Shadow of Death fk-5

by William X. Kienzle

  “You see, when Father Koesler returned to Dublin from that little village,” he turned to Koesler, “I can never recall its name—”

  “Gurteen,” Koesler supplied.

  “Yes. Well, he came to see me in the hospital and we arranged this little ruse. Even though you eventually made the identification of Licata, we went ahead with our plan, because, on the one hand, the prosecution can never have too much proof and, on the other, your identification linked Licata only with the assault on you. From that crime to the assaults against Father and myself, the connection becomes most tenuous. We needed something more concrete to prove he was responsible for the assaults against us as well. So, we acquired a secret warrant from Recorders Court Judge Lubienski,” he smiled as he added, “the Polish Connection.”

  “And they wired me,” Koesler interposed enthusiastically. Even after two months’ passage, he was still thrilled to have taken part in a procedure he had hitherto seen played out only in movies and on TV. “I carried a small transmitter in an otherwise empty cigarette pack in my shirt pocket and a recorder taped to the small of my back and a wire antenna wrapped around my body.” The priest was once more a kid playing cops ‘n’ robbers.

  “Was that not rather dangerous?” Toussaint persisted. “Did you not expect them to search you?”

  “We did indeed expect them to search Father—for weapons,” Koznicki responded. “Which is exactly what they did do. But we gambled that they would not find the sound equipment unless they were looking for it specifically.

  “And don’t forget: They knew he was heavily taped due to the bruises and muscle injuries suffered in that ‘accident’ in the Burren, so even if they had felt the taped area they undoubtedly would not have questioned it. Of course,” the Inspector grinned at Koesler, “they might have questioned what a man who had stopped smoking five years ago was doing with a half-empty pack of cigarettes in his pocket.”

  “Oh,” said Koesler jauntily, “I would have told them that current events had caused me to take up smoking again.”

  “Anyway, to get back to your question, Reverend. No sooner was Father admitted to Licata’s inner office than our men entered the waiting room. Remember, with the transmitter, they could hear Father’s side of the conversation as well as all that was said to him. At worst, if Licata’s men had found the sound equipment, our men would have entered the inner office at once and rescued Father. Of course, we would have lost Licata’s self-incriminating disclosure. But, we felt we had to take the chance, for at best—and for once we achieved the best—we would have on tape what, in effect, was Licata’s confession.

  “But I can assure you: At no time was Father in any real danger.”

  Koesler smiled at Toussaint. “Mother did not raise me for suicidal confrontations.”

  Toussaint nodded gravely . . . but there was a hint of a smile on his lips and in his eyes.

  “So,” Koznicki summed up, “with Licata’s being sentenced to ten years in an English prison; with the conviction of the Rastafarians responsible for the assaults and murders of the Cardinals; and with the abandonment of the assassination plot by what is left of this splinter group of Rastafarians, we were pretty well able to close the door on this very bizarre case.”

  “With one glaring exception, I believe, Inspector.” Toussaint spoke quietly but firmly. “Licata has been convicted of his attempted murder of me in England. But even with the additional evidence you gained, he has not been tried for his crimes against you and Bob.”

  “A very interesting point, Reverend. And a very interesting aspect of international law. We were not able to try Licata in the U.S. for crimes committed in another country. We were able to have him extradited to London only because of a treaty existing between the United Kingdom and the United States. There is no such treaty between the United States and the Republic of Ireland, so . . .” Koznicki’s voice trailed.

  “It’s the perfect crime, then, isn’t it?” Koesler’s voice held a bit of an edge. “To commit a crime in a foreign country to which the criminal cannot be extradited.”

  “I fear that is true,” said Koznicki. “Unless one can find a loophole. For example, in this case,” he smiled, “there is a treaty between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.”

  “So—” said Koesler.

  “So that when Licata has served his time in England, he can be extradited to Ireland to stand trial there. Ireland can and undoubtedly will request extradition at that time. Whether the request will be honored by the United Kingdom, we have no way of knowing . . . however, we have no reason to think it will not be.”

  “But if it were not?” asked Koesler.

  The Inspector shrugged.

  Emerenciana’s soft voice broke the silence. “Then suppose something were to happen.”

  “Something?” Koznicki felt the stirrings of a vague apprehension.

  “What if,” Emerenciana said quietly, “Mr. Licata completed his term of imprisonment in England, and Great Britain refused to extradite him to Ireland?”

  “Yes?” the Inspector prodded.

  “What if Mr. Licata were then discovered by the Garda in Ireland?”

  “Why, they would arrest him on the charge of attempted murder, of course.

  “But,” he added, “there is no way Licata would ever set foot in Ireland voluntarily. All he needs do is avoid Ireland and he will avoid a much longer jail term. A term which, added to his time in the English prison, would undoubtedly place him behind bars for most of the rest of his life.”

  “There is more than one way a person can travel in our world.” Emerenciana paused. “Not every trip is voluntary.”

  “A most interesting possibility,” commented Toussaint, whose face bore an interesting grin.

  The others looked at him with varying emotions.

  But all had to agree it was indeed a most interesting possibility.

  “Anyone for more tea?” inquired Father Koesler.

  Gratitude for technical advice to:

  DETROIT

  Sergeant Roy Awe, Homicide, Detroit Police Department

  Ramon Betanzos, Professor of Humanities, Wayne State University

  Margaret Cronyn, Editor, The Michigan Catholic

  Lucille Duquette, Promotion Department, WXYZ-TV

  Jim Grace, Detective, Kalamazoo Police Department

  Sister Bernadelle Grimm, R.S.M., Pastoral Care Department, Samaritan Health Center

  Timothy Kenny, Principal Trial Attorney, Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office

  Orlin D. Lucksted, Special Agent, F.B.I.

  Sergeant Daniel Mccarty, Homicide, Detroit Police Department

  Thomas Petinga, M.D., Director of Emergency, Mt. Carmel Mercy Hospital

  Rudy Reinhard, World Wide Travel Bureau Noreen Rooney, Editor, TV Listings, Detroit Free Press

  Andrea Solak, Assistant Prosecutor, Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office

  Neal Shine, Senior Managing Editor, Detroit Free Press

  ROME

  Kathleen McNamara Betanzos, Tour guide

  LONDON

  Richard Cohen, Divisional Director, Hodder & Stoughton

  IRELAND

  Sean Gallwey, Superintendent, Garda Siochana, Dublin Castle

  Thomas J. O’Reilly, Superintendent, Garda Siochana, Phoenix Park

  With special thanks to Chris and Mary Murray, Tom Murray, Gerald and Patricia Murray, Dom Murray, Eileen Keirns, Margaret Gallagher, Gertie McDonagh, R.N., Sean Tansey, and the people of Gurteen, County Sligo.

  Any technical error is the author’s.

  Shadow of Death copyright © 1983, 2012 by Gopits, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.

  Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC

  an Andrews McMeel Universal company,

  1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106

  This is a work of fiction and, as such, events descri
bed herein are creations of the author’s imagination. Any relation to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental and accidental.

  ISBN 978-1-4494-2362-9

  www.andrewsmcmeel.com

  William X. Kienzle died in December 2001. He was a Detroit parish priest for twenty years before leaving the priesthood. He began writing his popular mystery series after serving as an editor and director at the Center for Contemplative Studies at the University of Dallas.

  The Father Koesler Mysteries

  1. The Rosary Murders

  2. Death Wears a Red Hat

  3. Mind Over Murder

  4. Assault with Intent

  5. Shadow of Death

  6. Kill and Tell

  7. Sudden Death

  8. Deathbed

  9. Deadline for a Critic

  10. Marked for Murder

  11. Eminence

  12. Masquerade

  13. Chameleon

  14. Body Count

  15. Dead Wrong

  16. Bishop as Pawn

  17. Call No Man Father

  18. Requiem for Moses

  19. The Man Who Loved God

  20. The Greatest Evil

  21. No Greater Love

  22. Till Death

  23. The Sacrifice

  24. The Gathering

  Here is a special preview of

  Kill and Tell

  The Father Koesler Mysteries: Book 6

  1

  The fires of hell.

  Why did he invariably think of hell whenever he encountered fire? It didn’t matter whether it was a house afire, a fire under a pan on the stove, or a campfire. Always hell. It must be all those years in parochial schools and the good old Baltimore Catechism, he concluded.

  “Why,” the Catechism would ask, “did God make you?”

  “In order,” the Catechism would respond, “to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” And little Frankie Hoffman and all the other little Catholic kids would memorize not only the Catechism’s answers, but its questions also. It was only many years later, when Mr. Francis Hoffman became a junior executive in a major automotive company in Detroit, that he reidentified his personal goal in life: to become chairman of the board of his company—of The Company. And to do whatever might be necessary to get there.

  “We call this our ‘batch,’ Mr. Hoffman,” explained Amos Culpepper, the black manager of the glass plant. “It’s got all the ingredients used in making glass, plus a goodly amount of cullet—glass that’s discarded along the way in the process.”

  Hoffman stared at the grayish powder being almost imperceptibly pushed into a fiery furnace that was radiating enormous heat. “How hot is it in there?”

  “Oh,” Culpepper answered, “anywhere from 2,450 to 2,800 degrees.”

  Hoffman gave a low whistle. Once, he had forced himself, because he thought he had needed the discipline, to view a cremation. Till now, he had never experienced a similarly intense heat. If one approached the furnace too closely, the waves of heat were enough to literally take one’s breath away. “What would happen if you put a man’s body in there?”

  Culpepper chuckled. “Someday soon somebody would be looking out of a car through him.”

  Hoffman experienced a shudder. He had begun this day with an ominous feeling that had intensified as the day wore on. Breakfast had culminated in an argument with Emma, his wife. And it had not helped that for days he had been dreading this assignment given him by Charlie Chase, his immediate superior. He had complained to just about anyone who would listen about having to review the operation of The Company’s glass plant. He would get Chase for this. Oh, yes, he would.

  In the meantime, and for some inexplicable reason, the blast furnace was making Hoffman extremely nervous. He moved away from the batch and around to the side of the furnace where the heat was only slightly less intense. The considerable entourage that accompanied this VIP moved with him.

  “This is your first visit here, isn’t it?” Culpepper said.

  Hoffman nodded.

  “That’s why I’m taking you through our process step by step, right from the beginning.

  “Now, this area here is what we call the tin bath. The mixture is liquid now, and in this phase, it conforms to the perfectly smooth surface of the tin.”

  The heat, though less than that at the open furnace, was rapidly becoming unbearable. Hoffman led his entourage farther into the plant. “God, this is hot! When do you shut it down?”

  Culpepper shook his head. “Never.”

  “Never!”

  “Shut it down and the walls’d break up. Runs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Furnace lasts six, seven years; then we rebuild it.”

  It was Hoffman’s turn to shake his head. He was beginning to understand why the plant’s annual budget was in excess of $35 million.

  “Now,” said Culpepper, “this is where the glass is stretched and sized.”

  “What are those things? They look like anti-aircraft guns.”

  “They’re tweels. They’re the robots that stretch and size the glass. A good bit of our operation is automated. More every year. Imagine by the time I retire most everything’ll be done by robots.”

  In spite of himself, Hoffman was growing interested. Like many men, he easily became fascinated with machines that carried out automated functions. He could easily stand and watch by the hour as a machine carried out human, sometimes superhuman, tasks.

  He became aware of a marked drop in temperature.

  “Not as hot, is it?” Culpepper sensed his relief. “This is the annealing process. We relieve the stress on the glass by lowering the temperature gradually. The glass is cooling. But,” he added quickly, as he saw Hoffman approach the emerging thin, smooth glass, “you wouldn’t want to touch it yet. Still quite warm.”

  Hoffman, hands now inserted in trousers pockets to avoid further temptation, stepped away from the glass.

  A series of revolving cylinders conveyed the glass rapidly forward to a point where it was cut for the first time. The process was, again, automated. Two cutters, acting in tandem, were propelled alternately across the breadth of the glass. “Primary cutters,” said Culpepper. “Looks real simple, but actually they’re a little monument to engineering. Looks like they’re cutting on a bias. But what they’re actually doing is compensating for the movement of the glass through here.”

  Hoffman initially found the cutting process engaging. Once again, he was drawn by the automation. Now, informed of this special technological achievement, he became engrossed in the operation. Gradually, he became aware he was standing directly in the path of one of the cutters. As the razor-edged blade raced repeatedly across the glass’s surface, each time it stopped abruptly and automatically, only inches from his navel. He looked at Culpepper with a challenging grin.

  The manager correctly interpreted Hoffman’s smile. “Never fails. The blade’ll always stop at that precise point. Every bit of automated equipment we’ve got in the plant is monitored by fail-safe devices.” His smile exuded confidence.

  Maybe, thought Hoffman. But he wasn’t convinced. As fascinating as he invariably found automation, he also firmly believed nothing was fail-safe. As long as humans were involved, and the thing was made up of parts, and Murphy’s Law remained ubiquitous, machinery would find ways to fail.

  Hoffman could not identify what was making him edgy, but he could not deny the feeling. The incredible heat of the blast furnace; this automated cutter, which, were it to break loose from its arm, undoubtedly would kill him—everything seemed to contribute to his sense of nervous foreboding.

  The group moved along the production line.

  “These are the cord wood cutters,” Culpepper pointed. “Now the glass’s in rectangular shape. It’ll be cut one more time into the desired windshield size further on down the line. See? Some of the glass has already been broken or damaged. Well, these guys,” he indicated wo
rkers wearing heavy gloves and positioned on either side of the conveyor, “pull off all the spoiled glass and just let it drop down there, where another conveyor going in the opposite direction takes the glass back to the beginning where the cullet becomes part of the batch all over again.”

  The glass that survived all this cutting and jostling was carefully removed from the conveyor system by workmen, again heavily gloved, who stacked the glass in wooden brackets. The brackets were then manually loaded on dollies and transported to the next stage of the operation.

  “And here,” continued Culpepper, as the group reached a rather congested area, “is where the glass is shaped into the windshield.” Sensing Hoffman’s interest, Culpepper let the machines do the talking for a few minutes.

  Ingenious, thought Hoffman. Untouched by human hand. A robot with four arms extending from its control box, the arms bent downward where suction cups replaced hands . . . hands that picked up the bracket glass, a single pane at a time, then swung it to another machine. The robot then positioned the glass carefully and precisely on the table of another robot. The well-oiled “finger” of the second robot, armed with a glass cutter, traced the shape of a windshield on the glass. The outside rim fell off, and a perfect windshield would be delivered to the next worker in the chain.

  Yes, Hoffman had to agree, in time this entire operation might well be totally automated.

  “Like a mother picking up a baby,” commented Culpepper, having allowed time for Hoffman to become mesmerized by the robots. “Its sensors establish the limits of how far it moves the glass, and then it counts the pulses before laying the sucker down right on the exact spot. Amazing, ain’t it?”

  The two men were by no means alone in the fascination with the robots. The eyes of the entire entourage were riveted to the process.