Boy Crucified (11 page)

Many of the web pages I visited were drenched with old-time Catholic piety, numerous pictures of Mary and the saints, whole sites devoted to such things as the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary or devotion to the Precious Blood of Jesus or the prophetic predictions of the Mother of God.

They had homeschooling programs for their kids. There were online bookstores featuring old-style Catholic spirituality titles like
The Glories of Mary
and
True Devotion to Mary,
not to mention heaps of statues and medals and rosaries and liturgical supplies. They had magazines and other sorts of publications.

When Daniel came to the office at seven, I was neck-deep in an article about why the New Mass was actually sinful and why those attending it were committing mortal sin, which meant they would go to hell because it was such a serious offense. The cure for that was to confess the terrible sin to a traditional priest.

“Hey, boss,” he said, offering me a warm smile.

“Hey,” I said, looking up from my screen and wiping at my eyes.

“Man, you’re here early.”

“Yeah,” I said, not bothering to explain why.

“So what are we doing today?”

“Looking for traditional Catholic groups,” I said. “And from what I’ve seen so far, this ain’t going to be a picnic. There are hundreds of them, if not thousands.”

“But we could narrow down the options, couldn’t we?” he asked.

Yes, we could. “How are your Internet searching skills?”

“Probably better than yours,” he said, grinning.

“I hope so,” I said. I went to his desk, nodded at his computer. “We’re looking for a single group, with a single bishop in charge. They must have either a school or a monastery, or both, since both Whitehead and the victim ran off to join them. I mean, there must have been somewhere to go, a physical place. And since the victim found them over the Internet two years ago, they must have an Internet presence. So, how do you search for that?”

He got his computer up and running and started a search, trying a variety of keywords, restricting his search to Missouri.

After about twenty minutes, a web page for “St. Konrad’s” appeared on his terminal. St. Konrad’s was a traditional Catholic monastery and boarding school located in Chillicothe, Missouri, about ninety minutes away. They were run by His Excellency The Most Reverend Bishop James, who was, as we discovered while digging further into the site, the “last valid Catholic bishop left on the face of the earth.” Traditional Catholics were invited to join St. Konrad’s and submit to the authority of the “last valid Catholic bishop left” in the “real” Catholic Church or risk “eternal damnation.”

St. Konrad’s was home to about one hundred priests and brothers and a boys’ school, both grade school and high school levels. St. Konrad’s also housed a seminary for young men wanting to become priests. Another property, located down the road from St. Konrad’s, housed about one hundred nuns and a school for girls. Children at these schools received a “proper Catholic education” away from the influences of “godless secular education.” Catholic parents were obligated to give their child a “proper” education or risk that child’s eternal damnation.

“What do you think?” Daniel asked, looking up at me.

“Definitely one to check out,” I replied.

He kept searching. We came across another group with similar facilities right in Kansas City itself under the auspices of Archbishop Lefebvre. It included the convent we’d visited yesterday, a church down on 48
^th
and Main Street, and schools in St. Mary’s, Kansas.

“This is the group that nun belongs to, right?” Daniel said.

I nodded.

“Should we check it out?”

“Put it on the list, but it’s not a priority. They don’t fit our profile. They don’t go around calling themselves true Catholics and all that, and they don’t have facilities for religious brothers, so that counts out Earl Whitehead. Keep looking. But it’s a possibility.”

Despite his best efforts, he could not turn up any other group aside from St. Konrad’s, at least not in the state of Missouri. There were all sorts of “mass centers,” places where Mass was celebrated on Sunday mornings—bank basements, hotel rooms, even individual homes. But there were no other groups with the sort of facilities that could accommodate Whitehead and our victim—a monastery and a school or seminary program for a young person.

“I think we need to pay a visit to Chillicothe,” I said to Daniel, “if only to cross it off the list. It’s the closest candidate, and we might get lucky. If not, we may have to call in the Feds since they can go across state lines. Anyway, we’ll check them out. If we don’t get no joy, we’ll drive over to St. Mary’s and see what’s going on over there. It’s a place to start.”

“If there’s driving involved, I think I should be the one to do it,” Daniel said.

“Knock yourself out.”

IV

I
T
was a pleasant drive. We saw many of the famed hills of Missouri, their trees heavy with brilliant reds and oranges. Fields stood empty now, the season’s corn plowed under, the ground ready for winter. The sky was streaked with clouds.

Chillicothe was way out of my jurisdiction. As a homicide detective, I had the right to track a suspected killer anywhere I pleased. It was good form, though, to coordinate with local authorities so people wouldn’t feel their toes were being stepped on. So our first stop was at the Chillicothe police station, where we were ushered into the office of Sergeant Randy Grubbs, the man in charge.

“What can I do for you boys?” he asked, speaking with a heavy Southern drawl.

“We’re investigating the murder of a seventeen-year-old boy,” I explained, wondering if it would be worth the effort to point out that I was no longer a “boy” myself. “We think he might have gotten involved with a Catholic cult. We did a bit of research on the Internet and stumbled across a place called St. Konrad’s, in your neck of the woods. Guess I was wondering if you knew anything about them.”

He bit at his lips and shook his head.

“Does that mean no?” I asked.

“It means those folks at St. Konrad’s ain’t folks you want to be messing with.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Well, Lieutenant, I’ve gotten lots of complaints over the years about those folks.”

“What kind of complaints?”

He leaned back in his chair, seeming reluctant to discuss the matter.

“I have reason to believe that both the killer and the victim met at a place like St. Konrad’s,” I said. “Anything you could tell me would be helpful in figuring out what happened to this boy who got himself killed.”

“Would that be the ‘crucified kid’ the media folks are talking about?” he asked.

I nodded.

He nodded his own head and sighed, still seeming reluctant.

“I don’t want to be stepping on anyone’s toes,” I said, trying to reassure him. Small town cops could be very territorial.

“It ain’t that,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It’s just that there was a complaint filed a couple of months ago about these folks. Story is they nailed some kid to a cross as punishment for something or other.”

“Nailed a kid to a cross?”

“Kind of an ugly thing, I tell you. But the kid submitted to it voluntarily, so there wasn’t much to be done about it. I mean, we only heard about it after the fact from an anonymous source, and neither the kid nor his family were interested in pressing charges. Told us, in fact, it was none of our business.”

“Then what?” I asked.

“Well, weren’t much we could do, like I said. Turned it over to the social services people. One of the social workers started an investigation of the place for suspected child abuse.”

“What about this kid?” I asked. “He have a name?”

“Sure does. Or sure did. Hanged himself about a month ago. Alan Dobsen. Seventeen.”

“Hanged himself?”

“At St. Konrad’s. Yessiree. From the choir loft in the main chapel.”

“Then what?”

“Well, it ain’t a crime to hang yourself, is it?”

No, it was not.

“And this anonymous person who reported it: that person have a name?”

“Sure does.”

“And?”

“Well, can’t give it to you. Was very specific about that. Didn’t want to get in trouble with St. Konrad’s for ratting on them.”

“I’d like to talk to this person, if I could.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“What about the other complaints?”

He offered another deep sigh, whether in annoyance, frustration, or boredom, I couldn’t tell. “Complaints about kids, mostly,” he said. “Excessive punishments. Or kids who have run off and joined this group and their parents are trying to get them back. Kids, young people, late teens, in their twenties—parents want to talk to them, but the folks at St. Konrad’s won’t let them, so they come to us, wanting to know what we can do. If the child in question is a minor, we can ride on out there and try to get St. Konrad’s to produce him. If he’s of legal age, there ain’t nothing we can do. If the child don’t want to speak to his parents, that really isn’t our business. Stuff like that, mostly. If the child is a minor, we’ve got more options, but that’s only happened once or twice. Anyway, none of my guys like going out there—place sort of gives you the creeps. And those priests are impossible to deal with. Think they know more about the law than we do, always screaming about their rights, always threatening to sue us for harassment. We’ve found the best course of action is just to stay away unless we have some valid reason to approach them. And then, even when we do, we have to get legal advice beforehand to make sure we don’t open ourselves up to the possibility of a lawsuit. Those are some nasty folks at that place, let me tell you.”

“Sounds like a religious cult,” I said.

“You ain’t the first to say that,” he replied. “But they pay their bills and don’t mess with you unless you mess with them, so we try to leave them alone. The last thing we want around here is something like Waco.”

Perfectly understandable.

“Do you know someone named Earl Whitehead?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“We’re going to poke around,” I said, warning him. “I need to try to establish some connection between this place and my murder victim, and if I can, then I’ll get a search warrant, see if that turns up anything. Just so you know.”

“I understand,” he said agreeably. “And we’ll do whatever we can to be helpful. I’ll go out with you, if you like.”

“Appreciate it,” I said.

He stood, as if to go with us that very moment, then frowned. “I’ll tell you what,” he said slowly. “Earl Whitehead… that name rings a bell, but what bell, I couldn’t say.”

“Do you know him?”

“No, can’t say I do. In my line of work, though, I’ve got a million names to think about—missing kids, wanted suspects, outstanding warrants, felons, sex offenders, the whole kit and kaboodle. But now that you’ve mentioned it, that name….”

“Sound familiar to you?”

“Well, I guess it does.”

“Is your department computerized?” Daniel asked.

“They’re working on it, from what I hear,” Grubbs replied.

“So there’s no quick way to search your records?”

“I’m not much good with computers.”

“Where’s the county courthouse?”

“Just across the street. Why?”

“Just a hunch,” Daniel said. “Boss, care to come with?”

Daniel Qo was clearly onto something.

“Sure,” I said. To Grubbs, I added, “We may be back in a little bit.”

“I’ll be here,” Grubbs vowed. “Whitehead may have been mentioned in a report filed under someone else’s name. I’ll look through my own files.”

Daniel led me across the street to the county courthouse, an imposing affair that was extremely energy inefficient. The staff were polite.

“Do you have a public records terminal?” Daniel asked the woman at the reception desk.

“We do,” she said. “Second floor. Next to the tags office.”

We went upstairs and found the terminal, which was situated on a desk.

Daniel sat down. “Legal cases,” he said, “are usually available for public inspection now at public access terminals. Freedom of information. Some courthouses have all the records available. Some don’t. Some have civil suits, whatnot. It’s worth a shot.”

He did a search for Earl Whitehead.

“Shit,” I muttered when the man’s name popped up.

“Bingo,” Qo added with a smile.

Earl Whitehead had been named in an alienation of affection civil suit brought against St. Konrad’s two years previous by a man who claimed the group had broken up his family. The man was suing for damages. Whitehead was listed as one of the religious brothers who had helped convince the man’s wife to leave her husband and join the convent.

At St. Konrad’s, Whitehead apparently went by the name of “Brother Boniface.”

“I smell grounds for a search warrant,” Qo said happily. “Is there a judge in the house?”

V

S
T
. K
ONRAD
’
S
was located at the end of a dirt road on a heavily-wooded hill about two miles outside Chillicothe. It had once been a Benedictine monastery. After Vatican II, most of the monks had abandoned their vocations and the property was sold to a traditionalist group led by a man named Bishop James, who styled himself as the only valid Roman Catholic bishop left on the face of the planet.

Such a claim was breath-taking, a Big Lie, one of the biggest I’d ever encountered.

“Why do people believe this nonsense?” Daniel asked as we drove down the dirt road leading to St. Konrad’s, following Grubbs and his men.

“There’s no accounting for what people believe,” I replied. “Anyone who’s ever picked up a book on comparative religion could tell you that. People believe what they want to believe, and no amount of facts are going to get in the way. In fact, when it comes to religion, the more fact-free, the better, or sometimes I think.”