The Man Who Murdered God

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  But Frank was worried. He cared for Mattie. If she had asked him, Frank would have left his wife and children for the comfort of Mattie’s arms and the laughter that came so easily in her company.

  He had knocked on her door an hour earlier. There had been no response, but he thought, he was certain, he had seen a curtain move in an upstairs window.

  Frank wasn’t by nature a jealous man. He had no reason to be jealous, he knew. He remembered every detail of the two occasions when he had escorted Mattie home because she was too drunk to drive.

  The first time, she had kissed him good night, long and passionately. When he slipped a hand inside her blouse, she said “No, Frank, I’m sorry, I can’t,” but made no effort to remove his hand. “Oh, what the hell, help yourself,” she added finally. “Just tuck me in when you’re finished, okay?”

  The second time, a week later, she turned to him as he held her in his arms and asked, “Didn’t we do this once before?”

  “Mattie, you don’t remember?” he asked, feeling hurt.

  She stared back at him, searching her memory. “Oh, yeah, sure I do, Frank,” she said at last. “You were great. Just great.”

  The following weekend she met Chris and let him take her home, and soon Chris was boasting to his friends at the bar about his exploits with Mattie. “Christ, is she hot stuff!” he had laughed. “When she comes, she screams like a fucking banshee!” Chris threw his head back and imitated a thin scream that faded to a whine. All the men at the bar laughed. Even Frank laughed. But later that week it had been Frank who called Mattie and told him about Chris’s family.

  Now Frank watched his latest rival, a kid really, a slim blond guy who looked barely twenty, walk through Mattie’s yard and climb the fence. Frank waited until Bobby entered the woods before strolling casually back to Mattie’s front door and ringing the bell again. There was still no answer and this time there was no motion of the curtains from the top window.

  Turning his collar up against the rain, Frank walked to the rear of the house and mounted the porch steps, glancing back over his shoulder towards the woods. He knocked lightly on the door, calling Mattie’s name.

  When he heard no response, Frank grasped the door handle and twisted it. To his surprise the door swung open, and he entered Mattie’s colonial kitchen. Dinner plates were still on the table, along with the scattered remains of the previous night’s meal. Frank called Mattie’s name again. She’s probably sleeping, he thought. Knowing Mattie, she probably got drunk and fell asleep in her bedroom.

  He began walking cautiously down the hall to the bedroom in the front of the small house. Just beyond the kitchen he passed the high arched entrance to Mattie’s living room, and he glanced up at the wall facing him.

  Frank screamed and fell back against the door frame. Felt his stomach heave. Felt his widened eyes fill with tears and with horror.

  Mattie was staring down at him through dead eyes, her head sagging limply, her tongue protruding slightly from her mouth. She was naked from the waist up. Her arms were spread full-length, and they sagged too. Because they were supporting her weight. Because holding her against the wall, her head just below ceiling level, were two heavy nails driven through her open palms into the solid two-hundred-year-old beams that framed her living room and added such a charming colonial mood to Mattie’s home.

  Bobby trekked on through the woods. Darkness was almost at hand, and he was aware of moving in a wide circle, passing periodically behind ranch-style suburban homes on large manicured lots. Once, he encountered two young children. He said hello and smiled at them, but instead of replying they dodged their way back towards one of the houses, aware of the danger of speaking to strangers. Especially in the woods, especially in the fading grey light of dusk.

  When darkness fell, there were no houses nearby, and the path had long been played out. Bobby kept moving, feeling branches brush against his cheek, stumbling over roots, and once, falling to his knees into a shallow, fast-running creek.

  As he trudged up the hill from the creek bed, he saw something that lifted his spirits. It was high and distant, glowing in spectacular solitude: A golden cross. A sign, Bobby knew. He smiled and set off with new confidence. A sign of forgiveness and delivery at last.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  That evening the shy, laughing face of Robert Kennedy Griffin appeared on the front page of every Boston-area newspaper and was the lead story of every local television newscast. A number of corporations, many but not all of them headed by Roman Catholics, announced they were jointly offering a cash award of one hundred thousand dollars to anyone providing information leading to the arrest and conviction of the priest killer. By nightfall, the total exceeded a quarter of a million dollars.

  Bobby’s mother appeared on television, clutching a rosary in her hand and denying through tear-filled eyes that her Bobby, her altar-boy son, could have been involved in anything so horrible. Looking directly into the camera, she pleaded for her son to contact her, and together they would convince the world of his innocence and goodness.

  The effects of the positive identification of Bobby Griffin were galvanizing. Suddenly there was a focus of the fear and concern that had been preoccupying the city for a week. Suddenly there was someone specific to hate.

  Calls continued to flood Janet Parsons’ communications center. Each call was followed up diligently, with two cars of uniformed officers dispatched. Every investigation fell into one of two categories. In the first, the individual whom the caller said was Bobby Griffin bore little or no resemblance to him beyond blond hair or a large black athletic bag in his possession. In the second category, the caller would claim “He went that way!” pointing down a narrow street in the harbour area or along a path on a college campus in Brookline. The area would be flooded with police, but there was no sign of anyone matching the description of Robert Kennedy Griffin.

  “We’re chasing our Goddamn tails so fast, we’re in danger of disappearing up our own assholes,” said Ralph Innes. He was leaning back in a squad room chair, hoisting a slice of pizza up to his mouth. Bernie Lipson, Janet Parsons and other members of the team were sprawled in chairs listening to the police-radio scanner or seated at desks making notes on follow-up calls. Kevin Deeley walked casually among them, asking questions about procedures and nodding his head sagely at their answers. McGuire, who had entered and silently acknowledged the greetings of each team member in turn, sat alone in the corner. Periodically someone approached him with a question or comment, and he listened politely, gave his advice, and they left him alone.

  The telephone beside Ralph Innes rang. He picked it up and said “Innes” around a mouthful of pizza. The rest of his conversation was a series of grunts and monosyllabic answers, with the exception of one sudden expletive. He replaced the receiver and looked around the room, raising his voice above the level of conversation.

  “Hey, here’s one for you!” he shouted. “That was Lou Lester out in Wellesley. Says they found some broad crucified in her own house. Can you believe it?”

  “Crucified?” Bernie Lipson repeated. Kevin Deeley groaned. His face wore an expression of horror.

  “Yeah. She was strangled first, then hammered up with her arms out, nails through the palms, all that stuff. Lou said she had her top off, too.” Innes looked at Janet Parsons and grinned, a mischievous teenager again. “Tits like a pure-bred Holstein, just a-hangin’ out there.”

  “Ralph, you’re a fucking pig, you know that?” Janet spat at him. She slammed a file folder onto the desk in front of her and stood up.

  “Yeah, well before you stomp off somewhere, maybe a couple of us better get the hell out to Wellesley,” Ralph replied. “The guy who found her said he saw our man Bobby leaving the place about an hour ago.”

  McGuire stood up and strode quickly to Innes’s desk. “He sure about that?” McGuire asked, looking down at the notes Innes had written on t
he pizza box in front of him.

  The telephone on Janet Parsons’ desk rang. She threw another disgusted glance at Innes before answering it.

  “This guy who found the body, some bartender friend of hers, is convinced,” Ralph Innes explained to McGuire. “Lou Lester says he might just be hysterical. You know, everybody’s seeing the kid all over the place. And this isn’t his style, right? I mean, she’s not a priest or a faggot, he didn’t blow her away with a Remington.”

  Janet was speaking excitedly into her telephone. Her eyes flashed at McGuire, trying to get his attention.

  “How long was she dead,” McGuire asked. “Did Lou say?”

  “Coroner figures twenty-four hours—” Innes began, but he was cut off by Janet, who slammed the receiver down and shouted “We’ve got him!”

  Everyone turned to face her, and the expression of triumph that had been on her face faded. “Well, not quite,” she added quickly. “But we’ve got positive identification from one of the nuns.”

  “Nuns?” McGuire repeated. “What nuns?”

  “One who escaped,” she added, scribbling an address on a sheet of paper as she spoke. “He’s in a convent near Needham. He’s holding sixteen nuns with his shotgun inside the building. All the lights are out, and he’s asking for a priest.”

  The convent of The Sisters of St. Joseph, an old and conservative teaching order, was a local landmark. The building, a massive four-story neo-colonial structure, sat in a glade on the banks of a stream, which eventually flowed into the St. Charles River. The stream’s valley was wide and shallow, the convent enclosed within the protective hands of the wooded hills rising on either side of it. Only the elaborate cupola, surmounted by a brass cross that remained lit throughout the night, soared above the level of the trees on the hills and glowed like a beacon through the darkness for miles around.

  The building had been constructed at the turn of the century from contributions provided by many of New England’s burgeoning industries. Its brick walls extended for three stories before ending in a mansard-style roof, where gabled windows flanked by weathered wooden shutters provided a panoramic view of the valley.

  A modern schoolhouse extension had been added to the convent on the side facing the paved road leading to the highway. The Sisters of St. Joseph had hoped to fund the six-room elementary school structure in the same picturesque manner as their convent building. But in spite of bingo games, car washes, bake sales and a year-long campaign among local churches, the drive for funds had fallen short. While the newer structure was more than adequate in terms of facilities, it was less than an aesthetic match for the proud old building to which it was attached. With all the proportions and warmth of a shoe box, it extended from the colonial building “like a festered toe” in the private opinion of the bishop who had blessed it at its opening in 1965.

  The school extension, sealed from the convent building by locked fire doors at each end of the short passageway connecting it to the older building, had become a police operations headquarters by the time McGuire, Lipson, Ralph Innes and Kevin Deeley arrived. Outside, the convent loomed above them in darkness; even the lights on the cross had been extinguished for the first time in the memory of local residents.

  “Near as we can figure, he’s got sixteen sisters in there,” said Jim Caddy, an overweight gum-chewing deputy who briefed the Boston detectives. “He’s killed all the lights, locked and barred all four entrances. We’ve got six teams of men with infra-red spotters, plus eight snipers with laser guiders all around the place. Got assault troops with helicopters on the way. He ain’t going nowhere.” The deputy was sprawled in a teacher’s chair, a scuffed boot resting on the desk. Several local police officers stood around listening, their rifles at the ready.

  “Anybody here actually see him?” McGuire asked.

  “Got a nun in the other room with the father in there.” The deputy jerked his thumb at a door leading into a classroom. “Don’t know her name. She’ll tell you what he looks like.” Caddy narrowed his eyes at McGuire, and the chewing action of his jaw ceased momentarily. “What d’ya think? We get a SWAT team in here, lob in a few concussion grenades, or what?”

  “How many rooms in the convent?” McGuire asked.

  The deputy shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. Thirty, forty maybe. Never been in a convent myself.” He grinned at McGuire. “You ever been in one?”

  “You’ve got a hyper kid with a five-shot sawed-off twelve-gauge and sixteen nuns in there, you don’t know where,” McGuire snapped, ignoring the question. “Four stories plus the basement and dozens of rooms. You’d need at least a hundred SWAT guys and half that many concussion explosions, and he can still get off a couple of shots in a closed room and waste at least five, maybe six, innocent people.”

  Caddy looked glum and angry. “So you got any better ideas? Or you just want to stand around here all night while he rapes and kills ’em all, one by one?”

  “I want to talk to the woman who saw him,” McGuire replied. “You still got a telephone link to him?”

  The deputy nodded.

  “Then don’t use it until he calls. And if he does, you pass the call on to one of us.” McGuire indicated Kevin Deeley and his own homicide partners. “You got it?”

  “I got it,” Caddy sneered. He glanced around at the other uniformed cops who had been watching the conversation silently. “I got it, hotshot.”

  McGuire entered a small office area where a nun in formal habit was on her knees, praying with an elderly priest. He waited quietly until they had finished, Kevin Deeley standing at his elbow.

  Finally the nun and priest rose as one, crossed themselves and turned to face McGuire.

  “I’m Lieutenant Joseph McGuire, Boston homicide,” he announced. “This is Reverend Deeley from the diocese.” The nun and priest smiled weakly and introduced themselves as Sister Arlene and Reverend Parella.

  Sister Arlene appeared to be in her thirties. Her traditional habit framed her face in a starched white fabric beneath a headdress that totally concealed her hair. A long black shawl extended from shoulders to ankle, and several silver chains, the largest ending in an elaborate cross, dangled from her neck. McGuire showed her the picture of Bobby from Lynwood, and she nodded her head. “That’s the young man,” she said without hesitating. “That’s him.”

  Reverend Parella was much older, in his late sixties, and he listened silently as Sister Arlene spoke in a low, calm voice.

  “I was tending to things in the study,” she began, “when Sister Margaret entered all flustered. She had seen a young man wandering through the lower hallways. One of the other sisters asked him to leave. Then he began shouting. She said he sounded very angry and threatening.”

  Many sisters, she explained, were on a retreat, leaving only sixteen members of the order at the convent. Sister Arlene immediately called for the police from the office of the Mother Superior, who was with the other sisters on retreat.

  “When I hung up, I heard murmuring and praying,” she continued, “and I crouched below the levels of the windows in the little office area. I saw the other sisters walking together, holding hands and clutching their rosaries, all of them praying. Behind them was this young man with blond hair. He had a gun in his hands . . . an ugly thing, all guns are ugly, aren’t they? This one had a short black barrel—”

  “Where was he taking them?” McGuire interrupted.

  “Towards the chapel. I don’t know if they’re still there or not. He was turning off lights as he went. The office was already dark, so he didn’t see me there. I crept out to the rear doorway.”

  “Does it have a lock on it?”

  She nodded. “It locks automatically from the inside.”

  “Where’s the chapel?”

  The priest felt it was time for him to add something to the conversation. As Sister Arlene began to answer, he rested a hand on her shoulder a
nd said in a weak, high-pitched voice, “The chapel is on the ground floor at the south-west corner. If you go around the building, you can identify it by the rather elaborate stained-glass windows. They’re seventeenth century, originally from a church in Normandy.”

  Just the thing to lob a couple of concussion grenades through, McGuire thought. “Okay, let’s not panic about this,” he said, his hands raised, palms up. “We really don’t think he means to harm the sisters. . . .”

  “Hey, hotshot,” a rough-edged voice behind him called. McGuire turned slowly to look into the small, squinting eyes of Deputy Caddy. “He’s on the phone again. Wants to know when he’s gettin’ a priest in there.” The deputy looked at Kevin Deeley and Father Parella. “Which one of these guys you goin’ to send in first to get his head blown off?”

  Parella’s eyes widened noticeably, and he seemed to shrink back against Sister Arlene.

  In contrast Kevin Deeley turned to face McGuire directly. “I’m going,” he said. “Tell him I’m coming in.”

  Caddy grunted.

  “The hell you are,” McGuire replied. “You know what he wants you in there for.”

  “I can talk to him—” Deeley began feebly.

  “Talk to him?” McGuire responded. “Like the others did? Look, Deeley, get down off your pedestal and deal with facts. You go in there, you’re not coming out, all right? You’ll be either a martyr or a fool, and I don’t know what the hell the difference is anyway. This is the end of the trail for Bobby, and he knows it. He may be crazy, but he’s no idiot. He’s going to kill every priest he lays eyes on, starting with you if you go in there.”

  “I have no desire to be a martyr,” Deeley replied. “At least I’ll have the advantage of knowing what I’m dealing with. The others didn’t have that.”