Angel of Death

by J. Robert King

  That was the Latino’s story, once an interpreter could be found, and it was the truth. The truth didn’t matter. The police and community wanted someone to pay for the death of the detective, and a non-English-speaking, foreign, apparent child abuser was without defense. The death had been very satisfying for me. It was public, involved an ex-wife and a school-aged child, allowed Detective McHenry to play the hero one last time, included a harsh repayment for selfless action, used the trains that daily criss-cross Burlington, occupied the staff of the Gazette for months, and divided the community that McHenry’s jurisdiction had done so much to unite.

  I had overseen the deaths of one hundred twenty-two others in the Chicago-Milwaukee megalopolis before Keith McFarland went hunting again. This was the third death connected to Burlington – the editor, the cop, and now the priest. This time, I had little to do but observe and prevent things from going awry. Though Keith had no real plan – too psychotic for that – he was heading in a direction almost sure to satisfy us both. It was Christmas Eve. The ground was white with hoarfrost, all that the Midwest would have of a white Christmas, and a priest from Burlington happened to serve at St Francis in Woodstock, Illinois. Keith steps down from the bus and looks around. The town glows beneath a woolen sky. The steeple of the Nazarene church scrapes the belly of the clouds. Behind his gray polyester trench coat, glass doors close. The bus hisses and moves on.

  Keith ascends from the road to the curb. On the concrete, the frost has etched tiny stars. His Converse high-top All-Stars look very red against the wintry ground. He imagines standing there through the next frost and the first snow and wonders how his shoes would look then.

  Alone and lonely, that’s how. If I stand here all those days, I’d be alone and lonely for Father. That last one wasn’t too good. He was not much of a father except to his dog. There were plenty of fathers there who got scared, maybe, which helped. But still, one bad father was bad enough. He would have to be replaced by one very, very good, good father. The chimes of St Francis on the hill at the end of the street say it is two o’clock: time for confession. Mass is at six.

  Keith doesn’t put his hands in his pockets as he shuffles up the cracked sidewalk. Maybe if he holds them really still they will turn to ice and he can break them off at the wrists and put Father’s hands on in place of his own.

  He walks. The round-leafed weeds that worked so hard to push through the sidewalk cracks are now bunched and dry, shaded gray by frost. He can probably kick them out and they will be the shape of manhood, long and with a ridge underneath. They are pushing to get down into the ground – the sky is always trying to burrow into the hard, cold earth.

  Someone nods to him as he passes. Keith gestures in a way that looks like he is taking a DVD down from the rack. He wonders which DVD it is. Probably a naked one. He thinks of The Manhood of Eddy’s Father. That was a good one. For a while he walks with the scenes playing in skin-colored neon across his mind. All the store windows have bright fantasies: lights, snowflakes, pictures, statues, TVs, smiling men, pointed toes, metal rods up into the back of the boy’s new pants, deer with targets on their sides, guns with those hard long ridges beneath them, men in white furs that cover their long chastities, a man who crouches and turns a screwdriver in a wall box, a little train that puffs real gray smoke and always swerves away from the dark, round tunnel through the cotton mountain, silvery sausages made out of the dirty parts, amber bottles wearing little red collars around their necks, elves working hard and fast beneath Santa – what a wonderful world. He stands on the corner and waits for the light to change. It goes to yellow, and a black sedan roars up and dashes through the red. Someone shouts out of the window, “Fuck you!”

  That is what the rum man had said. What a wonderful world.

  Keith crosses the street and takes the sidewalk toward St Francis. The church is massive. It is built of yellow brick. The cornerstone says A.D. 1953, but it looks older than America. He wonders if there is a cat in the cornerstone. They do that to give a building good luck. It is bad luck for a cat. It is not a good cat they use. It is an alley cat that isn’t fixed and has one eye and half a paw on one foot.

  Maybe the luck isn’t in the cat. Maybe it’s just in the fun of killing it.

  The windows are tall and colorful and shaped like manhood. The steeple has a wiry cross on top like an unbent coat hanger. It is a bigger church than the Nazarenes have, and higher. It needs lightning rods so that when God blasts out of the sky, He doesn’t burn it all up. It is bigger than the Nazarene church but it is still really small under God and it belongs to God and He can do whatever He wants to it.

  There are three big red doors on the front, for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Keith McFarland wants to go through the big Father door, but it is locked, and the Holy Spirit door is, too. The Son door is just right, and he goes in.

  It is dark and damp and still cool inside. There is a smooth floor of stone like in a cave, and coats hang on one wall. He hangs his with the others. The big part of the cave is up ahead. It opens up so the colored windows are standing tall and shining on both sides. There are two men sitting in fur coats in the dark pews, their heads down like they’re tired. The Father is in that cabinet with the curtain, behind a little square with a screen like he is about to do a puppet show.

  Keith McFarland walks there.

  “Hey, get in line,” says a man with big yellow hair –

  no, a woman. She is one of the tired people in the pews. The other one, who also has breasts, looks up, too. Keith looks from the one man to the other and makes a dotted line in his head. He walks to the end of his dotted line and sits in the pew there. No sooner has he sat than a man comes out of a red curtain and walks slowly toward the hanging coats.

  “Hey, g-get in line,” Keith shouts to him. He keeps walking. He is tired, too. He must have been working very hard before he got here.

  The man with the big yellow hair is gone, but Keith sees her high heels under the curtain. He listens hard in the buzzing quiet and hears everything. This man talks like a little boy: “That hurts, Father. No, not there. That hurts. That hurts. Don’t.”

  There is one more man. She goes. Then it is Keith McFarland’s turn. He feels his pistol and his hunting knife.

  He goes past the curtain into the cupboard and stands in there, waiting for something to happen. His gun is ready in his pocket.

  “Kneel, my son,” says the voice through the screen.

  “Begin when you are ready.”

  Keith McFarland kneels on the little velvet cushion on the little wooden ridge. He still has his hand on his pistol.

  “What troubles you, my son?” the voice says.

  “N-nothing, m-my F-f-father.”

  “Have you any sins to confess?”

  “I-is killing a s-sin, my F-f-father?”

  “Killing what? An animal? A person?”

  “A p-person.”

  “Oh, yes, my son, that is a very serious sin – unless it was during a war. Did you kill this person during a war?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, but it troubles you, still. Are you Catholic, my son?”

  “Are you C-Catholic, my F-father?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am C-Catholic, too, my F-father.”

  “Have you confessed about this killing before?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Ah, but it still bothers you. Have you spoken to Our Lady of Mercies about it?”

  “I d-don’t kn-know.”

  “Are you C-Catholic, my son?”

  “I don’t kn-know, my F-father.”

  “What is troubling you? Speak freely. You have no need to fear.”

  “I don’t l-like the w-way you touch m-me.”

  There comes a pause. “What do you mean, my son?”

  “Th-this way.”

  “My son, this is a holy place. You must not do such things.”

  “It is when you touch me here, and put your hands in here, my Father.”

>   There comes another pause. The Father is speaking, but Keith hears another father, a father long dead and gone. “Oh, so you don’t like that? You don’t want me doing this? Or how about this? Well, that’s too bad, Keith. When you’re the father, you can make the rules.”

  “I am very angry about this.”

  “Go ahead and be angry. Go ahead and go in the back yard, spitting and kicking the cat. The neighbors know what you are, what you’ve been doing. They could care less. The cops know, too. They just say, ‘Well, he’s a retard. At least he’s found something he’s good at.’”

  “I’m good at shooting you with this.”

  “You keep your hands off my guns. How did you get into the rack? Give me that. You want to shoot the thing? Shoot it down your own throat. You ought to be used to that by now, you little fuck.”

  The bullet blasts out. It’s loud in the little box, and it echoes in the rest of the cave. There is a hole in the screen and something heavy leaning on the other side. Keith McFarland comes out of the cupboard and sees there is not a line, or anyone in the church at all. He opens the door where his father is and goes in with him.

  The gun is hot in his pocket but the knife is very, very cold.

  Father Mike could not have asked for a more fitting end. He was a young priest, very caring and sensitive. Such attributes lay a cleric open to charges of homosexuality and misconduct with younger parishioners, but Father Mike had not let suspicions prevent him from his work with the youth of Woodstock and nearby Rockford.

  When his superior, Father Clayton, had advised against his volunteer work at the Boys Club of Rockford and in the intramural basketball league of Woodstock, Father Mike had shrugged it off and said, “I cannot and will not abandon these kids to the streets just because gossip mongers want something to talk about. My ministry and message come first. If they want to ruin me, let them take up the matter with God.”

  Some had, and others with the parish council, but Father Mike was innocent of any offense, and the conflicting stories’ lack of evidence only served to prove the fact.

  Then, two years after the last such rumblings, a youth he had never known not only accused him of a crime he was innocent of, but also executed him for it. Father Mike had been willing to be martyred for his ministry and now, in the way of a true martyr, he had died for his beliefs without anyone but his killer knowing why. I am convinced that if he had seen Keith coming and known who and what he was, Father Mike would still have patiently counseled him, been similarly misheard, and would have died in much the same way. It was a rare and beautiful thing to have a serial murder in which victim and killer were so attuned that I had only to sit back and let the music of the spheres well up around me.

  FOUR

  The radio in her squad car went off during the eulogy. Phil’s voice carried from the open window of the vehicle, across the frost-laced grass of the cemetery, and out to where Donna Leland stood beside the grave. Leland at first tried to ignore the sound, her eyes averted to the frozen broadleaf weeds that had been sliced neatly in half when the grave was dug. She looked at the chocolate earth, silent and respectful beneath the silvery casket, and wished Phil would have the sense to shut up. The whole department was up in arms about Detective McHenry’s death and the recent murder, but there were enough others on duty to see to anything that might come up.

  Whatever had happened to the chance to mourn?

  McHenry was a good man. Though she had spent most of her time patrolling, whenever he’d needed a hand, they were partners. He’d taught her all she knew about police work. Now she would be stepping into his position, alone. Her mentor – her friend – was gone, and she had been promoted: Detective Donna Leland now was Burlington’s first line of defense. Phil’s voice continued, shrill.

  “Mother of God,” she murmured.

  Leland’s white-gloved role in this affair could not be interrupted. She clutched the folded flag to her dress blues.

  Louder, more strident, Phil’s radio crackle rose, carrying above the bowed heads.

  “… another death investigation … a priest in Woodstock. Same MO, same signature … the Illinois cops want you to see the scene …”

  The new detective uncomfortably cleared her throat. Her jaw flexed. Another murder. A priest. Now no one could deny this was a serial crime. Her attempts to tie the first case to the decapitation and manual amputation five years back had brought criticism from many of her colleagues, most notably the man whose remains were evenly distributed through the closed casket before her. The critics came back to one question – what had the killer been doing since the last murder in Bohner’s Lake? There were numerous possibilities. He might have been doing prison time for some lesser offense. Or, perhaps he had been institutionalized for mental illness, or gone to live with a relative elsewhere, entered a relationship that stabilized him for a time, faithfully took his medication, got a job, joined the army…

  Now, she wondered if he’d merely been spreading his kills through various jurisdictions, in various states.

  “… coroner is finishing crime scene work … still looking for the severed remains…”

  “–would have wanted his able successor, Detective Leland, to tend to her duties,” the priest intoned above the noise of the radio. He gave her a significant look.

  “It is the sort of man he was, that his duty to the department and service to the people came before all else.”

  Leland returned the priest’s nod, pivoted, and headed for the squad car. The flag that had draped the coffin was still clutched tightly to her jacket. She circled to the driver’s side, climbed in behind the wheel, snatched up the mike, and said, “This is Unit Four. Where’s the crime scene, Phil?”

  “St Francis in Woodstock, across the border. He killed a priest in the church.”

  “Here is where he killed him,” said Bob Cabel, McHenry County coroner. The old man had a lean physique, attentive eyes, and a mantle of silver hair that he wore in a ponytail. Despite the cold, he wore a thin, shortsleeved button-down shirt and coarse-woven nylon trousers, cinched by a wide belt.

  Leland looked from the old character to the bloodstained confessional. The puddle on the floor was the same deep maroon as the curtain.

  “It was still warm when I got here,” said Cabel with some agitation. “Wasn’t an hour old then.”

  The detective scanned the floor around the puddle. Tennis shoes had left red footprints down the side aisle, leading toward the chancel and altar. The rest of the sanctuary was filled with flashbulbs and cups of coffee and men in long coats.

  “Anybody follow the footprints?” Leland asked.

  “Outside, I mean.”

  He waved away the thought. “They go to an alley behind the bookstore and disappear on the gravel. He must have taken to the road, or maybe he just hiked out. They’re bringing dogs out from Evanston.”

  She nodded. “Sorry. You were saying…?”

  The feverish light returned to his blinking eyes.

  “Yes... he cut off the head and hands – I imagine he shot him first, since there’s a hole in the screen – and judging by the blood, took them up to the front of the sanctuary.”

  “Blood on the altar?” she guessed.

  “No,” the coroner said, silvery brows lowering over his eyes. “That’s the thing. Look at the prints. They don’t go straight. Some are darker, with puddles in front of them, like he stopped and stood, holding the head and hands.” They both took a moment to look along the line of footprints. The worn shoe soles wandered slowly away from the confessional, as much space between steps side to side as front to back. “He never got to the altar with the body parts. That would seem a symbolic act too tempting to turn down.”

  “He was masturbating,” said Leland flatly. “That’s why his feet were so far apart. His ritualistic fantasy is not about God. It’s somehow about hands and heads.”

  Cabel’s brows continued downward as he glowered at the footprints. “There was semen in the confess
ional, but we didn’t find any elsewhere.”

  “Find the head, and you’ll find the semen,” Leland said. The words, once said, made her nearly retch, and she half-expected Cabel to do the same. He only nodded.

  “Afterward,” prodded Leland, wanting to move on,

  “where did he go?”

  Cabel shrugged. “He went to the basement, poured out a bunch of garbage from one of the Sunday school rooms, washed his hands, climbed the stairs, went to the coat rack, and left through an alarmed door. It’s covered with bloody fingerprints.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Leland said. “As to the rest of it, let’s see. He dumped out the garbage so he could put the body parts in the bag. He’s not organized. An organized killer would have remembered his own bag. Besides, he’s left too much evidence. Dismemberment like this is usually done to keep the victim’s identity secret, but here – everybody knows who this is. The head and hands are for fantasy use, that’s all.”

  “How many killings is this for him?” the coroner asked. “Guessing?”

  Leland shook her head. “I couldn’t say, yet. Three, at least, though he’s been out there a long time – five years or more. He travels a good distance before hunting, but once he arrives, he will kill. I suspect that’s why the murders haven’t been linked – one in Burlington, Wisconsin, the next in Gary, Indiana, the next in Pontiac, Illinois, then Woodstock, and so forth.”

  “He’s a canny devil,” said a new voice: Detective Elwood of the Woodstock police department. The black-haired and neatly clothed man had met Detective Leland at the door and put her in Cabel’s charge until he finished interviewing the other parish priests. “He’s got to be brilliant to think of separating his crimes by jurisdiction so as not to get caught.”

  “I don’t think he’s trying not to get caught,” Leland said. “He’s left plenty of evidence at each of the scenes and taken high risk victims in public places. I don’t think he has the presence of mind to be canny.”