Olive Werner had died in the fire. Her body had been found in the hall outside her bedroom. (The Werners apparently slept in separate rooms.) According to her husband, he had been unable to rouse her after the blast. “I shook her and yelled at the top of my lungs,” the large man had sobbed. “But she wouldn’t wake up! Then I tried to drag her out, but the heat and the smoke — I couldn’t breathe!”
According to the reports, Mrs. Werner had weighed a good two hundred and fifty pounds. Even a man in good shape would have had trouble getting her out of a savagely burning house, Kesey reflected. And Ed Werner had gone flabby a long time ago.
But why hadn’t Olive Werner awakened? The medical examiner would have to answer that one.
Brenda Vine had two badly shattered legs. The doctors said she had a fifty-fifty chance of walking again, but she’d have a pronounced limp at best. They’d had to remove part of the bone from one leg. Her baby was unharmed, as was her boyfriend.
Kesey sighed. So where was the motive? Who in hell benefited from a nightmare like that?
He tagged his best man. “Background, McCarthy! I want everything you can find out about everyone in this case!” He paused a moment, then added, “That means the priest, too. I want to know what he meant when he said it was like before.”
By late that afternoon, Kesey had learned that Ed and Olive Werner didn’t get along. They’d fought often and loudly, much to the annoyance of tenants and neighbors. Furthermore, the insurance on Number 17 had recently been increased by thirty thousand dollars.
But that didn’t get them much further, Kesey reflected. The building had been underinsured, and increasing the coverage had been the insurance agent’s idea.
And then there was Olive Werner’s overly sound sleep. It seemed fishy, but what did it prove? She might have been drugged, but why? So she wouldn’t get out of the fire? Werner might have hated her enough to kill her, but he wasn’t likely to do it by blowing up a house with several other people in it, himself included. Besides, it appeared he’d made a valiant effort to save her. And his grief certainly seemed genuine.
Kesey shook his head. No, the answer wasn’t there.
On his way home, Kesey paid a visit to the parish where Father Thomas lived. St. Dismas rectory was a large Victorian building. It gave the impression of being well cared for, with a minimum of money expended. The door was answered by the pastor, Monsignor Reilly. He was a tall hawk-nosed man with a fringe of white hair.
“Father Thomas isn’t here. He’s in the hospital.”
“Oh? Is he ill?”
“Quite. But it isn’t what you think. He’s had a nervous breakdown, inspector.” The monsignor ushered Kesey into a shabby but homey-looking study where the two men sat down.
“Does Father Thomas’s — um, condition — have anything to do with the fire last Monday night?” Kesey asked.
“I’m afraid it does. He’s an extremely sensitive man, you know. And fire — well, he has a phobia. Quite understandable.”
“How’s that?”
“When he was ten years old, his home caught fire in the middle of the night. Although he wasn’t injured, his mother died. Fire has haunted him ever since. He’s had quite a lot of psychiatric treatment for it, and sometimes he manages nicely. At other times, however, he suffers a great deal. Why, I’ve seen him say Mass in near hysteria because of the candles on the altar,” Monsignor Reilly finished sadly.
Kesey frowned. “Do you know any of the details of that childhood fire?”
“Only that it took place in South Boston and that the Thomases lived on the third floor. Gerald had to jump out the window. A passerby caught him.”
Before he went to the office Thursday morning, Kesey stopped at the hospital. He was told that Brenda Vine was in surgery again, so he asked for Peter Silver’s room. He found the boy asleep with Mrs. Silver at his bedside. She looked tired.
When she saw him, her eyes filled with tears and she said defiantly, “It isn’t true!”
“What isn’t?”
“Your men seem to think Peter had something to do with the fire!”
Kesey paused. “Let’s find another place to talk.”
He found a private corner in the solarium and they sat down. “Tell me about it,” he said.
“Two of your men were here already this morning. They kept asking me why Peter was in the basement so late at night. They acted as if he did something wrong, just going downstairs to look for his chemistry set.”
“Is your son in the habit of staying up alone late at night?” Kesey asked gently.
“Oh, yes! Youngsters have so much more energy than we do, don’t they? Peter never seems to need sleep. But he’s a good boy! He stays up to read or study. He’s a straight-A student, you know.”
“Just why did he want his chemistry set at eleven thirty at night?”
Mrs. Silver looked wounded. “That’s what your men wanted to know. Peter’s studying chemistry. He’s taking a summer course in it. He says he wanted to check something the book said. Why shouldn’t he? What difference does it make what time it was?” She looked at Kesey squarely. “Peter’s a good boy,” she said again.
Kesey reflected that he had heard of more than one good boy who had done some pretty bad things. A fourteen-year-old straight-A student certainly had the intelligence to put together a crude bomb and timber, hadn’t he?
But where was the motive?
Back in his office, Kesey was greeted with new information.
“It’s that Howard fellow, inspector,” McCarthy said as Kesey took off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. “The guy on the third floor. It seems he was an antiwar protester in the late sixties and early seventies. He was convicted of firebombing a university chancellor’s office. No one was injured and he got away with only thirty days in jail.”
“What’s he been doing lately?”
“He works for a consumer protection group. His politics are still a bit to the left, but as far as anyone knows, he doesn’t advocate violence any more.”
Interesting, Kesey thought. But why on earth would Howard blow up a building when he was on the third floor of it?
Unless the bomb went off by mistake.
He poured himself a cup of coffee and reread the article that had appeared in Tuesday’s paper. The article was on page eight. There was no mention of a bomb, of course. They hadn’t released that information. The paper said “undetermined origin.” A small photo of Frank Olson accompanied the article. The caption beneath it began, “Saves three.” Kesey reflected that Olson looked unhappy.
The autopsy report on Mrs. Werner came in. She had taken (or was given) a moderate overdose of sedative. The medical examiner had attached a note.
I don’t think it means anything, Blaine. Her doctor says she’s been taking sedatives for years. A lot of people develop a tolerance for the drug and tend to take more than prescribed.
McCarthy had sent someone to the library to find the old newspaper accounts of the Thomases’ fire. Kesey found a written report on his desk after lunch. The fire had occurred in June of 1941. Father Gerald Thomas’s family lived on the third floor of a triple decker in Dorchester. The explosion, apparently from a leaking gas line, had knocked out the staircase wall, trapping the occupants of the upper two floors. There had been no fire escape. The blast had occurred at four thirty in the morning. A milkman who’d been making deliveries in the neighborhood had rescued all but one of the occupants of the two upper floors by catching them or breaking their falls enough to prevent injuries. The first floor tenants had been able to escape by themselves. Mrs. Thomas had died, interestingly enough, because of heart failure, apparently triggered by the explosion. It was known that she had had previous heart problems.