Marked for Murder: The Father Koesler Mysteries: fk-10 Page 27

  Bush had begun bordello life as a curiosity. Chances are there might have been in that house the traditional hooker with a heart of gold—some kind woman who might have protected and mothered him. But Bush bucked odds all his life. Instead of being sheltered and protected, he was treated as a joke. Upon arrival at the house, he was introduced to each and every fact of life by a series of the inhabitants. He was encouraged to—or at least no one seemed to mind if he did—surreptitiously watch from hiding places as the girls plied their trade. He knew what a condom was before he was able to spell the word.

  While the parents of other children his age were insisting on the completion of homework, Arnold was running errands for the women as well as for their customers. As a final obscenity, Arnold was taught how to satisfy clients who preferred boys as sexual partners. He was allowed to keep a small percentage of what he earned.

  At a comparable age and at almost the same time, Koesler was a seventh grader in a parochial school. He had loving parents who lavished attention on him. He had older sisters who included him in their lives. He lived in a protective cocoon.

  At about the time Bush was learning how to turn a trick with a John, Koesler was in a seminary, further insulated from the world, the flesh, and the devil.

  As his narration continued, Bush congratulated himself on his judgment of character. This priest was exactly what Bush had hoped him to be. No yelling, no table-pounding, no widened eyes, no fingerwagging. He just sat and listened. Perfect. Maybe, you never know—and at this point it could go either way—but, maybe he could tell this priest the whole thing. Get it all off his mind.

  Koesler, for his part, was all but spellbound by the tale. He’d read of lives like this. But he had never actually known anyone who had spent his tenderest formative years in a milieu where immorality was so pervasive it became merely amoral. As the priest listened, he tried to imagine what effect such an upbringing might have on a person. What sort of adult would develop from so bizarre a background? What moral values could possibly endure the immoral soil in which this grew? What sort of attitude would such a person harbor toward women in general, when the women among whom he grew up used and abused him so shamefully?

  As Bush continued his story about a life that had taken every possible wrong turn, Koesler, not pressed to respond, started to see something develop in Bush. It was not sharply at first. But then it began to take shape. A likeness. To whom? If one were to put . . . a collar . . . a roman collar . . . a clerical vest, on Bush, he would look very much like—no, he would look exactly like—Dick Kramer.

  Odd that it had not occurred to him before. Both men were blond. Both were of stocky build. But most of all, facially they were so alike.

  Then his mind took another turn. Something had been bothering him. A question. How . . . how something—oh, yes—how was it possible for two eyewitnesses . . . Who were they again? Adelle and Ruby . . . His train of thought leapfrogged. Adelle had seen the killer from a distance of several yards. Ruby had seen him from only a few feet away. Both women had identified Father Kramer in the show-up. Ruby, who’d had the best vantage, had been the more certain of the two. They both had identified Kramer. And they were both wrong. But—and this had been his problem—how could they have been so mistaken? That policeman, Mangiapane, had told Koesler about the police officer lookalike in the show-up. The women had had some difficulty making the identification because of him.

  How well would they have done, Koesler wondered, if Arnold Bush had been in that show-up? Could they have told the difference between a similarly dressed Bush and Kramer? And would they have been so sure of themselves? Koesler thought not. He wondered if there were any possibility of repeating the show-up with Arnold entered in the sweepstakes. It might be worth inquiring into.

  Now, nearing the end of his account, Bush decided to include the episode in this very room with Agnes Blondell.

  Mention of the Blondell woman wrenched Koesler from his distraction.

  Bush confided how confused he had been when Agnes had taken the initiative and arranged the date. How he’d tried to be a perfect gentleman. Even when she had come up to his apartment, he’d had no intention of taking advantage of her. Then, out of the blue, she had come on to him. And when he responded, she had gotten on her high horse and left. Only to spread cruel and vicious rumors about him. And it had been her fault entirely. He’d had nothing to do with it. Merely responded.

  And that, Bush concluded, is how he had come to meet Koesler. Which, as far as Bush was concerned, proved that good could come out of bad.

  As he spoke, Koesler could well imagine how, with his history, Bush might have reacted to a woman who was foolish enough to toy with his emotions. It might well have been, thought Koesler, very lucky for Agnes Blondell that she had escaped from that encounter. And that thought led to another. But again, Koesler was not quite able to bring the new concept into focus. Possibly he might have, had Bush not interrupted his thinking process by addressing him with a direct question: “You haven’t eaten all your corned beef. Didn’t you like it?”

  Koesler started. “Oh, too much cabbage, I guess. That happens. Especially when you like cabbage as much as I do.”

  “Well, then, all done?”

  “Yes. Yes, indeed.” Koesler glanced at his watch. It was almost time to leave if he was going to catch at least part of the parish council meeting.

  “Just some dessert then.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t. I really must go.” Koesler was convinced he had paid his dues this evening. Bush had said he needed Koesler—“now.” And he’d had him. Koesler was sure all Bush had wanted or needed was to talk this out—tell someone. Now, thought Koesler, it was over.

  “Just some Jell-O,” Bush fairly pleaded. “I made it myself”

  How else, Koesler wondered, would one get Jell-O without making it oneself “Well, okay. They say there’s always room for Jell-O. I guess there must always be time for it, too.”

  With a satisfied look, Bush cleared the few dishes from the small table. Then he went to his small, portable fridge to get the Jell-O. Things were such, and space so limited, that it appeared that Bush was going to require a few minutes to get the Jell-O on the table.

  Koesler, filled with cabbage at lease, felt the urge to stand and stretch a bit. There wasn’t much space in which to walk nor was there much to capture one’s attention. Except the pictures.

  Koesler, perhaps instinctively, went to the “religious” art. Arguably, in this assemblage there wasn’t much from which to choose. If only because he’d seen these saccharine monstrosities too often, he turned to the photos taken by Bush’s technician friend.

  He went rather rapidly from one to the next. He recognized some of the prints from the medical examiner’s files, though he had to admit he had not spent that much time looking at them yesterday morning in Dr. Moellmann’s office.

  Once again, Koesler puzzled over the sheer brutality of these attacks, the violence done to the bodies of the victims.

  “Dessert’s ready.”

  Just as well. He’d had quite enough of Bush’s version of Pictures at an Exhibition. Koesler could not help but think of Spiro Agnew’s aristocratic comment when scheduled to tour a slum: “If you’ve seen one slum you’ve seen them all.” Overwhelmed by these pictures, Koesler was about to paraphrase Agnew: When you’ve seen one mutilated prostitute, you’ve seen them all.

  Of course this was not true, unless one were dealing with this specific case where each victim had been brutalized in identical ways. The bruised neck, the evisceration, the branding.

  He returned to the series of framed pictures and stood staring at them.

  Bush looked up from his chair at the table. “Is something wrong?”

  There was no response. Bush tried again. “Is something the matter?”

  “Something is wrong,” Koesler said slowly. “Something is very, very, very wrong.”

  Bush joined Koesler. “What is it?”

  “These p
ictures here.” Koesler pointed to a series of prints, the latest additions to the gallery. “These are photos of the latest victim, Mae Dixon, aren’t they?”

  Bush did not need to study the pictures. He knew them well. “Yes, Mae Dixon. So?”

  “There’s a progression to these photos. The first ones—these, up higher here—were taken in the apartment. Of her in the bathtub, I suppose.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the later ones, down here, one row lower: These were taken at the mortuary.”

  “So?”

  “There are two photos that were not taken by the technician.”

  Bush began to perspire.

  “Those two photos were taken by the killer.”

  Koesler waited, but Bush said nothing.

  Koesler continued. “I had to look very closely because the angle is different from the other photos. But if you check carefully, there’s something missing. In these two pictures, Mae Dixon has not yet been branded. The picture seems to be taken from a higher angle, almost overhead. But it does show enough of the poor woman’s breast so you can see that the brand mark should be there. Right here.” Koesler touched the photo. “But it isn’t. Mae Dixon, at this time, at the time this photo was taken, was dead. She’d been strangled. And she’d been cut open. But she had not been branded. The other photos show that she was, indeed, branded. But not now, not when this picture was taken. There’s only one explanation: The murderer took this picture between the time he strangled and cut her and the time that he branded her.”

  Koesler looked long at Bush, who remained silent. “You did this, Arnold. You strangled her. You cut her open. You took this picture. And then you branded her.”

  Bush took his seat again at the table. He took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He removed a cigarette and dropped the pack on the table. He tapped the cigarette several times on the tabletop. He placed the cigarette at the edge of his lips and lit it. He inhaled deeply, then let the smoke escape slowly through his nostrils. It was a most reflexive routine. Every action indicated that he was carefully considering his response to Koesler’s charge.

  “What if I didn’t take those two pictures?” he said finally.

  “Then who took them? Who did you get them from, Arnold? Whoever took them murdered Mae Dixon.”

  Bush pinched off another deep drag on his cigarette. Who? Who could he have gotten them from? No matter who he named they would, of course, check. And they would find that the accusation was false. There was no one to blame—no one but himself.

  “Stupid,” Bush murmured. “Stupid. I wanted my own pictures. Everything else was mine. The plan. It was a good plan. It was maybe a perfect plan. Everything else. The tools. Everything was mine. I wanted my own picture. Stupid!” He spat out the final word.

  Koesler waited, but Bush added nothing more. “Not only that,” Koesler picked up, “but you involved an innocent man and a priest besides. You set him up, didn’t you, Arnold? Poor Father Kramer has been publicly humiliated and imprisoned because of you. He could have been convicted. He would have spent a great number of years—maybe the rest of his life—in prison. Arnold, how could you have done this?”

  But Bush was no longer listening. He was retracing in his memory the painstaking preparations he’d made. How carefully he had plotted the whole thing. And for what? For what?

  Father Koesler was numb. He would not have expected to be. He would have expected to be delighted, triumphant. There was never a doubt in his mind that Dick Kramer was innocent of these crimes. But, from time to time, Koesler had doubted that he or anyone else would be able to set the record straight and clear the priest. Never had this depression been more deep than just yesterday when he had learned that not only did Lieutenant Tully believe Kramer guilty, but that this opinion was shared by Dr. Moellmann and even Inspector Koznicki. Now this was all changed. It was nothing less than Divine Providence that had come to his aid. A miracle of sorts.

  Meeting Arnold Bush. What a spectacular accident! Agnes Blondell, out of nowhere, leading him almost by the nose to the basement of the morgue, where he had been introduced to Arnold Bush. Lunch in Greektown. All Arnold had been looking for was a non-judgmental priest. Not that impossible to find, especially in this day and age.

  So he’d listened to Bush. Then the call late last night. His strong inclination to postpone the dinner invitation into infinity. But Bush had been insistent—and there was Koesler’s reluctance to refuse anyone. Then, dinner tonight. One last look at the photo study of the mutilated prostitutes. The very last second glance at those pictures and spotting the fatal flaw.

  Especially that he, Father Koesler, should spot the final clue. He who had always been so poor at paying attention to detail.

  Yes, if it was not a miracle in the technical sense, surely in a more popular sense it was miraculous.

  At any point, this easily might not have happened. Had he been in the lobby of the morgue seconds earlier or later, Agnes Blondell would have missed him. Had he firmly refused Arnold’s dinner invitation, he never would have suspected, let alone stumbled upon, the telltale pictures.

  And if none of this had happened, like as not the doomsday predictions of almost everyone else would have come to pass. Father Kramer probably would have been convicted.

  So why didn’t he feel better? Why was there no ebullience?

  Koesler was not sure. Maybe because he was forced to trade one soul for another. What had Bush become that had not been programmed beyond his power to control? What a painfully shameful way to treat a child! Shuffled from home to home, ending in a brothel. How much genuine responsibility did Arnold Bush have to shoulder for his crimes? How guilty was he in the eyes of God, the most understanding judge of all?

  It was, any way it could be considered, a tragedy.

  Perhaps that was why there was neither relief nor joy in Koesler’s heart. He had simply traded one tragedy for another.

  Meanwhile three innocent women had become homicide victims. The time had come to pay the price.

  Bush lit another cigarette. All evening, at great personal discomfort, he had abstained from smoking for the sake of his party for the priest. It no longer mattered. In a short while his life of freedom, such as it was, would be at an end. The police would be here. Called by the priest.

  Called by the priest?

  Bush had killed before. Could he not do it again? With this priest out of the way he would be free.

  It was a consideration.

  But, in the end, no more than a consideration. It was one thing to snuff out a whore. Whores had snuffed out his youth often enough. It was quite another thing to kill a priest. No, he was deeply enough into this without descending further.

  Whether he had picked up the vibration of Bush’s thoughts or not, Koesler hastily moved to the phone. He thought briefly of dialing 911, the emergency number. He dialed the home of Inspector Koznicki.

  38

  It had been a frenzied evening. All in all, a memorable night.

  Inspector Koznicki had arrived at the Bush apartment within a half-hour of Father Koesler’s call. However, the first to arrive had been the uniformed police Koznicki had sent to secure the scene and begin the necessary procedures of arrest and the gathering of evidence. Then it had become a chain reaction. Koznicki had been followed by Lieutenant Tully, whom the inspector had called. Then came Officer Mangiapane whom Tully had summoned.

  The Miranda Warning was given and a now sullen Arnold Bush interrogated. He waived his right to have an attorney present. Still, he was less than cooperative. Most questions were answered with monosyllabic grunts.

  When the police technicians arrived, Koesler and Koznicki left. By mutual agreement, they regrouped at Norman’s Eton Street Station, a converted early railroad station managed by James McIntyre, one of Koesler’s parishioners. Besides being a good restaurant, Norman’s afforded Koesler undisturbed seclusion. The manager saw to that. Before leaving Bush’s apartment, Koznicki invited both Tully
and Mangiapane to join them at Norman’s once the statement had been taken and the booking and processing had been completed at headquarters.

  Mangiapane had been flattered by the invitation. Tully would much have preferred to skip the engagement, but, from long association, he could tell when one of Koznicki’s courtly invitations was, in reality, a command performance.

  As yet alone, Koesler and Koznicki had been seated at a balcony table. Most of that section had been vacated by that hour of the evening. Koesler nursed a glass of Chablis while Koznicki sipped a port.

  “What will happen now?” Koesler asked. “I mean, to Arnold Bush?”

  “To Bush? I assume he will be charged with murder in the first degree. Three counts. It seemed that he was ready to confess to that charge when we were at his apartment, although he said too little for us to know what the outcome will be.” Koznicki glanced at his watch. “They should have taken his statement by now.”

  “And Father Kramer?”

  Koznicki brightened. “He should be freed tomorrow morning. One of two things could happen: His attorney could request a writ of habeas corpus, a move he could make tonight. But I doubt he will do that either tonight or tomorrow. More probably, he will wait for our recommendation, after which the prosecutor’s office will move to dismiss the charges against Father Kramer.”

  “And then he will be free?”

  “And then he will be free.” Koznicki looked intently at the priest. “I must say I find your reaction to all this somewhat surprising, Father. You discovered the evidence that will clear Father Kramer. His freedom has been your goal from the outset. And now to be the instrument that accomplishes that goal . . . well, I should think you would be extremely happy. But I must say you are not the picture of joy.”

  Koesler smiled. “Sorry, Inspector. You’re right: I should be happier than I am. And I don’t know whether I can even explain. I guess I just don’t do very well in the abstract.”

  “The abstract?”

  “I didn’t realize it all these years, but my notion of jail and imprisonment was an abstract perception. I’ve seen jails in movies and on TV. I’ve read about people being imprisoned by rightful authority and by tyrants and terrorists. I’ve visited people in prison. But it wasn’t until I visited Dick Kramer in jail that the reality hit me. I think I might be able to adjust to almost everything about prison life except the essence of it all—being locked away. Lacking the freedom to . . . be free.