Body Count

by William Kienzle

  It was Koesler’s turn to smile. “I was rooting for you–silently, but rooting anyway. In the beginning, I couldn’t refuse your request that I act as a sort of technical adviser. I’ve never begged off in the past. If I were to have just flat out turned you down, I was afraid that in itself would be suspicious. It might have led to a lot of questions, questions that could have had no answers.”

  “That is a distinct possibility,” Koznicki said.

  “So,” Koesler continued, “I decided I would help as much as I could without relying on anything at all from that confession. It was a very narrow boundary. I knew that going in, but I had no idea it would be as difficult as it proved. At one time, Lieutenant, I referred to Father Keating in the past tense–and you called me on it.”

  “I remember. But it seemed a natural slip, especially since Homicide was investigating.”

  “As long as you were asking for background information on the various characters–Keating and his associate priest–we were on neutral ground,” Koesler said.

  “Looking back on it,” Tully said, “you weren’t your usual self. You did seem to be holding back. But of course that’s hindsight.”

  “Well, I’d like to get in on it now,” Koesler said. “You are going to reopen the investigation, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” Koznicki said. “We have the murder of Guido Vespa to solve. And thanks to the information you have now given us, we will reopen the investigation regarding Father Keating. In all probability, whoever issued the contract to Vespa in turn murdered Vespa and will be sought for conspiracy in the death of Father Keating.”

  The two officers rose to leave. But before leaving, Tully said, “As far as getting back into this investigation, you’d better not count on that. You’ve got some recovering to do.”

  “But—”

  “Tell you what we’ll do,” Tully said. “We’ll try to keep you updated on our progress. We owe you that much.”

  “And,” Koznicki added, “it may seem quiet in this room. But outside, in the corridor, there are lots of newspeople who are champing at the bit to get to you. And they will as soon as the doctors give permission.”

  “What’s keeping them out there now?” Koesler asked.

  “I’ve got a couple of uniforms on duty,” Tully said. “And we’ll keep one, at least, on duty around the clock. Whoever killed Vespa may have wanted you dead too. May have thought when you fell he’d got you both. In that case, he might try to get at you again. As long as you’re in this room, we can provide protection. So take it easy. And by the time you’re released, we may have this thing wrapped up.”

  “The media,” Koesler said, “what should I tell them? Or what shouldn’t I tell them?”

  “Good question,” Tully said. They had not anticipated the confessional material. He looked to Koznicki. After a moment’s thought, the inspector spoke. “It would be better if you did not mention the confession. Perhaps you should state only that Vespa called last night and asked you to meet him. Say that he made mention of the contract and then someone you could not see fired the shots.

  “In other words, tell the truth, but not all the truth. There may never be a necessity to mention the false confession. It is enough that we know that you are not bound by the seal. It would cloud the matter if you had to explain this over and over again to the newspeople.”

  Koznicki then promised that he would return soon for a visit, and the two officers said goodbye. Koesler could hear the clamor in the hallway as the door opened and they left his room.

  The conversation had distracted Koesler from the pain. Now he was all too aware of it again. It was not as sharp as it had been. That was encouraging; he wanted to use the morphine as sparingly as possible.

  There were so many things to think about. He was certain his mind would be too occupied with ancillary questions to pay much attention to this dulled pain.

  His first thought was of Nick Dunn. Even so, Koesler considered it a belated reflection. After all, Dunn was in this as deeply as he. They had both been privy to the same confession. They had both been keeping the same secret. The difference was that Koesler had been shot and Dunn had not.

  Of course in the balance of things, Koesler had only been wounded, whereas Vespa had been killed.

  Vespa. Vespa and his simulated confession. I should have tumbled right off the bat … or at least lots earlier in this game. There was something rotten about this right from the start.

  The confessional stalls were clearly marked. A child could have told the difference between the side that allowed a face-to-face visit and the side that provided anonymity. Why had Vespa entered the open side? It guaranteed Koesler’s seeing and recognizing a penitent who, having announced that this was his first confession since childhood, would naturally choose the screen. But before he entered the screened-off side, he had to be seen so that Koesler would know whose secret he was keeping.

  Then why hadn’t he been able to quiet Vespa down? Why had Vespa insisted on talking so loudly? So loudly that he could easily be heard by anyone in the otherwise quiet church. Did he know the church was not empty? Did he know that Father Dunn was out there? No, how could Dunn have been there; he hadn’t known that Koesler had seen Vespa. He must’ve come in afterward. Or, had he … ? Was Vespa’s loud voice for Dunn’s benefit?

  So convenient that Dunn should arrive at just that crucial moment.

  What did Koesler know about Dunn anyway? Nothing official, that’s for sure. A letter from a Minneapolis priest requesting residence at St. Joe’s while studying at U of D Mercy. Was he really a priest from Minneapolis? Was he really a priest? Was he in on this somehow?

  The door opened. The media people were getting louder. The door had been opened by a police officer, probably the one guarding his door. “There’s a Father Dunn here to see you, Father.”

  So this is how it was going to work. Koesler had never before had a secretary who packed a gun. He felt safer. “Show Father Dunn in, by all means.”

  Again the babel in the corridor as the door was opened, the cop leaving, the priest entering.

  Nick Dunn was the soul of concern. How sincere was this concern? Had Dunn known all that was going to happen ahead of time? Was he as surprised as Guido Vespa when the contractor decided to end the deal with a gun?

  “How are you?” Dunn asked. “God,” he continued, without waiting for a reply, “what a shock! I was waiting up for you. I couldn’t figure out what was keeping you. Then the call from the hospital! I came right away. Do you remember: I gave you the Sacrament of the Sick. Do you remember?”

  If Dunn was in on this, it was an award-winning performance. “Now that you mention it,” Koesler said, “I do seem to recall your being here.”

  “They let me into the recovery room after they operated. You were unconscious. But I was here in this room with you afterward. Do you remember? I kept falling asleep. You told me to go home before I fell off the chair and hurt myself.”

  “I said that?”

  “Actually, you were kind of funny. At one time when you woke up and I was falling asleep, you said, ‘Can you not watch one hour with me?’”

  “I said that?”

  Dunn nodded.

  “Well, thanks for the vigil, anyway–even if I don’t remember it all that clearly.”

  “So how are you? How do you feel?”

  “I’ve been better–lots better. But speaking of home, how’s everything at the parish?”

  “Bob, you haven’t been gone that long. But don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything that needs taking care of. What the hell, I can stick around the rectory and take seriously that reading list the university handed out. Don’t worry, it’s not that big a deal. What’s the prognosis? How long’re you going to be here?”

  “Haven’t seen the doctor yet. But I’ve seen the police and I’ve got something very important to tell you.”

  Koesler related what Vespa had said about the nature of the confession they had both h
eard. The story was punctuated with “no kiddings” and “I’ll be damneds” from Dunn. All the while Koesler wondered how much of this was really news to him.

  Nick Dunn seemed to digest this new information as quickly as Koesler could dish it out. Dunn asked many questions regarding the simulated confession and proposed some theories to attempt to explain the weird incident. But no matter who proposed the hypothesis, Koesler or Dunn, it could be no more than speculation–at least on Koesler’s part. Was it an attempt at silencing Koesler–and Dunn–or was it Vespa’s invention, like the disproved double burial?

  “So,” Dunn concluded, “we were released from the seal by Vespa, only to be silenced again by the police.”

  “That’s the way it looks. And, speaking of an investigation, we never had one.”

  “What?”

  “Well, not an investigation as such, but any kind of check into your background.”

  “Huh?” Dunn appeared bewildered.

  “I don’t want to seem less than a gracious host … but what do I really know about you? Somebody sent me a letter from Minneapolis requesting residence while he studied at a local university. I never checked into it. Outside of your showing up here, I have no idea who you really are.”

  “Well, hell, you could always look me up in the Kennedy Directory, Bob.” A testy note crept into Dunn’s voice,

  “And what would I find?” Koesler too was getting irritable. “I would be surprised if I didn’t find a listing for a Nicholas Dunn assigned to a Golden Valley parish in the Minneapolis-St. Paul diocese.”

  Dunn spread his hands. “So?”

  “So how do I know that it’s you?”

  “Huh?”

  “If I were going to impersonate a priest, I sure as hell would make sure I picked a name and an identity that existed in the Catholic Directory. It wouldn’t make sense not to; it’s too easy to check.

  “And another thing,” Koesler continued, though Dunn made a futile attempt to say something, “when we first met on that Saturday afternoon, you made a number of mistakes.”

  “Mistakes? What—?”

  “You said you were my new associate. And you’re not, of course; you’re ‘in residence’ here. If you were an associate, you’d have faculties to function in this archdiocese and all you’d need would be my delegation. But we had to get you faculties.” Koesler’s attitude seemed to say he’d made a very telling point.

  “Bob,” Dunn was defensive, “I didn’t mean that in the technical canonical sense. I just meant that I was here not only just to live but to help out … to be your associate. I didn’t think you’d–besides,” he broke off, “that was a long time ago. What the hell are you getting at?”

  “And that’s not all …” A note of triumph crept into Koesler’s voice. “You said that the three main drags in Minneapolis were named after priests. That would be Marquette, Hennepin, and Nicolet. Well, Marquette and Hennepin were priests, but not Nicolet. He was a French explorer.” Another point scored.

  Dunn seemed genuinely embarrassed. “I knew Nicolet wasn’t a priest. It was just a slip of the tongue, nothing more. You can remember that conversation in such detail? My God, what a memory!”

  “And wasn’t it a convenient accident, such a coincidence, that you just happened to show up at the exact moment Guido Vespa was going to confession plenty loudly enough for you to hear everything he said? You didn’t arrive in church just a few moments earlier when Vespa entered the wrong side of the confessional and I saw him?”

  “You saw him? You knew who he was! I didn’t know that!”

  “Sure, you got there conveniently after he’d entered the other side of the confessional so you wouldn’t appear to know that I’d seen him. But you saw him when he left the confessional. So you could pretend you were the only one of us who knew who he was. That gave you a dominant role to play. You could recognize him in the picture in the paper the next morning. I couldn’t have shut you out of this case if I’d wanted to. And the paper … did you know in advance that his picture was going to run in the paper?”

  Dunn was reduced to just looking at Koesler. Dunn’s mouth hung open. Then, slowly, a smile began to form. Gradually, it became a grin. “I’ll be damned,” Dunn said, “you suspect me!” His head tossed. “I love it!”

  Dunn’s reaction served to push Koesler into a somewhat defensive posture. “Well …” he drew out the word, “a coincidence is a coincidence because there’s no rational explanation for remarkable similarities. Once you can build that missing explanation, the chance of coincidence begins to vanish. There were a whole bunch of coincidences surrounding your arrival. It’s only natural to try to shoot them down with a reasonable explanation.”

  “And you think,” Dunn was obviously beginning to enjoy this, “you think that I was in on this thing. That maybe I’m not who I seem to be. That maybe I’m not even a priest?”

  The ease with which Dunn was voicing what Koesler had merely implied was beginning to unnerve Koesler.

  “If what you suggest were true,” Dunn said, “what would I have to gain from all this?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea of what anybody had to gain from all this. As far as I know, the earlier part of Vespa’s story is true: John Keating piled up some astronomical gambling debts. I can believe that. That a contract was put out for his murder and that Vespa did the killing. That Vespa’s fake confession, to keep me out of the picture, was part of the contract. But there are other people in this case. And we don’t know who they are. Somebody put out the contract. Somebody shot Vespa and me because Vespa told me that the confession was a fake. Maybe the two ‘somebodies’ are the same person.

  “What I’m getting at is there’s room for lots more people in this case. Maybe all those coincidences were not really coincidences. In which case, you made your entrance at the perfect time to play a part in this matter. And if that is true, I don’t know what part you may be playing or what you have to gain. Only that your presence in this is more than a little suspicious.”

  Dunn was still smiling. Koesler wondered if Dunn was not underplaying all this too much. Where he might have reacted with anger, he was reacting with good humor. The latter was proving more effective. Was it all a very good act?

  “At this point,” said Dunn, “I could move out. But I don’t want to leave Detroit. I really want those courses at U of D. And especially with the priest shortage, I could get a residence in almost any parish. But one of the reasons I asked to stay with you is because I wanted to see how you operate, particularly when, as you put it, you get dragged into these police investigations.

  “Well, I’m getting a better picture than even I counted on.

  “So here’s what I’ll do: If you don’t want to throw me out right now, I’ll prove to your satisfaction that I am the real Father Nicholas Dunn from Minneapolis. And that I’m still in good standing with the diocese and the Church. Then, if you want to suspect that a real priest could get mixed up in this, I’ll do what I can to put your suspicions to rest.

  “How about it?”

  Koesler’s immediate thought was that a “real priest” was already mixed up in this–Jake Keating. But he didn’t mention that. Instead, he said, “Okay, let’s take it from there. You continue on at St. Joe’s. But I don’t think it’s asking too much for some documentation on your status.”

  “Done then. And no hard feelings?” Dunn extended his hand.

  Koesler became aware that he wasn’t going to be using his right hand for a while. He reached out his left hand. “No, no hard feelings. Sincere apologies if my suspicions prove groundless.”

  There was a perfunctory knock and a white-jacketed man entered the room. An identification card hung from his breast pocket; a stethoscope dangled from around his neck. There were introductions all around. Father Dunn then left, promising to see to the routine services at St. Joe’s until Koesler could resume his duties.

  “You’ve attracted quite a mob out there,” the doctor commented
.

  “The media people? I’m not looking forward to that.”

  “I’ll limit their time with you. Think you can go about fifteen minutes?”

  “Yeah, I think so. How bad is it … my shoulder, I mean?”

  The doctor shook his head and pursed his lips. He was a fine-looking specimen. His full head of salt-and-pepper hair was styled. His features seemed chiseled from impressive granite. From Koesler’s position in bed, the doctor seemed about seven feet tall. Probably he was a six-footer. He put Koesler in mind of God. Or, rather, someone who thought he was God.

  “The slug came out nicely,” the doctor said. “There wasn’t much I could do about the shoulder. The rotator cuff is, for all purposes, gone. There’s a hole like this,” he cupped his hands to form a large O. “I debrided it …”

  “You what?”

  “I … gave it a haircut. Cut away the damaged tissue. I made sure the bleeding was stopped, and closed you up. Want to see?”

  Koesler was about to pass on the show-and-tell portion of this program when the doctor folded the hospital gown away from the shoulder and with one fluid motion pulled the bandage away from the skin.

  Koesler was grateful he was not terribly hirsute. At least there was no hair pulled out by the roots. He turned his head to study the area. It was what was left of his shoulder as colorized by Ted Turner. There were glorious reds, purples, and oranges against a white background.

  He was surprised there did not appear to be any stitches. “I’m stapled!”

  The doctor chuckled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard them referred to as staples.”

  “What then?”

  “Clamps. But you’re just as correct; they’re staples. In a couple of weeks, I’ll take them out. Meanwhile, they’ll hold you together.”

  “What happens next? I don’t know how much use I’ve got of my arm. It’s strapped to my body.”

  “What comes next is you’ll start on physical therapy. They’ll move your arm. Then, little by little, you’ll move your arm. Then you’ll begin working with weights.”