“Then we’ll do our best, but it can’t be perfect. Now, about continuing the conference. Are you all willing?”
“Funny,” Benbow said, “we had this same choice last night when we wondered whether to continue the conference after some heated words had been exchanged. And the odd thing is that it was Rabbi Winer who said something about having to go on. To see how this would end. And now, this is how it ended for him: He’s gone.”
Tully gave them a few moments to consider their choice.
“Reverend Krieg is the one at risk,” Marie said. “If he’s willing, I’m sure the rest of us will go along.”
Another pause. Tully would wait as long as necessary for them to decide.
“I’m willing,” Krieg said, quietly.
“Then so am I,” Marie.
“And I,” Benbow.
“All right,” Augustine.
“Good,” Tully. “Then the next order of business is that each of you will be interviewed by one of our officers.”
“Now?” Janet said. “Lieutenant, it’s late, and these people will have to work tomorrow in an extremely trying atmosphere. Couldn’t we-”
“Sister,” Tully interrupted, “this is a homicide investigation. The investigation has top priority. We’ll ask you all to cooperate and give your statements now.” There was something about the way he emphasized, “now,” that made it clear that the time frame was non-negotiable.
There were no further objections.
“One thing more,” Tully said, “we will want to search your rooms. All of you.”
“No you don’t! No you don’t!” Augustine was vehement. “That’s going a bit far. We know better. You can’t do that without a search warrant.”
Tully regarded him, then said, “If you insist on one, we’ll get one.”
“You’ll have to show probable cause before a judge will issue one,” Marie said.
“After all that’s been said here, the things you’ve said to each other in the presence of witnesses, the threats,” Tully said, “it shouldn’t be difficult at all to convince a judge.”
Tully waited, but there were no further arguments. “Of course we’ll have to wonder why you are so reluctant to have a police search. But that’s up to you. You can give us permission to search or you can tough it out. Up to you.”
After a few moments, Marie said, “Very well.”
Benbow, with a glance, checked to see if his wife had any objection. Seeing none, he said, “You have our permission.”
Augustine seemed to be fighting the issue within himself. “Oh, all right. But you can be sure the people back in Massachusetts are going to hear about what a police state you have here in Detroit.”
Tully ignored the virtually undeliverable threat. “Good. Now, please, all of you stay where you are. The officers will be here very shortly to take your statements.”
Tully did not leave a happy group behind him. But as he, Koznicki, and Koesler left the room Tully felt the emotional charge of commencing the investigation. It was off the ground. The chase was on to discover whodunit.
He quickly dispatched officers, some to interrogate the faculty, some to search their rooms.
“It was fortunate they backed away from their insistence on a warrant,” said Koznicki.
“Yes,” Tully said. “That could have taken some time. I’m sure we wouldn’t have any trouble getting one. But we’d have had to limit ourselves to whatever areas we listed in the warrants. Now we can bring to light anything we happen to find.”
“What did you think of the session with them just now?” Koznicki asked.
“Interesting,” Tully said. “They’re amateurs, of course, but they are familiar with police procedure. Probably done their research well. But one thing puzzles me.”
“And that?” Koznicki asked.
“They’re not turning on each other.”
“Not turning on each other?” Koesler asked.
“Sister Janet just doesn’t figure in that group. Martha Benbow might be a stronger suspect if only on behalf of her husband. But, then, she was at the movie during the 8:00 to 10:00 time of death.
“That leaves Benbow, Augustine, and Marie. Each of them seems to have some kind of grudge against Krieg. Only we don’t know why. It’s gotta be more, lots more, than that they just don’t want to write for him. Hell, all they’ve got to do is say ‘no.’ Even if they have to say it more than once. God, it’s a free country. Krieg can ask them pretty please as often as he wants. And they can say, ‘Get lost, creep,’ as often as they want.
“I think, first thing, we gotta find out what’s the kicker. Why are they so sore-assed about it?
“But the most puzzling thing is that they’re not going after each other. I gave them every chance to jump on each other. Augustine could say Marie or Benbow did this or that, which makes them more likely suspects. Or Benbow could say Augustine or Marie did such and so, which turns the spotlight on them. But no; they stuck together. When one agrees to be interrogated, they all agree. When one agrees to a search, they all agree. It doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. But it will,” he added, “it will.”
“The statements they made, the questions they asked,” Koesler said, “didn’t you find them rather unusual?”
“Unusual?” Koznicki repeated.
“For one thing,” Koesler said, “I know that without their consent you wouldn’t have been able to search their rooms without a warrant. But I didn’t know about “probable cause”-that you wouldn’t be able to get a judge to issue a warrant without convincing him that there was reason to believe they could be guilty of a crime and that the search was necessary.”
“Yeah,” Tully said. “Well, like I said, they’re amateurs. They’ve done their homework; probably learned a lot from research. That’s good news and bad news. Maybe they can be helpful if they pay attention and let us know what they think, what they suspect, what they see and hear. On the other hand, they are just as likely to get in the way.”
“And one thing we must never overlook,” Koznicki said. “One of them killed a man.”
“Yeah,” Tully agreed.
“If you don’t mind,” said Koesler, “I have one more question.”
Tully said nothing, but he came close to minding. What he’d said about the others in this ersatz faculty also applied to Koesler. The others wrote murder mysteries. Granted Koesler had been involved in actual homicide investigations. And, to be fair, he had made few mistakes, and had actually been very helpful on occasion. But they all were amateurs and while they could prove useful, they could even more probably get in the way.
Plus-and this was more like the bottom line-there was the awareness that Koesler was a close friend of Walt Koznicki. And Koznicki, although he needn’t and didn’t throw his considerable weight around, was still the boss.
It was with all that in mind that Tully accepted another question.
“The thing that kept bothering me in there was how narrow the scope of this investigation is. Now I know I’m not a detective and I’m not a real part of this investigation-nor should I be.
“But you seem to be insisting that the crime had to be committed this evening between 8:00 and 10:00. That the liqueur had to be poisoned during that time. And that it had to be done by either Dave Benbow, Augustine, or Marie.
“Isn’t that a bit restrictive? I know that people have been in and out and around the dining area all day long. But isn’t it just possible that somebody, somehow, managed to get into the dining room, into the cabinet and poison the drink sometime during the day, long before dinner?
“And if that is possible, isn’t it also possible that almost anyone could have done it?”
Tully nodded. “Sure, everything’s possible. Thing is, we got a hot potato goin’ on here. People downtown are gonna want this thing closed yesterday, which gives us an advantage we don’t ordinarily get: We’ll get lots of help. With all that help, we’ll be lookin’ into everything. All the things you mentione
d and more, Padre. The students, the kitchen people, the security guards-everybody’s being checked and interrogated. When we get done with the initial phase of this investigation, we will pretty well know what everybody has been doing nearly minute by minute all day today.”
“Well,” Koesler said, “I must say that’s reassuring. I’m sorry I raised the question. No,” he corrected himself, “I’m glad I asked, because it puts my mind at ease. But then. .”
“But then,” Tully picked up, “if all that’s goin’ on, why am I concentrating on Benbow, Marie, and Augustine?”
“Well, yes.”
“It could be anybody, Padre, like you say. But if it isn’t Benbow, Marie, or Augustine or any combination thereof, I’ll swallow my badge. They make up the list of the likely perps. That’s why with everybody else covering everybody else, I and a few others are gonna zero in on those three.”
15
“Father Koesler!”
The priest spun around. The greeting had been delivered so unaffectedly and enthusiastically that it had taken him by complete surprise.
It was a woman with an uncommonly pronounced smile. Dark hair styled in bangs, no glasses, hazel eyes, about five-feet-six, comfortably filled out; she looked like someone’s idea of the stereotypical homemaker.
Who was she?
It happened all the time. Priests meet so very many people. Especially priests who move from parish to parish during their extensive tours of duty. Inevitably, no matter where he happens to be, people will accost a priest with something like, “Father so-and-so! Remember me?”
More often than not the answer had to be, “Not really.”
Which usually was followed by, “You married me!” Or, “You baptized me!”
A priest Koesler’s age will have witnessed the marriage of hundreds of couples, most of them fading into one unrecognizable melange. Ditto baptisms, first Communions, and school plays.
So he tried to be as pleased about this chance meeting as was the young woman who had greeted him. But his hesitation communicated his failure to place her.
“Angie Moore,” she supplied. “Sergeant Angie Moore. We worked together briefly last year on an arrest. .”
Aha! That was it. “Of course. . Sergeant Moore.”
It all came flooding back. “The last time I saw you you were sitting on the floor and you were cut. . bleeding. How are you now?”
She laughed. An infectious, musical laugh. “That was a year ago, Father. I’m fine. I would’ve lost more blood if I’d given to the Red Cross.”
“Good, good.” Now what? “So, what are you doing here, Sergeant?”
“There’s been a murder, Father. I work in Homicide, remember?”
Damn! “Of course. How stupid of me.”
“Did you see her, Angie?” Tully was tiring of this reunion.
“Yeah, Zoo. I saw her. And learned a lot.”
Tully explained to Koznicki and, necessarily, Koesler also. “I asked Angie to get in touch with Mrs. Winer, the rabbi’s wife. . widow. So you saw her. How did it go?”
The transformation was instantaneous. It was as if her happy surprise at meeting Koesler hadn’t happened. Angie Moore was all business.
“It was rough,” Moore said, “real rough. I guess they must have been real close. One of those exceptions, a long and happy marriage. I thought I was gonna lose her right after I gave her the news. I mean, I thought she was gonna faint. But she didn’t. She hung on. She wanted so much to know what happened she must have forced herself to hold on.”
“And then?” Tully prodded.
“And then she wanted to know how it happened. Wait a minute. .” She took her notepad out of her purse and consulted it. “I told her,” Moore said, “that it had been a mistake-the result of a fluke, an accident. That someone had intended to kill Klaus Krieg, but that her husband had accidentally been poisoned with a drink intended for Krieg.
“At first she didn’t say anything. Then she said, ‘What a waste! What a waste!’”
“Strange,” Koznicki commented.
“That’s what I thought,” Moore said. “But I got the impression she wanted to open up to me. So I just kind of kept quiet and waited. And then, she did.
“She said, ‘What a waste! Irv went to that workshop to have it out with Krieg once and for all. And that Irv should die in Krieg’s place-I can’t believe it!’
“I agreed with her. Then I asked what she meant by her husband ‘having it out’ with Krieg.
“She didn’t respond immediately. Like she was debating with herself whether to open up or not. Finally, she said, ‘You see, my husband was in a Nazi concentration camp. .’” Moore looked at Tully. “Did you know that?”
“Yeah,” Tully said. “He had a number tattooed on his arm.” Tully shrugged. “He was Jewish.”
“Well,” Moore continued, “I asked her what her husband being in a concentration camp had to do with Krieg. She didn’t say anything for several minutes, just sat looking off into the distance. Finally, I guess everything overflowed. She started to talk, so slowly and quietly at first that I could barely hear her.
“She said, ‘It was near the end, just before the camp was liberated. Irv had suffered the pains of the damned for seven years. He lasted longer than just about anyone else condemned to that hell on earth. Then something happened.’ She stopped for a moment. . as if she was struggling with herself. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision-sort of as if she had decided to trust me. Actually,” Angie looked a little ill at the memory, “I think she was so close to breaking down that she had to overflow-you know, confide in another human being. And I guess ’cause it was another woman, it was easier for her.
“Anyway, she said, ‘He became an informer, a traitor to his own people, a collaborator with the Nazis.’
“Then she broke down crying. She was sobbing so hard I put my arms around her and just held her. Finally, she pulled herself together. And she said, ‘Irv didn’t know I knew. It was the one thing, the only thing he never told me. I found out when I started researching his genealogy. He was so proud of his heritage, I wanted to get a family tree put together for him. I went to a lot of trouble, writing, getting names of his friends, his family.
“‘It was one of his friends-well, actually a distant relative-who still lives in Germany. He told me. He said Irv didn’t know that quite a few people knew what he’d done in the camp. He wanted Irv to know that the Jews who knew about it bore him no ill will. They understood. They had been there. You did what you had to. You stayed alive.’ She shook her head, and added, ‘He was just a boy.’
“Then she looked at me and she said, ‘I never told Irv. What good would it have done? It didn’t matter if they forgave him or understood. I know him. I know he never could forgive himself. So I didn’t let on I knew his secret. If he didn’t tell me, he didn’t want me to know. I couldn’t let him know that I’d found out, even if it was by accident.’
“That seemed to be all she wanted to tell me. I waited, but nothing more came. So I asked her what all that had to do with having it out with Krieg here at the conference.
“She said, ‘It had everything to do with it. Because Krieg had found out. Oh, it wasn’t that difficult. It wasn’t that difficult for me to find out, and I don’t begin to have the money, the power, the resources that Klaus Krieg has. It just wasn’t as difficult as Irv probably thought it was.
“‘See, one of the times Krieg called, Irv wasn’t in. So Krieg talked to me. I guess Krieg assumed Irv had told me what had happened in the camp. Of course, Irv hadn’t told me. And if I hadn’t found out on my own, it would’ve been a terrible way to find out-from Krieg. But if I hadn’t already known about it and if Krieg had discovered that I didn’t, he would have threatened Irv that he would tell me about it too.’
“I said,’Too?’”
Tully exhaled so audibly it sounded almost like a whistle. “Blackmail! Krieg was blackmailing Winer. That’s what it’s all about.”
; “That would explain why the rabbi was so upset at Reverend Krieg’s repeated efforts to sign the rabbi to a contract,” Koznicki said.
“That’s it,” Moore said. “Mrs. Winer said that Krieg, after he got done using every legitimate means to get her husband to sign, had threatened and finally issued an ultimatum that if Winer still refused to sign, Krieg would get the story out in the open.”
“Could it have hurt that much?” Koesler asked.
The others looked at him as if he’d dropped out of the sky. They had nearly forgotten he was there.
Their reaction slightly embarrassed Koesler. Nonetheless, having surfaced, he proceeded. “I mean, it happened so long ago. In the context of where and how it happened, it is so understandable. And, according to his wife, everyone who knows about it has forgiven him.”
“I asked her the same question,” Marie said. “But she said that at very least he would lose his credibility, and very possibly the president of the synagogue would move to have him dismissed. And they’d probably do it. She was convinced that if that had happened his life both as a rabbi and a writer would end. But most of all, if it had become public, her belief was that he would just have disintegrated.”
Silence.
“So,” Tully said, “Winer came here to have it out once and for all with Krieg.”
“Do you think it possible the rabbi intended murder as a last resort?” Koznicki asked.
“Sure sounds like it,” Tully replied.
“Father Koesler has told us of his surprise at the hostility toward Krieg not only on the rabbi’s part, but from all the other writers,” Koznicki said. “Is it possible. .?”
Tully nodded. “Angie, go get Krieg. He’s in the dining room.”
Shortly, Moore returned with Krieg.
“Reverend,” Tully said, “Sergeant Moore here just got done talking with Rabbi Winer’s widow.”
“Praise God! Poor woman.”
“Yeah. Mrs. Winer said you know about a … uh. . a very compromising situation in the rabbi’s past and that you were blackmailing him, threatening to reveal his secret, unless he signed a contract with you.”
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