Bishop as Pawn

by William Kienzle

  He found his wallet, took out the parking stub and the single dollar that was the fixed night rate.

  He stopped at the attendant’s booth, gave him the stub and money. Without Koesler’s asking, the attendant gave him a receipt. Koesler figured so many medical and legal personnel used the garage, the receipt was automatic. He stuffed it in his pocket. The parking arm lifted; Koesler exited the garage and drove away from the hospital.

  What, if anything, had he learned? He was not at all sure. He would have to think this through.

  He let himself in through the kitchen of St. Joe’s rectory and checked the answering machine. No calls. Good.

  He could catch the final few stories on the late evening news. It was sports, weather, and a cutesy closing bit. He was sure the lead story on all television and radio stations had been the rearrest and incarceration of Father Carleson.

  He made sure the lights were out and the thermostat turned down.

  He had recently begun an interesting book on the Jesuits in America. He tried that for a few pages, but he was suffering from major distractions.

  He turned out the light and pulled up the blankets.

  He tried to find the precise key that might unlock this puzzle and cast a fresh light on static presumptions. But he was too tired.

  He had to agree with Scarlett O’Hara: I’ll think about that tomorrow .

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY - SEVEN

  “Brad, this is Quirt, George Quirt.”

  Brad Kleimer propped the phone between ear and shoulder as he swiveled his chair toward the window. “George” was redundant; how many Quirts could he know? “Okay. Good morning, George. Whatcha got?”

  “I just got done talking to Williams.”

  “Yeah? He home now?”

  “No … and that’s the problem.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Quirt did not have happy news. But since sending Williams to Maryknoll had been Kleimer’s idea, the problem was Kleimer’s. “Williams hasn’t been able to see the Maryknoll assignment book.”

  “Why’s that so tough?”

  “Well, he got to Ossining okay, and eventually he touched base with the local cops. He let them know what he needed, but it took a helluva long time to get their cooperation. He finally got one of the guys to go with him, and then they spent pretty much all day yesterday trying to find a judge who’d issue a warrant.”

  “What?” Kleimer came to his feet. “Why didn’t he just go to Maryknoll and look at the record?”

  “Well, he did, Brad—go to Maryknoll, that is. But they wouldn’t let him see it.”

  “They’re hiding something.”

  “Maybe. Probably. But the guy he talked to—a Maryknoll priest with the title of procurator—said it was the policy of the order not to disclose the record of any of their missionaries.

  “I got all this from Williams … it probably makes more sense to a Catholic—”

  “Get on with it.”

  “Yeah. Well, this procurator explained that the missionaries’ activities could be compromised if this stuff got into the wrong hands.”

  “Williams is a cop, for Chrissake! What does he mean ‘get into the wrong hands’?”

  “The procurator says it’s the rule—their rule. The records of the missionaries are strictly confidential and they don’t share ’em with anybody. That’s the only way they can be sure they’re not gonna get into the wrong hands: They don’t get into any hands.”

  “So? That’s one guy.”

  “Williams says he went to the rector of the seminary and even to the superior general—which, I take it, is the top guy. Same song and dance … matter of fact, the superior general said this rule originated with him. That’s when Williams went to the cops. He thought it would be a snap to at least get the cooperation of the police. But, it wasn’t. Then, like I said, he finally got one guy. But they spent all the working hours yesterday trying to find a judge who’d issue a warrant.”

  Kleimer was irritated and growing more so. “What’s the problem with the warrant?”

  “The judges they saw had pretty much the same reaction: ‘The Maryknoll order has every right to keep confidential the activities of its members.’ And the judges weren’t about to tamper with that secrecy just on the ‘intuition’ of some out-of-state cop. That’s the word they used, Brad: ‘intuition.’”

  “Intuition, my ass!” Kleimer’s fist hit the desk. “Williams is no dame. He’s a damn good cop! We don’t get jerked around by some hick cop department!”

  “Yeah, Williams said the term ‘hotshot Detroit Homicide dick’ did get thrown around a lot.

  “Look, Brad, I know you’re pissed off. So am I. But the bottom line is Williams is gonna have to stay in Ossining another day. And there’s no guarantee that he’s gonna get a peek at that record anyhow. The department okayed just enough for an in-and-out. We’re just about at the end of that chit. Me, I’d tell him to get his ass back here. But you were pretty strong on sending him there … if I remember right, you said something about financing this trip yourself. Well, now we gotta fish or cut bait. What’ll it be?”

  It didn’t take Kleimer long to decide. “Hell, reel him in. Things were getting kind of thin on that first count of murder. But now that we’ve got Carleson for the Demers killing, we can’t miss. I still think Williams was on to something, but we’ve got a while before we go to trial. Hell, if those people in Ossining want to play hardball, we’ll just be better prepared next time we go for those records.”

  “Lucky we caught that Demers killing,” Quirt said.

  There was something about Quirt’s tone. It took Kleimer a moment to realize that Quirt was fishing for a compliment. “No luck about it! That was just good police work on your part. It would’ve slipped right by if you hadn’t been on your toes, George. Good going! That put a few more nails in Carleson’s coffin.”

  “All in a day’s work, Brad. But not bad if I do say so myself. Of course, you won’t forget this when things open up here in Homicide, eh?”

  “Bet your bottom dollar on it, George. I won’t forget.”

  Quirt broke the connection. Everything was working out well. He felt very good.

  “What’s up?” Tully asked.

  “There’s no problem with Julio,” Sergeant Angie Moore said. “Even if we turned him loose, he couldn’t make it down the hospital corridor. We’ve got him under guard. Same with Vicki Sanchez. She’s lots better than Julio, but still needs care. She’s under guard too. Estella either has better tolerance or she didn’t snort as much as the other two. We’ve got her in holding upstairs.”

  “What’re we charging?”

  “For now, we’ve got her on possession with intent to deliver. I suppose it could be true. There was such a collection of dope in that apartment they’d be dead before they could use half of it. So maybe they’d turn it up and sell it.”

  “Good.”

  Moore shook her head. “This is kind of weird, Zoo. I’ve never been on anything like this before.”

  Tully looked up, near expressionless.

  “I mean … we’ve got a guy locked up for a murder while we’re holding somebody for the same murder. The second guy—Julio—isn’t even charged and hasn’t been arrested. He’s just trying to hold onto life. This is a whodunit! A real-life whodunit!”

  Tully smiled. “I got my chips on Mad Anthony. I haven’t seen him since the other day. But he knows we got Carleson back in jail. And he knows that Carleson’s charged with two murders—and the second puts the seal on the first. But Wayne hasn’t blinked. I think if he had any doubts about Julio, he’d get in touch. But: nothin’.”

  “Did you get anything at all from Julio?” Moore asked.

  “Only that he ‘did it’!”

  “That sounds pretty convincing to me.”

  “Yeah … except he’s not too sure whether he used a gun or a knife or a voodoo doll.”

  “Not exactly the kind of defendant you’d want to put o
n the witness chair. I can’t think of too many judges who’d accept multiple-choice weapons.

  “But, Zoo: What about this? What if Julio comes out of this completely and remembers everything? Suppose he says he did it and identifies the weapon—the correct weapon? Then what? What happens with the prosecutor who keeps on insisting that he’s got the perp? And that he’s got motive, opportunity, and means? He’s got a half ton of circumstantial evidence.… And the priest claims he’s innocent, while Julio claims he’s guilty. What happens then?”

  Tully seemed to be considering these contradictions for the first time. As he returned his attention to the file he’d been studying, he said, “Angie, we live in interesting times.”

  Father Koesler was getting through this day in a more or less mechanical manner.

  The high point of Father Koesler’s day always was his celebration of Mass. Each day he tried to prepare well for this sacred ritual—the essence of his life. But this morning Mass had been filled with distractions.As was the rest of this day.

  Mary O’Connor, the parish secretary, had sorted the mail, pointing out that the separate pile needed his immediate attention.

  He tried to give it undivided concentration but found himself rereading paragraph after paragraph. Somehow he got through it all. But it took up to three times what it normally would have.

  It was the same with his appointments. He conscientiously tried to focus on what his visitors said, the problems they brought to him. But if their presentation was at all on the dull side, they would lose him. He could not count the number of times he had punctuated the conversation with, “Sorry, could you repeat that?” or “I beg your pardon …” or “What was that you were saying?” As he saw each of these visitors to the door, he felt the need to apologize.

  Mary O’Connor left for home about 4:00 P.M. She was worried about him. There had been distractions before, but not a whole day full. She had tried to make things as easy as possible for him, but nothing seemed to help. She could only hope that a good night’s sleep might set things straight for him.

  After Mary left, Koesler donned his sweats and went into the basement for the series of exercises that had been suggested by a physical therapist. Requiring attention was a shoulder that had lost its rotator cuff to a stray bullet, as well as a creeping arthritic condition.

  Mercifully, the exercises helped clear his mind. He returned to his second-floor suite perspiring, but much more organized and put together.

  It was in the shower that the puzzle began to unravel. Why, he wondered, did this sort of thing so frequently occur while he showered? Possibly because during showers he almost always was thinking of nothing. And in that vacuum that nature despised, fresh ideas were born.

  He’d been trying to recall a simple statement Lieutenant Tully had made when last they’d talked. About Father Carleson’s apparent involvement in the death of Herbert Demers. Tully had said something to the effect that it was too bad that he—Father Carleson—had done it.

  The gist of the remark was that it was the second murder that gave crediblity to the first.

  The immediate and growing reaction to Father Carleson’s arrest for the murder of Bishop Diego had been disbelief. The media accurately reported what they discovered. Which was that everyone who knew Father Carleson knew him to be dedicated, generous, peaceful, kind, thoughtful, gentle—and very long-suffering—the very antithesis of a murderer.

  What circumstantial evidence the prosecution was gathering had begun to pale in the face of the spotless reputation that continued to emerge.

  Then came the death of Demers. Carleson’s image took a sharp downturn. It wasn’t so much that people and the media suddenly pictured him as a ruthless criminal and murderer. The figure that now emerged was of a priest gone mad.

  Here was a priest who—with or without the best of intentions—could snuff an elderly person’s life simply because nature wasn’t doing its job fast enough.

  If Carleson could deliberately kill a helpless old man—and he most assuredly had—then it was safe to believe he could and did kill a bothersome bishop. Demers’s reality gave credibility to Diego’s murder. Too bad Carleson had killed Demers. It proved he was capable of killing, and probably had killed Diego.

  Not a bad argument, Koesler had to admit.

  But …

  But some of the things Koesler had experienced last night as he’d retraced Carleson’s steps had planted some doubts.

  To reverse the current supposition: If Carleson indeed did not kill Demers, he probably hadn’t killed Diego either.

  Who, then, did kill Diego? Lieutenant Tully seemed to have a likely prospect in a young man from the Ste. Anne neighborhood.

  But if Carleson did not murder Demers, who did?

  Somebody who looked like a priest and who resembled Carleson would have to be the murderer if Carleson were not.

  What had Koesler learned last night?

  The night before last, somebody—a man, presumably—was seen by a couple of attendants outside the Emergency entrance. The man was standing approximately thirty yards away from the attendants. He was standing still. Was he trying to decide whether to enter through Emergency or the main door? Or was he waiting to be seen by somebody—anybody—in Emergency?

  What did the attendants see? They saw a man—a person—dressed in black. A black hat covered the man’s hair, except for the small tuft of white at his ears. They saw—or thought they saw—the narrow white tab that marked a clerical collar.

  If anyone had happened to glance out the door last night, they would have seen a man standing in about the same spot where the man had been standing the night before. They would have seen Koesler all in black. Discernible at the sides of his black hat beneath the brim they would have seen gray instead of white hair.

  But they would not have seen the white tab of his clerical collar because he had turned up the collar of his overcoat. It was bitter cold both nights. The most natural defense against the cold was to bundle up as much as possible.

  The earlier figure was standing half facing the Emergency door making his clerical collar evident. Everybody had been talking about Father Carleson. Carleson had frequented the Emergency Room. They expected to see Father Carleson. They did see Father Carleson … or so they thought.

  After visiting Emergency, Koesler had continued tracing Carleson’s path of the previous night. When Koesler arrived at the late Mr. Demers’s floor, the priest walked, just as he imagined Carleson had, to the room Tully said Demers had occupied. Just as he turned to enter the room, the floor nurse, Alice Cherny, looked up from her paperwork. As they talked, Alice admitted that for a moment she’d thought it was Carleson going into the room.

  She admitted that it was difficult to see distinctly down the corridor due to the lighting. Then, too, she and Ann Bradley, who was going off duty, had been talking about Father Carleson.

  And that’s exactly what had happened the night before. The light was uneven—quite bright in the nurses’ station, dim in the corridor. She and Ann had been talking earlier about Father Carleson. So he was on her mind.

  Last night Alice Cherny thought she saw Father Carleson approaching Demers’s room. She was mistaken; it had been Father Koesler. The night before, she thought she had seen Father Carleson enter Demers’s room. Was she mistaken that night too?

  All of this Father Koesler thought interesting. But that’s all: just interesting. It merely suggested that it was possible—just possible—that it had not been Father Carleson who, dressed as a priest, entered Herbert Demers’s room and suffocated him.

  And Koesler was positive that’s what the police would say if he were to present this theory to them: “Very interesting.” But all it indicated was that someone else might be the killer. And the murderer still could be Father Carleson. And he was the one under arrest. He was the one who had been closest to Demers. Carleson was the one who claimed Demers had begged his help to die. Carleson had tried to give Demers permission to die. In
all the world, neither the police nor the hospital personnel knew anyone more wishful for Demers’s death, more ready to help him die, than Father Donald Carleson.

  If Carleson did not murder Demers, then who?

  Koesler almost felt like taking another shower.

  If Carleson didn’t do it, then whoever did do it, did it either out of mercy or—? A moment’s thought turned Koesler’s mind from a mercy killing. That would’ve been Carleson’s motive. But no other priest—at least none that Koesler was aware of—had such a motive. And if it had been one of the hospital personnel, it wasn’t likely such a person would masquerade as a priest. It would be far easier for a member of the hospital staff to walk around freely in his or her own uniform.

  But suppose someone wanted to frame Carleson?

  Why would anyone want to do that?

  The obvious reason would be to cause precisely what had happened: a fresh start on the prosecution of the first case. The creation of a new image of the accused. Now, not a holy priest to whom any hint of violence was utterly foreign. Now, a not-quite-balanced individual who was capable of even murder in order to resolve a problem. If Herbert Demers was lingering too long—kill him. If Bishop Diego was manipulating good people—the murderer among them—and harming them—then kill him.

  But who?

  Gradually, an image took shape in Koesler’s mind. The more he thought about it—! Still, it was no better than a wild guess. And, in any case, he didn’t have a shred of evidence.

  Ordinarily, Koesler would not have pressed on immediately—not in this unprepared, unorganized state. But he sensed that the longer he deferred action, the more difficult it would become to pursue this theory.

  “… so,” he concluded, “what do you think?”

  Koesler had phoned Lieutenant Tully. He had explained his theory as logically and chronologically as he could. Now he waited for the lieutenant’s response.

  “Interesting.”

  Damn, Koesler thought. Just what he had anticipated. “Is there anything you—I— we can do about it?”