The Rosary Murders

by William X. Kienzle

  “Oh… Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was four-and-a-half weeks ago.”

  Koesler recognized the voice immediately. He had no idea who the man was. Nor was he likely to be able to identify him in ordinary conversation. But the whisper, the delivery, the borderline scrupulosity he couldn’t miss in this setting.

  “I had evil thoughts five or six times, more or less. I argued with my wife unnecessarily four or five times, more or less…”

  Here was the classic product of a Catholicism that was passing away in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. This was the way Koesler himself had been raised and trained. An obsession with numbers, times, kinds, and a protective qualifying clause thrown in just in case a human error might be misinterpreted by God. Koesler didn’t know if the penitent would say it this time, but he recalled the time this gentleman had confessed doing something “once, more or less,” and Koesler’s subsequent pondering about the sinfulness of something done less than once.

  “...I punished the children excessively six or seven times, more or less. I took some inexpensive things from work three or four times, more or less. I am sorry for these and all the sins of my past life, especially for disobedience.”

  His concluding formula was an indication of how long this man had been glued to this manner of confessing. He couldn’t have “disobeyed” in the past several decades. This is the way he had confessed in childhood. He would take it with him to his grave.

  There was a time in his early days as a priest when Koesler had tried to introduce such people to spiritual adulthood. Generally, he had succeeded only in driving them into deeper scrupulosity.

  He gave this penitent what he knew the man wanted, a few panacean words of encouragement, a simple, easily fulfilled penance of five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys, and absolution. The man would leave the confessional, kneel in the church, and recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary six times each—one extra to ensure having at least the prescribed five—and then leave, vaguely relieved.

  While Koesler had been engaged in this first confession of the afternoon, the heat had gone on. With the departure of the first penitent, and no one waiting in the other confessional, the priest turned on the light, loosened his clothing, and recommenced skimming through The First Deadly Sin.

  His perusal of the novel was interrupted by penitents only a half-dozen more times in the hour-and-a-half he spent in the box. He had concluded there didn’t seem to be many similarities between the fictional killer and Detroit’s real murderer of priests and nuns. However, he was more than ever convinced that, just as in the novel, the real murderer was picking his victims haphazardly.

  It was nearing five-thirty when the afternoon’s final penitent arrived. By the soft thunk of knees on the kneeler, Koesler correctly assumed his customer to be young.

  “The last time I was to confession, I promised to be nicer to my sister. I did pretty good. This time, I’m going to try to cooperate better with my Dad.”

  The new breed, mused Koesler. No times, kinds, numbers. Probably no scrupulosity or obsessive-compulsive behavior in his future.

  “O.K., sonny. Try real hard. And for your penance, say five Hail Marys.”

  “I don’t know five Hail Marys, Father.”

  Koesler paused as he was about to begin absolution. The boy clearly was grammatically correct. But no one had ever done this to Koesler.

  “Do you know one Hail Mary, sonny?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Well, will you say that one Hail Mary five times?”

  Brightly, “Yes, Father.”

  Back in the rectory, Koesler made himself a bracing Manhattan and lit a cigarette. He was trying to decide whether that kid was a sincere if premature grammarian or a technical smartass.

  Over the years, the Top of the Flame had remained one of Detroit’s better dining places. The restaurant’s name was based on its being located on the top floor of the Michigan Consolidated Gas Building. It boasted a magnificent view of the Detroit River and the riverfronts of both Detroit and Windsor.

  Over the years, each Sunday evening, with rare exception, three Detroit priests faithfully dined at the Top of the Flame.

  Monsignor Al Thomas held his age, fifty-seven, very well. His full head of hair was sleek and black, partly the work of nature and partly the gift of a bottle of hair dye. At five-feet-nine (he claimed five-feet-eleven), he fought a constant battle with baby fat. At the moment, the outcome was in doubt. Thomas had spent nearly all of his priestly career as a member of the Archdiocesan Matrimonial Court, technically called the Tribunal. For the past seven years, he had been head of the Tribunal, and he ran a tight court.

  Father Edward Killian’s thinning hair was silver. Still slender and athletic, his six-foot-four frame looked good in the clerical black suit. Killian was part of a new phenomenon in the Catholic Church, a pastor who had purposely reduced his status to that of an associate pastor. He had worked himself up through the ranks to become pastor of a stylish suburban parish, only to resign that post to become the associate at St. Olaf’s parish on Detroit’s far east side.

  Completing the troika was Father William O’Shea, a small, bald, peculiar-looking man, whose skin seemed always to carry a kind of greenish hue. He was pastor of St. Perpetua’s parish in Sterling Heights, an affluent far suburb.

  As always, the threesome, classmates thirty-two years ordained, had met before dinner, this time at Killian’s rectory, for drinks. They were now feeling little pain as they settled in for an undemanding evening of good food, good drink, and good bitching. Sunday dinner at the Flame was their way of rewarding themselves at the end of a working weekend.

  Their drink orders were typical of their personalities. Thomas’ was a double-dry martini, O’Shea’s a draft beer, and Killian’s a bourbon on the rocks—in keeping with his drinking man’s diet.

  “Oh, God!” Thomas moaned.

  “What is it? What’s the matter, Al?” Startled, O’Shea had turned even greener.

  “The people at the next table. They’re talking Catholic talk, can’t you hear them?”

  “Catholic talk?” Killian stopped in mid-stir of his bourbon.

  “Yes, Catholic talk. Somebody at that table is talking about Mass this morning and what a lovely homily so-and-so gave.”

  “So what?” Killian resumed stirring.

  “You’ll see! With a table full of Catholics sitting next to one with three priests, eventually they’re going to talk to us.”

  “What’s so bad about that?” Killian asked.

  “What’s so bad about it!? We talk to Catholics for a living. This is our night off. We deserve a few hours to ourselves. We’ve paid our dues.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Al,” Killian laughed. “It may not even happen. If it bothers you so much, next time we’ll wear our civvies.”

  “No,” O’Shea corrected. “We’ll be here in our clericals. And Al will order the same damn pork chop dinner he always does.”

  “What’s the matter with that? It’s the best pork chop dinner in town and inexpensive, too.”

  “You, Father Thomas, are a victim of routine.” O’Shea thought he might order another beer. “Which reminds me, I’ll bet that Rosary Murderer depends on the routines of his targets when he’s going to kill one of them.”

  “Rosary Murder, Rosary Murder,” Thomas huffed, “that’s all we talked about at Ed’s place. Can’t we talk about something else for a change?”

  “That’s all anybody’s talking about,” said O’Shea.

  “True,” said Killian, “but Al’s got a point. Why should we spend the whole evening on the Rosary Murderer? Not when we’ve got all the problems of Holy Mother Church to solve.”

  “Like when am I going to get an assistant,” complained O’Shea.

  “An associate.” Thomas smiled smugly.

  “Probably never,” said Killian. “That’s something we’re running out of. The new endangered species.”

  “Ho
w’s it feel being a member of that seeshies?” Thomas’ speech was beginning to slur slightly. He needed food.

  “A hell of a lot better than I did being a pastor. Who needs that kind of grief?” Killian pushed the garlic toast toward Thomas, knowing from experience his classmate would level off once he got something in his stomach. “Morning-to-night meetings. Parish councils, commissions, school boards, vicariates. Same money whether you’re on the top or bottom. But in the trenches you can do priest work. You oughta try it, Bill.”

  “Or not get in the rat race at all,” said Thomas, who barely remembered what parish life was like. “Whaddya say to another drink?”

  “Why don’t we wait till the food gets here? It should be just a few minutes,” Killian urged.

  “That reminds me,” O’Shea looked up brightly. “Did you guys ever hear the one about the pastor who threw a big party for a bunch of his classmates? They musta put away three cases of booze. Next morning, the housekeeper was dumping out all the empty bottles when the garbageman comes up and says, ‘A lot of dead soldiers there, lady.’ And she says, ‘Yes, but isn’t it consoling that there was a priest with each one right to the end?’”

  Thomas and Killian laughed appreciatively. Thomas, in fact, laughed so hard he began to cough violently. Killian pounded him sharply on the back several times.

  “Easy,” Thomas protested, “I’m O.K. You trying to sever my spine?”

  “No.” Killian was genuinely concerned. “But I am worried about you. You drink too much, and you’ve got a weight problem. You know that, don’t you?”

  “What d’ya want me to do? Run my ass off every day like you?”

  “You belong to the DAC. They’ve got a gym. You could do it. Work up to a few miles a day, but slowly.”

  “This comes,” Thomas was speaking to O’Shea, but pointing to Killian, “from the author of ‘Are You Jogging With Me, Jesus?’ “

  “You oughta get serious, Al,” Killian said. “Booze and that weight could be the death of you.”

  The elderly purple-haired lady at the adjoining table turned in her chair and tapped Thomas on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Father, but are you a Catholic priest?”

  “Oh, God!” Thomas moaned, sotto voce.

  “I beg your pardon?” she mumbled.

  “He prays a lot,” said O’Shea, enjoying Thomas’ anguish at being afflicted with the laity.

  “Well, you can’t be too careful these days. It’s hard to tell your genuine Catholic priests from your ordinary ministers. And then, there are your deacons.” Clearly she was winding up for a long conversation.

  At this moment, the waitress approached Thomas. “I’m sorry, Father, but the chef says we are out of the pork chop dinner.”

  “Oh,” the purple-haired lady said, fluttering her hands as one who knows the answer to a mystery, “I must have gotten the last pork chop dinner.”

  “Oh, God!” Thomas was in genuine distress.

  Lieutenant Koznicki and Sergeant Harris had invested in a mid-morning coffee break. Actually, Koznicki had called Control and asked Harris to bring some coffee.

  “The news media now own the corridors of this floor,” said Harris, as he carefully placed one of the coffee-filled paper cups on the corner of Koznicki’s desk.

  “How’s the Control Room?”

  “Secure.” Harris balanced his cup on the windowsill. “God! Those media guys really latched on to that ‘R-O-B.’ The News even reproduced it in red. I think there’s as much speculation about what it means going on in the media as there is in Control.”

  “Good.” Koznicki was signing the latest of numerous requisition slips his secretary had prepared. “I like having all that cheap police work done for me.”

  “But what pleases you most is that our killer finally made a mistake.”

  “You betcha. Until now, he’s been in the driver’s seat. Speaking his own language, telling us only what he wants us to know. And, on top of that, we haven’t broken his code. Then it happens. Something he didn’t count on. He was undoubtedly aware that Mother Mary knew him. He never thought she’d live long enough to leave an identification. It’s just possible this break has confused him. And if this assumption is correct, the mistakes may multiply. And thereby hangs arrest.”

  “We still don’t know what the ‘R-O-B’ stands for.”

  “What’s your guess?” Koznicki knew Harris was as much at home with a guess as he was with a firmer assumption.

  “I’d say it was a first name,” said Harris, retrieving his cup, and sipping a bit of the steaming coffee. “Robert or Robin.”

  “You reveal your nonparochial background.”

  “Walt, I do that with my entire lifestyle. How is it, in this specific instance the astute detective would know I was not a product of Catholic education? Except for my periodic craving for watermelon, that is.”

  “If you had gone to parochial school, and if you were old enough to have had the old-style nun, like Mother Mary was, you’d know that the nuns always called pupils by their last names.”

  “You’ve gotta be puttin’ me on. You mean when you were in the first grade, some nun called you Koznicki?”

  “Worse. Mister Koznicki.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Questions weren’t encouraged.” Koznicki sipped a bit of the still hot coffee, careful to keep his mustache uninvolved. “But you can see how important it is not to make a first name an odds-on favorite for ‘R-O-B.’ It could just as easily, and more than likely, be a surname. Roberts, Robertson, Robinson, Robb…”

  “Good point, Walt. I’d better make sure everybody in Control understands this.” Harris started to leave but was stopped by Koz-nicki’s question:

  “How are they following the ‘R-O-B’ lead now?”

  “I’ve got Ross on it. He’s assembling about twenty-five of our people. They’re going to track down as many records as they can find of kids Mother Mary taught, and find all the variables of R-O-B. It’s cutting a helluva lot of people out of our team, and it’s going to take a helluva lot of time.”

  “That’s pretty nitty-gritty work.” Koznicki dropped the now empty cup in his wastebasket. “Tell Ross to hold on that. I’ll get the chief to special detail some more personnel pro tem just for this job. Searching records takes no special skills. After they find all the Robs, we’ll have to start checking them out. And I want our team to be free to check out all the other leads that are coming in over the transom. With Ross in charge, the new people will be kept thorough.”

  “Think the chief will give us some more on such short notice?”

  “At this point, the chief will give us his mother and father if we’ve got a hot lead.”

  “You’re probably right.” Harris hesitated. “By the way, Walt, what’s your guess on the next one?”

  “How do I know? So far, he’s hit on a Wednesday and three Fridays. But he’s alternated priests and nuns. If I had to make an assumption, it would be Wednesday, the day after tomorrow. And it would be a priest.”

  “I wouldn’t cover that bet.”

  “Then it must be an extremely improbable wager. You’ll bet on anything. Now get out of here.”

  “O.K., Boss. But…” as he was closing the door behind him, “I’ll be back in precisely twelve minutes.”

  Twelve minutes? What the hell did he mean by that? Oh, yes. Koznicki smiled.

  St. Camillus Hospital was one of Detroit’s oldest private healthcare facilities. On East Grand Boulevard where the Boulevard makes a sharp ninety-degree turn, it had once denoted one of Detroit’s extremities. Now it was well within the city limits.

  It seemed longer ago than it actually was that this had been one of Detroit’s stylish sections. Now, it was an area marked by housing decay, heavy drug traffic, and high crime. Periodically, city officials gave public thanks to the Religious Sisters of Mercy for hanging in there. Which, while a vague morale booster for some of the staff, did not make their difficult job any easier.

&
nbsp; Sister Marie Magdala Connors was quite young to be administrator of such a complex facility as a major hospital. Just thirty-five, she was an impressive woman. Tall, almost six feet, dark-complexioned, with Titian hair and almond-shaped brown eyes, this immensely talented woman would have—were things as they once had been—been condemned by her relative youth to an innocuous existence in the relentless system of seniority. However, with the present paucity of religious sisters, her credentials had been allowed to surface.

  As administrator of St. Camillus, Sister Marie worried, mostly. She worried about the patients and the neighborhood. The two were related. Elective surgery was not high on St. Camillus’ priorities. Rather, many of the patients were the neighborhood’s victims. ODs of every age. Old black men who had been using street drugs before the white community knew they were for anything but purely medicinal purposes. Poor young kids, black and white, whose brains were being scrambled by their habitual escape from reality. Pregnant women whose unborn babies were already addicted. The victims of drug violence—shootings, knifings, assaults—for drug dealing was the king of organized crime in that neighborhood. Finally, the end product of poverty—the malnourished, the undernourished, the beneficiaries of a heritage of discrimination, unemployment, and hopelessness.

  At the beginning and end of her worries was money. The majority of the patients were very poor, and many were either underinsured or without insurance entirely. And there were precious few health-care corners she could cut. As a result of financial pressures, there was a very real possibility that St. Camillus Hospital might be forced to close.

  This was the least demanding moment of Sister Marie’s day. It was nighttime, and visiting hours were over. The halls were quiet after the hubbub and confusion of visitors. In a few minutes, Sister Marie would go to her large office on the main floor, turn on the public address system, and lead night prayers. But, for the moment, she wanted to wander through the halls assuring herself all was well.

  As she turned the corner leading to the psychiatric ward, she stopped, startled, and gave a strangled squeal. She hadn’t expected to encounter anyone. But here was the aged and ageless Sister Bonaventure, clad from head to toe in her traditional white habit, pushing her aluminum walker ahead of her. In the dim and otherwise empty corridor, she had at first appeared to be a ghost.