The Rosary Murders

by William X. Kienzle

  “What’s the matter, Magdala?” Sister Bonaventure chuckled; “don’t tell me you let old ladies scare you.”

  “I didn’t expect to see you.” Sister Marie blushed slightly. In her job and in this neighborhood, fear was a luxury. She had grown to believe she should be above the demands of human emotion. “What are you doing here, anyway? No one except authorized personnel is supposed to be in this corridor unless the security guard informs me.”

  “Don’t worry, dear. I won’t disturb anybody on this corridor any more than they’re already disturbed. And, besides, the security guard isn’t at his desk.”

  Oh, Lord! If there was anything they needed in that neighborhood, it was tight security. The security firm they’d hired was not the best, admittedly. It was also not the most expensive. It was all they could afford. But she would have to locate that guard and impress him with his responsibilities, as only she could. And, of course, notify his superiors in the morning.

  She was also troubled, as she had been many times in the past, that Sister Bonaventure might think she was not wanted in the hospital. Quite the contrary was true. Now in her late eighties, Bonaventure had never stopped learning and developing, the only formula for avoiding senility. She brought both warmth and rare wisdom to the patients.

  “Bonnie,” Sister Marie touched the old nun’s arm gently; “I’m only worried for your safety. Hospitals can be dangerous places, especially if, like yourself, you can’t move quickly, or signal for help, and the staff is reduced as it is at night.”

  “Pshaw, Magdala! Who’d want to bother hurting a sweet little old lady like me? Why, it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  “Bonnie, where do you think that expression came from in the first place? There are some people who will shoot fish in a barrel.”

  “Oh, very well. If it’ll make you stop screeching in the hallways, I’ll go park my bones away for the night. But if you’re going to shove me out of here, the least you can do is complete my mission of mercy.”

  “Glad to, Bonnie; into what private affair were you about to meddle?”

  “Don’t be bold with me, young lady. You may be my superior for the moment, but don’t forget, I’ll be in heaven long before you know half of what I’ve forgotten.”

  “All right, Your Beatitude,” Sister Marie laughed. Sister Bonaventure was always able to make her laugh. Even in the darkest moments. “What shall I do next?”

  “I promised I would pray with Mrs. Washington tonight.”

  “Where is she?”

  “259-D.”

  “All right. Now you get off to bed.” She watched as Sister Bonaventure slowly made her way down the corridor.

  Room 259 was no trouble to find. The room was dark, but she found Bed D at the left window. “Mrs. Washington?”

  “Yes. Who you?”

  “Sister Marie Magdala. Sister Bonaventure wasn’t able to come tonight. She asked me to pray with you. Will that be all right?”

  There was a moment of silence. “Well… O.K. You sure you know how to do it?”

  “Probably not as well as Sister Bonaventure. But I’ll do my best.”

  “Well, O.K.” Obviously, Mrs. Washington was unsure. But willing to chance it.

  “Father in heaven…” Sister Marie had learned only relatively recently to pray without reliance on formal ritual. “Hear us, your children. We ask you for health, to give us your healing hand and make us well.”

  “Amen!” Mrs. Washington was entering into the spirit of it. These antiphonal interruptions had once been greatly distracting to Sister Marie. Early on, she had taken great breaths and delivered paragraphs of prayer without hesitation. But she had learned the value of this shared prayer to those whose tradition it was.

  “Jesus, you knew suffering.”

  “Amen! Believe it.”

  “Come to us! Console us! Strengthen us! Let us see the value you found in suffering, and then heal our bodies and souls!”

  “Say it, Sister!”

  “We pray, too, for our loved ones who suffer because we suffer. Be with us and them this night.”

  “Amen, Lord Jesus!”

  “We ask this with faith that you hear us. Amen.”

  “Amen! Amen! Amen!”

  “Was that all right, Mrs. Washington?”

  “That was jes’ fine, Sister. Thank you.”

  From the light in the hallway, Sister Marie detected a tear on Mrs. Washington’s face. She touched it with her finger. The old black woman took the nun’s hand and they held each other tightly for a moment.

  “Good night, Mrs. Washington.”

  “Good night, Sister. And thank you.”

  Sister Marie headed for her office and night prayers, which she broadcast to the hospital. She worried again over the special vulnerability of Sister Bonaventure. She thought, with a touch of bitterness, that the events of the past several weeks in Detroit proved that nuns and priests do occasionally get killed like fish in a barrel.

  For a day off, today was having inauspicious beginnings for Father Fred Palmer. He had not slept well. For the past several hours before rising, he had felt uneasy. It was a vague feeling, but unsettling enough to allow him only intermittent napping.

  He nicked himself several times while shaving. He had more trouble than usual zipping his pants. Could that before-bed beer and popcorn have made that much difference?

  There was no altar boy for his seven-thirty Mass. And none of the fifteen-or-so people in church had come forward to help. As a result, he found himself sweating profusely as he finished Mass just a few minutes before eight.

  Breakfast was in keeping with the rest of the morning. Father Thaddeus Winiarski, pastor of St. Helen’s, had picked this morning to berate and beleaguer his associate.

  “Father, look at you!” Winiarski was wagging a spoon in Palmer’s direction. “To say you are overweight is not to say enough, to understate. You are FAT, Father! And this is hurting your career. Others who are thinner are moving ahead of you into pastorates. Don’t you want to be a pastor, Father? Of course you do. Doesn’t everyone? Isn’t that enough for you not to eat so much?”

  Palmer speared a three-tiered chunk of pancakes and swirled it into the pleasant blend of butter and syrup that had gathered at one side of his plate. The gravitational pull of an unbalanced table always provided a warm repository on the plate wherein to slosh food through substances such as gravy or melted butter.

  This was not the first sermon on self-improvement that had been preached to Palmer. Sometimes, he was able to retreat all the way back to the childish defense mechanism of denial and convince himself it wasn’t happening. Today, too many things had gone wrong, and most mechanisms were unavailable. He was absorbing but not willingly.

  “And don’t think, Father, that just because you go over by that health clinic, spa, whatever, once a week that you are being changed. I don’t know what you are doing over there. But whatever you are doing, it is not doing much of anything for you.” Winiarski was stirring his coffee in rhythmical figure eights, occasionally resting the spoon against the side of the cup to wag a finger at Palmer.

  Palmer stabbed an entire link of sausage, saturated it in the butter-syrup mixture, and plopped it in his mouth.

  “What can your good parents think of all of this, Father? Oh, I forgot, your good father is dead, Lord rest his soul. But then, what of your good mother? She knows well that the others of your classmates have become pastors. How it must wound her mother’s heart, Father, to see you like this!”

  If it were possible for Father Fred Palmer to assert himself, this would have been the moment of self-assertion. However, it was impossible. Winiarski was reaching him. Not to the point that he would speak. But the diatribe was increasing his general feeling of discomfort.

  “Why, Father, when the bishop was here for confirmations, he mentioned—it was when he was cleaning the consecrated oil off his fingers—that you could have a better future in the Church, that it was not too lat
e, that you could change. He also mentioned that it would be no small feather in my cap if I could effect some change for the better.”

  So that was it! Palmer had been puzzled at the special fervor of this lecture. There were strings attached. With special glee, he pierced another triple-tiered glob of pancakes, along with a piece of sausage, dunked the combination over and over again, and dumped the whole super-caloric mess in his mouth.

  “Think about it!” Winiarski was mercifully abrupt in today’s peroration. The balding, moderately-sized priest plodded determinedly from the dining room, his hands clenched skaterwise behind his back.

  Palmer finished his breakfast shortly after Winiarski’s final admonition. He climbed the stairs to his room, puffing all the way. He found white socks and an athletic supporter, both freshly laundered, and dropped them into the floppy black bag that contained tennis shoes and sweat clothes that were nearing their monthly wash cycle. The atmosphere around the bag was always a bit gamy.

  Palmer was nearly three-quarters of the way toward Vic Tanny’s, when he suddenly decided he was too depressed to go through his regular Wednesday routine. The truth behind Winiarski’s diatribe was really reaching him. He was on a treadmill going nowhere. A pastorate these days was a simple achievement. In the old days, it had been quite possible to live one’s entire priesthood without becoming a pastor. But nowadays, men with the oil of ordination still wet were being named pastors. When he was forced to think of it, it was depressing.

  On a whim, he turned onto Edward Hines Parkway. He decided to drive out to St. John’s Seminary in Plymouth and get one of the students to play racquetball with him. Usually, seminarians were respectful enough not to single out any of Palmer’s many weaknesses for sarcastic comment.

  Hines Parkway, an elongated tree-lined stretch of park, protected the path of the winding Rouge River. Signs of spring were unmistakable in this peaceful setting.

  As was his habit while driving, Palmer, in one gesture, removed the rosary that always hung from the radio’s volume switch and, in the same motion, turned on the radio. He habitually recited the rosary while driving and, not to waste time, listened to the radio simultaneously. As with most Detroiters, Palmer’s radio dial never left station WJR, Michigan’s most popular clear-channel station.

  Palmer was halfway through the third Glorious Mystery—the Descent of the Holy Spirit of the Apostles—and thinking that in a few more weeks, the familiar voice of Ernie Harwell would be describing Tiger baseball games on this same station.

  The pain was sharp and uncompromising. It hit in his left arm and shot like a bolt of lightning across his chest. Only one thought occurred to him, this can’t be happening to me. It was a thought clouded by his life’s last moment of panic. His right arm jerked to his chest. His body lurched forward. His head slammed into the steering wheel with such force that his forehead was cut and began to bleed profusely. The car drifted slowly from the roadway. It crossed some thirty yards of turf before hitting the large oak that blocked any further movement.

  It was only a matter of minutes before a Dearborn Heights police officer, patrolling the parkway, spotted Palmer’s car. It was not an unusual sight; the parkway was the site of many accidents, usually caused by speeding or reckless or drunk driving.

  The policeman noticed that both front doors of the car were unlocked. He opened the door on the passenger’s side, reached in and turned off the ignition. He then circled the car and opened the driver’s door. He noted the victim was wearing a black suit. A little unusual. Probing through the layers of fat around the man’s neck, he checked for the presence of a pulse, and found the Roman collar. A priest. Instinctively, he checked the dead man’s hands. The left hand was hanging lifeless and empty. The right hand was pinned between the body and the steering wheel. Dangling from the hand was a rosary.

  Never had this policeman called in so quickly.

  The clue left by the dying Mother Mary was having the electrifying effect Lieutenant Koznicki had predicted. Previously, Koznicki’s special task force had been receiving many tips every day. Since the revelation of Mother Mary’s painfully drawn ‘R-O-B,’ the number of tips had more than doubled. The news media were alternately referring to the murderer as the Rosary Killer and, simply, Rob. Koznicki’s team had all it could do to sift the tips, check nearly every one, and pay greater attention to the more likely.

  Koznicki was in Control, wandering about, glancing at notes as they were made by the officers handling the phones and talking to other officers between calls.

  He was engaged in one such conversation when he was summoned to the phone. It was Patrolman Andy Bologna, the special dispatcher Koznicki had selected for his team. Not long on the force, Bologna had the kind of unflappable nerves needed by air traffic controllers.

  “Lieutenant.” Bologna’s emotionless voice was precise. “We have a probable in Dearborn Heights, a priest on Edward Hines Drive near Telegraph.”

  “Do we have anyone in the vicinity?”

  “Sergeant Ross, sir. He’s in Wayne.”

  “Has he been notified?”

  “Affirmative. He’s on his way.”

  “So am I. I’ll be in Sergeant Harris’ car.”

  Harris was between Koznicki and the door. He could tell by what was for Koznicki a rapid pace that something serious had happened. He joined Koznicki, who, with a touch of controlled excitement, said, “We’ve got a probable, a priest, in Dearborn Heights.”

  As they exited the room, they noticed Warren Reston of the News in the hallway.

  “Anything up, Lieutenant?”

  Koznicki told him of the report; Reston was out the door only a few steps behind the two detectives.

  In the car, Harris turned to Koznicki. “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Walt.”

  “What?”

  “You called it. You said the next one would be a priest, and you called the day—today.”

  “So I did.” Koznicki hadn’t been thinking about his prediction. “Maybe now you’ll have a little respect for me.”

  Sergeant Fred Ross was the third person at the scene. Corporal William Nickerson had discovered the body. Dearborn Heights Police Chief Paul Markham had arrived just moments before Ross. Whatever had happened, accident or crime, had happened in the jurisdiction of Dearborn Heights. Ross was in the delicate position of requesting the cooperation of a neighbor force.

  They had not moved the body. For that Ross was grateful. The three now stood looking through the open car door at the dead priest, as flashes from the police photographer’s camera signaled that the scene was being captured for future reference.

  Markham spoke: “It’s in the wrong hand, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Ross, adding, “and it’s the wrong kind of rosary.” The rosary, clearly seen hanging from the lifeless hand crushed against the steering wheel, had large, translucent beads.

  “There’s just one more thing,” Ross turned to Nickerson. “If you would help me lift the body…”

  Nickerson crawled into the front side from the passenger side, and grasped Palmer’s right shoulder. Ross, from the driver’s side, took firm hold of the left shoulder.

  “Slow and careful,” Ross warned.

  Little by little, the two officers moved the body away from the steering wheel. Ross watched as the limp right hand appeared. The rosary hung loosely in the priest’s fingers, and, as the hand was exposed, the rosary clinked to the floor.

  The phone in Harris’ car rang. Koznicki answered.

  “We have a negative on the Dearborn Heights run, Lieutenant.” It was Andy Bologna.

  “Was it Ross’ report?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Patch me through to him.”

  “Yessir.”

  In a few seconds, Ross was on the line. “Lieutenant?” Strange how similarly flat both Ross and Bologna’s voices were.

  “What did you find?”

  “Large rosary with clear beads held in right hand, not wrapped around wris
t. Priest was overweight. Skin had discolored shortly after death. Looks like the Dearborn Heights Police have a heart failure.”

  “O.K., Fred.”

  “One more thing, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes?”

  “The media are going to be here. That guy from the News just arrived. How do you want us to handle it?”

  “Who’s ‘us’?”

  “Chief Markham and Corporal Nickerson of Dearborn Heights.”

  “Give them everything but the specific details of the clue.”

  “Tell them why we know it’s not the perpetrator without telling them exactly how the perpetrator leaves his rosaries?”

  “That’s right, Fred.”

  “Right, Lieutenant. Ten-four.”

  “Good-bye, Fred.”

  Harris had already turned the car and was heading back to the city. He glanced at Koznicki. “Why did you do that, Walt? If they’ve got a heart attack, they don’t have to tell anything.”

  “This is an excellent opportunity to communicate with the killer. Until now, we haven’t had a chance to tell him we understand his calling card. This is one message he’s sending that we are getting, and I want him to know that.”

  “O.K. Good move. But you know what? You don’t have the right day, you don’t have a murdered priest, and you don’t have my respect.”

  “I wanted your love.”

  The “Rob Murders” had become a source of shock to the nation and a special tragedy to the Archdiocese of Detroit. Weekly, they had been featured in the national media. If one could look at their news value alone, they had proven a fertile second-day story for the Detroit Catholic. As usual, the weekly could not compete with the frequency of the dailies, nor the slick competence of the national magazines. But the relatively small Catholic paper had performed perhaps better in this crisis than it had in its more than one-hundred-year history. And Father Robert Koesler thought he knew why.