The Man Who Murdered God (2 page)

The other woman introduced herself as Mrs. Drainie, a neighbour. “She's been like this for an hour,” she said, standing and stepping aside as the detectives approached. “Poor woman.” She crossed herself and lowered her head. “Poor Father Lynch.” Looking back and forth between the two men, she asked, “Would you be wanting me to leave?”

McGuire told her no, he'd rather she stayed, and she nodded and stood against a wall.

“Mrs. Kelley,” McGuire said softly, kneeling to look directly at the woman. “I'm Lieutenant McGuire and this is my partner, Lieutenant Lipson. We're with the homicide squad. Can we ask you a few questions?”

The woman turned to McGuire, and he was struck by the agony on her face. He had seen people in pain before, people who were suffering terribly and dying and knew it. Mrs. Kelley wore the same expression, her face contorted in torture, and it seemed to fall apart as she spoke.

“Who would do it?” she wailed. “Who would kill that man, that perfectly good man?” She reached a fluttering hand towards McGuire and seized the sleeve of his jacket. “He was a saint. He was, sweet and unselfish and . . .” She withdrew her hand quickly from McGuire and reached without looking for a string of prayer beads lying beside her on the couch. Clutching them tightly, she turned her face away and began mumbling, her fingers shifting the beads in spastic motion.

“Was there anyone here when you found him?” McGuire asked gently. “Did you see anybody in the church or outside, hanging around the grounds?”

She shook her head.

Over the next ten minutes, with both McGuire and Lipson taking turns with their questions, the detectives assembled Mrs. Kelley's story.

She had been Thomas Lynch's housekeeper for almost ten years. Each morning, at precisely seven-thirty, she would arrive at the back door of the church and let herself in with her key. She would enter the rectory, prepare orange juice, toast and tea and carry it in to Reverend Lynch's small office, where they were now. Twice a week she would change the sheets on his bed, put clean towels in the bathroom and take his dirty laundry to her home two blocks away. On alternate days she would dust his living quarters, then make his lunch—“Soup and sandwich and tea . . . I would leave the soup on the stove for him to heat . . . he had simple needs, there was nothing demanding about the poor father. . . .”—and be home by mid-morning. For all of this she was paid the same amount as when she had begun, twenty dollars each week. “Oh, but I would have done it for nothing, for the father, for the pleasure of being of service to such an angel, such a good,
good
man of the faith.”

On this day she had brought breakfast to his office. It was unusual but not surprising to find the office empty, so she had left the meal on his desk. It was there, untouched, when she returned after tidying his bathroom and replacing the towels. She entered the church to call him.

“When I first saw him, I thought the poor father had fallen and struck his head on a pew,” she whimpered. “So I ran to him, ran right up to the poor man, and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw his . . . his. . . .” She covered her mouth with her hand, and Mrs. Drainie moved quickly to wipe her forehead with the damp cloth.

McGuire turned to his partner, his eyebrows raised. Lipson nodded in agreement, and they stood up, thanked the women, and left.

“What'd you find?” Lipson asked Officer Baxter as they re-entered the church.

Baxter shook his head. “Nothing,” he replied. “Place is clean as a whistle except for a little mouse shit along the walls. Looking for anything special?”

McGuire nodded. “A spent shell, I'd hoped. How about the squad outside?”

Baxter replied that he hadn't heard anything from them, but he would go and check.

“They probably scooped it off the floor, the empty shell,” Lipson suggested.

“Or left it in the gun.” McGuire was returning his notebook to his pocket.

“Either way, what's it tell us?”

“Think about it. You're used to handling a shotgun, you're in a mad rage at a priest about something, you walk into his church and fire the gun at close range into his gut. If you're familiar with using a shotgun, what's the first thing you do? Instinctively?”

Lipson nodded in understanding. “Pump it. If it's a repeater.”

“Even if it's a single shot, you pop the Goddamn shell. But you don't kill the guy in a rage then scoop up the shell and take off with it. People mad enough to kill a priest in his own church don't get that rational.”

“So what're you saying?”

“That it's a professional job, somebody cool enough to walk off with evidence. Or . . .”

“Or what?”

“Or somebody who isn't used to a shotgun maybe. Just left with the shell still in the chamber.”

“Lieutenant McGuire?” Baxter was back, standing at McGuire's elbow. “The squad outside reports nothing found. And there's a Reverend Deeley here. Says the archdiocese sent him over. Wants to talk to you.”

McGuire looked up as the door opened, flooding the church with morning sunshine and crowd noises. A priest was edging his way past the cops at the door; one of them gestured at the two detectives.

“Still doesn't tell us a lot. About the shell I mean,” Lipson muttered, watching the priest approach.

“It tells us we're probably not looking for some juiced-up neighbour who has a repeating shotgun he's used before,” McGuire answered. He paused to watch the reaction of the priest, who was staring in horror at the dark stain in the carpeting where Reverend Lynch's body position had been outlined in chalk. “Hell, maybe you're right, Bernie. Maybe it isn't worth much.”

“Is this where Reverend Lynch died?” It was the priest, looking at each of the detectives in turn, a painful expression on his face, his mouth slightly open in horror.

McGuire nodded and stepped aside as the man dropped to one knee beside the outline, crossed himself and bowed his head.

“Joe? Bernie?” A round-faced man with rimless glasses motioned McGuire to join him at the end of one of the pews. “Got a minute?” The two detectives left the priest as he prayed. They walked between the pews to join the man, who was carefully folding clear strips of plastic into a binder.

“You get anything, Norm?” McGuire asked the man as they approached. Norm Cooper was a fingerprint specialist, called The Wizard by members of the Boston police force. In one celebrated kidnapping and murder investigation Cooper had managed to locate a partial fingerprint, barely a quarter of an inch wide, on a brass window fixture. The positive identification led to a successful conviction—of the victim's own stepfather. “Norm Cooper could pull week-old prints off a whore's ass,” Ollie Schantz observed once, and no one had disagreed.

“Couple of partials on the inside doorknob look fresh,” Cooper was saying as he packed his paraphernalia into a small aluminum case. “I'll have to compare them with the victim's. Go down later and take them, see if we have anything.”

“The outside of the doorknob, how about it?” Lipson asked.

“Not a hope,” Cooper said, standing up. “Sorry, Bernie. It's old cast-iron, pitted to hell. Plus the cop who investigated opened the door with it, rubbed off anything that might have been there.” He shrugged. “We'll have to make do with what I've got, unless there's some other place to dust.”

McGuire looked back over his shoulder at the kneeling priest. In his mind he measured the distance to the front door and subtracted ten feet. “I don't think so, Norm,” he said. “Everything points to the killer opening the door, walking about eight feet into church, then turning around and leaving.” He looked back at Cooper. “Show us whatever you got from the inside knob that's not the victim's, okay?”

When they returned to the centre aisle of the church, Deeley was standing again. McGuire approached, his hand outstretched. He introduced himself and Lipson to the priest, who explained he had been sent over by the diocese to offer any help the department might need.

“You have no idea how upsetting this is to the people over on Commonwealth,” he said as he shook Bernie Lipson's hand. “I mean, aside from the absolute horror of what happened here. Father Lynch . . .
Reverend
Lynch was a wonderful man, well-loved, well-respected by everyone, even some of the people at the diocese who are not very easy to please.” He shook his head and stared at his shoes, black and finely polished. “This makes no sense, absolutely no sense at all.” He looked up at McGuire and Lipson. “What can I do to help you find the madman who did this?”

“You know Mrs. Kelley, the housekeeper?” McGuire asked.

“Yes, I do,” Deeley replied. “Is she here?”

“She found the body. She can use some help from somebody like you right now.” McGuire jerked his thumb at the door alongside the altar. “She's in there.” He touched Deeley's shoulder as the priest began heading towards the office area. “We have to talk to neighbours, find out if anybody heard or saw anything. Can you see us down at headquarters later today? Sometime around two, three o'clock?”

The priest said he would be there at three sharp. McGuire watched him go, then turned and started walking to the front door. “Come on, Bernie,” he said over his shoulder. “Let's find out who was up with the birds this morning.”

“Go over it again, Bernie.”

McGuire, his feet on the desk, crumpled the coffee cup and tossed it at the far corner of their cubicle. It struck the side of a filing cabinet and bounced against the wall, then dropped neatly into the wastebasket.

“How high did they draft you?” Lipson asked. “The Celtics?” He looked up to see McGuire watching him patiently. Shifting his bulk in the chair, Lipson arranged the three pages of notes in front of him and began reading from the paper in a monotone.

“Victim—Reverend Thomas Henry Lynch. Age—sixty-three. Height—five foot ten. Weight—one hundred and seventy-three pounds. Residence—St. Eugene's Parish Church, 2134 Roanoke Street. Cause of death—massive hemorrhaging and trauma due to firearm wound, lower abdomen. Estimated time of death—6:30 a.m.”

He looked up at McGuire, who was staring through the window at the brick wall next door. “You want me to skip the technical stuff from Doitch?” he asked. McGuire closed his eyes and nodded his head.

“Suspected weapon—twelve-gauge shotgun, unknown make, possibly with shortened barrel. Witnesses—none. Characteristics of victim—born, Framingham, Massachusetts. Educated, P.S. 12 Framingham, Our Lady of Lourdes High School, Boston College, St. John's Seminary. Military service, 1943–1945, 36th Army Division, Italian campaign. Awarded Bronze Star, Purple Heart, several battlefield commendations. Served as Army Chaplain, Korea, 1952. Appointed to St. Eugene's, 1956.

“Nearest living relative—Mrs. Kathleen McGrath, 1389 Fifteenth Street, Moline, Illinois. No criminal record, no known enemies, no rational motive for attack.” He looked across the desks at his partner. “Hell, Joe. Maybe somebody shot him for wearing his halo crooked.”

McGuire allowed himself a small smile, and Lipson turned back to the notes in front of him. “Witnesses—none. No neighbours who recall unusual occurrence during period crime was committed. Five residents of immediate area claim to have heard one single loud noise from direction of church at approximately 6:30 a.m. Three of them assumed sound was backfiring car. One exited house, looked towards church, saw nothing unusual. One refused to become involved, returned to bed until 7:00 a.m.”

“Excuse me?”

Lipson and McGuire both looked up to see Reverend Deeley in the doorway. He had exchanged his severe black suit for a stylish blue jacket and grey slacks, worn with the same black bib and white collar.

“They told me I'd find you here,” Deeley continued, “but if you're busy . . .”

“Just reviewing the facts so far,” McGuire said, standing up and offering his hand to the priest. Lipson pulled a chair away from the wall and pushed it towards Deeley. “Sit down, please. Get you a coffee?”

Over bad coffee from plastic cups the two detectives revealed what they had gathered about the death of Reverend Thomas Lynch. Which, McGuire admitted, wasn't enough to issue a parking ticket.

“Look, Father—” McGuire began.

“We're not usually called fathers anymore,” Deeley smiled. “Kevin's fine, Lieutenant.”

McGuire shrugged and studied the priest. Kevin Deeley, in McGuire's eye, had been blessed with more than his share of attractive qualities. In his early thirties, he was tall with a slim, athletic build. His blond hair was already thinning, but McGuire could imagine women's knees growing weak when those clear blue eyes swept their way. Along with his good looks the priest had an aristocratic carriage few men acquired except through selective breeding or intensive training. Deeley appeared to be a natural leader, someone to seek out or follow into battle in time of trouble.

He'd break a hell of a lot of hearts in the bars on Newbury Street, McGuire thought. What makes a guy take an oath of celibacy when he could be fighting off the girls with a hockey stick?

Yet McGuire resented something about the priest. It may have been Deeley's patrician bearing—the natural animosity of one leader towards another—or perhaps simple jealousy. Whatever it was, McGuire was not pleased with the priest's presence.

McGuire pulled his chair closer and rested his elbows on his knees. “We're missing something here about your Reverend Lynch,” he said in a low voice.

Deeley blinked. “I'm not sure I understand.”

“What I mean is, people don't walk into a church at dawn with a sawed-off shotgun and blow somebody apart without a reason. And then disappear like a ghost again. It's not normal psychotic behaviour.”

The priest sat erect and stared out the dusty cubicle window as he spoke. “I didn't know psychotic behaviour was normal.”

McGuire stood up and walked to his desk, where he sat on the corner facing the priest again. “Look, I've seen my share of killings by nuts over the years. Trust me. They get a big enough pain to blow somebody away, they want the world to know it. Remember last year? Guy took an axe to a grandmother sitting on her porch, over in Roxbury? He went around telling everybody he'd just killed a witch, wanted to be made mayor of Salem? That's normal psychotic behaviour. Losing all sense of reality.”

“What are you saying, Lieutenant McGuire?” The priest was watching the detective intently, with a faint expression of distaste.

“I'm saying there has to be a
reason
somebody killed Thomas Lynch. I'm saying he had to do
something
to be ambushed and assassinated in his own church.” McGuire spread his hands. “That's all.”

Before Deeley could reply, Bernie Lipson spoke in a low, soothing voice, a sharp contrast to McGuire's harsh delivery. “We're really just looking for a motive here, Reverend Deeley. See, what Joe is saying is, this doesn't fit the pattern of a motiveless crime.”

It was Deeley's turn to stand up, and he stood by the window, looking out at the misty day as he spoke. “There was no reason at all for Reverend Thomas Lynch to die.” He bit off the words, one by one, and his fair complexion grew red. “I know of no other man
anywhere
, in or out of the Church, who was more widely loved and respected as a gentleman than Thomas Lynch.”

McGuire began to speak, but Deeley raised his voice, effectively cutting him off.

“I don't know very much about detective work, but I do know a little about psychotic behaviour,” he said, looking from McGuire to Lipson and back again. “I understand completely what you're saying. And I'm telling you that if any motive exists for this outrageous act, it's in the mind of whoever pulled the trigger. Not in the past of Reverend Lynch.”

“Hey, Father,” Lipson said smiling. “Easy now. We appreciate you being here. I mean, we can use all the help we can get on something like this, you know? But we have to keep an open mind here.”

“Did it occur to you that perhaps all the time you spend around criminals and misfits could affect your view of humanity?” Deeley asked. “God knows there's evil in the world. But I suggest you should look for it in more traditional places instead of in the past of a gentle, hard-working and well-loved priest.”

“It doesn't have to be a past you're even aware of,” McGuire replied. He was becoming angry at Deeley's self-righteous attitude. McGuire knew little about the Catholic church, and Deeley knew even less about detective work. “It might have been something that happened yesterday, last week, anytime.” He spread his arms, a gesture of conciliation. “Everybody does something to piss off somebody in their life. Me, I do it every day. Maybe Lynch gave somebody hell about walking on the grass or told the wrong guy to say too many Hail Marys, I don't know.” He dropped his hands onto his thighs with a slap. “That's what we're looking for.”

Deeley gestured at McGuire as he spoke. “Maybe you piss off people every day as you claim,” he said. “But Reverend Lynch did not. Reverend Lynch wasn't in the habit of upsetting people. He did all he could to comfort them.”

McGuire scooped a pencil from his desk, glared silently out the window and snapped the pencil in two.

The priest walked to the door, where he paused and turned back to face McGuire and Lipson. “I'm telling you, there was nothing in this past that could cause anyone to do this as a personal attack. And if that's the route you're taking in solving his murder, I don't put much faith in your chances of success.” He turned to leave.

“Reverend Deeley.” Lipson called.

Deeley looked back, avoiding McGuire's eyes.

“How about Mrs. Kelley?” Lipson asked. “You were with her. She's back home isn't she?”

The priest nodded. “The doctor gave her a heavy sedative. Said she'll probably sleep through the night. I think it would be better if you avoided talking to her in the morning.”

“You do lots of detective work, do you?” McGuire spat out, tossing the pencil pieces back on his desk. The anger welled in his face, and his chin tightened, driving the corners of his mouth down. He resented the priest's suggestion that they wait before questioning the woman.

“You save any souls?” Deeley fired back.

“Fuck you,” McGuire replied, and Lipson stepped between them, his hands raised, saying, “Hey, come on you guys,” while Deeley pursed his lips and his face grew crimson with anger. Then the priest turned on his heel and left.

“He might have been a big help to us, the priest,” Lipson said when McGuire had slumped back into his chair. “Guy like that—”

“Get one thing straight, Lipson.” McGuire jabbed the air in front of him. “I'm the senior guy on this team. I'll call the shots just like Ollie Schantz did with me for eight years. You got that?”

Lipson watched him without expression. Then he asked, “You want another guy to work with, Joe? I can go back on the desk, no problem.”

McGuire stared at the cluttered surface of his desk, then shook his head abruptly. “Forget it,” he said in a calm voice. “Let's go check the files, see if we can find any shotgun artists in the area.”

Lipson stood up, grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and strode past his partner out the door.

Working without Ollie just might be harder than I thought, McGuire speculated to himself.

“It was the strangest thing,” Anne Murison told her husband when she arrived home from work at the New England Aquarium that evening. “This young guy, maybe twenty or so, came in and spent the whole day there. Didn't even have lunch. Looked at all the fish for maybe an hour, then he found the river otter display over in the corner and stayed there the rest of the day watching them. I had to go over at five o'clock to tell him we were closing, and he looked at me and said ‘They really love each other, don't they?' Meaning the otters. Because they spend all day cleaning each other and swimming on their backs with their paws together. So I told him he should have seen them last week when George went in to clean their pond and got too close, and one of them bit him on the hand. Took six stitches to close it. And he smiled! He'd looked so sad all day until I told him the otters could be vicious, and that's when he smiled! Weird.”

Her husband said that was interesting, and he sure as hell didn't feel like warming up the macaroni from last night, so leave your coat on and we'll go out for burgers and a beer, okay? Which was fine with Anne, who didn't feel like cooking anything, not even heating the macaroni.

She said nothing about the heavy athletic bag the young man had been carrying. Not even the way it clanked metallically when he bumped it against the turnstile as he left. But who knew what people carried in those bags with names of running shoes on the side anyway?