Death Wears a Red Hat

by William X. Kienzle

  The three gazed at McCluskey’s body in silence. Somewhere a faucet dripped.

  “That would explain the death mask, do you think, Fred?” Browne addressed her assistant.

  “Yes, I guess it would.” Smith replied.

  “You know, Doctor,” Smith continued, “something’s been knocking on the fringe of my consciousness from the first moment I saw this body.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The resemblance of McCluskey’s death mask to the ones of those other murder victims.”

  “The Red Hat Murders,” Brown supplied.

  “Exactly.”

  “It’s the same thought I had, Fred. It’s almost a carbon copy of those others. I’m glad you agree. And since you agree …” Browne extracted a note pad from one of her oversize pockets and began writing on it “... I am shipping this body over to the Wayne County Medical Examiner.”

  “Doctor,” said Smith, smiling, “I think you are going to make Willie Moellmann’s day. Or,” checking his watch, “his tomorrow.”

  “My dear friends, I’d like to talk to you this evening on the evils of steady dating.”

  He must be out of his mind, thought Father Donald Curley, as he stood in the vestibule of old St. Joseph’s church. This is just a Novena Mass honoring St. Joseph; the average age of this congregation must be in the sixties, and the man wants to talk to them about steady dating!

  “I know you’re thinking, ‘What does this have to do with me?’” preached Father Edmund Sklarski in his best Boaner-gian tones. “But I tell you, my friends, the devil is no respecter of persons or ages. He roams about the world seeking the ruin of souls!”

  The congregation, small in number and generally elderly, dozed serenely, followed their own streams of consciousness or contemplated the myriad statues and pictures that were nearly everywhere in the church. Some few were actually listening to Sklarski. Somehow he was always able to introduce the subject of S-E-X into his sermons. It was occasionally entertaining to anticipate how he would work it in.

  “Many of us, my dear friends, deplore the emphasis now given to sports, especially on the high school level. Why, sports have become more important than the traditional three Rs!”

  Sports, another of Sklarski’s recurring themes. But how, his few listeners wondered, would he bridge his way to the Other Topic.

  “However, there are, we must admit, my dear friends, some obvious if fringe benefits accruing from this early emphasis on sports. Some of our racial minorities are enabled to continue on to a higher education as a result of athletic scholarships. An education that could be achieved in no other way. And then, too, my dear friends, an early interest in sports prevents the premature and unhealthy pursuit of girls!”

  Ah!

  As he circled outside the church and entered the sacristy from the rear, Curley formed a plan. As pastor, he had recently decreed that no sermon was to last longer than fifteen minutes. A blow aimed directly at Sklarski, who, when he launched on a homily, gave every indication of never intending to see shore again.

  Sklarski would never be able to wrap up so pregnant a topic as steady dating in the prescribed fifteen minutes. From the sacristy, Curley planned his attack. Strangely, he was reminded of Scarpia plotting the coercive seduction of Tosca from within the church.

  “I call your attention, my dear friends, to the picture over here,” Sklarski gestured expansively toward the right side of the nave, “depicting the conversion of St. Paul.”

  How would he get from the conversion of St. Paul to S-E-X?

  “There’s Paul, on his way to Damascus. He’s going there to find Christians and persecute them. But God knocks him off his wild horse. Wild horse! What might be your wild horse? Women? Sex?”

  Ah!

  Fifteen minutes. Curley flipped the switch turning off the public address system.

  The effect was dramatic. Sklarski’s volume level dropped to near inaudibility.

  “So!” Sklarski boomed, “you pull the plug on Sklarski? Sklarski simply raises his volume!”

  And on he thundered, afloat on his uncharted seas of sexual entrapment.

  Meanwhile, back in the sacristy, Curley slumped into a chair, defeated. He wondered if having Sklarski’s warm body around to help out was really worth it.

  No matter that she had worked there for years, it still required several minutes to get used to the strong smell of the various powerful chemicals.

  Emma Lewin was going on her fifth year as night custodial worker at the Wayne County Morgue.

  It no longer bothered her that the long narrow metal trays she was cleaning had been and would be used to hold a parade of cadavers that would be sliced, carved, and dissected by teams of pathologists. She no longer even adverted to the bodies stacked in their private shelves all about her.

  Emma was whistling “Some Enchanted Evening,” steadily changing musical keys as she progressed. This was one of the reasons she preferred working alone. She loved to whistle but could not carry a tune. None of her companions in the basement of the building would complain about her misshapen melodies.

  As she scrubbed a tray at the far end of the room, something white at the doorway caught her eye. She looked up from her work. It was a black man in a white uniform. He wasn’t in the doorway. He was in the hall. He was not in the light, so she couldn’t see his face clearly.

  He waved at her and smiled. “Laundry,” he explained, as he continued down the hall, dragging a large laundry bag.

  She thought little more of the incident—although it was odd: in her years of nightly work, there had not been a laundry pickup or delivery that she could remember.

  But if she had learned one thing from working here it was that this whole place was odd. Odd sounds, odd odors, odd sights, and some fairly odd people.

  After a brief interval—she was uncertain of the precise length of time—the white-clothed figure passed the door again.

  “ ’night,” he said as he left. He pulled the laundry bag after him.

  Emma selected “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to mangle.

  Pat Lennon and Joe Cox sat at opposite ends of the long wooden bench to one side of the entry to the Medical Examiner’s office.

  Lennon was there at the invitation of Lieutenant Harris, Cox at the invitation of Inspector Koznicki. Neither Lennon nor Cox cared for the competition of the other in this professional capacity. But there was nothing either could do about it.

  Koznicki and Harris paced together in front of the office door and along the open second floor corridor. They seemed nervous. An emotion neither often felt. It might be more accurate to say they were eager. Eager for the news Dr. Moellmann would soon bring.

  “The thing that puzzles me most, Walt,” said Harris, “is identification. If the guy’s head is still attached to his body, how can he be identified as a Red Hat victim?”

  “I think we’d better leave that in the capable hands of the good doctor,” Koznicki answered. “I’ve seen him pull rabbits out of some hats in my time. He’s good.”

  “God, Walt, it makes me tingle to think we finally have a body. If it’s really a Red Hat victim, we ought to get a cause of death and be able to come up with a charge that’ll stick. “

  “Yes, friend, it does seem we may see light at the end of the tunnel.”

  “What time is it?” Lennon asked.

  Cox looked at his watch. “About ten after eight.” He looked at her and, for the first that morning, smiled. “What are you worried about? You work for an afternoon paper now.”

  Lennon returned the smile. It was difficult for the lovers to remain cool to each other, even when professionally separated.

  “What did they say that guy—McCluskey—did for a living?” she asked.

  “Uhmm,” Cox consulted his notes, “McCluskey Roofing and Repair.”

  “Sort of a carpenter?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just want to stay on top of things.”

  �
��Speaking of which,” Cox slid closer to her on the bench, “would you consider a return to the apartment after this conference? We are in the neighborhood, you know.”

  Lennon shook her head. “Joe, if only you were afflicted with impotency, you would probably win an annual Pulitzer.”

  “Meaning I am not concentrating enough on my job?”

  “Meaning let’s find out what comes out of this conference before we make any dates.”

  Marge, Moellmann’s secretary, timed her emergence in the corridor to coincide with the moment Koznicki and Harris passed in front of the office door.

  “Would y’all care fer sum coffee?”

  As it turned out, all four would. Cox black, Lennon with cream, Koznicki with sugar, and Harris with cream and sugar.

  “Then y’all kin come in an’ get it!” said Marge, with a gesture indicating her head was swimming.

  “Whah don’t y’all mike yorse’ves comfortable?” Marge said as the four helped themselves to coffee and a variety of ingredients. “It my be a period ’fore the doctor returns.” She sighed. “At least he was happy ‘bout havin’ a whole in tahr body to work with!”

  It was with a great deal of anticipation that virtually the entire team of Wayne County’s pathologists gathered in the basement of the morgue to begin the autopsy of Tod McCluskey. Their curiosity had been piqued by the preliminary report sent with the body by Dr. Jane Browne of Detroit General.

  Dr. Paul Werner, with a theatrical flourish, pulled open the shelf and, with a dramatic flourish, threw back the covering sheet.

  There was a collective gasp.

  “Gott in Himmel! Scheisse!” swore Dr. Wilhelm Moellmann.

  “I don’t believe it!” said Werner.

  The mortal remains of Tod McCluskey had no head.

  “Wir hätten mindestens einen Kopf in der Hand halten können!” With his back to the wall, Moellmann tended to revert to his native tongue, as he wondered why his department couldn’t hang onto the heads entrusted to it.

  “Did any of you remove this head?” Werner asked.

  Of course none had.

  “Ich scheisse auf diese Idioten!” was Moellmann’s assessment of his staff.

  Werner looked helplessly at his Chief. “Sir, I don’t know how this could have happened!”

  “So sitzen wir wieder in der Scheisse!” was Moellmann’s assessment of their present situation.

  “Well, find out!” he suggested to Werner.

  Dr. Werner and several colleagues obediently peeled away from the group to try to track down the how, why and wherefore of Tod McCluskey’s missing head.

  After a moment to appraise the situation from several other angles, a smile began to play about Moellmann’s lips. He reassembled the remainder of his staff, moved what was left of McCluskey to the table and began cutting furiously.

  Moellmann slowly ascended the stairs en route to his office.

  As soon as he came into view, Lennon and Cox were off the bench and pumping him with questions.

  “What’s the verdict, Doc?”

  “Is it another Red Hat case, Doc?”

  “Did you determine the cause of death, Doc?”

  “Later,” answered Moellmann, motioning for the two police officers to follow him into his office.

  “Hätten wir nicht einen einzigen Kopf in der Hand behalten können?” said Moellmann to no one as he passed through the outer office.

  “What was that?” asked Cox.

  “He said,” explained Marge, “‘Couldn’t we even hold on to a single hay-ud?’”

  “Oh.” And then, as the possible import penetrated, “Oh?”

  “Roughly,” Marge added. Among the many talents for which Marge had been hired, not the least was her ability to understand Moellmann whether he spoke in English, Low German, medicalese, or high dudgeon.

  Moellmann, Koznicki, and Harris entered the doctor’s office. Moellmann shut the door behind them and indicated they should be seated. The doctor, however, began pacing behind his desk.

  “Verdammtes Pech!” Moellmann said. Then he added, “Actually, not such bad luck after all.”

  “Could you explain?” Koznicki asked.

  “Overnight, someone decapitated McCluskey.”

  “Decap—you’re kidding!” said Harris.

  “Would I?” Moellmann asked. “A cleaning lady who works alone at nights saw him, a tall black man. She did not see him well enough to identify him, only that he was tall, black, and had a deep voice. He posed as a laundry man.”

  “We’ll have to interrogate her,” said Harris.

  “You’ll have her name,” said Moellmann. “But there’s more.” He looked thoughtful. “With his head on, I don’t think it could have been other than highly speculative for us to have identified McCluskey as another Red Hat victim. With his head off, there is no doubt.” Moellmann appeared very pleased. “The same flawed saw. He removed the head in four or five strokes, even as awkward as that must have been with the body in the drawer.”

  Moellmann ceased pacing and stood facing the two officers. His excitement increased the scope of his gestures.

  “This,” he said, “is where the good news gets better. This is the first time in this series of murders that we have a body. Our preliminary autopsy indicates a foreign substance in the body.”

  Harris and Koznicki leaned forward.

  “I can’t be sure, but I think it could possibly be snake venom.”

  “You can’t be sure!” Harris almost exploded.

  “You think I am God?” Moellmann returned the volley.

  It was the first indication Harris had that the doctor might not think of himself in divine terms.

  “Easy,” Koznicki cautioned Harris. He turned to Moellmann. “What do you plan to do?”

  Moellmann paused long enough to permit his neck muscles to relax. “I have called in a toxicologist. He will be here by noon. We’ll have all your answers then.”

  It was a dismissal.

  “We’ll have to check your lab for prints and interrogate that woman,” Koznicki reminded.

  “Of course.”

  The officers left.

  Outside the examiner’s office, the two were bombarded by Cox and Lennon.

  They briefed the reporters on what they had learned from Moellmann, omitting the specific clinical details of the beheading that enabled them to identify the killing as another in the Red Hat series.

  “This guy, McCluskey,” asked Cox, “what kind of guy was he? I mean, why would he be selected by the Red Hat murderer?”

  “If I were you, I’d check the General Assignment Unit,” said Harris.

  Cox was off.

  “Oh, my God!” Harris exclaimed. “It just dawned on me. I guess I didn’t think of it because I wasn’t expecting McCluskey to be decapitated.”

  “What?” asked Koznicki.

  “McCluskey’s head,” said Harris. “It’s probably in some Catholic church right now!”

  “My God!” said Koznicki, “you’re right! But which one?”

  Lennon, who had been taking in the exchange, asked, in a tone of mounting excitement, “This McCluskey, wouldn’t he be classified as kind of a repairman, a kind of carpenter?”

  The officers agreed he would.

  “Then I think I know where the head is. Just give me a minute to call my photographer."

  Sergeant Terri Scanlon was searching her records. She was one of only four Detroit police officers who made up the General Assignment Unit.

  “Tod McCluskey,” said Scanlon, “the name is definitely familiar, but I can’t quite place it.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Terri,” said Joe Cox, “I’m not trying to put your unit down, but if your unit would be working on a guy like McCluskey, he wouldn’t be one of Detroit’s major criminals, would he?”

  Scanlon smiled as she continued to finger through the files. “No, Joe, we don’t work on the Al Capones. And you’re wondering what he’d be doing in our files if he’s a target of
the Red Hat murderer.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Joe, Homicide is just down the hall, same floor.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hmmm,” she said, “yes, we do have a file on McCluskey. Not a very large one, though.”

  “What was he into?”

  “Fraud, mostly. Nothing big league and nothing you could even make an arrest on. The tenth precinct handled most of the calls. McCluskey operated outside the tenth’s jurisdiction, in a variety of precincts, just often enough for our unit to be called in occasionally.”

  “What was his game?”

  “He was a con man. Very minor league, but very nasty. He would convince people, mostly old people—”

  “Picking on the lame and the halt, eh?” Cox interrupted.

  “Yes, that’s about it. He would convince them they needed roof repair, usually. And usually, the victims were too old or crippled to get up there and check it out. Generally, they would end up paying nearly all they had in savings or they would pay outrageous interest rates for pretty nearly the rest of their lives—until the grave freed them. And even then, the bastard would put in a claim for the balance from their pitiful estates.

  “But this is the kind of con,” she continued, “that’s almost impossible to prosecute. Not all his customers would complain by any means. Most of the people he picked on were used to being victimized as a way of life. And he always made sure he had a valid contract. So there were no grounds for prosecution.”

  “You’re telling me that McCluskey was just another slightly dishonest businessman?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He merely took advantage of his customers?”

  “That’s about it.”

  Cox whistled softly. “Good grief. But that’s the All-American way of doing business. They might not all be as bad as McCluskey, but can you think of a major business that doesn’t take advantage of its customers?”

  “No, I guess not,” she said, after a moment’s thought.

  “Terri, you know what this means? Almost everyone who deals with clients in this area is a possible candidate for the Red Hat murderer’s hit list!”