Death Wears a Red Hat

by William X. Kienzle

  “It was my own stupid fault.” Koesler grimaced. “By the way, Ramon, you wouldn’t happen to have any aspirin on you, would you?”

  “Sorry, Bob.”

  Koesler had no intention of interrupting their dialogue. But he did wish an aspirin vendor would pass their way.

  Which led to another consideration.

  “Just to satisfy my curiosity, Ramon, where does one find snake venom in Detroit?”

  “For your pharmacological information,” Ramon smiled, “cobra venom when dried and properly handled retains its potency almost indefinitely. A Mambo in Africa sent it to me. There is a network of voodoo practitioners so vast you might not believe it! I relied on the members here to get me work uniforms, to tell me of habits and routines, to show me hidden switches, to duplicate keys—especially to the churches. Why, a Houngan was the caretaker at Dutch Strauss’ headquarters!”

  “You’re telling me that because of this voodoo network, you could have access to almost anywhere and anyone in Detroit?”

  “In the world. The whites did a fairly thorough job of introducing Africans and their descendants to all the rest of habitated earth.”

  It was mind-boggling. If Toussaint was not exaggerating, this voodoo network could be more far-reaching and powerful than any group on earth, including the Mafia, Interpol, and General Motors.

  But there was still the individual to consider. At one time, Toussaint, as well as Koesler, had been under some suspicion.

  “What about your alibi?” Koesler asked. “Didn’t you have to provide the police, as I did, with an alibi for the times of the killings?”

  “I lied.”

  “And the corroboration?”

  “A lie.”

  “But, at best, that makes the end justify the means.”

  “You should not be surprised, Bob, that someone who executes six sinners who deserve to die will lie because it suits his purpose.

  “Besides, the traditional objection to the end’s justifying the means represents the theology of the Haves. The end must be able to justify the means for the Have-Nots or they will have nothing forever.”

  It was like first principles, axioms or givens. Koesler had never doubted, never even questioned, theological statements such as the end’s not justifying the means. He began to wonder if his personal theology and conscience had been formed with a blindness toward an alien but legitimate culture.

  It was too broad a concept for the moment. He would have to think this through at a later time.

  “But are your means justified when they involve a friend?” asked Koesler wryly, as he pondered his mangled toothpick. “If you are the one, you must have left those masticated toothpicks in Strauss’ apartment. Why did you do a thing like that to me?”

  Toussaint’s chuckle was throaty. “First, I made certain you had a firm alibi or I would not have done it on that occasion. But I was eager for the police to begin suspecting the clergy. I wanted them to get to me so I could give them my alibi and have them forget about me.

  “But apparently, it did not work as well as I had hoped. Later, they sent two officers to see if I had no regard for bad Church law and would perform a canonically invalid marriage. I ushered them out of the rectory so fast their heads must have been spinning.”

  “Are you sure they were police officers?”

  “Bob, I studied all of Homicide, especially Squad Six. I know the names and faces of all of them. We did not attempt our statement on the nature of sin without preparation.”

  The priest thought for a moment of the preparation that had gone into The Red Hat Murders. It was the antithesis of spontaneity. The amount of study, planning, and plotting had to be exceptional. Determining when these victims, some of them extraordinarily protected, would be dependably vulnerable demanded split-second timing.

  Which brought still another question to mind.

  “Why weren’t you able to retrieve the body of that McCluskey character? And while we’re at it, what did you do with the other bodies?”

  Toussaint looked slightly perplexed. “I am not sure about McCluskey. He died earlier than he should have. But then he was the only one who noticed the pinprick on the back of his hand and sucked on it. That might have spread the venom throughout his system sooner, thus advancing the hallucination. I just don’t know.

  “As for the other bodies, Bob, all over the city things are burned and, as you have seen, I have friends all over the city. “

  Koesler discarded the mangled toothpick.

  “That pinprick you just mentioned: is that how you injected the venom?”

  Toussaint removed a small box from his pocket, and opened it to reveal an innocuous-looking ring. “The stone is hollow; the needle is concealed by the stone. When I press the ring against flesh, the contents are ejected through the needle. Don’t touch it, Bob. It still contains venom.”

  Koesler recoiled. “But how did you get close enough to—”

  “Oh, Bob, in this country, if a black man is wearing an appropriate work uniform, whether it be coveralls or a busboy’s jacket, nobody notices him, pays any attention, or even knows he’s around. He is not only faceless; he might as well be invisible—a nonperson.”

  There are few things worse, Koesler thought, than being so far removed from consciousness as not to be noticed. Until this conversation, he had thought he empathized with the plight of minorities in this country. Now, he would agree, there was no way of really tasting prejudice without being black-, brown-, red- or yellow-skinned—or female.

  “Bob, I don’t think you know what it is to see someone trapped in a life of prostitution, enslaved by drugs, torn apart by an uncaring abortionist, or becoming a victim in the countless ways people have of taking advantage of others. You don’t know what it’s like to see all this and know that the law will never right these wrongs, will never protect the helpless!”

  Koesler felt as if Toussaint had read his mind. And yet, he thought, there was something overly simplistic in Toussaint’s contention.

  “I think you may be overstating the case, Ramon. The laws of this country and their enforcement are not all that bad. More often than not, criminals are arrested and punished.”

  “Arrested yes; punished sometimes. But not always and almost never promptly!”

  “St. Expeditus!”

  “St. Expeditus,” Toussaint echoed. “Not tomorrow. Punishment today. Frustrations build from watching evil flourish. Some are impelled to make a statement, as were ’Ciane and I.

  “But now, Bob, it is over. Our work in Detroit is done. Our statement has been made. I have accepted a position in a parish in the Mexican area of San Francisco.”

  “Isn’t that a bit premature?”

  “How is that?”

  “There is the matter of six murders, executions, whatever you want to call them, in Detroit. From a conversation I had with him the other night, I think Lieutenant Harris is suspicious of you. And now I have to wrestle with my conscience on whether to tell the police all I know.”

  Toussaint smiled broadly. “I did not freely give you all these details so you could become the prosecution’s star witness, Bob. I think you will find they have no case at all.”

  “There may be no case, Ramon, but there remain six dead men. Even now, I find it difficult to believe you are responsible for that. But there they are.

  “Now Ramon, as you very well know, we can make all you’ve told me a matter for confession. Do you want to make this a confession?”

  “For confession, Bob, you must have sin.”

  “Yes.”

  “In this, I am guilty of no sin!”

  I suppose, thought Koesler, that the principle holds true in or out of the sacrament: credendum est poenitenti tarn pro se quam contra se loquenti—a penitent, or sinner, must be believed whether speaking for or against himself.

  Shortly thereafter they parted.

  Koesler phoned his rectory and discovered a concerned Mary O’Connor. Good grief, in all the excite
ment, he’d forgotten this morning’s Mass! Some fifteen bewildered daily communicants had trudged home sans sacrament, not knowing that at that hour their unconscious pastor was sharing a room with Cardinal Mooney’s bones and Elmer Dessalen’s head.

  In addition, Inspector Koznicki had phoned. Would Koesler please meet him at Police Headquarters as soon as possible.

  The priest began to wonder if his friend were as safe as he thought he was.

  Dr. Moellmann was deadly serious. He could be when there was need. This was his second time through the explanation of his autopsy of the late Elmer Dessalen. Midway through his initial explanation he had sensed that both Koznicki and Harris appeared a bit dazed. And he wanted to be sure they understood.

  “There is no doubt,” said Moellmann, “that Dessalen’s head was removed by the same hand that severed the other five heads in what is popularly known as The Red Hat Murders.

  “There is also no doubt that the cause of death was heart failure, as it was in the case of McCluskey, whose body is the only other one in this series of deaths we have. However, unlike McCluskey, there is no suspicious foreign substance in the body.

  “You may recall I told you at the time of McCluskey’s autopsy that were you to find one more body that fit into this series and in which there was a substance that was fatal and/or hallucinatory—ideally, venom—that you would have a good chance at building a case of homicide.

  “However, with the scant scientific evidence available to us, I think we must conclude that instead of six homicides, we more probably have six deaths of natural causes—heart failure.”

  “That’s just silly, Doc,” said Harris. “They were homicides, six homicides!”

  “I’d say your chances of proving that with the evidence we have run from poor to nil,” commented Moellmann.

  “What if voodoo works?” Harris mumbled.

  “What?” asked a startled Koznicki.

  “What if voodoo works?” Harris’ tone was argumentative.

  “Ned,” said Koznicki, “I remind you: this is the twentieth century!”

  “He has a point, Inspector. There are deaths that have been attributed to voodoo. But in all the documented cases, the victim must believe totally in the power of voodoo to kill him.

  “If I understand correctly, the Lieutenant is wondering whether Dessalen and any or all of the others believed in voodoo.”

  “Right.” Harris affirmed Moellmann’s assessment.

  “Even if they did, I wouldn’t want to bring voodoo into a court of law,” said Koznicki, “unless I wanted to launch a career as a stand-up comedian.”

  “It’s the Inspector’s point,” Moellmann judged. “Even if you identified the person who has been removing the heads, I’m sure you couldn’t charge him with murder. The evidence simply isn’t here.”

  “I think I know who it is,” Harris said flatly. Today’s events had taken all the zest out of his intense search for the killer.

  “You do?” asked Koznicki, “who?”

  “I think it’s that deacon, Toussaint. It’s not much more than a gut feeling. I have no solid proof. But I think if I stayed on it long enough I’d nail him—for something. I’ve put him under surveillance. But now,” Harris shrugged, “what’s the use if we can’t bring him up on homicide?”

  There was a lengthy silence.

  “Say,” said Harris, finally, “isn’t it some sort of crime to decapitate even a dead person?”

  “I think you’re right,” said Koznicki, searching his memory, “uhmm … mutilating a dead body, I believe.”

  “Desecration of a human body,” Moellmann corrected. “I knew a pathologist who was charged with and acquitted of the crime. It is a felony, but I have no idea what sort of sentence goes with it.”

  “Couldn’t we get him on that?” Harris clearly wanted to get someone for something. He had worked tirelessly on the special challenges this case had presented.

  “I doubt it, Ned,” said Koznicki. “Most of the citizenry want the mayor to give him a medal. It would have been hard enough to prosecute him for homicide. But what the hell, why don’t you check with the prosecutor?”

  “Damn it, I will!”

  Harris returned to headquarters. First Moellmann, then Koznicki faced the press, neither happily.

  Father Robert Koesler pondered many things as he drove the relatively short distance to police headquarters. He experienced a brief period of mental torture almost every time he found himself knowing some fraught fact nobody else knew, or found himself in possession of portentous knowledge to which he alone was privy.

  Only two people knew all the secrets of The Red Hat Murders.

  The tendency among priests, generally, when entrusted with a secret, is to evaluate the nature of the secret. Is it a secret protected by the seal of confession, a professional secret, or the sort of confidence shared between friends?

  There was no doubt that Toussaint had not gone to confession to Koesler. So the secrets that Koesler now knew from Toussaint himself were not protected by the seal.

  But what, the priest wondered, if Toussaint had made his detailed narration of murder a confession?

  There was no automatic excommunication or other ecclesiastical penalty attached to murder, unless one killed a cleric. In the Red Hat killings, Toussaint would have had to agree to take care of any consequent problems. If there were any needy widows or orphans resulting, for instance, Toussaint would have had to be determined to do his best to take financial and to some extent emotional responsibility for them. Then, Koesler would have absolved him.

  After which he would then have issued Toussaint some sort of prayerful penance to perform, possibly to go on a private retreat to reevaluate whether the end does justify the means. But, especially since no innocent party was being charged with the murders, Koesler would not need to require Toussaint to move from the internal to the external forum and confess also to the police.

  If it had been a confession, Koesler’s present dilemma would have been solved. Under no circumstances would he be able to reveal any of what Toussaint had told him. The details would have been protected by the inviolable seal of confession.

  But it was no use. It was impossible for Koesler to perceive his friend as a murderer. For the moment, Koesler preferred to look upon it as an as-yet undefined form of justifiable homicide.

  Which was neither accurate nor real, but it was the best Koesler could come up with for the moment. Learning a close friend could murder coldly took some getting used to.

  However, all this was academic.

  As a result of following his own theories, Koesler had deduced that Cardinal Mooney’s grave would be the final scene for the placement of the last severed head. That surely would not be protected by the seal no matter what might or might not have been confessed. It was knowledge Koesler possessed completely exclusively of the confessional in any event.

  He had thought he recognized Toussaint in the darkness of the seminary cloisters. Yet, he could not have sworn that it had indeed been Toussaint. Only that it had seemed to be.

  Beyond these two details, which would carry little weight in a court of law, all the rest of the specific details Toussaint had just given him would have been inviolably protected by the seal if Toussaint had placed his tale within the context of the sacrament.

  Two things were crystal-clear: Toussaint did not believe that what he had done was sinful. His conscience was clear. And he was supremely confident that the police would not press charges.

  Koesler knew that according to Catholic doctrine, one’s conscience, unless hopelessly pathological, was the supreme personal arbiter. He could only hope Toussaint was accurate in his assessment of the police reaction.

  Much would depend on conditions as Koesler found them when he reached police headquarters.

  He decided to pray, without being quite certain what he was praying for.

  Lieutenant Harris had spent the past three-quarters of an hour on the phone with the Wayne Cou
nty Prosecutor.

  Painstakingly, he had explained the history and present status of the investigation, and Dr. Moellmann’s evaluation, as well as his own wish to continue the case with the possibility of prosecuting on the charge of desecration of a human body.

  It had been a lengthy monologue and Harris completed it breathlessly.

  There was a pause. Harris sensed it was an irate pause.

  “Do you mean to suggest, Lieutenant, that we should seriously prosecute the Red Hat murderer for the crime of severing a head from a dead body?” the prosecutor asked in his most intimidating tone.

  “Yes,” Harris responded, intimidated.

  “My God, man, that would be like prosecuting Robin Hood for establishing a multiple dwelling in a wooded area!”

  Harris massaged his ear.

  “Dammit,” he said to no one, “he didn’t have to slam it!”

  “You’ve done a magnificent job of showing the connection between Mooney’s tomb and Dessalen’s head, Pat.” Bob Ankenazy perched informally on the edge of Pat Lennon’s desk.

  “Thanks, Bob.”

  “Do you think the cops really believe this is the end? That there won’t be any more Red Hat Murders?”

  “It makes sense.” Lennon rested her chin in the palm of her hand and looked thoughtfully out the window. “Two series of three murders, in two separate weeks, the executions on identical days of the week, first the prominent criminals, then the more common variety.”

  “Incidentally,” she looked up at Ankenazy, “Dessalen was a real sleeper in the criminal category until we got some quick reaction from some of his mechanics who were pretty scared and some of his customers who were pretty angry.”

  “How about you, Pat; do you think it’s over? After all you were just about as close to this case as anyone.”

  Lennon smiled. “Yeah, I think I do. Especially since it all began with the Cardinal’s red hat and seems to have ended at the Cardinal’s grave. The moment I learned this morning where they had found Dessalen’s head, I just had the overwhelming feeling that this was the period. The end.”