by Jerome Wilde
“I wasn’t sure about that,” I replied, now wishing I had prepared him better. It hadn’t occurred to me that Charlie would make a run for it, or that I would foolishly run after him, leaving my partner behind. Damn sloppy work, that was.
“I’m going to try to retrace my steps,” I said. “Charlie could be anywhere out here. Grubbs and his men will have to beat the bushes and find him. He can’t go far anyway, can he?”
I rang off, feeling both annoyed and a bit frightened. I hated woods. In fact, I hated Mother Nature. I hated animals—rodents, mammals, red in tooth and claw and all that. I despised reptiles. Snakes made my skin crawl. Even birds frightened me. I could see myself being attacked by a flock of them, my eyes getting pecked out. Give me the city any damned day.
I struck off in what I thought would be a northeasterly direction, certain I would either come across the road or the cornfield, one or the other, within the next ten or fifteen minutes. I hadn’t been chasing after Charlie for longer than that. Or at least I didn’t think I had. I found what appeared to be an old, abandoned road, and began to follow it. About three minutes later, I saw Charlie standing in the road up ahead, staring at me.
I was so surprised, I didn’t know what to do.
“They made me do it!” he called.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“Tell you about what?”
“About Frankie? Brother Boniface? What you and Brother Leo did?”
I thought I saw his shoulders hitch up, as if he was fighting back tears.
“Where’s Brother Leo?”
He slowly shook his head.
“Why, Charlie?” I asked.
“He made me do it,” Charlie said.
There was about twenty feet of old road between us. If he took off, I would not be able to catch him. Obviously he knew that. Yet he seemed to want to talk, which was what I had originally suspected—that he was an unwilling partner, caught up in something he couldn’t get out of.
“I can help you,” I said.
“He made me do it!” he said again, more forcefully.
“You’re in love with Brother Leo, aren’t you?”
His face was stricken.
“But Frankie and Eli told on you, didn’t they? Told on all of you. And when you found out about it, you had to shut them up, didn’t you?”
Charlie shook his head.
“And when Brother Boniface came along on Friday and jumped in the van to take Frankie to Kansas City, he must have been surprised, because there you were—you and Brother Leo. All of you took Frankie to Kansas City, didn’t you?”
“They made me do it,” Charlie said again, despair in his voice. “They had pictures of me! I didn’t want to get in trouble!”
“What happened, Charlie?”
“We told Brother Boniface to not get involved,” Charlie said.
“That doesn’t mean you had to kill him.”
“We told him to get out!”
“So you killed him, didn’t you?”
“I don’t have to tell you.”
“Well, I already know, so it doesn’t matter, Charlie. Then there was Eli. You know, if you hadn’t done that, I would never have figured it out. But you couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
Charlie started to cry. He was caught. He was guilty. He couldn’t hide it, couldn’t deny it. Tears were only natural. Tears were a way of saying please pity me, please feel sorry for me, don’t be mad.
“Admit it,” I said.
“They made me do it!” Charlie replied forcefully. “Those fuckers made me do it!”
Of that, I had no doubt. But I wanted a confession, an admission of guilt. I wanted him to implicate Brother Leo and Bishop James.
“You were happy to help them, weren’t you?” I shot back. “Because you were in love with Brother Leo and you didn’t want him to get caught. So you helped him, didn’t you?”
“Yes!” he exclaimed angrily.
“And Brother Leo was right there helping you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes!”
“And the bishop was proud of both of you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes!”
“And I’ll bet the bishop even promised to stop hurting you as long you helped him, didn’t he?”
“He said he would take care of me, that I could join the monastery and be close to him.”
“And you believed him?”
This produced a look of confusion.
“You were next on the list, Charlie. Don’t you understand that? After you helped kill Frankie and Eli, you were next. That’s why you need to tell me where Brother Leo is.”
He wiped at his eyes, looking miserable and lost.
“They wouldn’t do that to me.”
“Just like they wouldn’t do that to Frankie and Eli?” I countered.
“But why?” he asked.
“Because you know too much, Charlie. You think they’re going to let you walk around, knowing what you know? They’re just using you.”
I moved closer and he made no move to run. Instead, he began to cry and crouched down in the road, hugging his arms around his knees.
I walked up to him, slowly, and bent down to put my hands on his shoulders. “It’s going to be all right, Charlie,” I said.
“I didn’t mean to do all those things,” he said through his tears.
“I know you didn’t. The police will know that, too, Charlie.”
“But I’m going to be in trouble.”
“I’m going to help you, don’t worry.”
He buried his face in his knees, tears wracking his body. He was crying so loudly that I did not hear the footsteps behind me until it was too late. I turned just in time to see Brother Leo swing a two-by-four, which connected rather solidly with the left side of my face.
After that, everything went black.
III
I WAS jolted into consciousness by the sound of a hammer, and an agonizing pain in my left wrist.
My eyes flew open.
Brother Leo, aka Andrew Mattling, was kneeling next to me, grinning, holding a hammer in one hand, a large spike in the other.
I jerked on my arms, surprised to find them stretched out and bound to a two-by-four, like the ones Frankie and Eli had been nailed to. At first, I thought Leo had hit my hand with the hammer. Then I realized it was a nail. Nausea swept through me.
The trees above were a brilliant canopy of color and the sun was off to my right. The smell of earth was strong, and I looked about: I lay on a bed of leaves, my feet duct-taped together, my arms duct-taped to the two-by-four. My jacket and shirt had been opened and my pants and underwear pulled down so they were bunched around my calves. It must have been a rush job, the stripping. They must not have had time to do it right.
I felt humiliated. Scared. Confused. I looked to my left, at my wrist, surprised to see a spike sticking out of it.
What the hell? But why should I be surprised? The kid had tricked me. I should have seen this coming.
Brother Leo stood and handed the hammer to Charlie, who was ashen-faced.
“It’s your turn,” Leo said. “You do the other one. Just like before.”
“Please,” Charlie replied, making a face. “Don’t make me do it.”
“You got him involved,” Leo said. “Now you’re going to help me get rid of him. It’s you and me. Remember? We’re in this together, Charlie. All the way. We finish off this pig and that’s that. We’re out of here. No one will ever know. The bishop is going to send us to the house in Canada, and we’ll be safe.”
I tried to call out Charlie’s name, but there was duct tape over my mouth.
“I don’t want to,” Charlie said, wiping at his tear-stained eyes. “Please, I can’t stand it anymore!”
“You and me, kid,” Leo said gently. “You’ve got to help me here. You know that. That’s what we agreed on. You remember? You and me. We’ve got to help the bishop. We’ve got to do it for the church. We’re almost done now. It’s alm
ost over. Just get rid of this cop. That’s all.”
“But he didn’t do anything wrong,” Charlie said.
“He’s a worldling. He’s part of the Antichrist and the Antichrist spirit. He’s just like all the rest of those Jew-loving communist faggots who are trying to destroy the world. Don’t forget that, Charlie.”
Leo handed him the spike, encouraging him to get on with it.
The pain in my left wrist was making it hard for me to catch my breath, and I watched the two of them out of the corner of my eye, my body still in denial. Surely that man hadn’t just pounded a spike into my wrist? Oh, but he had. Now he was ordering Charlie to put a spike into the other. Involuntarily, I jerked both arms, met with the same restraints as before, and was rewarded with fresh agony shooting up my left arm and down into my chest.
Christ, it hurt!
Brother Leo looked down at me, smiling. “You’re a remarkably stupid man,” he said. “A city boy, obviously, running around in the woods like a fool. You made it far too easy.”
He looked at Charlie, who squeezed his eyes shut in fear.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Leo demanded, glaring at him.
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Charlie said again.
“Hurry up!” Leo exclaimed, giving Charlie an angry look.
My eyes darted to Charlie, hoping he would do no such thing.
Leo grabbed up a backpack that was lying on the ground. He withdrew from it a whip, the sort that must have been used on Frankie Peters: there were a variety of leather thongs hanging from the handle, small bits of barbed wire curled around their ends.
“Don’t tell me you feel sorry for this nigger-loving pig?” Leo demanded, again giving Charlie an angry, disappointed look.
With a sudden jerk of his arm, Leo brought the whip down, raking it across my exposed chest.
I went into a spasm of pain and agony.
He struck again, and again, and again.
“It’s time to finish it,” Leo said, glaring at Charlie, panting from his exertions.
My body felt like it was on fire. I twisted about, helpless.
Leo held up the whip menacingly, as if he meant to use it on Charlie.
“Okay,” Charlie said meekly. “Okay. Fine. I’ll do it.”
He took in a deep breath.
Leo turned his gaze down to me, once more smiling. “You pigs make me sick,” he said, bringing the whip down again, catching me across the upper chest.
Spots danced in front of my eyes.
Charlie was hesitating.
“Do it!” Leo shouted. “Do it, or so help me God….”
“Okay,” Charlie said, breathless. “Okay.”
With his left hand, he clutched at the spike. With his right, he lifted the hammer, testing its weight.
“Okay,” he said again.
He knelt down and put the tip of the spike against my right wrist, glancing at me as if to say, with his eyes, that he was sorry for all this. Very sorry indeed.
Then he lifted the hammer and prepared to strike.
I closed my eyes, wishing I could scream.
But instead of striking the large nail in his hand, Charlie thrust the hammer suddenly sideways and nailed Brother Leo on the shin bone.
Leo screamed in sudden agony, collapsing in a heap on top of me.
Charlie brought the hammer down again, this time on the back of Leo’s head. He did it several times.
In less than a minute, there was complete silence.
A warm feeling spread itself over my belly—Brother Leo’s blood.
Charlie burst into tears.
CHAPTER SEVEN
De profundis
I
“HOW did you know, man?” Daniel asked. “I just don’t get it.”
It was the following day, and I was at the Kansas City Medical Center. My left wrist was heavily bandaged after surgery, my chest and belly covered with stitches and angry-looking scars. At least I was alive, although I wasn’t likely to ever play a violin, not in this lifetime. If I was lucky, my hand would heal. If not, the fingers would draw up into a claw and it might take who knew how many surgeries to get it fixed. We were going to have to wait and see. I had learned more about median, ulnar, and radial nerves than I cared to know.
Daniel, sitting by my bed, looked like he hadn’t gotten much sleep, and he probably hadn’t.
“The blond hairs we found,” I said, answering his question. “I kept going back to that. Brother Leo was blond. But then again, so was Charlie. Separately, I couldn’t see how either one of them had carried out the crimes. If Brother Leo went alone with Boniface and Frankie to Kansas City, how did he manage to kill them both? It would have been highly unlikely. If it was Charlie, on his own, how did he manage it? How did he get the van back here? He doesn’t even have a driver’s license. I kept running it through my head, but I couldn’t make sense of it. When I began to wonder if both of them were in on it, it started to make sense. Charlie’s reaction to the social worker’s questions was rather strange. It made me think perhaps he was in love with Brother Leo, or the bishop, or both of them. Why would he protect someone who was hurting him? Unless, of course, he wasn’t being hurt, or perhaps he enjoyed it, or perhaps he was in love.”
“All of that from a couple of blond hairs?”
“Basically. The statue was their first mistake. Brother Boniface must have given that statue to Frankie, because he loved the boy. Maybe it was a parting gift. And maybe, just to be mean or sarcastic or clever, Leo and Charlie left it at the scene, not knowing it had fingerprints on it. But it did. Then again, maybe they planned it that way. Maybe they were trying to frame Brother Boniface, make it look like he was the killer.”
“Then we showed up at St. Konrad’s.”
“That’s right. And Eli Smalley gets nervous because a social worker is walking around and he’s already spilled the beans.”
“So the bishop and Brother Leo decided it was time to deal with Eli?”
“Most likely. Eli’s house was only a few miles from Charlie’s house. Since Leo was hiding in the barn, he and Charlie could have walked to Eli’s at night. Charlie could have gone to the door or the barn, found Eli, talked to him—why should Eli feel threatened? But then Leo showed himself, and they took Eli into the woods and killed him. The important thing, though, was Lefebvre, the St. Bernard.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, if a stranger came at night, the dog would bark, wouldn’t it? I mean, really bark. But if someone like Charlie came along, someone the dog knew, it might bark at first, but it would quickly settle down. That told me someone close to Eli had killed him, someone the dog would know from frequents visits. And who else would that be, if not someone like Charlie?”
“Oh.” Daniel shook his head, as if this wasn’t what he had expected when he signed up for the homicide department. “I still don’t understand Charlie’s motivation. Why did he go along with all of this?”
“He was trying to protect people, trying to protect himself. Who knows? Charlie’s a very angry young man. Abuse does that. When you’re constantly being hurt, humiliated, forced to do things you don’t want to do, eventually you start to fight back. Either that, or you just go off in the corner somewhere and kill yourself. Probably, in this whole sorry mess, the only bright spot for Charlie was Brother Leo, because he was in love. But even that went to shit, and maybe that’s what sent him over the edge. A person can only take so much.”
“How did you know that Brother Leo was in the barn? You couldn’t possibly have known that.”
“It’s just a matter of one thing leading to another. If Charlie and Leo were acting together, then how were they meeting up? Leo was missing. Where was he? How did he get over to the Smalley farm without being noticed by anyone? And you saw that barn. It’s huge. You could put fifty people up in that hayloft, and if they kept quiet, who would notice?”
He considered this in silence. “Well, thank God Charlie came and got
us. You would have spent the night out there if he hadn’t, because there was no way we could have found you in those woods. Grubbs said that will be to his credit, that he tried to help you, even if he did bash Brother Leo’s brains in.”
I winced at the memory of it, lying there, one hand nailed to a board, the other tied, utterly helpless. I had a thing about feeling helpless. Corner me, leave me no options, and I go out of my mind. An overreaction from the events of my childhood and my mother, my therapist assured me. A desperate need to be in control to make sure bad things don’t happen. But still. It was embarrassing that Daniel and Grubbs and his men had seen me like that, half stripped. I had run off willy-nilly without thinking it through. All very foolish and stupid and sloppy.
“What?” Daniel asked, looking carefully at my face.
I shrugged.
Truth be told, I had been scared to death.
“Well, the bishop’s been arrested,” Daniel said. “And we’re off the case. The Feds have got it now. This morning they found a bunch of weapons, from what I’ve heard. And apparently that’s just the start of it.”
My left wrist had an ache in it, and when I thought about it, the pain seemed to get worse. I had been “lucky,” the doctor had assured me, that the nail had just barely gone through the space between the two main bones. I did not feel very lucky. And only now did the full horror dawn on me as to what Frankie Peters and Eli Smalley must have suffered. Nails through their wrists, one through both feet, not to speak of the whipping and the half-assed crown of thorns.
Unlike me, they were just kids. They must have been scared, frightened, horrified. Frankie must have been literally scared to death.
I began to cry softly.
“What?” Daniel asked, bewildered.
I said nothing.
He took my good hand into his own and held it.
“I’m here for you, boss,” he said quietly.
Something else struck me: Jesus had been crucified. A lot of others, too, during the bad old days of the Roman Empire. What a cruel, heartless thing, as if killing someone wasn’t enough. It had to be agonizing, humiliating, utterly overwhelming.