by Mark Zubro
Fenwick said, “They were threatening Dere last night.”
After the detectives summed up what they’d learned the night before, Molton said, “I don’t know if there’s any truth to be had from any of them.” The Commander chuckled. “I’m afraid Bishop Pelagius is not ever going to be your friend.”
“How long did you talk?” Turner asked.
“I invited them to stay as long as they wanted, but they were quite angry. The main problem is, they have no one to listen to them. The head of the County Board has no real power in the city, at least not over the police. And no one likes Vern Drake in the mayor’s office so he can’t cause as many problems as he would like.”
Turner said, “But they weren’t confessing or adding any actual facts to the case.”
Molton gave him a grim smile and held out his empty palm. “Here’s all the real help they gave.”
Turner said, “But they must know something. People this concerned have got something to lose.”
Fenwick said, “Gotta be covering up for the killer.”
“But why?” Turner asked. “All these people are going to lie for each other? They don’t seem to be close friends or lovers. Why lie? Why protect each other? For some esoteric notion of ‘church’? None of them seems to really care. Who is so worth all this lying? They really think they’re ‘saving’ the Catholic church by all this?”
Fenwick tapped the top of his desk. “They’re saving their own asses. They’ve got it easy. They’ve had it easy for a very long time, and they’re frightened. That much money is that scared?”
Molton said, “That much money is usually the most scared.”
The four of them were silent and mulled this for a few moments.
Fenwick broke the silence. “He told you he called us pawns of Satan?”
“He is very not happy with you. Did you try to tell him the wrist joke?” The whole wrist joke shtick was known and feared throughout the station.
“No. You know that joke is on a “you asked, I told basis”.”
Molton and Dams laughed and left.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Tuesday 2:02 P.M.
After finishing up more paperwork and doing collating and arranging more items on the spreadsheet, they decided to start with Fr. Howard Cehak, the parish priest who’d supposedly unearthed financial malfeasance.
At the rectory of St. Couffignals on the near north side, the door was answered by a florid-faced man wearing a Hawaiian flowered shirt and black pants.
He looked at their ID. He said, “I’m the old guy who has the goods on the Cardinal. Today’s headlines aren’t enough? I can add to his misery, if you guys are smart.”
He led them to a kitchen table. Without asking, he filled three coffee cups, placed them on the table in front of the detectives, put artificial cream and diet sugar packets on the table, and sat down. He offered them each a dollop of whiskey for their coffee. They declined. He indulged then began, “I know everything. I have proof of everything. I have copies. They don’t know I have copies. Thank God I knew enough to make copies. These people are ruthless. You’ll never get to the truth. Even if the Cardinal is forced to resign because he was a drag queen.” He chuckled for several moments. “A drag queen! That’s great. Everybody thinks we’re gay, but a drag queen. Ha! That’s rich.” He lost his smile. “But they’re ruthless cheaters.”
They let him rattle on for several more minutes, then Fenwick interrupted. “Exactly who was cheating, when, and on what?”
“Well, that is the question.”
“How did all this start?” Fenwick asked.
“Fifty years ago I was a young assistant at a parish in Hegewisch, down on the southeast side. The church roof needed repair. I found a couple guys in the parish who were willing to do it for free. The pastor found out about it. He went nuts. He said we had to go through channels. Didn’t matter that I could get it done for free. I got suspicious. It took a while, but I found out that it was all connected. That tiny little job! The local alderman and the financial office of the diocese got involved. I kept track of everything I could and kept records about those things that were supposed to be secret. I took note of anything and everything. And my young friends who’d been in the same seminary class as I was, when we’d talk, we’d go over stuff they noticed too. And they’d give me records. None of them was willing to stand up. Nobody in this organization really is. I found that out to my chagrin.” He sipped coffee. The detectives had no intention of interrupting him. The man was on a roll.
“The second thing I found was just as simple. Most of them were, or they started that way. See, I was in charge of setting up the Christmas display in the church. It costs over a hundred thousand dollars.”
Fenwick asked, “You spent a hundred thousand?”
“No, they did the year before. It took hours to set up all the lights on all the bushes, plaster and plastic animals on the roof of the church, just incredible stuff. The young guys from the parish who were helping me set it up blabbed. We were getting a beer afterward at a local pub. I didn’t have my clerical stuff on. One guy blurted it out. It was a working class parish, and they spent this money. I found receipts later, but they were for less than ten thousand, but they’d paid for a hundred thousand.” He pointed at the mass of papers next to him. “It’s all in there. Even ten thousand I thought too much. I priced some of the items. They were way over priced for what they were worth. Somebody was getting a lot of money for Rudolf and his nose glowing on the roof. A hundred thousand all those years ago for Christmas?”
Cehak began detailing all the minutia he’d accumulated over the years. He said, “Finally fifteen years ago, I talked it over with a lawyer in the parish I was in. I was pastor by then. I thought I had some standing. The lawyer was real helpful. He said make copies of everything and hide them. Good thing I did. I went to the chancery office and laid out what I had. What a bombshell! What a failure!”
He paused and sipped more coffee, wiped his forehead, his hands moved restlessly, and his knee bounced continuously. From the man’s red face and these personal tics, Turner suspected he had high blood pressure.
“What failed?” Turner asked.
“All of it. Every fucking thing. Excuse my language. It all came crashing down. They took my documents and then nothing happened. I had the sense not to tell them I had copies. Then the new cardinal came in, and I got a visit from Kappel. He had the sense to ask if I had copies. I had the sense to make another set of copies before I gave him what I had. And lie to him about having more copies.”
“So Kappel knew all about it?”
“Yep. And nothing came of what I gave him.”
Turner thought, Kappel either had another chance to cover up or a huge opportunity to have more leverage to get what he wanted. Turner just couldn’t figure out what it was that he wanted.
“Did the malfeasance continue under the new cardinal?” Turner asked.
“I was out of the loop by then. I presume it did, but I have no proof it did.”
“Can we get copies of what you’ve got?”
“And it will do what good?”
“We’re not sure. We’ll hope it will lead to a murderer.”
“How?”
“We’re not sure how,” Turner said. “In a murder investigation we look into everything. Most things lead to nothing. A few things lead to a killer.”
“A clue. You want a clue. And maybe I could give you a clue to Kappel’s murderer.”
“How did Kappel know to come talk to you?”
“They kept records in the chancery office. Complete records I’m sure. They know where everything is buried.”
“How was he to deal with when you talked to him?”
“He seemed coldly efficient.”
“Did you talk to him after he came here?”
“No. I figured nothing would get done.”
“Why’d you even give him copies?”
He sighed. “Hope? I always start with
hope. But he turned out to be like all the rest. Protect Holy Mother Church at all costs.”
“When can we get copies?” Turner asked.
“Now. A few years ago, I took the time to have everything scanned.” He pulled out a zip drive. “You got a zip drive? I can upload it onto any device that you’ve got, or I could email it.”
“You have all this backed up, right?” Fenwick asked.
Cehak gave him a pitying look. “I’ve been dealing with this crap a long time. Of course, I do.” He plugged his zip drive into a laptop computer and emailed everything to Turner. Turner opened his phone and saw that the attachment had arrived. He checked that it opened and he could read the documents. He could.
“Do you know Bishop Pelagius is in town?”
“The Papal Nuncio? No.”
“You know a big, burly guy who drives around in a limousine who may or may not have worked for Kappel or the Sacred Heart of Bleeding Jesus Order?”
“Nope. Sorry. I know little about the Order itself. I’m a diocesan priest.” As he led them to the door, he said, “It’s you guys I’d be worried about.”
“Why’s that?” Fenwick asked.
“The church isn’t going to let you besmirch them.”
Fenwick said, “They can’t stop a murder investigation.”
“I pity you,” Cehak said. “That’s such a naïve, simple belief. I envy you your naiveté.”
In the car Fenwick said, “Another old guy. Are these guys all alcoholics?”
Turner shrugged. “They don’t confide in me much. I’m more interested in their insights on murder not if they belong to AA. Why wouldn’t they kill Cehak instead of Kappel? This guy had damaging information.”
“The murder wasn’t about money?”
“Then what was it about?”
“If I knew that, we’d be home already.”
Turner emailed his new attachment to Molton and to Jeanne D’Amato along with an explanatory note. D’Amato replied that she’d get right to it.
They got back to their desks and started hunting through what Cehak had given them and comparing it to the mass of documents they’d already accumulated. They continued to fill out their paperwork as they went through the information.
Turner added data he thought relevant to the spreadsheet he’d created of people and events, possible motives, and where who was when.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Tuesday 3:45 P.M.
Poindexter from the front desk came up the stairs and approached them with a tall, thin gentleman with gray hair. The man looked to be in his late sixties.
Poindexter pointed to the gentleman and said, “This is Terry Kappel, Bishops Kappel’s older brother.”
Turner said, “We’re sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
Poindexter left. The detectives grouped chairs to the side of Turner’s desk.
“What happened to my brother?”
Turner said, “We’re still in the middle of investigating. We’re having trouble getting information about his life, about who would wish him harm.”
Kappel sighed. “That whole crowd was nuts. Years ago I knew some of them personally.”
“How so?” Turner asked.
“I was a week away from being ordained a priest in the Sacred Heart of Bleeding Jesus Order.”
“What stopped you?”
“I got a girl pregnant.”
“So they threw you out?”
“No. I never told them about her. Not before I left. I loved her. I was never going to be able to be celibate.”
“What were the men in the Order like back then?”
“They fought. Intrigue abounded. I was there when the great coup happened to Father Graffius. He was a good man. Dedicated to making himself a better person, making us better Christians, making the Abbey a better place to live.”
“What happened?”
“The accident.”
“He told us a little about a car accident.”
“There’s only the one. It caused a huge scandal in the Order at the time. Two people died in the crash. This was when the rival conservative versus liberal factions were going at each other like mad. Graffius wasn’t driving the car. The priest who was and the seminarian in the front passenger seat died. The people in the back seat survived. Graffius was blamed because he organized the expedition and was in charge of it. His enemies were looking for an excuse to dump him from his position in the seminary and as Provincial of the Chicago province.”
“What did your brother say about the Order these days?”
“Tim and I would talk sometimes. We were close back then, and we still were. He’d always come home for the holidays. He never said much about his investigations. We’d talk about some of the old guys who were priests or seminarians when I was in, but there were fewer and fewer of them as the years went by.”
“You knew he and Tresca shared a condo, a bedroom?”
“Tim never discussed his sexuality with me, his living arrangements. He did often talk about the politics, here and in Rome. The whole Bruchard versus Duggan compromise was something else. I never did understand all of it. Tim claimed he had a hand in negotiating it.”
“Your brother was that involved in making Cardinals?”
“He claimed he was. I never had reason to doubt him.”
“Did he ever mention a Bishop Pelagius?”
“That old fraud! He and Tim were thick as thieves, plotted, planned together. Tim said he had the most fun working with Pelagius.”
“Why do you call him a fraud?”
“Tim would laugh about their plotting and scheming. You know why Rome agreed to let Bruchard be in charge of the Order and not live in Italy?”
Head shakes.
“They wanted to keep Duggan and Bruchard out of Rome. The Sacred Heart of Bleeding Jesus Order is very powerful. They were allies of the last couple of Popes. Enemies of the current Pope wanted to create a distance supposedly so they couldn’t have any undue influence.”
“Pelagius is here.”
“In Chicago?”
“Yeah. He couldn’t have had something to do with Tim’s murder?”
“No. They were friends. I can believe Bruchard or Duggan plotting against Tim.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Tim never got real specific. He did so much investigating. He knew all the secrets about everybody, or so he said.”
“How’d you and your brother get along?”
“Great. He was a good guy.”
“Why’d he do all that investigating?”
“They picked him because he was honest and couldn’t be corrupted.” He leaned forward. “See, the thing is a lot of people thought he was this ruthless shit, but he wasn’t. He really tried to help people through a lot of difficult, complicated issues, but also tough times in their lives. His job wasn’t easy, and so much politics surrounded what he investigated, but he was always trying to do what was right.”
Turner added him to the short list of people who had good things to say about Kappel.
“Did he have enemies among the priests?”
“That whole group was a mass of intrigue and jealousy. And that’s when I was in the seminary.”
“So you knew some of these people back then, the Cardinal, the Abbot, Graffius.”
He smiled. “Old Graffius. He didn’t look old and fragile back then. I used to love to debate theological questions with him far into the night. A bunch of us would gather in the common room and go over what we’d learned in whatever class we were in that day or that week or the latest book we’d read. One of us was a Joseph Campbell freak. Another read ancient mysticism from India. We’d compare and argue. You know the way college kids can go on and on about the ways of the world. And Graffius was always reminding us of a question we hadn’t considered or a point of view that challenged us. He was a good guy.”
“Any contact with members of the Order recently?”
“No. I haven’t
seen any of them in years, except Tim, of course.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“Christmas. We emailed and talked on the phone about every other week.”
“Did the last emails you got make it seem as if he were upset or concerned about anything?”
“They were a little more terse. He did say some investigations were finally winding down, but he didn’t say which ones.”
He knew no more. They gave him information about when the body might be released and he left.
They returned to the mass of paperwork, filling out forms, detailing conversations.
THIRTY-NINE
Tuesday 4:52 P.M.
Half an hour into his part of the Cehak file Turner was checking the list of companies Cehak claimed were involved in nefarious activities against information gleaned about those companies from the Internet. “Whoa.”
Fenwick looked up from his writing. “What whoa?”
“Our beloved Vern Drake owned one of the companies Cehak says is in the middle of this whole financial chaos.”
“He have proof?”
Turner examined what he had so far. “Proof? I’m not sure. Some of the contracts for spurious work went through Drake’s company. I think it’s enough to make the State’s Attorney curious.”
“It would have made Kappel curious. And he wouldn’t need a subpoena.”
Turner said, “Kappel made a lot of dangerous enemies.” Turner hunted through several files. “Drake owns the company that leases that junkyard property on the river where the body was found.”
Fenwick said, “I know a clue when I hear one.”
Turner repeated their dictum, “Proximity is not proof.”
An hour later, Jeanne D’Amato showed up with a minion in tow. She looked at the huge spreadsheet on the immense screen. She said, “Impressive and necessary.”
She and the minion sat down with them for an hour and went over all the documents she had printed out from the Cehak data. Turner added more columns and rows on his spreadsheet for financial dealings.
When she was done and had left, Turner and Fenwick leaned against their desks and stared at the immense spreadsheet. Even the new screen wasn’t large enough to contain the chart Turner had made. He scrolled to the end of the data, taking the time so they could each read every line. It took nearly half an hour as Turner made additions and corrections as the two detectives compared insights and notions.