“It worked pretty good until that priest spotted that photo in Bush’s apartment.”
“‘That priest,’” Alice reminded, “was more help than you thought he’d be.”
Tully chuckled. “You ain’t gonna let me forget that, are you? If Koesler hadn’t been so goddam stubborn about Kramer bein’ innocent, God knows what woulda happened. Kramer was up for Murder One—two counts—until Koesler found Bush. Then Bush was up for Murder One—three counts—until Koesler found the key to the puzzle. Now Kramer will probably walk when the shrinks say he’s cured. And Bush’ll rot for his copycat crime.”
“A little lower, Zoo. Bight there between the shoulder . . . ahhh. So, like I said, the priest was more help than you thought he’d be.”
“There were times when I thought he was more of a hindrance than a help. But when he located the branding iron Kramer used, I had to admit you were right.”
Alice sat bolt upright. “He found the iron!”
“Yup. That hasn’t got to the news yet.”
“And you didn’t tell me!”
“I been busy.
“Actually, he didn’t find the thing; he told us where to look. He said he got the idea from talking to some old priest in a nursing home. It was some kind of joke about a guy who flunked his priest test when he said they should burn down a church and throw the ashes in a sacrarium.”
“A suck-what?”
“Somebody—Mangiapane probably—was talkin’ to Koesler about how we’d looked everywhere for the iron. We practically took Kramer’s car and the rectory and the church apart lookin’ for that iron. So Koesler ups and says how Kramer probably considered the iron a sacred instrument in what Doc Moellmann said was a ritual. And when they’re done with sacred items, priests are supposed to dispose of them so they won’t be desecrated by us human beings. And the traditional place to do that is the sacrarium.”
“The suck-what?”
“Babe, I’m gonna end up knowin’ so many Catholic words I’ll be able to teach catechism. In the sacristy—where the priest gets dressed for Mass—there’s a sink they call the sacrarium. It don’t lead to the sewer system. It goes straight into the ground. We dug out the sacrarium in Mother of Sorrows church and—voila!—the branding iron. And with all the letters on it . . . just like Koesler found in that Pope’s motto.”
“Your turn,” Alice announced.
He did not object as they traded places and she began to knead the tension from his shoulders.
“Well, that pretty well wraps it up” She paused. “You know, you could feel pretty sorry for that Father Kramer.”
Tully was in deadly earnest. “I could feel lots sorrier for him if I didn’t feel so bad about three ladies who would be alive today if it weren’t for him.”
Acknowledgments
Gratitude for technical advice to:
Robert Ankeny, Staff Writer, Detroit News
Roy Awe, Investigator, Attorneys' Grievance Commission
Olga Bachmann, Ph.D., and Rudy Bachmann, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologists
Ramon Betanzos, Professor of Humanities, Wayne State University
Sister Claudia Carlen, I.H.M., Archivist, Archdiocese of Detroit
Detroit Police Department:
Robert Hislop, Commander, Major Crimes Division
Sergeant Mary Marcantonio, Office of Executive Deputy Chief
Thistleton Robertson, P.O., Organized Crime Division
Barbara Weide, Lieutenant, Homicide Section
Jim Grace, Detective, Kalamazoo Police Department
Sister Bernadelle Grimm, R.S.M., Samaritan Health Care Center, Detroit
Sister Elizabeth Harris, H.V.M., Director, Women ARISE
Margaret Hershey, R.N., Pulmonary Care Unit, Detroit Receiving Hospital
Timothy Kenny, Deputy Chief, PROB, Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney's Office Noreen Rooney, Editor, TV Listings, Detroit Free Press
Andrea Solak, Principal Attorney, Grants and Legislation, Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney's Office
Werner Spitz, U.M.D., Wayne County Medical Examiner
Any technical error is the author's
Marked for Murder copyright © 1988, 2012 by Gopits, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.
Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC
an Andrews McMeel Universal company,
1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106
This is a work of fiction and, as such, events described herein are creations of the author’s imagination. Any relation to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental and accidental.
ISBN 978-1-4494-2367-4
www.andrewsmcmeel.com
William X. Kienzle died in December 2001. He was a Detroit parish priest for twenty years before leaving the priesthood. He began writing his popular mystery series after serving as an editor and director at the Center for Contemplative Studies at the University of Dallas.
The Father Koesler Mysteries
1. The Rosary Murders
2. Death Wears a Red Hat
3. Mind Over Murder
4. Assault with Intent
5. Shadow of Death
6. Kill and Tell
7. Sudden Death
8. Deathbed
9. Deadline for a Critic
10. Marked for Murder
11. Eminence
12. Masquerade
13. Chameleon
14. Body Count
15. Dead Wrong
16. Bishop as Pawn
17. Call No Man Father
18. Requiem for Moses
19. The Man Who Loved God
20. The Greatest Evil
21. No Greater Love
22. Till Death
23. The Sacrifice
24. The Gathering
Here is a special preview of
Eminence
The Father Koesler Mysteries: Book 11
1
He killed the first guy he ever shot.
Dumb luck, expertise, or a finely tuned reflex response? It didn't make a damn bit of difference to David Powell. He was dead.
David Powell, fifteen years old, grade school dropout, with a prodigious arrest record; purveyor of just about every manner of controlled substance, from the relatively innocuous marijuana to the current drug of choice, crack cocaine.
The essence of David Powell-soul or whatever-was gone now. What remained had been dropped on a slab in the morgue. How had Shakespeare expressed it-"Shrunk to this little measure . . . a bleeding piece of earth."
Alonzo Tully was not particularly strong on Shakespeare, but he was pretty sure of those phrases from Julius Caesar.
Zoo, as he was known to just about everyone, had been a Detroit police officer for twenty-two years, thirteen of them in Homicide. He dealt in death. He could not count the times he had stood in this dank, gray room in the Wayne County Medical Examiner's building, attending an autopsy. Certainly he had been here for each and every murder case he'd investigated.
Tully believed that each investigation needed all the help it could get. And, after the murder scene itself, the next best place to build one's case, chronologically and every other way, was the morgue. The autopsy process, and the morgue's boss, Dr. Wilhelm Moellmann, were instructive teachers.
However, Tully needed little enlightening with regard to the death of David Powell. The case, as Hollywood was wont to put it, was open and shut. Or, in the jargon of the police, a platter case, i.e., presented on a silver platter.