Extreme Unction: A Lupa Schwartz Mystery

by J. David Core

  Coneely leaned forward to accept the card and said, “I hope it won’t take long. I’ve got to be available from four to five to hear the confessions of the parent’s picking their children up from our parish daycare.”

  Schwartz waved the comment off and said, “Now you can tell me how you didn’t do it and why it is that I should believe you.”

  Coneely’s eyes drew wide. Most men are unaccustomed to being treated with this kind of brashness, and priests especially anticipate reverence from their earthly confederates. Gradually, he came to compose himself, and he began to answer the question. Schwartz did not seem to be in any great hurry. “As, I said,” Coneely began, but he stopped himself in mid-thought. “It would be easier to give you helpful information if I knew what you know of the case already. I haven’t read the newspaper accounts yet myself,” he stammered.

  “According to the papers,” Schwartz said, “the dead man had been dying of progressive bone cancer, Hodgkins Disease and leukemia for some years. Lately, however, the pain had become such that Hanson had asked his family to put him out of his misery. Several of the family members wanted to help, but they were handicapped by the law. A son, Carl Hanson, contacted you, their parish pastor; having been aware of your vocal stance in support of euthanasia. Several family members requested that the media be brought in to see how badly their father suffered, and you would be their media liaison. One sister — however — Peggy, was strongly opposed to martyring their father to your cause, and at the photo op, she made her position clear in a flurry of feminine tears.

  “The papers then report that after the press conference, you remained behind with several of the sons and one of the daughters to console with them about their father. During the course of the night, you suggested that there might be a way to put the elder Hanson down that nobody would suspect. You then laid out a plan whereby you could put poison in some holy oil and anoint the sick man with it while protecting yourself with a layer of candle wax, which you surmised that the poison could not penetrate.

  “A few days later, you were called upon to minister last rites, and shortly after, Mr. Hanson died. The daughter, Peggy, who had been so opposed to the idea of martyring their father, insisted on an autopsy, and it was found that the oil with which you had anointed the dead man was laced with a banned insecticide called Chlordane, which is toxic when absorbed through the skin, and that was determined to be the cause of death. That’s all that I know. Did the papers miss anything?”

  “Not much,” Coneely admitted. “It sounds as if they haven’t left much doubt to my guilt.” He chuckled nervously at his own bad joke, and Schwartz absently said, “Yes.”

  There was a short silence, which was quickly filled by the police Detective. “Well, there are still holes in any prosecution of this case,” he said in a manner uncharacteristic of the police. “For example, according to the time table, there’s the lag between the sacrament and the fatal convulsion which was witnessed by two of the man’s children, and how could Coneely have gotten Chlordane, and why would he have broadcast a plan like that if he really intended to carry it out?”

  The Detective’s interruption changed the dynamic of the interrogation, so I (with my reporter’s training) jumped in at this point. “How else could the Chlordane have gotten into the oil?”

  Coneely fielded this one. “I’ve been thinking about that.” He said. “Isn’t it possible that somebody else could have gone over the anointed spots with a heavier concentration of poison to oil after I’d left? I mean, like the Detective says, he did die some time later.”

  “Chlordane, as I understand from the Detective,” Schwartz said, “Does not act instantly.”

  “Considering the size of the dose and the condition of the victim at the time the poison was administered,” Officer Johns said, “The time lapse is considerable. I spoke about it with the coroner. She says death should have been quicker than the time frames involved if Fr. Coneely dosed him during the ceremony.”

  “Is that definitive?” Schwartz asked. “By that I mean — would a jury be convinced that it would have been impossible for Mr. Hanson to have survived his poisoning for the length of time in question?”

  “You’d have to ask the coroner that,” Johns said. “I don’t know. It’s not my field.”

  Schwartz turned to Coneely and pointedly said, “Very well, we’ve tentatively established that somebody else could have had opportunity, and that some of his children may have had the motive of wishing to end his suffering. However, that is not enough to vindicate you. If it is true that anybody on the premises might have had opportunity to return to the sick room and discharge the poison, I need to know the circumstances that followed your administering extreme unction.”

  “I can’t help you there very much,” Coneely said. “I left almost immediately.”

  Johns sighed. “That’s a good thing,” he said. “If you weren’t there, you couldn’t have gone back to lace the anointed sites with Chlordane.”

  Schwartz pressed on. “You say ‘almost immediately.’ How long were you there once the ceremony had concluded?”

  “Maybe ten minutes,” Coneely guessed. “Maybe fifteen. It’s hard to say exactly. The few of us who were in the room for the sacrament left Mr. Hanson’s side. He was sleeping most of whole time. You see, it isn’t necessary for the supplicant to participate,” Coneely added in anticipation of Schwartz’s next question. “We often minister last rites to people in coma or who are otherwise unable to participate, and recently, Mr. Hanson had been showing signs of dementia.”

  “You personally witnessed his dementia?” Schwartz asked. “You consider yourself capable of diagnosing another person’s mental state?”

  “No,” Coneely said defensively. “His son Matthew told me. At any rate, we moved on to the hall where Monsignor Donatelli was waiting. He was the former priest of the parish. He’d heard of Mr. Hanson’s condition, and he asked if he might tag along to help console the family. Anyway, we’d all chatted for a few minutes when Peggy started to make a little bit of a scene, so Fr. Donatelli and I went home.”

  “So at no time were you alone with the victim?” Detective Johns asked.

  “No, not completely,” Coneely said. “But I am the one who anointed him in the first place.”

  “When you were gathered with the family in the hall,” Schwartz began, “did you at any time shake hands or in any way touch anybody else?”

  Coneely thought. “I can’t remember. I don’t think so. I don’t recall touching anyone.”

  “Did you open the door for yourself” Schwartz asked.

  “No, Fr. Donatelli opened the door for me. I did open my door at the car though, but Fr. Donatelli was driving, so I didn’t touch the wheel. Do you think that if they check the door handle for Chlordane it will help prove my case when none is found?”

  “It’s doubtful since you could have opened the door with either hand or you could have since returned to the car and scrubbed the handle clean.” Schwartz pinched his lips between his left two first fingers. “Can you list for me the identities of all of the parties present in the house while you were there that evening?”

  As I sat listening to Coneely run through the cast of characters, I thought back to the numerous times my own father had sat listening in as the exposition of a plot was laid out, and I remembered what an admirer had once told me at a book signing. She’d said that Miller’s Analogies would do well to add this question to their entrance exam for journalism and creative writing students: Watson is to Holmes as my father is to…? To which the answer would, of course, of course been Schwartz’s grandfather.

  In my naive hubris, I fantasized this analogy on a future exam changed to include my name with Schwartz’s. I thought what a hoot that would be. What fun to experience the thrill of the hunt from practically the same vantage of my famous forebear. And I hope that it will be fun for you, the reader. For me, it turned out to be anything but.

  Coneely finally concluded his
run-through of other possible candidates to take his place as primary suspect, and Schwartz thanked both him and Detective Johns for submitting to his questions. He then turned to me and said, “Ms. Hoskin, if you would be so kind as to wait here while I see these gentlemen out. I’d like to speak with you for a few moments. Could you give me a few minutes?”

  I nodded, and the three men left me alone in the investigator’s private study. I was on my own for several minutes, and I took the opportunity to make mental comparisons between the offices of Schwartz and his celebrated ascendant. My father had so thoroughly described the interior of his employer’s office in his accounts of their exploits, that I had a vivid mental picture to work from. Whereas that office had been heavily appointed with extra chairs of various design to accommodate the large crowds he often gathered at the denouement of his investigations, Schwartz’s had only three chairs and a small couch which were designed and positioned for symmetry and to accent the room rather than to proclaim their function.

  Not that Schwartz couldn’t accommodate a large crowd in his study if the need were to arise. The far wall was the inner side of a turret tower, a five paneled semi-circular set of widows with window seats at the three central panels. There were several potted and hanging plants at the pane next to where I sat, and at the window across from it, there was a fully stocked wet-bar. Next to the bar was a C.D. rack, then the first door to the dining room. In that respect, Schwartz was very like his grandfather in that they both made food a focal point of their lives, but Schwartz ate more carefully and was much better built.

  The center of the room was an open space set off with a glorious Asian rug. Each piece of furniture had been chosen or later upholstered to match and further set off that beautiful carpet. The sparse furnishings and bric-a-brac were intentionally placed in such a way that they did not distract from and even complimented some feature of the floor covering. Even the crystal on the wet-bar was etched in a subtle pattern almost mimicking the pattern in the weave of the rug. Gradually, I came to find the pattern everywhere. The curtains, the etching on the borders of the window glass, the computer shell, the wall paper, even the selection of plants seemed dependent on their ability to grow leaves which would not clash with the pattern woven into the central broadloom.

  So Schwartz enjoyed decorating, or he allowed someone who did to plot out his office. The latter seemed more likely, and given the care taken to create a living space and not just a functional work space, I was sure that person had been a woman; which was the primary difference between the two men in question. One hated the presence of women, and he only tolerated them when it was truly critical; the other, however, loved women, and he often sought out excuses to keep them around. I wondered if this was why I’d been invited to stay. Now that he’d seen me, had he been attracted by my charms? At the risk of sounding vain, I have had my share of suitors. My mother was a beauty, and my father was quite handsome. Some of it had to rub off on me.

  This thought began to make me very nervous. Schwartz had a reputation as a lady’s man; though he was by no means considered sexist. With the exception of his lawyer, almost everyone he’d ever brought into his employ was a woman — even his personal mechanic. But some considered the stable that worked under him to be a harem; his own personal Charlie’s Angels. I had no intention of joining his posse.

  As I considered my situation, I stood to examine the entertainment case. The C.D.s were all in their original cases, so I read through the spines. I had wanted to examine his musical tastes, but the discs were all comedy records; George Carlin, Jack Benny, Bill Cosby, Lenny Bruce, Andy Griffith, Eddie Murphy and Woody Allen. He had Cheech & Chong and Tom Lehrer. There were digital re-masters of old radio sketches by Abbott & Costello and by Burns & Allen. I moved to the book shelf behind his desk. There was a dictionary and a Gray's Anatomy, but the rest of the books were comedy as well. Douglas Adams and Dennis Miller — The Hitch-hikers’ series and the Rants were the whole first shelf. Other writers he seemed to admire included John Kennedy Toole, Leonard Wibberley, Art Buchwald and Steve Allen. The bottom shelves were all videos; Monty Python and Woody Allen mostly, but also The Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, W.C. Fields, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks and It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I was reading the cast list on that last when he re-entered the room.

  “Do you enjoy comedy, Ms. Hoskin?” he asked.

  “Not exclusively,” I answered. “You have a very nice collection though. I’m especially impressed by the Wibberly.”

  “Yes,” he said. “The Mouse That Roared is one of the finest satires of our lifetimes.”

  “Your lifetime, maybe,” I said. “I’m still just a kitten.”

  “Touché,” he said as he sat at one of the conferring chairs before his desk. This was, of course, another difference between the two men. While his grandfather preferred to dominate any consultation, Schwartz was willing (when the mood called for it) to be insinuated into the conversation. I decided to take advantage of my happenstance position behind his desk, and I sat injudiciously in his own seat.

  Chapter 3

  Schwartz smiled with satisfaction. “I know,” he began, “that you are dying to ask me three questions. First, you want to know why I accepted this job with the city of Pittsburgh for a client instead of the diocese; second, you want to know why I changed my mind about letting you do a story on me; and third, you want to know why I don’t wish to discuss my grandfather. Am I correct?”

  I nodded. “You got the questions right, but not the order exactly. Why don’t you want to discuss him?”

  He leaned forward. “If I told you, that would be discussing it. However, after having met you, and seeing the clever way you got access to my house, I decided it would be fun to play up the relationship of our forebears in the press. Besides, perhaps I can use you. I assume you have some of your father’s gumshoe skills and instincts. After all, reporting is a form of detective work. Also, I’m sure that you have connections and resources at the magazine that you work for which could prove useful. I’m proposing a tit-for-tat relationship. You get dibs on a great story, and I get access to pick through your sources.”

  “How do I know it’s going to be a great story?” I asked.

  “With me,” he answered, “it’s always a great story. Besides, you heard the particulars. It’s already shown its promise. Now, what do you say? Do we have a deal?”

  Again I nodded, but I did not reach across the desk for a handshake. Schwartz’s grandfather never shook hands, so I was a little put-off when Schwartz’s hand extended across the desk as he stood to seal the deal. We shook, and the deal now sealed, I sat forward to press the final remaining point. “So why did you accept the job from the city, but refuse the same job from the diocese?”

  “Well phrased,” Schwartz said unctuously unmindful of the fact that my phrasing was simply a reconstruction of his own. “But,” he said “a better question to answer would be why did the city offer me the job at all? You see,” he said as he leaned back languorously in his seat, “the police are faced with a predicament. The man they are almost certain to have to charge in this case is not only a priest, but he is the face of the local euthanasia movement. As such, he enjoys the devotion of two large sub-constituencies, one secular and one religion based. Should the authorities be forced to charge him, they want to be doing it with the full faith support of at least one of those sub-sects. If I prove that Coneely is guilty, the church will not defend him, and the pro-euthanasia people will enjoy having him to replace Kevorkian as their favorite martyr. On the other hand, if I prove that someone else did it, then the police will have lifted a huge burden from the shoulders of the church, and they can proceed with a proper prosecution unimpeded from either side.”

  “So why don’t they just investigate on those grounds themselves?” I asked.

  “Because both groups will try to stonewall an official investigation — though for two entirely different motives. Also, because if Coneely is the guy, they wa
nt the finger pointing to be coming from outside the official channels. Even so, they will continue a by-the-book police investigation regardless of having hired me.”

  “So why,” I asked, “wouldn’t you take the case from the diocese? You could have accomplished the same thing for the police and saved the city your fee.”

  “I don’t accept work from churches. Not from the Catholics, not from the Jews, and not from any other of organized faith’s thugs. Religion means dogma, and dogmas mean abandonment of reason. Consequently, the patriarchy of these churches become overly confident and powerful. They lose sight of their own purposes and posit to defend their positions at the expense of truth. As a young man on the peninsula, I once did a job for a rabbi. A friend of his was vindicated of certain charges as a result of my diligence, but he sold me out rather than sacrifice some dogma. Consequently, some people dear to me were hurt, killed actually. No, I won’t work for a church.”

  “You’re talking about our parents, aren’t you?” I said. My own had died in the same attack.

  “Yes,” he answered, and the weight in that single word told me that I shouldn’t ask more on the subject.

  “So,” I said, “you hate churches? Is that why you called Coneely ‘mister’ rather than ‘father?’”

  “I called him ‘mister’ because he came unannounced, uninvited and on personal rather than church business. As to the first two points, they apply to you as well. Perhaps I’ll call you ‘mister’ also.” He smiled at his own joke. Obviously watching, reading and listening to all of that comedy hadn’t rubbed off any. “Actually, I never call priests ‘father.’ Neither do I call nuns ‘sister’ nor monks ‘brother.’ I’ll call a policeman on duty ‘officer’ or ‘detective,’ and a member of the military I’ll refer to by rank when he or she prefers it. Also, I’ll call a doctor of medicine ‘doctor.’ Beyond that, I’ll use the terms mister, and missus, ms. or miss as the party prefers. I see your eyes roll. I don’t consider it a lack of respect. It’s simply that I refuse to be manipulated by the haphazard rules of speech-etiquette. Certainly, for example, a person who devotes his or her life to the care of the sick or indigent deserves more nominal courtesy than one who devotes his or her life to the study of gemstones; yet an unregistered private healthcare giver such as one might find in numerous homes for the elderly or mentally challenged in this country is never called doctor, while a second rate college professor at a geological college is.”