Assault with Intent

by William X. Kienzle

  Koesler studied the set that had been constructed near the end of a long transverse corridor. The set consisted merely of a series of open, partitioned cubicles resting on a long table that was against the rear wall. Technicians were moving back and forth, bringing business-size envelopes and small boxes and putting them in the open boxes. Others were adjusting lights or microphones. Still others were moving about, appearing to be busy, but Koesler could not ascertain what it was they were doing.

  “What is it?” Koesler asked.

  “It’s supposed to be the mailboxes at Sacred Heart Seminary,” Mary replied.

  “The mail—? But they’re not even close to—”

  “We know.”

  “The mailboxes at Sacred Heart are long, thin, deep boxes of fine, dark, aged wood, joined together and enclosed.”

  “Too expensive to duplicate.”

  “Then why couldn’t someone have borrowed the real ones for a day or so? I’m sure Sacred Heart would have been willing to lend them for a short while.”

  “Just another release to get. Besides, the way things are getting broken or lost on this project, neither Bruce nor Herm wanted to take a chance on having to replace them. We’re running pretty close to the thin red line of our budget.”

  “But those bright yellow boxes … they’re obviously plastic. They look cheap!”

  “Father, don’t forget what I told you in the beginning: The answer to most questions about why things are done this way or that on this project is that this is the least expensive way to do it.”

  “I’ll remember, but I won’t like it.”

  Meanwhile, in a classroom not far from the set, Father Budreau was conducting his morality of Christian marriage class.

  “Roma locuta, causa finita.” Father Budreau tugged at the cummerbund-like sash he wore over his black cassock. “Rome has spoken, the question is settled.” He seemed quite pleased with himself, as if he had presented the ultimate solution.

  Edward Maley, whose query had elicited the ultimate answer, shook his head. “I’d have to agree with you, Father, that the question has been answered, but not by the Church.”

  “Of course it has, Maley. Go back to Pius XII and his ‘Casti Connubii’ address to the midwives in 1951. When he spelled out the principles for utilizing the ‘rhythm method’ of family planning—”

  “Or Vatican Roulette,” a student whispered behind his hand.

  “—he put to rest for all time the possibility of using any form of artificial birth control.”

  “But Father, 1951 was more than three decades ago.”

  “Our Savior lived two thousand years ago! What does time have to do with the eternal?”

  “Father, are you saying we must overlook all that mankind has learned in the past thirty-some years?”

  “Ha! Why don’t you just check with Father O’Dowd about what all mankind has learned in the past thirty years? He’ll tell you all the horror stories about how mankind is destroying its own environment!”

  “Well, all right, Father. I would naturally concede Father O’Dowd’s thesis on how we long ago lost our contemplative approach to life. But I’m talking about the knowledge explosion: mankind’s knowledge about itself, about mankind!”

  “And I’m talking about the Ordinary Magisterium!”

  Meanwhile, on the movie set …

  “You shouldn’t be swinging that around,” said the Second Man.

  “What’s the difference,” said the First Man, “nobody’s going to drink it.” With that, he flipped the bottle of champagne into the air. He reached to catch it but missed. Fortunately, it landed on a large soft cushion.

  “Watch it!” said the Third Man. “We don’t want to call attention to ourselves. Now put that bottle on the set where it’s supposed to be.”

  “Cheap,” commented the First Man, scrutinizing the bottle’s label.

  “So is everything else connected with this movie,” said the Third Man.

  “Has it occurred to you guys that we’ve been very lucky lately? I mean in holding onto these jobs?” said the First Man. “Just about everyone around us has been fired. And here we still are!”

  “That thought has occurred to me many, many times,” said the Second Man. “I have taken it as a good omen. God is with us. I think we’re going to succeed.”

  “Don’t take anything for granted,” the Third Man warned. “As soon as any of us lets up, this whole thing is going to fall apart. So stay on your toes! Be alert!”

  “I can’t help it,” said the Second Man, “I just feel we’re going to make it this time.”

  “Well, one thing’s for certain,” said the Third Man, “it won’t be long until we know.”

  Meanwhile, in the classroom …

  “Most Catholics never heard of the Ordinary Magisterium, let alone pay any attention to it,” said Edward Maley.

  “Then it’s up to people like us,” said Father Budreau, “priests, seminarians, or a religious education coordinator, as you will probably become, to tell them.”

  “It’s too late to ‘tell them,’ Father. They have already decided the matter for themselves. All the surveys and statistics say the same thing: The majority of Catholic laity have abandoned the Church’s teaching, at least on this issue, and they practice birth control without any guilt.”

  “Now you know as well as I do, Mr. Maley, that the Church is not a democracy. We don’t vote on doctrine or morality. It doesn’t matter what percentage of Catholics do or do not follow the ordinary teaching authority of the Church.

  “And there is no doubt that this teaching on artificial contraception is part of the Ordinary Magisterium. If you wanted to quibble about the teaching of Pius XII, there is ‘Humanae Vitae,’ the encyclical of Pope Paul VI that has been affirmed by every succeeding Pope.”

  “The people are voting with their feet, Father. They’re walking out on antiquated teaching.”

  “Mr. Maley, remember what Our Savior said when the crowds found him teaching a ‘hard doctrine.’ He did not call them back. He turned to His Apostles and said, ‘Will you, too, leave me?’ The problem, Mr. Maley, is theirs, not ours.”

  Meanwhile, on the movie set…

  Sol Gould stared at his wristwatch.

  Father Koesler stared at the actors standing to one side of the set. Some wore black cassocks. Others wore black clerical suits and roman collars. They were prepared to enter the set, on cue, and go to the mailboxes where the film Father Koesler would pick up his doctored bottle.

  The real Father Koesler did not much care for the thespian Father Koesler. The actor, an inch or two under six feet, was not nearly tall enough. But primarily, there was the actor’s vacuous look, particularly when he was not on camera. Koesler thought the actor should appear to have something going on behind his eyes at all times. Having made this critique, the priest laughed at his own vanity.

  Finally, Koesler noticed the bottle in one of the boxes.

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s the doctored bottle intended for the actor portraying you,” Mary Murphy explained.

  “But … but … the bottle was a fifth of very good gin,” he protested.

  “Well, neither Bruce nor Herm thought gin was classy. They decided on champagne.”

  Koesler shook his head.

  The bell sounded, ending the classes that were going on in the building.

  Apparently, the sound was what Gould had been waiting for. Get it out of the way so it wouldn’t mar the sound track. As soon as the clanging ceased, he called for silence. Everyone, including the many student onlookers, fell quiet.

  Meanwhile, in the classroom …

  Father Budreau gathered his books.

  The need for bodies to keep the seminary functioning notwithstanding, he would campaign for the expulsion of Edward Maley at the faculty meeting in June.

  Maley’s argumentative attitude was disruptive. He was not studying for the priesthood anyway. In point of fact, with his reaction to the Or
dinary Magisterium, one might even wonder whether he was actually a Catholic.

  Budreau stalked down the hall—quick strides, left arm swinging in a swooping arc. He passed the periphery of the movie set. The corridor was jammed with students watching wide-eyed as the miracle of moviedom unfolded before them.

  Budreau shook his head as he strode past the set. Secular nonsense! Nothing like this three-ring circus would have been tolerated in the seminary of old.

  In spite of himself, he looked back to see if he could figure out what was going on. He was certainly familiar enough with the story line. Not only had he read it in the papers and seen it on TV, he knew the principals personally.

  He saw a group of actors dressed as priests. They were in front of a row of plastic boxes, which Budreau identified as poor substitutes for the ancient, ornate mailboxes at Sacred Heart Seminary.

  They must be doing the Koesler episode, Budreau surmised. Fortunately, he thought, I will not be a part of this frivolous affair.

  As he passed from the set area through the swinging doors that bisected the corridor, Budreau could not have noticed that the champagne that had been shaken previously was bubbling furiously in its bottle.

  Budreau entered the empty chapel, walked about a quarter of the way down the aisle, genuflected, and entered a pew. He knelt and tried to focus on prayer. It was never easy, especially after a long debate such as he’d had with that Maley. The student’s stubbornness had irritated Budreau and he needed time to calm down.

  He decided to pray, as they had in the old days, for missions and missionaries. And he would pray in the Latin that he so loved and which was becoming a foreign language.

  Pro missionibus et missionariis. Pater noster, qui es in coelis …

  Someone had entered the chapel behind him. Odd. Seldom was anyone but himself in the chapel at this hour.

  … sanctificetur nomen tuum …

  There was no sound. Again, odd. Whoever was there was going nowhere. They always went to a pew or an altar or somewhere. Not nowhere.

  … adveniat regnum tuum …

  Budreau slipped his right hand into the front of his sash.

  … fiat voluntas tuo sicut in caelo et in terra …

  To one who had spent as much time around firearms as Budreau, the sound was unmistakable. Whoever was behind him had just cocked a gun.

  In one fluid motion that seemed surprising for a man of Budreau’s heft, he pivoted to his left, pulling a derringer from his sash as he did so.

  BANG!

  The cork shot from the champagne bottle and ricocheted from ceiling to wall to floor. Champagne spurted over most of the clerical clothing in the vicinity.

  “Cut, cut! Damn!” Gould yelled. “Doesn’t anyone here know how to make a movie!”

  “What was that?” Patrick asked.

  “The cork.” Morris seemed surprised by the question. “Someone must have shaken that bottle.”

  “No, there was another sound. Almost simultaneous with the cork popping … where’s Kirkus?”

  Both looked about quickly. No sign of Roman Kirkus.

  “Come on,” Patrick snapped, “it came from this direction.”

  He led Morris down the corridor. They were halted by the swinging doors that were now locked. Patrick kicked repeatedly before the wood splintered, the lock snapped and the doors swung back.

  Service revolvers drawn, the two raced the remaining twenty yards to the chapel.

  They found only a very shaken Father Budreau still holding his small pistol and giving every sign of being about to slip into shock. After quickly ascertaining that he was unhurt, they followed his trembling finger and whispered “that way,” and headed off in the direction whence they had come.

  Morris was first to spot the gun with its silencer lying on the tile floor at the rear of the chapel. Slipping a pencil through the trigger guard, she carefully wrapped the weapon in a handkerchief, then followed after Patrick, who had headed back toward the set. She found him just inside the swinging doors, which were now propped open. The floor between the doors was littered with debris from the splintered door and the broken lock.

  Patrick had found Roman Kirkus.

  “Where were you just now?” the detective demanded.

  “In the men’s room, right there.” Kirkus pointed to the room, which was just the other side of the swinging doors.

  “When did you go in there?”

  “About five minutes ago.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “Yeah, I heard a noise like someone was busting down the door. So I hurried out. The lock on the swinging door was broken. I figured somebody wanted to get out pretty bad. So I propped the doors open.”

  “Did anyone see you go in or come out of the men’s room?”

  “I did.” Another of the production assistants stepped forward. “I was in the men’s room at the same time he was.”

  Patrick looked from one to the other suspiciously.

  “Look!” Morris showed Patrick the gun she had picked up.

  “Good work! Any blood?”

  “No.” Using the kerchief as a sling, Morris turned the pistol over. “But look at this.”

  There was a noticeable gouge in the silencer.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Patrick. “He shot the gun right out of the guy’s hand.”

  “Yup. Shades of the old movie Westerns.”

  “Take it to Ballistics. I’ll stay here and see if I can get some answers. Like who locked these doors.”

  The onlookers were unaware that there was a better show going on in the corridor than the one they were watching on the film set.

  “So, they finally got the smoking gun,” Bob Ankenazy observed.

  “Literally.” Pat Lennon was checking her notes prior to programming her story in the CRT. “The cops got to the chapel a few moments after the shooting. When I got there, I could still smell the gunpowder.”

  “It’s a good thing you were on the scene. Talk about being at the right place at the right time!”

  “It was a bit lucky. I wanted to follow up on the ‘dirty movie* within a movie. I owe it all, including that super interview with Roman Kirkus, to the Tridentines, God bless ’em.

  “Yes, your story on the gratuitous sadomasochism in that film got us about caught up with the Freep’s story on the cheapie moviemakers. And your interview with Kirkus put us ahead … I suppose Cox was there today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn! Well, you can’t win ‘em all … what have the cops got?”

  Lennon flipped through her notepad. “No fingerprints. The guy had to be wearing gloves. There was no way he could have taken time to wipe the gun and still make his escape.”

  “That brings up the locked door. Anybody know who locked it?”

  “That may just be the key to the whole thing, Bob. As far as I could determine, the cops don’t know who locked the doors. They’re double doors that swing open or shut. While they’re filming, they want the doors shut, of course, but not locked.

  “Father Budreau, it seems, walked down the corridor where they had built this simple set and were filming. He pushed open one of the doors and walked through. The chapel is about twenty yards beyond the doors. He went in and started praying.

  “Nobody saw anyone go through the doors after Budreau. Everybody was watching what was going on on the set. But at least two other people went through them. One was Roman Kirkus, and the other was another of the production assistants. I’ve got his name here somewhere. They went to the men’s room, which is just on the other side of the doors from the set.

  “Apparently, sometime after the two went into the rest-room, someone locked the doors. They can be locked from either side.”

  “And you say the cops don’t know who?”

  “No one will own up to it. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who have master keys that fit almost all the inside doors. Any number of people could have locked the doors from either side.”

/>   “What was the idea of locking the doors, anyway?”

  “It gave the assailant just enough time to get away. After the shooting, he must’ve gone down the corridor in the opposite direction from the movie set. It’s about thirty or forty yards to the exit and another twenty or thirty yards to Schoolcraft, where a car could be waiting.”

  “What about the two in the men’s room?”

  “They claim that after they heard Patrick kick the door open they hurried out to the hallway. They saw the lock had been broken, so one of them propped the doors open.

  “So, they can’t identify who locked the doors …” Someone across the office was trying to get Ankenazy’s attention. He signaled that he would be only a few minutes.

  “No one admitted it and no one saw anyone do it. It could easily have been the assailant. He could have locked the doors, blocking or at least delaying the cops from following him. Then he could have gone quickly to the chapel, be thwarted in his murder attempt, and run the rest of the way down to the exit.”

  “What does Pat Lennon think?”

  “It was a conspiracy. Somebody waited until the assailant was on his way to the chapel, no matter which direction he came from, the set or outside. When he was ready, his conspirator locked the door.

  “It adds a whole new dimension to this thing. Until now, everyone thought the assailant was acting alone. If I’m correct, there’s a conspiracy involving at least one other person. And, more important, the motive changes. One person can have one reason for trying to kill people. But a team or a group has to have a motive that is mutual or common to them all. They have to have a motive both or all of them can agree on.”

  “Interesting. Have they been able to check out the assailant’s gun yet?”

  “I was just about to call Ballistics on that.” She picked up the phone.

  Joe Cox cradled the receiver. “Nellie! Ballistics just finished checking that gun. It’s the same one that was used to shoot that Gennardo guy.”

  “Great!” Nelson Kane looked up. He was seated at his desk sifting through copy.

  “That pretty well ties it up.” Cox, notepad in hand, crossed to Kane’s desk and sat across from the city editor. “I think I’ve got all I need.”