His retreat had refreshed his memories of Marygrove and the Athanasians so that he had acquaintance with the setting in which bizarre events had then occurred. Boniface had told him of the surprising return of a laicized member, who had lived like a prodigal in a far city but finally asked permission to return to his community. Yet even while on probation, he had become a source of division, something Boniface tolerated because of Nathaniel’s role in the restoration of the common office and Gregorian chant. But Nathaniel had started a faction that threatened to bring on more quickly than Boniface feared the end of the Order. The idea of selling off the choice property on which the Athanasians had lived their American existence had appealed to some of the old priests because it appealed to their sense of the demands of their vow of poverty. Their home began to seem a place they unjustly occupied. And not only the Athanasians would be affected by such a sale. The Georges, from time immemorial the groundskeepers at Marygrove, would find themselves unemployed as the land they had so lovingly cultivated was divided into plots and great expensive houses rose. In a short time, Nathaniel had made many enemies.
And then Stanley Morgan had brought Nathaniel’s California past to Fox River. When Mr. George had discovered the corpse of Father Nathaniel on a prie dieu at the grotto, Morgan had been staying in the lodge, there to be a grim reminder to his erstwhile silent partner of past injustice. When Morgan disappeared while the medical examiner and police swarmed over the scene of the murder, he became the obvious suspect. He was arrested in St. Hilary’s old school, doubtless given sanctuary by Edna Hospers. Morgan had been a danger to Edna, but that was all. If Morgan had made a sincere confession, there had been nothing untoward between him and Edna. And, equally on the assumption of his sincerity in laying his sins before a priest, Stanley Morgan had not killed Father Nathaniel. Father Dowling had waited for Phil Keegan to look beyond the presumed guilt of Morgan, unable to say anything that was based on Morgan’s confession.
The murder of Charlotte Priebe had turned up an ominous file on her computer. If I Should Die. Phil Keegan had shown him the printout.
“So what will you do?”
“Proceed with caution.”
“But proceed?”
And then Phil told him of the planned nocturnal visit to the basement of the Wackham Building to be made by Cy Horvath and Dr. Pippen. By now, they should know whether credence could be put in Charlotte Priebe’s account of Lars Anderson’s story. Discovery is largely a matter of eliminating possibilities and that was what the pastor of St. Hilary’s did, ticking off the suspects as he lay awake. All but one.
At five-thirty, Father Dowling got out of bed. His day had begun, whether he liked it or not. He shaved and showered and dressed and went downstairs. In the kitchen, he drank a glass of orange juice and left a note for Marie Murkin. WILL BE GONE FOR SOME HOURS. BACK FOR THE NOON MASS. Then he went out to his car and drove downtown.
When he entered the hotel lobby he thought it was Tuttle behind the desk, snoozing under his tipped-forward tweed hat. Father Dowling tapped on the counter with his car keys and the figure lurched into wakefulness. The sight of the Roman collar brought him to his feet.
“What room is Leo Corbett in?”
“You want me to call him?”
“Just give me the number, I’ll go up.”
Hesitation gave way before the reassurance of a clerical presence. “307.”
“Thank you.”
“Should I let him know you’re coming up?”
“Thank you.”
The elevator seemed undecided between upward and sideways movement. There was a strong smell of disinfectant that was lifted with Father Dowling uncertainly to the third floor. The hallway into which he emerged was poorly lit and needed all the disinfectant it could get. Father Dowling started in one direction, then altered course. When he turned, a door opened and Leo Corbett looked out, disheveled and testy.
“What do you want?”
Father Dowling walked to the opened door, laid a hand on Leo’s arm and gently moved him inside. “We don’t want to discuss this in the hallway.”
“What ‘this’?”
“Many things, Leo.”
“I don’t know you. Are you one of them?”
“Them?”
“Athanasians.”
“No. I’m Father Dowling. I have a parish here in town.”
“Look, I don’t want to talk about this or anything else. I’m not a Catholic.”
“Your grandfather was.”
“Senility,” Leo said contemptuously.
It was not a room in which anyone would care to spend much time. The bed looked as if Leo had spent the night wrestling with bad angels. The shade hung crookedly at the cloudy window, the ceiling lamp diffused weak light over the messy scene. A pile of clothing lay in the corner. On the little table beside the bed there was an overflowing ashtray and a small gooseneck lamp with a yellowing shade. Newspapers were scattered on the floor next to the bed.
“Senility? Do you mean his conversion or his transfer of his estate to the Athanasians?”
“They are two ends of the same thought.”
“I see in the paper that you consider yourself to have been disinherited.”
“Well, what would you think if your grandfather was one of the richest men in town and all he left his son was an annuity that ran out when he died?”
“Your father?”
“My father.”
“So you have put yourself in the capable hands of Tuttle?”
“Not anymore.”
“No?”
“Look, why are you here? Is this what priests do, call uninvited on hotel guests?”
“You must be anxious to talk to someone.”
“About what?”
“Father Nathaniel, for one thing.”
“He’s dead.”
“Indeed he is. By violence. Why did you do it?”
Leo gave him a look, then smiled sarcastically. “What do I do now, break down and confess?”
“That would be a start. How did you lure Nathaniel to the maintenance shed in the middle of the night?”
Leo looked at him for a long minute, his face registering a sequence of thoughts. Then he got up and locked the door. Lounging on the bed, he said, “Why not? What would you like to know?”
Father Dowling rested his back against the dresser. “I already have a question on the floor.”
“How did I lure Nathaniel to the maintenance shed? I called him up and said we had to talk. You see, your approach works. I told him there was a way to accomplish what he wanted. He told me it was too late, he had lost support. I told him my support was all he needed. It was he who suggested the maintenance shed. Since I was calling from my car, I was there before him and found what I wanted.”
“An ax?”
“A sort-of ax.”
“What was the point of killing him if he no longer presented a threat?”
“Do you think I believed that? Do you imagine I really believed that they would do a deal with Anderson and I would get my grandfather’s house?”
“So what was your plan?”
“You realize I’m telling you these things because you can be no danger to me.”
“Your worst enemy is yourself. And then you killed Charlotte Priebe.”
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
“Why not? As you say, I’m no danger to you.”
“Don’t you know what I meant by that?”
“Given your recent actions, I have a fairly good idea.”
“Aren’t you frightened?”
“Not as much as you must be.”
“The police? They’re stupid. Besides, they have a confession from Stanley Morgan. Don’t you watch the news?”
“Now they can concentrate on what happened to Charlotte. I should tell you the police found a very interesting file on the computer in her apartment.”
“How would you know that?”
“Believe me, they did. A
very incriminating document. She spoke of you. She feared for her life.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Why did you flee from her apartment?”
“I’m losing interest in this.”
“She took you in and you killed her.”
“She tried to take me in, you mean. The oldest trick in the world. It was fun while it was lasted, but was I supposed to believe a woman like that had fallen madly in love with me?”
“That was no reason to kill her.”
“She knew too much. And now so do you.”
“I know enough to know that you have destroyed any chance of getting what you think is owed you.”
“I am not working alone.”
“Lars Anderson?”
“Why do you say that?”
“I told you of the statement found on Charlotte Priebe’s computer.”
“I think you’re making that up.”
“No you don’t.”
Leo lurched forward and rose awkwardly to his feet. He was a huge young man, pudgy but powerful. “Come on, we’re getting out of here.”
“Where can you hide, Leo?”
“You should be worrying more of what could happen to you.”
“I have a suggestion.”
“Yeah?”
“Why don’t we visit your grandfather’s grave?”
8
Keep me as the apple of Your eye.
—Psalm 17
A note that Marie Murkin had called was waiting on Phil Keegan’s desk. And a message from Cy: Nothing. Phil was relieved as well as disappointed. There was one crisis he didn’t have to face. He picked up the phone and called the St. Hilary rectory.
“I suppose I’m just a worrywart,” Marie said, after telling him that Father Dowling was gone when she came down to the kitchen. “He left a note.”
“What does it say?”
She read it to him.
“Probably out on a sick call.”
“But he would have said if that’s what it was.”
“Marie, he’s hardly a missing person.”
“I know. But I had to tell someone.”
“I’m glad you did. I’ll call back in a little while. Maybe eleven. He said he’d be back for the noon Mass?”
“Yes.”
“There you are, then.”
It was ridiculous, but Marie’s worry had transferred itself to him. Roger Dowling was not an impulsive man. But during their last conversation, Phil had the impression that Roger was waiting for him to say something. They had been talking about the deaths of Father Nathaniel and Charlotte Priebe. Roger had frowned when told that Morgan’s confession to killing Nathaniel pretty well severed any link between the two killings.
And then the call came from the desk clerk at the Stella Hotel. The officer answering the phone said Phil would probably want to hear this himself.
“Captain Keegan,” he said, when the call was transferred.
“This is Brink at the Stella. Something odd is going on. A priest showed up here an hour ago and asked to see one of the guests and just now the two of them left. It looked to me as if the priest was being taken away.”
“What did he look like?”
Roger Dowling might not have been flattered by the description of him. Tall, thin, profile like an eagle.
“What’s the guest’s name?”
“He signed in as Leo Corbett.”
Leo’s license number was acquired and the make of his car and the search began. It ended at the Stella Hotel, where Leo’s car was found parked in the diminutive lot behind the building, backed up against the trash cans. Feeling like a fool, Phil Keegan put out a bulletin on Father Dowling’s car, a ten-year-old Olds-mobile Cierra. Meanwhile, Cy had come in.
“He must have come to the same conclusion I did when we came up empty at the Wackham.”
“You think Corbett did them both?”
Cy nodded. “It seems inevitable. All the other possibilities have run out.”
“We should have thought of Leo right away.”
But Cy wouldn’t give him that discomfort. Morgan had made himself the obvious suspect and if they didn’t like him, the Georges, father and son, seemed to be claiming the role.
“They wouldn’t have fouled their own nests.”
Cy said nothing. If murders made sense there would be fewer of them. They went off in separate cars, as reachable in them as anywhere else, destinations random. Phil drove to St. Hilary’s to find that Marie Murkin had called Father Boniface and the Athanasian had come to say the noon Mass. Phil knelt in back, feeling that Roger was almost posthumous, his place taken by another, as priest can easily be replaced by priest. Marie was in stoic selfcontrol.
“Come have lunch with Father Boniface,” she whispered in his ear when he was trying to pretend his anguished thoughts after communion were a form of prayer. He felt empty at the thought that Roger Dowling might already have met the fate of Nathaniel and Charlotte Priebe. Suddenly Phil felt that whatever future was left to him was uninviting. He would retire, he would … He got up and followed Marie to the rectory.
Lunch was like a wake, everything reminding Phil of the missing pastor. He had called his office and was given the rectory number. He had no appetite, but he ate everything Marie put before him. Boniface could not substitute for Roger at that table. He wondered what Marie would do.
Boniface began to speak of old Maurice Corbett. “He was a presence around Marygrove when I was a student, a silent, imposing old man. When we prayed for our benefactors I suppose we all thought of him.”
“Did you know the son?” Marie asked.
“The prodigal son of a prodigal father, in different senses of the term. He was a geologist.”
Their thoughts went on to the grandson. That a highly successful and finally generous man should have had a son whose passion was rocks and the ages of the earth was odd enough, but that the grandson should have developed a deep resentment because of the wealth he felt should have been his seemed a commentary on the ages of man.
“Maybe we are all composed of layers, like the earth,” Boniface said.
“Where is he buried?” Marie asked and Boniface stared at her. “I mean the grandfather.”
“Ah. In Resurrection Cemetery. He raised a great stone to his wife and he was buried next to her.”
When Phil went out to his car, he sat for a while before starting it. He called in to find out if anything had been heard, but of course they would have let him know. When he started off, he drove aimlessly for a time, his ear cocked to his radio, and then he headed for Resurrection Cemetery.
9
The Lord preserves all who love Him but all the wicked He will destroy.
—Psalm 145
“Good idea,” Leo said as he guided him through the lobby of the Stella Hotel. The man behind the desk had his tweed hat on the back of his head and waved at them. “I’ve visited there often to cuss him out.”
“If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t be, Leo.”
“You can say the same of Adam. And look what he did to all of us.”
“We won’t be condemned for Original Sin.”
Outside, they stood for a moment in front of the hotel. Father Dowling considered raising a fuss. What could Leo do to him there on the sidewalk? No doubt it would have been a futile gesture. The cars would have continued to speed past, hundreds of people hurrying to a hundred different places, unlikely to notice what was going on in front of a sleazy hotel. But then a watery-eyed man with reddish stubble on his face came up with his hand held out.
“Give a fella the price of a meal, Father?”
“Beat it,” Leo said.
“Hey, I asked him.”
“And I answered you. Get lost.”
Indignation made a showing in the watery eyes, but before he shuffled off Father Dowling gave him the change in his pocket.
“Bless you, Father.”
“For I have sinned,” Leo said. “Isn’t that how it goe
s? Where’s your car?”
He opened the driver’s door of Father Dowling’s car and told him to get in. When he was behind the wheel, the door slammed. With a flick of his finger he could have locked all the doors. But he waited for Leo to go around the front of the car and then get into the passenger seat.
“That bum won’t sound the alarm.”
“Where is your grandfather buried?”
“Resurrection.” Leo laughed. “Do you believe all that? These bones will live again?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation.”
Father Dowling started the car and pulled away. His Oldsmobile could have found Resurrection Cemetery by itself, it had been there often enough, when he didn’t ride with the undertaker. But he preferred driving his own car to the cemetery; it was better afterward. He would say a final word to the bereaved and then as he drove away see the little band drift off toward their cars, perhaps feeling for the first time the definitiveness of their loss.
It was late morning now and Father Dowling thought of the noon Mass. Why hadn’t he included his destination in his note to Marie? She might have been worried and called Phil and help would be on the way. But he felt more concern for Leo than for himself.
“Leo, nothing you’ve done is unforgivable. Think about it. You have taken human life. That was the first crime after Original Sin.”
“Oh, come on. Just drive.”
“Were you raised Catholic?”
“Drive!”
He drove through the busy streets, out of downtown and through a residential area, and finally into the country. Eventually they came to the entrance gate of Resurrection. Old Heidegger might notice his car, it would be familiar enough to him, but there was no sign of the sexton when they passed the gatehouse or as they moved along the quiet, tree-lined road.
Prodigal Father Page 27