Pious Deception (3 page)

“Miss O’Shaughnessy!”

Kiernan sighed. She felt a wave of sympathy for the bishop, who was so clearly out of his depth. But sympathy wouldn’t help now. What he needed was, alas, a cold splash of reality. If he couldn’t take that, better he, and she, know it now. “Bishop Dowd, what we’re discussing is a priest found hanging from his own altar, with his hands tied behind his back. It’s possible to rig a rope that way but not usual. The other possibility is that someone else did it. That’s what the papers will say if this comes out. The papers will have a field day with that.”

Dowd gasped.

Could he
not
have considered that? “Bishop, you can be arrested for concealing a crime. We’re talking a class-four felony here; that’s up to four years in prison and a hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar fine. As a private citizen, you are liable. The doctor you called could lose his license, and I could lose mine. So if you’re not willing to notify the police, I’ll leave now.”

Dowd tapped a finger on the arm of the sofa. His eyes rested on one of the green leather chairs as if for comfort. He seemed to be weighing the alternatives, and the process was taking him a long time. Too long.

She had already had second thoughts about taking this case, twenty-five thou or no. Let the Catholic hierarchy squirm. She could get other cases.

But this room of Vanderhooven’s, with its statement of respect for the people who made up the shabby little parish, intrigued her. The contradictory man who had created it intrigued her. The suggestion of similarity to herself had hooked her, as Chase had known it would. And, she realized with a start, she didn’t want Vanderhooven banished in disgrace, as Moira had been. A quarter of a century later, the accusation of suicide still stung. “Bishop Dowd,” she said, “you don’t have a choice about maintaining secrecy. Vanderhooven’s burial will involve too many people. The word is bound to come out. The only question is when, and how much trouble it will cause you.”

Dowd kept his eyes on the chair, offering no acknowledgment of her statement. Finally, he sighed. “All right; I’ll deal with it. But in the morning. One of the men in the next parish is on day shift. I’ll report it to him.”

She pointed to the contract. When they had signed and taken their copies, she said, “You’ve talked to Vanderhooven’s parents?”

“To his father. I had to call him in Maui. They were vacationing. I didn’t get him till two in the afternoon. They’re on their way here now.”

“Did you tell him the whole truth?”

Dowd winced. “I said young Vanderhooven had been hung.”

“Did you mention that his hands were tied?”

There was a hesitation before he said, “Of course not. Telling a man his son died a suicide was bad enough.” Absently, he rolled his copy of the contract into a tight cylinder and squeezed it between his hands.

“And how did Mr. Vanderhooven react to what you did tell him?” Kiernan asked, glancing from Dowd’s tightening fingers to his tense face.

“Disbelief. Outrage. What do you expect?”

Outrage wouldn’t be a parent’s first reaction to his son’s suicide. And a bishop wouldn’t automatically hire a detective. “And he referred you to me?”

Slowly, Dowd twisted the contract. Then with the smallest possible movement, he nodded.

Kiernan didn’t know just what Dowd’s fears about Vanderhooven’s death were, but she could see why he was so unnerved. Her own suspicions were getting clearer. She said, “Show me where you found the body.”

S
HE FOLLOWED
B
ISHOP
D
OWD
through the sacristy, glancing at clerical garb on hangers. The white dress the priest wore over the black one, what was that called? Alb. And the black one was the cassock. The purple robe, the flowing outer one, that was the chasuble. Surprising how those terms she hadn’t thought of in twenty-five years came back. There was a time in her childhood when setting eyes on the room where priests dressed would have been a coup. How disappointingly ordinary this one looked now. Without the robes and the stole the priest wore around his neck, it could have been any other dressing room.

Dowd opened the far door, reached around it, and flicked on a light.

Kiernan glanced in at the altar. It wasn’t at all like the one at St. Brendan’s in Baltimore. The pale brown-and-green statues beside the main altar seemed to blend into the gold that covered the wall. Subtle, tasteful, this altar had none of the gaudy blues and magentas of St. Brendan’s.

The acrid smell of incense hit her, momentarily obliterating the differences between the altars, erasing the past twenty-six years. She stared with a twelve-year-old’s bewilderment, despair, and fury. She could feel her father’s hand on her arm, restraining her as she started toward the coffin; she could feel his shaky fingers pressing into her flesh. She could almost see the angry tears running down his cheeks as he looked at the corpse of his beautiful red-haired daughter.

Swallowing, she turned back to Dowd. “Where was Vanderhooven’s body?” Her voice sounded sharper than she’d intended.

“Over there.” He seemed unable to move. There was no mistaking the sincerity of his reaction. He stared beyond the altar rail to a side altar in the nave. “He was there, hanging there.”

“From the altar.”

Slowly, Dowd nodded.

She moved down through the opening in the railing toward the side altar. Four painted wooden columns about five feet tall rose from the altar table, framing the statues of three saints and supporting a kind of cornice with an upright carved ornament at each end. The altar table itself was narrow, and the bases of the columns left barely enough space for a man to clamber up and loop a rope around one of those ornaments. But even from where Kiernan was standing she could see where the rope had scraped some of the flaky paint off the right-hand ornament.

Fine place for a suicide, Kiernan thought. And if Vanderhooven had strung himself up here, he certainly had danced on the edge of disaster to get his kicks. Dowd could have walked in any time, as he had Wednesday evening. No ordinary priest, indeed. She could certainly see why Bishop Dowd was so nervous.

She glanced back at Dowd. His ruddy skin had paled and his eyes stared blankly. “Bishop Dowd, how was Vanderhooven hanging when you found him?”

Moving his head slowly side to side, he said, “He was in front of the altar. Here. But not facing it. His back was to it. His feet had slid out behind him, soles up. His toes were against the altar. His body was arched way forward. His knees were almost on the floor. Like he’d been in prayer and then he lurched forward and …” Dowd looked beseechingly at Kiernan. “He could just have slid one foot forward, stood up and walked away.”

“But he didn’t. Or couldn’t,” she said softly. “Why not? That’s the issue, right?” When he nodded, she said, “Now tell me about the rope, how did it go? What kind of knots did he use?”

“The rope? I don’t know much about knots. Never was a Boy Scout. Didn’t bother with that sort of thing when I was a boy. Don’t sail.” He shrugged awkwardly. “You can sail in Arizona. There are lakes, plenty of man-made lakes, big ones behind the dams. You’d never know they were man-made. Little ones in the nicer developments. Ornamental lakes. I used to hang around the docks when I was a kid, in Boston, you know. Looked out to the ocean. Never could get up much interest in a lake after that.”

Giving Dowd time to stop rambling, Kiernan stared at the altar. Vanderhooven wouldn’t have had to climb up there. The ornament was only eight or nine feet above floor level. He could have tossed the rope over it. Lassoed it. Without turning, she said to Dowd, “You were going to tell me about the rope.”

“Well, it’ll be specifics you’re wanting, more than I could tell you, so … well, here.”

She turned to find him holding out a proof sheet. A photographic proof sheet! She stared in amazement. What kind of man, what kind of
bishop,
would take a roll of pictures of his subordinate, hanging dead
in his own church?
Kiernan struggled to keep the evidence of shock from her voice. “You took pictures?”

“Someone might ask how he was. I knew that, you see,” he said quickly, almost stumbling over his words, as if had rehearsed his explanation and now was trying to remember it. “But I couldn’t leave him hanging. From the altar. He was dead. His skin was clammy, and his arms”—Dowd shivered—“were already stiff. His face was gray. It was like all the blood had drained out of his head. Only color was in his tongue.” He swallowed. “You can see that from the pictures, even as small as they are.”

A cold shiver of horror went down Kiernan’s back as she looked down at the proof sheet. Three images on the glossy, dark sheet. Views from the front and both sides. The slight, pale figure, was hanging, tongue distended, eyes bulging. Kiernan held the sheet closer, squinting in the dim light. Another shiver iced her back. The priest’s fly was unzipped. The rope crossed there between his legs, extended up his back to encircle his neck and from there—pulled taut—to the wrists.

She had considered the possibility of autoerotic asphyxia, but that did nothing to lessen the shock now that she saw the evidence. It wasn’t the act itself that shocked her; she had heard tales of autopsies done on men who had tied themselves up, tightened the noose in hopes of that ultimate sexual thrill, and failed to get loose in time. She had done an autopsy herself on one such case. It was not even that this act had taken place in the church and been photographed there. It was the sudden, clinical betrayal implicit in Dowd’s presentation of the photos.

She looked back at the bishop. There was no sign of embarrassment or outrage or even awkwardness on his face. She took a breath and asked, “Did you develop these yourself?”

“I have a dark room. Photography’s a hobby of mine. I—”

“How much can you enlarge these?”

“And still keep the clarity?” He took the edge of the sheet, held it closer to his face, and stared down intently. She could see his jaw relax as he contemplated the familiar, the manageable. “I had to use a flash, of course. And it’s four-hundred film, faster than what you’d be using for vacation photos. I’d say eight by twelve, maybe eleven by fourteen, but that’ll be getting grainy. You’ll still see the ropes, all right. Any larger than that, no.”

Taking the sheet back she asked, “How soon can you have them for me?”

“In the morning, I guess.”

“Fine.” She stared back down at the sheet. No wonder Dowd was so nervous. “With his pants unzipped like this, no wonder—”

Dowd gasped.

She looked up at his ashen face. Now he really was shocked. Not at the state of Vanderhooven’s body, she suspected, but at the fact that he wouldn’t be spared dealing with the consequences. Why hire a detective and then hope she won’t see … But clients did that type of thing all the time. And Dowd came across as a man who could hope that his detective would somehow solve his problem without ever raising the question he so desperately wanted to avoid. “Bishop Dowd,” she said, “we need to be honest with each other. It’s not only the question of suicide you’re worried about. It’s the issue of sex. Autoerotic asphyxia.”

Dowd’s face went white. He sank back against the pew. “No! He couldn’t have …”

She peered closer at the tiny photos. “The knot by his hands, was it a slipknot?”

Dowd shook his head. “I told you I don’t know about knots.”

“Just a knot with a bight—with the tail looped through, so it could be pulled out quickly and the hands released.”

“There was. You’re—”

“Rats!”

“What?”

“That’s one sign of autoerotic asphyxia. When men do this to themselves, they’re not planning to die. The idea is to cut off the oxygen to the brain, experience the orgasm, and then pull the tail of the rope and free the hands
before
they strangle themselves.”

Dowd clung to the back of the pew. His face was sweaty, his skin whiter than Kiernan could have imagined possible. “You’re saying young Vanderhooven did this to himself? No! I can’t believe that.”

“I’m saying the slipknot and rope like his are essential to the procedure. If Vanderhooven concocted this himself, he would have used them.”

Suddenly Dowd smiled. “But Vanderhooven couldn’t have done that. With his hands behind him? There’s no way.”

He was so relieved, she almost hesitated to disillusion him. “Vanderhooven could have stepped through his arms. He could have tied the knot loosely, given himself enough slack on the standing end of the rope between the neck and the hands and stepped through.” She squinted at the photo, then shook her head. “Some men can do that, but it doesn’t look like Vanderhooven could. Not with the angle his humerus was coming out of his acromioclavicular joint. His shoulders were too tight.” She looked back at the photo. If Vanderhooven couldn’t pull his hands back there, then someone else did, and left him here, in the church, to become an object of scorn. “Let me see the body.”

“T
HE BODY’S IN THE
fridge, Bishop. You know where that is. I don’t want nothing to do with this. I ain’t seen him; I don’t aim to. Door three. He’s all yours.” Leaving Dowd and Kiernan standing in front of an elevator, the sundried little man scurried away over the mortuary’s thick carpet.

Kiernan caught Dowd’s eye. “That’s what I mean about too many people.”

“Russ? Don’t worry about him. He can be trusted. He wouldn’t have his job if he couldn’t be. The diocese sends a lot of business here.”

Kiernan looked over at Dowd. “Everyone’s got his limits. Give Russ a few free drinks,
then
see how discreet he is.” She looked at the mortuary elevator. “We’re going down, I presume.”

Dowd pushed the button and the doors opened. They stepped in and descended in silence. The doors parted to reveal a hallway. Empty coffins on raised tiers stood to the left, their lids opened invitingly. The dead air was laced with an old-rose perfume that screamed “air freshener.”

Kiernan followed Dowd down the hallway to an unmarked door. Inside there was no rosy perfume, only the familiar smell of ammonia, antiseptic, and decay. And the cold. There had been ample comments on that in medical school: the icy fingers of death, the frozen-meat section.