The Rosary Murders

by William X. Kienzle

  Cox was more than willing to await developments. Meanwhile, he determined to absorb all that was taking place as a background for his Pulitzer-Prize finish.

  St. Camillus Hospital maintained a chapel, as do most Catholic hospitals. However, on Sundays and other major feasts the hospital nuns usually attended services at St. Thomas à Becket parish church. The hospital and the church occupied the same block, and the nuns wished to identify with their ghetto community as much as possible.

  Thus, Sister Bonaventure and her police bodyguards had made their way slowly to St. Thomas’ for the Good Friday liturgy. The elderly nun had been deeply affected by the murder of her younger friend, Mother Marie Magdala. She had weighed their respective ages and the value of Magdala to the community, and wondered why, in God’s providence, she herself had not been the victim.

  There are those who say they do not fear death, but it is said in the same spirit as whistling while passing a graveyard. Not only did Sister Bonaventure not fear death; she was prepared to die. So she found it ironic when the police told her she might, indeed, be a selected target this very day. She correctly perceived her role as decoy and willingly cooperated. She was eager for the police to catch the murderer so this senseless killing would cease. She did not mind, if, in the process, she might be sacrificed.

  Communion had been distributed and the sparse congregation was praying silently. On either side of the kneeling Bonaventure were policewomen. Directly behind her was a tall policeman.

  Sergeant Joseph Kitch was in the church vestibule, scanning those who came and went during the service. Tall, blond and big-boned, he was dressed in a brown suit with a tan topcoat. He paced the vestibule steadily, glancing at the racks holding religious pamphlets and publications, alternately peering into the church and out the clear glass of the front door onto East Grand Boulevard.

  When a child waits a very long time on Christmas Eve to see Santa Claus—so long that he begins to believe that Santa isn’t coming—by the time someone dressed as Santa arrives, the child finds the thrill of recognition incredible.

  That was as close as Kitch could come to describing what he now felt, as he looked out the church’s front door window.

  For there, standing at the foot of the front steps, looking to the left, then to the right, as if checking the premises, was the Rosary Murderer—or his twin.

  White, male, about five-feet-eight, approximately in his late thirties, with an uncanny resemblance to the composite picture. When his first few steps made it quite evident that he limped, favoring his right leg, Kitch’s adrenalin reached near-volcanic pressure.

  A number of things happened in rapid, fluid succession. Kitch called on his walkie-talkie for back-up support, intercepted the man before he reached the front door, steered him to the side of the church, spread-eagled him against the wall and was searching him, as two black-and-whites screeched to a halt in front of the church. Four police officers joined Kitch.

  “Whatcha got here?” Officer Pete Ward asked. Then, as he caught sight of the man’s face and realized the resemblance to the composite, he added, “Whooie!”

  “And he limps,” said Kitch.

  “Got a .38?” asked Ward.

  “No—but it could be stashed in the church. He’s got a black rosary.”

  Kitch had identified himself to the obviously nonplussed man, and now asked for identification. Torpidly, the captive removed a driver’s license from his wallet. His name was Richard E. Jordan, his address only a couple of blocks from the church.

  “Sir,” Kitch said, “would you mind telling us why you limp?”

  “Just going to church,” said Jordan, stolidly.

  “Sir,” Kitch persisted, “would you tell us why you limp?”

  “Good Friday,” Jordan explained.

  It was either a good act or a highly unlikely coincidence.

  Kitch took a different tack. He asked Jordan if he had heard about the series of murders of priests and nuns. Jordan nodded. His eyes darted from one officer to another. Kitch then explained Jordan’s resemblance to the composite and that the police believed that the killer would be limping. He told Jordan that if he would accompany them to the precinct house, the matter could be cleared up quickly. He advised him that he didn’t have to go to the station, but that if he refused, they would have to place him under surveillance.

  Jordan agreed to go. His last words, as, shaking his head, he entered one of the black-and-whites, were,

  “And my wife wanted to go out for a beer…”

  In the choir loft, Koznicki’s walkie-talkie crackled. He took it into the storage room at the side of the loft. After a few moments, he resumed his seat near the railing next to Sergeant Harris.

  “They had a suspect at St. Thomas’,” he whispered.

  “Sister Bonaventure’s stakeout?” Harris returned the whisper.

  Koznicki nodded. “False alarm—but almost a double for the composite. A rosary but no weapon. And he limped on his right leg.”

  “Bullet wound?”

  “Congenitally lame. Right leg shorter than the left. Solid alibis for the crucial times.”

  Harris winked. “Shows we’re on our toes.”

  “Let’s stay that way,” said Koznicki, as he leaned forward to look down into the crowded church.

  There hadn’t been this sort of subdued excitement in the city room since the ’67 riots. Nelson Kane was once again directing his staff in a citywide effort to cover a story that might break anywhere. Kane was like a general plotting a campaign and dispatching troops to various sections of the battlefield.

  Or like a small boy playing Joe Willie Namath playing quarterback.

  Kane had been a major factor in the Free Press’ winning its big Pulitzer for its coverage of the riots. He had sensed then that they had a Pulitzer-type story, and he sensed it again now.

  Sleeves rolled up, tie pulled loose, he stood at his desk. He hung up the phone, and reinserted the ubiquitous unlit, ragged cigar in his mouth. Doug Webster, assistant city editor, approached.

  “Marge Greenwood just had some excitement over at St. Thomas’, the little church next to that hospital—you know, St. Camillus.”

  “Yeah? What?” Kane stood, feet apart, fists pressed tightly against either side of his waist. Much the way he imagined George Patton had carried it off.

  “They got somebody who won the Rosary Murderer look-alike contest. Dead ringer for the composite. Carrying a rosary. Even limped.”

  “And?”

  “The cops got him to the station house and discovered he’s got no bullet wound, he’s got an alibi for enough of the killings… and he’s scared stiff.”

  “False arrest?”

  “Nah.” Webster grinned. “The guy consented to go with the cops—went along willingly. Just a dead end.”

  “Dead end, my ass! It’ll make a damn good sidebar. Have Greenwood write it light. Lots of quotes from the guy on how it feels to end up at a police station when all you intended was to go to church.”

  “Right, Nellie,” said a chastened Webster as he hurried back to his desk.

  “Where in hell is Cox?” Kane bellowed. “Has Cox called in to anybody here?”

  Several heads were raised. Each shook a negative response and returned to work.

  “How in hell am I supposed to run a goddam city room when I don’t know where in hell anyone is?” rhetorized Kane at no one in particular. “Webster! Is Lennon on that story up at the Soo?”

  Webster covered the receiver, interrupting his conversation with Marge Greenwood. “Yeah, she left early this morning.”

  Thank God for small favors, Kane thought. At least he’s not with her. What the hell good is a sidebar without the lead? And I don’t even know the whereabouts of the guy I’m counting on for the breaking story. If I ever see that SOB again, I’ll tie a line around him so I can reel him in.

  “When Cox calls in,” Kane announced in his edict-issuing tone, “I wanta know about it!”

 
There really wasn’t much for a priest to do during that part of the Good Friday service called the Adoration of the Cross. Lines formed as everyone came to the altar to reverence a crucifix by kissing it.

  At St. William’s, a small altar boy held a comparatively large crucifix as he stood between the communion railing’s center gates. Father Ted Neighbors stood next to the boy. As each person bent to kiss the rood, Neighbors would note where it had been kissed, and wipe the spot with a small linen cloth. Since the mental exercise of the proceeding was to identify the kissed spot and occasionally turn the cloth when an area became reddened with lipstick, Neighbors’ mind was free to wander.

  In the choir loft, Lieutenant Koznicki was intensely alert. He had calculated that this part of the ceremony held the greatest possible potential for harm to the priest, particularly with the large, pressing congregation.

  Now used solely as part of the Good Friday liturgy, the Adoration of the Cross was an unfamiliar ceremony. People tended to compose their own peculiar approaches to the ritual. Some genuflected before and/or after kissing the cross, others didn’t. Some made the sign of the cross, others didn’t. Some parents insisted that their children, even small babies, reverence the cross. Many of these children never did understand just what it was their parents had in mind.

  In short, there was a good-sized crowd mingling very close to the priest, with a good deal of confusion present. Not a bad time for the killer to choose to strike. All officers guarding priests today had been especially alerted to this possibility.

  Koznicki wished he’d been able to provide officers as acolytes for Neighbors as he had for the archbishop, but it would’ve been too obvious. While adults regularly served the archbishop, children were nearly always used in parish churches.

  While Koznicki riveted his attention on Neighbors and his contiguous, disordered crowd, and the long lines waiting their turn, Neighbors’ attention had wandered back to the first Good Friday he had experienced as a priest.

  The liturgy had not been called a communion service then. And for a good reason. No one but the celebrant took communion. Back then, it was called the Mass of the Presanctified. Neighbors’ first Good Friday as a priest had been especially memorable, since it had been in contrast to those careful and reverential services of his seminary days. And also, because, although the ceremony was a once-annual affair, his first parochial experience had made him a victim of habit.

  He had been assigned to a large, then-wealthy Detroit parish as one of three assistants to an elderly pastor. Sunday Masses were every hour on the hour. The prime responsibility had been to get one crowd out so the next could enter. Without thinking, the three assistants had applied the same philosophy to Good Friday as applied to all Sundays. Starting at noon, by racing pell-mell through complicated ceremonies, they were able to complete the entire Mass of the Presanctified by one o’clock. Breathlessly, he and his two fellow priests had tried to determine what to do next. They had a passive crowd on their hands for another two hours and nothing to fill the time. That two hours had been punctuated by such interchanges as:

  “Have we tried the rosary?”

  “Three times.”

  “How long has it been since we did the stations of the cross?”

  “Forty-five minutes.”

  “Let’s do them again.”

  “I just found Fulton Sheen’s sermon on the ‘Seven Last Words’.”

  “Good! Go read it.”

  At this point in the priest’s reminiscence, the young altar boy did with the crucifix what small boys generally do when asked to hold heavy objects for interminable periods of time. He dropped it. It clattered resoundingly in what some might term a sacrilegious manner to the tile floor. A woman standing nearby did what some women do when presented with the unexpected. She shrieked.

  Then several things happened in such split-second succession that they seemed simultaneous. Neighbors bent to retrieve the crucifix, thus disappearing from view. Koznicki stood and almost vaulted over the choir-loft railing. Police throughout the church converged on the sanctuary. Ross, who had been seated in the first pew on the center aisle, launched himself in a straight trajectory into the scene of action, knocking several people, including Neighbors, to the floor. Cox scrambled from his pew near the center of the church and scurried through the waiting lines toward the arena.

  General commotion reigned.

  Neighbors, holding the crucifix, but now flat on his back, looked uncomprehendingly at the others in a similar position. A small gentleman, who vaguely resembled a Sicilian Truman Capote, and who had been felled by Ross, looked at the sergeant and said, “Why you get so ’cited? He only drop cross!” Ross, embarrassed, rose, dusted himself off, apologized abjectly, and resumed his seat.

  Cox, once he realized that nothing criminal was transpiring, returned to his pew. The young man he had jostled in his bolt toward the to-do, grumbled, “Hey, buddy, next time wait your turn! O.K.?” Cox nodded and began climbing over bodies on the way to his seat. He chanced a glance into the choir loft. Koznicki’s eyes met his. Koznicki’s face was expressionless. Cox had an urge to smile or wave, but the memory of the deceitful way he had tricked Koznicki’s secretary kept him noncommittal.

  If Koznicki had known what Cox thought he had perpetrated by dint of immense charm, it would have given him much-needed comic relief.

  “Wasn’t that a gas?” Brainard observed.

  “What?” returned his partner.

  “When Ross took that shallow dive in church and flattened all those people.”

  The two Tactical Services Department officers had been given a break to get some food. They picked up a couple of burgers and some coffee and were parked across from the Detroit City Airport at the side of De La Salle High School.

  “He did what he had to,” said Schommer.

  “I wonder what the people thought.” Brainard bit into his burger and frowned. He figured fast food was almost as deadly, in the long run, as the AR-15s the TSD issued.

  “They probably thought this was the latest change in church liturgy.”

  Brainard laughed. “That’s funny ... so, every Good Friday, somebody is supposed to dive through the worshippers and knock people down!” He laughed again. “I keep forgetting you’re still a churchgoing Catholic.”

  “Every goddam Sunday.” Schommer removed the cover from his plastic coffee cup; steam poured out the open window.

  “Anything personal in this detail for you, Tom? I mean, working on a case where somebody’s wasting priests and nuns?”

  Schommer shrugged. “No, not particularly. Just part of the job.”

  “Part of a damn dull job,” Brainard corrected. “I can’t wait to get back to TSD. How about you?”

  “Yeah. But I haven’t kidded myself since we got assigned to this task force. We weren’t selected for our investigative ability or our love for routine work. No… we’re the bottom line for this bunch. If it comes down to a shoot-out, they’re not gonna have time to call for help. We’re it. Koznicki’s smart enough to know that some of his regulars might spend one too many seconds thinking before firing a fatal shot. He knows we won’t.”

  Brainard disposed of his empty coffee container and checked his .45 magnum. It was a much more powerful weapon than the standard police revolver. But, then, so was all the equipment used by the TSD. “Damn,” he said, as he started the car, “and all this time I thought they loved us for our minds.”

  Bob Koesler had arrived at St. William’s shortly after three. There being no further services scheduled, he had kept Ted Neighbors company through the late afternoon hours. The two were now enjoying preprandials. Koesler’s was a dry martini; Neighbors’, a tall, graceful glass of white Burgundy.

  Koesler had long thought Ted Neighbors one of the oddest mixtures he’d ever known. Neighbors seemed, if not a man for all seasons, a person of two worlds.

  He had accepted an assignment to a parish which, if not in the core city, was in a changing neighborhood.
While St. William’s was not what it had once been, it still was very much middle- to upper-middle-class. One day, the neighborhood would inevitably be poor. And Ted Neighbors probably would not be there then.

  In nothing was the Neighbors philosophy of life more clear than in his dining habits. After receiving his appointment to St. William’s and after surveying the scene of his new pastorate, his first comment had been a disgusted, “Plastic dishes!” An effrontery to his proprieties that had been quickly remedied.

  Neighbors believed that gourmet dining could be as inexpensive as ordinary eating. All it took was a little extra care.

  Mrs. Bovey, the housekeeper, had been a meat-and-potatoes cook until Neighbors had patiently guided her through the gourmet world.

  The journey from bonne femme to cordon bleu had not been uneventful. At one point, he had recommended garlic for salad, and thence had endured biting into whole cloves of the stuff. At another point, he had suggested that a little meat would enliven the tossed salad; next time around, he had encountered huge chunks of liver sausage. These and other incidents had been learning experiences for both teacher and pupil.

  Dinner tonight was typical of the Neighbors life style. Meatless it was, penitential it wasn’t.

  It was blue trout. Or, as Neighbors had pridefully explained, Truite au Bleu. It was no more expensive, he insisted, than plain pan-fried trout. It required only slightly more attention—like bringing it home live, splitting and cleaving it with a single blow, and boiling it until its eyeballs popped. It was served with parsley, boiled potatoes, hollandaise sauce, and appreciative noises made by Neighbors.

  Dinner conversation was light and breezy, partly because Koesler wanted to relieve the tension, and partly because he’d never been able to take his classmate really seriously.

  While they ate in the dining room, Sergeant Ross sat silently in the far corner of the living room. He had refused any food. Time enough to eat later, when off duty. Fasting was small enough a sacrifice for him in favor of vigilance and readiness.

  Though the table talk mostly concerned nothing more serious than the latest clerical gossip, Koesler could not suppress concern for the safety of his confrere. Thus, when the phone rang, he jumped slightly, as he had each time anything even vaguely unexpected had happened this afternoon.