THE DEAD SOUL: A Thriller

by M. William Phelps

  That and, of course, a power tool and a pair of pliers.

  “Don’t worry, Mary,” the mailman said aloud, looking at her limp body in the rearview mirror as it rolled around in the back, “you’ll make it to heaven.”

  22

  Monday, September 8, 2:11 P.M.

  Father John was in the confessional, waiting for a customer, the green light above the small room on. Jake made his way into the church through the double doors. Stopped, dipped in the font by the entrance to the nave, made the sign of the cross, and then questioned why, finally blaming it on habit. Father John heard him, came out, and patted the wooden pew in front of them.

  “Sit down. Thanks for finding the time to come by, Jake. Can I offer you absolution today, I’m running a special?”

  They laughed. “I’ll pass, Father. Listen, about our conversation a few weeks ago—”

  “Forget it. Faith is something we all need to keep working on.”

  “You know me. I question everything.” Jake wanted off the subject. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  “Well, as I said, it’s Patrick O’Keefe. I’m worried about him.”

  They whispered as loud as they could. Being quiet in a Roman Catholic Church, Father John had instilled in Jake years ago, was a form of prayer in itself. The stained-glass window over Jake’s back cast a starburst glow down the seat portion of the pew. Brightened up the tile floor. Jake appreciated the rainbow of colors. How they melded together. The room smelled of frankincense incense, bringing back too many memories for Jake to unravel.

  “In what way, Father?”

  “Threats. I’m getting these calls. You’ve been involved with this evil murder case.”

  “Yep.”

  The priest sensed despair on Jake’s face, in his voice. Jake needed to catch this nut. It was beginning to fester inside him.

  “Let’s walk.” Father John stood.

  Jake dropped his head. It was hard to hide things from Father. Always had been.

  “Unhappy, Jake? You have this aura about you, I don’t know—an ambiguity.”

  “Who’s happy, Father? Everyone is thinking about living another life, right.”

  “Indeed. Very few live in the moment.”

  “But that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Right. I understand how much you have on your plate.” Father John knew this was Jake’s first murder case since that little girl. “How’s your father?”

  “Dad is fine, Father. Now, what am I doing here? Did my mother call you?”

  “Jake, try not to allow the past to write your future. The little girl is in heaven. Forgive yourself. You’ll drown in all that self-pity. It’ll smother you.”

  There was more to this, Jake now understood. He had been conned into a talk with his parish priest. Jake’s father, drunk from Alzheimer’s, had wandered off from his Arizona home in the old people’s community and disappeared the day before. Mrs. Cooper had called Father John and told him not to bother Jake with it. He was too busy. But Father knew better, so he let Dawn know.

  Desert Winds Police eventually found Mr. Cooper strolling through the aisles of the local Publix supermarket. He was standing near the shelves of soda, mumbling facts and figures about Sprite, Fanta Grape and Orange Crush, which he had spent his life selling.

  Jake was upset with his mother for not including him.

  “She meant well, I know.”

  “She’s human, Jake. Human beings will let you down. Your father lost a child. He didn’t know how to face that. He found healing—in some strange way—in numbing that unbearable pain. I see it everyday in this neighborhood. You know that.”

  “I need to catch this psycho, Father. For more reasons than you know. It’s not about my father.”

  “Don’t lose faith in yourself—dare I say it, Jake, the way you did in your father.”

  Jake shook his head. Could he argue with the priest?

  “I had you come here for several reasons. I need to show you something.” Father John knew it would cheer Jake up. “Been working on this for a while.”

  “How are things here? What about those threats, Father?”

  “Okay. Always in need of more help and money, of course, but we’re surviving. More than I can say for some of my fellow priests.”

  “And those calls? The deacon?”

  “Ah, a few calls here and there. Idle threats all the parishes receive. I will say, though, this week I’ve gotten more than the usual. They seem to be centered on Deacon O’Keefe for some reason.”

  Jake followed the priest, who moved quite sluggishly. They walked down into the basement hall where the church held its post-mass socials and dances. There was a stage. Folding chairs and craft tables. A coat room. Men’s and women’s restrooms. The salt-and-pepper checkerboard tile on the floor was sixty years old and looked it. Along the wall were dozens of what appeared to be class photos. Some in color. Others black and white.

  Jake didn’t recall seeing them before. But then, it had been three years since he’d stepped foot in this part of the church.

  “You ought to come for coffee after Mass more often, Jake.”

  They reached the north wall of the room.

  When they stopped, Father John, one hand in the front pocket of his black pants, the other holding the right ear piece of his glasses in his mouth, pointed with a wink at the wall. “That’s every class we’ve ever had here.” There was sense of appreciation in his voice. It was as if the hundreds of kids were his own children. “Just finished gathering all of the photos. Took me forever.”

  Jake scanned the images. What memories. Here was an eclectic mix of Irish-Catholic kids from Southie. Many were dead. Suicides. Overdoses. Drive-bys. Stabbings. More were in prison. The boys wore the Roman-style cassocks with the white surplice. As the years passed, the Church introduced a white linen collar with a large black satin bow. The type Jake had worn.

  “All of you added your own bit of grace to this parish over the years. You should feel good about that, Jake.”

  There were fourteen boys in Jake’s class. The photo was of their final year as servers. They stood on a stage, lined up from shortest in front, tallest in back. Most smiled, their crooked teeth from being on Welfare clear. The two boys bookending the rest of the class held beautiful bouquets of vanilla-colored flowers with purple diamond-shaped petals.

  “I don’t even remember taking this.” Jake had a tough time taking his eyes off the photo. He perused the names. “Haven’t thought about most of these kids in years.” He laughed under his breath, more to himself. “I’ve actually arrested a few of them.”

  Like Jake, many of these kids chose being an altar server over getting beat up everyday in the projects they came from. It was a way to stay off the street. The Coopers were not poor by any means, but that just made life worse for Casey and Jake.

  Father John said, “I think about how much I wanted Casey to be in one of these photos. But I searched and searched and could not find one.”

  They both went silent. Whenever someone mentioned his brother’s name, Jake got those butterflies in his gut.

  Jake was fixated on his class photo, probably running through a host of recollections. Some good, others not so good. There he was—the little Catholic soldier, standing tall, proud to be a part of God’s army.

  “Boy, Father, I was a nerdy kid.”

  Father John was in his own world. “Evil has insinuated itself into our lives and the Church,” he finally said. “I think people forget that. The press certainly does. I don’t need to tell you this. You see it every day.”

  Jake looked at the priest. Here we go, he told himself, Father John stepping up on his soapbox. Then focused on one boy who caught his attention. Black hair. Braces. Large, mousy buck teeth. Skinny and gaunt as a scarecrow. Something about the kid rubbed Jake the wrong way. Who the hell is that?

  “We’re involved in a cursed period of humanity, Jake”—Jake studied the boy, not really listening to Father—“and b
abies still come out of the womb sinless, their pink little bodies and cherub nature inherently established by God. Faultless, Jake. But give them a few years, and they’re assaulting His name. Why? Because we’ve taught ’em to.”

  “Society stirs up the flames, Father. We all make choices. You know the old argument—not every child that’s abused abuses.”

  Who is that kid? Jake knew him.

  “Sociology is supposed to solve all our problems, or so we’re told. But in the end we realize that’s nothing but wretched ignorance on our part. The realism here is, we are sinners. We breed sinners. And all of us—including you and me, Jake—need to grow in moral goodness every day of our lives.”

  The overhead air duct fan kicked on. It made a loud intake sound, as if a fire had found an oxygen source in the form of an open door.

  Whoosh!

  Jake turned to Father John. “You’ve been reading. Sounds like a Harvard way of saying we have free will.” As he said it, Jake thought of Mo—that little “favor” Mo had asked Jake to do. Mo wasn’t going to let up. There was a conversation he had with Mo earlier that morning in the squad room. Every talk was now an argument. “I pulled you out of the ghetto, Jake,” Mo shouted. “You seem to forget that so easily. I made you. You were a junkie. A numbers runner. Afraid of your own shadow. Always looking at the worst of things.” Most of it was untrue, Mo hoping the boys in the squad room would hear him. “Why don’t you go run to your priest friend. You’re still a punk. You let some stupid case, one little dead girl, destroy you. And you thought you could run with those Southie boys? Shit. You’re lucky I plucked you out of there—they would have eaten you. You’re a cop because I allowed you to become a cop.”

  That face. The kid. His dark eyes stared back at Jake.

  “I’ve been praying, Jake. We don’t trust a priest because he’s a priest. We trust a priest because he’s holy.”

  “Kids see a uniform—cop, fireman, security guard, soldier—and they trust what the uniform represents. A priest in vestments is about the most sacred uniform a human being can wear. Come over here, Father. I need you to look at something.”

  “I’m not making excuses here, Jake.” Father walked toward the row of photographs. “Don’t get me wrong. If we do everything naturally, we become barbarian perverts—all of us. Cruelty, lies, injustice. All that comes ‘naturally’ to many of us. Don’t forget that.”

  “Like this animal I’m looking for, you mean? And those Satanic priests touching kids.” Jake had left the Church during the sex abuse scandal. He couldn’t investigate priests and then take Communion from their friends.

  “Exactly. But he is a child of God, too. As are those fractured clergy.”

  Jake laughed. “Please. He is a child of Satan—same as those priests.” Jake tapped on the face of the boy in the picture. “Who is that, Father?”

  “To resist evil inclinations of nature takes discipline, Jake. You know that.” Father John leaned in to get a closer look. “It takes fervent prayer. We need a Divine Presence in our lives. This man you’re looking for didn’t have that. I’m sure of it. I’ll have to go to my list about the photo—I don’t recognize the boy.

  23

  Monday, September 8, 5:42 P.M.

  A Grand Pause in a musical score is a break, strategically placed in the middle of an unfolding drama. It is there to fool the listener into believing that something bigger is imminent. Getting Mary O’Keefe onto his 32-foot fiberglass Trojan fishing boat, The Grand Pause, turned out to be trickier than expected. The dockside was bustling with people. Probably the weather. It was a pleasant, warm night. One of the last few of the boating season. The whole belly clam shacks were open. The dockside tiki bars still allowed patrons to sit outside by the water. The harbor actually had a fresh smell to it. No dead fish or diesel fuel smog soiling the air.

  The mailman had a stiletto switchblade with a pearl handle poked into Mary’s back underneath her shirt. He whispered threats into her ear with his hot breath—something about gutting her father and returning with his liver for Mary to eat raw. It was enough to keep the deacon’s daughter tamely walking by his side, groggy as she still was from being knocked out.

  People looked. But the mailman and Mary appeared to be lovers, gently embraced, a little buzzed, heading off on a beautiful late-summer evening boat ride.

  Beyond Boston Harbor, out in the open waves of the Atlantic Ocean, Mary O’Keefe drifted in and out of consciousness. The after-effects of the chloroform gave her a terrible migraine and she started vomiting.

  “You’re cleaning that up,” he shouted into the wind, steering the boat. “Not me. That is friggin’ gross.”

  On her knees, trying to keep her balance, Mary wiped her chin with her forearm. Every once in a while, she turned and looked up at her kidnapper.

  “Pathetic, Mary. You’re just a piece of flesh.”

  It took almost two hours to get to the destination he liked. No one was around for miles in any direction, just the open seas. Mary could scream until her vocal cords tore into raw nerve endings.

  “I hate to have to sacrifice you, Mary O’Keefe.” The mailman maneuvered the boat to face the east, stalled the engines. He had a tongue-in-cheek tone to his voice, patronizing Mary. “But your father did so many terrible things that I don’t know where to even begin to illuminate you on the facts. You do deserve an explanation. I understand this part of it. But I am the one in control of this ship”—he laughed at his stupid joke—“and I do not feel the need to give you one.”

  6:12 P.M.

  They were anchored in an area outside Boston Harbor where you could look in all directions and not see land. By now, Mary O’Keefe had accepted her fate. This madness was somehow God’s plan, she figured. Her destiny. Her cross. Yet as insane as it seemed to die by the hand of this maniac, Mary had found her vocation. The truth was, as Mary sat in adoration earlier that morning, she hadn’t told anyone, but she’d made a decision. Heading north, as her father announced to the parish without telling her, was not what Mary wanted to do with her life after all. It was her father’s idea. His dream. Mary wanted to concentrate on acting school and travel with the theater. She believed Christ saved the world and repenting was one way to enter into the Kingdom. But she didn’t want to devote her life to the cloth like her miserable father. He was a fraud. She did not want any part of being a liar. When she was bedridden sick for a few months one time, the deacon made Mary feel as if she was some sort of burden. An invalid taking up his time and wasting his money. The things he had said to her when she asked for something. Now she hated him for it; and yet, at the same time, had forgiven the man.

  6:44 P.M.

  As the mailman scanned the outer waters of Cape Cod Bay with binoculars to make sure no one was around, he spoke to an unresponsive Mary O’Keefe. She was lying on the deck of the boat in back of him, one arm over her forehead, the other on her stomach.

  “You see, Mary, for the same reason that there is good and evil in this world and people question ‘God’s plan,’ there is really no rhyme or reason as to why I chose to kill you. Some might say I am taking revenge on your father. And that may very well be true. But it is a subjective opinion.” He wiped his brow as the wind kicked up and white caps crested on the swells. It got much colder as the sun set beyond the horizon. “To sum it up, Mary, you are, simply, the chosen one.”

  Still nursing her queasy stomach, Mary acted as though she was drifting in and out,. While trying to gain her composure. The mailman walked over, grabbed Mary by the back of the head. Looked into her eyes. Studied her for a moment. There was no reason, he deduced, to tie up this pathetic woman. Her being seasick and still suffering from the effects of being knocked out was a sufficient enough prison for the time being.

  Mary remained silent. A moan here, a deep breath and gag in her throat there.

  The mailman’s sonar told him the ocean floor was 350 feet below the boat. The swells calmed. If they were lucky, the mailman considered, standing
on the deck, looking out at the rising moon, a humpback might surface and take a breath, put on a show.

  “Incredible animals, Mary. The sheer grace. You can understand grace, can’t you, Mary?”

  He turned his back to his victim, walked over and took his murder kit out of a padlocked storage bin below the steering column. He set the thing on the seat and unfolded the knife set from a rolled-up pouch in which a barber might keep an inventory of scissors. One finger on his lips, he stared at the serrated knife.

  Well, what do we have here …

  While lost in his own selfish satisfaction, a loud splash came from the stern of the boat.

  Startled by the noise, he turned. It sounded as if someone tossed something overboard.

  “Mary?”

  She was gone.

  24

  Monday, September 8, 6:49 P.M.

  Seeing that photograph in the church rec hall had set the wheels spinning for Jake. An idea sent him off and running. He called home, told Dawn to eat dinner without him. He needed to go see an old friend.

  “Sure, babe. I’ll make a plate and put in the fridge. You want me to wait up?”

  “No. Sorry, honey.”

  “I love you.”

  “Me, too.”

  Lots of couples used the phrase. But what did it mean—me too?

  Dawn could sense that Jake was focused. Once he set his mind on something, that was it, there was no stopping the guy.

  As Jake started for home from St. Paul’s, it had hit him. He recognized the kid in the photo as Joe “Bags” Cane, a three-time Southie loser who Jake had arrested for all sorts of crimes. Robbery. Bookmaking. Crack dealing. You name it. Cane had even once started a pyramid scheme and ran it out of Old Colony Project. Jake had grown up with Cane. They hung around the church together as kids, trying to stay out of trouble. And yet it was a double homicide Cane got involved in that Jake thought about as he went in search of his old buddy.