The Skeleton Box

TWENTY-EIGHT

The blotter on Judge Gallagher’s L-shaped mahogany desk was framed in leather the color of blackberries. Gallagher pointed at it and said, “Remove the box from the plastic and place it here, please.” Catledge did. The judge fluffed the back of his robe and descended into a leather-backed chair. “You may uncuff these men, Deputy.”

I tried to get Whistler’s attention as Catledge removed his cuffs, but he kept his eyes down, rubbing first his wrists and then his pinkie ring. I recalled picking the ring up off his desk, how heavy it seemed, and the initials engraved inside: EJPW. Elizabeth Josephine Pound Whistler. Bitsy. His mother.

He sat alongside Breck, facing the judge. Dingus stood behind them. Repelmaus stood with the bailiff. I sat with Mom on Gallagher’s left, while Eileen, Darlene, and Doc Joe sat in a semicircle across from us. I finally caught Darlene’s eye. She didn’t smile, but she winked, and I thought maybe I’d done something right.

The judge opened a desk drawer and produced a package of latex gloves. He unwrapped it and pulled the gloves on. “Now,” he said, looking around the room, “I plan to take a look at what is inside this box. Unless there’s an objection.”

“I must respectfully object, Your Honor,” Eileen Martin said. “This risks contaminating what could be vital evidence.”

“Really, Ms. Martin? How do you know what’s in here? It could be nothing.”

“But Your Honor, could we at least have some photographs-”

“Overruled.”

Dingus spoke. “Your Honor, don’t you think-that is, wouldn’t you prefer, that the police handle the investigation and we’ll come back to you-”

“With what? Yet another suspect?” Gallagher said. “You suspended the only deputy who’s actually gotten anything done on this case, is that right?”

“Your Honor, the deputy did not follow-”

“You came into my courtroom this morning to charge this man”-he pointed at Breck-“with some very serious crimes, and an hour later we’re sitting here with another man whom I would wager you plan to charge as well, am I right, Sheriff?”

Dingus shifted his bulk, folded his arms. “No objection, Your Honor.”

“Thank you. Now, Mr. Regis?” Gallagher said. “I’ll allow you to witness this, so long as you tell me you promise to behave, which is to say, keep your mouth shut.”

“Yes, Your Honor.” Repelmaus cleared his throat and showed the judge a cell phone he’d pulled out of his jacket pocket. “Although it’s my duty to inform you that you may soon be getting a fax from Judge Wallace in Detroit.”

“Federal judge Joseph Peter Wallace? A good man. Not much of a golfer, but a good man.”

“Yes sir. My client has asked Judge Wallace for a temporary restraining-”

“No,” Gallagher said, clapping his hands together. “Not another word.”

“-order to halt this ad hoc proceeding and-”

“I’m sorry,” the judge shouted over Repelmaus, “I haven’t heard a word you said and if you speak another, Judge Wallace will have to post your bail.”

Repelmaus pursed his lips.

Gallagher turned back to the box. Dirt was caked around its hinges, and it was tall enough that all we could see of the judge was his head and the few stray tufts of silver the chemo had spared. He motioned to Doc Joe. “Could you come over here?” Doc Joe came around behind the judge. Gallagher handed the coroner a pair of latex gloves, then turned to Whistler. “Mr. Whistler,” he said, “can you tell us why you’re here?”

“I demand a lawyer, Your Honor.”

“Well, then, Mr. Breck?” Gallagher said. “Can you tell me why Mr. Whistler is here?”

A fax machine resting on a credenza behind Gallagher sputtered to life, chugging from hum to clatter as it began spitting out a page.

“Pardon me,” Gallagher said, turning to Doc Joe. “It’s impossible to conduct a conversation with that thing clunking along.” Doc Joe reached behind the credenza and yanked a plug from its socket. The machine went silent.

“Judge, you can’t be serious,” Repelmaus said.

“Much better,” Gallagher said. “Mr. Breck?”

Breck looked at Whistler. “He obviously made a mistake,” Breck said. “He must have worried that my arrest would lead to his, and he panicked and went looking for that”-he nodded toward the box on the judge’s desk-“and somebody figured it out.”

Darlene and me, I thought. Finally.

“And why would Mr. Whistler care about what’s in this box?”

Breck made a show of turning to look at Repelmaus. “Because he thought it might be worth a lot of money to the archdiocese. Like maybe five million dollars.”

I looked at Whistler, who appeared ready to explode, his cheeks crimson, his pinkie ring tap-tap-tapping on his chair arm. I wanted to hear from him.

“Not only that,” I interjected, “but he and his partner, one Beverly Taggart, sought to get women in town to help them with their little extortion plot under the guise of writing a history of St. Valentine’s Church.”

Whistler took the bait. “It wasn’t a ‘guise,’” he said.

“So, Mr. Whistler, you do want to speak,” Gallagher said. “What would this history of yours say?”

Whistler looked around at his audience. He couldn’t help himself. “Everything Breck says about the church framing his grandfather is true,” he said.

“Preposterous,” Repelmaus said.

“They had to frame somebody because Father Nilus Moreau had killed Sister Cordelia with his bare hands and buried her beneath the old church. Later he moved the bones so they could build the new church.”

“How do you know this, Mr. Whistler?” Gallagher said.

“My mother knew Nilus. Only too well.”

“Why wouldn’t the archdiocese just hand Nilus over to the authorities and wash their hands of him?”

“It was too late for that,” I said. “They were already covering up years of Nilus screwing his parishioners.”

“Your Honor,” Repelmaus pleaded.

“If the murder of a nun came out, everything would come out,” I said. “The archdiocese couldn’t help but look complicit, and who knows what else.” I looked at Repelmaus. “Your pal Reilly didn’t tell you about the paternity suits, Regis?”

“Judge,” he said, “this man has zero credibility as a journalist. Why is he even in here? What kind of crazy court is this?”

My mother jumped up. “Don’t you dare say that about my son.”

“Hush, all of you,” Gallagher said. “Beatrice, please, sit.”

“God damn you to hell, if he hasn’t already,” she told Repelmaus. She sat.

“Maybe Sheriff Aho should hire your son, Bea,” Gallagher said.

“Hah,” Whistler said. “He’s clueless.”

“Enough out of you,” Gallagher said. Then, to Repelmaus, “This is not a courtroom, sir, this is my chambers. There is no jury. The rules of evidence do not apply. But since you’re so keen on having the facts correct, please tell us: Did Mr. Whistler endeavor to extort money from the archdiocese?”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor, I would have to claim attorney-client privilege.”

“Ah. Maybe Mr. Whistler isn’t the only one with something to hide.” He waited for a reply, but Repelmaus had none. “All right, let’s see what could be worth the risks you people have taken.”

Gallagher stood. He lifted the hasp on the box. He took hold of the lid with his gloved hands and eased it open. A musty odor floated up from the open box. I imagined the sort of line that would appear in a newspaper story: The room filled with the smell of death. I watched Gallagher’s face as he examined the inside of the box. Doc Joe moved closer. His face blanched as the judge, whose face did not blanch, reached into the box and handed something to Doc Joe.

The coroner took the skull in one hand, rolled it over into the other. It wasn’t much bigger than a softball and was about the same color and roundness, except for a small, irregular oval circumscribed by a hairline crack in the rear left part of the skull. The dent looked like one a ball-peen hammer might make in a sheet of drywall.

“Jesus God,” Breck said. Whistler dropped his head to his sweatshirt.

I looked at Mom. Her eyes followed the coroner’s hands as he turned the skull this way and that, peering in through the eye sockets and up through the neck.

“Your professional opinion, Doctor?” Gallagher said.

“Purely unofficial, of course,” he said. “But on first glance, looks like a female skull, based on its size.”

“Human,” Gallagher said.

“Certainly.”

“And this?” The judge indicated the dented area.

“Probably some sort of blunt force. Hard to tell whether it’s passive or aggressive. It’s possible she fell. It’s possible somebody hit her with something. Not too terribly different from what happened to Phyllis, actually.” He peered over his glasses at Mom. “I’m sorry, Bea.”

She shook her head softly, pressing a wad of tissue against her lips.

Gallagher put a hand out and Doc Joe placed the skull in it. The judge set it back inside the box. He rested his hands on the edges of the box.

“Beatrice,” he said.

Mom had begun to rock back and forth in her chair, her tongue bobbing inside her lips, making an “N”: “Nonny Nonny Nonny.”

“I haven’t heard that name in a long, long time,” Gallagher said. “Whatever was it supposed to mean, do you know?”

Mom shook her head again. “Nothing,” she said, barely audible.

“Sister Cordelia made cakes for the kids’ birthdays,” I offered.

Gallagher’s smile was gentle. “That’s not quite correct,” he said. “I was a couple of years ahead of Bea, but St. Val’s was a tiny school. Sister Cordelia always made cookies for birthdays. She made cake for Bea’s. Didn’t she, Bea?”

Mom nodded.

“Bea was her pet.”

“She used to keep me in from recess to work on my spelling.”

“Did it work?” Gallagher said, still smiling.

“No.”

Gallagher addressed the whole room now. “I used to listen to detective dramas on the radio,” he said. “I always wondered why that body never washed up. Doc, is there a way to get positive identification?”

“Teeth are loaded with DNA, but I highly doubt we’ll find family to match it with,” Doc Joe said. “Maybe, with the help of the forensics guys in Lansing, we can reconstruct her smile and compare it to old photos, if we have any.”

“Clerk’s office,” I said. “In the microfilm.”

“Here, Horace,” Mom said.

I watched as she loosed my hand, unzipped her handbag, and removed her wallet. She unsnapped a wallet pocket, dug inside it, and produced a small black-and-white photograph. She handed it to Gallagher, who looked at it, smiled, and then handed it to Doc Joe.

“This should do,” the coroner said.

“There’s something else here.”

Gallagher reached into the box and plucked out a leather pouch that looked to be wound with white electrical tape. He turned the pouch around in his hands, inspecting it, then grabbed the scissors from the leather cup on his desk.

“Your Honor,” Dingus said. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“That is evidence, Your Honor,” Eileen said.

Gallagher sliced through the tape and peeled it back from the top of the pouch. “The zipper’s a little rusty,” he said. He pulled on it hard and it tore open with a puff of reddish dust. Gallagher perched his horn-rims on his forehead and peered into the pouch. With two fingers he pulled out a yellowish envelope. He set the pouch aside and squinted at the envelope seal.

“Please be careful, Your Honor,” Dingus said.

“Agreed, Your Honor,” Repelmaus said. “I respectfully submit that these materials be left alone until their relevance and admissibility can be properly adjudicated.”

Gallagher slid a fingernail beneath the seal. The envelope opened. The judge bent slightly and the envelope dipped below his desktop to where we couldn’t see it. He paused, apparently reading. Then he straightened and set the envelope on his desk. In one hand he held some pages that had been folded in thirds.

“This is a letter, or appears to be,” he said. “Written in what looks to be pen, in a rather florid hand, on the letterhead of St. Valentine’s Roman Catholic Church, Starvation Lake, Michigan.” He flipped to the last page. “It is signed by Father Nilus Moreau.”

“Without objection,” he said, “I’m going to read the first page.” He waited, but by now even Repelmaus had given up objecting.

The judge read.

“Father, forgive me, for I have sinned. I have succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, to the venal allure of physical pleasure, to the enrapture of lust and all that goes before it, and with it, and alongside it. I have let sin reign in my mortal body and I have obeyed its desires. I have committed atrocity and tolerated it and sought the false and sinful asylum of denial. I have made company with men who would do the same, while demanding my silence and wicked acquiescence. I seek your divine mercy and everlasting forgiveness as I write these things down on the twenty-first day of August in the year 1950-”

Mom pitched forward over her knees, her hands clenched into fists at her breast. “Mom,” I said, reaching across her shoulders, “are you all right?”

Gallagher looked up. “Beatrice?”

“Go ahead, Horace,” she said. “Just go ahead.”

Nilus met Sister Mary Cordelia at a convent in Midland, when he was an associate pastor at St. John Bosco Catholic Church. She was, he wrote, “as pure and delicate and lovely as a begonia open to the sun.” And merely eighteen years old when she became pregnant with Nilus’s child.

She refused an abortion. Her habit kept her from showing early but, before her belly became impossible to hide, Nilus arranged for her to stay for the rest of her pregnancy with his sister in Sandusky, about eighty miles east. In May 1933, Sister Cordelia gave birth to a girl who was immediately moved to an orphanage in Midland and then, the following year, to a different Catholic orphanage in the town that would soon become Starvation Lake, where Nilus had become assistant pastor of St. Valentine’s. Sister Mary Cordelia followed. She became a teacher at St. Valentine’s and helped at the orphanage.

Nilus and Cordelia vowed to remain chaste and be thankful that they had not been discovered, so they could take secret joy in watching their daughter blossom, if from a distance. Each night, they prayed that the family who adopted the child, unnamed in Nilus’s letter, would never take her away.

“There followed several years of acute and unremitting pain as I struggled to sustain my faith while longings for Cordelia insisted themselves upon me,” Nilus wrote. “It was then that Elizabeth Whistler entered into my life and lured me into the compounding of mortal sin that would damn my soul to eternity, Lord, if not for the saving grace and mercy which I pray you will bestow upon your unworthy servant.”

It was the fall of 1942. Bitsy Whistler was a member of the Women’s Guild at St. Valentine’s. She saw Nilus on occasion at bake sales and pancake breakfasts the guild organized. “Elizabeth was a woman with a heavy soul,” Nilus wrote, “having lost her heroic husband in the world war.” She sought Nilus’s advice-or so Nilus said-and, soon, counsel turned to consolation, which turned to love, or what passed for it between a despondent woman and a priest who labored under the weight of knowing he had made a mistake with the most important decision of his life.

Initially, Bitsy agreed to a quiet abortion of Nilus’s child and moved south, to Clare, where she stayed with a cousin who convinced her that an abortion would be a sin for which she could never atone. When she returned to Starvation Lake in the spring of 1944, she brought with her a boy-also unnamed in Nilus’s missive-who the townsfolk assumed was the son of her late husband, conceived on a leave shortly before his death at Bataan. Nilus gave Bitsy a job in the sacristy cleaning the chalices, cruets, and other furnishings used at Mass and paid her himself, in cash.

It wasn’t long before Nilus and Bitsy were trysting again. After every few assignations, Bitsy would demand that Nilus increase the amount of money he paid her. Fearing exposure, and too weak to resist her enticements, he complied. “I was remiss, dear Lord, in countenancing the presence of Satan himself, or herself, in the person of Bitsy Whistler,” Nilus wrote. “I was weak, weak unto my soul, weak in the flesh.”

I looked at Whistler. He was shaking his head in disbelief, or denial.

“It was on such an evening, with my will at its most frail, that my sins came to bear the terrible fruits to which I confess. It was six years ago, almost to this day.”

Sister Cordelia had gone to the sacristy looking for Nilus, to tell him their secret daughter had done well in a waterskiing contest. The sacristy was dark, but she heard voices inside. “She found us, O Lord, she found us,” Nilus wrote, “and my life will never be the same, God forgive me, God forgive my soul.” Cordelia, enraged, flung herself at Nilus. Bitsy stepped between them. The women struggled. Bitsy, the larger, took hold of Cordelia’s cowl and thrust her away. The nun spun backward and smacked her head on the corner of a counter, crumpling to the floor. In seconds, blood had soaked her veil.

“You must forgive Elizabeth, Lord, for what happened next, for she knew not what she was doing,” Nilus said.

Whistler came out of his chair. “No,” he said. “He’s lying.” Darlene jumped up and grabbed him by the shoulders. He tried to wrestle free, but Dingus stepped between them and slammed Whistler back down into his chair.

“Bullshit,” Whistler said.

Dingus snapped handcuffs off of his belt and said, “Judge?”

“My mother did not kill that nun.”

“Are you finished?” Gallagher said. “Do you want to hear the rest?”

“He’s lying, I’m telling you.” He looked around the room as if someone might sympathize. “Goddammit. All right, I’ll settle down. But Nilus is lying to save his own ass.”

“We’ll never know, will we?”

“I know,” Whistler said.

Gallagher resumed reading.

Bitsy went to a closet and removed a black cassock. She folded it upon itself several times and, kneeling in the spreading puddle of Cordelia’s blood, placed it tight over the nun’s face.

“I told her no, Lord, but I was too weak, too selfish, too fearful for my own welfare, to stop her,” Nilus wrote. “I thank you, dear Lord, that Cordelia did not appear to suffer.”

“Liar,” Whistler said.

Mom was doubled over now, quietly sobbing.

Nilus and Bitsy buried Cordelia in a crawl space beneath St. Valentine’s. Two years later, in 1946, Bisty and her young son moved downstate.

“With temptation removed, I redoubled my efforts to dedicate myself to you, Lord, by raising the necessary means to build a church that would give you greater glory.” Nilus wrote. “Circumstances arose, however, in which the Archdiocese of Detroit felt obliged to direct my actions. And so it is at the urging of Father Timothy Reilly that-”

“Your Honor,” Repelmaus said, “I demand that this, this, this proceeding, whatever it is, be adjourned now, before more rank speculation and unconfirmed evidence is allowed to slander the good name of my client.”

Gallagher looked at him. “You have a client named Father Timothy?”

“Actually, Your Honor-”

“Let me guess: attorney-client privilege?” Gallagher said.

“Father Timothy Reilly,” I said, “was the spokesman for the archdiocese quoted in the stories about Wayland’s murder in 1950.”

“You may leave now, Regis,” the judge said.

“Your Honor, you can’t be-”

“Bailiff?”

When the door had closed, Gallagher read the rest of the letter.

Nilus told Father Timothy about the nun buried beneath the church. Father Timothy, Nilus wrote, came to see him one night that August of 1950. He told Nilus that someone tearing down the old church might find the remains. He suggested that Nilus disinter Sister Cordelia and rebury her somewhere she would never be found.

And so, on August 21, 1950, he had.

His letter didn’t say that my mother had helped.

“Some confession,” I said. “He blames everybody and everything but himself for the murder of a nun and the subsequent cover-up.” I looked at Breck. “I’m sure you noticed there’s no mention of your grandfather.”

“I am not surprised,” Breck said.

“Mr. Whistler,” Gallagher said, “are you the son of Father Nilus Moreau?”

Whistler had turned pale. “Technically.”

“Horace,” Mom said. “I’ve had enough.”

“I can imagine,” he said. “Mr. Whistler, it would be prudent for you now to keep in mind that anything you say can and will be used against you.” He turned to Eileen Martin. “Ms. Prosecutor, do you plan to file charges against this man?”

“I need to confer with the sheriff,” she said.

“Then do so expeditiously. And what of Mr. Breck?”

“You have his plea, Your Honor.”

“And a paucity of evidence. However, I suspect Mr. Breck may have information that could be useful to your investigation. Did you hear that, Sheriff Aho?”

Dingus was whispering with Doc Joe. “Sorry?” he said.

“Sheriff, you ought to listen up,” Gallagher said. “You haven’t exactly covered yourself in glory these past few weeks.”

Dingus’s mustache twitched. “Yes, Your Honor. May I interrupt?”

“Interrupt.”

“That ring,” he said. “I’ll need it.”

Whistler grabbed his pinkie ring with the other hand. “First I want a lawyer.”

“They’ll confiscate it at the jail,” Gallagher said.

“Doc Joe, you’ve got the gloves on,” Dingus said.

The coroner held a gloved hand out. Whistler slipped the ring off and handed it over.

“So,” the judge said, “when we return to the courtroom, I will bind Mr. Breck over for trial in the hope that he might find ways to be helpful.”

“Noted, Your Honor,” Eileen said.

Gallagher placed the pouch back in the box and closed the lid.

“These items are now sealed until the court rules otherwise,” he said. “Deputy Catledge, please cuff the prisoners. Sheriff, I turn Deputy Esper back over to you for whatever you must do. But now let’s get back in court-everyone but you two.”

He meant Mom and me.

“Why?” I said.

“You can leave through my clerk’s office.”

“What are we supposed to do, Horace?” Mom said.

“As your son said, solve the case.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I trust you’ll figure it out.”

Everyone stood. Mom and I watched the others file back to the courtroom.

“Wait,” I said. “Darlene.”

I started toward her. She turned around and came to me. Dingus didn’t try to stop her. We embraced, Darlene burying her face in my chest.

“I had to go myself,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s almost over.”

We held each other for a long minute. Dingus finally took Darlene by an elbow.

“Careful, Dingus,” I said. “You don’t want to lose your best deputy.”

Gallagher was last to leave. “Take care of your mother,” he said. “And Bea, you take care of your son.”