Dead Wrong Page 28

  “Yes.”

  “So what brings you here, Father?” Hansen switched on his tape recorder as he moved closer to the priest.

  Koesler’s reaction was one of gratitude. Rod Hansen’s traplike memory had pulled up his name from previous episodes with the local media. But obviously Hansen was unaware that Koesler and Maureen were related. Otherwise, the priest’s telephone would have been ringing this morning. As long as he could keep the relationship quiet, there was a good chance he would move through this storm unscathed.

  “Well,” Koesler said, “in a sense you’re right, Rod. The Monahans and I go back a long way. I think they kind of expect me to come. At any rate, I’ll soon find out.”

  Leaving the reporter standing at the curb aiming his recorder at a departing back, Koesler climbed the steps and rang the doorbell. He prayed Maureen would let him in. Otherwise he would be forced to deal with Rod Hansen once more. Faced with such an astute reporter, Koesler knew he would soon run out of evasive statements. He had no intention of lying to the reporter. But neither did he want to be hounded.

  He breathed a sigh of relief as the door was opened. “You’re lucky,” Maureen said. “I didn’t intend to answer the phone or the door all day. But I hadn’t counted on a priest and a cousin as well. Come on in.”

  As Koesler stepped inside, he glanced back in time to see Hansen shrug. As Maureen closed the door, the reporter entered his car and drove off.

  INSIDE THE HOUSE it was more like the dead of night than morning. All the blinds were closed and the draperies drawn. Lights were turned on. The only sound came from the whir of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

  He entered the living room, to find Brenda seated on the couch. Maureen joined her. Koesler sat opposite them in an upholstered chair. “Everybody’s here but Mary Lou,” he said.

  “She was here,” Maureen said, “earlier. She left quite a while ago.”

  “In a huff?”

  Both Maureen and Brenda looked at him with interest. “What makes you say that?” Maureen asked.

  “Earlier this morning,” he said, “after I heard the news, a whole bunch of scattered thoughts, suppositions, theories, what-ifs, began to fall into place. Now I can think of more than one reason why Mary Lou left in a huff. Maybe why she may not be back.

  “I haven’t filled in every single space,” he explained, “but I think I’m close.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Suppose I tell you the story the way I have it figured out. And you tell me if I’m wrong. You might even fill in those blanks that are left.”

  Maureen and Brenda looked at each other, then returned their gaze to Koesler. “Okay,” Maureen said. “Go ahead.”

  Koesler settled back in the chair that was much more comfortable than it appeared. “Let me begin at the end—the break-in and murder in the chancery building the night before last.”

  Brenda shot an “I-told-your-so” look at Maureen.

  “A number of things about that whole mess sort of begged for somebody to make sense of,” Koesler said. “It occurred to me as the investigation proceeded that it was the head of your department, Brenda, who put these documents in the archives. I found that interesting. Also interesting was that the archives are on the same floor as your office. So, if you wanted to, you could have provided a key to the chancery’s door as well as the combination that would get somebody through security to the third floor, where your office and the archives are located.”

  “Lots of people could have provided as much. Or the intruder could have obtained the information from any number of sources,” Maureen objected.

  “Uh-huh,” Koesler admitted. “But there’s more. The presence of the security guard. Under ordinary circumstances, no guard would have been there. But the cleaning people demanded added protection as long as those valuable papers were in the building. How did they hear about the danger? All they’ve said is, ‘There was talk.’ I wondered, was it your boss, Mr. McGraw, who put out that word, Brenda … perhaps prompted by you?”

  “It—”

  “Then there was the killer,” Koesler said, cutting off Brenda’s attempted reply. “The police have since identified him as Rick Chardon. The possibility that Chardon is the same person who killed a young woman thirty-three years ago—coincidence? Inspector Koznicki is trying to establish the connection.

  “Now I was trying to figure out some connection between the two crimes besides the apparent motive that Chardon was trying to steal the land purchase documents. After Mr. Maher provided me with at least a partial list of items stored in the archives, I started wondering: What if both crimes were related to some sort of records?

  “In the case of the girl who was killed thirty-three years ago—Agnes Ventimiglia—she worked in a county office that dealt almost exclusively in records—birth, death, marriage. Among the things contained in the archives are microfilms of parish records—including baptismal records. What if that’s the relationship?

  “So far, Brenda, we have the possible use of your key, your ease of entry, your floor, documents that belong to your department—all this leading up to the possible theft or destruction of what—a baptismal record? By a person who is also the probable killer of a young woman in charge of birth records that go back to the time and place of your birth. What a coincidence!”

  The two women were gazing at Koesler, Maureen with a frown, Brenda with what Koesler took to be a slight smile.

  “The question I asked myself then,” Koesler continued, “is ‘Why?’ What is there about these records? Why would they involve murder—the first very premeditated, the second a matter of necessity?

  “That led me to consider what happened to you, Maureen. At the time you were dating Charles Nash, I was pretty completely preoccupied with my pastoral duties. But Oona and Eileen have recently filled me in. So I’m aware of how deeply involved you were with Charlie. You expected—understandably, I might add—him to marry you. Then you became pregnant. And he was the father of your unborn child.

  “But, he dumped you—brutally. You were filled with shame and anger and,” his voice softened, “I suppose a measure of despair. But,” he added, “it looks as if in your emotional reaction, that anger won out.”

  He looked at her questioningly. But Maureen, her face a mask, merely gazed at him wordlessly.

  Koesler pushed on. “You went away to Chicago during your pregnancy. You returned to Detroit for the birth of your baby. Undoubtedly, you loved your baby as much as any other mother. Other than that, you were one deeply angry young woman—especially when you discovered that Charlie had had a family even before he began seeing you. And that he’d kept hidden from you the existence of a wife and a son.

  “You would be the only source of information for the recording of your child’s birth. I can’t think of a single reason why you would not have listed Charles Nash as the father of your baby.” He paused, but with no response from Maureen, picked up the thread of his speech.

  “Now, I must admit I’ve never seen a copy of that birth record, but I would be powerfully surprised at this point, with everything that’s happened since, if that record doesn’t show ‘Father unknown.’”

  No reaction from either woman. In the absence of any response, Koesler assumed he was on the right track. “If you supplied the father’s name, Maureen, and later the record was changed, who but the father—Charlie Nash—would have been responsible for the alteration? What if he hired Chardon, and Chardon provided the ‘romance’ that filled that unfortunate young woman’s last days? What if in return for that ‘gift’ of ‘love,’ Chardon required—that Agnes remove Charles’s name from the birth record …?

  “Since Agnes was killed at the end of November, the month of your child’s birth, the record would have been altered around about that time. I know that at the end of each month, copies of that month’s records are forwarded to Lansing to be kept at the State Capital. That’s why they had to get Agnes to alter the record before December. It also explains why they would k
ill her then. They had no further use for her.

  “But you wouldn’t have known all this. And good Catholic that you are, you would have had your daughter baptized. Now here’s a record that would present a considerable challenge to tamper with. For one thing, no priest would allow it. But beyond that, you could select any parish you wished and Nash would have the devil’s own time tracking down the parish of baptism. And his name definitely would be on that record.

  “Now, why would Chardon be trying to get to this record in the archives? I’ll bet if we looked up that record in the archives and found the church of baptism—and that would be easy enough—I’ll bet we’d find that something had happened to change or destroy the original baptism record in the actual parish.

  “Not that many people knew about that microfilming program. So I’m assuming—and I’m sure I’m correct—Nash had something done to the parish record, thought he could rest easy, then found that the record still existed in the archives. Thus, Chardon again.

  “But there’s one more twist to this story, I do believe, Maureen.” Again he paused, this time seeming to look off into the distance. The two women didn’t know whether he was thinking or, possibly, praying.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever come close to gauging just how deeply and totally you hated Charlie Nash, Maureen …” He turned back to her.

  “… nor how deeply determined you were to have revenge—the most complete revenge I have ever encountered.” He shook his head.

  “At one point, you may have contemplated seeking a mind-boggling child support from Nash. But after you discovered that Charlie had gone so far as to have your daughter’s birth record altered …” He paused. “When did you discover that, anyway?” Maureen’s only response was a shrug. After a moment, Koesler went on. “At any rate, whenever you discovered it—and possibly even the concomitant murder of an innocent young woman further motivated you—you started on your careful, painstaking long-range plan of revenge.

  “When it finally dawned on me what you’ve done, I couldn’t believe it.” He looked at her, then shook his head with a pained expression. “That’s when I decided I could scarcely recognize you as the kid I grew up with.

  “Here’s what I think happened. In a huge county like Wayne, there must be many more than one child per month whose birth record lists ‘father unknown.’

  “You didn’t assume custody of your child immediately. That may very well have been a necessary financial decision. But I think it was much more than that.

  “Somehow, you kept track of two children—one a foundling, the other your daughter. Eventually, you brought one, then the other, to your home. As far as most of us—myself included—knew, they were both more or less adopted by you to take the place of the daughters you would never have.

  “Then your sisters were let in on that secret—and much later, they informed me, as one born out of due time: Mary Lou was your real daughter. She was my real cousin.

  “But now, Maureen”—he looked at her fixedly—“I think not.”

  Both women remained impassive; it was as if they knew his conclusion was inevitable.

  After a moment, Koesler went on.

  “As a good Catholic girl, you very probably considered your love affair with Charlie Nash as one prolonged mortal sin. For one raised as you and I were, there was no possible way you could have escaped that self-condemnation. But you could see light at the end of the tunnel: He would marry you and make your love legitimate.

  “Then he discarded you because you were pregnant—with his child.

  “At this point, as sorry as your situation was, you could have returned to confession and Communion.

  “And, at this point, I asked myself, why not?

  “Okay, your hatred of him is so great that you can’t see yourself reconciled with God. But years pass—thirty-three of them—and you’re still that angry? We Catholics have remedies for lingering anger. Given time, we can take measures—praying for those who have wronged us, at least trying to forgive. But none of these measures can coexist with deliberate, premeditated, and unresolved revenge.

  “That, Maureen, was why you couldn’t bring yourself to confession. The revenge you planned was as fresh and rampant as when you first laid your careful plans.

  “But I wasn’t certain how such a complicated scheme of revenge could involve Mary Lou. Granted, if she was Charlie’s daughter, she could make a lot of trouble for him. And then it hit me: but not nearly the misery that would befall him if it turned out that Brenda was his daughter.”

  He looked at Maureen, who returned his gaze unflinchingly. “That’s it, isn’t it?” he said. “Brenda is Charlie’s daughter. Brenda is my cousin, not my ‘niece.’”

  They sat looking at each other. It seemed that each was trying to think of something to say.

  “Uncle Bob …” Brenda said finally. But she immediately corrected herself. “Actually it’s Cousin Bob.” She smiled, a real smile this time. “At least now I can address you as a relative and mean it.”

  “Brenda!” There was warning in Maureen’s tone.

  “It’s all right, Mother. It’s over now. At least as far as Father Bob is concerned.” Brenda turned her full gaze on Koesler. “The break-in was Ted’s idea,” she said resolutely. “He told me about the Ford Park land development. I told McGraw. I also told Ted about the microfilm copies of parish records. When Ted decided to go for those records, the development plans became the perfect smoke screen. Any vandalism in the archives would seem to be aimed at those plans. Ted chose Chardon with the understanding that he would do only what was ordered, as long as one was specific.”

  “Then,” Koesler said, “it was Chardon who killed Agnes Ventimiglia?”

  “Yes. Charlie—” She stopped. “I can’t think of him as ‘Father.’” After a moment, she continued. “Charlie told him only that he wanted his name off my birth record and that no one should know that it had been altered. By Chardon’s lights, he was simply doing his job efficiently. Ted didn’t know any of this until a few days ago when Mother issued her threat—a veiled threat, but enough to start the ball rolling.”

  “And the security guard on the third floor?”

  “I told the cleaning people about the important papers being kept in the archives. I suggested it would be a dangerous situation until the matter was resolved. Which is probably true for that matter. But actually, I knew of no plan—besides Ted’s—to do anything about the vault.

  “When it comes to that,” she added reflectively, “I really doubt that anyone would actually try to break into the vault—not just for those plans.”

  “And the killing?”

  Brenda’s lip trembled. “That was tragic. Chardon was explicitly told, no violence. For all I cared, he could get caught or, when he spotted the guard, he could have aborted the job.

  “But even if the cleaning crew hadn’t forced the issue, none of it would have mattered. You see,” she explained, “I had already made a copy of the microfilm that contained my baptismal record.” She shook her head. “It wouldn’t have mattered …” Her voice trailed off. After a moment, she continued. “But once I learned that they had arranged to put guards on that night, I knew it wasn’t necessary for me to do anything.

  “Either way it would have forced the Nashes into something more desperate.” She shook her head again. “He wasn’t supposed to get violent. He wasn’t supposed to kill. That was tragic,” she repeated. “But it was entirely his own decision.”

  With Brenda near tears, Koesler turned to Maureen. “How did you ever do it, Mo? Juggling two infants in foster homes and, when you were ready, taking them home with you?”

  Maureen didn’t reply. She seemed to be weighing whether or not to open up, even now. Finally she sighed. “It’s been a long, hard time. What would you both say to some coffee and cake?”

  Koesler wasn’t sure whether “long, hard time” referred to the past thirty-some years or the past few hours. But he suddenly realized that the th
ought of coffee and cake was indeed appealing. He nodded to Maureen, who rose and went toward the kitchen, followed immediately by Brenda.

  As the age-old homey sounds and aromas of coffee-making emanated from the kitchen, Koesler leaned back in the chair and, arms above his head, stretched his muscles. I wonder, he thought, what the inspector is doing?

  IT HAD BEEN a long and exhausting Saturday, but a satisfying and rewarding one.

  Inspector Koznicki walked slowly along a series of Spartan holding cells on the ninth floor of police headquarters. When he reached the last cell, he stopped and stood looking in. The occupant was aware immediately of the officer’s presence. Both men evaluated each other silently. The occupant rose from his cot and walked to the bars where he stood only inches from the inspector. Still neither man spoke.

  Koznicki rubbed his cheek and chin, scratching a now more than five o’clock shadow. “Rick Chardon,” he said.

  There was no change in Chardon’s expression; only his eyes seemed to react.

  “You have been busy,” Koznicki said. “Wanted in five states to face murder charges. And detained here on a charge of murder in the first degree.”

  There was no response from Chardon.

  “I have ascertained that none of these states including our own has the death penalty. I wonder if you considered that when you accepted the contracts.”

  A slight smile appeared on Chardon’s face. It remained there, a sort of mocking expression.

  “But,” Koznicki said, “my greatest pleasure in this day harkens back to 1960. I had not been long out of the academy. We got a call about a suspicious article in the river. I pulled the bag from the river. The bag you threw in the river.”

  Chardon’s eyes registered surprise, but only for an instant. Then the slightly mocking expression returned. But now it seemed forced.

  Koznicki took some pleasure from that. “I do not have to tell you what was in the sack. You know all too well. There are, perhaps, only a few details you did not know.