Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 136, No. 5. Whole No. 831, November 2010

A Prayer Answered by David Dean

Real-life police chief David Dean has a new case for his fictional police chief Julian Hall. EQMM has been publishing Julian Hall stories for some twenty years, but Julian wasn’t always a police chief. Like his creator, he’s climbed the ranks of the Jersey shore force to which he belongs. This time Juian investigates alongside his priest, in a case that’s a test of faith. Mr. Dean is an EQMM Readers Award winner, a Derringer Award nominee, and, currently, for his EQMM story “Erin’s Journal.”

Father Gregory hastily parked the old black Buick a half-block from his destination, running it up onto the curb in the darkness. Driving was still a new experience for the priest and only recently learned. In his native India, his diocese had been far too poor to afford such luxuries as automobiles and, he thought with a sigh, he had been much thinner in those days as a result. With a grunt, he slid out of the tilted vehicle. In one hand, he clutched the valise that contained the Sacraments, while the other struggled to keep the white stole round his neck from being blown off in the rising wind.

A young policeman approached him from a cluster of emergency vehicles that pulsed with red-and-white strobe lights that made the young officer appear to shift from side to side like an apparition as he drew nearer. With what seemed impossible speed for a walking man, he loomed ever darker and larger. Father Gregory unconsciously smoothed his black shirt over his plump belly and smiled nervously. “Hello,” he called out. “I am sent for by Chief J, I believe… yes, um… yes, I think so.”

The officer was suddenly in front of the priest, as tall and broad as a tree that had miraculously sprouted forth from the asphalt. How do Americans grow so large? Father Gregory wondered as he awaited whatever the policeman might do.

“Father Gregory?” he asked abruptly, then, not waiting for an answer, said, “Follow me, sir, the chief is inside.” Turning on his heel, he indicated the house surrounded by the police cars and set off once more. Nearby, an ambulance sat idling, its occupants slumped in their seats, bored-looking and unconcerned in the flickering red wash of lights. Next to them, a white panel van sat empty on the lawn, its rear doors thrown wide, revealing nothing but a greater darkness within. On its side were printed the words MEDICAL EXAMINER.

Father Gregory, hurrying to keep up with the striding officer, managed to ask, “Is there more than one person hurt?”

The policeman glanced back over his shoulder. “Nope… just one.”

“Then why…” The priest struggled with both his English and his shortness of breath. “Then why is the ambulance still here, may I ask? Surely the injured should have been taken to hospital by now?”

The officer slowed and turned, and Father Gregory thought he could discern an expression of concern on the young man’s face. “We had an ‘injured’ when we got here,” he said, “but she’s beyond all that now.” He nodded towards the panel van, his face hard and set once more. “The meat wagon is for her; the ambulance is waiting for the go-ahead on her husband… he’s paralyzed, you know… fell down a flight of stairs while giving his wife a drunken beating years ago. The chief is holding on to him until we remove the body… there’s no way he wouldn’t see her otherwise, so we’re leaving him in his bedroom until you… do whatever it is you do.” The sergeant halted uncomfortably, then continued, “I’m not a Catholic, Father, and I don’t really understand why you were needed at a crime scene in the first place, but I’ll let the chief give you the rundown, he’s the one that said you should be called.”

The “chief ” had been amongst the first of Father Gregory’s new parishioners to welcome him to Camelot and invite him into his home. This had gone a long way to breaking the ice with the rest of the islanders. Though the venerable Monsignor Cahill was still nominally the head pastor, his slow, painful demise by cancer was steadily robbing him of his vitality, and his availability had been severely curtailed as a result. Many had found the dark little man with the nearly incomprehensible accent a jarring change from the dour old Irish prelate. But with time, an improving grasp of American idiom, and a sincere devotion that needed no translation, Father Gregory had gradually come to be embraced by the community at large. He had heard it remarked of late that his homilies were nearly completely understood. By his own calculations, the congregation laughed at his jokes at least half of the time and this delighted him, as he felt strongly that he was an inspired humorist.

The house itself was a throwback to the seventies and one of the last of its kind on the island. Most of the older homes and cottages had long ago been devoured by the jaws of the wrecking machines and replaced by four-, five-, and six-bedroom vacation homes that were only used in the summer months and on various holidays. It squatted amongst its silent, dark neighbors like a cringing old dog awaiting a kick or a curse. Even the color, to Father Gregory’s eyes, participated in the allusion, being the mangy yellow of an unwelcome cur.

The priest had not been told who occupied this home, and he could not remember ever having visited it before, but he had assumed that the victim within was one of St. Brendan’s parishioners. Certainly the man standing in the doorway was. Chief Julian Hall was engrossed in a murmured conversation with a thin young policeman who stood beneath the clouded porch lamp. He held in his hands a notebook, and Father Gregory heard his nervous laughter float out from beneath the bug-filled globe above his head. Chief Hall patted him on the shoulder and turned to go back inside, then spotted the little priest.

He stepped around the rookie officer and hurried down the few steps to Father Gregory. “Father, I’m so sorry to drag you out this late.” The two men shook hands as the freshening wind off the ocean several blocks away swirled around them. The breeze carried just a hint of pine, the harbinger of spring.

“No, please, it is my duty to come to those in need. However,” Father Gregory paused to arrange his words, “this man tells me that I have come too late. I sincerely hope not, Chief J.”

No one else on the entire island called Julian “Chief J,” and he winced slightly. Julian put it down as one of the Indian priest’s famous attempts at humor and could not bring himself to say anything on the matter, though in recent months some of his own officers had taken up this new form of address and invariably delivered it with a smile. He threw a glance at Sergeant Dunbar, who had escorted the cleric, but his face remained as closed and stoic as ever.

The police chief paused. “Well, yes and no, Father. When I had you called, Mrs. Fischer was still alive, if just barely…” Now it was his turn to choose his words carefully. “I could tell from her wounds that she didn’t have much time left; that’s why I had you contacted to respond here instead of waiting to get her into the hospital… it turns out I underestimated the damage… she’s dead, Father.”

Father Gregory still grasped the chief’s hand and now patted it gently, as if Chief J were one of the newly bereaved. He knew Mrs. Fischer, of course, “Kitty,” as she was known to everyone — though why she should be equated to a young cat the priest was at a loss to understand. He blamed his imperfect comprehension of American speech and promised himself that before he returned to Goa, he would master its intimacies. “I see,” he murmured. “I quite understand, dear man.” He patted the chief’s hand once more before releasing it. Behind him he heard a snort. Unperturbed, he demanded, “Take me to her, Chief J.”

Julian responded with, “Prepare yourself, Father,” and then nodded at the officer with the notepad, who stood aside to let the two men pass. As they did so, Julian said to him, “Father Gregory Savartha…” then added for the benefit of the puzzled rookie whose pen remained hesitatingly aloft, “common spelling on Savartha.” He led on with only the ghost of a smile.

The sixty-five-year-old woman lay on the grimy linoleum of her kitchen floor within full view immediately upon entering the house. Father Gregory found that he was not prepared, and said simply, “Oh…” upon seeing her. “Oh, dear lady.”

In spite of all the medical packaging that lay strewn about her, clearly none of their contents had been useful — she was quite shockingly dead. The blood that had leaked from the numerous gashes in her skull had congealed into a black pool and she lay with the back of her head resting in it, her features grey and slack, the whites of her eyes gone the color of dirty sheets flecked with red. Even to his untrained eye, the priest could see that she had originally been facedown in the mess and had been turned over by the officers and rescue personnel attempting to save her life. As a result, one half of her face was war-painted a sticky scarlet — a final indignity for a woman he knew as a quiet and intensely devout member of his flock.

“She was always kneeling and praying,” he murmured sadly. “I believe she must have lit a thousand votive candles in the brief time I have been here. This is a damn shame.”

Chief Hall threw him a surprised look. “I don’t need to tell you not to touch anything, I’m sure,” he nonetheless reminded the priest. “Though the scene’s been pretty thoroughly photographed and processed up to this point. In fact, I think the investigators from the prosecutor’s office have already cleared.” He glanced over at the Viking-like patrol sergeant who filled the doorway behind him, completely obscuring the young rookie on sentry duty. The sergeant nodded once but made no move to enter the room. “These folks,” and here the chief indicated two figures suited up in what appeared to be paper pants, shirts, and caps and wearing surgical masks and gloves, “are our M.E.’s best.” The two sexless, faceless figures appeared to glare at the senior policeman over their masks. “They’re a little annoyed with me,” he continued in a mock confidentiality meant for the entire room to hear. “They’re anxious to package up Mrs. Fischer, the cadaver, that is, and be off — it appears we are holding them up with our superstitious ways.”

“I see,” Father Gregory replied uncomfortably. “Well, this shan’t take but a moment or two, I am thinking, as the time for the viaticum has, unfortunately, passed. Some patience is in order, however, for a simple prayer.” He set his valise on the floor, no longer requiring its contents, and knelt next to his unfortunate parishioner, though being careful to stay well out of the blood. As he drew closer, an odor began to reach him, cloying and carnal, that would shortly become rank. How distressingly mortal the poor body is, he thought, even as he grimaced at the smell of new, and violent, death.

Sketching a cross in the air above the corpse, he intoned, “In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” and began to pray for the soul of one Katherine Denise Fischer. Julian automatically followed suit and crossed himself, refraining from kneeling due to some unarticulated concern over his professional reputation, but bowed his head for the prayer nonetheless. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw that Sergeant Dunbar and the medical examiner’s investigators were all but tapping their feet.

In what seemed an almost inappropriately brief time, the priest completed his prayer with an Amen, and rose once more. With a sigh, Father Gregory removed the stole from his shoulders and returned it reverently to his valise. “Such a shame,” he whispered to Julian while studying the sad remains. Suddenly the little priest appeared to remember something and said, “I was too late to administer to her, of course, but perhaps she had last words that I should be informed of. Is this possible?” he asked the chief.

Julian looked inquiringly around the room, meeting the blank, hostile glare of the M.E.’s people and coming to settle on the sergeant. “Anything?” he asked out of politeness.

Sergeant Dunbar backed out of the doorway while simultaneously seizing the rookie and thrusting him bodily in through the same. “He was first on scene,” he spoke from the porch. “Says she made some kind of statement. Read it,” he demanded of the thin young officer who had suddenly become the center of attention.

With the slightest tremor in both his voice and hands, the policeman flipped back through several pages of the notebook he held and appeared to find the passage in question. Taking a moment to clear his throat and draw himself up to his full and uncommanding height, he read aloud, “My prayers have been answered… thanks be to God.” He slowly closed his book and looked up to gauge the effect of his reading upon his audience. Everyone stared back at him.

“That’s all she said?” Chief Hall asked.

“Yessir,” the rookie confirmed. “That’s it.”

Julian grunted in dissatisfaction. “I guess it’s too much to expect that she should name her killer,” he asked rhetorically of the room at large.

Father Gregory stared up at him in seeming astonishment. “Chief J,” he asked shyly, “may we confer in private?”

Julian gave the nod to the medical examiner’s investigators, even as he took his parish priest by the arm and led him into the living room. The last thing he saw in the kitchen was the hasty unfurling of the body bag.

Once in the musty, overfurnished front room, he turned back to Father Gregory. The little man squinted in the dim, dusty light that filtered in through the kitchen. “Is it possible for me to be included in the details of the case?” the priest inquired breathlessly.

Julian studied the priest’s round face, with its large, dark eyes and white shock of wispy hair that lay twisted round his neat skull by the restless winds outside. At last, he spoke. “If… and this is very important, Father… if I can rely on your discretion. You do understand that we have a murder here?”

“Indeed, Chief J, I do. As to discretion,” the cleric paused with just the slightest of smiles, “you can’t be serious, my friend… I am a priest.”

From the kitchen came the clack and clatter of the gurney as it received its sad burden. Kitty Fischer will never return to her kitchen again, Julian thought, as he glanced over the smaller man’s shoulder. “What we have is an apparently motiveless murder, as Mrs. Fischer was neither robbed nor raped. There was no forced entry — like many folks in town here, they never locked their doors — the locals consider it a point of honor.” The chief paused to roll his eyes, then continued, “As she lived alone with her husband and they kept largely to themselves — the ‘charming’ Mr. Fischer being paralyzed from the waist down — it is hard to imagine how they might have any enemies.” The chief paused to arrange his thoughts, then resumed, “As to evidence, the only obvious thing we have is the murder weapon — a ball bat.”

Father Gregory repeated this last in puzzlement, “Ball bat, Chief J?”

“Yeah, a baseball bat we found in the yard…” It occurred to him that the Indian prelate was unfamiliar with the instrument. “Like a…” He struggled for the appropriate analogy. “…like in cricket?” He raised his eyebrows hopefully, but in vain, then continued, “You know, a bat… a club… a shillelagh.” He laughed.

“A cudgel!” Father Gregory cried delightedly, catching on. “Oh yes, I do understand! From whence did it come?”

The chief stopped smiling and answered, “We don’t know yet. It could have come from here… nearly every house in America has at least one in the closet. The victim’s husband,” Julian winced at his own attempt to distance himself from his newly murdered neighbor, “is too ‘distraught’ to be of much help right now.” He threw a glance down the hall to a closed door.

Father Gregory picked up on the policeman’s emphasis and asked, “You do not think much of this bereaved man?”

“I knew Charlie back in the days before he was a… victim, Father.” Julian hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the bedroom. “If all this had happened twenty years ago when he was still walking around, he would have been my prime suspect.

“In fact, if it had been left up to him, Kitty would have been dead long ago, and it wasn’t for lack of trying on his part. My God, the beatings he gave her… That’s why he’s in there now. He dragged her to the top of the stairs one night by a belt he had looped around her neck, and though Kitty denied it, I think he was going to try and hang her somehow. In any case, fate intervened and he lost his balance and fell down that same flight, breaking his ugly neck on the way down and landing him on his back permanently. In all my years of policing, I’ve never seen a more hateful, jealous man, nor one with less reason to be so. Kitty was a saint.”

Father Gregory remained silent, studying the outraged young officer who had suddenly appeared in place of the steady middle-aged man who governed Camelot’s police department. It faded once more into obscurity even as he watched, then vanished altogether, leaving the drawn and creased face that he was familiar with staring back at him in embarrassed silence with pale, washed-out blue eyes.

“So, certainly there is your motive,” Father Gregory pointed out. “Vengeance is a strong motive… it often crops up in the Scriptures… Old Testament, mostly.”

“Vengeance,” Julian repeated, as he turned to study the little priest more closely. “Wouldn’t that require that the suspect be able to stand on his own two legs, Father? She was struck repeatedly on the top of the head; I seriously doubt she knelt down for Charlie to have a go at cracking her skull,” he finished with some irritation.

“Fingerprints?” Father Gregory queried for no other reason than to return them to comfort.

“Yes,” Julian answered with a shake of his grey head, “plenty of those. But it will be some time before we can determine whose are whose… chances are they all belong to Kitty and Charlie… possibly the killer. Though if we don’t develop any suspects, or his prints are not on file, they won’t do us much good.”

“What if they are on the bludgeon?” Father Gregory persisted.

“Same,” Julian answered.

“What if you find only Mr. Fischer’s fingerprints on the weapon?”

Julian thought longingly for a moment of the days when he smoked cigarettes. “Father, let’s not play cat and mouse. We played this game once before and you know I find it irritating.” He was referring to a case a few months before when the Indian priest had uncovered a murderess within the pages of a discarded journal. “Spill it.”

Father Gregory appeared to think the proposition over carefully before answering. “I believe Mrs. Fischer… Kitty,” he tried on the nickname for size and found it uncomfortable, “has named her killer for us.”

“And when did she do this?” Julian asked quietly.

Father Gregory smiled at this seeming encouragement. “In her dying, and recorded, declaration.”

“I don’t recall that being in her statement,” the chief declared flatly.

“No, no, perhaps not,” the priest began enthusiastically. “But, she did say,” he cocked his round head like a bird with the effort of memory, “‘My prayers have been answered… thanks be to God!’” He brought his hands together, with their improbably long fingers, in an attitude of prayer and shook them at the policeman. “A miracle,” he whispered excitedly: “A miracle!”

“Father, are you telling me that Kitty prayed that Charlie would walk again… and that he has?”

“Yes, yes, this was her most fervent prayer! She has told me many times! The prayers of a pious and devout woman carry great weight! I knew that you, if anyone, would understand this.”

Julian stared back in amazement, unable to speak for several moments. “No,” he said at last. “No, I don’t. You don’t honestly believe that her prayers were answered with murder!”

The joy fled from Father Gregory’s face at the policeman’s logic and he appeared to consider his previous declarations carefully, then answered, “You are only half right, Chief J — the good woman’s prayers were answered, her own words testify to it. As to the husband, I believe this odious man has squandered God’s precious grace in that most pernicious act… revenge. For him, I reserve my greatest pity.”

“Pity,” the policeman repeated while studying the closed door of the bedroom, and thinking that Kitty had been found as if fleeing from someone coming from that direction — she had been running to the kitchen door, not from it. “Revenge for what?” he muttered.

Father Gregory cleared his throat and appeared embarrassed at the question. “Well, as to that, it is awkward, dear man. You see, it was told to me in confession… but as she is now no longer among us, I can say at least this — on the night of his terrible ‘accident,’ he had, or believed he had,” the priest added cagily, “discovered the proof he had been unable to beat from her on previous occasions.”

“Good God,” Julian breathed. “Please don’t tell me she shoved him down those stairs.”

Father Gregory stared blankly back at him. “He did try to harm her,” he added at last.

“Father,” Julian began after a pause. “You do understand what you’re saying here? If what you believe is true, it means that Charlie Fischer had to keep this a secret once he discovered feeling had returned to his legs. That he had to exercise himself for weeks, or months, without Kitty knowing: prolonged and denied himself the pleasure of walking out in the fresh air; all these things, just so that when he was strong enough, he could both surprise and kill her. Do you understand what all that would mean — the hatred, the… the evilness?”

Both men remained silent for several moments, then the chief spoke once more. “What do you expect me to do with this?”

“You cannot arrest this man?” Father Gregory asked in obvious disappointment.

“Based on what?” the chief fired back. “I don’t intend to haul him before an ecclesiastical court, Father. I need proof, or at least a good circumstantial case.”

The cleric was not to be deterred. “Is Mr. Fischer not a good suspect? And one that sits like a spider in this web of suspicious circumstances? If he could walk, would you not be interrogating him at this moment?”

“If he could walk, Father…”

Someone cleared their throat and the two turned to find the ambulance driver standing awkwardly in the doorway to the kitchen. “The M.E.’s people have taken Mrs. Fischer,” he said quietly. “Should I get Mr. Fischer loaded up now?”

It had been Chief Hall’s intention to have the victim’s husband evaluated by the emergency-room physician for stress and shock, as he had been a witness, at least an audible witness, to the horror of his wife’s murder. He stared blankly back at the plump, unshaven young man awaiting his answer, even as he felt the eyes of Father Gregory upon him.

“No,” he murmured, “not just yet, Justin. Give me a few minutes with the poor man.”

Unconcerned, Justin nodded and began to back out of the room.

“Oh, and Justin,” Julian halted the young man’s escape. “You’ve got an EMT riding with you… right?”

Justin nodded in perplexity. “Yeah, Chief, we’ve always got one on board… you know that.” Then another thought occurred to him. “Is someone else hurt, Chief? We thought there was just the one victim.”

“No,” Julian reassured him, “the only victim was Mrs. Fischer… just checking, that’s all.”

As the young man completed his exit, Julian extracted a long needle from a pile of sewing that lay in a basket next to the couch, and held it up to the light. “I have been assured that he has no feeling from the waist down,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

Father Gregory stared at the needle gleaming like truth in the dim obscurity of the room. “You are indeed a man of faith, Chief J,” he said admiringly.

“Probably an unemployed one as of tomorrow,” Julian replied, as the policeman and the priest approached the closed door at the end of the hallway.

The arraignment of Charles Fischer for the murder of his wife created a small sensation as the facts of the matter were made public. Chief Hall, for his part, received a letter of censure from the county prosecutor for his rather extraordinary actions in exposing the killer. Surprisingly, though, the accused chose not to challenge the probable cause that led to his arrest but, instead, accepted a plea bargain that guaranteed him twenty-five years in prison — a certain death sentence at his age. This was a decision he declined to discuss with the press, except to say that he was, indeed, guilty of the crime of which he stood accused and was deeply sorry.

Charles Fischer’s thoughts and feelings, beyond those few words, remained private to all but his confessor, Father Gregory Savartha, who was most pleased to have been able to grant absolution to the wretched man, knowing that he was truly contrite, and now restored to full humanity.