All the Dead Fathers

by David J. Walker

  After the money, time passed, too. With therapy and rehab and AA, Michael Nolan finally managed to grab hold of the life that was slipping past him, and to hang on and drag himself into it. Growing up, Kirsten came to know him as her priest-uncle—her mother’s only brother—who once had a drinking problem he’d overcome, but she never heard about the pregnant girl who killed herself. He joined them on holidays and was pleasant to everyone, even though her mother and father barely spoke to him, and would never tell her why. He worked at various churches, all of them in the most poverty-stricken neighborhoods in the city. When he was finally named pastor of a parish he turned the rectory into a shelter for homeless families and lived in a storage room in the back of the church.

  By then, too, Michael was far more to Kirsten than just her kindly uncle. He was the rescuer who’d gotten her through the lowest, loneliest, most frightening time of her life. An episode she’d kept bottled up inside her ever since, never revealing it to anyone—though God knows she’d tried to tell Dugan a hundred times. Meanwhile, and especially after her father died, Michael became like a second father to her. A week seldom went by when they didn’t see each other or at least talk on the phone.

  Then, two years ago, it all fell apart. The dead girl’s family got a new lawyer and sued to set aside the decades-old settlement as “inadequate, fraudulent, obtained under duress, and coercive.” The suit made terrible claims about what Michael had done so many years in the past. He was frightened and ashamed and was yanked out of his position as pastor. When Kirsten heard, she knew it couldn’t be true, and she got Dugan to represent him. Then, when Michael admitted everything, she’d been shocked beyond belief, and hurt and terribly angry. And those feelings still lingered.

  Michael, of course, hadn’t had a dime to pay the girl’s family. So it was the lawyers for the archdiocese—that’s where the money was—who did all the legal work in the lawsuit. Since it was filed nearly thirty years after the suicide and the family had long ago received money to settle the matter, the suit was dismissed in short order. Dugan said that didn’t bother him so much because that was, after all, the law. It also didn’t bother him that he never had to deal with Michael again.

  Kirsten, though, felt obliged not to abandon her uncle. She tried to hide the feelings she couldn’t get over, and she watched him pretend he didn’t know how much everything had changed.

  And now? She reached for the phone and tapped out his number.

  “Hello. Michael Nolan here.” He couldn’t call himself Father any more. That was one of the new orders he’d been given—since all the recent publicity about priests and sexual abuse—along with no more saying Mass and no more Roman collar. Not to mention no more job with the archdiocesan Office of Liturgy. They’d dump him entirely, if they could. “Hello?” he repeated.

  “Oh … hi. It’s me. Kirsten.”

  “Oh, how are you? You haven’t forgotten Thursday, have you?”

  “Of course not.” Where once they’d gotten together almost every week to laugh and cry and share their everyday experiences, now maybe once a month they met and went through the motions. She had no expectation that one day things might be the way they used to be. Because no matter how she tried, she couldn’t forgive him, not only for what he’d done, but also for hiding it from her … and for the lack of courage that showed.

  “Kirsten?”

  “Oh,” she said, “sorry. The thing is … I have a conflict on Thursday night.” Which wasn’t true. “So how about today?” He’d been there for her. She had to be there for him. “Are you free?”

  “Today? Well, Monday nights I usually—”

  “I’m thinking lunch.” She knew Monday nights were AA meetings. “Lambs Farm? Noon? My turn to buy.”

  “Sure. That’s great. See you there.” He sounded genuinely happy about the change, and she wondered if he’d heard about Thomas Kanowski.

  * * *

  With Lambs Farm maybe twenty-five miles north of the city, Kirsten would need about an hour to go home, get her car, and drive up there. So she had plenty of time. She stripped the rubber bands from the bundle of mail left from Saturday. It was usually 100 percent junk, but once in a while some real mail was lurking in there somewhere.

  This was one of those times.

  It was an ordinary postcard, the kind you buy already stamped. The postmark was Chicago and it was addressed to her “c/o Wild Onion, Ltd.” with a mailing label, but a label that had obviously been cut from another piece of mail, probably a magazine or a catalog, and taped onto the card. On the message side, in penciled block letters, it said: HERE I COME.

  4.

  Three words. HERE I COME. Innocuous, really. So why did Kirsten find them so menacing? She thought of calling Dugan, then decided to wait. But until when? Until she knew who was coming? Until whoever it was arrived?

  And the cops? No way. Even if they considered the postcard a threat worth spending police time and resources on—and they wouldn’t—it would take months to get results back from a police lab. Instead, she went next door to Mark Well Diamond Company, Inc., where Mark Brumstein, Andrea’s husband, gave her some clear plastic envelopes, the kind he used for sorting gems. They made good evidence bags, one each for the postcard and for every other piece of mail in the bundle. She could take them to Renfroe Laboratories. Any fingerprints Leroy Renfroe found on the card he could check against hers, which he had on file, and against the postal carrier’s, which he might find on other pieces of mail. He could also look for any trace substances that might tell them something or could be used for DNA comparison if they ever got another specimen.

  If there was anything helpful, Leroy Renfroe would find it. But she didn’t go to Leroy’s lab. She decided to wait. She was overreacting.

  Or was she? Whoever sent that card had taken a piece of her own mail, maybe pulled it out one day through the slot, and cut off the label to tape to the card. The words were: HERE I COME. But the message was: “I’ve been here already.” Like it or not—and she didn’t—it spooked her.

  She picked up her car and headed north for lunch with Michael. She’d gotten an anonymous note that on its face wasn’t even a threat, and she’d learned that a man possibly connected with her uncle—connected in disgrace—had been brutally murdered. Did either she or Michael have real reason for concern? Maybe he and his fellow priests on that Sun-Times list did, but she certainly didn’t. Or was it vice versa? And what perverse stroke of fortune caused both things to happen at the same time?

  Yes, she was overreacting. And no, she couldn’t keep her eyes off the rearview mirror.

  * * *

  She had picked the restaurant at Lambs Farm, a facility for adults with developmental disabilities, because it was quiet and unpretentious. More importantly, though, it was only about ten miles from the seminary in Mundelein, and at the seminary there was a retreat center called Villa St. George. That was where the archdiocese was warehousing Michael and the other accused priests—the ones who hadn’t already walked away—while appeals to Rome and procedures to decide what to do with them ground forward. So Lambs Farm wasn’t far from Michael, who had very little money for gas or anything else.

  She took a table and ordered coffee and said her companion would have some, too, whenever he got there. Then she waited. Punctuality had never been his strong suit. On the other hand, it didn’t seem to bother him to wait for her, either, even if—as had happened several times—she didn’t show up at all and hadn’t been able to warn him. He had no cell phone and was hard to reach if he wasn’t right there at Villa St. George.

  When she saw him coming across the dining room she thought, as she often did, that even in what he called his “civvies” he looked exactly like you’d expect a priest to look. A silly thought, she knew. In his early sixties, he was maybe five-ten, slender, his skin more ruddy than tanned, and the few gray strands of hair he had left were combed over his head less from vanity, she thought, than from habit. He looked intelligent, kind, sensi
tive; not at all like someone who had abused a trusting young girl.

  She stood up. “Michael,” she said.

  She didn’t feel comfortable calling him either Uncle or Father, not since she’d found out what he had done. She knew too well what that poor girl had gone through. How could he have betrayed someone who trusted him? And not only the girl, but Kirsten, too, by not telling her what he had done and letting her worship and respect him as she had.

  “Hi, Kirsten.” He shook her hand. They never embraced any more, either. Maybe they were the same people they had always been, but two years ago everything changed.

  They sat down and were joined at once by a waitress. Cheerful and heavyset and constantly squinting behind thick lenses, the young woman had difficulty with her consonants and was certainly a Lambs Farm resident. Michael frowned and hesitated over the menu, then finally ordered chicken and dumplings.

  “I don’t know what’s to think about,” Kirsten said. “You always order the same thing here.”

  “I thought this time I might try the chicken pot pie,” he answered. “But it’s probably the same, only less.”

  Once she’d have joked about how she always knew what he meant even when he didn’t really say it. Today she ordered the seafood salad.

  * * *

  The meal began like their times together always did these days, the conversation starting slowly and never really getting anywhere. Michael read voraciously and he saw lots of movies, mostly on video. So at least there were a few things to talk about. Things outside of themselves.

  She used to tell him everything, including about the cases she worked as a cop, even the violent, heartbreaking things—and how they affected her. And later about her hopes and dreams about running her own detective agency. He loved all that, and he’d tell her about whatever parish he was working at, and his hopes and dreams for the people. And even though Dugan had rarely joined them, she used to talk about all the weird, funny things he did. Now, since the lawsuit, Dugan’s name was hardly ever mentioned. Michael had urged her once to bring him along, and she told him the truth. “He won’t come. He can’t get by what … you know … what happened. He’s … pretty angry.”

  “And you?” he had asked.

  “It was a long time ago,” she said. “Let’s not talk about it.”

  It would have been nice to be able to say: Even though I hate what you did, Michael, I forgive you. But she couldn’t. Oh, she still felt a great debt to him for being there when she’d needed it. And from what people in the churches he worked at said about him—before he’d been removed from parish work—she knew he’d helped lots of others, too. But forgive him? How could she?

  Today, though, she could at least see whether the Kanowski murder was worrying him, and offer reassurance if it was. But neither of them mentioned it, and they struggled through lunch as usual. Finally, when they were on dessert, or he was, anyway—apple pie—she leaned forward a bit and asked, “Did you … um … happen to see the morning news? I mean about…” She didn’t want to say it.

  He looked back at her with an expression she first thought was sadness but then understood to be fear. “Thank you,” he said.

  “What? Did I do something?”

  “Thank you for meeting me today.” He lowered his head and poked at his pie and then laid the fork on the plate. But he didn’t look up. “I thought I didn’t get scared any more, not really scared. But now…”

  “I don’t understand.” She did, but what else was there to say?

  There were tears in his eyes now. “I got over being afraid of what people might say, or think. Even got over being afraid of dying … or that’s what I thought.” He shook his head. “Thomas Kanowski. I knew about him, but never knew him personally very well. He … his problem was with a boy. Eleven years old.” He paused, and Kirsten shuddered to think of that poor little boy. “He denied it all the way, but I guess they proved it with … I don’t know … DNA or something.”

  “He … went to prison?” she asked.

  “Oh yes. He’s been out about a year, but nobody I know has seen or heard from him since way before that. Then a couple of months ago his name appeared on that list in the paper, along with me and the others. And now … well … the way he was killed. It was brutal, they said on TV.”

  She folded her napkin, then unfolded it again. “You don’t even know for sure whether it’s the same Thomas Kanowski. And if it is, you don’t know that his death had anything to do with—”

  “It’s him, all right. They told us this morning. And why else would he have been hacked to death? I mean, there I was, driving over here to meet you today in broad daylight, and I’m looking around to see if someone’s following me. Tonight, when I go to AA, I’ll come out in the dark. Go to my car. How do I know…” He slipped the tips of his fingers up behind his glasses, and wiped the tears from his eyes.

  “Are you … going to finish your pie?” Again she didn’t know what else to say. She hadn’t expected tears.

  “I have to get back,” he said. “There’s a meeting we all have to attend. But it’s really so stupid, this fear.” He smiled a little, and she could see it was an effort. “Why am I so scared? People are tortured and die terrible, painful deaths all the time. Iraq, Somalia, El Salvador. Many of them heroic deaths. They suffer and it’s over. But me, I’m scared.”

  She couldn’t remember ever seeing an old man cry like he had … out of fear. He wasn’t crying now, but he looked very old, indeed. And there was nothing at all she could do. What he needed was someone to comfort him, tell him everything would be okay. He needed someone to hug him. But how could she?

  * * *

  Kirsten followed Michael as he drove out of the Lambs Farm parking lot. She had told him to call her if he needed to talk to someone, and they’d agreed to meet for lunch again next week. They went under I-94 and he continued west while she turned onto the entrance ramp to take the interstate back to the city.

  By now it was being reported on the news that the victim was indeed a former Chicago priest who’d been convicted of child molestation. Since his release from prison he’d been living with a relative near Rockford. The authorities were being stingy with details about what happened. There was no reference to any motive or even to a cause of death.

  Although Michael spoke of the man being hacked to death, he’d been watching the TV during breakfast in the company of some other priests who were as uninformed, and as scared, as he was. All she had heard was that the body had been mutilated. Now, even that much was omitted.

  She considered the possibility of her finding someone from the Illinois State Police—or would it be the local county sheriff?—to give her information about the case. Her chances were somewhere south of zero, she thought, and then suddenly remembered that there was no case, not for her.

  She had no client, only an uncle who was afraid the killer would come after him, too. But no one knew that to be true. The only proof that someone was out to kill any other priests on the list would be more killings of priests on the list. There was no case, nothing for her to do.

  Meanwhile, she couldn’t keep her mind off that damn postcard. HERE I COME might simply be someone’s idea of a harmless joke, although she couldn’t imagine who that someone might be. On the other hand, she’d made her share of enemies, and the card and its mailing label address showed how close to her someone could get, how vulnerable she was. If the card wasn’t a joke, it was meant to sow the seed of fear in her heart.

  How well that worked was entirely up to her.

  5.

  On the day after she dealt with the pervert Father Kanowski, Debra Moore stood in her bathroom and studied her two images: her new self reflected in the mirror, her old self looking out from a snapshot tacked to the wall. The photo, taken when she hadn’t been expecting it, was a good likeness of how she used to look. Strikingly pretty, yes, but also looking angry in the photo, and Debra realized that when she wasn’t thinking about it her face fell into
a frown.

  Her new self and her old self. Anyone who didn’t know better would easily be fooled. It wasn’t just the plastic surgery, but also the auburn hair, the blue contacts, the weight loss. And when she smiled … well, that made a big difference. So she practiced smiling.

  * * *

  Debra Moore was the name she’d chosen when she created her new identity and came back to the United States. With money not a problem, she’d settled here at the farm north of Detroit and used her time well, working out on the weight machines, growing stronger in mind and body. She bought a full-sized van, a used Ford Econoline, to haul things around in, and began making regular trips to Chicago. The woman lived there, and Debra gradually spent more and more time watching her. Whatever else she did, though, Debra was always, always, counting down the days until Carlo’s return.

  Then one day, as though out of nowhere, came the turning point, the sign. She might easily have missed it, that list of eighteen priests in the newspaper. By then she’d been going to Chicago three or four times a month, staying several days at a time, but otherwise she never saw a Chicago newspaper … which was how she knew it was a sign. From God. God made someone leave that particular Sun-Times at that particular Burger King in Saginaw, 300 miles away from Chicago. God knew Debra would pick it up and read, and God knew she would feel once again the rage against such men as those eighteen evil fathers, a rage that boiled up inside and set her trembling.

  Always before when that happened—and with all the recent publicity the episodes came more often—she would eventually calm down and tell herself not to be distracted, to concentrate on one desire, one goal, at a time. But this was different. This time when her mind cleared she was staring down at an actual list of names. And at one name standing out from all the rest: Michael Nolan. That name, on this list? It was a clear sign. God was not only calling her, but had brought together her two deepest, seemingly separate, goals: to punish that bitch who went about ruining people’s dreams, and to purge the world of those loathsome beasts who used their position to prey on the helpless.