“And he did. Right then.”
Both the resident and Carleson laughed.
Carleson, upon reflection, was aware of the phenomenon of clearing the way for imminent death. But he had never heard a more illustrative, yet humorous, anecdote demonstrating the theory.
Still chuckling, Carleson made his way into the hospital.
It didn’t take long to wipe the smile from his face. The intake department overflowed with patients and their relatives and friends. Most of them were so used to being put on hold that they fully expected to sit in these chairs watching mindless television forever. Forever was the time it took to process the sufferer into a room, a cubicle, or an Ace bandage and out.
No one seemed to identify him as that clergyman they’d seen on TV news or on the front page. He was grateful.
As he made his way down the corridors, he took care to share a confident smile with the worried visitors searching for the room that held their loved one.
Some of the visitors and a few of the patients pushing IV stands paused to talk to him. Somehow they sensed that this was a priest who really understood what it meant to be alone, to be abandoned, to face overwhelming odds. Some asked for a prayer. Others bowed their heads for a blessing.
In some strange way, these interventions, far from sapping his energy, gave him strength. Busy hospitals such as Detroit’s Receiving communicated to him the sense that this was where he was supposed to be. These people—so frightened, so alone—were, in a special way, his people.
Now he found himself on the floor where Ste. Anne’s one and only hospitalized parishioner should be. Carleson made his way toward the nurses’ station, hoping that Herbert Demers was no longer here. No longer, indeed, in this life.
Ann Bradley, R.N., looked up from the screen where she’d been searching for records. “Oh, hi, Father. Come to see Mr. Demers?”
It was no surprise that she recognized the priest. By this time, almost all the hospital employees knew him. He’d been there for, in the course of time, all shifts.
“He’s still here?”
Bradley nodded grimly. “That’s about the way we feel, father. Every time any of us comes on duty, there are a certain few patients we expect to find gone. Mr. Demers certainly is among that group. He doesn’t really cause us any trouble. But there’s so little we can do for him. Make sure the IV tubes are working. Turn him. Talk to him. Funny thing,” she said, thoughtfully, “every once in a while I get the feeling he’s trying to tell me something.” She shrugged. “Of course he isn’t. It’s something like a baby: We get the impression we’re communicating but, outside of maybe he feels our touch, nothing.”
“What if …” Carleson hesitated. “What if he did? What if he did communicate with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“The last time I visited him—I know this isn’t going to make much sense—but I’d swear he formed words with his lips.”
“Really!” Bradley lost all interest in the computer screen. “What did he … uh, ‘say’?”
“He said … he said, ‘Help me die.’”
“He said that? Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I really am positive. I’d just told him a story—a joke, actually—about a patient in one of those old-fashioned oxygen tents. Somebody was accidentally standing on the oxygen hose killing the patient.” He stopped, then shook his head. “I can’t tell you why in the world I was telling somebody as sick as Herbert Demers such a black joke. I guess I just felt I should say something. And I didn’t think Herbert would know what I was talking about anyway.
“But, after this joke about a visitor killing the patient, Herbert very slowly and very deliberately mouthed those words: ‘Help me die.’”
“Weird!”
“My thought exactly. But what would you do if you had that experience? What if Mr. Demers asked you to help him die? What would you do?”
“Well, I’d note it in the log, make sure the doctor knew about it.”
“That’s it?”
“It? Oh, you mean would I act on it? Well, no. Of course not. You must know, Father, there are lots of patients—terminals, people with a lot of pain—who want to die. But that’s completely out of bounds.” There was surprise, mingled with a touch of shock in her manner. As if the last thing she ever expected from a priest was the hint of approval for euthanasia.
“Yeah, sure, of course,” Carleson said. “Just wondered. I think I’ll go see Herbert now. See if he wants to mouth any more messages.”
Carleson’s offhand demeanor convinced Bradley that he hadn’t been seriously suggesting euthanasia. Just considering all possibilities.
Carleson entered the room. The second bed was vacant and tightly made up, awaiting the next patient.
Herbert Demers lay motionless in his bed, his skin almost as white as the sheet. The rise and fall of his chest was almost imperceptible. Carleson took the elderly man’s hand. He felt a pulse—barely.
After a lengthy period of sitting and stroking Demers’s hand, Carleson recalled the story he’d just heard in the Emergency Room. What the hell, he thought, it might just work. It certainly was worth a try.
Carleson slid his chair as close as possible to the bed. He squeezed Demers’s hand tightly. There was no answering pressure.
“Mr. Demers …” Carleson spoke loudly. Then, considering the old man was in a coma, the priest decided to throw caution to the winds and shout. “Mr. Demers … Herbert …” Carleson shouted, “it’s all over. Your family is all grown up. They love you, but they don’t need you anymore. You’ve had a good, long life. It’s over now. You can go to God. He’s waiting for you. All you have to do is let go. Let go, like you were going to sleep. Let go and go to God, Mr. Demers. Let go and go to God, Herbert.”
Carleson repeated the exhortation twice more, in more or less the same words. At the end, he was actually perspiring. He had poured so much of himself into willing Demers into eternity that he was nearly exhausted.
After he had been silent for several minutes, Ann Bradley entered the room. Evidently, she had been waiting in the corridor for Carleson to finish.
She stood next to the bed across from Carleson. She grasped Demers’s wrist and held it several seconds. She placed his arm gently on the bed. She placed her fingers on the patient’s neck, feeling for the carotid artery. She looked at Carleson and shook her head.
“He’s gone?” Carleson was willing at this point to believe in magic.
“No,” Bradley said. “Sorry. He’s still very much with us. But” —she smiled—” nice try.” She left the room.
Carleson remained seated, close to Demers. This doesn’t make much sense, he thought. There should be some provision for cases like this. Demers had concluded his life long ago. There was no doubt whatsoever in Carleson’s mind that Demers had communicated. He had pleaded for help in dying. So, this was no vegetable lying on this bed. There was a soul in prison, longing to be free.
With nothing much better coming to mind, Carleson decided to recite the rosary aloud. Maybe that familiar prayer would strike a chord in the old man’s memory.
Carleson took his beads, signed himself with the cross, and, fingering the crucifix, prayed aloud the Apostles’ Creed.
All the while, he thought of Demers’s request for help to die. It would be so easy. So easy.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
The networks and national news media giveth. And the networks and national media taketh away. Bradley Kleimer was not—definitely not—disposed to bless either party. And that, he thought, goes double for the local gang.
In interviews with reporters from the News and Free Press and all four local TV newscast stations, followed closely by sessions with stringers from national and international news services, Kleimer could see the writing on the wall.
As was their practice, today’s media had already tried the case. Unlike most of their previous excursions into the predicted verdict, this time they had acquitted the ac
cused.
Kleimer soon got the impression he would be persecuting—not to be confused with prosecuting—an amalgam of Mother Teresa, Jimmy Carter, and Jeanne d’Arc.
And the deeper the media dug, the worse it got.
In their probe of Carleson’s background they were not turning up the mud Kleimer was hoping Quirt was finding; instead, what was emerging was the portrait of a selfless, sacrificing, dedicated missionary, who served the poorest of the poor with quiet, unassuming distinction. Also emerging ever more markedly was the strong image of a bishop who was the antithesis of the talented missionary whom he had forced into a sort of involuntary servitude.
This, for Kleimer, was not a happy turn of events. He remained unshaken in his belief that Carleson had murdered Diego. But something had to happen. Something had to turn this media-triggered momentum around.
The phone rang. Kleimer had long since lost his eagerness to answer it. But it could scarcely get much worse. And one never knew.…
It was Quirt. This could go either way.
“Geez, Brad,” Quirt said with emphasis, “have you been listening to the radio or catching the TV news?”
“Most of it,” Kleimer said glumly.
“Makes you wonder, don’t it?”
“What? You too? Don’t tell me you’re second-guessing us!”
“Oh, no. No, we got the right guy. But I think the media want us to give Carleson a medal instead of life in Jacktown.”
“Yeah, well, fortunately the media aren’t going to be in the jury box.”
“That’s true. But it makes you think, don’t it? Hey, Brad, is it possible for the prosecution to ask for a change of venue?”
“No—that’s just for the defense. Besides, where would we go? This is getting national—hell, international!—coverage.” With little hope, Kleimer asked, “Any of your guys come up with anything?”
“Nothin’ you could bottle. Williams thinks he’s on to something, but it’s pretty vague. Nothin’ to get your hopes up for.”
“Is he there with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Put him on.”
“It’s not much more than a hunch.”
“Put him on!”
“Okay, okay. Just a second.”
No one had to caution Kleimer to rein in a rampant exuberance. His single comfort, and it wasn’t much, was that things couldn’t get much worse.
There was a click on the line. “Williams?”
“Yeah. Listen, this is just a feeling—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kleimer interrupted. “Quirt’s already given me the disclaimer. Whatcha got?”
“Well, I was checking Carleson’s past assignments with Maryknoll headquarters in New York. Most of what I got was the same stuff they’ve got on radio and TV. It’ll be in the papers in more detail later today and tomorrow. But there’s one thing I’m pretty sure they haven’t got.”
“What’s that?” Kleimer tensed and leaned over his desk. The pen he’d been toying with he now poised over a legal pad.
“It was a routine question,” Williams said. “This priest …” Kleimer assumed Williams was checking his notes. “This priest—a Father Weber—was giving me a list of Father Carleson’s assignments—missions, I think they call them. Like I said, it was routine. He was giving me names of places—mostly Central and South America—and dates, and if anything outstanding happened because Father Carleson was there … you know, like chapels or housing units built, or wells being dug—stuff like that—”
“Yeah, yeah. So?”
“Well, he got to one place—Father Weber, I mean—it’s called … uh, Sandego. It’s in Nicaragua—close to Honduras—and, well, anyway, when he came to that point, this Father Weber hesitated. It wasn’t a long pause. But I got the impression that he was surprised by something to do with that assignment. I think he came across something, and he was trying to decide whether to tell me. And then he decided not to.”
That was it. Williams apparently was finished. “That’s it?”
“I said it wasn’t much.”
“What did you make of it?”
“It could’ve been anything. A word that was smudged and Weber was trying to make it out. Maybe his glasses got dirty. Maybe he got tired of reading through all these dates and places.”
“Did you press him on it?”
“Yeah. I did. I thought he spent too much time brushing it off as ‘nothing.’”
“Your gut feeling?”
“Without any real good reason, I got the idea that Father Weber was covering, uh, I don’t know what. Something that, for whatever reason, Maryknoll wants kept quiet. Father Weber—and I’m just guessing—well, I think he knew what was in the record. But then when he was reading me all the assignment stuff, he almost went too far. He stopped himself at the last minute.
“But I gotta tell you: All this is just one king-size guess … nothing more.”
Kleimer was no longer taking notes. He was tapping his pen on the desk pad. After a minute, he spoke. “Go there!”
“You want me to go to Ossining?”
“That’s it. I want you to read that record for yourself. Who knows; it could be the break we need. But we’ll never know with you here and that record in New York. See if you can tap a contingency fund. If not, I’ll see if I can free up some travel expenses here. Hell, if worse comes to worse, I’ll pay for it! Just go!”
Kleimer broke the connection and sat lost in thought.
What could it be? Something Maryknoll is trying to hide? Something Carleson did that nobody’s proud of? Molesting children? That sort of thing had become more common recently, it seemed. Maybe knocked up a local virgin?
Get serious, Kleimer admonished himself. Carleson may have reached the end of his rope and offed a bishop. But, be real: He’s not the venal type.
Nicaragua. What comes to mind? The Contras. Civil war. Thugs in uniform. Villages destroyed. What would a guy who didn’t give much of a damn for rules and regulations do in a situation like that? Certainly not sit on his hands. He’d do … something. Maybe something violent. Something that would lead a jury to believe he was no stranger to violence?
Kleimer turned off his daydream machine. Such speculation could inject a little hope into a largely hopeless situation. But, face it: The odds were heavy that Williams would find nothing more than that the Maryknoll priest has emphysema and that when he read as far as Sandego, he just needed to take a breath real bad.
Kleimer wasn’t sorry he was sending Williams on this fishing expedition. But he knew there was no way he could count on miracles.
No, he was going to have to work like hell, starting right now. He decided to check the fax machine and see what Quirt’s people had turned up on Carleson. Kleimer needed to get inside that guy’s skin and find out what made him tick.
“Have you seen this afternoon’s Detroit News?” Phil Mangiapane asked.
“Yeah, I did,” Angie Moore replied.
Zoo Tully, focusing on reports, paid only peripheral attention to their conversation.
“I didn’t get past the front page,” Mangiapane said, “but—wow!—I think they’re gonna canonize Father Carleson.”
“You should see the rest of their coverage. They’ve got stuff on a whole bunch of cases that depend on circumstantial evidence, interviews with lawyers, and reactions from just about all the Hispanic spokespeople. I can’t remember when I’ve read about a less likely killer.”
“Things don’t look good for our side.”
“Scratch ‘our side,’ and make it, ‘Things don’t look good for Quirt and Kleimer.’”
Tully put down the reports and gave full attention to his sergeants. His squad, like the other six, could boast of outstandingly competent officers. Experience had taught Tully that Moore and Mangiapane were his most dependable. And with this investigation going in many directions, dependable officers were a prime necessity. This was especially true since the case of Bishop Diego’s murder had been closed. A suspe
ct had been arrested, arraigned, and was now free on bail. Thus, this ongoing inquiry had to be handled with extreme delicacy.
The squad was expected to move on to the next in the neverending caseload of homicides. So most of their investigation into the Diego case now would have to be carried out on their own time.
This was no problem for Tully personally. Normally he would be hard-pressed to distinguish between his time and company time. It was a measure of the respect in which he was held by his squad members that they would follow his lead in this sort of situation.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Tully said. The three were alone in the squadroom. “There’s Michael Shell. One of the oldest motives around: alienation of his wife’s affections. Opportunity?”
Moore shook her head. “Donnelly checked out that bar he said he was in Sunday afternoon … the Lazy Dolphin. The bartender remembers Shell. Donnelly showed the guy several head shots. He picked Shell out of the pack right away.”
“What made him so sure?”
“The length of time Shell spent at the bar. The barkeep remembered that Shell got there early to midafternoon and stayed until early evening. He remembers because Shell had been drinking pretty heavily, and he considered cutting him off. But then he talked to Shell and Shell voluntarily switched to a couple of soft drinks. Then he left. But by the time he left, it was a couple of hours at least after the time of Diego’s murder.”
“Okay,” Tully said, “that’s a dead end. How about his wife … Maria?”
“That’s still a live one,” Mangiapane said. “Patterson’s been following that up. The opportunity was there: She hasn’t got anybody who can account for her time that afternoon, or that evening. The motive wasn’t all that strong, but it’s getting healthier. Patterson’s been talking mostly with friends of Mrs. Shell—including some that aren’t all that friendly.”
“Oh?”
“I got a hunch Moore’s gonna kill me for this …” Mangiapane smiled. “… but Patterson spent some time in the beauty shop where Mrs. Shell goes—like regularly. And while Patterson sat there, the girls talked. Their candid opinion seems to be that there was one hell of a lot more going on between Maria and the bishop than what the lady told us. They—her ‘friends’—seem to think it’s not all that impossible she coulda done it.”
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