“I’m here to see Monsignor Belducci,” I said.
“Is he expecting you?”
I showed her my ID.
She crossed herself and said, “It’s about Father Conlon. Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“The Father will be missed,” she said. “He was a blessed soul. I’m Sister Mary Margaret. Come with me. I’ll see if the Monsignor’s available.”
I followed her down a marble hallway until we stopped in front of a pair of double doors. A polished brass plate on the gloss mahogany door read: MONSIGNOR BELDUCCI, in bold black letters. She paused with her hand on the brass doorknob. “Wait here,” she said. Then she opened the door and disappeared inside. In less than a minute, the door opened again. “Go in,” she said. She stepped aside to let me pass, and then walked out, closing the door softly behind her.
The office was a large mahogany rectangle. A floor-to-ceiling window looked out onto a courtyard offering a view of a bubbling fountain centered atop a manicured patch of lawn and set amongst a group of statues of holy figures and brightly colored shrubberies. A brass chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling in front of a large mahogany desk and on a pedestal in a far corner, stood a three-foot-high statue of the Virgin Mary in pastel colors. On the wall behind the desk hung a brass crucifix and several framed documents and certificates, neatly arranged. I could see Belducci’s name in calligraphy on each one of them.
Monsignor Belducci was a big man, grossly overweight and well into his seventies, with a full head of white hair, flabby jowls, and a huge double chin, no doubt, the product of too much linguini and meatballs. Sitting there behind his desk in his black cassock robe and clerical collar, I couldn’t help thinking—at the risk of sacrilege—that he resembled “Jabba the Hut”. He looked up at me over the top of his reading glasses and said, “Come in, my son.” As I walked closer to the desk, I could smell his aftershave, “Old Spice,” I think. We shook hands. His grip was weak for a big man.
“I assume you’re the detective in charge.”
“I am,” I said. “Maxwell Graham, Homicide.”
“Please sit,” he said. He indicated for me to sit in one of the two leather upholstered chairs that were positioned obliquely in front of his desk. I sat. He removed his glasses, closed the folder he’d been reading, and leaned back in his chair, folding his hands comfortably over his ample belly.
“Ugly business,” he said. “I hope this thing can be resolved as expeditiously and discreetly as possible.”
“We’ll do our best,” I said.
“We will certainly cooperate in every way,” he said. “What is it you’d like to know?”
“Anything you can tell me about Father Conlon, anything that might be helpful? Anything at all that would make some sense out of why this would happen.”
The Monsignor leaned forward on his desk, emitted a small burp without excusing himself and said, “Father Conlon was a fine priest and a fine man. His work here has been exemplary and without reproach. He is loved by many and will be missed by many. That’s why none of this makes sense.”
“What about his recent personal life, outside the church?”
“The church was Father Conlon’s life. He spent his free time involved with youth organizations, local boys’ clubs, Boy Scouts of America, YMCA. He was a very giving person, which made him a great priest.”
“Can you tell me about yesterday morning when the Father was found?”
“I was asleep,” he said. “It was very early. I remember being awakened by the sound of my name being called. It was a loud high shrill voice and I remember the urgency in it. As I sat up in bed, my heart pounding, there came a rapping on my door. When I opened the door, young Crockett was waving his arms frantically and shouting that we needed to call the police. ‘Father Conlon is dead!’ he kept repeating. When I became cognizant enough to collect my thoughts, I hurried to the phone on my bedside table and dialed 911.”
“Was anyone else awakened?”
“I didn’t see anyone at the time. After Crockett calmed down a bit, we waited by the rectory door for the police to arrive. While we waited, he explained to me what he had seen. I wanted to enter the Father’s office to see for myself, but young Crockett said it would best if I didn’t.”
“What happened after the police arrived?”
“Crockett led them to Father Conlon’s office. Before long, more detectives and investigators arrived. I waited in the front vestibule, keeping out of the way, but remaining available. Chief of detectives…I think his name was, Riggs—”
“Chief Briggs,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said. “He asked us a few questions and said he would need official statements from us. He said someone would be around today. I guess that would be you?”
“Other than the police, did anyone else show up on the scene?”
“The havoc awoke Father Sidletski and Father Romano. Father Faynor showed up a while later. He was returning from his morning run.”
“How many priests reside here?”
“There have always been five including myself: Conlon, Sidletski, Romano, and Faynor. Each has his room on the second floor and an office on this floor. The kitchen and bath facilities are shared.”
“I’ll need a statement from each of them,” I said.
“You can arrange that with them.”
“I would also like to see Father Conlon’s room.”
“I’ll have Sister Mary Margaret show you the way.”
He picked up his phone, spoke softly into it and then hung up.
I stood up and removed my business card from my wallet, wrote my cell phone number on it and handed it to the Monsignor. “Thank you for your help,” I said. “If you need to reach me, that’s my number at the precinct and my cell number.”
He took the card without looking at it and placed it in the top drawer of his desk. As I turned to leave, he stopped me with: “There is one thing, detective. It may not be important, just a personal observation.”
“Everything’s important in a murder investigation,” I said.
“It seems to me; Father Conlon has been a bit out of sorts lately.”
“How so?”
“For the past month, he seemed to be somewhat less tolerant of things, easily agitated. I’m a good judge of character traits, as I’m sure you are, and I can tell when something weighs on a person’s mind enough to alter his demeanor.”
“Had the Father been ill lately?”
“I don’t think so, but perhaps I’m making too much of it. It may be of no consequence.”
I hadn’t seen Andy in almost a year, so I was unable to confirm or refute the Monsignor’s assessment. Andy had always had an even personality, and I was sure Belducci could have easily noticed any deviation from it. Andy was the kind of guy who always “had it together”. He knew exactly where he wanted to go and exactly how to get there, but he wasn’t a robot and just as susceptible to the gamut of human emotions as the rest of us. The Monsignor’s comments may have been nothing, but I made a mental note of it.
“Did you know Father Conlon well?”
I wasn’t expecting the question.
“Since I was a boy,” I said. “He was a big part of my life.”
He made the sign of the cross in the air in front of my face and said, “Then your loss is greater than ours. The Lord will bear your burden with you.”
He opened his top desk drawer and removed a metal key ring. I mentally counted at least a dozen keys on it of various sizes. He came around his desk, hooked his arm through mine and walked with me to the door.
“With the strength of God,” he said, “we’ll all get through this. I’ll be calling the family with words of comfort this morning, and this afternoon we will begin planning for the funeral mass. It will be held in the church. I’ll preside over the mass myself. The Father will then be interred in the church cemetery.”
When he opened the door, Sister Mary Margaret was waiting for me
in the hallway. The Monsignor selected a key from the ring and handed it to her.
“Sister Mary Margaret will show you to Father Conlon’s room,” he said.
He released my arm and said, “The Lord be with you.”
“And also, with you,” I said and walked out.
I hadn’t used that litany since my church-going days.
On our way up to Andy’s room, I questioned Sister Mary Margaret about the keys.
“Monsignor has access to every room in the rectory and church,” she said. “It’s something few people are aware of—security concerns.”
“And you’re one of the privileged few.”
She smiled. “He keeps the keys locked in his desk and always knows where they are or who has them; he’ll be expecting me to return them immediately.”
“Of course,” I said, “security concerns.”
***
Andy’s room was in disarray, which was something I hadn’t expected to see. He had always been neat and orderly, which was part of his “having it together” attitude. His bed was unmade and the small desk beneath the window was cluttered with papers and folders and books and a laptop that appeared to be in sleep mode. On the floor beside the bed lay a pair of pajamas and a pair of well-worn slippers. A bathrobe had been thrown hastily on the foot of the bed. There was a TV on a stand in one corner and a small bookcase beside that. On the wall above the bookcase were framed photographs of Andy’s parents and another of his sister Eileen. On the night table next to the bed there was an opened can of ginger ale and a bag of chips. Besides that lay a gold watch, a gold ring and a pair of reading glasses. The people from forensics hadn’t inspected the room yet, so I tried to be as careful as I could.
Using my fingernail, I lifted the lid of the laptop. The screen flickered on almost instantly showing me a travel website. There were scenic views of Arizona and the American southwest and a smaller window showing previously visited sites related to travel. Andy might have been planning a vacation. I closed the lid, and with the same fingernail pulled back the top drawer of the desk. Nothing unusual here: pens, pencils, elastic bands, paper clips and a package of sugarless chewing gum. I closed the drawer with my hip and moved to the night table. I pulled back the drawer and saw a box of Nyquil, a bottle of aspirin, a string of rosary beads and a paperback copy of The Shack. In the closet hung several vestments, and an assortment of lay clothes on plastic hangers. The dresser drawers held underwear, pajamas, and socks. I found nothing that indicated to me that Andy wasn’t leading a normal life, other than a degree of untidiness, which he’d probably acquired with age; hardly anything to criticize him for. The Monsignor said Andy had been, “out of sorts” but there was nothing here to corroborate that, other than some cold medicine. I left feeling satisfied that I’d found nothing untoward.
Chapter 4
When I got back to my desk, I called the switchboard at the rectory and got the phone numbers for Fathers Sidletski, Romano and Faynor. I wanted their insight into Andy’s behavior and their take on what happened the morning Andy was found. I phoned Father Faynor first, and he said he’d be glad to speak with me and would be available right after lunch.
As I hung up the phone, I saw the genial but indomitable face of my partner, Danny Nolan, moving toward me. He sat opposite me, flipped open his notepad and began to read:
“David William Crockett, age, twenty-six years, five feet ten, one hundred and sixty pounds, born in Michigan, the only child of David and Andrea Crockett. The family moved to Connecticut when he was six. He attended a tech school after high school to study carpentry. No military service. No criminal record, never married. He has eight hundred and fifty dollars in a Citibank savings account and two hundred in checking. No inordinate debt. His father died three years ago. His mother lives with his stepfather in their Connecticut home. He’s estranged from his mother, never approved of the man she married. After his father died, he moved out of the house, wandered around for a while, and then found his way to the New York metro area. He bounced around for a few years on various construction jobs until he took a steady job at the church as a handyman/custodian, which is his current residence. He’s been there for two years.”
He closed his notepad.
I sat back and took a deep breath. “You’re sure you didn’t leave anything out?”
“If I did, it’s not important.”
“So, you’re telling me, this guy’s clean?”
“As an altar boy—no pun intended.”
“How do you account for the work overalls and the screwdriver?” I said.
“I don’t,” he said, “too obvious. Being a carpenter doesn’t make him a killer, and he’s not the only one who wears overalls and has access to a screwdriver. There are service people that go in and out of that church almost daily.”
“True,” I said, “but someone once taught me to search places that are ‘excessively obvious’. There’s where you’re likely to find what you’re looking for.”
“What does that mean, ‘excessively obvious’?”
“It means you look in places that are right before your eyes, where you wouldn’t think to look because you believe it isn’t worth looking there. Often, you find what you’re looking for. It’s a theory that works.”
“Oh,” Danny said.
I wasn’t sure he got it.
I wrote the phone numbers for Father Sidletski and Romano on a piece of paper and asked Danny to conduct the interviews for me. He took the paper and said he would, then went to his desk and picked up his phone. His help would leave me enough time to interview Father Faynor this afternoon and get home in time to make the wake tonight.
I picked up the Daily News from the corner of my desk and opened it to the front page. The headlines blared of the murder at St. Trinity. The narrative was sketchy and the reporting a bit speculative, but this morning, all New Yorkers would learn the details of the atrocity that occurred there. I turned to the obituaries and confirmed when the wake and funeral mass would be. Interment would be in the church cemetery, just as Monsignor Belducci had promised. It was something I wasn’t looking forward to.
Father Faynor was a tall man and looked to be in his mid-fifties. His hair was dark without a speck of gray, parted to one side and long enough to cover the tops of his ears. His complexion was ruddy with chiseled features and when he smiled; his teeth shone bright white behind thin lips. He was dressed in jeans and a long sleeve flannel shirt.
We sat at a table in the rectory dining room bathed in the colors of stained-glass. He extended his hand, offering a delicate handshake.
“Thank you for seeing me, Father,” I said.
“Glad to help,” he said.
His voice was deep and monotone and without conviction.
“I won’t take up much of your time,” I said. “How long have you known Father Conlon?”
“He was here when I arrived, five years ago,” he said. “We hit it off right away. Andy was that kind of person.”
“So, you became friendly from the start?”
He smiled and said, “Well, it takes time for people to become close friends, even priests.”
“Then it would be safe for me to assume you knew him well enough to see any personality changes in him.”
“How do you mean?”
“His general demeanor or any change you might have noticed in his behavior, lately?”
“Andy kept an even personality,” he said. “If there were any changes, they would be easy to detect.”
“I take it that means you saw none?”
“Changes?”
“In the way, he acted.”
“No.”
“Can you tell me what you saw the morning the Father was found?”
He shifted his position in his chair, crossed his leg over his knee and thought for a moment before he said, “I was returning from my morning run when I spotted the police and medical people in front of the rectory.”
“What time would that have b
een?”
“After six, I always begin my run at 6:00 a.m. and it invariably takes me thirty minutes.”
“What did you do then?”
“I hurried up the steps and into the front vestibule. There were people everywhere in hurried confusion. I spotted Monsignor Belducci standing by the staircase with Father Romano and Father Sidletski. When I approached him, he told me what had happened. I was shocked beyond belief.”
“I assume you used the staircase to the front door to begin your morning jog?”
“Of course.”
“Then you passed Father Conlon’s office that morning?”
“Naturally.”
“Did you hear or see anything unusual?”
“It was very early,” he said. “Almost everyone was still asleep.”
Suddenly his face showed the concern of an afterthought, as he drew his eyebrows together and added, “That is, except for that Crockett.”
“The custodian.”
“Yes. I passed him on the stairs on my way out.”
“You mention his name with a hint of disdain,” I said.
He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward, and rested his elbows on the table.
“I don’t have anything personally against Crockett,” he said, “but the boy’s an enigma.”
“How’s so?”
“He’s a bit strange. Keeps to himself most of the time, show up when you least expect him to.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“He’s everywhere you look, in a dark corner of the church or emerging from the shadows of the rectory or suddenly from behind an opened door, and always at the strangest times.”
“Isn’t that his job; to be where he’s needed? He’s the custodian.”
Other Men's Sins Page 3
