The Man Who Murdered God (9 page)

Hudson looked up at his audience, who sat with sceptical expressions on their faces. Two in the morning, and some doorknob is saying a shotgun killer has a sense of right and wrong, they were asking themselves. Where'd McGuire find this clown?

But Kevin Deeley sat forward, his chin on his hand, absorbing every word.

The graphologist cleared his throat and turned back to the photograph. “Now, this is very unusual. From what I can see, the writer used very heavy pressure on the chalk. I've never seen this combination before, of an affectionate and moralistic nature plus such strong pressure in every letter.”

“Which means what?” asked McGuire.

“Which means we have a very complicated personality here,” Hudson explained. He was growing bolder, enjoying the opportunity to exhibit his expertise. “You see, pressure like this is normally associated with a self-reliant, revengeful individual. Which isn't normally combined with affection and high moral sense.” He glanced back at the writing sample. “I'd say he might be a trifle immature too.”

“Does this mean he's a schizoid, this guy?” Bernie Lipson asked.

Hudson shrugged and smiled. “I'm sorry,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “I'm not a psychologist.”

“What else can you figure out?” McGuire asked. He sat wearily on a table next to the map and rubbed his eyes as Hudson replied.

“A few tentative clues,” said Hudson who, along with Kevin Deeley, was the most wide-awake person in the room now. “The varying size of the letters suggests someone immature. The dots over the two ‘
i
's
are light and firm. I'd say this person has moral courage, somebody who dares to do what he thinks is right.”

Hudson looked around the room again at bored, unbelieving expressions.

“Anything else?” McGuire asked.

“Some of these forms, in the ‘
d
's and ‘
e
's, are found in the writing of shy people. And all these varying sizes of the small letters are common in the writing of people undergoing serious inner turmoil. You see that a lot in teenagers.” He looked up and smiled. “As you might expect.” Janet Parsons smiled back. Hudson adjusted his tie and pushed up his glasses.

“Is that it?” McGuire demanded.

“One more thing,” Hudson said. “Uh, is this,
does
this have anything to do with the series of priest murders?”

“It might,” McGuire replied gruffly. “Why?”

Hudson glanced at Deeley, who was watching him intently. “Because,” the graphologist continued, “there's one aspect of the writing I just couldn't ignore.”

“What's that?”

“Whoever wrote these words is very religious. A terribly religious person.”

The face appeared on the front page of every newspaper in the Boston area the following morning. The police artist's sketch, based on the recollections of Harvey Jaycock, was notable only for its total lack of distinguishing features—hair full and blond and hanging carelessly over the forehead; face slightly oval and open; nose and mouth in average proportion.

“He gave me a better description of the gun than of the guy,” the police artist told McGuire when he had completed the sketch. “I'd put a nose on, or fool with the eyes, and he'd say, ‘That looks okay,' and I knew he had nothing to tell me. But he sure got that gun right.”

The sketch of the killer ran adjacent to details of the murder of Father Sellinger. Each newspaper carried editorials demanding action be taken to protect members of the Catholic church. The mayor called a morning press conference to announce that until further notice, special squads would be assigned to protect all Roman Catholic sites of worship and assembly. A local disc jockey placed a live telephone call to Radio Vatican, where a heavily accented press representative expressed dismay over the killings and assumed the police department was doing its utmost to find the person responsible. The pope celebrated a special mass for each of the murdered priests.

The major news networks dispatched crews to the Boston area for live reports on their evening newscasts. Profiles of each of the dead priests, together with maps showing the locations of their murders, were carried in newspapers and were being prepared for the next issues of
Time
and
Newsweek.
Interviews were arranged with Harvey Jaycock, who was reported to be seeking a press agent to negotiate exclusive coverage in the New York
Post
.

But nothing appeared anywhere about the three-word message that had been scrawled on the blackboard by someone who was shy, possessed a high sense of morals and held strict religious beliefs.

“I think we should release it,” McGuire said, tossing the
Globe
aside. “Get it out. Maybe somebody knows what it means.”

Kavander stared at him, incredulous. “You've gotta be nuts,” he grunted. “You know how many calls we're getting already with that Goddamn sketch? We've had eight confessions so far, and it's not even noon.” He leaned back, pulled the toothpick from his mouth, snapped it in two and aimed for the wastebasket. He missed. “The only way we can spot the real nutcases is by asking what they wrote when they blasted Sellinger. You give that up, and we'll be sifting through confessions all summer long. Besides, I start releasing key evidence, and the D.A. will come looking for
me
with a load of buckshot. It'd be one way to screw up his case for sure. Not to mention it's against department policy. Forget it.”

“Damn it, Jack, it means something. We can't figure it out. Maybe somebody else can.”

“It means the priest was asking for it, that's all.” Kavander opened his desk drawer and selected another toothpick. “‘The Priest desires.' He was asking for it. Same thing.”

“But why write it on a blackboard and leave it there for us to see?”

“For Christ's sake,” Kavander bellowed. “Why blow the guts out of three priests at random? You're trying to think logically about something that
has
no logic.”

“Except in his mind,” McGuire said quietly.

“What?”

“It's logical in his mind, isn't it?” McGuire stood up. “Remember the guy we found, what, two years ago? The one with the wire around his neck, in the alleyway off Washington? And no shoes? Nobody thought much about the guy having no shoes on a cold night in November. Except Ollie. ‘There's gotta be logic to him having no shoes,' Ollie kept saying, when everybody else was putting it down as just another mugging.

“Then Ollie started poking around and found out about a rape murder the same night over in South Bay. Two guys did it, and they both took off down the alley, leaving footprints in the mud. Clean as a whistle, those prints.”

Kavander was nodding, remembering the case.

“One set was from a pair of work boots with a funny heel, remember? Ollie put it together. After stabbing the woman, the two guys got drunk and in a fight. The killer, big guy with a Russian sounding name, Milosavich? Millavitch? Something like that. He pulled the boots off the other guy and threw 'em in the St. Charles. That's what they had been fighting about, the prints that the Russian knew they had left behind. We found a witness who saw him do it and ID'd him. We dragged for the boots and wrapped it up.” McGuire touched the side of his head. “Logic, Jack. That's what did it.”

“Speaking of Ollie, you ever thought of giving him a call? Seeing what he thinks about all of this?” Kavander leaned back in his chair, his eyebrows raised.

“We don't need him.” McGuire turned on his heel and headed for the door. He opened it, stopped, and turned back to Kavander. “Besides, he bought a boat and took off for New Brunswick.”

Kavander nodded and smiled.

The death of Father Sellinger acted as a catalyst on the broadcast and print media, which dispatched entire teams to the Boston area. Groups of cameramen and their equipment clustered around the giant grey edifice on Berkeley Street. By early afternoon Acting Lieutenant Eddie Vance had been filmed by all three networks and CNN news and was giving an exclusive interview to
USA Today
in the foyer.

“The son of a bitch is a media junkie,” McGuire said as he watched Vance from the downstairs elevator corridor. “He and old Harvey Jaycock, they'd make a good pair.”

Bernie Lipson grunted assent. “Speaking of Jaycock,” he said as they stepped into the elevator together, “did you hear that Ralph Innes found a ripped-up porno magazine in one of the trash bins at St. Matthew's? Looks like Harvey spent his spare periods in the furnace room pulling more than thermostat controls.”

“Ralph show it to him?” McGuire asked as the door closed.

“Yeah. Jaycock admitted it was his. Begged Ralph not to tell the priests. Figured the church wouldn't approve of one of their building custodians slobbering over orgy pictures when the fathers were saving souls one floor above him.”

“Why'd he tear it up?”

“Beats me,” Lipson shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe he wasn't having any more meaningful relationships with it, the magazine.”

“Yeah, but you don't tear up porno. I mean, you throw it away or you burn it or something, but you don't rip it up.”

Lipson stood silent for a moment, then shrugged again. “I don't know. It doesn't seem important. The magazine, Innes is holding it over Jaycock's head in case he spills anything to the press. Ralph told him to cut the interviews and don't talk to anybody about anything, or we'll send the porno magazine to the bishop and explain where we found it. That'll have old Harvey on the street begging for spare change in a minute.”

“Get Ralph to ask him why he tore it up,” McGuire ordered.

The elevator doors opened at their floor. McGuire stepped out, his head down, lost in thought.

“You don't think it means anything?” Lipson asked. “The porno?”

McGuire didn't answer. He kept walking, not thinking of the pornography as an important clue. He was thinking instead of persuading a media-hungry acting lieutenant to reveal something publicly.

Whether Vance knew it or not.

It had been a slow day at the New England Aquarium, which was just fine with Anne Murison, because she could use the rest. Working five days a week helped her and her husband with the expenses and all, but it certainly put a strain on her housework, and Anne Murison prided herself on the clean home she kept. “I'm not what you call your core-dawn blue chef,” she was saying to George, who cleaned the otter pens and penguin pools. “I mean, macaroni and cheese is about my limit, next to maybe a pot of stew. But I like to keep a clean house, you know? Norman tells everybody he could eat off the floor in our place, it's so clean.” She giggled. “Then he always says, ‘And if she ever learns to cook, maybe I will some day!'”

George laughed and picked up his bucket to walk away. He stopped and returned to Anne Murison's ticket counter. “He's back,” he said in a low voice, his eyes on the far corner of the open ground floor area. “Your friend who likes otters.”

The ticket seller looked up from her magazine. “I know,” she answered in a hoarse whisper. “And he looks terrible, doesn't he? His clothes are so dirty, and he could use a good bath.”

“That's every day this week,” George said, frowning. “Doesn't the kid have any other place to go?”

“You know, I wondered about that myself.” Anne lifted a hand to her thick dark hair and began twirling the curls between her fingers. Thirty-five dollars she'd paid for that perm, and Norman hadn't even noticed. “Actually, he's really kind of cute.” She wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn't mind taking him home with me. Might stir Norman up a bit and make him appreciate what he's got.” She snorted.

George shook his head sadly, still watching the far corner where the otters frolicked in front of the slight figure silhouetted against their glass window. A heavy bag sat at the figure's feet. “You think we should call somebody?” George asked. “The cops or something?”

“What for?” Anne asked, her voice rising in anger. “He doesn't hurt anybody. He pays cash to get in, he stands there and minds his own business. He's very polite. When we're closing up, I just have to touch his arm, and he smiles and heads for the subway. Leave the poor kid alone.”

George glanced back at her. “All right, take it easy. It was just an idea. Doesn't seem natural, a young guy like that spending the whole day looking at a couple of otters, not talking to anybody, not working anywhere, not going to school.”

“Come on, George. Don't you have something better to do?” Anne asked, looking down to find her place in the magazine article.

George frowned at her and shuffled away. The hell with it, he thought. If she wants to let some nut hang around her all day, that's her business. Still didn't seem right, though.

Janet Parsons swept into the squad room and collapsed in a chair in front of McGuire. She was wearing a straight-cut grey skirt and silky blue blouse, with a single gold chain around her neck. Her dark shoulder-length hair reflected red highlights as it caught the late afternoon sun streaming through the window.

McGuire glanced up from the stack of three-by-five cards in his hands. Each card carried the name, description and personal details of suspects, witnesses and other participants in the three priest murders, plus telephone tips, leads from police informers and confessions. He held almost a hundred cards of various colours, each generated by Eddie Vance's computer program and printed at 160 characters per second on a laser-jet machine.

The cards, McGuire decided, were worthless.

“There has to be a kid on every block in this city who looks like the one Jaycock saw,” Janet Parsons said. She sprawled in the stiff metal chair, her legs stretched in front of her, her hem riding above her knees.

“The picture may be more trouble than it's worth, right?” McGuire said.

She rested her forehead on her hand and nodded. “Everybody who calls thinks it's a neighbour's kid or some punk who was hanging around the corner last week. That face looks like everybody and nobody.” She lifted her eyes to McGuire's for the first time since she came in the room. “You think the janitor really saw somebody there? Or is he just trying to play hero again?”

McGuire tossed the colour-coded computer cards on the desk. “I believe the blond hair and that it was a young guy,” he answered. “Other than that, all I think Jaycock saw was the shotgun. That's when he shit his pants.”

She giggled and turned her head away.

“You know what I think?” he said.

She looked at him. “What do you think, McGuire?”

“I think we should release the writing on the blackboard. To the media.”

Her hand dropped from behind her head where she had been patting her hair in place, and she stared at him, absorbing what he had said. “You're crazy,” she replied finally.

“It means something.”

“Sure it does. It means we've got a way of filtering out all of the crazies who are calling us up, saying ‘I shot the fathers! I shot the fathers!'”

“‘The Priest desires.' What's it mean, Janet?” He leaned forward over the colour-coded cards. “Just what the hell does it mean?”

“I don't know. Maybe it doesn't mean anything.”

“Sure it does. Why not ‘To hell with Catholics'? Or ‘Piss on the Pope'? That's your real down-home angry graffiti. You blow a priest's face half off, then you write something like ‘The Priest desires' on a blackboard. That's calm, Janet. There's nothing angry about it.”

McGuire stood up and walked to the window, where the sun was beginning to set somewhere beyond Cambridge.

“If it means something to the kid who's killing the priests, then maybe it means something to somebody else. But we have to tell that somebody about it,” McGuire said.

“You ask the shrink if it means anything?”

“He agrees. If you're angry enough to blast somebody with a sawed-off, you don't write something as calm as ‘The Priest desires' unless it's really significant to you.”

“What's Kavander think?”

“Kavander thinks the same as you do.” He looked over at her, and she shuddered a little. He grinned and caught himself admiring her long slim legs again. Married. He tried to recall if he had ever met her husband and couldn't.

“Maybe you should leak it,” she suggested. “Maybe you've got a point. Somebody reads it, puts two and two together. . . .” She shrugged again. “Any lead will be better than what we're getting now.” She stood up and began spreading the colour-coded file cards with her hand. “These are useless. You know what Fat Eddie's got the girls in the steno pool doing?”