The Man Who Murdered God

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  “The other thing is the change that takes place in people in late adolescence. Remember that old line ‘I can’t believe how much smarter my parents got between the time I was eighteen and the time I turned twenty-five’? We all change in that period. We all vacillate back and forth, being revengeful children one minute, smashing our best friend’s sand castles and telling our parents to leave us alone. The next minute, under different circumstances, we can act like responsible adults.

  “Now think of Bobby. As I see it, he was betrayed by the one thing in his life he cherished and trusted the most, the thing which could replace the father he no longer had. Horribly betrayed. Disgustingly used. As an adolescent his mind went into a self-protection mode—it withdrew. Totally. It said, in effect, ‘If I don’t acknowledge being alive, these things cannot be happening to me.’ Then, as an adult, the anger took over. With freedom and power comes a need for justice. The adult in him wants revenge, it wants retribution and action. Just like Bobby’s father was a man of action.”

  McGuire nodded silently on the other end of the line.

  “But my God!” Taber continued. “They destroyed a beautiful human being. Rarely have I seen anyone so gifted and filled with so much potential.”

  “Do you think his mother knew?” McGuire asked suddenly.

  “I think he tried to tell her,” Taber replied. “And she refused to believe him. I think that’s what the estrangement was all about, when he threw the crucifix through the window.”

  McGuire thanked Taber and was about to hang up. “One thing, McGuire,” Taber added.

  “What’s that?”

  “When you find him, what’s going to happen?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll certainly try to disarm him, try to apprehend him without anyone being hurt.”

  “Do that, will you?” Taber pleaded. “Try to remember that he could have been a wonderful individual. Whatever he’s done, wherever he is, it’s not entirely his fault.”

  McGuire returned to the window and stood staring out at the night sky. If Gloria and I had had kids, he thought, they might be as old as Bobby is now. He could be my son. And if, he were, what would I think of him and what he’s done?

  Bobby lay the tool aside and stood back from the wall. It would do. It would have to do. Feeling the tears return again, he slumped on the couch and covered his eyes until the crying had passed. He rolled over, his back to the wall, while Mattie looked down at him as he slept.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  McGuire woke to the sound of rain beating against the windows. As he scratched and yawned, he tried to reassemble fragments of dreams that cluttered his mind. The clock radio beside his bed came to life in the middle of a commercial for a laundry detergent. On the 6:00 a.m. news the announcer revealed that police had identified the priest killer as an escaped mental-hospital patient but were withholding his name pending further investigation.

  McGuire scowled and rolled out of bed. He needed coffee. Badly.

  An hour later he was in the Boylston Street donut shop sipping coffee and eavesdropping on the ragged conversations around him.

  “Sure, he was a nut,” a mailman seated at the counter nearest the door was saying to a woman three stools away from him. “You could tell. Who else would shoot a priest, uh?”

  “He’s gotta be an atheist, too,” the woman replied. She was holding a coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “You believe in God, you don’t kill a priest, right?”

  “We had capital punishment in this state, this sure as hell wouldn’t be happening,” a man in a rumpled grey suit added. He was standing in line waiting for a takeout order, and he had the appearance and demeanour of someone who was being continually overlooked by society.

  “How’s capital punishment going to stop a priest killer?” a younger man in windbreaker and jeans asked. “He’s going to burn in hell anyway, right?”

  “Not if he’s an atheist,” the woman with the cigarette added. She glanced around, catching McGuire’s eye. McGuire looked quickly away.

  “Atheists don’t burn in hell?” the man in the grey rumpled suit asked.

  “Sure they do. They gotta if they’re atheists. They just don’t know it’s coming, that’s all.” She took a long drag on her cigarette.

  “If he’s going to burn in hell for being an atheist, then it doesn’t matter if he kills a thousand priests.” It was the mailman. He looked concerned. He had found a fatal flaw in theology.

  The woman pondered her cigarette for a moment. She was heavy and middle-aged. Her make-up looked as though it had been applied with a trowel. “They got different levels of pain in hell,” she said finally. “He’ll get the worst.”

  The man in the grey rumpled suit looked confused. “Different levels of pain?” he repeated. “Different places reserved in hell?” His coffee and donuts were in a paper sack in one hand. His other hand was extended, waiting for the silent Vietnamese clerk to drop change in his open palm. “What, like getting rooms with harbour views at the Sheraton?”

  The mailman laughed. “Yeah, you’re a priest killer, you get a room directly over the fire?”

  The woman frowned. “This isn’t funny,” she admonished. “There’s nothing lower than a priest killer. Nothing. The man’s a monster. Anybody who’d kill a priest would murder a child or assassinate the president. Whatever they do to him when they catch him, it’ll be too good for him.”

  Everyone nodded.

  The man in the grey suit pocketed his change and turned from the head of the line to leave. “They’ll catch him,” he said as he headed for the door.

  “They’d better,” the woman muttered. “Or somebody’ll get their ass kicked.”

  McGuire glared at her for a moment before slipping two dollars under his coffee cup and walking quickly through the door into the damp morning air.

  “I read your report.” Kavander slipped a fresh toothpick into the corner of his mouth. “Good work. Lucky, maybe. But good stuff.” He picked up the picture of Bobby Griffin supplied by Dr. Taber. “This is the best picture you could get?”

  “It’s the only one,” McGuire said from the other side of Kavander’s desk. “The kid destroyed all the rest.”

  Kavander grunted. “We’ve got it state-wide on APB,” he said. “Now we’ll release it to the press.” He looked up at McGuire, his eyes steady. “You want to do that, McGuire? I hear it’s your specialty.”

  If Kavander had expected McGuire to flinch, he was disappointed. “What the hell does that mean?” McGuire asked.

  “It means I know Fat Eddie didn’t send the picture of the Goddamn blackboard to the Globe. Eddie’s an insufferable prick in many ways, but two things I know he’s not. First, he’s not sloppy about procedures. Second, he’s scared shitless of me.” The captain’s eyes never wavered from McGuire’s. “He didn’t send the picture,” Kavander said, lowering his voice. “But I know who did.”

  “Who?” McGuire stared back at Kavander, challenging him.

  “You did.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I will.” Kavander leaned back in his chair, keeping his eyes on McGuire. “Next week I’m launching a complete internal enquiry. Whoever did it will be cited for insubordination and possibly obstruction of justice.”

  “Obstruction?” McGuire exploded. “It got us the Goddamn lead, didn’t it? If the picture hadn’t appeared, we’d still be running around here like rats with their fucking tails cut off!”

  “Oh?” Kavander raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Is that right?” He reached for a stack of papers at the corner of his desk. “What, uh . . . what was the address of that monastery you were at yesterday?”

  McGuire told him.

  Kavander nodded. He retrieved the sheet of paper he had been searching for. “Of course it is, McGuire. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  “The hel
l I did,” McGuire replied. He looked over at Lipson, who shrugged from his position at the window.

  “Well, you could have discovered it.” Kavander slid the paper across to McGuire. “Vance had it two days ago. Lower right-hand corner. See it?”

  The sheet was filled with scribbled names, addresses and telephone numbers scattered randomly in Vance’s somewhat flowery handwriting. Circled in red ink at the bottom was the address of the Cesena monastery.

  “Where’d he get this?” McGuire asked. There was no fire in his voice.

  “Checks of shotgun sales. The kid bought it last month. Used his own name and an identification card with the monastery’s address on it. Waited the usual two weeks, went back and picked up the gun.”

  “I never saw this. Vance never showed this to us.” McGuire turned to Lipson. “You ever see this, Bernie?”

  Lipson shook his head no.

  “Well, he had it,” Kavander snapped. “Said you were never interested in anything he came up with.”

  “That’s because he kept coming up with garbage that wasn’t worth spit,” McGuire said. “So he had the monastery address buried in all his other junk. It doesn’t prove a thing. It was the blackboard message that got us the lead.”

  “And it’s the blackboard message that just might get your ass out on the street,” Kavander hissed. “Christ, I can’t believe how Ollie Schantz covered for you all these years!”

  “Nobody covered for me!” McGuire spat at him. “Ollie and I, we worked as a team. I carried my share of the load, damn it!”

  “And a week from now you may not be carrying a badge,” Kavander sounded suddenly weary. He was studying another scrap of paper on his desk. “Incidentally, this doesn’t give me any pleasure, but did you get all those messages that were coming in yesterday?”

  “What messages? The ones to call you? Yeah, I got them. I was too busy tracking down Bobby Griffin to get back to you.”

  “That’s too bad.” Kavander’s eyes found McGuire. “Who the hell’s Gloria Arnott? That’s not—”

  “Gloria? My first wife. You remember her from when we were both. . . .” McGuire’s expression changed. “Why? What happened?”

  Kavander had been nodding his head at the recollection of Gloria. Gloria McGuire. “She died, Joe. Yesterday morning. Hospital tried to reach you all day.”

  McGuire flung the vase against the wall, the dead flowers dropping to the floor among the shards of coloured glass. The nurse glanced uneasily at the doctor standing beside her.

  “I can understand why you’re upset, Mr. McGuire,” the doctor said. His face was both youthful and weary; the cheeks were still pink and unlined, and the hair was full and fashionable in its cut. But the eyes, behind gold-rimmed glasses, were tired and flat, as though they had endured more suffering than the rest of the man. “But you have to see our position here. . . .”

  McGuire turned his head to stare at the doctor coldly.

  “When Mrs. Arnott arrived,” the doctor explained, “she gave quite clear instructions to us, in written form. In the event of her death there were to be no ceremonies. Only a simple cremation procedure. Please understand, she had been here for a number of days before she listed you as someone to contact.”

  “Don’t you usually leave it to the next of kin to make funeral arrangements?” McGuire snapped.

  “Of course we do,” the doctor replied, shaking his head. “But Mr. McGuire, you weren’t listed as next of kin. And we tried to reach you, you know that. Meanwhile we already had the paperwork necessary for disposal of the body. We’re not equipped here to retain our patient’s remains for an extended period of time, you can understand that. It’s dangerous to the health of the other patients.”

  “When was she cremated?”

  The doctor glanced at his wristwatch. “It was scheduled for this morning. Probably an hour ago.” He looked back at McGuire. “Naturally we’ll leave instructions to have the ashes forwarded to you.”

  McGuire sat heavily on the edge of Gloria’s bed, his eyes on the floor.

  “Is there anything else we can do for you, Mr. McGuire?” the nurse asked.

  McGuire looked up at her. The doctor was edging his way towards the hall, where another nurse was waiting for him, a clipboard in her hands. “Just leave me alone for a few minutes,” McGuire replied.

  “Of course.” The nurse turned to a counter behind her. She picked up a plastic container shaped like a small washtub and set it on the foot of the bed. “Mrs. Arnott’s personal effects are in here,” she said, then left.

  McGuire sat in silence for several minutes before examining the contents. He sifted through paperback books, cards from nurses, coloured ribbons, which had been used to secure bouquets of flowers he had brought, lipstick and eye shadow, and a number of insurance policies. Inside Gloria’s purse he found more make-up items and an expensive lizard-skin wallet, which contained credit cards, over two hundred dollars in cash and several pieces of identification listing her as “Mrs. Gloria Arnott” above a Houston address.

  He found only one photograph. It was of himself.

  Gloria had taken the photograph twenty years earlier on their honeymoon in Washington. It showed him standing in the park across from the White House, the Washington Monument thrusting skyward behind him. He was wearing a new suit with a light plaid pattern, the lapels slightly peaked in the fashion of the time, the tie surprisingly wide and boldly striped. He remembered the suit. He remembered the day. But it was the broad, open, free laughter on his young and unlined face that startled him. He couldn’t remember what it was that had made him laugh so freely. Something she had said. Something he had felt. Something they had enjoyed together.

  He tried to say goodbye to her there, in the empty hospital room, with its cold utilitarian furniture, the room where Gloria had nightly closed her eyes and ridden the rush of morphine to Lahaina to escape the pain and the inevitability it promised.

  He remembered the last evening they had spent together, ten years earlier. They sat in bed and talked through the night, each knowing they would part the next day. McGuire’s bags were packed, the lawyers had been called. They spoke with the dull resignation of people whose reservoir of love had become empty and hollow, talking of times, good and bad, in the distant manner of historians, without passion and involvement.

  “The opposite of love isn’t hate,” Gloria said that evening. “It’s indifference.” She had been visiting a psychiatrist and was heavily sedated with Valium.

  McGuire had agreed. They agreed on everything during that long, aching night. At the time McGuire felt they were behaving with maturity. Now it all seemed silly and juvenile, the posturing of two people who were either ill-equipped or too lazy to work at a marriage that had once been alive and vital.

  Before leaving the hospital room, McGuire carefully gathered the remains of the vase and flowers from the floor and wiped up the water. He tore a sheet from his notebook, scribbled the name and address of a lawyer he knew downtown, added his own name to the bottom and lay it on top of the plastic container. Let the lawyer handle everything, he told himself. Let somebody else make the decisions.

  He took the cash from Gloria’s wallet and searched out the nurse who had been present when he smashed the vase. As he approached, she watched him warily until he apologized for his behaviour in the room and gave her the money from Gloria’s wallet. He asked her to buy champagne for everyone on the staff who had cared for Gloria Arnott. Then he turned and walked, with his head down, to the elevator.

  McGuire spent the afternoon trying to concentrate on reports and paperwork. Bernie Lipson remained in the squad room, following up leads with Ralph Innes and the rest of the team. At mid-afternoon Janet Parsons entered the office, sat across from him at Bernie’s desk and asked if he wanted to talk. McGuire said no, and she remained watching him for a moment, then silently rose and left.

 
; Kevin Deeley arrived around four o’clock to say he had heard about Gloria. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked. McGuire shook his head, and Deeley touched him lightly on the shoulder before departing.

  Alone again, McGuire repeated what had become a ritual throughout the afternoon. He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew the picture of the laughing young man in the plaid suit. Laying the photograph on the desktop, he stare at it intently, all the while asking himself over and over again, “What was I laughing at? How could anything have made me so damned happy?”

  There was nothing left to be done.

  Bobby seized the handle of the heavy black athletic bag and walked to the rear door of Mattie’s house. He stepped out onto the porch and felt the light rain against his cheek. To the west the sky was burning, the rays of the setting sun glowing crimson through the thinning cloud cover. Above him the remnants of the spring shower remained. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, the water falling on his face like a baptismal rite, a cleansing of sins.

  He opened his eyes and glanced around. On the other side of the road he saw a bald man still sitting in an old red car.

  Directly ahead of him, behind Mattie’s faded and tumbling picket fence, stretched woodlands that formed part of a community green belt. Bobby could see a path leading up the slight rise and into the trees. He hoisted the bag onto his shoulder and set out.

  He was thinking nothing and feeling nothing. There is solace in nothingness, he had learned long ago, and in the caverns of his mind he was able to withdraw to that place of vacuum and numbness. It was warm there. Nothing that was there could hurt him.

  In many ways it was Bobby’s only home.

  From behind the wheel of his car Frank watched Bobby leave. All afternoon he had tried to reach Mattie by telephone. No one at Jenkins Real Estate had heard from her: they assumed her absence from the office was the result of too much celebrating over her sale of the Delisle estate.