The Rosary Murders

by William X. Kienzle

  Mother Mary entered the first supermarket on her list and began recording prices of various items on her ledger, while the manager, familiar with this routine, could only sigh. Later, she would check her list against those gathered by some of her friends in suburban stores.

  As she was leaving the market, she remembered an item she’d forgotten to check. Returning to the checkout counter, she asked a very attractive black cashier, “Dear, how much is your ground round today?”

  The girl glanced at a list attached to the cash register. “Dollah, thir’-sic’ cen’.”

  Mother Mary looked at her with a mixture of kindness and concern. “Dear,” she said, “if you had said, ‘One dollar, thirty-six cents,’ you’d have the world in your pocket.” She left behind her a puzzled but slightly more thoughtful young woman.

  Few people, black or white, walked through Mother Mary’s neighborhood, day or night, without an awareness of the danger of those streets. No one, black or white, was as safe as was Mother Mary. Even the drug-dulled hopheads of the neighborhood, who could kill without any reason, would not think of harming Mother Mary for fear of the certain and terrifying retribution that would be visited upon them. Mother Mary was uniquely protected in an enclave of crime, drug abuse, and murder.

  “How did the interview with young Langton go?”

  Lieutenant Koznicki was balancing precariously on one foot while struggling to remove a boot from the other foot. It was snowing, one of those days Detroiters hoped would be the last snow of the season. Koznicki had arrived at his temporary office a little late this morning, after delivering some clothes to the cleaners and two of his children to school, and fighting slippery pavements and weather-congested traffic.

  “Zilch,” replied Sergeant Harris. “He had solid alibis for two of the three murders.”

  “Two for three?” Koznicki was wrestling with the other boot.

  “Yeah. He couldn’t come up with anyone to substantiate his whereabouts March fourth, when the nun was killed. But when we’re lookin’ for one guy who killed three times, two for three ain’t bad.” There was a glint in Harris’ eye as he stared fixedly at Koznicki’s feet. From the first time they had met, Harris had been fascinated by Koznicki’s feet. He had never seen larger feet. Somehow, they were not inappropriate when considered as a part of the rest of Koznicki’s huge body. But, Harris thought, isolated, they belonged in the Guinness Book of Records.

  “Fallon did the interrogation,” Harris continued, “I just went along for the ride. Funny though, if Langton hadn’t been busy on the twenty-third and the eleventh, he’d be prime contender for the role of guilty party. That guy’s got a lot of hate goin’ for him. Along the way, we discovered he doesn’t like blacks, Jews, and communists. But way up at the top of his list is Catholics, including priests and nuns. ‘Now, Your Eminence,’” Harris bowed low, “explain that one. I thought you Catholics got along pretty good.”

  “We used to. Then things changed.” Koznicki was sorting the mail on his desk.

  “Why would anyone get so mad about fish on Friday?”

  “It’s deeper than that.”

  “Or ‘domino go friskum’?” Harris insisted.

  “It’s deeper than that. But it’s past the understanding of a Baptist.”

  “A good detective would have known that, despite my racial persuasion, I couldn’t be Baptist. No Baptist dresses this good. I’m Presbyterian. By their threads ye shall know them.”

  “Harris, I’ll bet your mama wishes you’d grown up to be a good man. Like Joe Louis or Sammy Davis.”

  “That’s right; I’m the white sheep in my family.”

  The conversation drifted off as Koznicki became more involved with his mail. Harris, coffee cup in hand, wandered to the window to contemplate the comparative peace of Windsor. “Beats headquarters,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The view—it beats the sights and smells of Gratiot and Beaubien.”

  “Right. But I’ll be glad to get back there.”

  “Because by then we’ll have caught our man?”

  “Right. But you know, Ned,” Koznicki was wagging a letter he’d just finished reading, “that inane conversation we just had reminds me that most of our guys who aren’t Catholic don’t realize how much things have changed for Catholics in the past ten years or so. And our killer may be motivated by something so different from anything we’re used to, we could miss a vital clue.”

  “What do you want to do, make being Catholic a requisite for membership on this task force?”

  “Get serious.”

  “Well,” said Harris, opening the door, “let’s go over to Control and see.”

  The two men walked briskly along the fifth-floor corridor toward the floor’s largest room, which had been specially outfitted and termed the Control Room. There could be doubt in no one’s mind that this was no ordinary floor of an office building. Police were virtually everywhere. Even plainclothes police, when seen together in large numbers, could be unmistakably recognized as cops.

  Inside Control, about twenty policemen and women were answering recurringly ringing phones. The walls were nearly covered with charts, pictures, and bulletin boards. Pertinent data were prominently displayed. Names of the victims, along with their photos, coroner’s pictures, their biographies, dates and places of death; in short, everything that had been discovered, including mistakes and misjudgments, was displayed in the room, which was off-limits to everyone but task force members. It was also a testament to Koznicki’s thoroughness. Too many cases he’d worked on had been filled with needlessly wasted time due to repeated mistakes and identical false leads. He didn’t mind honest mistakes. He considered repeated mistakes to be dishonest.

  Koznicki was also aware that most of the police work in cases like this was “busy work.” With so little to go on, the killer’s almost nonestablished method of operation, police work at this stage was mostly an exercise in wheel spinning. But it was vital to check every genuine lead carefully and to pool knowledge. It was always possible, even after examining the facts over and over again, that the team would discover a new dimension in something they had considered many times before. Koznicki hung to the belief that someone would break the coded language the killer was using by purposely leaving clues, chief among which was those ordinary black rosaries.

  Harris and Koznicki separated and mingled with the men and women on duty. From their conversations, the two discovered that most of the task force had been amazed at the kinds of calls they’d been receiving. Most had considered their amazement at the nature of those calls a private experience and were surprised to learn that nearly everyone had had the same kinds of calls. Most had never heard of many of the liberal and conservative Catholic organizations that had sprung up over the past few years. Several such organizations had been mentioned, either as an identification for the caller or as a lead to be investigated.

  Some team members wondered that all the murder victims hadn’t been Detroit bishops; everyone seemed to hate them. To a person, not one non-Catholic on the team understood what was going on. Even some of the less involved Catholics were not fully plugged in.

  Koznicki determined that at the earliest opportunity, he’d have Father Koesler come in and talk to the task force. Koznicki knew the priest was very familiar with the topic the force needed to learn: why and how a goodly number of Catholics hate one another.

  Father Fred Palmer was forty-seven years old, going on seventy. To say he was fat, good-natured, and lazy would be an exaggeration. That he was fat was a biological verity. That he was good-natured was a matter of common consent. But that he was lazy was simply unfair and untrue. However, he was extraordinarily inept.

  He was the only member of his seminary class who was still an associate pastor. A very few of his classmates, like Bob Koesler, had special jobs in the archdiocese. The rest were pastors.

  Father Palmer was reflecting on this very fact this morning, as he drove down Telegraph Road f
rom St. Helen’s, the suburban Livonia parish to which he was assigned, toward Vic Tanny’s health club in Dearborn.

  When he had been ordained twenty-two years before, the road to pastorship had been entirely chronological. Depending on the life span and health of one’s senior clergymen, the average wait was between twenty and twenty-three years before one could expect to become a pastor. However, in the past decade, roughly, several things had happened to upset the pattern. Pastoral appointments were no longer being made in chronological order, priests were leaving and retiring in unprecedented numbers, and the seminaries were nearly empty. Why, hell, Palmer thought, as he stopped for a red light at Joy Road, just a few weeks ago, some young punk who’d been out only six years had been named pastor of a prestigious Farmington parish.

  That he was not yet a pastor was a matter of mild shame to him, a source of peripheral embarrassment to his family, and a rare example of good judgment on the chancery’s part. If he had gone into the business world, it’s likely he would not have made it into middle management. In the priesthood, even as a perennial assistant, he was successful in one of the few professions that did not demand achievement for continued employment.

  Wednesday was Palmer’s regular day off. Today, as he did each week, he was headed toward a workout at the health club he’d joined three years previously.

  He had presided over a thoroughly undistinguished Mass at eight o’clock, followed by a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and waffles. Not an unusual breakfast for Palmer. Besides, he’d reflected while pushing his third waffle through a sea of butter and syrup, today he’d work it off at the club.

  Palmer guided his Oldsmobile from Michigan Avenue into Tanny’s parking lot, got his gear from the trunk, and hurried in through the unlit foyer.

  “Hi, Billy.” Palmer could never remember the young man’s last name. In fact, remembering names was among the many things at which Palmer was inept.

  “Mornin’, Father.” Bill Turner had joined the Tanny staff a little more than a year ago. He had taken an immediate liking to Father Palmer and had not given up trying to motivate the pudgy priest to be serious about a health program. Invariably, Palmer would toss off a mixture of jokes and excuses and manage to forestall reformation for another week.

  Turner followed Father Palmer into the locker room. “What’s your program today, Fathier?”

  “Same as usual, Billy; weights, board, pool, sauna, whirlpool.”

  “Sounds good. But, if I know you, you’ll leave your game in the locker room.”

  “Come on, now, Billy. Don’t be so hard on the poor old parish priest.” Palmer was removing his right support stocking. It was his final article of clothing. The resultant sight required an act of faith.

  “Do me a favor, Father. Stand up.”

  Palmer, whose initial reaction invariably was obedience, rose. Gravity claimed layers of fat as the priest’s trunk took on the configuration of a many-tiered layer cake.

  “Now, don’t bend over, Father, just look down. Can you see your feet?”

  “Are you supposed to?”

  “You’re going to find this hard to believe, but, yes, you are… if you were in any kind of shape at all.”

  “Oh, well, blessed am I who cannot see but still believe I have feet.”

  “C’mon, Father, get serious. Your diet is garbage, and you smoke and drink.”

  “Yes. But I’m still celibate.” Palmer had to admit that, unlike most of the others who gave him unsolicited advice and admonitions, Turner practiced what he preached. To lose weight, the young man would have had to carve flesh from his bones.

  “O.K., Father. But try to be serious about your exercise today. Remember,” Turner randomly selected one of the layers of Palmer’s belly and patted it, “this could be the death of you.”

  Palmer pulled on his sweat togs and bounced into the exercise area. He selected a twenty-pound barbell for either hand and waggled them around for about ten minutes. Then, with the peculiar short rapid steps common to obese persons, he waddled to the slantboard, carefully fixed his feet into the straps and tried several times to raise his torso. Sweat flowing through the folds of his body, he decided that was enough violent activity for this day.

  Changing to his swim trunks, Palmer padded to the pool, dropped heavily into the cool water, took a few strokes, rolled to his back and floated for a while. Then to the sauna, where he was lubricated by a combination of the steam and his own perspiration. A few moments in the whirlpool and, he felt, he’d paid his dues toward health.

  He showered, dressed, packed his gear and, before leaving, looked down. He still could not see his feet. Another day, perhaps. At the front door, he once again encountered Billy Turner.

  “How’d it go, Father?”

  “Not bad. I think I made some progress,” he lied.

  “How about joining me at our health food bar, Father?”

  “No, thanks, Billy. I think I’ll drop in at the Holiday up the street. I feel a yen for a beer, ’burger, and fries.”

  “Remember, Father,” Turner again familiarly patted the priest’s black-garbed stomach, “this could kill you.”

  Palmer affectionately waved at the young man and worked himself and his gear through the door. I wonder, the priest thought, if it’s possible to have a mens sana without the corpore sano. It seemed workable to him.

  It was one of those days in the Free Press city room when TGIF was in the air. Bright and crisp, the glorious weather promised a quick transition to spring. It had been a demanding week for many of the reporters, with several major local stories either breaking or developing. But now the weekend was near, and most of the newspeople would get a break.

  Joe Cox had spent the better part of this morning alternating between the phone, his notepad, and the typewriter. He was only a couple of paragraphs short of completing another story on the continued patrolling of the metropolitan freeways by the state police. There was a lot of union pressure for this duty to be resumed by a combination of city police and county sheriff’s deputies. Political influence on the question was about equally divided. There was little doubt that public opinion heavily favored the continued presence of the state force. During the almost one-year program of state patrol, citizen confidence in expressway protection had grown solid. There was still time for heavy lobbying before the state legislature and the governor would undoubtedly come to some sort of compromise.

  Cox had completed his calls and gathered quotes that nicely balanced the story. Now, as the article was all but completed, Cox’s gaze wandered over to Nelson Kane’s desk. The city editor was busily scanning copy. Cox thought of the rumors he’d heard going around the city room. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Kane was about to move up the executive ladder. Kane himself expected it. He felt he deserved the promotion. He’d worked through the organizational level from near the bottom rung to near the top of the heap. There was no doubt in his mind that he could handle greater responsibilities, make weightier decisions, be more instrumental in setting directions for this already influential publication.

  But that was not the direction some of the rumors were taking.

  The most persistent rumors had it that some of the Knight-Ridder hierarchy wanted Kane up and out. According to this school, the anti-Kane group thought Kane represented an outdated type of journalism. Sex and violence, this group held, sold everything from refrigerators to newspapers.

  Kane, of course, recognized the market value of sex and violence. He simply believed other things also interested readers and sold newspapers. Things like pictures of kids and animals, an occasional upbeat human interest angle and, as he had often insisted, tabernacle veils in the folds of which people saw the face of Christ and, of course, weeping statues of saints.

  His opponents would be little interested in any of these unless those essential two elements could be insinuated into the story. For instance, kids who hid in trees and sniped at their neighbors. Or statues with obscene messages painted on them.<
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  To an outsider, these might appear to be minor ideological differences. To those directly involved, it was a struggle that would end with Kane victorious and the Free Press’ present policies intact, or Kane either out of the organization or on a useless titled shelf and Free Press policies subtly but radically changing.

  Cox was caught looking as Kane’s head raised from the copy he was reading, and their eyes met. Kane beckoned Cox. The reporter sighed as he approached the editor’s desk. Three more paragraphs and he would have been able to wrap it up for the day.

  “Joe…” Kane’s voice was so low Cox could barely hear him and decided to try to read lips as an auxiliary aid to understanding. “…you know I don’t give a goddam who sleeps with whom around here. But I do care about starting work somewhere near on time. You and Lennon are making it pretty obvious. Not only have you both been coming in late but late together. From now on, I don’t care if you come in at the same second as long as you’re both on time. Got it?”

  “Got it.” Cox did not blush. Cox could not remember ever having blushed. But he did raise one eyebrow. It was an admission of mild surprise that anyone would notice or care about two consenting adults. He had to admit they had been coming in late regularly. That was because Pat Lennon was entirely open to as much sex as possible each morning, and Cox’s schedule wasn’t programmed for that sort of frosting. Until he had met Pat, Cox would have been unwilling to admit anyone was more interested in sex than he was. Now, he was nearly convinced he should abdicate.

  “How’re things coming with the Rosary Murders?” Kane’s voice was raised to its usual soft growl.

  “It’s simmering. The cops are busy following leads. But I’m almost positive they haven’t uncovered anything new. Of course, they’ve got more than they’re giving us. This guy is leaving some kind of a calling card, and it’s got something to do with the rosary. That much I got from Koznicki…”

  “Koznicki told you that?”