The Man Who Murdered God

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  The entire page had been covered, front and back, with repetitions of the same three words, written over and over in a hand familiar to both of the detectives: The Priest desires.

  “Where’d you get this?” McGuire demanded.

  “In Bobby’s room about a year ago,” Taber answered. “Shortly after he finished his painting. Which he spent almost an entire year completing, by the way. He seemed to be writing those three words everywhere as a form of automatism—”

  “What’s that?” Lipson interrupted.

  “Automatic actions or behaviour that the patient goes through without being conscious of it. You find it in some amnesiacs or when a patient is in a hysterical trance. For a while Bobby was repeating the same three words in writing everywhere. He filled a notebook with it, he wrote it on the walls of his room, on the margins of books, everywhere.”

  “Didn’t you ask him what it meant?” McGuire asked.

  “Of course. But he wouldn’t answer. Worse, he would withdraw more deeply inside himself. Which we didn’t want, because he was just beginning to emerge from his illness, and the prognosis was looking good.”

  “What was his illness?”

  “At first we suspected schizophrenia, because when he was admitted here . . .” Taber studied the front of the file folder “. . . four years ago, he exhibited catatonia, which is often a phase of schizophrenia.”

  “He came here in a catatonic fit?” McGuire asked.

  Taber frowned, obviously displeased with McGuire’s suggestion. “I don’t care for that term,” he said. “Let’s just say he was unresponsive verbally and emotionally to any stimulus.”

  “How long did he stay that way?”

  The psychiatrist let his eyes roam down the page, looking for information. “About two and a half years,” he said finally.

  “Two and a half years?” McGuire almost shouted.

  “Jesus,” Lipson muttered.

  “There were small signs of progress during that time,” Taber added, his eyes still on the sheet. “Especially when he began painting. He did hundreds of sketches but destroyed them all. Which was acceptable, because it was the act not the result that was important to his recovery. But my goodness, they were fine. Brilliant even. Anyway, he certainly wasn’t a hopeless case. In fact, his psychosis was fascinating. From a clinical standpoint, I mean.”

  “What drives a bright, eighteen-year-old kid to just clam, up for over two years?” McGuire asked.

  Taber shrugged. “We don’t know,” he said. “We suspected it might be organic, but I’m not so sure of that. So we looked at trauma.” He opened the file folder again and flipped through its contents, stopping at a worn, blue typewritten sheet near the back. “He suffered a mental trauma when his father died. He was aged six at the time. We talked about his father when he began responding to verbal stimuli. His father was a hero to Bobby, made all the more so by the fact that he died when Bobby was such an impressionable age.”

  “How did his father die?” Lipson inquired.

  “Vietnam. Air force. Shot down, body recovered. Posthumous valour award. Buried in Arlington.”

  “A lot of kids lost their old man in Vietnam,” McGuire said dryly. “That wasn’t enough to make them catatonic, was it?”

  “No, no,” Taber agreed, still studying the blue report sheet. “And neither did this. He underwent a personality change. Became much more withdrawn and intense, according to his mother. . . .”

  “Is she still alive?”

  Taber glanced up at McGuire and nodded sadly. “Oh, yes. Mrs. Griffin is alive. And well. And living in Lexington.”

  “Where can we find her?” Lipson asked.

  Taber read him the address and telephone number.

  McGuire asked if she ever came to visit her son.

  “At the beginning,” Taber replied. He wrinkled his nose as though smelling something unpleasant. “But around the time he ceased acting catatonic, they had a falling out. After that they would talk on the telephone, but she wouldn’t come to visit him. Mrs. Griffin is what I would describe as something of a religious fanatic. She believes unhesitatingly in her religion, including the fact that her late husband is preparing a home in heaven for her and her son, on the right hand of God.”

  “You say religious,” McGuire said. “Any special faith?”

  “Oh, most definitely,” Taber answered. “Roman Catholic.”

  “Couldn’t she give you any clue about what her son was going through?” McGuire asked. “Wasn’t she any help at all?”

  “Not really. She claimed he came home one day, went up to his room and wouldn’t speak or come out. He just sat in a corner and cried to himself. Her family doctor examined him and referred him to us.”

  McGuire again: “Why here? Why not a state mental home or private therapy?”

  “Well, it began as a short-term stay. Or at least that’s what we expected it to be. Besides, he wouldn’t have responded to the assembly-line treatment of a state hospital. His mother wanted something better for him, something private and intense. Apparently veteran’s benefits cover most of the costs of his treatment here.”

  McGuire was staring at the writing on the notebook paper, the same three words that had been scrawled on the blackboard in Sellinger’s classroom. “Did you ever figure out what this means?” he asked, tapping the paper.

  “I’m not sure what it means,” Taber replied. “But I’m sure of the source.” He turned to a small credenza behind his desk. “I was looking it up again, waiting for you to arrive,” he said, his back to the two detectives. When he turned to face them again he was holding a small green book. “It’s in here. Along with painting, one of the things used to pull Bobby out of his catatonia was encouraging him to read. And he did. He devoured everything we gave him.” He flipped through the book. “Did I tell you he graduated from high school at sixteen, and his I.Q. was measured at 153?”

  McGuire shook his head. Lipson wrote down the facts in his note pad.

  “Anyway, he started to work his way through our library, reading everything available when he wasn’t working on his painting. Novels, politics, mystery-adventures and poetry. Around the time we hung his painting in the foyer, Bobby began responding from his withdrawal. I remember the day I first heard him speak. He was sitting in the reading room, halfway through A Farewell to Arms. As I passed him, I asked casually, ‘How’s the book, Bobby?’ I spoke to him all the time, never expecting a reply, just keeping the door open, so to speak. Usually he would ignore me entirely or smile shyly. This time he said, ‘It’s a good book, Dr. Taber.’ As normal as could be. I didn’t make a big thing about it, but I knew we had achieved a breakthrough. Then he got into poetry . . . ah, here it is.”

  Taber passed the book across the desk to McGuire, who followed the doctor’s finger down the lines of text.

  “It’s a poem by Wallace Stevens. See? Here?”

  The poem had been marked carefully with red ink in two places. The first section, near the top of the page, was one line. McGuire spoke the words aloud, tonelessly: “The death of one god is the death of all.”

  Taber grunted. “The poem’s called ‘Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction.’ Now read the second part, further down.”

  McGuire’s gaze dropped to four lines framed within a box of red ink.

  “The monastic man is an artist,” he read in the same flat voice. “The philosopher appoints a man’s place in music, say, today.” Then, his voice rising in urgency. “But the priest desires. The philosopher desires. And not to have is the beginning of desire.” He looked up at Taber. “What’s it mean?”

  The psychiatrist shrugged. “It’s poetry,” he said. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  McGuire said he wanted to keep the book as evidence, and Taber agreed. “I think Bobby was the only person to ever read it here anyway,” he said. “We won’t m
iss it.”

  At McGuire’s request Taber allowed the two detectives to make notes from Bobby’s file but refused to provide the records unless they obtained a court order. McGuire said that would be fine, they would just copy what appeared to be important.

  “How was he behaving in the last week or so?” McGuire asked when he and Lipson had finished.

  “A little tense. In retrospect.” Taber picked up a pencil from his desk and toyed with it as he spoke. “I thought it might have to do with his leaving us next month.”

  “Why was he leaving?”

  “Because he had responded to treatment and appeared normal in virtually every way. After he practically mastered oil painting, he began working in the kitchen, doing basic things at first, peeling vegetables, that sort of thing. Then he started reading all the gourmet cook books he could get his hands on. Soon he was making sauces and soufflés and tackling difficult dishes with ease. He became an excellent cook. So good, in fact, that our regular cook became a little jealous.” Taber smiled at the memory. “The creativity helped him. Helped his identity and his ability to communicate. There was little point in keeping him here. It was time for him to experience independence. His father had left him a fair-sized bequest, to be paid when he turned twenty-one. Which was last fall. Over the years it’s built up in value. I’m not sure how much it’s worth exactly, but Dr. Metcalf told me it was over a hundred thousand dollars. It’s held in trust for him at a bank near here. I believe he can draw a reasonable amount out against the principle each month.”

  “So he didn’t have any money worries?”

  “Not really. He could have gone to college. We talked about that a good deal. He began taking tennis lessons last fall and played all winter at an indoor club over in Brookline. He bought himself the best racquets, the best shoes, and really got into it. To the point where you always saw him carrying this big gym bag, a big black thing, with his racquets and his tennis outfits inside. The last couple of weeks you’d never see him without it. Heard he played well, too, considering he’d only taken up the game recently.” Taber shook his head. “Bobby is amazing. He can do just about anything he puts his mind to.”

  “And he could come and go as he pleased?”

  “Sure. Some mornings he’d be up and gone long before breakfast—”

  “And back after dark?” McGuire said pointedly.

  Taber blinked. “One of those priests was killed early in the morning, wasn’t he?”

  McGuire nodded.

  “And two others at dusk?”

  McGuire nodded again.

  Taber wiped his forehead with his hand. “It’s still so very difficult to believe.”

  “Dr. Taber, we’d like to see Bobby’s room,” McGuire said. “Then we want to seal it off and have it checked for Bobby’s prints.”

  “Would you have a photograph of him?” Lipson added.

  “I anticipated that, too,” Taber said, swivelling around to his credenza again. When he turned to face them, he held a snap shot in his hand. “This was taken at Christmas. I think it was the happiest period I can recall in Bobby’s life.”

  The photograph showed two people standing next to a decorated Christmas tree. McGuire recognized Dr. Metcalf, wearing a long formal gown. Beside her a slim attractive blond man leaned on her shoulder, his eyes squeezed shut either in laughter or in anticipation of the camera’s flash. He looked nothing like the composite drawing made under Harvey Jaycock’s direction.

  “This is the best you’ve got?” McGuire asked, and Taber said he was afraid so. McGuire passed the photograph to Lipson, who studied it, then slipped it into his jacket pocket. “Let’s see the kid’s room,” McGuire said rising from his chair.

  Bobby Griffin’s room was a plain, square cubicle with one window facing the front gardens. A neatly made bed, wicker night table and easy chair were the only furnishings. A small black-and-white television set had been placed on a wall-mounted bookshelf beside the easy chair. McGuire scanned the books on the shelf. Most of the titles were classics: Dickens, Thackeray, Proust, Hemingway, Faulkner. The only non-fiction books were two figure-drawing guides for artists, and three instruction manuals on tennis.

  A faded photograph in a brass frame sat on the night table, a picture of a smiling, tall man, Hollywood-handsome and wearing an air force uniform. He was standing next to a jet fighter, resting his arm on its wing with the casual aggressiveness of a warrior enjoying a respite from his labours.

  “Joe, look at this,” Lipson called from the closet.

  McGuire walked over, glanced up at the shelf in the top of the closet. “Bobby got his big black athletic bag with him?” he asked Taber, who was standing in the doorway.

  “I assume he has,” Taber answered. “The last time I saw him, yesterday morning, he had it. He was off to a tennis match.” Taber nodded vigorously at the memory. “Yes, because I remember seeing him walking down the pathway to the subway station.”

  “Funny,” McGuire said in a voice that said it was anything but humorous. “He left all his tennis equipment in his closet.”

  McGuire used the telephone in Taber’s office to instruct Ralph Innes and a team to take statements from each member of the institute staff and bring a squad of uniformed officers to seal off Bobby’s room and provide round-the-clock surveillance of the building. Norm Cooper was to sweep Bobby’s room for prints and compare them with those found at the scene of the Lynch and Sellinger murders.

  “How about the priest, Deeley?” Lipson asked when McGuire had hung up.

  “What about him?”

  “This kid’s mother is as crackers as the shrink says, we might be able to use him. Why not arrange for him to meet us there?”

  McGuire thought about it for a moment, then nodded and called Berkeley Street again. This time he spoke to Janet Parsons, telling her to contact Deeley and ask him to meet the detectives in Lexington. “You better alert Lexington cops, too,” he added. “Have them send a patrol car around to meet us at the house. Remind them the kid is armed and dangerous.”

  “Got it,” Janet answered. A nice voice on the telephone, McGuire noticed. Low and purring. “I’ve got some messages here for you—”

  “Don’t want ’em,” he answered. “Gotta go.”

  “Not even one from Kavander?”

  “Especially one from Kavander.”

  In the foyer he and Lipson thanked Taber for his co-operation. “We’re off to see Bobby’s mother,” McGuire said, “but we’ll be coming back to talk to you, I’m sure. Obviously if you hear from him or about him, call us immediately.” He handed Taber his card, turned to leave, then looked back at the psychiatrist again. “Two questions,” he said.

  “What are they?”

  “Are the patients allowed to have crucifixes in their room?”

  “Of course. Anything that helps them fit back into normal society is encouraged.”

  “Why wasn’t there one in Bobby’s room, if he’s such a devoted Catholic?”

  “He wouldn’t have one. That’s what the fight with his mother was about as a matter of fact. When he ceased being catatonic, she brought him a crucifix to hang over his bed, and he became violent.” Taber allowed himself a quick smile. “Threw the crucifix out the window.”

  “Okay, second question. How the hell can you treat a patient for four years and not know he’s liable to commit a murder?”

  Taber stiffened. “You still haven’t proved he did it, Lieutenant,” he said coldly. “No matter what it looks like, until someone shows me a connection between Bobby’s illness and these horrible murders, I can’t accept it.”

  “But you don’t even know what made him catatonic in the first place, right?”

  “You’re right. I fully expected the reason to emerge, especially when the catatonia passed. But with his steady progress, the appearance of an outgoing personality, and his total a
bsence of any hostile or self-destructive tendencies, I considered it a relatively minor concern.”

  “Except for the crucifix. That he threw out the window.”

  Taber smiled. “Lieutenant,” he said in a low voice, “I suggest you hold your opinion of Bobby’s actions until you meet his mother. That was an isolated incident. And it’s my opinion that his mother was the inescapable catalyst.”

  As they left, Lipson and McGuire passed the two agoraphobic ladies huddled in a corner near the window still undecided about the prospect of venturing outdoors.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jenkins Real Estate was located in a converted salt-box house at the intersection of the state highway and a residential side road. On the outside the old home retained its original clapboard siding and shake shingle roof. The interior, however, had been sectioned into several glass-enclosed cubicles finished in mar-resistant decorator colours and lit with energy-efficient recessed fluorescent fixtures. To the passing world the Jenkins office was colonial charm; to the employees it was hard-edged glitz.

  In one of the modern cubicles, a half-empty cup of coffee cooled to room temperature at her elbow, Mattie slumped morosely, her chin in her hand. Shirley Finkle, Mattie’s best friend at the real estate office, sat listening to Mattie’s tale, wearing a sympathetic expression.

  “He liked it,” Mattie grumbled. “Loved it. Kept saying how, with a little work, rebuilding the coach house, new landscaping, decorating, no more than two or three hundred grand, the place would be perfect.”

  “Sure, that’s all it would take,” Shirley nodded.

  “It was that little bitch with him who’s going to screw the deal.” Mattie’s voice rose in a nasal howl, more sarcastic than imitative. “‘Oh, I don’t know, Chuckie. I mean, it gets so cold up here in the winter time, doesn’t it? And Daddy always says you never know what’s inside these old houses until you buy one and try to fix it up.’” Mattie shook her head, and her voice dropped to its normal husky range. “I mean, first of all it’s not her money, it’s his. He’s the one who’s running in the cocaine that pays for the Ferrari they’re driving. And second they’re not even married for Christ’s sake. They’re just shacked up together. A year from now he’ll have some other bimbo to walk his dog, and she’ll be back table dancing in Fort Lauderdale.”