Boy Crucified (22 page)

Leo screamed in sudden agony, collapsing in a heap on top of me.

Charlie brought the hammer down again, this time on the back of Leo’s head. He did it several times.

In less than a minute, there was complete silence.

A warm feeling spread itself over my belly—Brother Leo’s blood.

Charlie burst into tears.

CHAPTER SEVEN
De profundis

I

“H
OW
did you know, man?” Daniel asked. “I just don’t get it.”

It was the following day, and I was at the Kansas City Medical Center. My left wrist was heavily bandaged after surgery, my chest and belly covered with stitches and angry-looking scars. At least I was alive, although I wasn’t likely to ever play a violin, not in this lifetime. If I was lucky, my hand would heal. If not, the fingers would draw up into a claw and it might take who knew how many surgeries to get it fixed. We were going to have to wait and see. I had learned more about median, ulnar, and radial nerves than I cared to know.

Daniel, sitting by my bed, looked like he hadn’t gotten much sleep, and he probably hadn’t.

“The blond hairs we found,” I said, answering his question. “I kept going back to that. Brother Leo was blond. But then again, so was Charlie. Separately, I couldn’t see how either one of them had carried out the crimes. If Brother Leo went alone with Boniface and Frankie to Kansas City, how did he manage to kill them both? It would have been highly unlikely. If it was Charlie, on his own, how did he manage it? How did he get the van back here? He doesn’t even have a driver’s license. I kept running it through my head, but I couldn’t make sense of it. When I began to wonder if
both
of them were in on it, it started to make sense. Charlie’s reaction to the social worker’s questions was rather strange. It made me think perhaps he was in love with Brother Leo, or the bishop, or both of them. Why would he protect someone who was hurting him? Unless, of course, he wasn’t being hurt, or perhaps he enjoyed it, or perhaps he was in love.”

“All of that from a couple of blond hairs?”

“Basically. The statue was their first mistake. Brother Boniface must have given that statue to Frankie, because he loved the boy. Maybe it was a parting gift. And maybe, just to be mean or sarcastic or clever, Leo and Charlie left it at the scene, not knowing it had fingerprints on it. But it did. Then again, maybe they planned it that way. Maybe they were trying to frame Brother Boniface, make it look like he was the killer.”

“Then we showed up at St. Konrad’s.”

“That’s right. And Eli Smalley gets nervous because a social worker is walking around and he’s already spilled the beans.”

“So the bishop and Brother Leo decided it was time to deal with Eli?”

“Most likely. Eli’s house was only a few miles from Charlie’s house. Since Leo was hiding in the barn, he and Charlie could have walked to Eli’s at night. Charlie could have gone to the door or the barn, found Eli, talked to him—why should Eli feel threatened? But then Leo showed himself, and they took Eli into the woods and killed him. The important thing, though, was Lefebvre, the St. Bernard.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, if a stranger came at night, the dog would bark, wouldn’t it? I mean, really bark. But if someone like Charlie came along, someone the dog knew, it might bark at first, but it would quickly settle down. That told me someone close to Eli had killed him, someone the dog would know from frequents visits. And who else would that be, if not someone like Charlie?”

“Oh.” Daniel shook his head, as if this wasn’t what he had expected when he signed up for the homicide department. “I still don’t understand Charlie’s motivation. Why did he go along with all of this?”

“He was trying to protect people, trying to protect himself. Who knows? Charlie’s a very angry young man. Abuse does that. When you’re constantly being hurt, humiliated, forced to do things you don’t want to do, eventually you start to fight back. Either that, or you just go off in the corner somewhere and kill yourself. Probably, in this whole sorry mess, the only bright spot for Charlie was Brother Leo, because he was in love. But even that went to shit, and maybe that’s what sent him over the edge. A person can only take so much.”

“How did you know that Brother Leo was in the barn? You couldn’t possibly have known that.”

“It’s just a matter of one thing leading to another. If Charlie and Leo were acting together, then how were they meeting up? Leo was missing. Where was he? How did he get over to the Smalley farm without being noticed by anyone? And you saw that barn. It’s huge. You could put fifty people up in that hayloft, and if they kept quiet, who would notice?”

He considered this in silence. “Well, thank God Charlie came and got us. You would have spent the night out there if he hadn’t, because there was no way we could have found you in those woods. Grubbs said that will be to his credit, that he tried to help you, even if he did bash Brother Leo’s brains in.”

I winced at the memory of it, lying there, one hand nailed to a board, the other tied, utterly helpless. I had a thing about feeling helpless. Corner me, leave me no options, and I go out of my mind. An overreaction from the events of my childhood and my mother, my therapist assured me. A desperate need to be in control to make sure bad things don’t happen. But still. It was embarrassing that Daniel and Grubbs and his men had seen me like that, half stripped. I had run off willy-nilly without thinking it through. All very foolish and stupid and sloppy.

“What?” Daniel asked, looking carefully at my face.

I shrugged.

Truth be told, I had been scared to death.

“Well, the bishop’s been arrested,” Daniel said. “And we’re off the case. The Feds have got it now. This morning they found a bunch of weapons, from what I’ve heard. And apparently that’s just the start of it.”

My left wrist had an ache in it, and when I thought about it, the pain seemed to get worse. I had been “lucky,” the doctor had assured me, that the nail had just barely gone through the space between the two main bones. I did not feel very lucky. And only now did the full horror dawn on me as to what Frankie Peters and Eli Smalley must have suffered. Nails through their wrists, one through both feet, not to speak of the whipping and the half-assed crown of thorns.

Unlike me, they were just kids. They must have been scared, frightened, horrified. Frankie must have been literally scared to death.

I began to cry softly.

“What?” Daniel asked, bewildered.

I said nothing.

He took my good hand into his own and held it.

“I’m here for you, boss,” he said quietly.

Something else struck me: Jesus had been crucified. A lot of others, too, during the bad old days of the Roman Empire. What a cruel, heartless thing, as if killing someone wasn’t enough. It had to be agonizing, humiliating, utterly overwhelming.

How was it that we humans could be so cruel?

“What?” Daniel asked again, putting his face close to mine. I could feel his warm breath on my cheek. I could smell him. And, suddenly, I had the mad desire to make love to him, right then and there, a wild, wicked tumble of naked limbs and body parts, as if the only way to escape the darkness and cruelty of the world was to lose oneself in its opposite.

Instead, I fell asleep.

II

The next time I woke, Daniel was still in the chair by my bed, only now his head was resting on the mattress near my legs, and he was fast asleep.

It seemed to be early evening.

My mind felt fogged, sluggish, yet also alert, as if I was waking up from a long fever or illness and making my way back to reality.

I remembered everything that happened and frowned. I looked again at my bandaged wrist, just to be sure I hadn’t imagined it all.

Daniel was roused by my movements.

“How are you, boss?”

I tried to offer a smile. For some reason, I was afraid, overwhelmed, on edge.

“It’s okay now,” he said. “It’s all gonna be all right.”

I tried to smile. I reached out my good hand, putting my fingers on his cheek. He was such a lovely man, one of those souls completely unaware of how beautiful they are.

“How’d you get to be so fucking handsome?” I asked.

“I was wondering when you were going to notice,” he said.

“Well, since I’m flat on my back and helpless, if you don’t take advantage of me at least once, I’m going to be terribly disappointed.”

“What if I take advantage of you more than once?”

“I’ll just have to live with it.”

He smiled that bright smile of his, flashing those big, white teeth, and I was completely and undeniably hooked.

“Got news for you,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Your mom was arrested for violating her probation.”

“That was fast,” I replied.

“Don’t you want to know why she was arrested?”

“Not really,” I said. “She’s safer inside than out. That’s all that matters.”

“They’re going to let you out of here today,” he said. “I’ll take you home. Tuck you into bed. And then… well, you know.”

“No. I don’t know. Please elaborate.”

“We live in the Show-Me State. Perhaps I’ll just show you, boss.”

His hand slid beneath the sheet, down my bare belly. My cock was hard before his hand closed around it, squeezing it, making me breathless. For some reason, I thought of Georgina Durmount singing
Mississippi Goddam
.

“Well… hello again,” Daniel said.

“Don’t be starting something you can’t finish, Daniel Qo,” I said.

“That wouldn’t be Chinese-style, boss-man,” he replied, flashing a brilliant smile.

About the Author

J
EROME
W
ILDE
is a writer, gay rights activist and former Franciscan who lives in the Deep South. He has an unhealthy interest in murder and mayhem and is often found lurking at the library among unsuspecting patrons.

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