Mary, carrying the coffeepot to the table, shook her head. “It wasn’t Father Untener; it’s you.”
“Me?”
“Have you forgotten? You were in the papers a couple of weeks ago. Your people knew you’d be back today; they came to see the celebrity.”
“That’s my fifteen minutes.” He looked up at her. “You think that’s really it? Well …” He smiled. “It beats ringing doorbells. But,” he added resolutely, “I’ve got to get back to that as soon as possible. Maybe all those Catholics hibernating in the high rises will recognize me for a little while. I’d better capitalize on that while it’s still warm.”
He noticed that Mary, holding her cup, was looking directly into his eyes and smiling. “Something?” he asked, puzzled.
“Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“How you knew it was Quentin Jeffrey-and how you caught him?”
“You read all about that in the papers.”
“Not all and not from the horse’s mouth.”
“Thank you for not thinking of another part of the horse’s anatomy.
“There’s not an awful lot to tell that wasn’t in the papers. The most bizarre part of the story-building an unbeatable hand by killing people-that was reported.”
“Yes, but not how you got to impersonate the Cardinal-and how you knew the deacon would come that night.”
“That? Well, it wasn’t easy getting to stand in for the Cardinal. As to the timing, that was more or less a lucky guess. The murders seemed to be accelerating. Father Bash was killed almost as Archbishop Foley was being buried. I had the impression that the killer was getting anxious, in a hurry. So I thought if we falsely announced that the Cardinal was leaving for an extended period for an undesignated place, the killer would act before his victim could get away.”
“And impersonating the Cardinal?”
Koesler grimaced. “That was the hard part. Oddly, I had a far easier time convincing the Cardinal than I had with the police. The Cardinal and I are about the same height. Oh, I’m a bit heavier, but in dim light and in a cassock, that wouldn’t be too noticeable. I told the Cardinal that if I was right-and I was certain I was-that he would be dead very soon unless we set the trap. Fortunately, he believed me when I told him that he was the only one in danger. I assured him the killer wouldn’t hurt me because I didn’t fit into his plan.”
“But why you, Father? That’s the question I’ve heard most often these past two weeks. Why not a policeman in the cassock?”
“The very question that was uppermost in Lieutenant Tully’s mind,” Koesler said. He sipped his coffee as his thoughts leaped back to the fateful evening.
“Well,” he said finally, “it wasn’t so much a ‘question’ as a very, very strong objection. The lieutenant and I argued-yes, that’s the right word-we argued about it for-well, hours, I guess. He was totally opposed to a civilian’s risking his life in a situation that he felt demanded a trained policeman.
“My argument was that we didn’t have any evidence to try him on, or even hold him on. We had no proof of anything and the most they could come up with using a policeman stand-in would be circumstantial evidence. And no matter how strong that might be, it wouldn’t carry as much weight in a court of law or be as strong as a confession. And that once Quent found he was dealing with a policeman, he wouldn’t say anything.I was sure he’d talk to me. And he did.”
“And that argument convinced the lieutenant?”
“Not by a long shot. He absolutely refused to let me go through with it.”
“And?”
“I told him I was going to do it anyway, whether he went along with me or not. He was really angry-just short of furious, I think. But eventually, he said if I was determined to be ‘a damn fool’-those were his exact words-he’d set it up.”
“But it worked.”
“Yes. And I’m pretty sure he’s still angry with me. Even though it did work.”
“It was lucky he agreed to provide protection or you might be dead now.”
“I don’t think so, Mary. I heard the words he murmured. I saw the expression on his face. He had no intention of harming me Once he knew the police were there, he knew if he drew his gun they would kill him. The poor guy had nowhere to go but into another life, where I pray God and Quent’s victims forgave him.” Koesler paused. “There was another reason I insisted on standing in for the Cardinal. I don’t know that it would make sense to anyone but me. See, I promised Archbishop Foley I would jump right in and get actively involved in the case. And I made the same sort of commitment to Cardinal Boyle. The opportunity to stand in for the Cardinal was a gift from heaven. I had to do it. That was the argument that finally convinced the Cardinal to go along with my plan.”
“It makes sense to me.”
“Thanks, Mary. I needed that, Thanks.”
Mary refilled their cups. “Such a weird plot.” She shook her head. “Do you think he really was insane? And if he was, how could he have appeared to be so normal?”
“That puzzled me too. I couldn’t figure it out. It got so bad that I phoned my friend Dr. Rudy Scholl from Florida. I gave him an account of the whole thing. He said it was a classic example of what psychologists call a borderline personality.”
“Borderline? What does that mean?”
“Would you fill my cup one more time? I think that’ll do it. Thanks. Well, if I understand Rudy correctly, it means that such a personality is living right on the edge-the border-between sanity and insanity.”
Mary shuddered. “That’s frightening. I mean it sounds like some sort of science fiction-or a horror movie.”
Koesler sipped the hot coffee. It was excellent. He was convinced there was no special trick to brewing good coffee. “It is frightening. But it’s strange: When we were in that room, together, just Quent and I, I got the overwhelming impression that he had been under enormous stress for a long, long time-ever since his wife died. I think he felt he was caged in a box he couldn’t escape from.
“Rudy agreed. And added the word ‘conflict.’ It was, he said, a ‘stressful conflict.’ Quent felt he was intended to live a married life. That had been taken away when his wife died out of due time. He believed that any sexual relationship had to be restricted to marriage. According to Church rules, he could not marry again. And he felt compelled to comply with that law even though he detested it. He was not going to back away from this obligation. You could scarcely find a more clear example of stressful conflict.
“My problem was the same question you raised: How could he function so well in a normal daily life and then deliberately kill people? He would have had to be some sort of chameleon. One moment he would be a well adjusted, even dedicated man, a minister of the Church-and the next moment he would be a madman.
“But Rudy explained that this is the key to the borderline personality. They function at a high level of normalcy and then they decompose and go into a psychotic state.”
“‘Decompose’! That seems an awfully strong word.”
“I know. But that’s the word Rudy used. He also said that Quent was the right age to have been in the Korean War. Isn’t that odd: Quent and Clete Bash would have been in the same war. One emerged physically crippled, the other maybe emotionally. Anyway, Rudy said that if it were true, that Quent could already have been programmed to be violent as a result of that bloody war. As a soldier he would have to follow orders. Then as a successful businessman, he would have the power to make his own rules. So he was used to being in charge of his life.
“Then he becomes a deacon and once again he is subject to rules that he cannot bend. Another stressful situation.
“Rudy said it was completely believable that Quent could begin to see these laws that hemmed him in on every side as a kind of catch-22-a game. In his psychotic state, he would treat the situation like a game. Only it was his deal. And he was going to deal himself the unbeatable power hand-a royal flush: ten, jack, queen,
king, ace of the same suit-Catholic leaders.”
They were silent for a few moments.
“I was just thinking,” Mary said, “those married ministers and priests who are becoming Catholic priests-they may have to face the same kind of problem Quentin Jeffrey did.”
Koesler nodded. “Yes, that’s possible-even probable. It will be a problem that the Catholic Church-at least the Latin Rite-hasn’t had to face for about a thousand years. That, and, I suppose, divorced priests … priests who want to remarry after a divorce. I guess that’s why the Pope is paid so well.”
They laughed.
“It certainly is a different Church from the one we grew up in,” Mary said.
“I’ll say. Some think that in the Third Vatican Council, the bishops will bring their wives along. And at Vatican IV the bishops will bring their husbands.”
Mary laughed. “That’s too much for this old head to handle.” She finished her coffee and left the kitchen, to busy herself in the office.
Koesler, alone in the room, cradled his cup and thought. In such a brief time, five, almost six, people dead. Four people he’d known quite well; one, Helen Donovan, he never knew. Four people who had no idea why they had been selected, who had no advance warning whatsoever that the end was at hand. One man the cause of it all. Yet, could a “borderline personality” be fully responsible? Was he himself a victim of a different sort, and was it one rule that was the cause of it all?
Koesler did not know. He tried to visualize the five, the victims and their killer, in heaven. In heaven-and in heaven alone-would it be possible to find the understanding and forgiveness needed to heal these wounds. Like the two soldiers, in Wilfred
Owen’s war poetry who had fought hand to hand, thrusting and parrying until they had slain one another. Now, one invites the other to come away from the field of slaughter, and rest.
He thought of the last letter St. Thomas More wrote to his daughter before he was executed. The last words of that letter, the last words that great man wrote: “Farewell, my dear child and pray for me, and I shall for you and all your friends that we may merrily meet in heaven.”
Only in heaven …
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-ba368f-8989-6140-529c-05cc-aa9e-766961
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 20.01.2013
Created using: calibre 0.9.13, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 software
Document authors :
William X. Kienzle
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
Chameleon fk-13 Page 31