The Man Who Murdered God

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  He entered the furnace room, switched on the light, reached up to the top shelf and withdrew the magazine, its front cover a colour photograph of a young man reclining on a couch while being serviced by two blond women. Harvey walked back towards the custodian’s room, flipping through the pages as he went.

  What the hell was that? Sounded like the back door closing. Sellinger must have finished and left already.

  Harvey turned to a photo story of the young schoolgirl who welcomes the two television repairmen into her home while her parents are out. Harvey liked that one. The story began with the girl in pigtails, wearing a short skirt and knee socks. The two young repairmen fixed the television and lay down in front of it with her. On the next page they had her clothes off. Harvey’s hands shook as he looked at the sequence of pictures. He fumbled with the magazine as he turned to the next page, where—

  Footsteps. Damn it, Sellinger’s still here. Or somebody else is, another teacher maybe. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, don’t they know how late it is? Can’t they get their work done in the daytime, like everybody else?

  He could hear the footsteps moving along the hall. Harvey hoped whoever it was had wiped his feet at least. A whole hour it had taken to buff and polish that hallway.

  The sound of the gunshot slammed its way through the school and down the stairs to where Harvey Jaycock was suddenly frozen in place. He stood wide-eyed, unbelieving. Then, rising in volume and pitch like a living thing, a wail, a cry to heaven and to hell, he heard the scream. It was a whine of terror and pain, cut off by another explosive sound that echoed through the halls to the basement of St. Matthew’s Catholic School for Boys.

  “Oh sweet Mary, save me,” Harvey whispered aloud. He stood in place, unable to decide whether to mount the stairs in front of him or to work his way through the basement to the other end of the school, climb the stairs there, leave by the side entrance—

  There was no noise. No footsteps in the hall above him. The rear stairs—they were best. A quick sprint down the hall, and he would be gone. Harvey turned and moved as discreetly as his overweight body could manage, past the furnace room, the electrical room, the mechanical pump-room, to the rear stairs. He paused at the bottom, hearing only his heart beating, only his breath in staccato rhythm.

  He began climbing the stairs.

  “You’re early, Joe. That’s nice.”

  She was sitting upright, her pillows propped behind her. Her make-up had been neatly applied, her hair tied back in a pink ribbon. But nothing could camouflage the tension that began somewhere behind her eyes and extended across each line in her face.

  McGuire sat beside her, closer than on his earlier visits. “I gotta tell you,” he said. “Today I looked forward to this visit. It’s kind of nice to talk to somebody who isn’t second-guessing me.”

  She crossed her hands in her lap and forced a smile. “Are they getting to you?” she asked. “You said you would never let them get to you. You said you’d go back to Worcester and drive a cab before you would let them get to you.”

  He smiled back at her. “You remember that, do you? Funny. Just last night I was thinking of Gordie Scambati and me talking about that. Getting our own cab business in Worcester, maybe running limousines into Boston or something. I saw Gordie’s picture in that box you gave me. Remember Scooter Scambati?”

  Her eyes were shining. The lines had softened. “I remember him,” she said. “I remember them all. Talk to me about them, Joe. It’ll do you good.”

  And they talked of old friends and the past, because McGuire knew it would help Gloria even more than it would help him.

  Harvey was at the top of the stairs. Ahead of him, at the end of the hallway, he could see the rear door. Beyond it was the parking lot where Harvey’s Chevrolet and custom-made Strikemaster waited. Just get down the damn hall, Harvey told himself. Past the stairwell and down the hall and out the damn door and get the cops, get somebody here, just get the hell out.

  He moved at a fast walk, approaching the stairwell. Keeping his eyes moving. Listening for sounds. Watching for—

  Jesus Christ!

  He was there on the stairs, not ten feet away. A kid with a shotgun. A short, black, pump gun held at the kid’s waist, aiming at his gut. Oh Mary, Mother of God. Oh Jesus.

  Harvey broke into a run, but the stairwell was open on that side, and the kid, Harvey knew, had a clear shot all the way down the hall. There was a doorway on the inside wall. Harvey skidded to a stop, seized the knob, swung the door open and stepped inside.

  A broom closet. Of all the damn doors in St. Matthew’s, he had to step into a broom closet. He’s gonna blow me apart, Harvey whimpered to himself. There’s no inside lock on this door, the damn door is only two layers of eighth-inch plywood, hollow in between. He doesn’t even have to open the fucking door. He just aims and shoots, and I’m hamburger. Harvey crouched down, his heavy hands holding the doorknob, hearing the footsteps approach.

  She was laughing aloud, her head back and her eyes closed. “You were in the attic,” she said. “We could never figure out how you got in the attic, as drunk as you were.”

  McGuire laughed with her. “Hell, I can’t remember either. I just remember making those stupid noises and looking down at you guys, you and Carole and Phil and Scooter and Scooter’s girl, what was her name? Anyway, you all thought the place was haunted. I remember Scooter yelling ‘This is the last time I come to Maine! This is the last time I come to Maine!’”

  “Lyn,” she said, a hand wiping the tears from her eyes. “I remember her name was Lyn. Pretty girl.”

  “And then I tried to walk back through the attic, away from the trapdoor, and put my foot right through the ceiling!”

  They laughed again and talked about the car that wouldn’t start and the beach they discovered the following day. Breathing life into a Maine weekend enjoyed a quarter century ago.

  Harvey heard the footsteps approaching, the sneakers scuffing along his polished marble floor. “Oh God,” he whispered, “save me from this one, save me now and I’ll do penance, I’ll take the family to Rome and we’ll walk through St. Peter’s Square on our knees, I’ll light a candle every morning the rest of my life, I swear. . . .”

  The footsteps stopped outside the closet door, a foot away from Harvey, who crouched there in the darkness, squeezing his eyes shut.

  He heard the sound of . . . what? Paper being torn. It’s my magazine, he realized. In his panic to enter the closet he had tossed the magazine aside. Now it was being shredded two feet beyond the closet door. He’s tearing up my magazine, Harvey realized.

  The footsteps receded until the heavy outer door at the end of the hall slammed closed. Harvey whimpered slightly and leaned against the door frame, his breath escaping in long, deep sobs.

  Only when he stood up did he realize he had soiled himself.

  “You have to, Joe. You said you would.”

  The tension had returned to her eyes. McGuire heard the nurse coming down the hall with Gloria’s evening injection.

  “Gloria, I’m not good at this.”

  “Neither am I,” she said. “But I told you. It’s all I’ve got to plan now. Please. I’ll tell you what I want, and you can make the arrangements. I know you’re busy, but it shouldn’t take long.”

  “It’s not the time, for Christ’s sake,” he said. He looked up to see her watching him. He could feel the nurse’s eyes on him, standing at the door. What the hell, it’s the least he could do. “Okay. You’re right. You want the chapel service, you want the champagne for the nurses. . . .”

  “Lieutenant McGuire?”

  He turned to face the nurse.

  “You’re wanted on the telephone,” she said. “It’s a man named Lipson. He says it’s very urgent.”

  McGuire looked at Gloria. She closed her eyes and nodded. He brushed past the nurse to the end of the hall, where a wall telephone w
aited, its receiver off the hook.

  “Yeah?” he barked into it.

  “We’ve got another one,” Bernie said on the other end of the line. “In Braintree. I’ve got a car on its way to you. It’ll be at the emergency entrance.”

  “Okay,” McGuire answered, “I’ll go right down.”

  “Joe?”

  “What?”

  “This one’s different. This time he left us a message.”

  McGuire hung up and walked quickly back to Gloria’s room. When he arrived, the nurse was rearranging her instruments on the tray, and Gloria was lying back, her eyes closed, her face relaxed, her breathing calm and steady.

  Chapter Ten

  Vandals, McGuire thought as he entered Father David Sellinger’s sixth-grade classroom at St. Matthew’s Catholic School for Boys. Vandals with red paint.

  No, he told himself. Not red paint. Not vandals.

  The wall facing the entrance displayed childish images of spring, brightly coloured posters of flowers, kites, boats and children painted with the freshness and primitive forms of ten-year-old artists. Now their innocent pictures were splashed with blood.

  Bernie Lipson called his name from the corner, and McGuire looked up to see his partner standing with two uniformed officers and Mel Doitch. In the opposite corner a small, wiry man was crouched loading film into his camera.

  “Who’s the victim?” McGuire asked, walking over to Lipson and Doitch.

  “Name’s David Sellinger,” Lipson answered. “Jesuit priest. This is his classroom.” Lipson nodded to the blackboard that ran along the wall opposite the posters. “The message, it’s over there.”

  McGuire walked up to the wall and squinted at the words hastily scribbled in chalk on the black slate:

  The Priest desires.

  “What the hell does that mean?” McGuire wondered aloud as he edged his way between the rows of school desks to inspect the writing.

  “Who knows?” Lipson followed at a respectful distance. “This guy, we figure he wrote it on the way out. All the blackboards had been cleaned off earlier.” Lipson stopped next to McGuire. “We’ve got more to go on here, Joe,” he said. “The writing, if the killer did it. I’m betting he did. Plus we’ve got somebody who was here when it happened. Name’s Jaycock. School custodian. He’s downstairs in the teacher’s lounge. Says he tried to play hero, but I don’t think he’s telling us everything.” Lipson angled his head back towards the mutilated body on the floor beneath the children’s images of spring. “And this guy didn’t go down without a fight. Looks like he charged the killer. Took the first shot in the neck. Then the gunman reloaded and finished him off in the chest. Hell of a mess.”

  McGuire nodded again and walked to examine the priest’s body more closely. “You got the perimeter secure?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Three teams, one in the school, two on the grounds,” Lipson answered. “Norm Cooper’s on his way for prints. Mel Doitch will bet everything matches. Buckshot pellets, sawed-off pattern, the works.”

  The police photographer moved cautiously behind McGuire, who was crouched studying Sellinger’s wounds. The left half of the priest’s face had been cruelly mutilated by the fringe of the buckshot pattern. His chest was an open vessel of coagulated blood. “Can you get a clean shot of the writing on that blackboard?” the detective asked sharply without looking around.

  The photographer had been prepared to focus on the body. Now he twisted to peer over his shoulder at the message scrawled in chalk. “Sure,” he said. “How many you need?”

  “One,” McGuire replied, still studying the priest’s body. “About a half-dozen prints of one perfect shot before some idiot decides to houseclean and erases it.”

  “Sellinger, the father there, he didn’t lock the door I guess.” Harvey Jaycock sat on a straight-backed wooden chair, looking awkward and uncomfortable. He avoided the eyes of the two detectives standing in front of them, their hands thrust deeply into their pockets. “The guy, he must have come in through the rear door. Same door the father used.” Looking up, Jaycock managed a small smile for Bernie Lipson. “The TV guys here yet? Eyewitness News?”

  “Didn’t see them,” Lipson answered.

  “Where were you when it happened?” McGuire demanded. Jaycock looked away and shifted in his seat. A mild stench filled the air. McGuire winced and glanced over at Lipson, who nodded silently.

  “Downstairs,” the janitor replied, avoiding McGuire’s eyes. “Near the furnace room. I’d just finished my work and was set to go home. I heard somebody come in. Thought it was another teacher, see? Sometimes two of them’ll come in for a meeting or something. Then I heard the gunshot and the scream and another gunshot, and I knew it was the priest killer. Right here in St. Matthew’s. In Braintree. Jeez.” He shook his head in wonder at it all.

  “What did you do then?” McGuire asked as Bernie Lipson scribbled in his note pad.

  “Well, you know, I wanted to catch the bastard. So I went upstairs to find him.”

  “With what?”

  The janitor looked quickly at McGuire, then away again. “What do you mean, with what?”

  “You go upstairs to meet some guy who’s just killed a priest with a shotgun, and you don’t take anything? A gun or something?”

  “Hey, I don’t carry no gun,” Jaycock protested. “This is a school. I’m not licensed.”

  “So you went upstairs all set to take on a shotgun killer with your bare hands?” McGuire demanded.

  Jaycock shrugged. “Well, you know, you don’t think about yourself at times like that. I just went up there, you know. I was pissed off, somebody coming in a good Catholic school, shooting a priest, a fine man like Father Sellinger, so I just went up the stairs after him.”

  “Is that when you shit your pants?” McGuire asked. Jaycock winced.

  “Hey, I had an accident. Bowel problem, it runs in my family. . . .”

  McGuire’s hand shot out and grasped Jaycock by the neck, squeezing the soft flabby flesh and forcing the man’s head against the wall. “Listen to me, you slimy son of a bitch,” McGuire hissed through clenched teeth. “Cut the fucking around and tell us what happened, or the only way you’re getting on TV is when we wheel you out on a stretcher with the corpse.”

  Jaycock’s eyes bulged and rolled back and forth from McGuire’s angry face to Lipson’s calm expression. His hands reached up to McGuire’s grip on his neck. “I didn’t do nothing,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “Were you down here when Sellinger was killed?” McGuire asked, tightening his grip.

  “Yes, I told you.”

  “And did you go upstairs after Sellinger was shot?”

  “Yes, yes. That’s true.”

  “Why?” McGuire paused while Jaycock’s eyes rolled over to Lipson, who stood silent and impassive. “Why?” McGuire shouted.

  “To get the hell out of here!”

  McGuire relaxed his grip and straightened up. “Now quit trying to play hero and tell us what happened. All of it.”

  Jaycock rubbed his neck in silence, staring at the floor. “I seen him,” he said finally.

  “Where?”

  “In the stairwell. With the shotgun. I thought I was next, so I hid in the broom closet. He knew I was in there but . . .” Jaycock paused and shook his head. “He walked right by me. Right out the same door he come in. I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t fucking believe it.” He looked up at the detectives. “I waited in there maybe five minutes. Then I come out, and I go downstairs and phone the cops. I didn’t go upstairs. I didn’t want to see it, what he done to the father.” He shook his head in wonder again. “He looked right at me. He knew I saw him. He had a clear shot at me down the hall when I was heading for the closet. Then he just walks out, calm as could be.”

  “What did he look like?” Lipson asked.

  The janitor
scratched his nose absently, his eyes wide and staring off in the distance. “Young. Maybe twenty, twenty-two at the most. Slim build, blond hair.” He looked up at the two detectives. “He looked like a nice kid,” Jaycock said. “A real nice kid. And calm. Real calm, he was.”

  Returning upstairs, McGuire and Lipson found some late arrivals performing their chores. Norm Cooper was dusting the blackboard for prints, Eddie Vance was scribbling furiously in a wire-bound notebook, Mel Doitch was speaking to two waiting ambulance attendants, and Kevin Deeley was praying softly over the body of Father David Sellinger.

  McGuire jerked his thumb at the writing on the blackboard. “You get a shot of this?” he demanded from the police photographer. The photographer assured him he had several pictures, and that the prints would be on McGuire’s desk within hours. The detective grunted in approval, then turned to study the body again. He snapped his fingers.

  “Vance!” he shouted across the room. “You got an M.B.T.A. map on you?”

  Fat Eddie glanced up from his notebook. “What?”

  “A subway map. You got one?”

  “Might be one in my car.”

  “Get it. Then go downstairs and take a statement from the custodian.” He looked over at Kevin Deeley, who made a sign of the cross over the dead priest’s body before turning to McGuire. “You know him, Father?” McGuire asked, lowering his voice.

  Deeley nodded, his eyes still cast downward. “Not very well,” Deeley answered softly. “But yes, I knew him. He was a strong man. He wouldn’t have gone down without a fight.” The priest looked over at McGuire abruptly, his face flushed with anger. “When is it all going to stop? When is all this killing going to end?”

  “When we catch the crazy son of a bitch,” McGuire replied calmly. “That’s the only time it ever ends.” He looked quickly around the classroom, then down the hall. “Anybody see a pay phone here? I’ve got to make a call.”