Sudden Death

2

“God, I hate Mondays. And if there’s anything I hate more than Mondays, it’s Monday mornings.” Lieutenant Harris rubbed his eyes elaborately.

It did not help Harris’s diurnal distress that he had begun a fresh homicide investigation last night that had kept him up rather late. Nor did it help that his partner in the case could be depended upon to be in good spirits even on a Monday morning.

“You’re in good company, Lieutenant,” said Sergeant Ewing cheerfully. “Willie Moellmann doesn’t like Monday mornings either. But success does wonders for a guy’s spirits.”

“Huh?”

“Quickest autopsy I ever witnessed.”

“Hunsinger?”

“Yup.”

Most homicide detectives attended the autopsies of cases they were working. It being the despised Monday morning, Harris had relied upon the dependable Ewing to attend this morning’s. Ewing had not disappointed him.

“Of course,” Ewing added, “it didn’t hurt at all that Doc pretty well knew what he was looking for.”

“Was it the strychnine?”

“Yup. All the symptoms check out-just like we found Hunsinger last night.” Ewing ran down the notes he had taken during the autopsy. “‘Terrified expression, fixed grin, and cyanosis.’” He looked up. “That’s the purplish discoloration of Hunsinger’s skin; he couldn’t get oxygen. Strychnine’s really a horrible death. Want the details?”

“Spare me.” Harris’s Monday syndrome had dissipated. He was now fully alert. Moellmann’s progress had galvanized him. “Was it the DMSO?”

Ewing nodded. “Weird delivery system, but damned effective. Doc had a book on it.” He again turned to his notes. He had copied the book’s description of the manner in which dimethylsulfoxide works. “‘It is most often administered by simply dabbing it on the skin; and, alone or as a carrier for other drugs, which DMSO often potentiates, it penetrates the skin to enter the bloodstream and be borne to all parts of the body.’”

Harris gave an impressed whistle. “And the strychnine was added to that?”

“Uh-huh. Doc says that with most people, even dabbing DMSO on leaves a red mark on the skin. But if you rub it in, it’s most likely to cause a rash.”

“Like the ones on Hunsinger’s hands and head.”

“Right. He poured the stuff on his hands, like you would shampoo, and massaged the stuff into his hair and scalp. Doc says the red marks on Hunsinger’s chest and neck were caused by somewhat the same thing. Strychnine causes a tightness in the chest and a stiffness in the neck. Hunsinger probably grabbed at his chest and neck when the poison hit his respiratory system. . but then you didn’t want the details of what Hunsinger went through.”

“Only if they’re relevant. . damn relevant.”

“Relax, Ned. That’s the end of relevancy.”

“Where’d he get the DMSO? Anybody know?”

“Yeah. One of the other guys at the examiner’s office was familiar with it. Seems you can get it all over town. Most health-food stores.”

“I thought it was-”

“It is. But they can sell it as a solvent. Isn’t that a peculiar turn of fortune? I’ll bet the scientist who put DMSO together never thought it would be used to dissolve strychnine. Anyway, it carried the warning right on the label.” Ewing again quoted from his notes, “‘Sold for use as a solvent only. Caution. This product not federally approved for medication.’ And how about this: ‘Warning: May be unsafe. Not approved for human use.’”

Both were silent a moment, contemplating the irony of it all.

“Okay,” said Harris, “that’s how Hunsinger got the DMSO. It’ll be a good idea to check into how popular this stuff is with football players generally. But it leaves the bigger question: Where did he come up with the strychnine, and why?”

“We got an answer for the second question anyway. Our guys picked up some rodent bait last night in Hunsinger’s apartment. It was saturated with strychnine.”

“Rat bait! Wasn’t that its primary use before they took it off the market?”

“Yeah, it was effective as hell with rats. Apparently, Hunsinger didn’t favor a stick of dynamite when there was an atom bomb handy. I mean, why use a simple rat trap when you’ve got the Cadillac of poisons around?” He shook his head. “But it still doesn’t explain where he got it.”

“Yeah, well, okay. But I’ve got one more question before we start going off in all directions.” Harris drained the last of his coffee. “We got a very inventive killer who’s going to use DMSO as a delivery system for strychnine. Why doesn’t the perpetrator drain the shampoo bottle and pour in the mixture of DMSO with the poison?”

“The perp banks on Hunsinger’s compulsive nature. The Hun is going to reach for the second bottle from the left because that’s where the shampoo is. Always.”

“Okay, so the perp knows that Hunsinger’s a compulsive. But it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for even a compulsive to glance at a label as he’s using something.”

“Except that Hunsinger had bad eyesight. He wore contacts.”

“Right. So the perp knows that Hunsinger is a compulsive and also that he has poor vision.”

“I get the impression that those two items were not exactly secrets to anyone who knew Hunsinger at all well.”

“Okay.” Harris appeared to have arrived at his final question. “Hunsinger, relying on his habit of always keeping things in their appointed place, automatically picks up the second container from the left. It feels just like his shampoo bottle. After all, the shampoo bottle is the same shape and size as the container of DMSO. He doesn’t read the label because he can’t make it out without his contact lenses. But the shampoo was a distinctive pink color and the DMSO is colorless. Why doesn’t he notice there’s no color?”

“Why doesn’t he notice there’s no color?” Ewing repeated thoughtfully. “Why doesn’t he notice there’s no color? Unless. . unless. .”

“Our first stop,” Harris announced, “Hunsinger’s eye doctor.”

“But first, we’d better give a call to Inspector Koznicki.”

“Walt? Why?”

“I think he’ll want to know that his old buddy Father Koesler is back in the homicide business.”

It took less than half an hour to drive to West Dearborn, where Thomas Glowacki’s office was located.

Yes, Dr. Glowacki, the late Hank Hunsinger’s ophthalmologist, was in. Did they have an appointment? Well, the doctor was very busy. Oh, the homicide department! Well, in that case, would they wait just a few minutes in the doctor’s private office?

Dr. Glowacki, tall, thin, with a full head of brownish hair flecked with gray, entered the office briskly. Harris noted the doctor wore bifocals. It gets to everyone, he mused.

“This is regarding Mr. Hunsinger?” The doctor looked appropriately concerned. “A pity. I read about it in this morning’s paper. A great pity.”

“We know you’re busy, Doctor,” said Ewing, “so we’ll try not to take up much of your time. We’ve got a few questions about Mr. Hunsinger’s sight-he was your patient, wasn’t he?”

“Oh, yes, for a great number of years. The receptionist-my wife-could tell you exactly how long.” Glowacki manifested great satisfaction that his wife was also his receptionist. It was anyone’s guess as to the source of his satisfaction: that husband and wife could function as a team; that wife was competent enough to keep his records; that he was saving a ton of money on her salary.

“That’s all right.” Ewing eschewed the history. “We’re more concerned with the condition of Mr. Hunsinger’s sight as it was just before he died.”

“Yes, yes. A most interesting case. A most rare case. Of course, he had astigmatism for many years-for most of his life. But it was correctable with lenses.”

“We were more concerned with his color perception.”

“Yes, I was just getting to that. Colorblind.”

The two officers could not suppress triumphant smiles. Suspicion confirmed.

“I am not referring to a color deficiency,” Glowacki continued. “I mean Mr. Hunsinger was colorblind, literally colorblind. Do you know how rare that is?”

Both shook their heads. They urged him to elaborate. This could prove most relevant.

“In general,” the doctor explained, “99.5 percent of women and 92 percent of men have normal vision with regard to color. Which means they can distinguish between all the colors of the spectrum. Now, among those relatively few people who have problems with color perception, there are three groups. I can tell you about them without becoming overly technical.”

The officers nodded. Ewing prepared to scribble notes.

“The largest number of people who have a color deficiency are called anomalous trichromats.” Glowacki glanced at Ewing’s pad and spelled the term. “They can see the same major color characteristics as people with completely normal vision. But they tend to have problems with tones that are close together in the color spectrum, like orange and pink.”

“How about white and pink?” Harris asked, thinking of the bottles of shampoo and DMSO.

“To the anomalous trichromat they would appear as exactly the same color.”

Again the officers smiled. That alone would have been sufficient to explain Hunsinger’s fatal error. But the doctor had indicated that the deceased’s color perception was much worse than that.

“The second group, called dichromats”-again Glowacki spelled-“have what’s called a red-green deficiency. That means they confuse colors like the red fruit and green leaves of the cherry tree. Their vision is unable to separate colors that occur at the same position on either side of the color spectrum-those with the same wavelengths. But, like the trichromats, these people are still able to see colors and distinguish among most of them.”

Glowacki paused. There were no questions or comments from the officers.

“You see,” he continued, “most people think that if a person such as those I’ve just described has any trouble at all identifying any colors, that the person is colorblind. Technically, that’s not true. Such people are color-deficient.

“The true colorblind person is called a monochromat.” He did not bother to spell. “The monochromat is unable to match one color with any other color. Everything, to the genuinely colorblind person, is either white, black, or gray.”

“Until now,” Harris commented, “I thought Hunsinger had done his apartment in Art Deco. Everything is white, black, or gray.”

Glowacki nodded vigorously. “I’ve never seen Mr. Hunsinger’s apartment, but I’m not surprised. Without assistance a colorblind person could not help making serious blunders in decorating an apartment. Even a color-deficient person probably would err. For a person like Mr. Hunsinger, it would make great good sense for his decorator to use black, white, and gray. That, after all, is exactly the way he saw life.”

“This question just occurred to me,” said Ewing. “Wouldn’t his colorblindness be a serious problem for him playing football. . you did know he played football?”

“Of course. No, it didn’t hinder him. Remember, he saw things in the same way a normally sighted person sees a black and white television picture. There were times when his colorblindness was a help to him.”

The officers registered incredulity.

“For instance, when two competing teams wear the same colors; say, blue and white. It happens. It can be confusing for the person with normal color vision. But as far as Mr. Hunsinger was concerned, his team was wearing dark pants and white shirts. While the other team wore white pants and dark shirts. That’s the way all team colors appeared to him.”

“One more-maybe the final-question,” said Harris. “To your knowledge, did many other people know Hunsinger was colorblind?”

Glowacki thought for a moment. “I rather doubt it. No one learned it from me. I have never discussed it with anyone other than Mr. Hunsinger. Now it no longer makes any difference to him. But I got the clear impression that while he lived he wanted it kept a secret. He was, after all, a member of an infinitesimal minority. Less than one percent of males are colorblind. I don’t know if it was because he was a private person or he was ashamed of his condition or he was just exceptionally vain.”

“If you had to guess?” Ewing prodded. It was important that they learn all they could about the victim.

“Well,” Glowacki pulled at his lower lip, “I’m no psychologist. But if I had to guess-and this is just a guess-I would say he was too vain to have admitted to being colorblind.”

“Reasons?”

“I remember when contact lenses first became popular, Mr. Hunsinger was among the very earliest to use them. I sensed he had always been embarrassed to appear in public wearing glasses. He used to come in quite regularly because the frames were bent out of shape. They’d been in his pocket getting bent when he should have been wearing them. Then, as I say, at his earliest opportunity, he got contacts, so people wouldn’t know that his vision needed correcting. Even though the contacts he first wore were rigid lenses.”

“Is there a problem with rigid lenses?” asked Harris.

“They have a tendency to pop out rather easily. You can imagine how troublesome that would be in a violent game like football! So as soon as the Toric soft lenses came out he started wearing them.”

“The difference?”

“Well, for one thing, soft lenses need more elaborate care than the rigids. I’m sure that after a game, Mr. Hunsinger’s eyes would be sensitive and red. He’d surely remove the lenses and clean them.”

“As a matter of fact,” Ewing commented, “they were ‘cooking’ when Hunsinger died.”

Glowacki again shook his head, reminded that the man they were discussing had been murdered only yesterday. “Yes, he’d do that. First thing after getting home. Mr. Hunsinger was a bit of a compulsive.”

“ So we’ve been given to believe.”

“And also proud,” the doctor continued. “Proud of his physique. Proud of his appearance. Proud of his accomplishments. Too proud, I’m sure, to ever let it be known that he belonged to an exclusive minority of people who are colorblind. He considered that a blemish, a defect. But one that was, as far as others were concerned, invisible. And I’m sure he did everything in his power to make sure it stayed that way.”

The officers thanked the doctor for his time and information. They advised him that his late patient’s colorblindness was becoming a significant factor in their investigation and warned him not to reveal the fact to anyone, at least while the investigation continued.

They got in their car. Harris inserted the key in the ignition, but did not turn it. Instead, he drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “I’ve got a feeling that we’ve got the essence of the thing. How about you?”

“Yeah,” Ewing agreed, “the perpetrator didn’t bother to pour a mixture of DMSO and strychnine into the shampoo bottle because he-”

“Or she-”

“Or she-knew it didn’t matter. Hunsinger, seemingly an ironclad victim of habit, would reach for the second container from the left, assuming that everything was in its proper place-as everything in his life was. The bottle was the same shape and size as the shampoo container. He couldn’t read the label because his contacts were in the ‘cooker,’ where they always were when he showered after a game. And he couldn’t tell the liquid in the bottle was white instead of pink because he was colorblind.”

“We are looking for someone with a motive for killing Hunsinger,” said Harris, “someone who had the opportunity to kill him and who knew his compulsive routines: knew of his showering at home after a game, knew his eyesight was bad-and knew that he was colorblind.”

“Of all that, it seems the best-kept secret was his colorblindness.”

“Well, let’s get crackin’.”

“Right. On to good old Father Koesler.”

In 1954 Robert Koesler was ordained a priest to serve in the Archdiocese of Detroit. He was ordained in Blessed Sacrament Cathedral on June 4. The next day, Sunday, June 5, he offered his first solemn Mass at 10:00 a.m. in his home parish, Holy Redeemer. In the congregation at that Mass were Grace Hunsinger and her seven-year-old son, Hank.

Conrad Hunsinger, Grace’s husband and Hank’s father, was not there. Conrad was not present because he was not a Catholic, and, further, he never attended any church service. Grace was there because a first Mass of a returning ordained young man was an extremely important parochial event for deeply religious Catholics. And Mrs. Hunsinger was a deeply religious Catholic. Hank was there because his mother made him attend.

In three months, Conrad Hunsinger would be dead. Very sudden. A heart attack. Very sad. Robert Koesler would not know any of this. In August 1954, he would be working in his first parochial assignment on Detroit’s east side. He and Conrad Hunsinger had never met.

To a degree, Grace Hunsinger had watched Bobby Koesler grow up. She had attended at least one Mass almost every day of her adult life. Frequently she would kneel back in the shadows of the enormous Romanesque Holy Redeemer church and watch little Bob Koesler, altar boy, in cassock and surplice, serve Mass. She knew, from the churchy gossip of other daily Mass attendants, when he went away to the seminary. She noted, on his return during vacations, that he still played the part of a faithful altar boy well into his twenties. From time to time, she wished the church bug had bitten her son. It was not to be.

Koesler knew Grace Hunsinger, although not by name. He knew her as a quiet gentle lady who seemed always to be in church. There were several like that, mostly women, mostly middle-aged to elderly, who seemed to be in church most of the time, especially during Masses and novenas. He had no way of knowing that one day, many years later, the unseen son of this nice lady whose name Koesler did not know would, for a short time, play an extremely important role in his life.

That day, June 4, 1954, was the culmination of all that Robert Koesler had dreamed of since he was of an age to remember dreams. As far back as he could recall, he had always wanted to be a priest.

Shortly after he had gone to the seminary in the ninth grade to test his vocation, Going My Way, one of the greatest recruitment films of all time, was released. Inspired by that movie, lots of little Catholic boys concluded that it might be neat to grow up to become Bing Crosby’s Father Chuck O’Malley, turn a bunch of juvenile delinquents into a celestial choir, rub elbows with Rise Stevens, stand backstage during a Met performance of Carmen, become savior of parishes on the brink of financial disaster, and reunite an old Irish pastor with his aged Irish mother when they both should have been dead.

Great as Going My Way was, Bob Koesler hadn’t needed it for motivation. Long before “. . just dial ‘O’ for O’Malley,” Koesler was convinced the priesthood was the life for him. He viewed the twelve years of preparation-four high school, four college, four theologate-as just so many obstacles to be overcome, so many hurdles to be leaped. And he took them pretty much as hurdles, clumsily kicking over many on the way.

Koesler’s professors as well as his contemporaries would agree that his seminary career was “interesting.” By no means a serious student until perhaps the final few years of the seminary, Koesler could more frequently be found on the athletic field or the stage.

But at the end of twelve years his determination to be a priest was more firm than ever. The seminary officials found no good reason to deny him; some even found good reasons to recommend him. So, on June 4, 1954, came his ordination, followed by his first Mass, with, unbeknownst to him, Grace and Hank Hunsinger in attendance.

The years of his priesthood were, like his seminary career, “interesting.” After three parochial assignments, he was appointed editor of the Detroit Catholic, a weekly newspaper owned by the Archdiocese of Detroit. For that post, his lack of qualification was remarkable. Somehow he mucked through, learning much along the way. Eventually he became what he was now: pastor of St. Anselm’s, a suburban Dearborn Heights parish.

By far, the most “interesting” turn of events took place in 1979, when Koesler stumbled onto a clue in the murder of a Detroit nun. Thence he was drawn into the investigation of what turned into a series of murders of priests and nuns. From this grew a close friendship with Inspector Walter Koznicki, head of the homicide division of the Detroit Police Department.

Since that first homicide investigation involving Koesler, he had, through a sort of recurrent kismet, been drawn into other similar investigations. At times, he became involved because the murdered victims were members of the Catholic clergy, other times because victims were found in Catholic churches, still other times because the dramatis personae in the investigation were members of his parish. Now it seemed he was about to become involved in yet another homicide investigation because the victim happened to be a member of a Bible study group that included Koesler.

When Inspector Koznicki had phoned earlier this morning and requested Koesler’s participation in at least the early stages of the investigation into the death of Hank Hunsinger, the priest had been stunned. At breakfast he had read in the Free Press about Hunsinger’s death and was shocked. As in the death of most murder victims there was a special element of surprise in Hunsinger’s demise. It was so unexpected. This was a strong young man, a man whose body was not prepared for death. And readers did not have to wait to reach the sports pages to learn of the murder of the tight end; it was splashed on page 1 with companion stories throughout Section A.

Koesler had not been able to talk at length with Koznicki. After accepting the inspector’s invitation to render whatever assistance was possible in the investigation, Koesler had to marshal his rectory forces to cover for him, locate a priest to fill in at daily Mass, and reschedule several appointments.

All had been done. Now he awaited the promised arrival of Lieutenant Harris and Sergeant Ewing, both of whom he knew from previous investigations.

Although he had met Hunsinger several times in the Bible study group and had seen him play football any number of times either in person or on television, Koesler remained unaware of their connection through Holy Redeemer parish. He had known Grace Hunsinger by sight. But he had not known her name. He had never met the young Hunsinger. Even though the seven-year-old had been dragged to Koesler’s first solemn Mass, Koesler of course had no way of recognizing the young lad’s presence. And Hunsinger himself had long ago dismissed the memory as that of one more meaningless ceremony.

Koesler did not know it, but he was in for a big surprise.

“This is probably going to sound like one of those ultimate philosophical questions,” said Father Koesler, “but, why am I here?”

“It wasn’t our idea.” Lieutenant Harris was the less diplomatic of the two officers.

In a flash, Koesler pictured the scene. Koznicki suggesting the priest be included in at least the beginning of the investigation. Harris objecting, undoubtedly strenuously. Koznicki closing the discussion considerately but firmly.

“Actually, Father,” Ewing explained, “you, all by yourself, are our control group.”

“Huh?”

Harris was driving. They had picked Koesler up at his rectory and were now en route to the Silverdome.

“You see,” Ewing continued, “between the time a new security system was installed in Hunsinger’s apartment building and the time that Hunsinger was killed, seven people were recorded as his visitors. All seven came the same evening. You were one of them. All seven had the opportunity to case. . er. . study the security system and discover an easy way to beat it. If one of them did that, he’s our man.”

“Then I’m a suspect?” Koesler hoped his question was facetious.

Ewing laughed. Koesler’s hope was affirmed. He breathed more easily.

“No, you’re not a suspect. Like I told you in the beginning, you are our one-person control group.

“You see, it didn’t take us long to discover the connection between you seven. Now comes the interrogation. We have no sure way of knowing whether this or that person is answering all our questions truthfully. You are the only one we can rely upon to tell the truth. It just may work out that we can measure the truthfulness of the others by your answers and recollections.

“There are, by the way, three other people who had or may have had keys to the apartment: Hunsinger’s mother, his mis-uh, girlfriend, and, possibly, Mrs. Galloway. But then, you wouldn’t know any of them, would you?”

Koesler shook his head.

“Okay, so we’ll concentrate on the members of the discussion group. Let’s start with Hunsinger while we’ve got a little time. Why would a guy like him join a Bible discussion group anyway?”

Koesler hesitated. “I haven’t given it that much thought. For one thing, for athletes to join some sort of Christian organization is very prevalent. . like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, for instance. You know, there’s more than one religious discussion group just within the Cougars.

“Now that I think of it, though, it was an odd group. On the surface, they seemed to have nothing in common but football. Some actually played the game; then there was the trainer, of course, and the two in management.

“But it seemed to me that something was going on just beneath the surface. For one thing, there was a good deal of conflict. The arguments that occurred between the Hun and Bobby and Kit, I always felt, were more than mere differences of opinion.

“Then, in the group at large, I got the impression that most of them were there because they just had to know what the others were doing, what the others were thinking. A couple of the players attending represented the highest paid athletes on the team. The welfare of the players, how they were spending their time away from the field, seemed a special concern of the trainer. And of course the players wanted to get every clue they could as to what plans management had.

“As for Hunsinger specifically,” he shook his head, “I just don’t know. It might have been his way of saying, in effect, You guys think you know me, but you don’t. You don’t know where I’m coming from. You think I’m incapable of anything spiritual, but I’ve read my Bible too. . and just because I don’t turn the other cheek doesn’t mean I don’t know what you’re getting at.” He shook his head again. “But then, I don’t usually spend a lot of time trying to analyze people’s motivations; I tend to just take them at face value. . Maybe Hunsinger thought he needed some higher-up help. .”

“All in all, Father,” Ewing had been jotting notes, “you’re not describing a very altruistic bunch.”

“After a few get-togethers, I didn’t think I was attending very altruistic meetings either. But it was a fascinating study in human behavior nonetheless. I learned some things. And not just about human behavior. About Scripture too. Each of these men had his own peculiar interpretation of Scripture. Through those interpretations, I think I learned something about each of them and also got some fresh insights into Scripture.”

Ewing had half turned toward the rear seat. He now swung his left arm over the front seat and faced Koesler. “I’m going to tell you some things now, Father, that we hope no one outside the investigating team will learn. Things that are vital to our investigation and are not to be revealed to anyone else.”

Koesler nodded and smiled. “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

So far, the news media knew only that Hunsinger had been poisoned. Ewing now explained in detail the manner in which the dead man had been killed.

At the end of the account, Koesler sighed. It had been an ugly if quick way to go. The older he grew, the more dismayed he became that anyone would take it upon himself that another should not live. That conviction stretched from abortion to war to capital punishment.

“You’ve been involved in enough of these investigations to know that we’re looking for someone who had a sufficient motive to kill, had the opportunity, and actually did the deed,” Ewing continued. “But, in this case, there are a few other things we’re looking for along the way. We think that in order to use the method he did to commit murder, the killer had to know certain things about Hunsinger. So, let’s see what you knew about him and, maybe, what you think the others knew.”

Koesler nodded.

“To begin with, were you aware of anything peculiar about Hunsinger’s behavior?”

“Peculiar?”

“One might even call it neurotic.”

“Neurotic. .”

“Compulsive,” Ewing finally clarified. He was beginning to wonder about the advisability of including the priest in this investigation.

“Compulsive! Oh, my, yes. I don’t think anyone could have been around Hank very long without noticing the repetition of one routine after another: the precise placing of his Bible, pen, pad; he even got upset if anyone disturbed anything in the apartment-and if anyone did he had better put it back in its exact position. But then,” Koesler expanded, “I’ve always thought that if a Catholic was going to become neurotic, compulsive behavior was a natural vehicle to choose, even subconsciously.” Koesler smiled as he launched into one of his favorite routines.

“After all, we provide our people with so many numbers: one God, two natures, three persons, four cardinal virtues, five processions, seven sacraments, nine Beatitudes, nine First Fridays, Ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys, twelve promises to St. Margaret Mary, fourteen Stations of the Cross. Probably one of the most popular images for a Catholic is a rosary. And there you’ve got the Catholic carefully counting out ten Hail Marys for each decade, five decades in the small popular rosary, fifteen decades in the full rosary. And it’s the rosary that’s entwined in the Catholic’s hands when he or she is laid to the final rest.

“Mind you, I don’t claim that all Catholics become compulsive. Only that I’ll bet the majority of Catholics who become neurotic at least go through a phase of compulsive behavior.”

Silently, Harris hoped Koesler would be able to hold down the quantity of his responses.

“Okay,” said Ewing, “how about the others in the group? Do you think they were aware of his compulsiveness?”

“Oh, yes. Remember I told you about how he insisted on everything’s being in its proper place? He almost forced his guests to join him in his compulsiveness.”

Better, thought Harris.

“Now, here’s a second consideration, Father. Were you aware that Hunsinger had any problems with his vision?”

“His vision? Well, I assume he had some problem; I mean, he wore contact lenses. At least I noticed one of those lens-disinfectant containers-what do they call them, cookers? — in the apartment.”

“Would the others in that group know about the lenses?”

“Again, I assume so. Surely his teammates would see him putting the contacts in, taking them out. . wouldn’t they? Surely his employers. . the trainer. . would know. . wouldn’t they?”

“We’re not so sure they all knew. We do know that Hunsinger was very reserved when it came to anything that might be construed as a personal defect or deficiency. But that’s an interesting observation about the lens cleaner. Do you recall where you saw it?”

“Yes. When I visited the bathroom, it was on a dresser in the bedroom.”

“Then the others could have seen it?”

“Uh-huh. Anybody who looked into the bedroom-and we all did-would be likely to see it. That is, if you could get your eyes away from all those mirrors.

“Another thing, about the strychnine. Hank bragged about having it in the apartment. Said it was the atom bomb of rat poisons. Everyone in the discussion group would have known it was there.”

“Okay. One final thing, Father: Were you aware of anything else that might have been wrong with Hunsinger’s vision?”

“You mean besides the fact that he wore glasses-or contacts? No. . I didn’t even know the reason he needed corrective lenses. Was there something else?”

“He was colorblind, Father, totally colorblind. We just visited with his eye doctor. All Hunsinger could see was white, black, and gray.”

“Amazing!” A new light came into Koesler’s eyes. “Say, that would explain why Hank’s apartment was decorated the way it was, wouldn’t it? I never really wondered about it, just thought it was sort of. . masculine. Maybe because that’s the way I ordinarily dress: in black and white. But that certainly explains the decor of his apartment.”

“Now, think carefully, Father: Did any of the others ever give any indication they might have known about Hunsinger’s colorblindness?”

Koesler gave the question careful consideration. “No. There was a bit of what I considered to be just banter … the kind of thing you might expect from athletes. But no, nothing at all that had to do with color. There were some remarks about Bobby Cobb’s color-he was the only black in the group-but it seemed to be given and taken in good humor. I am rather sensitive to that sort of thing. But it didn’t trouble me. No, as far as I can recall, no one made any reference at all to colorblindness.”

“Well, there it is,” Harris noted.

The other two peered at the distance. The outline of the Silverdome was barely visible.

Ewing looked at Harris. “Well, where do we begin?”

Harris smiled. “My personal philosophy is, start at the top.”

“The top it is.”

In the remaining time, Ewing, consulting his notes, explained to Koesler all that Dr. Glowacki had told them about color deficiency and colorblindness.

One of the fringe benefits of these police investigations, thought Koesler, was that he always learned something.

At forty-four, Jay Galloway easily was the youngest owner of a professional football franchise. And he appeared even younger. Of moderate height and build, he had an oval, wrinkle-free face and a full head of dark brown hair untouched by gray, parted in the middle, and shaped in a mod cut covering the top tip of the ears and just touching the back of his shirt collar.

Galloway was a native of Minneapolis. His father had been a successful salesman, his mother a homemaker. He had a younger brother and sister.

Environment has its effect on the developing personality. But it is an unpredictable effect. Jay Galloway was a case in point.

Born James Randolph Galloway, he developed in a solid, typical WASP family. Security and stability were there. The family attended a nearby stylish Lutheran church nearly every Sunday. Galloway’s father, besides being a successful ad salesman for the Minneapolis Star, was active in the Boy Scouts of America. Mrs. Galloway kept an extremely neat home; loved, humored, and obeyed her husband; was active in the ladies’ society of Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church, and tried her very best to instill in her children the virtues of piety, reverence, honesty, truthfulness, diligence, and industriousness. In this, she was sustained by her husband.

Jay Galloway grew up in a state whose reputation for cold snowy winters was fabled. He grew up in a city that was famous as a municipality that had been carefully planned; had a well-monitored government cleaner than that of almost any other large urban area; was headquarters for many large corporations and businesses whose management demanded and got an attractive city in which their executives would be eager to live; was liberal in politics and conservative in almost everything else. The eleven lakes within the city were open to the public. No one privately owned property contiguous to any of the beautiful lakes. Taxes were high, but education took the top dollar.

While the downtowns of other cities decayed and gurgled in death throes, downtown Minneapolis with its mall and skyways remained vibrant long after Mary Tyler Moore was done throwing her cap up in the air outside Dayton’s. General Mills, 3M, Cargill, International Multifoods, and similar corporations were generous in community donations, providing an ideal atmosphere for raising families. No branch of city government had an excess of authority without having another segment of government there to provide checks and balances. One graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School who specialized in criminal law moved to another state after passing the bar, because he did not think there was enough crime in the Twin Cities to provide a lucrative legal career.

The Guthrie was among the very best and most famous of regional theaters. Chanhassen was among the most successful dinner theaters in the nation. Yet both theaters regularly staged classical, tried-and-true productions.

And that was pretty much the way Minneapolitans grew up-in relative safety, in good health, well educated, with a penchant for planning ahead carefully, proud of their city, programmed for white-collar jobs, and convinced the Ford assembly plant just outside St. Paul was an anomaly.

Like their theaters, Minneapolitans did not take many risks. They followed their ancestors in vocations, or carefully trained for established professions. They lived well and patiently waited their turn for membership in escalatingly prestigious country clubs.

That is how the Galloway family lived. That is how their three children developed. That is how young Jay Galloway grew. For a short time. Then he began to forge a lifestyle that was nearly the antithesis of his impressive environment.

Environment has its effect on the developing personality. But it is an unpredictable effect. So it was with Jay Galloway.

After graduation from the University of Minnesota, he was employed by the Minneapolis Tribune as an advertising salesman. Following in his father’s footsteps, but not along the identical path. His father was an ad salesman for the Star. But it was an understatement to call them sister publications. They were more like twins. Readers of both papers would have been hard pressed to discern a difference in their editorial policies. They were housed in the same building. They were both properties of the Cowles Publishing Company. And when one looked high enough into the management hierarchy of both papers, the personnel was identical.

So, young Jay began in the approved Minneapolitan fashion.

All his life, he’d heard his father run on about the sales game. Jay had studied sales and business management in college. He was, it was universally recognized, a natural. Some salespeople counted up to seven noes before they accepted a negative answer. Jay Galloway never gave a client an opportunity to turn him down. His standard method was to make an excellent sales presentation, usually by phone, then interrupt himself before reaching the point where the client would have to accept or decline. “Don’t make up your mind now,” Galloway would say, “Think about it. I’ll get back to you.”

Galloway had some sixth sales sense. Unerringly, he would perceive the moment the sale was made. And he would move in for the sales kill. Of course, his technique was not effective in every case. But his success ratio was extremely high. He made good money and his prospects were excellent.

He courted and married Marjorie Palmer. In this union, he attained the carousel’s brass ring. Marjorie had been the University of Minnesota’s dream girl, the campus beauty par excellence. Jay and Marj had attended the university at the same time, she a year behind him. He had made his play for her then and found only that she did not recognize his existence. Her tastes ran to whatever football player happened to be Big Man on Campus.

After graduation, Galloway finally caught her attention when he attained some considerable standing as a young man of means in the community. From that moment on, it was the full-court press. Dining at Charlie’s Cafe Exceptionale, the Blue Horse, Lord Fletcher’s, the Rosewood Room; dancing at the Orion Room and Chouette’s; evenings at the Guthrie or Chanhassen. Afterward, sometimes his place, sometimes hers.

It was a society wedding. St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. Honeymoon in Hawaii. They settled into the Minneapolis suburb of Edina. They decided not to have children. It promised to be a good life. Together they would tread the path to success and fulfillment as had so many other successful Twin Cities couples. They were Beautiful People.

But he grew restless. He found depressing the prospect of following forever in his father’s footsteps, even though Jay was certain to soar beyond his father’s achievements.

He began to find staff meetings a crashing bore. He fidgeted through what had been routine three-martini lunches. He became distracted during sales presentations. His acquisition of new accounts slowed, then stopped dead in the water. He began losing dependable old accounts. His employers were very concerned. They sent him off to a private, company-owned retreat on the north shore of Lake Superior. They hoped that in seclusion and peace he would find himself.

He did.

But the self he found was new. It did not fit into the Minneapolitan mold prefabricated for him by his parents and peers. He would be his own man. No longer would he work for others. He would become an entrepreneur-the guy who gives the other guys ulcers.

But more than anything else, he would become Somebody. No longer would people identify him as Jay Galloway, ad salesman. He would become Jay Galloway, celebrity. No soiree would be complete without him. He would have his picture in the newspapers regularly, as well as on the TV screen, as part of the news and, perhaps, the entertainment scene. He would leave behind this relative anonymity that was now his lot. He had to become Somebody.

That was what he concluded during the first half of his retreat. Just how he would become Somebody was the subject of the final portion of his retreat.

At length, he decided to follow the maxim, Go with what you know. He knew newspapers. He would start his own. Nothing to attempt to compete with the Star or Tribune. He hadn’t the clout to take on even a small portion of the Cowles empire. He would begin a kind of shopping guide for the thriving Minneapolis downtown.

And so he did.

He invested everything he owned, mortgaging up to his hairline, to start his publication. He found there was more to this business than he had realized. In the beginning he found it necessary personally to stand at the corner of the Mall and pass out complimentary copies of his tabloid to indifferent Minneapolitans. He was close to panic.

That was when he sensed Marjorie was beginning to drift. It began with disenchantment with Jay. In her eyes, he had blown it all. Their comfortable life had degenerated into counting coins. Dinner out had degenerated into eating at the Jolly Troll occasionally. Marjorie completely lacked her husband’s vision of a rosy future. She began to see other men.

Galloway learned of his wife’s dalliances. He was neither terribly hurt nor surprised. But the fact that he felt neither emotion was surprising. Something subtle and subconscious had happened. He had harbored a latent feeling of contempt for her. The feeling had begun the moment she consented to marry him. It had grown steadily since then. He still was not cognizant of the contempt, only that he felt neither strong anger nor surprise.

It was a phenomenon that would occur within him time and again throughout his life. He would court the very best-executives, staff, athletes, women-and the moment they consented to associate with him, either as employee or mistress, he would lose all respect for them. But never consciously.

If ever he had gone into psychotherapy honestly, he might have discovered that he was simply projecting his self-loathing onto others. Unconsciously, he had no respect for himself. Thus, subconsciously, he could not respect anyone who proffered services or love.

In any case, his downtown paper began to thrive. It was a tribute to his tenacity and talent at salesmanship. While remaining complimentary to readers, the ad sales skyrocketed. As with most ad salespersons, he was slipshod about picking up the pieces, attending to detail. Thus it was fortunate for him when he could begin hiring a staff.

He was able to take on a full-time editor, who was given a rather generous budget for attracting freelance writers. He then hired two more salespeople. His greatest coup-a singular tribute to Galloway’s salesmanship-was in luring his old friend, Dave Whitman, from International Multifoods to become business manager of the paper.

Whitman was such a prize that Galloway almost-but not quite-retained his respect for his friend. The others he hired he quickly but quietly began to despise. They became aware that there was something peculiar about their relationship with their employer. He noticed there was something peculiar about his relationship with his employees. But no one could identify just what was going on.

From the paper, Galloway moved into the pizza business-a sleeper enterprise in the capitalistic society. He took with him Dave Whitman. Together they managed to garner solid, six-figure incomes. Thence they moved into the subculture of professional football. As he did with his Minneapolis paper, Galloway sold his interest in the pizza business. Now all his financial eggs were in the Cougars basket. He worried a good deal about that. The income from attendance, television, and other sources was extremely gratifying. But the expenses, particularly in players’ salaries, were enormous. And growing annually. Unlike other owners, Galloway had no resource to satisfy expenses other than the income created by the Cougars. He had cause to worry.

One of his major worries involved Hank Hunsinger. The Hun posed a serious dilemma for Galloway. On the one hand, Hunsinger drew a crowd, not only on the playing field when he carried the ball, but in the stands. A hefty percentage of the Silverdome crowd came to see the Hun. But, on the other hand, his salary demands grew more preposterous by the year. There was a time coming, if indeed it had not already arrived, when the two would counterbalance each other and the Hun’s salary and fringe benefits would offset the crowd he drew.

It was just possible Hunsinger stood in the way of Galloway’s master plan: to be Somebody. Galloway could not let that happen. He could brook no impediment to his goal. He had to find a solution to the problem of the Hun.

“I understand you have to investigate this matter.” Galloway, fingers trembling slightly, lit a Camel. “But I’m a very busy man. And you don’t have an appointment.”

“We haven’t time to make appointments during a homicide investigation,” Sergeant Ewing explained affably. “We’ve just got to go where the investigation leads.”

“But I don’t know anything about it,” Galloway protested. “Besides, I’m trying to put this whole thing back together. I still can’t believe we’ve lost Hunsinger!”

Koesler thought Galloway made it sound as if he had lost a prized tool.

“Look, Mr. Galloway,” said Lieutenant Harris, “we can ask you a few questions, get a little information from you here and now. Or we can all go downtown to police headquarters, where you can make a statement.”

“Y-you can do that?” In moments of great stress, Galloway suffered a slight stammer.

Harris nodded.

“Okay.” Galloway blanched at the very thought of being taken to police headquarters where the dregs of society were led through the corridors. He virtually collapsed into his black executive chair. With a vague wave, he motioned the others to seat themselves. He glanced at Koesler. “What’s he doing here?”

“The department,” Ewing explained, “has decided to use Father Koesler as a consultant in this investigation.”

“Why?”

“That’s all you need to know,” said Harris.

Galloway appraised the two officers. From all he’d seen on television and in the movies, they were playing the tough-cop/nice-cop routine. He decided he would be able to handle Ewing with no problem. But he’d better be cautious about Harris. He was not entirely correct.

Galloway sank deeply into his chair. He dragged on his cigarette. It was several seconds before he exhaled through his nostrils. He sank his thumb into his cheek. The cigarette was clenched between his index and middle fingers. A thin curl of smoke followed the contour of his head, then disappeared above him. His eyes darted from one officer to the other, waiting for the questions.

“Mr. Galloway,” Ewing began, “we want to pinpoint the last time Mr. Hunsinger was in his apartment before he returned to it after the game.”

“H-how should I know?”

“Well, when did he have to join the rest of the team before the game?”

“Oh, that’d be yesterday morning at eight at the Pontiac Inn for the pregame meal and taping.”

“Then he might have left his place at-uh, how long does it take to get out to the inn from Jefferson and the Boulevard? About 45 minutes, doesn’t it? So, about seven or seven-fifteen?”

“I suppose. Why don’t you find out from the doorman?”

“We did ask the doorman. But in investigations like this, we crosscheck. We may well ask you questions that we have asked others. There’s no telling where an investigation will lead.”

“Oh.”

“Just a minute, Mr. Galloway,” said Harris, “I thought it was the custom for teams to stay at a hotel the night before a game, even if they were playing at home. How come your team doesn’t get together until game day itself?”

Galloway glanced nervously at Harris. He was the one to be wary of. “We decided long ago it would be better for the players to be at home until just before the game whenever possible. Helps relax them. So, when we play at home, we assemble on the day of the game.”

Harris, Ewing, and Koesler each had the same thought: staying at home saved an overnight hotel bill. To Harris’s thought was added: you stingy bastard.

Ewing resumed the questioning. “Mr. Galloway, were you aware that Hunsinger had any physical problems or flaws?”

“Physical problems?”

“Any impairment?”

“Well, he had a chronic problem with his shoulder. And his knees were in horrible shape. But anybody who’s played as long as the Hun would have to have a lot wrong with him.”

“Anything, any impairment not connected with football?”

Galloway took another long drag and jammed the cigarette butt into a large ashtray. As with most smokers, he failed to completely extinguish the cigarette; it continued to smolder as he lit another. “His eyes? You mean his eyes?”

“That’s right.”

“Yeah; he wore glasses. Contacts. He was nearsighted or something.”

“Anything else?”

“Not that I know of. Actually, he was in pretty good shape for the length of time he’d been in the game.”

“I mean anything else about his eyes?”

Galloway frowned. “Something, I think it was astigmatism. You’d better check with Dave Whitman, or with Jack Brown, my trainer. They know more about the physical condition of the players than I do.”

“What do you know about Hunsinger’s death?”

“Just what I’ve read in today’s papers. I’ve been on the phone all morning. But I haven’t been able to find anyone who knows more about it. Or, at least anybody who’ll talk. He was poisoned. That’s all I know.”

“It was strychnine.”

“Strychnine!”

“We found a container in the apartment. Did you know it was there?”

“No. N-no. I don’t think so. Why would I?” For some time he had been swiveling his chair from side to side. It was obvious he was nervous and wanted this interrogation over as quickly as possible.

“Mr. Galloway, do you know of anyone who would want to kill Hunsinger?”

For the first time, Galloway showed a brief smile. “Just about everybody he ever played against.”

Ewing returned the smile. “We’re trying to narrow this investigation, Mr. Galloway. We’re concentrating on those who might have had access to his apartment and might have both a motive and the means. Specifically, right now, six of the men who met at his apartment in the discussion group.”

“The discussion group!” Galloway seemed genuinely shocked. “That was a Bible discussion group, for God’s sake. Besides, with the exception of the good father here, we were all with the same team. Why would any of us want to hurt the Hun, let alone kill him?”

“Think, Mr. Galloway.”

Galloway butted another cigarette, left it smoldering in the tray, and began drumming his fingers on the desktop. “Hoffer, I suppose. He played behind the Hun. He may have resented the Hun, but”- he shook his head-“not enough to kill him. No,” he shook his head again, “the idea is just preposterous.”

Softly, without moving in his chair, Harris asked, “What about your wife, Mr. Galloway?”

“What!” Abruptly Galloway lurched forward as if he were about to stand. “Marjorie! What has she got to do with this?”

“We have information that she was a very close friend of Hunsinger at one time.” Harris retained his calm manner.

“B-but that was ages ago. A year or more. There isn’t anything between them anymore.”

“Then you knew about the affair?” A hint of a smile played at Harris’s lips.

Galloway’s shoulders caved slightly. He had been trapped. Even though he had known Harris was the dangerous one.

They were on the brink of a confessional precipice. Ewing, for one, did not wish to cross it at this time. “Were you aware of Hunsinger’s attitude toward routines. . habits, Mr. Galloway?”

Galloway remained erect in his chair. He would not chance relaxing again during this conversation. “Routines! Hell, yes. Everybody knew the guy was compulsive. Hell, he was a compulsive-obsessive!”

“You say that was general knowledge?”

“Everybody in the league knew it. Everybody who read the sports pages knew it. The guy wouldn’t play if a shoestring got crossed.” Galloway looked from one officer to the other, then glanced at his watch. “Is that about all? I really have a lot to do.”

“Just a few more questions, Mr. Galloway,” said Ewing.

“Can you account for your whereabouts yesterday between 7:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.?” Harris asked.

“M-me! My whereabouts!” Galloway flushed. His lips trembled. He clearly was angry. “What do you mean, my whereabouts! Are you accusing me of this thing?” He reached for the phone. “I think I’d better get my attorney!”

“Before you do that”-Ewing raised a hand; Galloway did not lift the receiver-“you should know that you are not being accused of anything at this time. We are merely conducting a preliminary investigation. We are going to be asking this question of quite a few people.”

Galloway removed his hand from the phone.

“Now,” Ewing continued, “can you tell us what you did yesterday between 7:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.? Try to be as thorough as possible.”

“Okay. I got up about six-thirty, had some coffee, read the papers. Got down to the Pontiac Inn about ten. Joined the gang for some brunch. Went directly from there to the stadium. After the game, I went out to dinner with some friends from GM. That would take me up to about ten last night.”

“So you were in the company of others from six-thirty in the morning until ten last night?” Harris asked.

“Not exactly. I was alone until I got to the inn.”

Harris raised his eyebrows. “So no one can corroborate your story until after ten yesterday morning?”

“I’ve had about enough of this, Lieutenant.” Galloway stood and leaned forward, his whitened knuckles pressing against the desktop. “Are you saying that I’m a suspect in this murder?”

“No one has said that,” Harris stated.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Galloway continued. “Why would I do a thing like that? I had no reason at all.”

“How about, just for the sake of pursuing the idea, jealousy or revenge for what he did to your wife?” Harris suggested.

A sardonic smile cracked one side of Galloway’s mouth. He would rather not have addressed the subject at all. If Harris had not tricked him into admitting knowledge of the affair, he would have responded in some vague manner. As it was, he had to answer openly. And he was prepared to do so.

“Your source, whoever it was, about the affair my wife had with the Hun failed to fill you in on the status of our marriage. My wife and I are separated. We have been for over a month. Hunsinger was not the cause. . although he may have been the final straw. You can ask any of the gossip columnists. They’ll tell you my wife really gets around. It’s going to be a messy divorce. The media can hardly wait. They’ll tell you.”

The ensuing moment of silence was awkward if not embarrassing.

Galloway continued. “Aside from the fact that, frankly, I don’t give a damn about my wife, I really would be a fool to do anything harmful to the Hun. He was a meal ticket. The local hero. God, his fans go back to high school around here. A lot of the fans come out just to see him. You can check for yourselves. On home dates, when it’s known beforehand that he’s hurt and not going to play, there have been more no-shows than at other games.

“And now, gentlemen, the Hun will be permanently absent from our games. I’ve got to address that problem. And it’d better be a pretty damn smart move I make, whatever it is. That’s what I’m busy with this morning. So if there are no further questions-”

“Not just now, Mr. Galloway,” said Ewing. “There may be more later. Thank you for your help.”

The two policemen and the priest rose and left the office in silence.

“Want some lunch now?” Ewing asked.

Harris checked his watch. “Let’s hit on the other executives while we’re up here.”

“Okay,” said Ewing. “On to Dave Whitman.”

They began walking down the corridor, eerily quiet in the gigantic stadium.

“Whatcha think, Father?” Ewing asked.

“Well,” said Koesler, “for what it’s worth I think he lied about the strychnine.”

“What?”

“As I told you, Hank clearly mentioned that he had a supply of strychnine in the apartment. And not only was Mr. Galloway present, but I remember his making some comment about it.”

“No shit!” Ewing murmured.

“I should never doubt Walt Koznicki,” said Harris. “Every once in a while he is capable of an absolutely inspired idea.”

“Bring it in. Bring it home. We had to do it. They depended on us.”

Although he had an exemplary father, young Dave Whitman’s role model of choice was his paternal grandfather, a railroader of the old school.

Whitman’s father, Robert, was a surgeon. He also was for many terms a Minnesota state senator. A rare combination. Understandably, he was held in high esteem in the community. Also understandably, he was seldom home. On those few occasions when he was both home and not otherwise occupied, he spent as much time as possible with his son and two daughters.

The daughters were very close to their mother. Dr. Whitman thought that appropriate. But he was particularly pleased that young Dave attached himself to his grandfather. As he grew up, the doctor had related well to his father, Bernard. Especially since he was forced to be away much of the time, Dr. Whitman could think of few others he could wish his own son to copy more than the man the doctor had patterned himself after. In fact, when in a nostalgic mood, the doctor frequently envied his son’s relationship with the old man.

Before David was in his teens, Bernard Whitman was nearing his eighties. Although of English rather than Scandinavian extraction, Bernard was a stereotype of what one might expect a native Minnesotan to be. In his late years, Bernard looked as if he’d been chiseled out of rock. Years of facing a frigid unrelenting winter wind had cut deep ridges in his face. Once he had been a huge man. Now his big-boned body was pencil-thin, skin taut over the bones. His hands remained large and gnarled.

Many an evening, Dave would sit at his grandfather’s knee near the fireplace and listen eagerly to the oft told tales.

“Things were different when I was a lad, David. I was a country boy up near Duluth. There was no Reserve Mining. Just the Lake.” (Grandpa never gave Superior its name, but always referred to it as if it were uppercased.) “And some homesteaders, some Indians, and the land to care for so it would care for us. And I was eager and ambitious. From the first time I ever saw a train I knew that was going to be my life.

“I started as a hostler, a laborer. I’d clean the shop and the pits, prepare the engines, knock the fire out, clean the ashes. That’s the bottom, David.”

Dave had guessed, before being told, that that was so.

“Then I became a fireman in the engine. That was hard work.”

Dave’s eyes would drop from his grandfather’s face to his work-worn hands; he could understand just how hard that work had been.

“Then I passed an examination to be the engineer, gained my seniority, and got to be able to pick my runs. When business got bad, I’d go back to being a fireman. In the 1929 depression, I lost about twenty years’ seniority for two or three days.”

Grandpa was with the Minneapolis, Northfield amp; Southern Railroad for fifty-one years. Regularly, he would sum it up for his grandson: “Indeed, David, it was a thrill. We’d travel under all kinds of conditions-storms, faulty engines. But there was the thrill of getting the fireman to get up speed. We had to get ’er over the hill. There were no excuses. We had to come through.”

Of all his grandfather’s many reminiscences, David was most impressed by two quasi-creeds by which Grandpa lived. One, in proof of maturity, was, “There were no excuses; we had to come through.”

When at last grandfather retired from the railroad, “I was still eager for something ahead of me to inspire me.”

He found it in the Minneapolis Society for the Blind. “I always pitied the handicap of the blind. I got sympathetic watching the blind travel. Well, sir, one day the Society for the Blind had an open house, and I attended.

“I always wondered how a blind man could operate a power saw. It seemed like suicide to me. So I sneaked away from the open-house crowd and walked over to talk with some men who were working with wood. One of the supervisors asked me if I would like to volunteer. Right then I knew that this was where I wanted to be.

“First I had to learn how to use power tools before I could learn how to teach the blind in their use.

“But I was left alone to teach them. Which was good. I never liked to have a boss over my shoulder. All my life I had to depend on myself to bring myself in.”

That was the second maxim by which grandpa lived. Young David Whitman determined to live his life in the same way. He would make no excuses. And, to the extent possible, he would have no boss over his shoulder. Certainly he would never depend upon a boss for motivation. He would depend upon himself to bring himself in.

Tempering these challenging goals was a subtle but almost ever-present sense of humor. When filling out application forms for the University of Minnesota, Dave had answered the question “Church preference?” with “Gothic.” Fortunately for the fledgling collegian, the admissions dean also had a sense of humor.

After an outstanding tour through academe, he was recruited by and joined the public relations section of International Multifoods. As IM expected, he was very good. He quickly built excellent relations with the community-and with the media, to whom he was a genuine help. They learned to trust him.

However, there was a boss over his shoulder. Whitman certainly did not depend on anyone else for motivation in his work. But bosses, even approving bosses, would not go away.

Thus, when his childhood friend, Jay Galloway, pressed Whitman to join an independent venture in publishing, his inclination was to abandon the giant corporation and its multiple bosses and get in on the ground floor of something new and exciting. It took him a considerable time to convince his wife, Kate, of the wisdom, even of the necessity of the new gamble. But he succeeded, as he knew he would.

It was not long before disenchantment set in. It was not that Whitman did not believe Galloway could succeed. Indeed, it was probable he would. But no sooner did Whitman begin working for Galloway than an air of contempt began to be detectable.

Whitman could have ignored that. But Galloway had an irredeemable habit of cutting corners, playing fast and loose with rules, relying only on hope to get away with his unending fiscal peccadilloes. Sometimes Whitman wished Galloway would just commit one serious crime rather than all those minor offenses, the total penalty for which would be approximately the same as for a felony.

Whitman had been nearing the end of his endurance when Galloway came up with the idea of buying into and eventually owning the Cougars. The prospects were too good. Whitman, after a fierce internal battle, reinvested in Galloway.

They moved to a new city, a new state, a new enterprise. But nothing else had changed. Galloway was still mucking about in areas unsuited to his talents. Once again, Whitman was nearing the end of his tether when a fresh thought occurred.

He would nudge Galloway out of the picture. He would maneuver Galloway into an intolerable position with the Cougars. And then, out. Finally, Whitman would be where he was destined to end: in the driver’s seat. No boss over his shoulder. Depending on himself to bring himself in.

It would require some bold strokes. But Whitman had one such stroke in mind. It would take a lot of planning. He knew well the problem Galloway had with Hank Hunsinger. Whitman, indeed, was the management representative who had to negotiate the contracts containing those outrageous demands with the Hun. If it had been up to him alone, Whitman would have taken a much more hard-nosed attitude toward Hunsinger, including letting him go, to see if he could pursue his career with some other team.

But Galloway insisted on keeping the Hun, whatever the cost. Galloway seemed to Whitman to be unrealistic about the Hun’s value to the team. And that, Whitman decided, was Galloway’s Achilles’ heel. Whitman began to devise a complicated scheme. It would require very careful planning. But then, planning was his forte.

All that was required was that he get up a head of steam, get ’er over the hill, and bring ’er in.

Distractions were second nature to Father Koesler. And he was suffering from a persistent one now. The twin rows of pipes on Dave Whitman’s desk had nearly mesmerized the priest. He had never seen so many pipes outside a tobacconist’s. Clearly, Whitman was a serious smoker.

Between attempting to count the pipes, Koesler had been listening to the interrogation. They had covered the length of time Whitman had been associated with Galloway, the tragedy of Hunsinger’s death, and Whitman’s awareness of the player’s obsessive compulsiveness.

“Were you aware of any physical impairment, outside of injuries, that is?” Ewing asked.

“Yes, of course.” Whitman consulted Hunsinger’s file. Earlier, when the officers and Koesler had entered his office, Whitman’s secretary had brought it in. “He had a sight problem: astigmatism with a touch of nearsightedness. See for yourself.”

Whitman offered a sheet of paper to Ewing, who glanced at it, then gave it to Harris. It was a record of Hunsinger’s health status. The report mentioned the vision problem, but made no mention of any color deficiency. Apparently, he had been able to keep his colorblindness out of his official record.

“He wore contacts,” Whitman continued.

“There was nothing else wrong with his eyes?” Ewing asked.

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Are you aware of how Hunsinger died?” Harris asked.

“He was poisoned, wasn’t he? At least, according to the media.”

“It was strychnine,” said Harris.

Whitman raised his eyebrows. He sucked hard on his pipe, but it had gone out. He tapped the dottle out of the bowl and inserted a pipe cleaner in the stem. He returned the pipe to its place on the rack, removed the next pipe, and began the elaborate procedure of filling, tamping, and lighting it.

“Were you aware that Hunsinger kept a supply of strychnine in his apartment?” Harris continued.

“Uh-huh.”

“How’s that? Did you see it?”

“No. He told us about it. At one of our meetings, he mentioned how he’d had a problem with rodents in the apartment. He said he’d gotten the problem under control with, as he put it, ‘good old-fashioned strychnine.’”

Koesler nodded at this. Whitman’s description was exactly how the information had come out.

“Do you know how he got it?”

Whitman shook his head. “Didn’t ask. But it surprised me. Strychnine’s a controlled substance, isn’t it?”

Ewing nodded. “Speaking of surprises, Mr. Whitman, you looked surprised when Lieutenant Harris mentioned that strychnine was the poison that killed Hunsinger. Why was that, if you knew that strychnine was in the apartment?”

Whitman scratched the side of his head with the stem of his pipe. “I guess I was surprised that whoever killed him had used a poison that was already in the apartment. I guess that would have to mean the killer would have to have known that it was there in advance.”

“Like you did,” said Harris.

Whitman smiled self-consciously and blushed simultaneously. “Silly of me. . trapped by my own logic.”

“Mr. Whitman,” said Ewing, “part of your responsibility here is to sign up the players, negotiate their contracts, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Would you say Mr. Hunsinger had a good contract? I mean, measured by comparable contracts for comparable players?”

“I’d say it was an excellent contract. But fair. If the Hun hadn’t liked it, he could have played it out, become a free agent, and maybe gone to another club.”

“But isn’t this his market?” Ewing pressed on. “I mean, because of his local background, he’d be more valuable here in Michigan than anywhere else.”

“True, as far as it goes. But the Hun was a premier performer-a pheenom, as they say in this business. He would have gotten good money no matter where he went.”

“But not more than he’d get here. Which would give you a bargaining tool. I mean, after your final offer, say, you could point out that he would not get as much anywhere else, right? Sort of take away the whipsaw possibility.”

Whitman exhaled a thick cloud of smoke. He smiled. “That’s why they call it negotiating. During negotiations, it would be just me and the Hun getting together in our own little huddle.”

“Just you and Hunsinger? Didn’t he have an agent?”

“Nope.”

“Isn’t that kind of odd? Everybody’s got an agent.”

“Almost everybody. A long time ago, the Hun had an agent, when he signed his first couple of contracts with us. Then-no. The Hun was no dummy. After the first couple of go-rounds, I think he figured he could do as well as any agent, and also, he didn’t want to give 10 percent to anybody.”‘

“And you, you didn’t have an attorney or anyone with you?”

“It’s my responsibility. I bring it in.”

“And you’re capable, all by yourself?”

“I am capable of doing whatever I’m responsible for.”

“Sort of a lone wolf,” Harris commented.

“Not exactly. Just a philosophy of mine. I take responsibility for completing what I set out to do. And I make no excuses.”

Harris and Ewing wondered, if ever so briefly, whether that encompassing philosophy might extend to murder. Koesler, harking back to a day when workers were more conscientious, thought it a laudable philosophy.

“What does Hunsinger’s death mean to your team?” Harris asked.

Whitman shrugged. “Undoubtedly, it will hurt attendance. You’d have to ask the coach about the implications for the team’s playing strength.”

“It also blots out an extremely expensive contract, doesn’t it?”

“That’s just shortsighted, Lieutenant. It may be true-no, it’s definitely true, that whoever we bring up to the Cougars will not get a contract close to what the Hun had. There isn’t a tight end in football who ever equaled the Hun’s contract. But we’re going to have to pay someone to fill out the team. And we’re certain to have a falloff in attendance. Happened every time the Hun missed games in the past.

“So, from a financial standpoint, it’s like cutting off one end of a carpet and sewing it on the other. Whatever money we save on the Hun’s contract we’ll lose at the gate.” Whitman extended both hands, palms upward, in a gesture of futility. “Now, is that everything, gentlemen? I’ve got a very busy day ahead of me. Mondays are bad anyway. And, what with the Hun. .”He didn’t bother completing the statement.

“Just one more thing,” Ewing responded. “Can you account for your whereabouts through the day yesterday?”

Whitman took several deep puffs from his pipe, rekindling tobacco that had almost gone out. He seemed to be collecting his memory. The officers noted that, unlike Galloway, Whitman showed no reluctance to account for his time.

“We got up about seven, jogged our five miles, had some breakfast, read the papers, got ready, and went to the stadium about noon.”

“Excuse me,” Ewing interrupted, “but who is ‘we’?”

“My wife and I.”

“The two of you were together throughout the whole morning?”

“Why, yes.” Whitman seemed surprised at the question.

“I see. Okay, continue, please.”

“Well, we watched the game from our box. After the game, we went out to dinner with some of our friends. Then we went home, watched a little TV, the eleven o’clock news, and then retired.”

“Then you were with your wife or others all day?” Ewing asked.

“Far as I can remember.”

“Just a moment, Mr. Whitman,” said Harris. “If I recall correctly, you said you arrived at the stadium at noon. But the game didn’t start till two. What about those two hours?”

Whitman looked disconcerted-at having forgotten the two hours, or because they had spotted the gap?

“I was up in my office catching up on some business.”

“Anyone with you?”

“Why, no. I was alone.”

“Alone? Where was your wife during all that time?”

“I can see you haven’t been to many Cougar games, Lieutenant. Or, at least, you haven’t come early to the games. There’s a regular ritual many fans enjoy before a game. It’s called tailgating. It can become a genuine banquet. That’s where my wife was, Lieutenant, with some friends of ours at a tailgating party.”

“So there are two hours for which you have no corroboration.”

“I suppose so. Why should I need any?”

“During that time, you could have left the stadium.” Harris pressed the point.

“I could have. I didn’t. Why would I?”

“Between the time Hunsinger left for the stadium and the time he returned, somebody went to his apartment and set the trap that would kill him.”

For the first time in this interview, Whitman placed his pipe in the ample ashtray and sat forward. “Are you accusing me of killing Hunsinger? Are you serious?”

“No one is accusing anyone of anything-yet,” said Ewing. “But the investigation will proceed. We may have more questions for you later, Mr. Whitman. In the meantime, it would not hurt if you could think of anyone who could establish that you did not, indeed, leave this office between noon and two yesterday.”

“And for your part, gentlemen,” Whitman was standing, “it might help your flimsy suspicion if you could come up with a single solitary reason why I would even think of cutting off an attraction like Hank Hunsinger.”

In better restaurants it was called ground round or chopped steak. To Father Koesler, it was hamburger. And he had built a considerable reputation as the gourmand of the local hamburger circuit. As an expert-acknowledged or self-appointed-he disdained as hopelessly inferior the beef served in all fast-food chains, with the possible exception of Wendy’s.

Nonetheless, he was eating in a fast-food restaurant and it was not Wendy’s. It had been selected by Lieutenant Harris. Sergeant Ewing had concurred. Father Koesler’s opinion had not been solicited.

They were at the coffee stage of the meal. The one bright spot in this lunch as far as Koesler was concerned was that they served brewed decaf.

Luncheon conversation had been studied. The officers could not talk shop without leaving the priest awkwardly out of it. Koesler sensed that policemen might not be interested in parish matters or theology. So they advanced through lunch pushing one word after another.

“You come here often?” Koesler essayed.

“First time for me.”

“Me too.”

“I thought. . since you found it. . and it was so close to the stadium. .”

Harris smiled. “We don’t come to the stadium that often either.”

“Too expensive,” Ewing said. “And, besides, you have to invest too much time getting out of that parking lot. How about you, Father?”

“Only once in a long while. Actually, once since I joined the Bible discussion group. I thought I ought to patronize the business of the other members of the God Squad. But since attending in person, I realized that TV just doesn’t cover the game.”

Ewing sat back and for the first time appraised Koesler carefully. Redistribute the weight a little and take off maybe thirty years and he would at least look like a pro football player.

“How about you, Father? Did you ever play the game?”

“Me? Yeah. But I went through high school and college in the seminary and we played touch. Which sounds a lot more innocent than it was.” He grinned. “No conditioning, no pads, the blocking identical to tackle football-and there were some pretty big guys playing.

“Teams like the Cougars have thirty seconds to huddle and get the next play under way. Our plays originated in maybe a three-minute huddle. And we didn’t call the plays in shorthand. It was more, ‘You block so-and-so. You block so-and-so. You go out for a deep pass. You go out for a short pass. You go out in the flat and buttonhook-that means turn around-and you get out and cut behind the wheelbarrow.’

“So there’s a limit to how much I am able to identify with the Cougars.

“Before I got involved in this discussion group, the closest contact I had with a pro football player was a gentleman I’ll never forget. The name wouldn’t mean anything to you. But he played in the years just after the professional league was formed in 1922. I met him in his last days. He had terminal lung cancer. We became quite good friends. When he died, I had his funeral Mass and because I’d come to know him so well, I gave a eulogy that, I guess, was kind of affecting.

“Anyway, after the Mass, I went back to the rectory to get ready to go to the cemetery. The doorbell rang. It was a huge, elderly gentleman, who, it turned out, had been a teammate of the deceased. I don’t know whether he was embarrassed or just didn’t have the words to express himself, but he stammered something like, ‘I just wanted to tell you. . I mean. . I just wanted you to know. . uh. . that. . I thought. . well. . you played a good game!’”

The two officers smiled.

“I got to thinking about my friend this morning while I was listening to Mr. Galloway and Mr. Whitman explain what the loss of Hank Hunsinger would mean to the Cougars. How attendance would drop as it always did when he had to be out of a game.

“I remembered that my friend had told me of a similar experience. He had been a good player, but not nearly as famous as players like Red Grange and Bronco Nagurski. In fact, attendance in those early years was very poor until Grange became a professional. Anyway, my friend told me that when word got out that one of the superstars would not be able to play, attendance always suffered. But when, inevitably, a superstar retired, it had no effect at all on attendance.

“It was as if the fans felt cheated when a superstar-a pheenom I believe they call them now-would not perform. The star played last Sunday and he’ll probably play next Sunday. But this Sunday, when I pay my hard-earned money, he’s not going to play. So I’m not going to pay until he plays again.

“Whereas, when the player retired, the fans didn’t feel cheated when he no longer played. In fact, if it went anywhere, attendance used to go up because the fans wanted to see who would be taking the star’s place.

“So I thought it rather odd that both the owner and the general manager would assume that the Hun’s permanent loss to the team would necessarily hurt the gate. Seems to me attendance is just as likely to improve.”

There was a moment of silence. Toward the conclusion of Koesler’s monologue, Harris has paused with his coffee cup halfway raised. It was still in that position. “Out of the mouths of babes,” Harris murmured.

“Galloway and Whitman know, of course, who they’ve got back of Hunsinger. And they know how good he is. Who is it?” Ewing asked.

“Kit Hoffer,” said Koesler, “and I think he’s quite good. But he hasn’t had much of a chance to play. . what with the Hun’s being the superstar.”

“I think we’d better get back to the stadium and check out the new kid in town,” said Harris. “Then we’ll know a little bit more about just how motivated management was in keeping Hunsinger alive and well.”

Monday mornings in the Cougars’ locker room and training facility were devoted mostly to the walking wounded. The wounded who could not walk were usually in the hospital.

By the time Harris, Ewing, and Koesler entered the locker room in search of Kit Hoffer, much of Monday’s customary routine had taken place.

The players had begun to straggle in about nine. Some were dressed in the identical clothing they had worn when they left the stadium the evening before. They hadn’t been home. They had partied long and late. Most of these were in the arms of a bleary-eyed but good-humored hangover. Others, the more mature or serious athletes, were rested and ready to go.

A high percentage of those who had seen considerable game time yesterday now needed at least patching. Trainer Jack Brown had been steadily taping extremities, chests, and groins. At eleven-thirty, the team doctor arrived, checked the halt and the lame, and examined the more seriously maimed.

In general, the Cougars were far more subdued than usual. Most of the conversation, naturally, revolved around Hank Hunsinger. It was truly shocking for one athlete to contemplate the death of a fellow athlete, much less his murder.

After the examinations were completed, the trainer and the doctor delivered their reports to the coach, so he could begin to consider the personnel around whom he would build this week’s game plan.

It was at this point that the detectives and the priest entered the locker room. A few questions to players, some in varying stages of dishabille, others wrapped like mummies, disclosed that Hoffer, Cobb, the coach, and several assistants were on the field in the stadium. And yes, that was out of the ordinary for a Monday. But the coach wanted Cobb and Hoffer to have the maximum time in working together.

The three walked up the gentle incline toward the field with its artificial surface. Koesler considered the view from the field awesome, a sports cathedral. Not far from them, a group of men were clustered. Four wore team jackets. Koesler recognized only Coach Bradford. The three others, it would turn out, were assistant coaches on the offensive team. In nondescript sweat clothes were Bobby Cobb and Kit Hoffer. Koesler vaguely hoped the officers wouldn’t immediately halt the workout. He wanted to watch for a short while at least.

So did the officers.

At about the 10-yard line, Cobb and Hoffer stood approximately six or seven yards apart, roughly where they would be had the rest of the team been in playing position.

Cobb, holding a football in his right hand, turned toward Hoffer. “Okay, let’s try a dragout. Right. On two.”

Cobb hunched as if crouching behind an imaginary center. Hoffer assumed a three-point stance.

Cobb called out, “Hut! Hut!” and slapped the ball against his left hand as if it had been thrust there by the center. He retreated rapidly, four, five steps.

Hoffer began a pattern, swinging slightly to his right, and continuing downfield. Abruptly, he broke for the sideline, looking over his right shoulder.

The ball was thrown behind Hoffer. He tried to twist his body in the opposite direction; his legs became tangled and he fell, rolling over and over.

Cobb cursed. One of the assistant coaches returned the ball. The others shouted either correctional advice or encouragement. Coach Bradford stood silent and motionless, arms locked across his chest, face expressionless.

Hoffer, obviously feeling as graceful as a puppy whose legs are its worst enemy, returned to the imaginary line of scrimmage.

The two players conferred with one of the assistant coaches, then set up for another play. This time, Hoffer lined up to Cobb’s left.

“Okay, Hoff! Gimme a dragout and go! Left! On one!”

Cobb crouched. Hoffer balanced on his toes and the knuckles of his right hand.

“Hut!” Cobb slammed the ball and backpedaled.

Hoffer slanted slightly to his left, heading downfield. He abruptly broke toward the left sideline, then, just as abruptly, headed down-field at full speed.

Koesler thrilled to the exuberance of it: Hoffer, like an animal, seemed to run for the joy of running.

Cobb sent the ball in a high, deep arch. Hoffer slid to a halt, keeping his balance with one hand on the turf. He returned several yards and caught the pass just before it touched the turf. Clutching the ball to his chest, he fell and rolled over several times. Then he lay on his back, holding the ball up as high as he could, like a trophy.

“Bobby!” an assistant coach yelled. “Tell me what the hell good it is to outrun the safety and have to come back for the ball!”

Coach Bradford might have been carved from stone.

“Okay, Hoff. Let’s try a little curl! Right! On one! Hut!” Cobb retreated.

Hoffer ran straight downfield ten to thirteen yards, then stopped and curled back toward scrimmage. The ball was delivered just as he turned. He barely saw it. He dropped it.

The assistant coaches shouted.

What seemed to be a frown appeared on Bradford’s face.

At twenty-five, Kit Hoffer was young by anyone’s standards. Yet he was a little old to be a rookie. The cause of his retarded career might have been buried somewhere in his background.

Hoffer had just missed the 1950s, the decade many say was America’s last age of innocence. Born in 1960, he would live through the age of power explosions: student power, radical power, black power, drug power, fem-lib power, consumer power, rock power, rocket power.

Much of that had taken place beyond his awareness. He was only a teenager during Watergate. And Vietnam was over before he would have been forced to go.

Actually, despite growing up during a time of turmoil, Kit Hoffer had had a comparatively tranquil youth.

An only child, he had worshiped his father, Harold. And the affection was returned. Kit wanted to grow up just like his dad. Fortunately for that wish, he took after his father in that they were both mesomorphs with an abundance of bone, muscle, and connective tissue. Harold was, and Kit would grow to be, a muscular athlete with a large skeletal frame. And, as was so often the case, the son would far surpass his father in both size and athletic ability.

Harold Hoffer had grown up in New York City. He had attended Catholic schools, and had been an outstanding athlete from grade school through college. But while his scholastic career had been exceptional, he was not quite up to the standard of a professional in any sport. He went into sales for American Airlines. He was highly successful, using many of the contacts he had made during his life as a sports hero. He was transferred to Dallas-Fort Worth, the once and future headquarters of American.

Harold had married while living in New York. Kit was born there. When they moved to Texas, Kit was too young to know that everything about him would have been perfect if he had been Baptist. That anomaly diminished significantly as Kit grew and grew and grew.

He attended public school. But his parents made certain that he also attended catechism instructions faithfully. By so doing, he learned the Commandments, the Sacraments, and the Creed, over and over. His parish was not in the catechetical avant-garde.

For a while, young Hoffer toyed with the notion of becoming a priest. But he discovered two effective barriers to that vocation. He liked girls far too much to go through life without a wife. And his grades never reached a level that would encourage an academic career demanding scholastic achievement.

By no means was he stupid. He could have become a serious and successful student. But his desire to follow in his father’s tracks forestalled that.

His parents would have been pleased enough had he wanted to be a priest. But his father would have been convinced that his son had missed a vocational vehicle. So father and son played endless catch, shot numberless baskets, hit countless baseballs. At the proper time, Kit began to invest regular hours in pumping weights and working out on exercise machines.

It worked. In senior high school, he was all-state in football, baseball, and basketball. Most major colleges tried to recruit him. The best package was offered by, in effect, his hometown university, Southern Methodist.

He had it all. All but luck.

College baseball and basketball have their value. But neither attracts the publicity nor garners the income for the school that football does. Considering Kit’s build and natural talent, Harold and his son put all their chips on intercollegiate football. Kit became fullback for SMU. The best fullback in the conference. Perhaps the best in the nation.

But almost every time SMU would play one of its traditional rivals-a Notre Dame or a Texas A amp; M-on national television, for one reason or another Kit Hoffer would be sidelined. An injury, the flu, once, unbelievably, housemaid’s knee. Thus, he gradually earned a reputation for unreliability. The word went round that Kit Hoffer could not be counted on for the big ones.

It was unfair. Kit Hoffer played, and played well, against Notre Dame, Texas A amp; M, Texas, Oklahoma, but generally not when national TV covered the event. Unlucky.

He should have been chosen in the first round of pro football’s draft. He went in the eighteenth, to Chicago. Just as training camp opened, his mother died. He was late for camp. Unlucky. By the time he got there, he had fallen hopelessly behind in learning Chicago’s system. Two veteran fullbacks were well ahead of him. The coach decided to go with the two veterans. Unlucky.

His father got Kit a job in sales with American Airlines. His was a very big name among sports fans in the Metroplex area. Many travel agents and business people wanted to be seen in the company of the big, if former, college football star at the Fairmont, or the Pyramid or the Carriage House. Kit did well for American Airlines. But his heart wasn’t in it. His heart was in football.

The next season, as a free agent, he was invited to Tampa Bay’s training camp. On the first day of contact drills he injured a knee. Because he was unable to participate in any further drills or practice, he never did catch up-and failed to survive the final cut. Unlucky.

He returned to Dallas, where he continued to please influential people who reserved a lot of space in air travel. American Airlines was pleased with his work. But he and his father shared a common disappointment. They knew it was all a matter of bad luck. However, there seemed to be nothing either could do about it. Kit stayed in shape, working out regularly at the Y.

The following season he contacted no one. And no team contacted him. But he continued to maintain his excellent physical condition. He played softball, basketball, and touch football with amateur groups, while keeping in mind that he could not afford to forget to hold back. Otherwise, he would be likely to injure someone.

He married. He and his childhood sweetheart had agreed to wait till his career in pro football was well established before marrying. That they went ahead with the marriage was a tacit admission that he had given up hope.

Then the phone call came from Coach Bradford. The coach wanted to reinforce the position of tight end. He was certain Kit could master the new position. Yes, even if he made the team he would be playing behind Hank Hunsinger. But nobody lasts forever. And he would finally attain his dream of playing professionally.

Kit, his wife, Grace, and his father agonized over the decision. They even went to their parish priest and had a Sunday Mass offered for guidance. They decided to take the chance. Actually, Harold and Kit had known from the start what the decision would be. The agonizing had been for Grace’s benefit.

For once, he sailed through training camp uninjured and unencumbered. He more than mastered the position of tight end. But there was that brick wall: Hank Hunsinger. A no-cut contract, and orders that he play every moment he was capable of playing. Unlucky.

Kit had practically no opportunity to even work out with the first string. In practice, he was on the squad of reserves that ran the plays of the coming week’s opponent for the benefit of the Cougars’ first-string defensive team. Kit had little more than a nodding acquaintance with Bobby Cobb, the perennial starting quarterback.

And so it would go, he was convinced. The recipient of one bit of rotten luck after another.

Unless. . unless he could make his own luck.

Bobby Cobb and Kit Hoffer had reverted to the simplest pass patterns. Little more than playing catch. But as they grew increasingly successful, Hoffer grew increasingly confident. The shouted encouragement of the assistant coaches became more sincere. Coach Bradford watched the progress intently but impassively.

Hoffer jogged back to what passed for the line of scrimmage.

“Okay, Hoff, let’s just try that curl again. Right! On two! Hut! Hut!”

Hoffer left the scrimmage line driving and at full speed. As he reached a point just behind where the middle linebacker would play, he planted his right foot and curled back toward scrimmage. At the moment he turned, the ball was there, in a tight spiral, thrown hard and aimed at his chest.

By now, Hoffer was becoming accustomed to the quarterback. Kit anticipated the ball, the spot, the velocity, the tightness of the spiral. He opened his large hands and “looked the ball in,” letting the spiral drive itself into his hands. No sooner had he made the catch than he spun away and was driving downfield, the ball securely tucked in the crook of his left arm.

Perfect.

Koesler looked over at Coach Bradford. He didn’t smile. But he did something with his lips. Perhaps it was the suppression of a smile. The assistant coaches were going wild. They sensed the new combination was beginning to jell.

Hoffer trotted back, his fine blond hair bouncing as he jogged. He wore a wide, self-satisfied grin.

“Okay, Hoff! Let’s go for the big enchilada. Let’s try for the flag with a one-step fake inside. And, Hoff, when you make your break, turn on the afterburners. I’m gonna lay this sucker dead over your right shoulder. Right! On one! Hut!”

Hoffer drove from the line, running low, moving toward some invisible target. After some fifteen or twenty yards straight down-field, he planted his right foot, took one feinting step to his left, immediately planted the left foot, and broke for that corner of the end zone where the small red flag was planted. As he broke, Cobb lofted a high, deep pass downfield.

Hoffer glanced back as Cobb released the ball. Instinctively, the tight end knew where the pass would come down. He extended himself, lengthening and quickening his stride. As he neared the goal line, he knew the pass was too long. He would never be able to get both hands on it. He would be lucky to get one hand on it. He stretched every fiber of his being as far as possible. The tips of the fingers of his right hand made contact with the descending ball. He wiggled it toward his palm. Stumbling, he crossed the goal, the ball firmly, triumphantly held in his right hand. None of those watching had ever witnessed a better effort or a better catch.

The assistants went wild. Bradford kicked the turf and shook his head.

Harris, Ewing, and Koesler approached Bradford.

“Nice catch,” Harris understated.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen better.” Bradford shook a full head of unruly salt-and-pepper hair. His accent was an Oklahoma-Texas mix. His permanently tanned face was creased by too much sun and wind.

“Looks like Hoffer could be an adequate substitute for Hunsinger,” Harris offered.

“Adequate?” Bradford raised an eyebrow. But for a few extra pounds around the middle, Bradford could have been the image of the classic cowboy. “Adequate?” he repeated. “Better than adequate, I’d say. He’s bigger, heavier, faster, and younger. The Hun had a few moves it’ll take the kid a couple of years to learn. But he’ll learn ’em. ’Sides, most of the Hun’s moves lately have been for self-preservation. He was gettin’ a bit long in the tooth.”

“So why didn’t you play Hoffer?”

Bradford’s eyes, for one brief moment, lifted to the owner’s empty box. “Orders from upstairs.”

“Management tells you who to play?” Harris, having judged the coach to be as tough internally as he appeared on the surface, was surprised.

Bradford’s sigh spoke volumes regarding long, heated arguments over who had final control over the game itself. “They sign the checks,” he commented simply.

“But why? If Hoffer could be better than Hunsinger was?”

“They’re convinced the crowd comes to see Hunsinger. Nothin’ I could say’d change their minds.” He looked sharply at Harris. “Now, don’t get me wrong. Hunsinger was plenty good and he was popular, and a great many people did come to see him play. But you can educate fans. They’ll turn to sumpin’ better if you give ’em a chance.”

“Hmph.” Harris stored this information with the rest he was gathering. “We’ll need to talk to Hoffer and then to Cobb.”

Bradford nodded. “I figured you wanted to talk to somebody when I seen you come up the ramp. You got your work to do. I’ll cooperate much as I can.”

Cobb and Hoffer were standing together surrounded by smiling assistant coaches.

“I think,” said Cobb, “I got it figured out now: I throw the goddam ball far as I can and Hoff runs under it and catches it. Man,” he cuffed Hoffer playfully on the shoulder, “we got some fine times comin’ up. We shall overcome!”

Everyone laughed.

“Hoff.” Bradford called, “these gentlemen wanna talk to you.”

Hoffer dropped the prized football to the turf and trotted over. Bradford performed introductions, then left.

Ewing led Hoffer through the questions that were becoming all too familiar to Koesler. Yes, Hoffer was well aware of Hunsinger’s compulsions. Even though Hoffer was a rookie with the Cougars, it had taken no time at all to learn to keep clear of Hunsinger’s obsessions. And there were lots of them. Hoffer guessed that not only his own team, but everyone in the league talked about Hunsinger’s endless routines.

Yes, he was aware that Hunsinger had a sight problem; he wore corrective lenses, didn’t he. Nearsightedness, maybe. Hoffer seemed not to be aware of any further vision problem Hunsinger might have had. Just needed glasses.

It was when they reached the subject of Hunsinger’s having strychnine in his apartment that Hoffer’s information caused the officers to perk up.

“ Shoot, yes. . I knew he had that poison in his apartment. I was with him when he got it.”

“Oh? How and where did he get it?”

“Well, it was when we were in Houston for an exhibition game. Well, it wasn’t, you know, during the game; it was, like the night before the game. And the Hun took me and Murray-that’s our kicker-out to supper.”

“Just a minute,” Harris interrupted, “why would he do that? Doesn’t the team usually eat together before an out-of-town game?”

“Basically, yes. But different teams, you know, do it different ways. We always eat together the day of the game. But when it’s, like, not game day and we’re on the road, well, you know, we get expenses.”

Funny, thought Koesler, how even fairly well educated college grads took on the contemporary speech patterns so prevalent in pro sports.

“We want to get this straight from the beginning,” said Harris. “Why would Hunsinger take you and. . uh. . Murray to dinner? Did he take you often? Were you especially close to him?”

Hoffer snorted. “I don’t rightly think you could call us close. Basically, I think he wanted to, like, dominate the people on this team. And he’d, you know, start with the rookies. The night we were in Houston, I think he maybe wanted to introduce me and Murray to, like, the world of booze.

“We went to La Reserve, which they tell me is like the best restaurant in Houston. The Hun had the money. No doubt about that. Well, from the time we sat down and all through the meal, the Hun kept ordering whiskey neat-no ice, no water; just, you know, whiskey. He put ’em down one after the other. And poor Murray matched him drink for drink.”

“And you?”

“I been there. I knew what that booze would, you know, do. After a couple, I just turned ’em down. The Hun could hold booze by the quart. So he was okay the next day for the game. Poor Murray was sick as a dog. But the Hun pulled him through for the game. Got him kind of sobered up. Threatened him if he should so much as, you know, york on the field. . made him very dependent, you know. . just like he wanted.” Hoffer shook his head. “That’s the way the Hun was.”

“The strychnine?” Harris pressed.

“Oh, yeah, I was just, like, comin’ to that. Toward the end of the meal, when Murray was about to slip under the table, along comes this dude-I’ve seen enough of them in Dallas: plenty of hat and plenty of cattle. Well, this guy sits down at the empty chair at our table. He didn’t have any, you know, trouble finding us. The Hun and me were bigger by several times ’n anybody else in the place. Then the guy recognized the Hun.

“You know how it is, Lieutenant, with some people: they just want to be seen with football players. Basically, they want to go back to work and say, like, ‘I had a few drinks with the Hun Saturday night.’ That’s the way it was with this dude.”

“And how did this go over with Hunsinger?”

“It coulda gone either way. The Hun coulda knocked the dude on his ass. But, by then, you know, Hun was feelin’ no pain. So he takes the dude in like a long-lost buddy. Even buys him a drink. God, Lieutenant, you’da thought the dude had died and gone to heaven.

“Next thing I know, the Hun is tellin’ this guy about his swank apartment in Detroit. The dude is, like, lappin’ it all up. But, Hun says, the only problem with this apartment is it’s got rats. ‘Can you imagine that?’ says Hun. ‘Payin’ all that money and havin’ to put up with rats!’

“‘Funny thing,’ says this dude. He happens to be, like, I think he said, something like a county agent for the state Department of Agriculture. He handles this poison that is just made for rodents: strychnine. Gets it from someplace in New York. Comes as some sorta chemical compound. They turn it into liquid form, pour it on bait, use it for, like, ground squirrels. Promised he would send the Hun some.

“Basically, Lieutenant, that’s how he got it: from some dude in Texas who could handle it legally.”

The interrogation was drawing to a close. No, Hoffer could not say for sure who else knew the strychnine was in the apartment. But he was pretty sure the others in the discussion group knew. As he recalled, Hunsinger had mentioned it once when they met at his apartment.

“One final thing,” said Ewing, “can you account for your time yesterday? Don’t leave any large unverifiable gaps, if you can help it.”

Did they imagine it, or did Hoffer seem to blanch? “Well, basically, I’m gonna have to start with a gap. See, I, like, got up about six-thirty. I tried not to wake my wife, and I don’t think I did. Then, after I got ready, I stopped off at church for a while, to, like, pray for good luck in the game.”

“You went to St. Anselm’s?” Ewing asked. He glanced at Koesler, who seemed surprised.

Hoffer nodded.

“What time was that?”

“It was about seven.”

“But, Kit,” said Koesler, “we don’t have early Mass until eight o’clock.”

“I know, Father, but the janitor opens the church just before seven. And I stopped in just to pray for good luck.”

“Did anyone see you there?”

“Afraid not. Wasn’t anybody around that early. The janitor just opens up and leaves.”

“He goes on his rounds checking all the other buildings,” Koesler corroborated.

“So then what happened?” asked Ewing.

“Well, after I got done praying, I left for the Pontiac Inn. But I misjudged the timing. I got there about eight-thirty, quarter to nine. I got the hell bawled out of me and, like, I woulda got it worse except Bobby Cobb was late too. He didn’t arrive until a little after nine. And he woulda got it worse than he did ’cept he’s one of the team’s pheenoms.”

“How about the rest of your day?”

“Well, there was the meal and taping and trip to the stadium and the game with the rest of the team and all. Then, you know, after the game I went with my wife to dinner with some friends. Then, like, the wife and I went home.”

“But there’s no one to attest for your time until eight-thirty or eight-forty-five. Which means you got to the hotel up to forty-five minutes after the rest of the team, after Hunsinger.”

“Excepting for Bobby Cobb.”

“Except Cobb.”

“That’s about it, Lieutenant.”

“One more thing,” Harris added. “Hunsinger’s death, it sort of opens the way for you, doesn’t it?”

Hoffer lowered his head. “Lieutenant, it’s a cryin’ shame that the Hun is, you know, dead. And I’m sorry it happened. But I guess you’d have to say that I, like, got lucky for a change.”

They advised Hoffer there would probably be more questions, then left to locate Cobb. If nothing else on the surface made Hunsinger’s death of interest to Cobb, there was that hour’s tardiness that might prove interesting.

As they walked down the tunnel toward the Cougars’ locker room, Koesler said, “That’s odd, Kit stopping in church the morning of the game.”

“What’s odd about it, Father?” Ewing asked.

“Just that Kit and his wife were at the four-thirty afternoon Mass on Saturday. That satisfied his obligation to attend church on Sunday. Catholics, generally can be depended on to attend Mass once on the weekend. And that generally is about how often they are involved in formal prayer of petition. I would expect Kit to pray for victory and survival when he attended Mass on Saturday. I wouldn’t expect him to repeat the process the next day, just because it was Sunday.”

“Are you sure he was there Saturday afternoon?” Harris asked.

Koesler chuckled. “I’d have to be blind to miss that hulk in church.”

That Koznicki and his hunches, Harris thought approvingly; having Koesler along is cutting neat corners on this investigation.

On June 11, 1963, Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama, attempting to bar two black students from registering. Governor Wallace proved himself no prophet by promising, “Segregation Forever! Integration Never!”

Years later, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, urging blacks to make optimal use of educational opportunities, and in allusion to Mr. Wallace’s symbolic blockade, observed, “Nobody is standing in the schoolhouse door now.”

Quite independently of the Reverend Mr. Jackson’s observation, Robert Leland Cobb spontaneously reached the same conclusion.

Born in 1956 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Cobb grew up in that city. His father taught English in Kalamazoo High. His mother was a homemaker. He was an only child.

From the beginning of his conscious life, he was essentially an introvert. As early as possible, his parents introduced him to the joys of reading. He took to literature quite naturally and readily. His love of reading, together with a contemplative bent, prompted him to measure his world with precocious maturity.

It did not take him long to experience and learn what it meant to be black in an essentially white town. For a small city, Kalamazoo was heavy with institutions of higher learning: Nazareth College, Kalamazoo College, Western Michigan University. There were an unusual number of hospitals and schools of nursing. It was almost literally worth one’s life to find a mere general practitioner; most medical doctors were specialists. The Upjohn Company was so objectively large and significant it was practically the only game in town.

When little Bobby Cobb first understood the significance of being black-skinned, he was uncertain what to do about it. This deferral of judgment set a pattern in his life. Seldom would he act precipitately.

Although neither of his parents was particularly large, Bobby gave every promise of becoming a giant of a man. His father could trace this promising physical development to his paternal grandfather, a onetime slave whose feats of strength were storied.

In keeping with his father’s respected position in the community, Bobby’s family lived in the comfortable northwest section of Kalamazoo. They were about the only blacks living in that area.

Bobby observed that as time passed and he grew to be so much larger and stronger than his friends and schoolmates, he became more accepted. Even those with racist tendencies treated him with a certain civility, even deference. It did not much matter to Bobby that their attitude might spring from fear. In any case, Bobby’s polite articulateness won him acceptance in the homes of his white friends.

Jackie Robinson’s years as major league baseball’s first black player were gone long before Bobby’s time. But, unlike so many of his contemporaries who knew nothing of what had preceded them, Bobby learned everything he could about Robinson, and also about Paul Robeson, the black athlete who had earned letters and a law degree at Rutgers and had gone on to electrify the world as singer, actor, and activist.

Cobb was good at sports, very good. And he would get better. If he applied himself assiduously, he could become a professional athlete, probably in the football arena. At that point, he could do as many of his brothers had: carve out an athletic career and have nothing to turn to when age put him on the shelf. But no, that would not be for Bobby; he lived, and would live, in a white man’s world. And no amount of blackspeak or adopting of African names would change that fact.

His athletic ability easily would win him a scholarship to most any university of his choice. Under normal circumstances, that would be Western Michigan. He studied that option. Only one athlete from WMU had made it big: Charlie Maxwell, nicknamed Ol’ Paw Paw after the western Michigan town that was Maxwell’s point of origin. Maxwell had played baseball for a number of years for the Detroit Tigers. His career was marked by penchants for hitting home runs on Sundays and hustling back to the dugout after strikeouts. No, not WMU. Scouts would have to dig to find him there. And nothing must be left to chance.

He settled on Michigan State University. It had a big-time football program. But not so big that one could not be serious about one’s academic life. And Bobby did intend to be serious. He would be an attorney. And he would be one in the white man’s enclave. The white man’s world would be his field of combat. He would be articulate, well-educated, cultured, poised, cool, and armed with a well-publicized sports portfolio.

He was already handsome in a white context, with caucasoid features and chocolate-colored skin-evocative of a king-sized Harry Belafonte.

And that caused a problem which demanded the careful planning that was becoming his general modus operandi.

During Bobby’s teens and young adult years, in both college towns of Kalamazoo and East Lansing, consciousness-raising became very popular. Racist as well as sexist attitudes were roundly condemned, especially by high school and university students. But not infrequently an opposite swing of the pendulum would occur. Not only were racial disparities downplayed, but there was a mindset group of white females whose objective it was to merge with black men.

This, Bobby promised himself, would not happen to him. The quantity and at times superior quality of young white women students who plainly made themselves available to him were tempting, most tempting. But giving in to that temptation was not a part of his plan. The stratum of white society he would be a part of was not altogether prepared to accept miscegenation. So, neither was he.

Things went pretty much as planned. There were few surprises in Bobby Cobb’s life. And when an occurrence extraneous to his plan threatened to upset his modus vivendi, he always managed to bring things to order expeditiously.

He was an All-Everything in high school football. Most of the major colleges had heard about him, even though he came from little Kalamazoo. Feelers came in from as far away as Florida and California. He chose Michigan State, as he had planned long before MSU recruited him. He continued to develop both mind and body. He was cordial to, but stayed clear of, white coeds. He first dated, then courted, a gorgeous girl whose complexion was soft chocolate like his. They made a fine-looking couple. He knew the white world he would enter would accept the two of them unreservedly.

From his sophomore through his senior year he quarterbacked a football team whose success depended, in large part, on his excellence. He graduated cum laude and was drafted by the Cougars in the first round. He married his college fiancee. He was counseled to take no more than one semester a year in his postgrad march toward a legal degree. That way neither the demands of law school nor those of professional football would be too taxing.

Now he was in his seventh season with the Cougars and only a few short months away from taking the bar examination. His marriage was a success. He had two rather perfect children, a boy and a girl.

His program was right on schedule. There was but one fly in the ointment. Hunsinger.

It was part of Bobby Cobb’s plan that he be Numero Uno with the Cougars-the star attraction. It would not do to court the most illustrious law firm in Detroit unless one were indisputably the most prestigious candidate in applying for entry into the partnership. And that prestige must be across the board, in studies as well as professional accomplishment.

As it turned out, he was Numero Dos. Hunsinger always managed to get a tad more publicity. He was good copy, mainly because he was flamboyant. He could afford to be; he was not seeking the button-down life of a corporation lawyer. He wasn’t searching for anything but pleasure, security, and fame, in that order.

Worst of all, Hunsinger didn’t deserve the publicity he received. He was beginning to go over the hill. He wouldn’t even be getting in all that playing time were it not for those jackasses in management who assumed the capacity crowds were coming primarily to see Hunsinger in action.

Another part of Cobb’s plan was that the team he represented be of championship caliber. Nothing but the best for the area’s top law firm.

In Cobb’s eyes, for some reason, Hunsinger seemed to try his best to ruin the careers of his teammates-introducing the younger members to booze, breaking curfews, entertaining playmates, and flirting with drugs, including cocaine, and stopping just short of heroin.

For six full seasons Cobb had tried to neutralize Hunsinger. For six seasons Cobb had made little headway. In fact, it appeared to Bobby Cobb that Hunsinger’s popularity and his influence upon the Cougars were stronger than ever.

Hunsinger stood directly in the path of Bobby Cobb’s carefully laid plans.

Something would have to be done.

“Where did everybody go?” Ewing asked of the assistant trainer, the only person in the locker room.

“Oh, they’re probably in the projection room.”

“Bobby Cobb in there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Get him for us, will you?”

“Sure.”

“The assistant trainer did not need to ask who the two plainclothes detectives were, nor who the priest was, nor why they were at the Silverdome. Word had gotten around.

Moments later, Cobb entered the locker room. He wore cutoff jeans and a T-shirt. Koesler marveled, as he had many times this day while viewing partially clad pro football players, at the muscle tone. It was as if a Renaissance sculptor had chiseled out an entire team. None of them seemed to have a neck. Massive shoulders sloped gracefully into a head. It made him wonder about the cartoon Father McNiff had described wherein the lady explained to her companion that the football players were wearing falsies. Up close and in person it was obvious that, except for protection, the players needed no padding.

Ewing greeted Cobb. “Sorry to have to disturb you.”

“No sweat. You just saved me from suffering through yesterday’s game again. Watching us fumble it away. They were just getting to Hunsinger’s fight. Come to think of it, that’s the last film of the Hun inaction.”

Koesler was unable to tell whether there was a touch of relief, remorse, or just thoughtfulness in Cobb’s tone.

“How can I help you?” Cobb asked.

“Just a few questions. We’re trying to get to know a bit more about Hunsinger and some of the people around him. What kind of man was he?” Ewing asked.

Cobb smiled. “That’s a big order.”

“I mean, did he have any eccentricities?”

“Eccentricities? What pops to mind immediately were those weird routines-compulsions, I guess you’d call them. Used to drive me nuts watching them.”

“Many of them?”

“Oh, yeah, let me count the ways. Shoelaces had to lie flat against his shoes. Going on or off the field he would run by the right side of the goalpost only. First step up the stairs had to be with the left foot. Before going into a game the first time he’d have somebody slap his shoulder pads exactly three times. The long white sleeve of the sweatshirt we wear under our jerseys always had to be visible. He always sat in the last row of the plane-claimed it was safer. . shall I go on?”

Ewing smiled. “You watched him pretty closely.”

“Couldn’t help it. Fascinating. Besides, it wasn’t boring. Every so often he’d come up with something new to add to the list.”

“How about showers?”

“Showers? You mean the way he showered? Never noticed. I’m usually last in the shower and last out of the stadium.”

“Not the quality, the quantity.”

“Quantity? Oh, you must mean the double showers.” Cobb grinned. “The Hun led an … uh … an active social life. He wanted to. . uh. . smell nice for the ladies. So, particularly after a game and the crowd in here and the TV lights, he figured he needed more help than he got here in the locker room.”

“Was this common knowledge? I mean, it sounds kind of personal.”

“Yeah, well, you see, a team gets closer, maybe, than any other group. We get to depend on each other. So we get to know a bit more about each other than you might expect. Besides, there are those who prefer to keep some personal secrets and those who like to brag. The Hun was a talker.”

“Were you aware,” Harris took over, “that Hunsinger had a vision problem?”

Both officers studied Cobb’s reaction to the question. They detected nothing out of the ordinary.

“Shit, yes-sorry, Father-I mean, I used to spend enough time on my hands and knees down on the turf looking for his damn contacts. That was before he got the soft lenses. The hard lenses used to pop out a lot.”

“Again, common knowledge?”

“The team almost took up a collection so he would get the soft lenses. We all spent time lookin’ for his lenses.”

“Were you aware Hunsinger kept a strong poison at his apartment?”

“You mean the strychnine. Sure. Like I said, the Hun was a talker. He blurted it out when we had a meeting of the discussion group at his place.”

The sound of many male voices talking loudly and simultaneously interrupted the interrogation. The team had finished viewing the films of yesterday’s game. Now they filed through the locker room.

“Show’s over,” Cobb observed. “Are we just about done?”

“Just about. What happens now with the team?”

“The coaches’ll run us for a while. . just to loosen up after yesterday’s battering.”

“One last question then,” said Harris. “Can you account for your time yesterday?”

“Let’s see. .” Cobb nibbled on a knuckle. “I got up about seven, kind of overslept and then started running behind.”

“You were late getting to the Pontiac Inn,” Harris stated.

Cobb looked at him sharply. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“How late?”

“Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour.”

“Isn’t that kind of late for rising at seven? The brunch meeting didn’t begin till eight.”

“I had a flat on the way to the stadium.”

Harris looked skeptical. “Did you call anyone? Triple-A?”

Cobb shook his head. “Happened at an empty stretch of I-75.”

“Anybody stop to help you?”

Again he shook his head. “Ever see I-75 early on a Sunday morning?”

“Was your family awake before you left for the stadium?”

“No. They usually sleep in till about ten.”

“So no one would be able to attest to your whereabouts until you arrived at the inn at eight-forty-five or nine?”

“What are you getting at?” Almost from the beginning of this interrogation, Cobb had understood its purpose. Now that the intent had become so obvious, he thought it best to get the cards on the table.

“Nothing, Bobby.” Ewing was conciliatory. “But Hank Hunsinger is dead and we have to find a murderer. And to do that, we’ve got to ask questions. As, for example, what does Hunsinger’s death mean to you?”

Cobb glanced pointedly at Harris and hesitated, as if refusing to answer any more questions. But finally he spoke. “Nothing. Hun’s death means nothing to me. By a series of coincidences we happened to be on the same team. That was the end of it. No, I’ll take that back: You saw it for yourselves up there,” he gestured toward the field. “I’ll be throwing to a better player. And if you want to know whether I knew Hoffer was that good, the answer is no. I’ve had practically no time with him since he joined the club this season.

“Now, is there anything more?”

“Not now, Bobby. We may want to talk to you again,” said Ewing in parting.

Cobb lightly jogged out of the locker room and headed up the ramp to join his teammates in their running exercises.

“That’s a lot of time unaccounted for at the beginning of his day yesterday, isn’t it?” Koesler asked.

“Yup,” said Ewing. “Since Hunsinger arrived at the inn on time, he would have had to leave his apartment by about seven. If Cobb went there, he could have gotten there anytime between, say, seven and eight, and still have had plenty of time to get out to the inn by nine. It would take only seconds to switch containers and pour the strychnine into the DMSO.” Ewing paused and reflected.

“But have you noticed?” Ewing continued. “So far, everyone we’ve talked to has an unaccounted-for gap in yesterday’s schedule. And in each case, the missing time is sufficient for the person to have gone to Hunsinger’s apartment and made the switch.”

Harris shrugged. “Sometimes you can’t raise a suspect. And sometimes there’s too many.”

“Who’s next?” asked Ewing.

“We’d better grab that kicker before he gets away. But first, I want to call headquarters.”

While Harris was gone, Koesler studied the locker room. Just a series of open wire cages, each containing a set of shoulder pads on a shelf topped by a helmet. Wide open. No privacy. He could imagine Cobb studying Hunsinger indulging in one obsessive compulsion after another. It would be hard to hide anything in this setting. Not that Hunsinger had tried to hide anything, from all they’d been told. Perhaps he should have tried to be more secretive.

Harris returned. “There are prints all over the apartment. But then a lot of people had been there lately. However, only Hunsinger’s prints on both shampoo and DMSO containers. And another thing. Hunsinger’s latest girlfriend, that Jan Taylor who found his body. Jackson checked her out. She’s got a roommate who testifies that they were together all day Sunday until Taylor left to join Hunsinger. The timing checks out. She’s clean.”

“It figures,” Ewing commented, then turned to Koesler and smiled. “Father, you’re not holding up your end.”

“What’s that?”

“Praying for success.”

They offered him a contract guaranteeing a salary of $35,000 and containing a health-care package and litle else. He thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Of course, it meant that he might never return to Dunderry, at least not to work there. That was the best part.

Dunderry was an estate of approximately a hundred acres. It had been taken from its native Irish owners in 1573 and settled by a transplanted English landlord. Though the property had been passed down through generations of the Birmingham family, the present Georgian mansion had not been built until the late nineteenth century.

At about the time of the official establishment of the Republic of Ireland in 1949, the then Lord Birmingham lost interest in Dunderry. He became an absentee landlord. The Murray family became his tenants.

The Murrays came from Gurteen, less than ten miles south of Ballymote. Dunderry stood at the outskirts of Ballymote. Both Gurteen and Ballymote were in County Sligo.

Three of the seven Murray brothers pooled all their resources and entered into a mortgage on Dunderry, much to the relief of Lord Birmingham. The Murray brothers moved their considerable families into Dunderry. Space was not a problem; the mansion was huge.

The Murray plan was to make of Dunderry a sheep farm. The secondary plan was to make of the mansion a bed-and-breakfast establishment. The combined plans put food on the table. And that was about all it did. That the sheep were sheared, the once magnificent gardens maintained at least to a minimal degree, and the occasional overnight guests satisfied was a tribute to the industriousness of the Murray families and all their many children.

Into the large family, in 1965, was born Niall, fourth son and seventh child of Liam and Meg Murray.

Niall learned the rudiments of farm life not long after he learned to walk. He was given responsibility for a list of chores as soon as he was physically able to carry them out. The list of chores grew right along with Niall. As a side effect of all this work, Niall was building a strong body. He would not become a huge adult, but he would be hard packed, with sinewy power.

At the age of only four, he began his formal education at Ballymote National School. Discipline was rigid, obedience and performance expected. Although it had been years since physical punishment had been banned in schools, that did not preclude a cuff on the ear from time to time. Teachers guilty of sporadic hitting had little fear that the punishment would be reported. Pupils quickly learned that the blow suffered in school, if reported at home, most likely would be repeated there.

At age fourteen, Niall attended St. Nathy’s College in Ballaghadreen. St. Nathy’s was the equivalent of high school in the States. A Catholic boys’ school with a priest as dean and a faculty comprising clerics and laity. If anything, the discipline and demands were far more intense than at Ballymote National.

There were times during Niall’s four years at St. Nathy’s that he was invited to friends’ homes. At some of these visits, he learned that Dunderry was a mansion in name only. The experience was akin to that of one who grows up in poverty, not desperate poverty, but poor nonetheless. As long as everyone in his milieu lives in roughly the same circumstances, the boy is unaware that he lives in what others would term poverty.

Niall, in his visits to some Ballaghadreen homes, discovered that not everyone lived with sheep; that outer clothing does not have to carry an animal odor; that toilets, even though indoor, need not appear to be the outdoor variety; that multiple consanguine families need not live together; that every able-bodied person in a home need not work at every conceivable moment.

He was by no means the only one in the Murray clan to learn these facts. But as he assimilated them, some unpredictable inner conviction was formed. He would escape. He would flee the inheritance of Dunderry. There was a better life out there, and he would have it.

But how?

One possible avenue was the natural progression, taken by many of his predecessor classmates, from St. Nathy’s to Maynooth. St. Nathy’s, as a Catholic school, was a feeder to the seminary. Many’s the lad who had been force-fed a liberal arts curriculum featuring Latin; been an altar server over many years; been exposed to the example of so many clerical professors; then matriculated at Maynooth to pursue studies that might lead to the priesthood. For many Catholic students in Ireland, the progression was as natural as going from third to fourth grade.

But that was not for Niall. He’d had a belly full of discipline, starting with his earliest memories at Dunderry, then St. Nathy’s. Spending his adult life curtsying to some bishop hardly described an escape for Niall.

Besides, he wanted to get as far from Dunderry as possible. He felt that if he remained in Ireland, Dunderry would get him in much the same way a vortex sucks under a drowning person. His future lay in the States. He was sure of it. There, in the land of the free, his horizons would be limited only by his talents and his ambition.

Of course, it was possible to get to the States through Maynooth. For many years, a goodly number of Irish priests had been imported to the States, technically excardinated by their Irish bishops and incardinated by American bishops. The trend was particularly strong throughout Florida. In Florida the imports were called by the local clergy, FBIs. Foreign-Born Irish. The term was used pejoratively.

Again, Niall had no intention of trading obedience owed an Irish bishop for that owed an American Irish bishop.

He was aware of the Irish Clergy Connection because he made himself aware of every possible shred of news about what went on in America. He read all the American literature and journals he could find. And when he chanced upon any potential avenue of entry to the States, he zeroed in on it.

Thus it was that Niall learned that there had been a blend of sorts between distinctive United States and European sports. Football-American, not Irish-rivaled baseball as America’s favorite sport. Niall took special note of and interest in the phenomenon of soccer-type kickers, many of European origin, becoming specialists in attempting field goals and extra points for American football teams.

Why not? He’d played a lot of Irish football. He was a strong young man. And, in remote preparation for such an event, he’d gotten a mail-ordered American football and kicking tee. On one of the seldom used fields of Dunderry, he’d set up regulation-sized goalposts. As often as possible, he would cajole or bribe one or another of his brothers or sisters to shag the ball. For him, practice made not only permanent, but near perfect. Repeatedly, he would split the uprights from distances approved by American standards.

Then, as if fate had ordained it, he read that the Pontiac Cougars, before each training season, staged a sort of open house for amateur athletes to try out for their team.

The open tryout was the brainchild of owner Jay Galloway. His intention was twofold: to whip up more local interest in the Cougars; and, on the off chance that some genius talent might be uncovered, to sign that talent to a minimum contract.

Niall could not know Galloway’s intent. Nor would he have cared had he known. The opportunity seemed perfect-God-sent, in fact.

Despite warnings and dark prophecies from family and friends, he spent nearly every pence he’d saved and purchased a plane ticket to Michigan. He promised his fiancee, Moira, whom he’d been courting these two years since graduating from St. Nathy’s, that he’d send for her as soon as he’d made good with the Cougars. She alone believed in him.

It happened. The Cougars coaches, who usually daydreamed through these ragtag tryouts, scarcely could believe their eyes. This Niall Murray-not a potbellied, overstuffed, noncoordinated dreamer-was a trim, powerful, natural athlete.

At first, the coaches were content to watch him put kick after kick through the crossbars from the 10-yard line, about the distance of a PAT. Then they began moving him farther and farther from the goalposts, adding difficult angles to the increasing distance. Rarely did he miss.

Few of the coaches could recall, in their experience, anyone like him.

The assistant coaches fetched head coach Bradford, who generally retreated to his office during these tedious tryouts. He, of course, agreed wholeheartedly with the others. Altogether, they treated Murray like a piece of rare Waterford. They got him a good room in a good motel and made sure he had sufficient money for expenses.

The coaches immediately found general manager Dave Whitman, who informed owner Jay Galloway that a rough-cut diamond was all but signed. Then, before anyone could say “agent,” Niall Murray was under contract to the Cougars.

It did not matter to Niall that he would be the lowest paid Cougar, nor that he would be among the lowest salaried players in the league-$35,000 to Niall was as good as a million. It got him off Dunderry and out of Ireland. Forthwith he sent for Moira Malloy.

Hank Hunsinger arranged for their wedding at Holy Redeemer after the Hun’s mother pulled a few strings with the good Redemptorist Fathers. Hunsinger also arranged Niall’s bachelor party, at which the Hun introduced him to marijuana.

Niall could not quite fathom why he had been singled out for special attention by Hunsinger. The other Cougars treated him like an alien at best and a toy at worst. Some mocked his brogue, others taped him to the goalpost. But as time passed and his consistently excellent performance exhibited itself, his teammates had to acknowledge that the Mick would be winning games and helping them make more money. Now Niall was unreservedly accepted into their company.

From the very outset Hunsinger had accepted him. Actually, more adopted than accepted. And, correspondingly, Murray had become dependent on Hunsinger. After a while this dependency became apparent even to Niall. However, since, from his first days with the Cougars, he had accepted an enormous amount of help from Hunsinger, Murray could find no way of terminating his dependency.

And as long as this dependency continued, Murray felt himself drifting further and further from his goals. He wanted to be superior at his job as a place kicker for the Cougars, make an escalating amount of money, and secure a future for himself, his wife, and the family they would have. Meanwhile, the Hun continued repeatedly to try to lead him into chemical dependency and infidelity.

He decided his relationship with Hunsinger was one of aversion-attraction. Niall was truly grateful for all the Hun had done in the beginning, even though the ill-intentioned basis was becoming apparent. Niall acknowledged to himself that somehow he must free himself from the harmful hold Hunsinger had on him.

There was no doubt in Niall’s mind that he would have to do something. The only question was how far he would have to go.

Around and around the track circuiting the playing field the team jogged. Koesler watched, fascinated. These finely conditioned athletes ran so effortlessly. They were running ostensibly to loosen up from the aftereffects of yesterday’s game. Some needed more than others.

Lieutenant Harris informed one of the coaches that Niall Murray was wanted for interrogation. As Murray neared the group, the coach waved him out of the drill.

“It’s grateful I am to you for that.” Murray toweled his head as he stood with Harris, Ewing, and Koesler.

Introductions were made and explanations given, specifically for Koesler’s presence. The introductions and explanations were becoming less and less necessary. Word of the interrogations, their purpose and scope, was circulating throughout the team.

Yes, Murray was well aware of Hunsinger’s compulsive behavior; wasn’t everyone? Niall also knew of the Hun’s astigmatism and nearsightedness. Team members by and large were aware that Hunsinger kept some sort of device in the training room for cleaning, or “cooking,” his contact lenses after practice. Only after practice? Then did Murray know what Hunsinger’s postgame routine was? Of course. He took a cursory shower here and then went back to his apartment where he took care of his lenses, showered again, and prepared for the Big Evening. Everyone knew that.

“Were you aware of anything else being wrong with Hunsinger’s vision?” Ewing asked. “I mean, besides the astigmatism and nearsightedness?”

“Oh, then, you must mean that the poor man was colorblind.”

Murray’s unequivocal delivery of this unexpected answer stunned the officers and Koesler.

Harris recovered first. “How did you happen to know that Hunsinger was colorblind?”

“It came out of a night when we were, as they say, hoistin’ a few. For once, I used the brains I was born with and let the Hun get well ahead of me with the creature, and the poor man was after running off at the mouth about the bad tricks fate had played on him. Among them was the fact that he was colorblind. But once it was out and the Hun realized what he’d said, he swore me to secrecy. . I don’t suppose it matters anymore now, does it?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Ewing, “it does. Very much. Have you told anyone else?”

“Oh, I did not; certainly not! It was a secret! I told no one. I just thought. . now that he’s dead-”

“No, no. It is terribly important that you continue to keep this to yourself.” Harris was unsure how most effectively to extend the embargo on the knowledge of Hunsinger’s colorblindness. He decided to tread lightly; Murray seemed likely to react better to trust than to threats. “We can’t reveal the reason for this secrecy just yet. But it is most important to our investigation that you go right on keeping it a secret.”

Murray nodded, as if he had turned a key in his brain. The Hun’s secret defect would remain unrevealed by him.

“One final thing,” said Ewing, “can you tell us what you did yesterday?”

“Ummm. . I can. I think. Let’s see; we got up about half-five; went to six o’clock Mass. It’s over by seven. . no sermon, ya know. Too early. Left home about quarter past seven. Got to the inn just at eight. Had the pregame meal. Got taped up. Attended the special team’s meeting. Then it was out to the stadium. Got suited up. Then there was the warmups and the game.”

“And after the game?” Ewing had not bargained on such detail.

Murray blushed slightly. “Well, then, I shoulda gone straight home. But I didn’t. .”

“Oh?”

“Some of the lads convinced me we all needed some-what did they call it? — comin’ down from a high. So they took me to this party in Grosse Pointe. And I ‘m afraid I had a mite too much to drink.” He decided to omit the girl and the cocaine. After all, they had not passed the stage of being temptations, and he hadn’t actually used either one. “But then, before I did anything more foolish, Bobby Cobb came by and took me home where the wife got in her licks as well.”

Ewing looked up. He’d been taking notes. “That pretty well covers the whole day, doesn’t it?”

“That’s what you asked for, wasn’t it?” Murray seemed embarrassed, as if he had revealed more than was required. “You wanted to know what it was I did yesterday, did you not?”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Ewing. “That’s what we wanted to know.”

“Will that be all then?” Murray had worked up a sweat while running and wanted to take a shower before catching a chill.

Ewing dismissed him with an admonition to remain available for further questioning.

Murray trotted down the incline toward the locker room. Hindsight told him, especially now that the Hun was dead, that all his suspicions about his relationship with Hunsinger had been accurate. Even that bit of advice the Hun had given before the field goal in yesterday’s game. Murray had been bothered on and off since then, wondering whether it might be a sin to think of doing it with your wife without actually doing it. He thought he’d ask some priest. He was pretty sure what the priests back home would say. But the priests over here appeared to be more liberal. Maybe he’d get a chance to ask that Father Koesler. He seemed to be the sort of priest you could trust.

“How about that!” said Ewing. “The only one so far who admits he knew Hunsinger was colorblind. . and he’s got an alibi for all day.”

“Do you take his word for it?” Koesler asked.

Ewing smiled. “Oh, no. Not any of them. We’re just gathering statements. Then we’ll check each one’s story. Somewhere in this crowd is the murderer. And the murderer will lie. He-or she-has to. But we’ll break it down and get whoever it is.”

“We’d better get to the trainer before he closes shop for the day,” said Harris.

“Right you are.”

The three men walked toward the locker room. There was an eerie stillness in the huge, empty stadium. Koesler was relieved to leave it.

It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. That was all the boy could think. His father agreed, but that was not his only thought.

The doctor had just been in the boy’s room and delivered the prognosis. The boy had a heart murmur so pronounced and so potentially threatening that there could be no thought of strenuous exercise in his future.

That was what was not fair. Young Jack Brown had been destined for a life of sports stardom. Everyone agreed on that. His father had pushed him along that trail from preschool days. When Jack reached the fourth grade, he was already bigger and stronger than his classmates. By bending a few rules, he played on the seventh- and eighth-grade extramural athletic teams from the time he was a sixth grader. By the time he was in the eighth grade, a Dallas high school coach thought enough of Jack’s ability that the coach moved the Brown family into his school district so that Jack could play there.

Then, during summer vacation between sophomore and junior years, he was stricken with polio. In 1944 many who contracted polio died. So young Jack Brown was extremely fortunate to be alive. That was the thought uppermost in his father’s mind.

Yes, it was not fair that such a budding athletic career should be ruined by a chance exposure to that dread disease. At the same time, they were lucky to have Jack still with them.

In due time, Jack was released from the hospital and returned to his school. Not long after the scholastic year began, football practice commenced. Jack could do no more than stand on the sidelines and watch his former teammates go through the drills. It hurt. But by then, he had pretty well adjusted to a life without the heady joy and challenge of athletic competition. He had no idea what he would do with that life.

The coach had a difficult time concentrating on practices with his best player reduced to a spectator. One day he asked Jack if he would accept the position of team manager. After talking the offer over with his parents, Jack took on the job. At least it would keep him close to the sports he loved.

There had never before been a team manager for this south Dallas school. So the job became defined as Jack performed it. He took care of the equipment, brought drinks onto the field, applied iodine and calamine lotion, and made some bandages. There was a scarcity of tape because of the war.

It was the beginning of a new career. Jack was awarded a partial scholarship at the University of Houston to act as assistant trainee in the university’s sports program. In 1951 he graduated with a degree in physical science.

Finding a job as a professional trainer was a larger problem than Jack had anticipated. He might not have caught on anywhere had it not been for a few Texas coaches and trainers-friends of Jack’s-and their interest in and intercession for him. But through them and their sports contacts, Jack uncovered several promising leads. Nothing outstanding, mind; after all, he was just a fresh college grad with no professional experience.

Interviews with some Canadian football teams proved largely unproductive. Some offers were made, but the money was always less than he needed for sustenance as well as to satisfy debts he had incurred while attending college.

Finally, he was hired as an assistant trainer for the New York Rangers hockey club. It was a sport with which he was largely unfamiliar, but hockey players needed conditioning and incurred injuries just as did football players. Hockey players, since they were on skates, did not hit, clutch, and hold each other as violently as did footballers, but there were the boards around the rink into which the skaters were regularly slammed. And in those days, players did not wear the helmets and masks popular today. Pucks traveling around a hundred miles per hour wreaked their own special damage on exposed heads and teeth.

It was while Jack was with the Rangers that he met and grew to admire Gordie Howe, the durable and memorable winger of the Detroit Red Wings.

It was also while in New York that Jack met several of the better boxing trainers, known more popularly as corner men. New York then was the world capital of prizefighting. Some of the trainers were generous enough to teach Jack how they taped their fighters’ hands; how to get the protection where it was needed without cutting off circulation or restricting movement; how to slip the strips between the fingers. From that time, Jack’s football players would have their hands taped after the fashion of prizefighters.

After serving his apprenticeship with the Rangers, Jack was hired by Ball State University through the good auspices of then assistant coach Buck Bradford, who had followed Jack’s career from his high school days. Bradford, who had great confidence in Jack’s ability, integrity, and understanding of athletes, took him along as Bradford became head coach at Texas A amp; M, then Oklahoma, and now the Cougars.

Jack Brown watched his profession evolve over the years he practiced it. In his early days, it was carrying water and fixing bandages over cuts. Then it moved on to ice packs, towels, hot packs, and massages. Trainers were expected to acquire something of a pharmacist’s expertise in pills and linament.

Then came the National Athletic Trainers Association and its board of certification. At one time, the title, Certified Athletic Trainer, was, in an exercise of cronyism, passed on to a very few veteran male athletic trainers. Now, the initials AT,C after one’s name were highly sought after and awarded only after long and demanding scholarly study and practice.

Those associated with Jack Brown professionally knew that he admirably fulfilled the responsibilities of an up-to-date athletic trainer, whose functions were to prevent athletic trauma and treat any conditions that might adversely affect the health or performance of an athlete. Such functions included management-first aid, evaluation, treatment, and rehabilitation-of athletic trauma or other medical problems that affected the athlete, as well as counseling the athlete in such health-related areas as nutrition, relaxation, and tension-control and personal health habits.

Trainers were expected to be able to manage and operate such therapeutic agencies and procedures as hydrocollator, hydrotherapy, dinthermy, ultrasound, cryotherapy, cryokinetics, contrast bath, paraffin bath, and infrared, manipulative, and ultraviolet therapy.

In short, Jack Brown exemplified the modern athletic trainer who has made the long journey from water-bucket brigade to just this side of a medical degree.

But of all the expertise he had acquired in his years as trainer, that of which he was most proud was, oddly, taping. No mean skill, it involved not only the routine taping of ankles-required even for practices-but the building of castlike pads, made of fiber glass, covered with a protective layer of foam rubber and held together with tape.

Like most trainers, Brown was dedicated to his players, to their conditioning and rehabilitation. He could never forget the disease that had robbed him of a playing career and from which, for him, there had been no rehabilitation. He found no greater joy than to nurse an athlete from a position on the shelf to a spot in the active lineup.

That was why he simply could not understand Hank Hunsinger. Brown had encountered bad-tempered people in his long career. He had known athletes who were the antithesis of the grateful lion from whose paw Androcles had pulled the thorn.

But Hunsinger-bent to destroy other athletes-was something else. Brown had never taken any courses in psychology, and had never regretted the lacuna until he met Hunsinger. The Hun was sick, Brown had at length concluded, but it was a sickness that was impervious to massage, a whirlpool bath, or the panacea of taping. And while Brown fretted over what to do about this condition, Hunsinger roamed about seeking teammates to devour.

Most recently, the victims were the two rookies, Hoffer and Murray. Hoffer, after a bad start, seemed to be handling Hunsinger adequately. But Murray seemed to be more easily led into Hunsinger’s world of wretched conditioning, debauchery, and chemical dependency.

There was no turning away from it; something had to be done. But what? Since the bad influence Hunsinger was having on the team resulted in poor conditioning and, as a result, in injuries, it seemed to Brown it was up to him to rectify the situation.

That would mean, as far as he could figure, something would have to happen to Hunsinger. But after all these years of repairing and healing bodies, could Brown bring himself to a denial of everything he stood for?

Harris, Ewing, and Koesler stood outside the training cubicle wherein a player was consulting with Brown.

Koesler studied the closed door. A series of cartoons had been taped to it. Many had turned yellowish-brown with age. Two were at his eye level. Both were by an artist named Cochran and looked as if they had been clipped from USA Today. One showed a coach admonishing a huge player, saying, “You’re a sadistic bully who has no compassion for his fellow man, Foswell. I like that in a linebacker.”

The other depicted a coach saying to a trainer on the sidelines, “Jones has a broken leg. Go out and spray it.”

He could abide someone who lived his life by cartoons. Koesler felt he himself frequently did.

Shortly after he had asked them to wait until he had finished, Brown dismissed the player and invited them into his office.

The initial interrogation of Brown proved predictable. He knew of Hunsinger’s obsessions, his astigmatism, that he showered again at home after the games, and that he had a supply of strychnine in his apartment. Brown gave no indication that he knew of Hunsinger’s colorblindness.

Neither Harris nor Ewing expected any more. The only real surprises so far had been Hoffer’s explanation of how Hunsinger had acquired the strychnine, and Murray’s admission that he knew the dead man had been colorblind.

One more question and they would move into the second phase of the interrogation: getting the subjects to talk about each other.

“One more thing,” said Ewing, “would you tell us what you did yesterday? Be as complete and thorough as you can.”

Brown reflected momentarily. “I got to the inn about six-thirty in the morning. I always get an early start, especially on game days. The guys started showing up about seven-thirty. We had something to eat. Then I started taping. The guys take turns eating and getting taped. Then about ten, I came here to the stadium to get ready to apply the special braces, get out the medication-things like that.

“The team started getting here about noon. We did the final taping. Then there was the game. After that a few guys needed some first aid. I checked out some injuries that would need the doc’s attention. Then there was the cleaning up.

“I left here about eight, eight-thirty and went right home and had some dinner.”

“I see,” said Ewing. “Was there anyone at the inn when you got there at. . uh. . six-thirty?”

“My assistant got there just a few minutes after I did.”

“How about when you left here last night at about eight or eight-thirty?”

“Again, my assistant.”

“How about that period in midmorning?” Harris asked. “What was it-you said you left the inn to come here about ten and the players didn’t get here till about noon. Anybody with you then?”

“No, I came alone.”

“Nobody here when you got here? Anybody here at all between ten and noon?”

“No.”

“Anybody see you come in?”

“Maybe. But I don’t remember seeing anybody.”

“So you were alone here for a couple of hours, but there isn’t anybody can attest to that?”

“I guess so. I had to get things ready here for the game. . like I told you. Is there anything wrong with that?”

“Not yet. Did you notice any of the players show up late at the inn yesterday morning?”

“Sure. There’s almost always a few.”

“Hoffer and Cobb among the late arrivals?” Ewing resumed his questioning.

Brown nodded. “Near as I can remember, Hoffer said something about going to church, and Bobby had a flat. Didn’t matter. Coach chewed ’em out.”

“How did Cobb and Hunsinger get on?”

“Okay, I guess. There’s always a kind of special relationship builds up between a quarterback and his receivers. The longer they stay on the same team, a kind of-whatchamacallit-ESP builds up.

“See, like during a play, a pass play, let’s say the blocking breaks down and the receiver has already run his pattern. They could be separated twenty-thirty yards, but about then a good quarterback may want the receiver to come back for the ball. The receiver, if he’s on the same wavelength, sort of senses this and comes back for the ball. It’s amazing. I’ve seen it work quite a few times. It worked between Bobby and the Hun. But Bobby is a good quarterback and the Hun is-was-a good receiver.

“’Course, there wasn’t a helluva lot of love lost between them. That happens. But they were able to communicate on the field.”

“So,” Ewing tried to sum up, “you’d say they were able to anticipate each other.”

“Kinda.”

“How about Hunsinger and Hoffer?”

“Well, Hoff played behind the Hun, so that didn’t make for all that friendly a relationship. In the beginning of this season, seemed like the Hun tried to take Hoff under his wing, but it seemed Hoff wasn’t havin’ any of it. ’Course, Hoff played behind guys in the past-high school, college. Even tried out with a couple of pro teams before this year. So he knows what it is to have to wait your turn.”

“How about the owner, Jay Galloway. . and the general manager. How’d they get along with Hunsinger?”

Brown shrugged. “They don’t get taped.”

In spite of himself, Ewing smiled. “I know you’re not as close to them as you are to the players, but it’s a team; you must have some opinion on their relationship with Hunsinger.”

“Depends on what time of the season you’re talkin’ about. Around contract time, Mr. Whitman didn’t think too kindly of the Hun. He drove a hard bargain, a real hard bargain.”

“And Galloway?”

Brown put the adhesive tape he’d been toying with on the shelf. “Pretty well known Mr. Galloway wanted the Hun on the field at all possible times. Thought a goodly percentage of the fans came out to see the Hun. Mr. Galloway’s probably takin’ this pretty hard.”

“You agree with him? About all those people coming out to see the Hun?”

Brown shook his head. “Guess I’ve seen too many come and go. Franchises somehow survive the players.”

“And how did you and Hunsinger get on?”

Brown paused, then shook his head. “The Hun was no malingerer. He took his licks-gave some too-and came back for more. He knew there were lots of strong, fast kids out there achin’ for his job. He was a good player, far as that went.

“But the thing you gotta remember about the Hun is that he was the only person he cared about. If you were in his way, he’d try his damndest to run you over. ’Bout the only guys who got on with him were the ones he impressed. Some were impressed with his money. Some were impressed with his reputation. He was almost a legend. He holds-or held-nearly all the league records for a tight end. And he played the position longer’n anyone else ever. He was an established hero to some of these kids when they were growin’ up.

“But you were either impressed with him or you didn’t care much for him. He wasn’t easy to like. . too much for himself and almost nothin’ for the team. That’s the way the Hun was.”

“And you?”

“I taped him, patched up his bruises. Outside of that, as far as he was concerned, kept pretty much to myself. Only way to get through life.”

“Okay,” said Harris, rising from the chair, “I think that’ll be all for now. We’ll probably have more questions. So stay available.”

Brown nodded.

The three men left the locker room and began the steep incline toward the parking lot outside the stadium. The vast lot, nearly empty, was dotted by only a few cars. One could see the significant potholes, cracks in the asphalt, and areas of just bare ground. Koesler mused that it must be some sort of moral crime to charge-and extravagantly-to park there.

They entered the city-owned car. “Do you mind, Father,” Ewing asked, “going with us on one more call?”

“No, of course not.” Koesler was surprised. He had been asked to participate in this interrogation segment of the investigation only because of his particular association with the God Squad discussion group. And the questioning of those members was now completed.

“Actually, we’ve got two more calls-Mrs. Galloway and Hunsinger’s mother-to make before we go back to headquarters and get together with the others investigating this case. Delivering you to your parish is right on the way to Mrs. Hunsinger’s.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, why Mrs. Galloway and Mrs. Hunsinger?”

“They had keys-and thus access-to Hunsinger’s apartment. We have to check them out.”

Koesler could understand why Hunsinger’s mother might have a key to his apartment, but did Mrs. Galloway still have a key?

“All we know is what we hear on the gossip circuit. She and Hunsinger had an affair awhile back. He gave her a key. We have no idea whether she returned it or might have had a copy made. We’ve got to check it out. . touch all bases, you know.”

Interesting, thought Koesler.

Sergeant Ewing would have no way of knowing how far from actuality he was when referring to Koesler and a gossip circuit in the same sentence. The priest neither collected nor spread rumor. And thought himself the better for it.

She could remember drowning. Even though she was only six at the time, the memory had never left her. Not that she constantly thought about the event. But it certainly had changed and formed her life.

It had happened when she, an only child, accompanied her father aboard his sailboat on Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. The wind was up and the lake’s surface disturbed. Marjorie Palmer and her father were alone on board. He had strapped her in a lifejacket. . too tightly, she decided. She loosened it.

Her father had just begun a tack when an unexpected wave slapped the boat. Marjorie lost her balance. As she tumbled out, her head struck the side of the boat. She struggled only momentarily before going limp. Her body slipped out of the loosened lifejacket. And down she went.

It took her father several minutes to locate her in the roiled water. When he did, he grabbed her and shot to the surface. Afterward, he was unable to recall how he had managed to get her and himself back aboard. He hadn’t thought to lower the rope ladder before diving off the boat. He had thought only of rescuing his daughter or dying in the attempt. Without the ladder, it was pretty improbable that he would be able to get back in the boat, much less get his daughter’s limp body back in. Everyone attributed his feat simply to the phenomenon that in extreme emergencies, people are capable of almost superhuman strength.

Once back in the boat, he had administered artificial respiration until Marjie began to breathe again. But she was still unconscious. Fortunately, the occupants of a nearby powerboat witnessed what had happened. They sped Mr. Palmer and his unconscious daughter to shore, where an ambulance sped her to Hennepin County General Hospital.

It was in the emergency room that the bump on her head, just over the right ear, was discovered. The doctor performed a lumbar puncture, hoping to find the spinal fluid to be clear. It was streaked with red.

The medical staff did what it could. They fitted her with catheters and IVs. Nurses came in periodically to turn the small patient to prevent bedsores. They administered physical therapy, moving her small arms and legs so the joints would not stiffen. But no one could predict whether she would ever feed herself or move her own body again.

Hours became days. Days melted into weeks. Marjie remained unconscious. Her classmates, her playmates-indeed, because of media coverage, most Twin Citians-prayed for her. One or the other of her parents was with her constantly.

One day, some three and a half weeks after the accident, Marjie’s eyes fluttered, then opened. Her father, seated at her bedside, had been staring at his daughter’s closed eyes for so long that at first he did not believe his own. Then, of course, emotion overcame him.

The Twin Cities celebrated. A lot of prayer and concern had been invested in that little girl. And it had paid off. The Sunday following her recovery, sermons were preached on the theme of Jesus curing the sick, especially children. Little Marjorie Palmer was a celebrity.

Her recollection of her coma was published in area newspapers and discussed in radio and television newscasts. It was not that much. She remembered striking her head as she fell. She remembered slipping under water. She remembered trying to breathe and swallowing water. She remembered being terribly frightened.

Then, there had been a brilliant light. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she was certain she had seen Jesus. He was waiting for her, smiling, arms outstretched. Gone was her fear. She felt very comfortable. Then, it was as if she had drifted into a deep, peaceful sleep, remembering nothing more until she awoke and saw her father crying tears of joy.

That had been almost ten years before Elisabeth Kubler-Ross made afterlife experiences popular. Little Marjorie’s experience made her even more of a celebrity.

From that time on, Marjorie Palmer held the firm belief that God had a very special purpose for her. That was why He had returned her to this world. She would have died after but six years on earth if God, perhaps as a result of all those prayers, had not restored her to life. Her parents, firmly believing this to be so, impressed the message on their daughter so repeatedly and forcibly that she had little alternative but to believe.

It was not simple growing up knowing she was divinely destined for some unknown but obviously earthshaking purpose. On top of all this, Marjorie was a bright girl, who learned easily and won top grades. She was also a beautiful brunette with a spectacular complexion. Little wonder she became the most popular coed at the University of Minnesota.

Looking back now, at her life from the time of her “drowning,” through her college days, she could find no reason why she had let Jay Galloway into that life. In the jigsaw puzzle of her existence, he was the piece that didn’t fit. When she forced him in regardless, he destroyed everything.

Though they had attended the university at roughly the same time, she didn’t recall him there. She had traveled with a crowd several levels above Jay Galloway’s expectations at that time.

Then had come the massive frontal assault he called courting. She had to admit that, at least through the courting stage, he was fun. Even the sex was good. Better than anything she had experienced until then. Better, in fact, than anything since, including Jay Galloway.

It started on their honeymoon. In the Hotel Liliuokalani, he began to treat her like a whore. She almost expected him to pay her after they copulated. She could not understand it. . nor would he discuss it.

As life with Jay Galloway continued, Marjorie slid subconsciously into her role as, not his wife, but a high-priced mistress.

How far she had fallen! From a privileged soul who had had an encounter not merely with death but also with God. She’d been programmed to believe that hers was a divine mission. God had saved her for something significant.

To be the debased consort of Jay Galloway?

It was when he sank everything they owned into that miserable tabloid, when they had been reduced to eating stretched-out leftovers and borrowing money-from her parents, his parents, everyone-she was pushed around the bend. She seemed to descend, in her husband’s eyes and her own, from being a high-priced mistress to a two-bit whore. She abandoned the last shreds of self-respect and acquired a well-deserved reputation for sleeping around.

As their financial condition improved with the success of the paper, followed by another success in the pizza business, culminating in this present adventure with the Cougars, she simply became more selective about her sleeping partners, whether of one night or of some duration. It seemed her only way of striking back at the man who had dragged her from the heights to the eighth circle of hell. Her condition might be best described by the ancient adage Corruptio optimi pessima, (“When the best is corrupted, it becomes the worst”). And she owed it all to her husband.

She had planned Hank Hunsinger as the coup de grace to her relationship with Jay. She had long thought that her husband and the Hun deserved each other. They used each other shamelessly. Galloway urging Hunsinger to play even when badly injured, reminding him that one doesn’t make the club from the tub, and that a good part of the crowd had come to see him. And that any loss of playing time would certainly be reflected in the cash value of his next contract.

Hunsinger, for his part, gleefully wrung every last cent he could get out of Galloway’s wallet each time a new contract was negotiated. It was no longer that the Hun needed the money; he just enjoyed the torture he could inflict on the penurious Galloway.

Marjorie’s strategy, then, was not only to have an affair with Hunsinger, but also to make sure her husband knew of it. Knew that the two people he despised, one for marrying him, the other for working for him, were mocking him through the gossip columns. Knew that the money, expensive gifts, and investments she would insist Hunsinger lavish on her all had their source in Galloway’s carefully doled-out fortune. In effect, she would force her husband to support her twice over.

Her plan worked, at least to the extent that the affair did mark the end to any conjugal relationship. Until recently, the Galloways had continued to live together and be seen together, but there was no longer any intimacy between them. A divorce was in their immediate future.

However, Marjorie had very badly gauged how much an affair with Hunsinger would drain from her already depleted emotional reservoir. Even life with Galloway had not prepared her for the degree of humiliation Hunsinger was capable of inflicting.

Long after she felt that she had achieved the revenge she had plotted against her husband, Hunsinger would not permit their affair to end. He demanded that she beg for the shame he heaped upon her. When he was finished with her-and only then-he casually dismissed her.

She could not forget and would not forgive.

Marjorie attended the Cougar games faithfully. It was one of the few agreements she and Galloway had reached. Besides, she derived deep satisfaction from the physical punishment Hunsinger had to absorb in those games.

But it wasn’t enough. It never could be sufficient reparation for the brutality he had wreaked against her. There had to be something more. As time passed, the memory of her ill-fated fling with Hunsinger, instead of fading, became more intense and piercing. With increasing frequency, she found herself indulging in elaborate plans of revenge.

As her ace of trump, there was always that duplicate key to his apartment.

Lieutenant Harris needed more time and many more words to explain to Marjorie Galloway what Father Koesler was doing in her home. She was the only one of this morning’s interviewees who had not known him through the God Squad, or through any other circumstance, for that matter.

During the explanation, Koesler experienced one of those awkward sensations that was by no means unique in his life. He felt like an appliance being described by a salesman. After a demonstration, should the housewife decide against him, he would be put out on the porch and discarded. He stood, hat in hands, while he was being spoken of in the third person, offering it up for the suffering souls in purgatory.

At length, Koesler was accepted into the Galloway home, as accepted he must be. Marjorie Galloway led them to the living room, airy and spacious, but, Koesler thought, not particularly well decorated. He felt that something was wrong with the decor, but he couldn’t identify what. He smiled inwardly; what did he know about decor? There were times when he was inordinately grateful he ordinarily wore basic black and white. If he were a businessman, it would be all browns, blues, grays, or greens. He would never try a contrasting color combination; the chances that the colors would complement one another were no better than fifty-fifty.

The priest listened attentively as Lieutenant Harris and Sergeant Ewing covered the now familiar territory of their preceding interrogations.

Yes, she certainly knew Hunsinger was compulsive and that he regularly showered at home after a game. The question was answered with a slight shudder. As if the memory of Hunsinger’s postgame shower was somehow disturbing. She claimed not to know there was any strychnine kept in the apartment. That would jibe with the fact that they had broken up approximately a year before; Kit Hoffer had stated that Hunsinger had gotten the strychnine during the preseason games, which would have been about three months ago. Her professed lack of knowledge hinged, of course, on her not having returned to the apartment since her affair with Hunsinger ended.

Yes, she knew about the contact lenses and the nearsighted astigmatism. But painstaking questioning by the officers failed to elicit any evidence that she knew anything further was amiss with his vision.

Koesler tended to believe people. Probably it had something to do with his training. Many years before, in the seminary, he had been taught that a priest hearing confessions is obliged to presume that the penitent is telling the truth, whether speaking for or against him- or herself. He had followed that principle throughout his many years of hearing confessions. And the presumption spilled over into his general attitude toward people.

But Mrs. Galloway’s seeming ignorance of Hunsinger’s color dysfunction stretched Koesler’s credulity almost to the breaking point. How well could a person disguise a problem like colorblindness? Sufficiently for a spouse or a paramour to be ignorant of it? Maybe. But the priest had his doubts. And, he thought, if he doubted, what must be the state of mind of the detectives, who, after having been lied to regularly over the years, are programmed to distrust at first blush rather than to believe?

Koesler also noted that Mrs. Galloway was fielding these questions rather smoothly, as if she knew what was coming next. The only thing so far that had seemed to surprise her had been his presence.

And, indeed, she had been forewarned. Jay Galloway had phoned her immediately after his interrogation. He wanted no discrepancies in their responses to the detectives’ questions. Since he had been informed that Koesler’s presence stemmed from his having been a member of the God Squad, and since Marj was not a member, it did not enter Galloway’s head that Koesler would be present at Marj’s interrogation. So he had not mentioned the priest. Thus her surprise.

“One thing more, ma’am,” said Ewing, “could you tell us what you did yesterday? Try to be as thorough as possible.”

Marjorie Galloway sighed. “I must have awakened at about nine. Had breakfast, read the papers … a rather leisurely morning, all in all. Went to the game. After the game, went to dinner with some friends. Then returned here. Watched some TV. Went to bed.

“Now you’re going to ask me if anyone can corroborate all this, right?”

Good-naturedly, Ewing nodded.

“Right!” She smiled. “You see, I’ve watched ‘Hill Street Blues’ too.”

Ewing smiled in return.

“Well,” Marjorie proceeded, “the answer is yes and no. I sat in my husband’s box for the game. So lots of reliable people can account for me there. I had dinner with the van den Muysenbergs-he’s the Dutch consul. That was immediately after the game until nearly nine. And, from what I read in the papers about the Hun’s death, that should pretty well take care of my afternoon and evening alibis.

“However, I’m at a loss for a morning alibi.”

Ewing looked up from his notepad; Harris raised both eyebrows.

“I live alone now. Have for the past month. Actually, for all practical purposes, for the past year. There is,” she nodded in Father Koesler’s direction, “something to be said for celibacy. I have assembled an unenviable track record of living with people. Now I’m trying life alone, and enjoying it. At least I have more peace alone than I’ve ever experienced with anyone else.

“Gentlemen,” she looked from Harris to Ewing, neglecting Koesler, “I admit what you already know: that Hank Hunsinger and I were. . an item … for a long while a year or so ago. It was a sordid affair well chronicled in the gossip columns. But you can’t think for a minute I killed him! Why would I?”

Ewing shrugged. “Revenge?”

Marjorie smiled sardonically. “‘Hell hath no fury. .’? Trite! And it’s been more than a year! If I’d ever thought of it at all, why would I wait till now?”

“An idea whose time had come?” Ewing suggested. “Look, ma’am, nobody is accusing you of anything.”

“Then why are you asking me all these questions. . as if I were a suspect?”

“We’re asking questions of lots of people, ma’am,” Ewing responded. “Just trying to get the general information we need to home in on the perpetrator.”

“Well, look at it this way: You said the poison used was strychnine and that it was found in the Hun’s apartment. I can tell you it wasn’t there when I was. . seeing him. And you probably know that. So, how would I know there was strychnine available in the apartment?”

“You had a key-”

“I had a key! I had a key! Of course I had a key! But when we broke up I gave it back to him … I threw it at him!”

If that was a lie, or if she had the key duplicated before she returned it, thought Ewing, that would be a very interesting lie.

“Of course,” said Harris, “we’d have no way of knowing whether you returned the key, would we?”

“I assume you’re having the apartment searched. You should find an extra key among his belongings.”

Unless, thought Koesler, he’s given it to another woman. .

“We may find more than one key. But that would not necessarily indicate one of them was from you.”

“I returned it! “ She said it defiantly.

“Maybe you did. But what if you had the key duplicated before you returned it?”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“No one has said you did. This is just the first round of our investigation.”

Unexpectedly, she relaxed and appeared quite confident. “I think the rule of law is that I am presumed innocent. The burden of proof- of proof-is on you.”

Harris nodded acknowledgment of her correct assessment of the situation.

“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Galloway.” Ewing rose and, as if it were a signal, so did Harris and Koesler. “As Lieutenant Harris indicated, we will very probably be needing more information from you.”

“Anytime.” Her response held no indication of sincerity.

She showed them to the door. As they departed, she called out, “Oh, by the way, Father. I guess I’ll be seeing you tomorrow night.”

“What?” Koesler was nonplused. “I don’t understand.”

“The so-called God Squad is meeting here tomorrow evening.”

“Here?” said Ewing. “I thought-”

“That I was separated from Jay? You’re right. But I still hostess for him on occasion, and this is one of those occasions. . part of the rather complex deal we’re working out.” She smiled at Father Koesler. “Although this will be the first time I’ve served the God Squad.”

The door closed, leaving the three men standing awkwardly on the porch.

“Did you know there was to be a meeting here tomorrow night?” Harris asked Koesler.

“Yes.”

“Interesting.”

“We’ll have you home in no time,” said Sergeant Ewing, as their car rapidly moved south on Telegraph Road.

“Will you be off duty then?”

Ewing chuckled. “No way. We’ve got lots more to do before we call it quits today.”

“Where to next, if I may ask?”

“For starters, we’re going to talk to Mrs. Hunsinger.”

“I didn’t know he was married.”

“He wasn’t. Well, he was. Then, divorced. Long time ago. Remained single ever since. No, I meant his mother.”

“Oh, that’s right; you mentioned her. But isn’t that a bit farfetched? His own mother?”

“She did have a key, remember?”

“Oh.”

“Have to touch all the bases.”

Koesler fell silent. He tried to picture Hunsinger’s mother, not knowing what she looked like. Not aware that he had known her in the distant past.

Whoever she might be, his heart went out to her. Especially since she must be quite elderly now, it would be particularly painful to lose her son. Koesler was sadly familiar with the situation. He had assisted many an elderly parishioner on the occasion of the death of a mature son or daughter. In old age particularly, one tends to accept the inevitabilities of nature, the natural progression of life and death. But one hopes for the continued love and solicitude of one’s children. One expects to be buried by one’s children. Usually, in Koesler’s experience, there is a particular poignancy when the expectations of nature are upset.

Exacerbating this, these officers would soon be asking her some of the same questions they had asked earlier of those who might be considered suspects in Hunsinger’s murder. The detectives were only doing their job from which there was no escape. But Koesler grieved that Hunsinger’s mother would have to be subjected to this sort of questioning.

He could not decide whether a police interrogation such as this was better or worse than the questioning by the reporter who feels compelled to thrust a microphone into a grieving parent’s face to ask, “How did you feel when you saw the truck run over your child?”

All he could hope was that Harris and Ewing would be gentle when they met with Mrs. Hunsinger. He had every reason to expect they would.

The car came to a stop. It was not the sort of stop made for a traffic light. An air of expectancy pervaded the car.

They were in front of St. Anselm’s rectory.

“Oh,” Koesler said, “we’re here. Thank you very much.”

“Not at all,” Ewing responded. “Thank you. You’ve been a help, Father, If anything else comes to mind, give us a call.”

They pulled away, leaving the priest suspended midway between the rectory and the church. After a moment’s consideration, Koesler headed for the church. An investigation into a deliberate murder might be the daily fare of homicide detectives, but it was a rare and deeply disturbing episode for a suburban parish priest. He felt he needed time to reflect on all he had heard this day. And after many years of searching he had never found a better place for silent, prayerful reflection than a quiet church when there were no services going on. There was something about the building’s memory of being packed with worshipers, the faint odor of incense that clung to the pews and furnishings, the present emptiness that urged Koesler to sit back and look at God and let God look at him.

She had planned on becoming a nun. It seemed logical.

She was raised in a large, pious German Catholic family. And she was rather plain. At least that’s how she thought of herself. Mostly because others treated her as if she were. She was the middle child of seven children. None of her siblings appeared to hold out any hope that someone someday would offer Grace Koenig a proposal of marriage. So Grace did not consider marriage as her vocational vehicle in life.

In that state it was only natural that Grace Koenig would prepare herself for life in a convent.

She grew very close to the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, more simply known as the IHMs, who taught in her parish school, Holy Redeemer. And they grew very close to her.

She was not a gifted pupil, but she applied herself without stint. She earned consistently good grades. That gave everyone hope that she would be successful in the IHMs, for the nuns in that religious order were all teachers.

Grades alone did not a teaching sister make. Grace knew that. Both priests and sisters taught Grace that a religious vocation had to be worked at. She, along with all other parochial students of the time, learned that the real heroes of life were the young boys who went away to the seminary to become priests. Next in line for heroism were the little girls who went to the convent to become nuns. Nuns, of course, were second class to priests, but then, as nearly everyone of that time knew, girls were second class to boys.

Then there were the Great Unwashed who got married. Marriage, as anyone who studied the catechism knew, was for “the procreation and education of children.” Sex was around to propagate the human race and to relieve concupiscence. And that, pretty much, was that.

If Grace Koenig was not to be found at home, more than likely she was in the convent, helping the nuns clean or cook, or repair their religious garb. Some of her more spiteful classmates took to calling her Sister Grace. Some who were familiar with the Latin litany in honor of the Blessed Mother aimed at Grace such high-class barbs as “mater purissima” (“mother most pure”), “mater castissima” (“mother most chaste”), or “virgo fidelis” (“faithful virgin”). None of this much troubled Grace. To paraphrase Irving Berlin-which Grace would never do-she had the Mass in the morning and prayers in the evening. And with the Mass in the morning and the prayers in the evening, she was all right.

In due course, Grace graduated from high school. The brand new St. Mary’s Convent, the IHM motherhouse in Monroe, Michigan, awaited the assumed entry of Grace Koenig into religious life. Mother General was surprised when Grace did not arrive.

After graduation, Grace’s parents took her aside for a serious talk. There was no problem with her going to the convent. There was no way they could forbid her to go, though she was an obedient girl. The commitment to religious life for most of her scholastic years had been a given. But didn’t she think she owed the family something? Her father had supported her all of her life. Even paid for her parochial school education when he might have sent her to a public school. In return, she had made no financial contribution to date. And she surely would make none after she took the Sisters’ vow of poverty.

Would she, then, consider entering the work force for a year or two, maybe three, so she could make some fiscal contribution before entering the convent? After all, she was a very young woman, still in her late teens. She would have plenty of years as a nun. Most of them died in their eighties and nineties. You could read it for yourself in the obituaries.

She consented, reluctantly. And that is when a small segment of history was altered.

She got a job in Hudson’s in downtown Detroit. Since she would be a saleslady, she thought she owed it to her customers and employers to fix herself up a bit. With what her parents allowed her to keep of her first paychecks, she got a permanent, some new, if inexpensive, clothing, and some cosmetics.

Then, a funny thing happened: Grace Koenig became pretty.

Her thin, Germanic face hadn’t benefited by wearing her straight blond hair in a boyish bob. The permanent was a strong aid, as were lipstick, rouge, and eyeshadow. Her very attractive figure, hitherto concealed in modest, baggy dresses, was now evident.

Her immediate superior complimented her. That was a first. She noticed other salespeople and an occasional floorwalker taking a second look at her. That was a first. Then came that memorable moment when a customer very politely asked her for a date. That, very definitely, was a first.

She absorbed a lot of kidding at home about her dating. She blushed when her siblings poured it on. But she was determined to continue dating Conrad Hunsinger as long as he was willing. He always treated her like a lady and never tried to get fresh. About the only problem of which she was conscious was that Conrad was not a Catholic. If push came to shove, he would admit to being Lutheran. But he never went to church.

They became engaged. They were married, at Holy Redeemer, at a side altar in the basement of the church. It was a small wedding with a modest reception and a traditional honeymoon at Niagara Falls.

Perhaps not altogether traditional. Conrad learned that he would never see Grace unclothed, unless she was ill and he had to nurse her. She learned that he wanted no children and would always use a prophylactic. At least once, an accidentally perforated condom failed, resulting in little Hank Hunsinger.

Although Conrad never darkened a church door, Grace continued to attend daily and Sunday Mass. She went to confession each Saturday. Among other sins, she regularly confessed birth control. Regularly she was severely chided, but absolved. Then she would go to communion every day until the inevitable night when Conrad would fit himself with a prophylactic and, in the darkness, work her nightgown up in his practiced manner and quickly reach a grunting climax. Then she would not go to communion again until she could go to confession again and be absolved.

After many years of this frustrating vacillation from a state of sanctifying grace to mortal sin and back, she chanced upon a young Redemptorist priest, fresh from the seminary, armed with the latest in Catholic theology.

Her confession was routine. It had been a week since her last confession. She had lost patience with a neighbor and with her husband several times. She had forgotten and tasted food she was preparing on a fast day. And she had committed birth control once.

The new priest asked if she intended or wanted to practice birth control. No, it was her husband’s idea. Then, Father said, all she had to do to escape all guilt was, first, never instigate intercourse when she knew it would end in illicit birth control and, second, try not to get any enjoyment out of the evil act. Then the entire burden of guilt would be borne by her husband.

It was, for that era, enlightened advice.

She had never been given advice easier to follow. In her entire married life, and before, for that matter, she had never initiated anything that could be described as foreplay. And she had never derived any pleasure from sex. She was not even certain she was supposed to get any pleasure from it. She had paid careful attention as a series of unmarried priests and nuns had taught her about marriage. Their instructions were always couched in vague, cautious, and circumspect terms. For most of these dedicated men and women, intercourse was an act they had read about in theological textbooks, but had never experienced. The general theme of their instructions was that men wanted sex and women were supposed to give it. Since the purpose of sex was the “procreation and education of children,” and since women could not bear children much more often than every nine months, men usually wanted sex more often than was absolutely necessary.

In any case, as long as there was none of the hanky-panky of artificial birth control going on, should either spouse request or demand intercourse, the other spouse “owed” it, because coitus was also referred to as the “debitum,” the debt. In practice, since men were the animals who always wanted sex, the burden of satisfying the debt fell to women. Grace never associated the rendering of a debt with pleasure.

Thus, the knowledge that she could pay the debt accompanied by birth control without sin was a heaven-sent revelation. And it was possible because a young priest had learned the principle of the indirect voluntary, a recent application of traditional Catholic theology. In effect, Grace was materially, not formally, cooperating with her husband in a sinful deed. But because her cooperation was not voluntary, but actually even against her will, she was without sin. It troubled her that this theological conclusion shifted the entire blame to Conrad. But her husband seemed to be bearing up under the burden rather well.

It never occurred to Grace that Conrad’s decision provided her with a canonical reason for a Church annulment of her marriage. There were few enough reasons why the Church would consider a marriage null and void from its inception. Denying a partner the right to that complete action which could produce children was one such reason. Technically, it was termed “contra bonum prolis”- “against the good of children.” It never occurred to Grace to challenge the validity of her marriage because she never got over being grateful that Conrad thought she was pretty and had wanted to marry her.

Then there was little Henry, the ever-present reminder that the better designed forms of birth control do not always work. Even the presence of Henry would not have weakened her nullity case, had she chosen to pursue it. It was Conrad’s decision to deny Grace all but birth-controlled intercourse that constituted the canonical impediment to a valid Catholic marriage. The accident had no bearing on it.

Conrad accepted Hank much as a gambler accepts a loss at the gaming table. Grace greeted Henry as a miracle baby, which, given the odds against his happening, he nearly was. She loved the child with a chaste, carefully controlled love.

Now she became more painfully aware of Conrad’s complete absence from church as she dragged a reluctant son to Mass every Sunday and occasionally on weekdays. When Conrad died, leaving behind a seven-year-old son, Grace was desolate.

If anyone needed the strong influence and guidance of a father, Henry certainly did. He had his father’s large physique and gave every indication he would grow to be an even larger man.

The nuns were a godsend. She knew not what she might have had to do if they had not offered her work in the convent. God knows they paid little. But it was enough. And God knows they tried their best to help with young Henry. But no one could control him. She could not stop him from hanging around with a bad crowd. She worried about him constantly. But worry changed nothing.

Although she did not understand athletics very much, she was proud of Hank’s-everyone called him Hank-accomplishments. And he was always good to her. This, she had to admit, was almost his sole redeeming virtue. Particularly when, after signing a professional football contract, one of the first things Henry-she could not stop calling him Henry-did was to offer to buy a new house for her.

But she insisted that she wanted to live out her days in this house that held so many of her memories. And right across the street from her beloved Holy Redeemer. So Henry paid the mortgage and saw to it that the exterior and interior of the home were kept in tiptop shape. He provided her with more money than she needed or used. She gave much of it to the Redemptorist foreign missions.

She read about Henry’s on- and off-the-field exploits, of course. It disturbed her deeply that he had acquired the reputation of being an unfair and dirty player, as well as that of a rake, a libertine, a womanizer, a playboy. On his infrequent visits, she admonished him. She left notes for him when she went to his apartment to make sure everything was clean.

That, largely, was a waste of time. She did it only because, like many mothers, in her eyes her son would never grow up. Each time she visited his apartment, everything was in perfect order and spotlessly clean. Nevertheless, she would run a dustcloth over tables and shelves.

In her own way, she was as compulsive as he.

Both Grace and Hank had concluded, independently of each other, that he had “caught” his compulsiveness from her. In point of fact, though not in the way they thought, he had. During his adolescence, the conflict between what his mother expected of him and the sort of life he actually led produced an overwhelming conflict within him. Unconsciously marshaling his emotional defense mechanisms, he channeled all that conflict into an obsessive-compulsive neurosis. A relatively mild defense as neuroses go. Obsession fitted in so beautifully with all the numerical truths he was learning in his catechism, it was a natural, if subliminal choice.

As time passed, Grace wondered, with greater and greater frequency, what could be done about Henry. He remained her only son, but he was obviously hurting others. She felt somehow responsible. Something had to be done. But what?

It was a question she had never been able to answer.

Both Lieutenant Harris and Sergeant Ewing were lifelong Detroiters. If they had been Catholic, they would have known that the intersection of Vernor Highway and Junction Avenue was a famous corner in the eyes of westside Catholics. It was at that intersection that the hub of the enormous physical plant of Holy Redeemer parish was located. If Ewing and Harris had been a bit older, they undoubtedly could have recalled a time when Redeemer High School had constituted a major athletic power in Detroit.

But that was history. Now the once financially comfortable parish struggled to stay afloat in a neighborhood where there was no longer at least one Irish-owned bar per block. Long before, when affluent Catholics had begun moving out to the suburbs, the then Cardinal Edward Mooney had mused that he wished some of the larger parochial structures had been built on wheels so they could follow the families that built them to the suburbs. Redeemer would have been chief among these movable edifices.

Harris and Ewing were standing directly across from the mammoth church with its flight of stone stairs climbing to the mosaic church exterior. Impressive. They turned to face 1731 Junction, Hank Hunsinger’s ancestral two-story home and present residence of his mother and her companion. It was well kept up and preserved. But then, so were most of the homes on the block. A careful eye would note that 1731 had had a tad more money poured into its maintenance.

They mounted the stairs and rang the doorbell. Neither looked forward to this interview. Interrogating a mother after her son’s death, especially when the death is caused by murder, was not fun.

They waited patiently several minutes before the door was opened a crack. They could see the links of the chain lock that prevented the door from being opened fully. Behind the chain was a small, wrinkled, suspicious visage.

“Mrs. Hunsinger?” Harris tried.

“Mrs. Quinn,” clarified the face.

The two detectives identified themselves, showing their badges and identification cards. Finally convinced, Mrs. Quinn let the detectives in and showed them into the living room, where Mrs. Hunsinger, handkerchief held to her face, sat in a padded rocking chair.

Only a few of the room’s furnishings appeared to date back to the time the Hunsingers had first moved in. Most of the furniture-end tables, hutches-was contemporary and fairly new. All in all, the room was tastefully outfitted and decorated.

The officers identified themselves to Mrs. Hunsinger. It was obvious she had been crying. But now she seemed composed. The two men and Mrs. Quinn seated themselves.

“We’re sorry about your son’s death, Mrs. Hunsinger,” said Ewing. “But we need some information to help us solve his murder. So we have to ask you some questions.”

“I did it,” Grace Hunsinger said quietly.

“What?”

“I’m responsible for Henry’s death. “

“I don’t understand-”

“It all began when he was a little boy and hanging around with that bunch of hooligans. Of course, if his father had lived, it might have been different. There just was so little I could do. .”

“But you said-”

“As the boy is, so is the man. If I had been able to control him more, he might not have turned out as he did. So many people seemed to hate him. It could have been different if I had been able to do things just a bit differently. Still, he was a good boy. He certainly took good care of his mother. .”

After being initially startled, Harris and Ewing relaxed. It was a typical case of a parent blaming herself for all the circumstances that contributed to the downfall, death, or murder of her son. Even though most of these circumstances were beyond her control and, indeed, may well have been clearly his responsibility. But the two men did not interrupt as the grieving woman continued to find reasons, in her background, in her late husband’s background, for all the evils of her boy’s life. Finally, inevitably, she ran out of excuses for her son.

“Poor, dear Henry,” she concluded. “So young. To think that I must bury my son. .” She covered her eyes with her handkerchief and wept silently. After a short while, she seemed to gather some inner strength. Her shoulders no longer quivered. She dried her eyes and looked at the officers. “But you have your work to do, don’t you? I believe you said that you had some questions you wanted to ask me.”

Ewing opened his notepad. He’d been studying Mrs. Hunsinger. He guessed she had been a handsome woman. Even now, she had a striking presence. And, he estimated, she must be in her seventies. “Mrs. Hunsinger,” he began, “could you tell us something about your son’s compulsiveness?”

“Compulsiveness? I don’t know what you mean. He was neat. I taught him that. One of the few good things I was responsible for. A place for everything and everything in its place. Do you find anything wrong with that, young man?”

Ewing, startled by her response, looked at Harris, who, in a sort of silent message, first returned Ewing’s gaze, then directed it significantly around the room. What Ewing saw answered his question. There was a place for everything and everything was in its place. The pictures were hung perfectly, the carpet had been freshly vacuumed, and not a speck of dust could be seen.

Of course. Why should she think her son’s behavior out of the ordinary when it was but a reflection of her own compulsiveness?

“No, nothing wrong, ma’am. It’s just that not everyone is as neat and clean as your son was. The way he kept everything in perfect order and the way he would always do everything the same way all the time. . well, it made him a bit. . uh. . different.”

“A virtue, I’d say.”

“Yes, ma’am. Could we talk a bit about your son’s eyesight. . his vision?”

“My fault once again.”

“Ma’am?”

“So rare. Far less than one percent are colorblind. And yet, medical science is always coming up with cures for ills we grew up with. Who’d ever think someone would come up with a cure for polio? There may even be some cure for colorblindness, some operation, some medication. We were never rich enough to afford anything like that. But Henry assured me over and over that it was all right. That it didn’t interfere with his football. He was a good boy.”

“Yes, ma’am. Did you know that your son kept a supply of a poison known as strychnine in his apartment?”

“That was only recently. I warned him about that. I left him a note. He didn’t need anything as powerful as poison. His rodent problem could have been handled the good old-fashioned way-with traps. But no; he had to do it his way. Just like his father. I told him in my note that it was dangerous.”

“Speaking of your note, ma’am, just how often did you visit your son’s apartment?”

“Irregularly. Perhaps once every other week. There wasn’t much to do, though. Henry kept everything in pretty good order. Used to let the refrigerator get kind of empty. I’d bring him milk. He’d never get it on his own. Then he wouldn’t eat a nourishing breakfast with cereal. I’d call first, though.”

“Ma’am?”

“Never knew when he’d have. . company over. Ran into a hussy there once. Wasn’t wearing a stitch. And not a bit ashamed or embarrassed about it. I certainly was. Didn’t want that to happen again. So, I’d always call first.”

“But you had a key? Your son gave you a key?”

“Of course. How else would I get in when he wasn’t there?”

Ewing looked at Harris. Once again communicating wordlessly, Harris indicated they should wrap up this interview.

“One final question, ma’am. Can you tell us what you did yesterday?”

Mrs. Hunsinger exhibited a small, self-conscious smile. “It’s one of the things that goes when you get older. Usually I can remember things that happened ages ago clear as a bell. But the closer we get to the present moment, the harder it is. . Mary Frances. . Mary Frances!”

Mrs. Quinn had dozed off. Her head drooped down near her bosom. The officers had quite forgotten she was there. When Mrs. Hunsinger called her name, it startled everyone, including Mrs. Quinn.

“Oh! Oh. . yes. . what is it?”

“These gentlemen want to know what we did yesterday.”

“Yesterday. Yes. .” Mrs. Quinn was slowly coming out of her nap. “Well, let’s see. We got up about eight as usual and got over to church for nine o’clock Mass. We never eat before we go to communion. Everybody else does now. That doesn’t show the proper reverence for our Eucharistic Lord. So we don’t have breakfast until after Mass.”

Harris began to think that it would take Mrs. Quinn all of today to recount yesterday.

“Then, after the nine o’clock Mass, we stayed for the ten o’clock. We always hear two Masses at least. One in thanksgiving for the other. Then we came home. It was harder than usual getting back across Junction. Do you remember, Grace? The traffic was really unusually heavy yesterday.”

Mrs. Hunsinger nodded agreement.

“Then we had breakfast. Just cereal and coffee. We eat lightly, you know. It’s better for you when you get older.”

“Ma’am,” Ewing interrupted, “just touch on the high spots. I mean, we don’t need to know everything.”

“Oh, I thought you wanted to know what we did yesterday.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Ewing grew resigned; there was nothing he could do about her meandering in any case.

“Then we read the papers. The Free Press didn’t get here until late. Now that was strange because the Free Press is the morning paper and the News is the afternoon paper. But yesterday the News got here before the Free Press.”

Harris sighed audibly. Mrs. Quinn remained undeterred.

“Then there was the pregame show. We never watch television on Sunday unless Henry’s team is playing. And with that man who talks all the time, we wouldn’t watch it at all if it were not for Henry. Then the game started and we watched. Who won the game, Grace?”

“I think the other team.”

“Whatever. Then we turned off television and listened to records. It was the Beethoven symphonies, wasn’t it, Grace?”

“Yes. . no; it was Brahms.”

“Yes, that’s right. It was Brahms. And before the Fourth Symphony we had dinner. We made frozen dinner so we didn’t have to cook. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to watch the game. You had the roast beef dinner and I had chicken. . isn’t that right?”

Mrs. Hunsinger nodded.

“Then, after dinner, we listened to the radio. We always listen to the classical music station, WQRS. . although we can’t stand the modern composers. It’s just noise. Not like Beethoven, Brahms, and Chopin. Then, after that-”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Ewing interrupted, “but that would bring you up to about eight o’clock yesterday evening, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“Well, it just so happens that’s all the time we need accounting for.”

“Oh.”

“So we’ll be leaving now.”

The two officers rose and started hastily for the door. They were stopped in their tracks by Mrs. Hunsinger’s anguished tone.

“Where’s my son?”

“Beg pardon, ma’am?”

“Where’s my boy?”

“Mr. Hunsinger? I would guess the medical examiner is finished with h-uh. . I suspect the body has been delivered to the mortician. You do have one, don’t you?”

“Yes. The Hackett Funeral Home across the street on Vernor.”

“Well, then, that’s probably where the b- where your son is now.”

Ewing opened the door and Harris preceded him out.

“Will you be coming to the funeral?” Mrs. Hunsinger asked.

“The funeral?”

“Yes. I suppose it will be on Wednesday. There’s no reason to postpone it. Everyone who might attend is already here in the Detroit area. Will you be coming?”

“We’ll certainly try, ma’am. Depends on what our schedule will be then. And, thank you, ma’am, for your time. And”-his look bore pity-“our condolences, ma’am.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Come in,” said Mrs. Quinn to Mrs. Hunsinger. “You’ll catch a chill.”