Dead Wrong (37 page)

In the light of all that had happened, including this morning’s bombshell, how could this event square with a reasonable conclusion?

Koesler’s brain was a near maelstrom. But gradually, as he began to fit things—people, events—into place, one possibility loomed ever larger. Now, he needed just one more bit of information to have everything come out right. There was one person he simply had to talk to.

He dialed her number ten separate times, by actual count, before he gave up. He would have to make an unannounced and uninvited visit. Something he scarcely ever did.

But first, he left a desperation-filled note for Mary O’Connor, parish secretary, general factotum, and his right arm. He apologized profusely and stressed what an emergency he faced today. He had no idea where he would be nor how long he would be gone. He asked her to try to find a spare Jesuit to offer the noon Mass. Short of that, she might contact one of the parish’s extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist to conduct a prayer service with the distribution of Communion.

All of this Mary would have thought of on her own, once she knew he’d been called away. He was going into detail only to indicate how sorry he was to dump these emergency burdens on her.

Next, he asked her to reschedule today’s appointments for later in the week.

For all of this, all he could promise her was that he would not make coffee for her tomorrow. For some reason, she never cared for any of his brew.

He had only to remove his cassock and don the black jacket and clerical collar. And he was gone.

A
S HE NEARED
Maureen’s modest home in the suburb of Warren, Father Koesler was met by an array of departing vehicles. Several vans with prominent TV logos were headed out of the neighborhood. The rest of the motorcade he took to be radio and print people.

His initial surprise gave way to an acknowledgment that it was only natural that Maureen and the girls would be among the hottest news items in town following Nash’s announcement.

As he parked in front of Maureen’s house, he thanked God he had not arrived earlier when the reporters must have been swarming all over the place. There was only one man left, who was about to enter his car as Koesler pulled up. A radio personality, he would have gone unrecognized except that Koesler had been interviewed by him in the past. WJR reporter Rod Hansen smiled as the priest approached. “If they didn’t call for you, I don’t think you’re going to get in here, Father.”

Koesler nodded toward the house. “Anybody home?”

“Oh, somebody’s home all right. They just don’t want to talk to anybody. Not anybody from the media anyway.” His innate curiosity and reportorial skills were piqued by this priest who had arrived conveniently after the mass of newspeople had departed. “It’s Father … Koesler, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So what brings you here, Father?” Hansen switched on his tape recorder as he moved closer to the priest.

Koesler’s reaction was one of gratitude. Rod Hansen’s traplike memory had pulled up his name from previous episodes with the local media. But obviously Hansen was unaware that Koesler and Maureen were related. Otherwise, the priest’s telephone would have been ringing this morning. As long as he could keep the relationship quiet, there was a good chance he would move through this storm unscathed.

“Well,” Koesler said, “in a sense you’re right, Rod. The Monahans and I go back a long way. I think they kind of expect me to come. At any rate, I’ll soon find out.”

Leaving the reporter standing at the curb aiming his recorder at a departing back, Koesler climbed the steps and rang the doorbell. He prayed Maureen would let him in. Otherwise he would be forced to deal with Rod Hansen once more. Faced with such an astute reporter, Koesler knew he would soon run out of evasive statements. He had no intention of lying to the reporter. But neither did he want to be hounded.

He breathed a sigh of relief as the door was opened. “You’re lucky,” Maureen said. “I didn’t intend to answer the phone or the door all day. But I hadn’t counted on a priest and a cousin as well. Come on in.”

As Koesler stepped inside, he glanced back in time to see Hansen shrug. As Maureen closed the door, the reporter entered his car and drove off.

I
NSIDE THE HOUSE
it was more like the dead of night than morning. All the blinds were closed and the draperies drawn. Lights were turned on. The only sound came from the whir of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

He entered the living room, to find Brenda seated on the couch. Maureen joined her. Koesler sat opposite them in an upholstered chair. “Everybody’s here but Mary Lou,” he said.

“She was here,” Maureen said, “earlier. She left quite a while ago.”

“In a huff?”

Both Maureen and Brenda looked at him with interest. “What makes you say that?” Maureen asked.

“Earlier this morning,” he said, “after I heard the news, a whole bunch of scattered thoughts, suppositions, theories, what-ifs, began to fall into place. Now I can think of more than one reason why Mary Lou left in a huff. Maybe why she may not be back.

“I haven’t filled in every single space,” he explained, “but I think I’m close.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Suppose I tell you the story the way I have it figured out. And you tell me if I’m wrong. You might even fill in those blanks that are left.”

Maureen and Brenda looked at each other, then returned their gaze to Koesler. “Okay,” Maureen said. “Go ahead.”

Koesler settled back in the chair that was much more comfortable than it appeared. “Let me begin at the end—the break-in and murder in the chancery building the night before last.”

Brenda shot an “I-told-your-so” look at Maureen.

“A number of things about that whole mess sort of begged for somebody to make sense of,” Koesler said. “It occurred to me as the investigation proceeded that it was the head of your department, Brenda, who put these documents in the archives. I found that interesting. Also interesting was that the archives are on the same floor as your office. So, if you wanted to, you could have provided a key to the chancery’s door as well as the combination that would get somebody through security to the third floor, where your office and the archives are located.”

“Lots of people could have provided as much. Or the intruder could have obtained the information from any number of sources,” Maureen objected.

“Uh-huh,” Koesler admitted. “But there’s more. The presence of the security guard. Under ordinary circumstances, no guard would have been there. But the cleaning people demanded added protection as long as those valuable papers were in the building. How did they hear about the danger? All they’ve said is, ‘There was talk.’ I wondered, was it your boss, Mr. McGraw, who put out that word, Brenda … perhaps prompted by you?”

“It—”

“Then there was the killer,” Koesler said, cutting off Brenda’s attempted reply. “The police have since identified him as Rick Chardon. The possibility that Chardon is the same person who killed a young woman thirty-three years ago—coincidence? Inspector Koznicki is trying to establish the connection.

“Now I was trying to figure out some connection between the two crimes besides the apparent motive that Chardon was trying to steal the land purchase documents. After Mr. Maher provided me with at least a partial list of items stored in the archives, I started wondering: What if both crimes were related to some sort of records?

“In the case of the girl who was killed thirty-three years ago—Agnes Ventimiglia—she worked in a county office that dealt almost exclusively in records—birth, death, marriage. Among the things contained in the archives are microfilms of parish records—including baptismal records. What if that’s the relationship?

“So far, Brenda, we have the possible use of your key, your ease of entry, your floor, documents that belong to your department—all this leading up to the possible theft or destruction of what—a baptismal record? By a person who is also the probable killer of a young woman in charge of birth records that go back to the time and place of
your
birth. What a coincidence!”

The two women were gazing at Koesler, Maureen with a frown, Brenda with what Koesler took to be a slight smile.

“The question I asked myself then,” Koesler continued, “is ‘Why?’ What is there about these records? Why would they involve murder—the first very premeditated, the second a matter of necessity?

“That led me to consider what happened to you, Maureen. At the time you were dating Charles Nash, I was pretty completely preoccupied with my pastoral duties. But Oona and Eileen have recently filled me in. So I’m aware of how deeply involved you were with Charlie. You expected—understandably, I might add—him to marry you. Then you became pregnant. And he was the father of your unborn child.

“But, he dumped you—brutally. You were filled with shame and anger and,” his voice softened, “I suppose a measure of despair. But,” he added, “it looks as if in your emotional reaction, that anger won out.”

He looked at her questioningly. But Maureen, her face a mask, merely gazed at him wordlessly.

Koesler pushed on. “You went away to Chicago during your pregnancy. You returned to Detroit for the birth of your baby. Undoubtedly, you loved your baby as much as any other mother. Other than that, you were one deeply angry young woman—especially when you discovered that Charlie had had a family even before he began seeing you. And that he’d kept hidden from you the existence of a wife and a son.

“You would be the only source of information for the recording of your child’s birth. I can’t think of a single reason why you would not have listed Charles Nash as the father of your baby.” He paused, but with no response from Maureen, picked up the thread of his speech.

“Now, I must admit I’ve never seen a copy of that birth record, but I would be powerfully surprised at this point, with everything that’s happened since, if that record doesn’t show ‘Father unknown.’”

No reaction from either woman. In the absence of any response, Koesler assumed he was on the right track. “If you supplied the father’s name, Maureen, and later the record was changed, who but the father—Charlie Nash—would have been responsible for the alteration? What if he hired Chardon, and Chardon provided the ‘romance’ that filled that unfortunate young woman’s last days? What if in return for that ‘gift’ of ‘love,’ Chardon required—that Agnes remove Charles’s name from the birth record …?

“Since Agnes was killed at the end of November, the month of your child’s birth, the record would have been altered around about that time. I know that at the end of each month, copies of that month’s records are forwarded to Lansing to be kept at the State Capital. That’s why they had to get Agnes to alter the record before December. It also explains why they would kill her then. They had no further use for her.

“But you wouldn’t have known all this. And good Catholic that you are, you would have had your daughter baptized. Now here’s a record that would present a considerable challenge to tamper with. For one thing, no priest would allow it. But beyond that, you could select any parish you wished and Nash would have the devil’s own time tracking down the parish of baptism. And his name definitely would be on
that
record.

“Now, why would Chardon be trying to get to this record in the archives? I’ll bet if we looked up that record in the archives and found the church of baptism—and that would be easy enough—I’ll bet we’d find that something had happened to change or destroy the original baptism record in the actual parish.

“Not that many people knew about that microfilming program. So I’m assuming—and I’m sure I’m correct—Nash had something done to the parish record, thought he could rest easy, then found that the record still existed in the archives. Thus, Chardon again.

“But there’s one more twist to this story, I do believe, Maureen.” Again he paused, this time seeming to look off into the distance. The two women didn’t know whether he was thinking or, possibly, praying.

“I don’t think I’ve ever come close to gauging just how deeply and totally you hated Charlie Nash, Maureen …” He turned back to her.

“… nor how deeply determined you were to have revenge—the most complete revenge I have ever encountered.” He shook his head.

“At one point, you may have contemplated seeking a mind-boggling child support from Nash. But after you discovered that Charlie had gone so far as to have your daughter’s birth record altered …” He paused. “When did you discover that, anyway?” Maureen’s only response was a shrug. After a moment, Koesler went on. “At any rate, whenever you discovered it—and possibly even the concomitant murder of an innocent young woman further motivated you—you started on your careful, painstaking long-range plan of revenge.

“When it finally dawned on me what you’ve done, I couldn’t believe it.” He looked at her, then shook his head with a pained expression. “That’s when I decided I could scarcely recognize you as the kid I grew up with.

“Here’s what I think happened. In a huge county like Wayne, there must be many more than one child per month whose birth record lists ‘father unknown.’

“You didn’t assume custody of your child immediately. That may very well have been a necessary financial decision. But I think it was much more than that.

“Somehow, you kept track of two children—one a foundling, the other your daughter. Eventually, you brought one, then the other, to your home. As far as most of us—myself included—knew, they were both more or less adopted by you to take the place of the daughters you would never have.

“Then your sisters were let in on that secret—and much later, they informed me, as one born out of due time: Mary Lou was your real daughter. She was my real cousin.

“But now, Maureen”—he looked at her fixedly—“I think not.”

Both women remained impassive; it was as if they knew his conclusion was inevitable.

After a moment, Koesler went on.

“As a good Catholic girl, you very probably considered your love affair with Charlie Nash as one prolonged mortal sin. For one raised as you and I were, there was no possible way you could have escaped that self-condemnation. But you could see light at the end of the tunnel: He would marry you and make your love legitimate.