Marked for Murder: The Father Koesler Mysteries:

4

It was nearly ten o’clock when Alonzo Tully approached St. Anselm’s rectory. He had phoned earlier to make sure that, first, Walt Koznicki had contacted Father Koesler regarding El’s funeral and, second, that this would not be too late to call on the priest.

It had been a busy day. Tully was tired with that peculiar enervation that comes after pursuit down a series of blind alleys.

Which was not to say there hadn’t been any progress. The M.E. had been particularly helpful. Now, if only they could determine what words, what message, had been burned into El’s breast. That might clarify the entire mess. That could be the key.

Ever since this morning’s discovery of the partial lettering, Tully had been certain that his initial premise was correct. This was a mob-sponsored killing in retaliation for El’s having given him some tip, some information.

The problem was, what message did the ritual convey? It did not seem manifestly symbolic. What could it symbolize, the garroting, the gutting, the cross? That damned cross! The message was in those words. It had to be.

Tully had checked with the M.E.’s office periodically throughout the day. But, as yet, nothing. All they would tell him was that they were working on it.

Otherwise, it had been a day like so many he had spent in past investigations. A day where you take on the street and the street people. People who knew nothing. People who knew something, but weren’t going to help a cop.

The owner of the greasy spoon remembered El. She was a regular, a regular in that restaurant of ill repute and a regular on that corner. He remembered serving her the hamburger, the remains of which Moellmann found partially digested in El’s stomach. But he’d read the early Monday papers and knew what happened to El, so he knew nothing more. Whether or not he could have helped, it was obvious he wasn’t going to.

Much more disposed to cooperate were the street hookers. On the one hand, one of their number had been murdered and each knew, at all times, that the same could happen to any of them. So the quicker the weirdo John was put away, the safer life would be for all of them. Additionally, many, particularly the older women, knew Tully from his days on the vice squad. They knew him to be eminently fair, even understanding and, more’s the miracle, often kind.

Thus, Tully experienced a great deal more cooperation than did, say, Mangiapane. Even so, there just was not all that much information available.

By far, Tully’s most significant breakthrough came from a woman who was both a friend of El’s and beholden to Tully for past favors.

This woman had been working the street a few blocks from El’s corner. Yesterday had been particularly slow, she said, so she had been able to be more aware of details than she ordinarily would.

It had been late afternoon, maybe about five, when she noticed something a little out of the ordinary. A black four-door sedan—a Ford, she thought, though she couldn’t come up with the exact model; but it was black and so was the driver—no, wait: He wasn’t a black—although she had thought he was the first couple of times she saw him. Yes, she saw him more than once because he seemed to be circling the same several blocks. About the third pass, she could tell he was white, but he was wearing black: black hat, black coat, collar pulled up

She figured the guy was cruising, looking for a party. She would have pursued him more aggressively, but it was so damned cold she was almost frozen.

What was so peculiar was the number of times he circled. Most tricks go around a couple of times making their selection. This guy kept going around and around—like he was looking for something else.

This meshed with Tully’s hypothesis that the perpetrator took care to make sure El’s buddy was nowhere in sight.

Intrigued by this somewhat erratic behavior, the woman, against her better judgment—what with the cold and all—walked over to Third to see the man’s next pass. There she saw somebody—she was sure it was El—get in the guy’s car. But dammit, she didn’t get a number. Nonetheless, it was another piece of the puzzle. A puzzle he was going to solve. Of that he was certain.

Tully had no problem finding St. Anselm’s. His years on the force had made him familiar with all sections of the metropolitan area. Anselm’s was just north of Ford Road, set well back on West Outer Drive. As he saw it now, under a light cover of snow, with the Christmas crèche still up and the facade of the church illuminated by soft floods, it looked like a lovely Christmas card. El would enjoy being buried from this church.

Father Koesler, in cassock, collar, and soft slippers, answered the rectory doorbell. Tully figured the slippers indicated either that the priest had sore feet or hoped their meeting would be brief, as bedtime was calling.

Koesler greeted the officer and led him into the main office, which was none too large. At this hour, and given the identity of his guest, Koesler might have held their meeting in the rectory’s more comfortable living room. But in his phone call, Inspector Koznicki had briefly explained what it was Tully wanted. Koznicki had suggested nothing. He asked the priest for no favor, only cleared the way for the appointment.

Although Tully had noticed the priest at Police Headquarters several times over the past few years, he had always been too occupied to take much note of Koesler. Now, one on one, Tully took a closer look.

The priest was taller than he had appeared at a distance—maybe six-foot-three. His thinning hair was completely gray and the cassock’s sash did not conceal a slight midriff bulge. The glasses were bifocals. There were no facial wrinkles, only a hint of laugh lines around the eyes to betray his late fifties age.

Tully sat in one of the two visitors’ chairs. “I came to arrange for a funeral, Father. I never did this before.” Help me, his expression said.

“That’s what Inspector Koznicki said. It’s for that woman who was killed yesterday?”

Tully nodded.

“Horrible,” Koesler said. “The paper said her body was mutilated.”

“Uh-huh.” Tully was not about to confide details. In truth, Koesler did not want to know.

“Well, Lieutenant, a couple of questions do come to mind. First, was the woman—Louise Bonner—was she a Catholic?”

“Oh, yeah. I knew her pretty well. Every once in a while she’d talk about growing up Catholic. She even attended a Catholic school. ’Course, she didn’t go to church much lately . . . what with her, uh, profession and all. Is that a problem—that she didn’t go to church very often?”

Koesler smiled. “It used to be. But not so much anymore.”

Since the inspector’s call this morning, Koesler had been reluctantly awaiting this appointment. Instinctively, he was opposed to holding the rites at St. Anselm’s. He feared there would be a lot of publicity, not to mention notoriety, attending such a funeral. St. Anselm’s needed neither publicity nor notoriety.

So, off and on through the day, Koesler had been formulating reasons why Louise Bonner could not be buried from his parish. The primary and overwhelming reason her funeral should not be here was, of course, that there was no reason why it should. At least no reason he could think of. Now he began exploring the soft underbelly of the matter.

“These few times Louise attended church,” Koesler said, “did she ever come to St. Anselm’s?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“I didn’t think so. Does she have any relatives in this parish?” If she did, Koesler was not aware of any.

“Not that I know of.”

“Then I must assume Louise lived somewhere in Detroit and probably dropped in at some of the central parishes. Or maybe one particular city church.”

“If she favored one church over another, I certainly didn’t know about it. She was the type who would go in on the spur of the moment. So she probably went to a lot of different parishes . . . is there a problem about that?”

“The central problem I’ve got, Lieutenant, is: Why St. Anselm’s? We don’t know that she ever attended this church. She has no relatives here. There’s just no connection at all.”

“That’s a problem?” Tully was being naive, and he knew it.

“The problem, as I see it, Lieutenant, is that there is no reason to have Louise Bonner’s funeral from this parish.”

Tully shrugged. “She’s gotta be buried.”

“But why St. Anselm’s?”

“Why not? Look, Father, I went over this with Walt Koznicki earlier today. The point is, El was a Catholic. She was even kind of proud of it. She went to church sometimes . . . oh, nothing regular; she was never specific. Not with me. I couldn’t put my finger on any one parish, Detroit or the suburbs, and say, ‘Yeah, I know she attended there.’

“Point is, it doesn’t matter which parish I go to, which Father I talk to, everything comes down to I can’t tell any priest, ‘Yeah, Father, I know she went to your church sometime or ever.’ Point is, I could go to any church and the priest could tell me, ‘There is no reason to have El’s funeral here.’ Just like you just did.

“Point is, I came to you ’cause you’re a friend of Walt Koznicki’s. I figured I’d get a better than even break here. But . . .” Tully rose halfway out of his chair.

“Wait a minute.” Koesler waved him seated again.

Several moments of silence followed.

Tully correctly surmised that the priest was wrestling with his conscience.

Koesler was periodically reminded of a sort of reverse discrimination in the Catholic Church, at least in the Church of Detroit. Catholic churches in the city of Detroit were better able to bend, or even overlook, Church laws, rules, and regulations than suburban churches. And the more rundown the city area happened to be, the less official notice was taken of this freewheeling attitude.

The pertinent law in the burial of Louise Bonner was Canon 1184 of the revised Code of Canon Law, promulgated November 27, 1983. Paragraph three of Canon 1184 stated that ecclesiastical funeral rites are to be denied manifest sinners for whom these rites cannot be granted without public scandal to the faithful. Another paragraph added that if there was any doubt regarding a specific case, the local bishop was to be consulted and his judgment was to be followed.

The basic problem was, of course, did Louise Bonner qualify as a “manifest sinner”? Koesler’s conclusion was that she probably did. Not only was she a prostitute, but the local news media, in reporting her murder, had made her profession crystal clear.

But would her church burial cause scandal? This was a more difficult question. There were, after all, varying kinds of scandal. There was a genuine scandal that seldom was recognized as such. Koesler had long considered the church burial of Latin American despots a real scandal. Too often, he thought, the Church refused to face the hard decision and buried ruthless dictators. The fact that frequently such rulers were responsible for the torture and death of many innocent people, including priests and nuns, could easily identify them as manifest sinners.

Of course white-collar crime seldom was labeled manifest sin— unless it was committed by a Communist.

On the other hand, there was a type known as pharisaical scandal. In that instance, the scandal was in the eye of the hypocritical beholder. If there was any scandal to be had in the Church burial of Louise Bonner, Koesler was certain it would be of the pharisaical type. Was it not Jesus who said that harlots would be welcomed into the kingdom of heaven ahead of the self-righteous Pharisees?

Koesler was sure enough of the law’s application that he felt no need to solicit the opinion of Cardinal Mark Boyle, Detroit’s archbishop.

Once satisfying himself on the matter of law, Koesler was unconcerned about the possibility of scandal. It was the notoriety that troubled him. And this was where the problem of reverse discrimination reared its ugly head.

It was quite possible that Louise Bonner might be laid to rest from some all-but-deserted core city church with a minimum of publicity. But at a parish such as St. Anselm’s, it would be another matter. Koesler could visualize the TV cameras plus the radio and print journalists. He could stand opposed to pharisaical scandal anytime. He wasn’t so sure about notoriety.

But when Tully made as if to leave, it all gelled. In actual elapsed time, it took only a few moments to decide, especially since Koesler, earlier in the day, after he’d been alerted by the inspector, had pretty much resolved for himself the interpretation of Church law.

The expression on Tully’s face as he explained the futility of shopping for a parish to bury his friend had settled the matter. As Koesler saw it, on one side of the scale was the notoriety that would come to him and his parish. On the other was a police officer trying to do no less than a corporal work of mercy: burying the dead. And the deceased was a poor woman who’d lived a hard life and died a worse death.

So to hell with the notoriety.

“We’ll have the funeral, Lieutenant. And we’ll try to do our best for Louise—for El.” Koesler adopted Tully’s term of affection for the deceased.

Tully’s expression relaxed into a relieved smile. “Appreciate it, Father.”

Koesler opened a pad on the desk and began to take down information. The Mass of Resurrection—a term that had to be explained to Tully—would be Wednesday at 10:00 A.M. The matter of a rosary recitation was left in abeyance since no funeral home had yet been selected. Koesler would take responsibility for all the religious aspects of the funeral. Tully would see to the mortuary, the cemetery, and the pallbearers.

As he bade the officer good-bye, Koesler winced at the prospect of his immediate future now that he had agreed to take on this funeral. There would be notoriety. Of that there could be little doubt. And all he wanted was a quiet ministry among parishioners he’d come to know and love. Then, inevitably, there would be scandal; pharisaical, to be sure, but scandal nonetheless. Something with which he would be forced to deal. Doing what one realized was the right thing, was that really enough?

On top of all this, it was entirely possible that local Church officials would fault his judgment.

Undoubtedly, some priests would argue that Louise Bonner was not a “manifest sinner.” Rather, she was more sinned against than sinning. But those priests would not very likely be found in official positions in the Church. That, however, was not the bone of contention. The pivotal question was the matter of scandal. Here, nitpickers would split hairs over genuine versus pharisaical scandal.

When it came right down to it, it was not a matter of law. Koesler’s stand had nothing to do with any direct violation of Church law. It was, as with an umpire in some sports, a judgment call. One might argue that a base runner was out or safe. But the umpire’s decision would stand—subject, of course, to review.

Review, in the case of this burial, was the province of functionaries in the chancery and, of course, the archbishop, Cardinal Boyle. Koesler’s decision to grant ecclesiastical rites was not of a magnitude to spread beyond diocesan boundaries. He had no reason to expect it to be examined by an apostolic delegate in Washington, much less by the Pope.

And that was all to the good. While there was an abundance of unrest, distrust, suspicion, and condemnation in the Church on national and international levels, Cardinal Boyle remained amenable to reason and slow to denounce the judgment of one of his priests unless it was grossly incorrect.

So, while he could and should expect hypocritical scandal, notoriety, and at least some ecclesial flak, Koesler could be reasonably sure that, in the final analysis, he would have at least the tacit support of his archbishop.

Indubitably, he could have avoided the entire controversy and escaped all responsibility had he followed the advice of Canon 1184 and turned the decision over to the archbishop in the first place. But every drop of experience he’d had in more than thirty years as a priest anticipated the outcome in that eventuality. The answer would have been “No.” All following the tight-to-the-vest philosophies of “When in doubt, don’t.” Or, “Better safe than sorry.” As far as officialdom was concerned, in a choice between the burial of a marginal Catholic and a public relations mess, there was no contest. Especially since ecclesial burial or the denial of same, by everyone’s theology, had nothing to do with a statement on salvation or damnation.

All in all, Father Koesler closed out the day with mixed emotions. He was convinced he’d made the proper decision. He was also convinced it was going to cost him.

Lieutenant “Zoo” Tully, for his part, returned to his northwest Detroit home with the sense that he had, indeed, accomplished one objective today: El’s final send-off in the style she would have chosen in her fondest dreams. This achievement he attributed to his lifelong study of human nature.

Without actually knowing him, Tully had figured out Koesler almost perfectly. Koesler had given up and agreed to host El’s funeral a bit too easily. That had been Tully’s only misjudgment. Reflecting on it now, he attributed Koesler’s quick surrender to a sense of guilt more profound that Tully had anticipated. He’d seen it often in clergymen, particularly in those who pastored in suburban churches. Many seemed to experience some sense of guilt when confronted with a poverty problem in the core city. There they were in the comparative comfort of the suburbs while he forced their attention to the city slums.

All in all, as far as Tully was concerned, it was not a bad trait. The evidence of this tendency to be moved by another person’s need might almost make a believer out of Tully—if that were possible. But it was not to be.

He parked in the driveway. There was a light in the kitchen. The rest of the house was dark.

It was too big, way too big now that his family was gone. His former wife, now remarried, and their five kids were living in Chicago. He visited them four or five times a year. He would have visited them more often but the situation that had caused the marital breakup still endured: He was married to his job. It came before his wife, even his children, before everything.

His wife had put up with it until she had no further endurance. It had been about as amicable a divorce as possible. He had agreed to the alimony and child support. It had been a “no-fault” divorce, but if there had been any fault needed, he was ready to admit that fault was his. He had agreed to her custody of the kids. He had no time for them while he and his wife were still together; how could he possibly have cared for them alone?

The light in the kitchen? That had to be Alice.

Their relationship was still in the trial stage.

Alice, a social worker assigned to juvenile court, was an extremely attractive woman in her early thirties. They had met only a few weeks ago over lunch at George’s Coney Island on Michigan near Livernois. It had not been love at first sight. But it had been the beginning of a fast and easy friendship.

Alice had never married. But she found it quite natural, after a few dates and a tentative compatibility, to move in with him. There had been no strings or promises, just a tacit agreement to try it.

So far so good.

“How’d it go? Did you get a church for El’s funeral?”

“Uh-huh.”

Alice was seated at the ancient kitchen table. She was wearing her blue down housecoat. The house was too large and there were too few people living in it to heat it all. So no part of the house, even the rooms that were heated, was very warm.

“Which church?” She was doing some paperwork.

“Anselm’s.” He got a bottle of beer and sat opposite her.

“Just like you figured.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Any progress?”

“Got a black car—probably a Ford—and a guy dressed in black. Picked El up just before she was killed.”

Alice looked up. “That’s something.”

“Uh-huh. Plus the cooperation of just about all the other working women. El was like a mother to some of them. A friend to the rest. I don’t think she had an enemy.”

“Except for the killer.”

“Not an enemy, I think. At least not hers. Mine.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Alice pushed her work aside and removed her glasses. “You figure she got it because she was one of your sources. Anything new on that?”

“Maybe.” Tully finished the beer and got a replacement from the refrigerator. The first had been to satisfy thirst. This one would be just for enjoyment. “Doc Moellmann is trying to figure out the words that were branded in her skin. That could be the key. Whoever did it is trying to send me some message. If I could figure it out, I’d be a helluva lot further ahead. This way it’s like working on a case where the central clue’s in a foreign language, and I don’t know the language. It’s damn frustrating.”

“Can I help?”

“Not right now. But I sure as hell will let you know when you can.” Tully lifted the lid off the cookie jar and put several brownies on a plate. He hadn’t had dinner. Not unusual. “How’d things go with you?”

“The usual. Some kids in their late teens. Adults in everything but years. They know only too well that as long as they’re juveniles we can’t hold them after their nineteenth birthday.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how they get so hard so young.”

“They teach each other. Older brothers teach younger brothers. They go to detention and learn some more tricks. One of the first lessons is that the straight life is hard. Got to go to school, got to study, got to learn. Or they can hit the streets and with street smarts they can make more before they’re twenty-one than they could make in an entire lifetime straight.”

“If they live to see twenty-one.”

“The final lesson: Life is short. It’s short whether they’re pushing, using, or just standing on the wrong corner at the wrong time.”

Alice rested her head on her folded arms. She was tired and this conversation was discouraging. “There’s this one I’ve been working with for a few months,” she murmured. “I thought there was some hope for him. Today, for the first time, he finally shed a tear. I actually saw a tear trickle down his cheek.”

“That’s good.” Tully had difficulty hearing her muffled words.

“The tear was shed because I told him they were going to waive him into adult court. He may spend the rest of his life in Jacktown.”

Tully reached out and touched her affectionately. With the other hand he lifted the bottle of beer and took another sip “Well, that’s the way it goes.” What was there to say?

Alice snapped upright. “Zoo! This is a kid I’m talking about. Just a child. And he’s going to be locked up for the rest of his life. Maybe forty, fifty years!”

“Yeah, I know. But he might just last longer in Jacktown than he would on the street. A lot longer.”

“But he’s just a kid!”

“Like you said, a kid in actual years counted. But in everything else, he’s an old man. Look in his eyes: He’s seen everything.”

“I guess you’re right.” She shook her head. “He has seen everything. Probably more than I have.”

“Look at it this way, Al: If he went into detention, he’d be out in, what—a year or two? And the court would just be handing him over to us. He’d get some goddam gun, blow somebody away, then we’d get him. And then: Jacktown.”

“Good God, it’s depressing. Why don’t we quit?” She said it half in jest.

“Speak for yourself, Al. As for me, and just about everybody else in homicide, it’s the case; it’s the game.”

“The game?”

“Every once in a while, you get one handed to you on a platter—a platter case. A man kills his wife. There’s witnesses all over the place. The husband is guilty and feels guilty. He confesses. The case is handed to you on a silver platter. A rookie just out of the academy could close it.

“But then, you get a puzzler and you start putting the pieces together. A guy’s shoes match the tracks outside a window. The guy’s prints are lifted from the glass that held the poison. You dig and dig until you find enough reluctant witnesses who can put the guy at the scene of the crime. No one of the clues is enough all by itself. But you keep piling up one bit of circumstantial evidence after another. Pretty soon, you get enough strands of evidence to make a rope that you tie in a hangman’s noose.”

“Like a whodunit.”

“Exactly like a whodunit. Only for real. And that’s it, Al: That’s the whole thing. The chase, the game, the puzzle. Solving the puzzle. The whole thing.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Huh?”

“Putting the guy away.”

“Putting the guy away,” Tully repeated scornfully. “No, Al, the game ends when you solve the puzzle. What goes on over in court is something else . . . another world. You go to court and you don’t recognize the bum you took off the street. The defense has gotten the guy a haircut and a shave and a three-piece suit. He just sits up straight all during the trial and doesn’t take the stand. And the jury asks, ‘How could that nice-lookin’ man do all those horrible things?’ So he walks.

“Or the defense finds a legalistic loophole, and the guy walks. You know—I mean, you know—he did it. But he walks.

“Or one of your witnesses doesn’t show. And the judge goes out of his way to make you feel like a fool ’cause he was your witness and he didn’t show.

“No, Al, what happens in court is another world. It might go good, or it might go bad. It might be justice, or it might be a farce. No; the game ends when you catch him, when you solve the puzzle.”

“And that’s what’s going to happen to the guy who got El, eh? You’re going to solve the puzzle.”

“Damn right! Only this one’s not gonna end there. I’m gonna nail him.” He was unnaturally truculent. “Nobody does that to one of my people; nobody does that to me and walks.”

“Well, Zoo, there’s lots of people out there want you to do just that.”

Alice got up, walked behind Tully’s chair and began kneading his shoulders. He groaned as she found one taut muscle after another.

“You’ve had a rough day.” She continued to dig her fingers into his back. “I’ve had a rough day. We’ve had a rough day. What say we go to bed?”

Tully hesitated. He seemed to be weighing the pros and cons. Finally, he shook his head.

“No, Hon; you go ahead. I want to go through my files again. Someplace in there is the guy who did this—or had it done. I gotta find him. And I gotta find him quick. There’s a whole day gone and we’re not even close.”

Alice slowly climbed the stairs—alone. Maybe Zoo’s first wife had a point in leaving. The chase, the game, the puzzle. Maybe it was just impossible for a woman to compete with a real-life whodunit. Maybe it wasn’t even worth the try. She slid between the cold sheets and curled into a ball.

Tully went into the den. He poured a generous glass of inexpensive Gallo wine and opened the private files of cases he’d worked on. He would stay at it until the early hours of the morning when he could no longer keep his eyes open. Even under the steady pressure of precious elapsing time, there were limits beyond which even he could not push himself.