Truth Beat

by Brenda Buchanan

  “Always has been before.”

  I decided not to call ahead to let Kathleen know I was on my way. She knew I was onto her habitual mendacity, so my best bet was to simply show up and hope her instinctive good manners would keep her from refusing to see me. After dropping Roz at a downtown bagel shop for a rendezvous with the good-looking Detective Booth, I circled the hospital parking lot for ten minutes before finding an empty space. My persistence did not pay off because Kathleen had been discharged. The young woman at the information desk wouldn’t divulge another fact, so I went to the Hazelwood residence, where a tired-looking Kathleen answered the door herself.

  “I wondered what time you’d show up.”

  “What time did they spring you?”

  She motioned for me to come inside. “I got home about two hours ago.”

  “Feeling okay?

  “Better than yesterday. That whole experience was hellish.”

  Her eyes seemed clear and her speech was, too. When we reached the kitchen there was no bourbon bottle in sight. An ironing board was set up near the door that led out to the deck, a black dress spread across its surface.

  “Getting ready for tonight?”

  “Yes. I dread it. But I’m getting ready to put on a costume and paint on an appropriate face and represent my family at my dear brother’s wake.” She slid into a kitchen chair as though she had no bones. “Did you ever have an experience so painful you had to force yourself through it? That’s where I am right now. Just putting one foot in front of the other, telling myself that I will survive this shit.”

  The last line loosed her tears, big gulping sobs that left me unsure what to do. I got her a drink of water and edged an economy-size box of tissues closer to where she slumped, crying more softly but still steadily.

  I tabled my plan to ask her if she thought her brother was gay, and if that might have had something to do with his death. Bide your time, man.

  “What can I do to help you, Kathleen?” They were the right words for a friend to say, but not especially right for a reporter. But little about my coverage of Patrick’s death had been by the book.

  “Will you drive me to Riverside? I don’t think I can make it on my own.”

  “Absolutely. I drove up here with a colleague, and she can take my car back, so we can drive in yours.”

  “That’d be great,” she said. “I’m afraid if I were left to my own devices I’d find a way to screw up.”

  I assumed she meant she’d pull off the highway somewhere along the 130-mile stretch for a little bar break.

  “I’ll get you there safe and sober.”

  “Right,” she said. “For Patrick.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A quick series of texts with Roz resulted in a car-swap plan. Kathleen promised to be ready in an hour when I returned with Roz. I called Leah on the Bluetooth while I drove downtown. Bangor is a small city, so she’d barely begun filling me in the latest protest news when I spotted Roz waiting in front of the bagel shop. She beamed a bright smile when she slid into the passenger seat. I pulled into a parking lot next to the old courthouse to finish the conversation with Leah.

  It turned out the protesters had demands, one of which was that they put a “citizen reporter” on the church-closing beat.

  “A ‘citizen reporter,’ meaning not a professional reporter?”

  “Right. The gripe is that we are not fairly representing their side of the parish consolidation story. In fact, the very use of the term ‘parish consolidation’ infuriates them. They say that’s diocesan doublespeak, and by adopting the oppressor’s language, we implicitly adopt the oppressor’s position.”

  “Somebody studied the theory of political movements.”

  Roz cleared her throat. “Bozco’s in the middle of this, right?”

  “He’s one of several,” Leah said. “But it seems like he’s hand-picked the others, because he can manipulate them all day long.”

  “Hotheads with jerky knees?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “This ‘citizen reporter’ thing is bullshit. Why would the newspaper spend a second listening to such a ridiculous demand?”

  “Because Jack Salisbury doesn’t have the faintest idea about how journalism is supposed to work, and thinks we ought to be open to whatever the public asks of us.”

  “The union will go to the mats on this,” Roz said. She was shop steward, and I could already see her rallying the troops.

  “It won’t surprise you that Al Lombard is offering to broker a compromise,” Leah said. “He actually went out there and met with Bozco and his acolytes. He says they might be willing to stop picketing if he was assigned to the church beat again.”

  “And I’m taken off?”

  “Of course.”

  “No friggin’ way.”

  “Of course not,” Leah said. “But the way it’s playing out makes you wonder who’s actually behind the protest, and what their real goal is.”

  I told Leah I’d be driving Kathleen to Riverside for the wake, and hoped along the way to get some useful information out of her. Roz said she was working on some leads about the assault on Kathleen but didn’t have enough to write yet. Leah rang off, promising us our desks would not be set aflame in our absence.

  Roz blurted out what she’d been waiting to talk about as soon as I disconnected the call.

  “Booth was as chatty this morning as he was closemouthed last night.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Kathleen checked herself out of the hospital last night, against medical advice. Did you know that?”

  I replayed the tape of my conversation with Kathleen and realized she hadn’t actually said what time she left the hospital, only that she got home a couple hours before I knocked on her door.

  “She didn’t exactly tell me that, no.”

  “Booth is worried about her, thinks she’s cruising for big trouble if she doesn’t get a handle on the booze situation.”

  “That’s not news.”

  “Probably not, but it’s frustrating to the cops, because they aren’t quite sure what they’re chasing. They did get a break on the car that was in her driveway. A light-colored sedan with a Maine plate, either a Honda or a Hyundai.”

  “A Civic?”

  “Booth said witnesses thought it was a larger model, an Accord or Sonata, maybe. I told him about Bozco, and that he owns a white Civic.”

  “Was the bullhorn boy on Booth’s radar?”

  “Oh yeah. He even knew about this morning’s protest at the Chronicle. Cops read Twitter and Facebook, too. He or one of his minions has been monitoring Bozco’s feed along with those of some of the other church protestors.”

  “Is that all he had to tell you? Long friggin’ trip for those two tidbits of already-known information—Kathleen’s got a drinking problem and Bozco is a person of interest.”

  “I haven’t gotten to the good part yet.” She pursed her ruby lips and leaned back against the headrest.

  “They questioned Kathleen’s ex—Philip Hazelwood—who’s a big shot Rotary Club type-guy. Goes by the nickname Philo. Apparently that’s a hipper name than Philip, and even though he’s a paunchy fifty-year-old businessman, he thinks he’s hip. Booth says Philo might be full of shit, but he claims that since their divorce, Kathleen has been romantically involved with a priest.”

  “Kathleen told me since her divorce from Philo, she’s sworn off men.”

  “Well she’s not exactly known for her truthfulness, is she? And if a woman is sleeping with a priest, that’s pretty strong motivation to tell a few fibs.”

  Roz watched my face while I put it together.

  “Let me guess. Philo says Father DiAngelo is the priest?”

  She nodded. “He told Booth that t
wice in the last month he’s seen Kathleen alone with DiAngelo, meaning Patrick wasn’t with them. Once at the house—Philo saw DiAngelo there when he swung by to pick up an extension ladder that he’d left behind when he moved out. The other time Philo spotted them sitting in a back booth in a downtown restaurant, deep in conversation.”

  “That doesn’t mean they were sleeping together. They’re friends. He and Patrick and Kathleen hung around together. Maybe DiAngelo came to Bangor because he was worried about Patrick, and wanted to share his concern with Kathleen. Christ, maybe they were doing something as innocent as planning a birthday party.”

  “Booth said Philo didn’t offer any hard proof, so maybe you’re right, but he was insistent during the interview, said his ex-wife’s body language is an open book and both times she was broadcasting that she thought she’d been caught doing something illicit.”

  “Illicit. Could this story get any more Catholic?”

  * * *

  When we circled back to the Hazelwood house Roz asked if she could come inside to use the restroom, but I knew her real goal was to meet Patrick’s sister, to see her on her own turf. Kathleen had pulled herself together nicely. She’d put some kind of rinse in her hair to make it seem more brown than maroon, and she didn’t do the gel thing, so it lay against her head in soft waves. She wore makeup, subtle perfume and a simple but flattering black dress set off by a silver necklace.

  Kathleen accepted Roz’s words of condolence with grace, and thanked her for being willing to drive my car south solo so I could serve as official chauffeur. “I’m feeling rather alone in the world these days.” She said it with only the slightest quaver in her voice. “I appreciate your kindness.”

  She was so composed I wondered if she’d taken something while she was getting dressed—an antianxiety med of some sort—but changed my thinking as soon as we shut the heavy doors of her dark blue BMW.

  “Pretty good act, eh?”

  “Was it?”

  “An act? Yes, sir. My insides are roiling like a choppy sea. I’m afraid to eat anything. Just promise me you’ll stick near me during the calling hours. Four hours. Two hundred forty minutes.”

  “You can do it.”

  “If I start falling apart I’ll need you to step in, get me out of the damned church so I don’t wind up on the front page of your newspaper or worse, as the lead story on the local TV reports: Dead Priest’s Sister Wigs Out at Wake.”

  I was uncomfortable in the role of Kathleen’s protector. I had a job to do, and couldn’t be constrained to stick by her side for the afternoon and evening. Realizing that it would upset her if I said so, I kept my thoughts on that matter to myself, sure some of Kathleen’s nurse colleagues and friends would appear at the church, prepared to stand with her at her time of sorrow.

  Kathleen was curious about both of the women with whom she’d seen me in the past two days. Roz had nearly twenty years on me, but like everyone with half a brain Kathleen could tell at a glance that she was a pistol. Despite my insistence that Roz and I were colleagues only, she teased me that a younger man/older woman dynamic could be, well, dynamic.

  “If you’re too intimidated by Roz, Christie could be your type,” she said. “She’s a beauty, that one.”

  “She’s a longtime friend,” I said, determined to keep my business to myself.

  Kathleen reached over and put her hand on my arm. “Are you interested in women?”

  “Why yes, ma’am, I am indeed. And perfectly capable of managing my own love life.”

  She made a sour face. “Just trying to help.”

  “Nope, you’re trying to ask me questions so I won’t ask you questions.”

  “What questions have I not answered?”

  “First, one I haven’t asked. How close were your brother and Father DiAngelo?”

  “Very close. They were the only two priests at St. Jerome’s for years now.”

  “Were they personally close?”

  “When I wondered if you were gay, at least I came out and said it.”

  “Okay. Was Patrick gay?

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. He barely dated in high school, even though he was quite popular. One of the girls he did date asked me once if he had what she politely termed ‘a problem.’ Apparently she all but straddled him when they were at the drive-in one night, but he didn’t take the hint.”

  “He never talked to you about it?”

  “Pat? Tell me he was gay? Never.”

  “Do you think there’s any possibility he and DiAngelo were lovers?”

  She laughed. “Pat and Michael? Together? No way.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Have you met Michael?”

  “Yeah. Friday afternoon. After you called to set it up. He was less than happy to know that you told me about the lobster shack visits, when you played at being tourists.”

  “I’m sure that bugged the shit out of him,” she said. “It was probably the only playful thing he ever did in his whole life. God gave the man good looks but crippled him with a humorless personality. If my fun-loving brother was gay, he never would have hooked up with a stick-in-the-mud like Michael DiAngelo.”

  “Okay then. On to an actual unanswered question. You haven’t told me who the friend was who came to your house yesterday morning. You know, right before you landed in the hospital?”

  “And I’m not going to. Let it be, Joe. Let it be.” She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. “I’m going to rest for a while, okay?”

  Kathleen’s clamped lips left me in the worst possible place—stonewalled in my effort to get more information about what happened to her and, because of her presence, unable to call Leah for an update on the protest and the citizen correspondent craziness. She roused herself when we were a few miles north of Portland. My monosyllabic response to her awakening must have seemed like anger, and maybe she figured me for the kind of guy who would renege on my promise to support her during the emotional trial of her brother’s wake, because she caved when I turned onto on the road that led from the interstate to Riverside.

  “It was Michael,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Father Michael is the friend who came to see me yesterday morning.”

  It had occurred to me that might be the case after Roz told me about Philo’s claim. My suspicion had increased when she acted so certain that Michael and Pat could not have been lovers. Now that she’d admitted it, the next step was delicate.

  “I remember you saying the first time we spoke that the three of you—you, your brother and Father Michael—were like the musketeers.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “Musketeers. It was more like two and a half, because Michael was so reticent.”

  “Was yesterday the first time you saw Father Michael since—since Patrick died?”

  “We spoke on the phone several times this week, but didn’t see each other until he showed up yesterday morning, so sad, and then so mad.”

  “Mad because?”

  “I told you that part yesterday. He was angry because I met him at the door with a tumbler of bourbon in my hand and he could tell it wasn’t my first of the day.”

  I took a deep breath. “Did he lose control, or did you?”

  She pursed her lips, squinted at the sign that told us we were entering Riverside. “We were both upset.”

  “Did he strike you?”

  “I’m sure he would say it was for my own good.” She barked a mirthless laugh. “A lot of people have been using that phrase lately. ‘Trust me, Kathleen, this is for your own good.’”

  She turned her body sideways in the seat to face me.

  “Okay, you’ve managed to pick the scab off the wound, so here’s what happened. He showed up without bothering to warn me that he was coming. I’m sure he thought we would
have a few quiet hours together, talking about Patrick, crying perhaps, grieving together. Instead he found me well on my way to numb. He expressed his displeasure. I told him I had no energy to please anyone. It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other and if alcohol made that possible, so be it.”

  I asked again, in the same quiet voice I’d used the first time. “Did he strike you?”

  “Slapped me,” Kathleen said. “He reached out with an open hand and slapped my face. Not hard, really. Not enough to leave a bruise. But a non-playful slap, to be sure, like he was trying to wake me up—sober me up.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I went nuts. Yelling. Pounded my fists against his chest. Kicked at his shins. Threw my half-full glass at him. He tried to calm me down. Apologized. Pleaded. But I couldn’t pull it together. So he left.”

  “How’d you wind up on the floor?”

  “I slipped. After he left. On an ice cube, I think. I opened the door to yell something at him, but he’d already turned the car around, was pulling onto the street. When I stepped back into the foyer, I slipped and fell.”

  We were a block from St. Jerome’s, and it was almost three o’clock. I was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and felt the need to get in the loop workwise before I could go to the church.

  “Thank you. For what it’s worth, I get why you want to protect Michael from being questioned by the police. But they’re going to keep pushing you to tell them who came to your house, and I think the longer you hold out, the harder it will be. But I won’t tell them. I’ll let you decide how to do that.”

  Silent tears were sliding down her cheeks.

  “Not one thing about this is easy,” she said. “Not one damn thing.”

  * * *

  The hardworking millworkers who’d financed the construction of St. Jerome’s a century and a half earlier hadn’t stinted on making it a beautiful place of worship. The church had two levels. Upstairs was a formal space, with fancy chairs on a broad altar and three aisles of pews that could hold perhaps five hundred people. The soaring ceiling was painted ivory with pale blue accents, and grapevines and flowers were carved into the graceful pillars that reached to its apex. The floor was carpeted in a deep burgundy, and the stained glass windows softened the light that managed to penetrate. A longtime parishioner told me that for most of his years as a member of the congregation, the upstairs church had been packed to the rafters every Sunday, with latecomers relegated to the choir loft. By 2015 it was used only for ceremonial occasions, Patrick’s funeral being one of them.