The Rosary Murders

by William X. Kienzle

  “And, as I begin a campaign for reelection,” the mayor continued, “there is some jackass maniac out there wasting Detroit priests and nuns.” Cobb tapped white ash from his Antonio y Cleopatra small cigar into the gigantic executive ashtray on his desk.

  “We’re doing all we can, Mr. Mayor.” Tany stood directly in front of the mayor’s huge desk. As usual, they were a study in sartorial contrast. Cobb wore a stunning vested gray suit that nicely set off the gray temples of his black, wavy hair. Tany once again looked as if he’d slept in his navy blue suit that had been slightly too large for him to begin with.

  “It’s no longer a case of ‘all you can do,’ Frank. It’s no longer a case of all anybody can do. It’s a case of catching this mother and putting these killings behind us. Frank, ‘Rob, the Rosary Murderer’ made the covers of both Time and Newsweek this week. That kind of publicity can kill me politically. Our plans were that Detroit would get national coverage for the opening of the Renaissance Center, not for killing its clergy!”

  Tany shifted his weight to his right side. He always tried to stand during meetings with Cobb in an attempt to make them as brief as possible. He admired Cobb’s political savvy, but the mayor was a complete political animal with unerring skills for survival. None of these qualities was any part of Tany’s marrow. He was a cop who had worked hard and, admittedly, had been in a series of right places at the right times. He held the respect and loyalty of his department at a most difficult time in Detroit’s history. The city was slowly passing from a white to a black majority. He had originated affirmative action hiring and promotion policies aimed at achieving at least an approximate racial balance on the force. And he stood at an awkward center between a black mayor and a police department that had little love for that mayor.

  The mayor drew deeply on his cigar. “Frank, are you sure this lieutenant—what’s his name?…”

  “Koznicki.”

  “Koznicki…is the best you’ve got in homicide?”

  “He’s the best anybody’s got.”

  Cobb was never sure if Tany were leveling with him or being blindly defensive of his department. “Then why hasn’t he got this case solved?”

  “I know the public is impatient…” Tany tactfully chose to exclude Cobb from an impatience the mayor obviously shared. “…but this case is different, I dare say, from anything this city has ever experienced.”

  “Different?” Cobb brightened. If it were different enough, perhaps the very difference could be an argument against his opponents. Something he could sell the voters.

  “Yes, different.” Tany saw no political advantage here. Only that this type of case was traditionally the toughest nut of all to crack. “The kinds of homicide we’re used to dealing with in Detroit happen in family arguments where one or another person has a deadly weapon, usually a cheap gun. Or it’s the result of organized crime, where it’s a clear assassination. Or it’s some punk who’s seen it over and over again on TV and wants the thrill. In all, either the killer is an amateur and makes countless mistakes, or it’s a professional who has a clear motive. The police work is clear: discover the mistakes, or work from the motive back to the perpetrator.

  “With this present series of murders, Mr. Mayor, not only do we not know who is committing them, much more importantly, we don’t know why.”

  “Don’t know why,” thought the mayor, a smile crossing his mind. Perhaps he could amplify that “why” into political gold.

  “This is like a novel, Mr. Mayor,” Tany continued. “Except that in a novel, you know, if you read far enough you’ll find out who done it. Unfortunately, this is real life. We may never know.”

  It was enough. Cobb had some additional ammunition for the political wars. The fact that the motive was unknown could be used as an explanation for the lack of progress. It was an excuse that had not yet been used, and possibly an excuse the press and the public just might buy.

  “This lieutenant—what’s his name again?” Cobb stubbed out his cigar.

  “Koznicki.”

  “Koznicki. Does he have everything we can give him?”

  “He has everything he asks for. I’d stake my job on his ability.”

  “You have.” Cobb pivoted his chair toward the wall, indicating the interview was over. “Maybe we both have.”

  Of all institutions to be found in a modern American city, probably the clearest anachronism is a monastery of Discalced Carmelite nuns. Yet, there are sixty-three Carmelite monasteries sprinkled throughout the United States, and one of them is located in the outskirts of Detroit.

  The Monastery of Mary, Mother of Divine Charity, is tucked unpretentiously off Wyoming Avenue in an isolated corner of the Marygrove College campus.

  Not much of substance has happened to the Discalced Carmelites since Saint Theresa of Avila removed their ornate boots in 1562 a.d. They lead a life of such stark simplicity that the average complex American would find them incredible. They seldom speak, never frivolously. They are sparing vegetarians. They pray specified prayers at specified hours. They are encouraged to follow their famed foundress into flights of mystic contemplation. They have almost no contact with the world in which they have placed themselves as uninvited visitors.

  The Monastery of Mary, Mother of Divine Charity, housed nine professed nuns, one novice, in training to become a professed nun, one postulant, in training to become a novice, and one extern nun, in contact with society to the extent of receiving visitors and dispensing food to the deserving poor as well as to the bums of Wyoming Avenue who came to them in varying degrees of need.

  The nuns of the Monastery of Mary, Mother of Divine Charity, were permitted, if not encouraged, to read the Detroit Catholic, under the misbelief that it constituted “spiritual reading.” To be sure, there were sections of the Detroit Catholic that could qualify as spiritual reading. But, as a whole, it was not intended as competition with Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, or even Andrew Greeley.

  In any case, it was because they had read about them in the Detroit Catholic that the small Discalced community of Detroit knew about the Rosary Murders. They knew little of the more lurid details of the killings, however, nor were they aware of the speculative stories appearing in the local and national press. But the past four issues of the Detroit Catholic had set some sort of record for being read by a greater percentage of Detroit Carmelites than any other issue in the paper’s history. It proved to be as fascinating a story to these other-worldly people as it was to their very worldly brothers and sisters beyond the cloister.

  Four of the Carmelites were sitting in the sun room, appropriately named this day as the rays of an early spring sun streamed warmly through the tinted glass that shielded the nuns from the frequently unseeming sights of Wyoming Avenue. It was “recreation” period, during which they were allowed to speak while they engaged in “recreational” sewing. Three of them were working on exquisitely embroidered Mass vestments. The fourth was mending her black veil that should have been discarded long ago.

  “What do you suppose it all can mean?” Sister Margaret Mary of the Holy Martyrs asked of no one in particular.

  “Trust Providence,” urged Sister Theresa of Jesus and Mary. “God writes straight with crooked lines.”

  “How can God have anything to do with the murders of all those priests and nuns?” asked Sister Mary Elizabeth of the Holy Face.

  “Not a sparrow falls to earth without Our Father in heaven knowing it,” quoted Sister Theresa, who was the convent’s resident curmudgeon and Biblicist. “You can be sure these six good and holy men and women have not gone to their eternal reward without God’s Holy Providence being involved.”

  “Well, it doesn’t make much sense to me,” said Sister Mary Elizabeth. A postulant in her early twenties, she had doubts about everything, including her vocation. “I can understand why a man can murder someone, but I can’t understand how God is involved.”

  “It’s the problem of evil, child,” said
Mother Agnes Ann of the Infant Jesus. The prioress of the Detroit monastery was in her well-wrinkled eighties and had virtually mastered the art of aging gracefully. “No one’s been able to solve it. God permits evil because He has given us free will to choose between good and evil. Someone out there has chosen evil and with it the death of those consecrated men and women.”

  “Meanwhile,” said Sister Margaret Mary, who was the convent’s cook, and perhaps the warmest personality of all, “we must pray for the poor man who’s doing these terrible deeds.”

  “Pray for him?” asked a somewhat astonished Sister Mary Elizabeth.

  “Pray for his apprehension,” stated Sister Theresa flatly.

  “And for his conversion,” added Mother Agnes Ann.

  “Father Brown would have caught him by now,” said Sister Margaret Mary mischievously.

  “Father Brown?” Sister Mary Elizabeth looked from one nun to the other, bewildered. She was unaware of any archdiocesan police force. “Who’s Father Brown?”

  “Father Brown was an invention of G. K. Chesterton, dear. He’s fictional. Sister Margaret Mary, you shouldn’t go on like that!”

  Sister Margaret Mary buried her cherubic, peasant-like face in the vestment she was embroidering.

  “When he is apprehended,” said Sister Theresa, returning to the objective of her prayer, “he should be executed!”

  “Sister!” exclaimed Sister Margaret Mary. “What a perfectly dreadful thing to say! You above all should know that God desires not the death of a sinner, but that he be converted and live.” By no means did she spend all her time with her nose in a cookbook. She had, indeed, absorbed the Gospel message as well as anyone and better than many. God, after all, had been duly thanked by Jesus Christ that He had revealed the message to “little ones.”

  “That’s the very point,” said Sister Theresa.

  “Ouch!” exclaimed Sister Mary Elizabeth, who, on sticking herself with a needle, had rejected several exclamations she had left behind in her life in “the world.”

  “Did you hurt yourself, dear?” Mother Agnes Ann leaned toward the young postulant with evident concern.

  “It’s nothing.” But it would have been if I’d said what came to mind, Sister Mary Elizabeth thought.

  “Go on, Sister,” prodded Sister Margaret Mary. “You were about to explain how execution fits in with God’s plan for salvation.”

  “Exactly!” Sister Theresa proceeded. “I’ve thought it all through. You see, if a man like the one who is guilty of these murders is given a long sentence—say, life in prison—he will think of all the time he has to be converted before he dies, and he may never be converted at all. Whereas, if he knows he will be executed in a short time, he will be converted immediately.”

  “I suppose that makes sense. I just don’t understand it.” Sister Margaret Mary said a short, silent prayer of thanksgiving that Sister Theresa had never become a judge.

  After a brief silence, Sister Mary Elizabeth stopped embroidering and said, “I must confess, for the first time since I’ve been in this monastery, I feel guilty.”

  “Why is that?” asked Sister Margaret Mary.

  “Well, I’ve always thought this was the greatest sacrifice—to leave the world so completely. But now I wonder. All the priests and nuns in Detroit seem to be in danger from this killer—except us. We are the only protected ones.”

  “Sister,” said Mother Agnes Ann, touching the young woman’s shoulder lightly, “each person’s cross is just big enough for him or her. God sees to that. For most, the cross awaits out there in the world. For the moment, at least, yours is here in this cloister. We waste our time wondering whether we could carry another’s cross. We have all we can do to take up our own, daily, and follow him.”

  Another name for Forty Hours is boredom, thought Father Robert Koesler, as he sipped his 7-Up. His drink bore enough apparent resemblance to gin to forestall any objection that he was not taking his imbibing seriously enough. It surely was not that Koesler did not appreciate a drink now and again. It was his experience, however, that when the clerical gang got together, there was usually a little too much drinking. He simply had a better time observing the results than participating in the libations. It was extremely rare that anyone ever got falling-down drunk when the boys gathered at the drinking hole. But tongues and collars loosened, voices became raucous, and everything seemed somewhat funnier than it actually was.

  It was now almost midnight. Forty Hours had closed, solemnly, almost four hours earlier. Ten priests remained of the original thirty-four clergy guests of St. Robert’s parish. They were gathered in the rectory basement. Heads of numerous dead animals stared sightlessly from the light tan, paneled walls. In the basement’s southwest corner was a large display case, containing most of the rifles that had been used to kill the animals. Opposite the gun case was a large, circular poker table, whereon a game had been going nonstop since the last of the candles had been extinguished in the church.

  In the basement’s northeast corner, walls had been constructed, separating a ten-by-twenty-foot room from the rest of the basement. The room had been lovingly christened “the bomb shelter,” presumably because that’s where people went to get bombed. It had a wet bar and a closet filled with enough wine, liquor, and beer to supply the initial thirst of a small army.

  Koesler was standing near the bar in the bomb shelter. The location was comparable to Grand Central Station, in that if one stood there long enough, nearly every priest in the Archdiocese of Detroit would eventually pass by.

  The conversation, most of the evening, had, quite naturally, been about the Rosary Murders. The topic was winding down now, mostly because several conversers were no longer able to keep some of the crimes’ statistics clear.

  “I don’t care what anybody says; as far as I’m concerned, it’s a black guy.” Monsignor Jasper Max was standing, as was everyone else in the shelter.

  Koesler dropped another ice cube into his already diluted 7-Up. “Why’s that, Monsignor?”

  “Because all the murders have been committed in Detroit. Black guys just blend into the landscape in the city, but they stand out like sore thumbs in the suburbs.” Max was a huge, sixty-seven-year-old whose self-image exceeded reality. A former jock, he was still a prodigious swimmer. He had spent a large part of his early ministry in the inner city. But as it had turned black, he had maneuvered a series of suburban assignments. Now, he was nearing retirement. “That’s why all the murders have been in the city, ’cause the guy wouldn’t dare try it in the suburbs.” Max splashed a little more bourbon into his glass.

  “There are black people in the suburbs, Monsignor.” Father Harold Steele, whose strikingly handsome face was framed by a heavy head of hair and a shaggy gray beard, resembled Moses. His parish marked the spot where the 1967 Detroit riot had begun.

  “Domestics, maybe. Here and there a homeowner. But not many,” Max allowed.

  “Have any of you noticed anything peculiar about the wakes and funerals of the victims?” asked Father Alfred Dalton. It wasn’t a perfectly segued question, but at that hour and in their condition it made little difference.

  “They’re too frequent,” Koesler responded soberly.

  “They’re depressing,” added Max.

  “No, no,” said Dalton, addressing his own question, “I mean all the police who are always at both the wakes and the funerals.”

  “How can you tell?” asked Max.

  “How can you miss them?” Dalton returned. “They don’t fit in with anyone else. They have these bulges under their coats. They’re usually pretty big. And, what I consider most significant, they don’t participate.” Dalton’s straight, stocky body was topped by a bald, bullet-shaped head. A Navy veteran, he considered himself an expert on nearly everything.

  “Maybe they got caught,” observed Steele.

  “Caught?” asked a startled Dalton.

  “Yeah. Didn’t you ever notice how, when you get to a mortuary to lead
the rosary, a lot of the mourners get out before you start? A couple of weeks ago, I went into the Dingle Funeral Home, sort of pulled up my coat collar to cover the Roman collar, and I just knelt down and started.” He grinned, reminiscently. “I trapped everybody. You should’ve seen the looks I got afterwards.”

  The story got a collective laugh.

  “Put it on the roof!” The words were fired like cannon shots, followed by Father Ed Sklarski’s explosive laughter.

  The four who were standing at the bar turned toward Sklarski, who had just delivered the punch line to Father Kevin Scanlon, with whom he’d been talking near the doorway.

  “Put it on the roof?” inquired Koesler.

  “I was just explaining,” explained Sklarski, “to Scanlon here how you justify parish expenses you don’t want the chancery to know about. Put it on the roof. I don’t know one guy at the chancery who’d be willing to climb up on the roof to find out whether you’d spent anything on it.”

  “Not bad,” noted Steele. “Another way is just to have an inner-city parish. They don’t want to know what you’re doing. And you haven’t got any money for them to be interested in. The other day, a bunch of us had a meeting with the Archbishop. At one point, he said ‘Gentlemen, if you’re running street-front churches, don’t tell me.’”

  The conversational road turned toward Church politics, a perennial favorite.

  Pleased with himself at having caused the conversational switch and thus prolonging the evening, Sklarski decided to visit the boys in back.

  As he left the shelter, Sklarski was smiling. St. Robert’s Forty Hours had been a success, by and large.

  Attendance had been spotty during the three days’ daytime hours, but it had been excellent for the closing tonight. The children who were forced to attend had apparently done a marvelous job selling their parents on coming along. When the priests talked about St. Robert’s Forty Hours closing, and they would, they’d have to admit it was a good crowd. Goodly number of priests, too. Sklarski was proud that St. Robert’s featured the best food and drink on the Forty Hours circuit. Mrs. Bullingin and her Ladies of the Altar Society were largely responsible for that. Largely! He grinned at the unintended pun. They were pretty big.