ball before it was cut to death by a mower ran from slim to nonexistent.

  At that point, the foursome felt a sprinkle of raindrops. They quickly escalated into a cloudburst.

  The three priests who had not yet teed off ran for the clubhouse dragging their clubs behind them.

  Dolan, standing motionless on the tee, watched them. Then he picked up his bag, threw the strap over one shoulder and trudged down the fairway heading toward the right rough and the inevitably fruitless search for his ball.

  As he disappeared into the rainstorm, he was heard to mutter fervently, “What the pot!”

  Most holy days originally were conversions of pagan feasts. As they became fixed dates in the calendar, they became, ipso facto, holidays. Whole villages would celebrate the combined feast day and holy day by attending morning Mass and then enjoying a communal picnic.

  Through the centuries, this custom, along with nearly everything else, evolved. The Church stuck steadfastly to her holy days of obligation, while the world no longer granted the holiday. The only exceptions were Christmas and New Year’s, when church and state still combined the holy day and holiday.

  Even though Church law still obliged Catholics, under pain of serious sin, to attend Mass on all holy days, attendance was nothing as compared with Sundays. Only a relatively few Catholics deigned to attend holy day services. Every once in a while, though not often, Catholics voted with their feet on an isolated rule or regulation by simply not observing it.

  Dean Patrick and Bill Lynch had not attended holy day services since childhood in parochial school. They would not even have been aware of the event were it not announced from the pulpit on the preceding Sunday. Even then, they never seriously considered attending.

  Thus, each felt a measure of surprise to find himself among the thin crowd in St. Anselm’s at 7:30 P.M. for the feast of the Assumption into Heaven of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

  It was a novel feeling for them to view Father Koesler in his sacramental role of priest presiding over Mass. Until then, Koesler had been little more to them than a millstonelike onus they were forced to carry through the Thompson investigation. From this point on, they would, of necessity, see him, in the specialized view of a Catholic, as their priest.

  During the homily, Koesler spoke interestingly enough of the privileges of Mary stemming from God’s selection of her for a most special and important role, comparing this to God’s selection of us as His children.

  As the offertory began, Lynch turned to Patrick. “Is there going to be a collection?”

  Without looking around, Patrick replied, “Is this a Catholic church?”

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than parades of ushers marched down the center and side aisles, baskets at the ready.

  “Lend me a buck, will you?” Lynch asked.

  “Is that all you’re going to give the Lord after all He’s given you?” Patrick chided, repeating a reproof he’d heard uncounted times from various priests in various parishes.

  “I’m not giving this to the Lord,” Lynch stage-whispered. “I’m giving this to Father Koesler, who will probably mismanage it.”

  The shoulders of the two men shook with silent laughter.

  Koesler had marked the two detectives as soon as he entered the church. The crowd was not so large that a couple of tall strangers would escape notice.

  Their presence was a stark reminder of the fact that Tommy Thompson was missing, possibly in peril, possibly dead. Koesler decided to offer this Mass for Thompson, the investigating detectives, and the eventual success of their efforts. To which, if the detectives had known his intention, they would have added a sincere, “Amen.”

  6

  The announcement was there in the Detroit News’s August 5 issue. It was there for everyone to see. Monsignor Thomas Thompson would be at a wedding reception at Roma Hall in East Detroit on the evening of August 11. It was unlikely that any of his cronies would be with him. He would be unguarded, unprotected, among strangers, virtually alone, vulnerable.

  It was noon on that Sunday, August 5 and Father David Neiss, having read the Free Press, was plowing through the comparatively enormous Sunday News. He had offered the 9 and 10:30 Masses earlier that morning and needed only to assist Father Cavanaugh with communions at the 11:45 and 1 P.M. Masses, and he would be finished with work for the day. He had about half an hour before he would be needed for the 11:45 A.M. communions.

  Wedding announcements ordinarily did not interest Neiss. He was about to turn the page when his eye caught a familiar name. So Tommy Thompson would be at a wedding reception at Roma Hall next Saturday. Neiss could not think of Thompson without reflecting on how the man had mucked up the lives of a young couple Neiss respected and liked.

  Somebody should do something about that man, Neiss thought. What Thompson had perpetrated against Harry Kirwan and Mary Ann McCauley was nothing less than a despotic crime. The proscriptions of canon law were bad enough without adding capricious rules of his own.

  Just because Thompson posited that Poles were likely to have their invalid marriages convalidated—even though in this case all authentic records indicated the contrary—two very fine people had been driven away from the Church. And, as far as Neiss could discern, it was all Thompson’s doing.

  But who could or would do anything about Thompson? There seemed no question that Thompson was keeping all the rules and regulations. God, he enforced them beyond the last dotted “i” and crossed “t”! So there wasn’t much chance that anyone in the bureaucracy would do anything about him.

  How about some disgruntled petitioner? No; if it hadn’t happened by this time—and Thompson had been wheeling and dealing for a good number of years—it didn’t seem possible any such person now would lay violent hands on the clergyman.

  For a fleeting moment, Neiss considered the possibility that he himself might be the agent of justice. He would have considered this possibility earlier and more seriously had his ego strength not been battered and bruised by continual emotional beatings administered by his emasculating pastor, Father Cavanaugh.

  Suddenly, in the manner of a divine inspiration, a favorite Biblical text came to Neiss. He picked up his Bible and found the beginning of the book of the prophet Jeremiah, the man of tears.

  God says to Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou earnest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”

  Then Jeremiah says, “Ah, Lord God! behold I cannot speak for I am a child.”

  But God says, “Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid…”

  Be not afraid! Be not afraid to do what?

  What, thought Neiss, can I do? What could I do?

  He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes before he had to help with communions. He sat back and closed his eyes. As he sat very still, he could envision the coming week. If all these concepts worked out, perhaps he could become God’s messenger in time for next Saturday’s deadline. I shall not be a child, Neiss decided. And I shall not be afraid. I shall bring Thompson to his knees, so help me God.

  To hell with Cavanaugh! To hell with 11:45 communions! I think I’ll go fishing. Fishing and plotting go well together…

  MONDAY, AUGUST 6, 2:30 P.M.

  There had been hell to pay, of course, for skipping out yesterday without helping with the distribution of communions a
t the last two Masses. However, Father Cavanaugh was forced to temper his fury when confronted by a seemingly reborn Father Neiss.

  As was the case with Saints Paul and Peter, as recorded in Galatians, Chapter 2, Verse 11, Neiss had withstood Cavanaugh to his face. The air had been thick with acrimony, but it also had been cleared. The two priests had now established the beginnings of a more professional relationship. There was no doubt that Cavanaugh would fall victim to some recidivism. He had too long-standing a habit of treating subordinates like children to turn a decisive and permanent new leaf. The rebirth most affected Neiss, who, for the first time, felt like an adult.

  Now, Neiss was headed toward Detroit’s east side to check out the first part of his plan. The first peg of the plot rested with the advice and consent of one Peggy O’Brien.

  Peggy, now twenty years old, until a year before had been a Divine Child parishioner and a most prized member of Neiss’s Young Adult Club. A talented singer and dancer, Peggy had been the star of several of the shows staged by the club. However, last year she had decided on a career change that had had a radical effect on her entire lifestyle. Peggy had become a topless dancer.

  For this she had been virtually disowned by her parents. Father Cavanaugh had only barely been dissuaded from denouncing her from the pulpit. Most of the members of the Young Adult Club had seen her perform at the Club Libra at McNichols and Outer Drive. Some of the girls envied her, secretly. Some of the young men lusted after her, noisily.

  From time to time, Peggy visited Father Neiss. She assured him that her job was not sinful. Although regularly propositioned, she never went out with any of the patrons. She did live with a young man. But they intended to get married if it seemed their relationship was working out. And that was O.K., wasn’t it, Father?

  Somehow, the two had remained friends. And now, Neiss’s plan to bring Monsignor Thompson to task depended on Peggy’s professional advice and cooperation.