Sudden Death

6

Father Koesler tapped the bottom of the box; the last few flakes of Granola dropped into the bowl. He sliced a banana over the fine grain, poured in some milk, and, presto, breakfast.

He spread out the morning Free Press and scanned page 1, trying to determine which story to read first.

His immediate attention was caught by a picture at the upper center of the page. It was a photo from the paper’s files showing Cougar trainer Jack Brown standing on the sidelines, arms folded across his chest. The caption read: “Jack Brown, Cougars’ trainer, arrested for the murder of Hank (“the Hun”) Hunsinger and later released, all on the same day. Story on page 3-A.”

That took care of any doubt over which story to read first. Koesler flipped the paper open to the second front page and began reading.

He continued to spoon in bananas and cereal, but lost interest in the remainder of the paper, following, instead, his own flow of thought.

Initially, he felt happy for Brown. Then he felt sorry for the police, who would now, as the story stated, have to begin practically all over. No wonder the inspector hadn’t phoned him.

Though he had promised himself that he would waste no more of his time with the question of who murdered Hunsinger, he found it impossible not to rehash the matter.

After all, there had been times when he had been of some help to the police in the solution of a few homicides. But now that he began reflecting on those past cases, he recalled that the help he had been able to provide had usually concerned something to do with things Catholic or something that he had learned by virtue of being a priest-information more likely to be recognized as such by him as a priest than by the police as law-enforcement experts.

Was it possible it could work again? Koesler left the dining table and began to pace the living room. This was an unlikely pursuit. A venture less prone to success than hunting for the proverbial needle. But he wanted to help. And he had proved beyond a doubt that when it came to genuine police procedure, he was of less aid than the rankest amateur. So he continued to pass the suspects, one by one, through a religious filter.

There was of course the Bible discussion group. That was religious. He sifted through things he had heard various members of the God Squad say in relation to the passages they had examined. But what to look for? Violence? The most violent statements he could recall, usually endorsing some of the more ferocious sections of the Old Testament, had come from Hunsinger.

As he continued to recall statements that had been made by individuals, something else, related but not identical, began to surface. He couldn’t identify it, nor could he afford the luxury of waiting for a magic moment when, unbidden, it would make itself clear. So he continued to focus on individuals and their commentaries on the Bible. Meanwhile, he threw open a neutral gear in his mind that permitted a good deal of stream of consciousness to run freely.

Something. Something. Something. Something about the Scriptures themselves. Not about anyone’s comment on Scripture. The Scripture itself. An image came to him of the blind man Christ cured in stages so that he saw, but in a confused way. No, that couldn’t be it; he’d been down that path before.

But it was Scripture that was knocking at the back door of his consciousness. But what Scripture? Something he’d heard or read recently. Something he’d tried to develop into a homily. Something he had looked at, in a confused way, like the blind man recovering his sight. Something looked at the wrong way. That meant there must be a right way of looking at it.

Of course! That was it! Looking at it the wrong way versus looking at it the right way.

Slow down, now. Must be cautious. Just recovered from a major league blunder. Can’t be wrong a second time. Not so close to the first time. Let’s just check all the seams. See if there are any holes. Well, yes, a few possible holes. But, by and large, it seemed to make sense. The more he thought about it, the more sense it seemed to make.

Just a couple of phone calls to set things up. Then, put the theory to the test.

“Thank you ever so much for meeting me here, Inspector.”

“Not at all, Father. . although I must admit your call surprised me.

“I don’t blame you. After embarrassing you with the Galloways, I don’t suppose you ever expected to hear from me again. . at least regarding any investigation.”

“Father, if only you knew how frequently we are wrong in our theories. Even in an investigation that eventually proves successful, we often encounter many dead-end roads. You have nothing to be embarrassed about or to apologize for.”

“Nevertheless, I feel a bit awkward. I just couldn’t subject Lieutenant Harris or Sergeant Ewing to another round of my own serial, Father May Not Know Best. That’s why I’m especially grateful you agreed to meet me here. Sorry, too, about the traffic. We had to park so far down the street.”

“Walking is good exercise. We should do more of it.” Koznicki tipped his hat as they passed in front of Holy Redeemer church. Koesler had almost forgotten the gesture. But Koznicki’s tip of the hat put the priest in mind of his own father’s teaching him the custom. It was a sign of reverence for the presence of the Blessed Sacrament in the church. Koesler resolved to renew the custom in his own life. He never ceased to be amazed at how much he had to learn from others.

Koesler rang the doorbell and waited patiently. One could not expect old people to run to answer the door.

The familiar face of Mary Frances Quinn appeared. She greeted Father Koesler reverently but appeared a bit tentative toward his extra-large companion until Koesler performed the introductions. Mary Frances ushered them into the unilluminated living room. Again introductions were made.

Koznicki, after being seated, carefully studied Grace Hunsinger. Why did she remind him of a small animal about to be cornered? Her eyes darted about as if seeking some avenue of escape. Her breathing was rapid and shallow.

“Mrs. Hunsinger,” Koesler began, “we won’t take much of your time. I just want to talk to you a little bit about your son. But first, I wonder if you would mind looking at the numbers in this book and telling us what you see. Just take your time and read the numbers, if you will, as I turn the pages.”

Koesler opened the book to the first page.

Grace adjusted her bifocals. “Twelve.”

Everyone could read that, thought Koesler, as he turned to the next page with its number eight.

“Three.”

Koesler turned to five.

“Two,” Grace read.

Koesler turned to twenty-nine.

“Seventy.”

Koesler turned to seventy-four.

“Twenty-one.”

Koesler turned to seven.

“I don’t see any number there at all.”

“I think we need go no further,” said Koznicki.

Grace removed her glasses. “What was the meaning of that?”

Her hands were trembling slightly.

“That was a test of your color sight, Mrs. Hunsinger,” Koesler said. “It indicated you have what’s called a red-green deficiency.”

“I. . I don’t understand. “ Her hand fluttered at her hair.

“I think it means you couldn’t know that when you mixed the strychnine with the DMSO and switched that bottle with the shampoo that there was a difference in the colors. The DMSO is clear. The shampoo is pink.”

A remarkable transformation affected Grace. Her entire body seemed involved in the deep sigh she uttered. Her hands relaxed in her lap. “You know,” she said so softly as to be barely audible.

“You tried to tell us often enough, didn’t you, Grace?”

She nodded, giving every indication of being relieved.

“Grace!” Mrs. Quinn exclaimed. “What does he mean?”

“According to Inspector Koznicki here,” Koesler proceeded, “and in what you said to me, you held yourself responsible both for your son’s sight disability and for his death. But after making the statements, you backed away from them slightly, stating your responsibility in remote terms: that if you had done this or that differently, your son would not have turned out as he did. The confession was there, but it was sort of up for grabs.

“We chose to look at the statements through our viewpoint. Taking on blame for a child is common with many parents. Taking a greater responsibility for their children’s behavior than they ought or need to. If we had been looking at those statements through your eyes, we might have taken them more literally. But that was not likely.

“But if we had been seeing things from your point of view, we would have asked ourselves why you felt responsible for your son’s colorblindness. Because you just happened to be his mother and, as such, gave him his disability? I don’t think so. If you had normal vision, and there were any hereditary cause involved, it could just as easily have come from his father. Why should you think you were responsible unless there was something wrong with your vision and you thought you had passed that defect on to your son? I checked with Dr. Glowacki, an ophthalmologist, and he said there is no evidence that colorblindness, total colorblindness, is hereditary. But that would not have prevented you from thinking it was so.

“But if you have a color deficiency-and you do-why does it not show up in your home decor? I think the answer lies with Mrs. Quinn. The first time I met you, Mrs. Quinn, I believe you told me that you and Mrs. Hunsinger take care of each other as best you can. That the two of you seem to combine your skills and abilities. You get along, I think you used the phrase, like yin and yang?”

“That’s true,” Mrs. Quinn said.

“Mrs. Hunsinger took care of the house, didn’t she, Mrs. Quinn, doing much of the cleaning and cooking? You took care of the door and, among your other responsibilities, you probably took charge of the decorating?”

“Well, yes. Grace sometimes would get the strangest color combinations. I thought it was. . well, not the best of taste. “

“We’ve already been through that one,” Koesler said to Koznicki, alluding to the Galloways.

“Then,” the priest again addressed Grace, “we come to your son’s death. How many times and how many ways you tried to tell us of your responsibility, not directly and plainly with no room for doubt, but trying nonetheless. I have a suspicion you wanted us to guess it.”

Grace barely moved her head in a sign of affirmation.

“First, you told us outright, then hedged enough so that we proceeded to draw the wrong conclusion. Then, to me, the next most evident statement was at your son’s funeral Mass.

“The evening before the Mass, I was talking with Father Forbes. He told me you had gone over the Bible readings for the Mass and had made the selection of which ones would be used. Yet when I heard the readings, I listened to them with my ears, not yours. Or, to return to the metaphor of sight, I saw them through my eyes, not yours.

“That first reading was an odd selection. I’ve never heard a reading from the Book of Maccabees used at a funeral before. The Protestant and Jewish Bibles don’t even contain that Book. And yet, when I heard it, I listened with my understanding and I thought of you as the brave mother withstanding the all but unbearable grief of watching her children die. But that is not the way you saw that reading, is it, Mrs. Hunsinger? You saw it in the literal, obvious sense: Here was a mother willing to witness the death of her sons rather than see them break the law. It was the statement of why you did it.

“Henry had broken just about every law he encountered, and not a few Commandments. And he showed every promise of continuing in this unbridled lifestyle until long after your death. When you died, there would probably be no one who cared enough for him to stop him from hurting others. It was up to you. And so you did it. You were the modern mother of the Book of Maccabees, willing even to allow the death of her son rather than see him go on breaking the law.

“But I think we all tended to dismiss out of hand the possibility that you might be responsible for the death of your own son. And on top of this sort of natural tendency not to take you as a serious suspect was your alibi. You spent the entire day with Mrs. Quinn here. . isn’t that right, Mrs. Quinn?”

“Why, yes. We started off with Mass in the morning-”

“Yes, I remember,” Koesler interrupted. “Now please don’t take this amiss, Mrs. Quinn, but practically every time I’ve seen you, you were taking. . uh. . a little nap. You do take little naps, don’t you, Mrs. Quinn?”

“Well, that happens when you get older. You need it.”

“Last Sunday, for example, if I remember correctly what Inspector Koznicki told me about your interview with the police, it was a very leisurely day.”

“Older people need to rest and recoup what little strength they have.”

“Yes, and-please don’t take offense-I know you need your rest. But Sunday you got home from Mass, read the paper, watched the game on television, listened to some records, then had dinner. . correct?”

“Just what we do every Sunday, except for the game. Sometimes Henry’s team doesn’t play on Sunday. And sometimes it isn’t televised because, I think, not enough fans would come out to see it.”

“Yes, that’s right. And probably during that long morning and afternoon you took some naps.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I need them.”

“And some of those little naps could go on for an hour or more?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“Mrs. Quinn, every time I’ve seen you napping, you’ve never awakened spontaneously. Someone has always wakened you. Don’t you think you might be able to nap for an hour or more?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so.”

“And if, indeed, you had taken a nap and had awakened to find that Grace was not in her chair, where would you have assumed she might be?”

“Oh, probably out to the kitchen to prepare dinner, or something like that.”

“So, with all this in mind, do you think you could testify that Mrs. Hunsinger was actually here with you all day Sunday?”

“Well, I suppose not really. I mean, I didn’t keep my eyes on her all day like some kind of watchdog.”

“So much then for the alibi. Mrs. Hunsinger, you could have gone out almost any time Sunday for an hour or so, confident that your friend would either be asleep or suppose that you were somewhere in the house.”

Grace did not react. Relaxed, smiling slightly, she continued to gaze steadfastly at the priest.

“And finally,” Koesler said, “one more time when I foolishly viewed an event through my eyes and not yours-during the funeral Mass, at communion time, you broke down in tears. I projected my own feelings and figured that it was this highly emotional moment of sacramental union with our Lord that caused your emotional reaction. Whereas it more likely was the fact that you hadn’t had a chance to go to confession. And you were receiving communion in the state of mortal sin. That’s what caused the outburst!”

There was silence for several moments.

“Little Bobby Koesler,” Grace murmured at length, “how proud your mother must have been of you. You were always so faithful. And on your ordination day, how proud she must have been of you-a priest of God, forever!”

“Mrs. Hunsinger,” Koznicki said, “before you reply to all the things Father Koesler has said, I am required to inform you of your rights.” He then removed a well-worn card from his wallet and read the Miranda warning to her. When he had completed the warning, after a slight pause, Grace spoke.

“Oh. . it’s true.” She smiled tiredly. “All except the part about confession. Father should have remembered that confessions are heard very frequently at Holy Redeemer, even during morning Masses. I had been to confession Monday morning. But, mortal sin? How could that be? The plan came to me during prayer. Our dear Lord told me Henry must be stopped. How could a command given to me by our Lord Himself be a sin, much less a mortal sin? Henry had hurt enough people and more. And he would go on-just as Father Koesler said. No one would stop him.

“I prayed before I opened my Bible that our Lord would show me the way. And I opened the Bible to that very passage in the Book of Maccabees. That brave woman witnessed her sons’ torture and death. She encouraged them to die rather than sin! That was what had to be: Henry had to die and it had to be at my hand.

“Father was right about everything but my tears at the funeral. I thought I had shed all the tears I possessed. When our Lord told me I must kill my very own son, I wept until I was sure I had no more tears. But I was wrong. At the moment of sacramental union with our Lord, I found there still were more tears to come. That was the reason.”

Inspector Koznicki shook his head slowly, sadly. “This is one of the times, one of the very rare times, when it is not good to be a police officer,” he said, almost to himself. And then, more loudly, “Mrs. Hunsinger, I am going to have to take you downtown with me. But take your time and gather all you need for a stay away from home. Perhaps Mrs. Quinn would help you.”

“So, Father, it all happened the way you envisioned it.” Koznicki took a small sip from his glass of cream sherry.

“I guess it did,” said Koesler, “but with the wrong cast of characters.”

The priest and the inspector had met at a small restaurant near St. Anselm’s late the same afternoon on which Grace Hunsinger had been arraigned on the charge of murdering her son, Henry. Neither felt like eating. In fact, neither felt like drinking. What each needed was the other’s company.

Koesler had been shaken to his core both by the fact that a respected Catholic matron had killed her only child and by the happenstance that it was he who had come up with the clues that led to her arrest. Koznicki, despite his many years with the Detroit Police Department, had never been more reluctant to make an arrest than he had been today.

“Now, Father, you are always too modest about your accomplishments. It was a most clever bit of deduction.”

“Well, thanks, Inspector. But I’m not all that proud of it. First, I embarrassed Lieutenant Harris and Sergeant Ewing as well as myself. And undoubtedly the Galloways too. And I can only feel terribly sad about Mrs. Hunsinger. You know, Inspector, she and I spent a lot of years together that I was totally unaware of. All those years she followed my career as an altar boy and seminarian and priest!” Koesler shook his head. “I didn’t even know she was looking.”

“None of us feels good about Mrs. Hunsinger, Father. But justice has been served and this case is closed. And I still believe that it was very clever of you to have come up with the hypothesis that the perpetrator had a problem with color vision. How was it you did that?”

“I still don’t know. It’s all jumbled in my mind. I think the seed was sown when I saw the horrible mix of colors in the Galloway living room. You see, Inspector, I started this whole thing in the wrong ballpark.”

“But you soon moved it to the correct location.”

“An accident, I think. As usual, whenever I’m able to be of any help to the police, it’s a matter of coming up with something that’s just not in the usual sphere of police work. This time, the most significant clues I uncovered were found in the Bible. Mostly, the incident where Christ cured a blind man, but only in stages. And, of course, that text from Maccabees. Strange, now that I think of it, the Biblical text that provided the clue that led to a solution was the same text through which God ‘told’ Mrs. Hunsinger to kill her son. And of course I goofed entirely on the reason the poor woman broke down during the funeral.”

“An irrelevant detail, Father.”

Koesler cupped his bourbon manhattan in his palms, assisting the ice to melt. “Did she. . I mean Mrs. Hunsinger. . did she confess. . I mean officially, to the police?”

“Yes, she made a full statement shortly after arriving at headquarters. She said she left her home shortly after she and Mrs. Quinn returned from Mass. She said that was a particularly ‘nappy’-was the word she used-time for Mrs. Quinn. Mrs. Quinn invariably got exceptionally tired after attending two Sunday masses.

“So, about eleven that morning, or shortly thereafter, Mrs. Hunsinger left home, drove to her son’s apartment building, entered through the basement, and took the elevator to his apartment. There she mixed the strychnine and DMSO and switched that bottle with the shampoo bottle. And, as you deduced, she was unable to tell that there was a different coloration.

“She returned home to find that Mrs. Quinn had not awakened once during her absence. And of course Mrs. Quinn assumed that Mrs. Hunsinger had been at home with her all through the day. Sergeant Ewing recalled that when he and Lieutenant Harris asked her what she had done all that day, she had Mrs. Quinn give an account of their time. She didn’t even have to lie.”

Koesler sipped his drink, caught one of the rapidly melting ice cubes, and held it in his mouth to complete the melting process. “What will happen to her now?”

“That is up to the prosecutor’s office. I assume she will be charged with murder in the first degree. No one could doubt, now, that she killed her son and that it very certainly was premeditated.”

“And do you think she will be convicted?”

Koznicki smiled briefly. “I never speculate about such matters. Our police work is done now, save testifying at her trial.” He looked at his clerical friend with a faint touch of amusement. “But for you, I will make a conjecture. If I were a good defense attorney-and you can depend on it, she will have one-I would love to have a client who can say with utmost sincerity, a sincerity that no prosecutor can break down, that ‘our Lord told me to do it.’ I would guess that Mrs. Hunsinger will eventually spend some time, perhaps the rest of her life, perhaps not, in some institution where she will receive psychiatric help. And with the money her son had already provided for her, the therapy ought to be first class.”

Koesler shrugged. “What a waste; what a tragic waste! Such a good woman!”

“A good woman, yes. . but,” Koznicki touched a finger to his forehead, “somewhat unbalanced.”

“Probably if we knew her complete background, it all might make some sense. I can’t believe a good woman like Grace Hunsinger could just step outside her whole lifestyle and suddenly become a murderess. Or even that she could lead an otherwise normal, even very pious, life and then have this one psychotic episode.”

Koesler deposited his glass on the table. This would be one of the rare occasions when he would not finish a drink. “One final point of information, Inspector. How could Grace Hunsinger know that DMSO would penetrate to the bloodstream and carry the poison with it? She hasn’t any medical or pharmaceutical background. At least not that I’m aware of.”

“Quite true, Father. She learned in the simplest possible way. It came out in her statement earlier this afternoon. We know that Mrs. Hunsinger, the compulsive mother of a compulsive son, regularly cleaned his already clean apartment. She would be aware of everything in it. Things like the intimate feminine apparel neatly tucked away, always changing as new women entered her son’s life. And the X-rated video cassettes. And the ample supply of strychnine. And that strange bottle of DMSO in the medicine cabinet. Always concerned, if fruitlessly, about her son’s use of illegal substances, she asked him about the DMSO.

“He explained its function, even going so far as to demonstrate. He put a drop of iodine on his hand, then, when it dried, he covered it with a drop or two of DMSO. She watched as the iodine disappeared, carried beneath the skin by the DMSO. At the time, she did no more than remind her son of the warning found on the bottle itself that the product might be unsafe, that it was not approved for human use.

“It was not until she received her ‘divine commission’ that she formed the plan of using the strychnine in conjunction with the DMSO. It was, as Dr. Moellmann observed, a very simple plan, yet ingenious in its simplicity.” Koznicki finished his drink. “And that leads to a question that still puzzles me. Grace Hunsinger was a very, perhaps overly, religious woman. How could she take her son’s life when in all probability he would thus have died in mortal sin? In this, she would not only be killing him, but condemning him to hell as well. . would she not? This, Father, is your field of expertise.”

Koesler shook his head slowly. “It’s a good question, Inspector. I ‘m not sure how to approach an answer.” He paused a few moments. “Perhaps you’ll remember a movie that came out about. . oh. . thirty years ago, called Night of the Hunter. Robert Mitchum played a preacher who was a psychopathic killer. He had the word ‘love’ tattooed on the back of one hand, and ‘hate’ on the other. I’ll never forget the scene where he’s alone driving a car and talking to God-praying would be a sick use of the word to describe his monologue. He admits-brags almost-to God that he is a killer. But he reminds God that there’s a lot of killing in the ‘Good Book.’ Well, Inspector, there is. The essence of the Bible, at least for the Christian, occurs when Almighty God allows His Son to be brutally executed. In fact, the execution may be said to be the fulfillment of the Father’s will.

“When you move back into the Old Testament, killings multiply. And, not infrequently, they are in response to God’s will. It starts with Cain killing Abel. Moses kills an Egyptian. God takes the firstborn of each Egyptian family. God wipes out the entire Egyptian army in the Red Sea. Whole cities are destroyed at God’s command. And-in perhaps the most touching instance-to test his faith, Abraham is ordered to sacrifice his only son. Then, there is that rather obscure woman in the Book of Maccabees who encourages her sons to die under torture rather than sin. Grace Hunsinger was familiar with all of them. She, indeed, selected the Maccabees woman’s story as one of the readings at her son’s funeral. So she was no stranger to the phenomenon of God’s occasional use of, in effect, a divine death sentence.

“Once she felt compelled to carry out the divine death sentence that had been passed on her son, he gave her no alternative. If we could compare his state of sin to a state of insanity, we would say he had no lucid moments. And she knew it. As you just stated, Inspector, she knew about the intimate feminine apparel, she knew about the X-rated TV cassettes. She knew about her son’s whole dissolute life. She had no choice but to go forward with her plan and, as far as her son’s soul was concerned, hope for the best.”

“But,” Koznicki said, “was there nothing the poor woman could do? Could she not have urged him to go to confession as the end neared?”

“On the contrary, Inspector, she would not have added sacrilege to her son’s long list of sins. She would have been aware from her many years of parochial training that confession without a determination to change one’s life-she would have known it as a ‘purpose of amendment’-is not only useless but a sacrilege. Of what purpose would it be for her son to go to confession of a Saturday afternoon when he had no intention of going to Mass of a Sunday morning, no intention of ceasing his womanizing, no intention to stop manipulating others, no intention of doing anything at all about changing his life for-what she would consider-the better.”

Upon reflection, Koznicki had to agree. He had had at least as much parochial training as had Mrs. Hunsinger, if not more. “Of course,” he said, “but a moment ago, Father, you said something about Mrs. Hunsinger’s hoping for the best?”

Koesler smiled and spread his hands on the tabletop. “Who knows? After death, who knows the immense power of God’s forgiveness? We believe that after death there is a judgment. And, aided by Scripture and tradition, we think we know the rules under which we will be judged. But we don’t really know how much God can and will forgive, nor how much He will not. All prayers after death, no matter how holy or sinful the deceased’s life, presume nothing. They only ask mercy.

“Mrs. Hunsinger and I spent quite a bit of time consoling each other. I reminded her of God’s infinite mercy as well as the fact that, for whatever reason, her son had freely joined a Bible study group. While she reminded me that at least he was good to her. And I would agree that filial devotion is very definitely a virtue.”

“To know all is to forgive all?”

“Maybe. Or maybe to know all is to understand all.”

Drinks finished, they made ready to leave.

“For the living, life goes on,” Koznicki said, then added, “Oh, by the way, Father, will you be able to come over for dinner on Sunday?”

“Thanks, Inspector, but I’ve got tickets to the Cougars game on Sunday. And parking at the Silverdome makes that an all-day adventure.”

“Well, then, have fun.”

“With Father McNiff along, it’s always fun.”