Tully smiled. “Not bad, Father. But how about the following premise: Suppose Kramer killed Louise Bonner and Nancy Freel. He tries to kill Mae Dixon, but we grab him. He’s booked and his picture appears in the papers. Bush sees the picture and the resemblance. He knows all the details of the killing from his job at the morgue. He also knows the identity of the third intended victim. So he decides on a copycat murder.
“We think Kramer pulled off the third one too, but that is disproved when you latch onto those photos. So we’ve got the killer of the first two women in jail already. And now, thanks to you, we’ve got the killer of the last one—the copycat—in jail too. Besides how could Bush possibly know that we were planning a blanket surveillance on that third Sunday?”
Tully was conveniently overlooking the fact that he had discussed just such a surveillance with Dr. Moellmann, within earshot of Arnold Bush.
Koesler shrugged. “Lieutenant, our arguments are hypothetical. You suppose one thing, I suppose another. You think you know for sure; I think I know for sure.” He looked to Koznicki. “Inspector?”
Koznicki said with a sense of assurance. “We must, finally, weigh the sum of circumstantial evidence. The weight falls on the shoulders of Arnold Bush. There is no shadow of a doubt he is guilty of the murder of Mae Dixon. The presumption must be that he is guilty of the first two murders. Tomorrow we will recommend to the prosecuting attorney that she move to dismiss the charges against Father Kramer.”
Koesler breathed a sigh of relief.
Officer Mangiapane finished the beer and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Can I tell them about the mothers, Zoo?”
Lieutenant Tully said nothing.
“Mothers?” From Inspector Koznicki came part question and part command.
Mangiapane, now conscious of everyone’s eyes upon him, wondered whether he’d drunk the beer too quickly. Perhaps it would have been better not to have brought up the mothers. That was the clear message he was picking up from Tully. But now he felt obliged to continue.
“Uh . . . mothers . . . Well, see, me and Zoo were on surveillance, on this very case, and he told me about his theory about mothers. Uh . . . sorry, Zoo, if you didn’t want me to bring it up . . .”
Still Tully said nothing.
“Well, anyway, Zoo said that in cases like this where you have a multiple murderer or a serial murderer or a woman killer, nine times outta ten you’re lookin’ for somebody who had problems with his mama.”
“Oh?” said Koznicki, to whom the theory was not unfamiliar.
“Yes, sir,” Mangiapane affirmed. “Usually, he said, you got an orphan or a bastard or somebody who was institutionalized. And what he’s doin’ is he’s killin’ mama over and over again. Because he’s convinced that all his troubles started with his relationship—or lack of one—with his mother.
“Zoo had a whole list of multiple murderers who fit the profile. I could remember only a few of ’em . . . like John Bianchi, Dave Berkowitz, Ted Bundy, Al Fish, Ed Kamper, Albert De Salvo, Richard Speck, Norman Collins, Charles Starkweather . . . I forget . . . there were quite a few others.” He looked brightly at Tully. “Why don’t you tell ’em, Zoo? It’s your theory.”
Tully was turning his glass slowly, meditatively. He did not look up. “It’s not my theory. It’s been pretty well documented. It’s in their records. It’s in their own statements.
“Bundy complained that because he’d been a bastard, he’d been robbed of a past. He was bitter about that. So were all the rest. When Kemper killed he was acting out the rage he felt toward his mother. De Salvo—the ‘Boston Strangler’—was dominated by his mother. He hated her for it. But it was taboo to get her for what she was doing to him so he killed woman after woman.
“Berkowitz—who was the ‘Son of Sam’—was another bastard, who gave that as his reason for shooting women. He himself said that he was an accident: ‘My birth was either out of spite or an accident.’
“It keeps on going like that.”
“Anyway,” Mangiapane said, “I thought that after the inspector said we were going to move to dismiss, that it would be okay to talk about the mother thing. Because . . . because . . .”
“Because,” said Tully, “I told Mangiapane at headquarters after we booked Bush that at least we finally had a suspect who fit the profile. How could it be better? A bastard who spent his youth in a whorehouse.”
“He said it was better than Kramer,” Mangiapane added.
“Actually, it wasn’t that much. Everybody who has—or thinks he has—reason to hate mama doesn’t become a killer. Nor is each and every mass murderer illegitimate. But I must admit, now that the decision has been made, it was the one and only chink I ever saw in the case against Kramer. At least he had a normal childhood.”
“Oh, but—” Koesler blurted.
Tully looked pointedly at the priest. “But what?”
“Uh . . . nothing.”
Quietly and deeply Koesler was in turmoil. Should he bring it up or not? There was no possible way Tully could know that Dick Kramer qualified as an ecclesiastical bastard. If Tully had checked—and probably he had—he would have found records attesting to the fact that Richard Kramer was the legitimate son of Robert Kramer and Mary (née O’Loughlin) Kramer. There would be no grounds for Tully to check a baptismal record—which would reveal that Robert and Mary had not been married in the Church and that, therefore, he was—for ecclesiastical purposes only—illegitimate. Koesler himself would have been unaware of this fact had he not been told by Monsignor Meehan.
But why bring it up? This was no more than a theoretical argument that now was over and finished. Besides, Koesler was only too conscious that he was foreign in this field and that Tully was the expert. Better leave well enough alone.
“Well,” Koesler observed, “it’s getting late. And my parish council met tonight without benefit of my presence. I’d better get back and see if they sold the parish out from under me.”
Koesler, preparing to leave, noticed that Tully was still looking intently at him.
Koznicki, tugging at his French cuffs, glanced at his watch. “It is late and we have much to do tomorrow. Good night, gentlemen.”
That was it. Everybody prepared to leave. Three police officers looked in vain for the bill. Father Koesler’s parishioner, the manager of this restaurant, had delivered another freebie to the priest.
Father Koesler considered Koznicki’s dictum. Koesler tried to consider what he had to do tomorrow. Nothing outstanding.
He had no way of knowing how busy he would be.
39
Sleep eluded Father Koesler. It had been well past his bedtime when he’d arrived at the rectory. That alone was enough to ruin the routine.
Taking into account the glass of wine at Eton Street, he had decided against his usual mild nightcap. Again the violation of routine.
He tried reading—sitting first in a chair and then in bed—but it didn’t put him to sleep. If anything, he was so distracted that he found himself rereading paragraphs two and three times.
Partly, he decided, he was charged up from all the excitement this evening—Arnold Bush and the police and his animated argument with Lieutenant Tully. But it wasn’t just the stimulation of the argument with Tully that was keeping the priest from his much desired sleep. It was more the questions the lieutenant kept raising that continued to plague the priest.
Drat that stubborn man! Bullheaded is all it was. He had been that way from the beginning. Convinced that Dick Kramer was guilty. Doing everything in his power to prove Kramer guilty. And even now, with proof that Arnold Bush was the real killer, Tully refused to accept the fact that he was—had been—wrong. Still asking questions. Did the man believe himself infallible? Good grief! Even the Papacy had only one uncontested infallible statement on record in the slightly more than 100 years since the doctrine of infallibility had been defined. And as far as he knew, no one had claimed even a tiny fraction of inerrancy for the police department.