God's Spy

by Juan Gomez-jurado

  “And? So tell us, if you’re so clever, who and where the son of a bitch is who did what you see here to a cardinal in the Holy Mother Church, so that we can all go home to bed.”

  The priest did not react, as unflappable as his starched collar. Paola suspected the man was simply too hardened to fall for Pontiero’s little act. There was no doubt life had sown terrible trials in the creases on his skin, or that his eyes had confronted worse things than a small-time cop and his smelly tobacco.

  “Enough, Maurizio. And kill the cigarette.”

  Pontiero threw the butt away. He was pissed.

  “As you like, Padre Fowler,” Paola said as she shuffled the photographs on the table, her eyes bearing down on the priest. “You’ve made it clear to me that, for now, you’re in charge. You know something I don’t, something I need to know. But you’re in my neck of the woods, on my turf. It’s up to you to say how this turns out.”

  “What do you say to starting off with a profile?”

  “Can I ask you why?”

  “Because in this case there’s no need to create a profile in order to know who the killer is. I can tell you that. In this case we need a profile in order to know where to find him. And those are two different things.”

  “Is this an exam, Padre? Do you want to know exactly how good the person sitting across from you is? Are you going to be the judge of my deductive capacities, just like Troi?”

  “I think that at this moment the only person judging you is you yourself.”

  Paola took a deep breath and mustered every bit of self-control to keep from shouting. Fowler had put his finger right in the wound. And just when she thought she was about to lose it, her boss showed up in the doorway. He stayed there without moving, carefully studying the priest, who looked back at him equally intently. Several seconds later, the two greeted each other with nods of the head.

  “Padre Fowler.”

  “Direttore Troi.”

  “They let me know about your arrival by, shall we say, an unfamiliar channel. It goes without saying your presence here is an imposition, but I recognize that you can be of some use to us, if my sources are accurate.”

  “They are.”

  “Then please keep going.”

  From earliest childhood Paola had had the discomforting sensation she had arrived late to a world already under way, and at that instant the feeling returned. She was fed up with the fact that everyone there knew things she did not. She could ask Troi for an explanation when she got the chance later, but right now she decided to turn things to her advantage.

  “Padre Fowler here has told Pontiero and myself that he knows the identity of the killer, but it seems he wants a free psychological profile before he reveals his name. It’s my personal opinion that we’re losing precious time, but I’ve decided to play along with his game.”

  She leapt to her feet, which staggered the three men who were watching her. She walked over to the blackboard that took up almost all of the back of the room and started to write.

  “The killer is a white male, between the ages of thirty-eight and forty-six. He is of medium height, with a strong body, intelligent. His studies took him as far as the university, and he’s gifted with languages. He is left-handed, he received a strict religious education, and he endured difficulties or abuse in his early life. He’s immature, his work subjects him to pressure over and above his affective and psychological stability, and he suffers from an intense sexual repression. He most likely has a history of considerable violence. This isn’t the first or even second time he has killed someone, and, obviously, it won’t be the last. He thinks very, very little of us, the police, as much he does of as any of his victims. And now, Padre, why don’t you give your killer a name?” Dicanti spun around and tossed the chalk into the priest’s hands.

  She glanced at her audience. Fowler watched her, a look of surprise on his face; Pontiero beamed; Troi remained the skeptic. Finally it was the priest who spoke up.

  “Well done, Dottoressa. Ten out of ten. I may be a psychologist, but I can’t figure out how you came to your conclusions. Could you explain a little further?”

  “The profile is only provisional, but the conclusions should be somewhat close to reality. That he is a white male is shown by the profile of his victims, since it’s very unusual for a serial killer to kill someone from a different race. That he’s of medium height, since Robayra was tall and the angle and location of the cut in his neck indicate that someone about five feet nine inches tall took him by surprise. That he’s strong is obvious; otherwise it would have been impossible for him to get the cardinal as far as the interior of the church, because even if he used a car to transport the body to the door, around back there is still a distance of some one hundred and thirty feet to the chapel. His immaturity is directly proportional to the thrill killer type: he has a profound disrespect for his victim, considers him an object; the same goes for the police: he considers them inferior beings.”

  Fowler interrupted her by politely raising his hand.

  “Two details in particular grabbed my attention. First, you said that it’s not the first time he committed murder. Did you deduce that from the involved handiwork at the scene of the crime?”

  “Exactly. This person possesses a basic familiarity with police work. He’s carried this off on more than one occasion. Experience tells me that the first time is very messy and spur of the moment.”

  “The second was when you said, ‘His work subjects him to pressure over and above his affective and psychological stability.’ I’m at a loss to explain how you came to that conclusion.”

  Dicanti, still standing, blushed. She crossed her arms and gave no answer. Troi took the opportunity to intervene.

  “Ah, good old Paola. Her great intelligence always leaves a small crack for her feminine intuition to slip in, isn’t that so? At times Dicanti arrives at purely emotional conclusions, Padre. I have no idea how. Of course, she would have a great future as a writer.”

  “More than you know. Because she hit the bull’s-eye,” said Fowler, getting up from his chair at last and striding toward the blackboard. “Ispettore, what is the correct name for your profession? Profiler, isn’t that it?”

  “Yes,” Paola said, still embarrassed.

  “When did you receive your degree as a profiler?”

  “Once I had finished the course in Forensic Criminology and after a year of intensive studies at the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Division. Very few candidates manage to pass the entire course.”

  “Can you tell us how many qualified profilers exist in the world?”

  “At present, twenty. Twelve in the United States, four in Canada, two in Germany, one in Italy, and one in Austria.”

  “Thanks. Is everyone clear on that, gentlemen? Only twenty people in the world are capable of drawing a psychological portrait of a serial killer with any kind of certainty, and one of them is in this room. And believe me, if we want to catch this man. . . .”

  Fowler turned around and wrote a name on the blackboard in a large hand, with firm, thick letters:

  “. . . We are going to need someone capable of getting into his head.

  “Now you have the name you asked me for. But before you race to the phone to bark out orders for his arrest, give me a chance to tell you everything else I know about him.”

  CORRESPONDENCE FROM EDWARD DRESSLER, PSYCHIATRIST TO CARDINAL FRANCIS CASEY

  [Excerpts]

  Boston

  May 14, 1991

  [. . .] Your Eminence, we no doubt find ourselves in the presence of a born recidivist. From what I am told, this is the fifth time he has been reassigned to a new parish. The tests we carried out over the course of two weeks confirm that we cannot take the risk of sending him to live in close proximity to young children without putting them in danger. [. . .] By no means do I doubt his desire to repent, because it is strong. But I doubt his ability to control himself. [. . .] We cannot permit ourselves the luxury of having him
in a parish. It would be better if we clipped his wings before he loses all control. Otherwise, I cannot hold myself responsible. I recommend a period of internment of at least six months in the Saint Matthew Institute.

  Boston

  August 4, 1993

  [. . .] I have tried for the third time with him [Karosky]. [. . .] I have to say that the “fresh air” as you called it, when you moved him from parish to parish, has not helped at all; rather the opposite. He is beginning to lose control with greater frequency, and I detect strains of schizophrenia in his behavior. It is very possible that at some moment he will completely cross the line and become another person. Eminence, you know my devotion to the Church, and I understand the present overwhelming lack of priests but to lower the bar so very close to the ground! [. . .] 35 of these men have passed through my hands so far, Eminence, and I have seen, in some of them, the possibility that they might recover their autonomy [. . .] Karosky is definitely not one of those. Cardinal, only on rare occasions has Your Eminence followed my advice. I beg you to do so now: persuade Karosky to enter Saint Matthew’s.

  UACV HEADQUARTERS

  Via Lamarmora, 3 Wednesday, April 6, 2005, 12:03 A.M.

  Paola sat down, bracing herself to listen to what Fowler was going to say.

  “1995 was when it all began, for me anyway. At that time, after I’d retired from the Air Force, I worked under the direction of my bishop. He wanted to make use of my training in psychology to send me to the Saint Matthew Institute. Anybody heard of it?”

  All three answered in the negative.

  “I’m not surprised. The very existence of the institution is a secret to a majority of the informed public in North America. It officially consists of a residence center set up to attend to priests and nuns with ‘problems,’ located in Sachem Pike, Maryland. The reality is that ninety-five percent of its patients have a history of sexual abuse of minors or problems with the consumption of drugs. The Institute’s facilities are without question luxurious: thirty-five rooms for the patients, nine for the medical personnel (nearly all interns), a tennis court, two paddleball courts, a pool, recreation room with billiard table . . .”

  “Sounds more like a health resort than a psychiatric institution,” Pontiero interjected.

  “Well, the place is a mystery on many levels. It is a mystery to the outside world and a mystery to those who live there, who at first see it as a place where they can retire for several months, where they can rest, although little by little they discover that it is something very different. All of you know the enormous problem the Church in my country has had with certain Catholic priests over the last few years. From the point of view of public opinion, it wouldn’t be well received that persons who have been accused of sexual abuse with minors were celebrating paid vacations in a luxury hotel.”

  “And they were getting away with it?” asked Pontiero, who seemed very affected by the subject, perhaps on account of his two children, both of them teenagers.

  “No. I’ll try to recount my experience there in the most succinct form possible. Upon my arrival I found a profoundly secular place. It didn’t look like a religious institution: no crucifixes on the wall, none of the members of the various orders wore habits or robes. I’ve spent many nights in the open air, on an expedition or at the front, and I never took my clerical collar off. But everyone there came and went just as they pleased. Faith and self-control were obviously in short supply.”

  “And you never communicated this to anyone?” Dicanti asked.

  “Of course. The first thing I did was to write a letter to the bishop responsible for that parish. He accused me of being too influenced by my time in the armed forces, by the ‘rigidity of the military atmosphere.’ He advised me to be more ‘adaptable.’ Those were tricky times for me; my career in the Air Force was a roller-coaster ride. I have no intention of getting into that; it has nothing to do with the case at hand. I’ll just say that I had no desire to add to my reputation for being intransigent.”

  “You don’t have to justify yourself.”

  “I know, but I’ve got a bad conscience about what happened there. They cured neither minds nor souls in that institution; they simply gave their patients a little push in the direction of least resistance. What took place there was exactly the opposite of what the diocese hoped would happen.”

  “I don’t follow,” said Pontiero.

  “Nor do I,” Troi chimed in.

  “It’s complicated. To begin with, the only psychiatrist with a university degree on staff at the center was Father Conroy, at that time the Institute’s director. None of the others had graduate university training beyond nursing school or a technical degree. And they were allowed the luxury of making psychiatric evaluations!”

  “Insane.” Dicanti was amazed.

  “Completely. The one endorsement you had to have to get hired was to belong to Dignity, an organization which promotes the priesthood for women and sexual freedom for male priests. I personally do not agree with them about anything, but . . . it’s not my place to judge. What I can do is make some estimate of the professional capacity of the personnel, and that was very, very wanting.”

  “I don’t see where all this is taking us,” Pontiero said, lighting another cigarette.

  “Five minutes more and you will. As I was saying, Father Conroy, a great friend of Dignity and very liberal when it came to people’s inner life, managed Saint Matthew in a completely erratic manner. Honest priests arrived there, men confronted with baseless accusations, and thanks to Conroy they relinquished the priesthood that had been the light of their lives. Others he urged not to struggle against their nature but to simply live life. He considered it a success when a religious person gave up his or her vows and began a homosexual relationship.”

  “And you see that as a problem?” asked Dicanti.

  “No, not if the person really wants it or needs it. But the patients’ needs didn’t matter to Conroy in the slightest. First, he established his objective and then he applied it to the person, without any prior knowledge of him or her at all. He played God with the hearts and minds of those men and women, some of them with terrible conflicts. And then he washed it all down with a fine single malt. Washed it down well.”

  “Good Lord,” said Pontiero, feigning being scandalized.

  “Take my word for it: He was not on the premises. But that was not the worst. Owing to grave errors in the selection of candidates, many young men in my country who were unfit to be the shepherds of men’s souls entered Catholic seminaries during the seventies and eighties. They weren’t even fit to take care of their own souls. It’s a fact. With time, many of these young men gave up the cloth. They did a great deal of damage to the good name of the Catholic Church and, what is worse, to many children and young men. Many priests accused of sexual abuse, guilty of sexual abuse, never went to jail. They disappeared from view; they were moved from parish to parish. And some of them finally ended up at Saint Matthew. Once there, and with a bit of luck, they were directed towards civilian life. Shamefully, many returned to the ministry when they should have been behind bars. Tell me, Dottoressa Dicanti, what sort of chances are there for the rehabilitation of a serial killer?”

  “Absolutely none at all. Once he crosses the line, there’s no way to bring him back.”

  “It’s the same for a compulsive pedophile. Sadly, the unambiguous certainty you possess does not exist in our field. They know that they have a monster within reach, someone who must be caught and caged. But it is much more difficult for the therapist who works with the pedophile to know if he has crossed the line for good or not. I know of only one case where I never had the slightest doubt. And that was a case where, beneath the pedophilia, there was something else.”

  “Let me guess: Victor Karosky. Our killer.”

  “The same.”

  Troi cleared his throat before interrupting. An irritating habit, which he repeated every so often.

  “Padre Fowler, would you be s
o kind as to explain to us why you are so sure that this is the man who has torn Robayra and Portini to pieces?”

  “Certainly. Karosky turned up at the Institute in August 1994. He had been moved around various parishes, with his superior shunting the problem from one place to the other. In every one of them there were complaints, some more serious than others, although none of an extremely violent nature. According to the testimony we collected, we believe he abused eighty-nine children in all, although the number could be higher.”

  “Fuck.”

  “You said it, Pontiero. Look, the root of Karosky’s problems is located in his childhood. He was born in Katowice, Poland, in 1961. There—”

  “Hold on, Padre. He is forty-four years old now?”

  “That is correct. He stands five feet eight and a half inches tall and weighs one hundred eighty-seven pounds. He has a strong build, and IQ testing reveals an intelligence between 110 and 125, depending on when he took the test. He took seven in all at the Institute. He found them entertaining.”

  “Pretty high IQ.”

  “You are a psychiatrist, while I studied psychology and was never an especially brilliant student. I encountered the most extreme psychopaths too late to read the subject’s bibliography. So tell me: is it true that serial killers are extremely intelligent?”

  Paola smiled, half-ironically, and glanced at Pontiero, who looked at her with the same expression.

  “I think that the detective here can respond more forcefully to the question.”

  “ ‘Hannibal Lecter does not exist and Jodie Foster should stick to costume dramas.’ Dicanti says it all the time.”

  Everyone laughed, not because the joke was funny but simply to let some of the tension out of the room.

  “Thanks, Pontiero. Padre, the popular figure of the super-psychopath is a myth fashioned from the novels and the movies. In real life, someone like that does not exist. There have been serial killers with high IQs and others with low IQs. The big difference between the two is that the ones with the high IQs tend to carry out their crimes over a longer period of time because they are more cautious. What without a doubt the academics all agree on is the serial killer’s great talent for killing people.”