"You were still at the LaCourts' when Shelly and I left, and we went into town to interview Bergen. Couldn't have been him," Lucas said.
"Maybe the guy wasn't chasing me-but after last night, I was sure that he was. I was sure, because it was so strange."
"Get dressed," Lucas said. "Let's go look at it."
Seven o'clock in the morning, utterly dark, but Grant was awake, starting the day, people scurrying along the downtown sidewalks in front of a damp, cold wind. One city police car, two sheriff's cars, and the Madison techs' sedan were waiting at the rectory. Lucas nodded at the deputy on the door. Weather followed him inside. Carr was sitting on a couch, his face waxy. A lab tech from Madison was in the kitchen with a collection of glasses and bottles, dusting them. Carr wearily stood up when Lucas and Weather came in.
"Where is he?" Lucas asked.
"In here," Carr said, leading them down the hall.
Bergen was lying faceup, his head propped on a pillow, his eyes open, but filmed-over with death. His hands were crossed on his stomach. He wore a sweater and black trousers, undone at the waist. One shoe had come off and lay on the floor beside the couch; that foot dangled off the couch. His black sock had a hole at the little toe, and the little toe stuck through it. The other foot was on the couch.
"Who found him?" Lucas asked.
"One of the parishioners, when he didn't show up for early Mass," Carr said. "The front door was unlocked and a light was still on, but nobody answered the doorbell. They looked in the garage windows and they could see his car. Finally one of the guys went inside and found him here. They knew he was dead-you could look at him and see it-so they called us."
"You or the town police?"
"We do the dispatching for both. And the Grant guys only patrol from seven in the morning until the bars close. We cover the overnight."
"So you got here and it was like this."
"Yeah, except Johnny-he's the deputy who responded-he picked up the note, then he handed it to one other guy, and then I picked it up. I was the last one to handle it, but we might of messed it up," Carr confessed.
"Where is it?"
"Out on the dining room table," Carr said. "But there's more than that. C'mon."
"I'll want to look at him," Weather said, bending over the body.
Lucas took a last look at Bergen, nodded to Weather, then followed Carr through the living room and kitchen to the mudroom, then out to the garage. The back gate of the Grand Cherokee was up. A pistol lay on the floor of the truck, along with a peculiar machete-like knife. The knife looked homemade, with wooden handles, taped, and a squared-off tip. Lucas bent over it, could see a dark encrustation that might be blood.
"That's a corn-knife," Carr said. "You don't see them much anymore."
"Was it just laying here like this?"
"Yeah. It's mentioned in the note. So's the gun. My God, who would've thought…"
"Let me see the note," Lucas said.
The note was typed on the parish's letterhead stationery.
"I assume he has an IBM typewriter," Lucas said.
"Yes. In his office."
"Okay…" Lucas read down through the note.
I have killed and I have lied. When I did it, I thought I did it for God; but I see now it was the Devil's hand. For what I've done, I will be punished; but I know the punishment will end and that I will see you all again, in heaven, cleansed of sin. For now, my friends, forgive me if you can, as the Father will.
He'd signed it with a ballpoint: Rev. Philip Bergen.
And under that: Shelly-I'm sorry; I'm weak when I'm desperate: but you've known that since I kicked the ball out from under that pine. You'll find the implements in the back of my truck.
"Is that his signature?"
"Yes. I knew it as soon as I looked at it. And there's the business about the pine."
Crane, the crime tech, stepped into the room, heard Lucas' question and Carr's answer, and said, "We're sending the note down to Madison. There might be a problem with it."
"What?" asked Lucas.
"When Sheriff Carr said you thought it could be a homicide, we got very careful. If you look at the note, at the signature…" He took a small magnifying glass from his breast pocket and handed it to Lucas. "… you can see what looks like little pen indentations, without ink, at a couple of places around the signature itself."
"So what?" Lucas bent over the note. The indentations were vague, but he could see them.
"Sometimes, when somebody wants to forge a note, he'll take a real signature, like from a check, lay it on top of the paper where he wants the new signature. Then he'll write over the real signature with something pointed, like a ballpoint pen, pushing down hard. That'll make an impression on the paper below it. Then he writes over the impression. It's hard to pick out if the forger's careful. The new signature will have all the little idiosyncrasies of an original."
"You think this is a fake?"
"Could be," Crane said. "And there are a couple of other things. Our fingerprint guy is gonna do the Super-Glue trick on the whiskey bottle and pill bottles, but he can see some prints sitting right on the glass. And except for the prints, the bottles are absolutely clean. Like somebody wiped them before Bergen picked them up-or printed Bergen's fingerprints on them after he was dead. Hardly any smears or partials or handling background, just a bunch of very clear prints. Too clear, too careful. They have to be deliberate."
"Sonofagun," Carr said, looking from the tech to Lucas.
"Could mean nothing at all," Crane said. "I'd say the odds are good that he killed himself. But…"
"But…" Carr repeated.
"Are you checking the neighborhood," Lucas asked Carr, "to see if anybody was hanging around last night?"
"I'll get it started," Carr said. A deputy had been standing, listening, and Carr pointed to him. He nodded and left.
Weather came in, shrugged. "There aren't any bruises that I can see, no signs of a struggle. His pants were undone."
"Yeah?"
"So what?" asked Carr.
"Lots of time suicides make themselves look nice. Women put on nice sleeping gowns and make up, men shave. It'd seem odd to be a priest, know you're killing yourself and undo your pants so you'd be found that way."
Carr looked back toward the bedroom and said, "Phil was kind of a formal guy."
"There's a knife out in his car," Lucas said to Weather. "Go have a look at it."
While she went out to the garage, Lucas walked back to the bedroom. Bergen, he thought, looked seriously disgruntled.
"We're checking the neighborhood now," Carr said, coming down the hall.
"Shelly, there's this Pentecostal thing," Lucas said. "I don't want to be insulting, but there are a lot of fruitcakes involved in religious controversies. You see it all the time in the Cities. You get enough fruitcakes in one place, working on each other, and one of them might turn out to be a killer. You've got to think about that."
"I'll think about it," Carr said. "You believe Phil was murdered?"
Lucas nodded. "It's a possibility. No signs of any kind of a struggle."
"Phil would have fought. And I guess the thing that sticks in my mind most of all is the business about the pine. We were out playing golf one time…"
"I know," Lucas said. "He kicked the ball out."
"How'd you know?"
"You told me," Lucas said, scratching his head. "I don't know when, but you did."
"Well, nobody else knew," Carr said.
They stood looking at the body for a moment, then Weather came up and said, "That's the knife."
"No question?"
"Not in my mind."
"It's all over town that he did it," Carr said mournfully. All three of them simultaneously turned away from the body and started down the hall toward the living room. They were passing Bergen's office, and Lucas glanced at the green IBM typewriter pulled out on a typing tray. A Zeos computer sat on a table to the other side, with a printer to its left.