The Man Who Murdered God
Read The Man Who Murdered God Online
Authors: John Lawrence Reynolds
A Joe McGuire Mystery
John Lawrence Reynolds
To Holly,
who knows why by now.
It would be a soft day.
While the city slept through a mid-April night, warm air had crept northward, easing away a cold front that had belonged to March. By morning the temperature had leaped two months ahead to May. The day was mild and moist, flooded with dampness and devoid of wind. A soft day.
The Reverend Thomas Lynch rose at his usual pre-dawn hour, showered his aging pink body, and combed, with an exactness that revealed a surprising vanity, his thinning white hair. As the eastern sky changed from gravel to roses, he dressed in collar and black suit, emerged from the comfort of the rectory, entered the church proper and knelt before the altar to pray and to wonder.
His morning prayers never varied. But in recent months he remained kneeling after his prayers, the fingers of his right hand clasping the bridge of his nose, seeking understanding and guidance for himself and for the future of St. Eugene's Roman Catholic Church.
The parish of St. Eugene's was the smallest in the greater Boston area. The church and rectory, established over a century earlier, had been created when both the power of God and the enduring energy of the Boston Irish were considered equally infinite. Situated on a rise amid a quiet residential section that straddled the boundary between Jamaica Plain and Forest Hills, the church commanded a dramatic view east towards Franklin Park and beyond Dorchester to the Atlantic.
Its architect, a gifted yet practical man, had made the most of both the location and the limited funds assigned by the archdiocese for the construction of St. Eugene's. He used rough, red granite following lines that advanced and retreated from the viewer's eye, moulding the structure to follow the hill's crest. Heavy timbers, among the last harvested from Massachusetts' dwindling forests in the nineteenth century, were exposed here and there to define the building's lines and add to its humble, stolid appearance.
The steeple's impressive height had been decreed not by the architect nor for the greater glory of God but to satisfy the dictates of the bishop, who had been appalled when shown the low lines of the building and who insisted that the cross sail far above other churches in the area.
Through the turn of the century and two world wars St. Eugene's survived, if not thrived, on the support of Boston's smallest Catholic congregation. But eventually the solid middle-class Irish and scattering of Italian families began either moving west towards Tudor Brookline, thereby gaining a notch or two in achievement, or drifting north to Revere and Chelsea, losing degrees of respectability and faith in the process.
The parish of St. Eugene's was dying. Reverend Lynch realized it each time he completed his matins and remained in the quiet light of dawn, kneeling before the carved oak presence of the Virgin. Already the church basement was being leased on a daily basis to a private daycare centre. Years before, the parish itself would have provided the service and absorbed the cost; now it desperately needed the centre as a source of income.
There had been enquiries, subtle to be sure but as plain in their meaning as the first frost of winter, about Thomas Lynch's reaction to the idea of giving up his church duties to perform hospice work on behalf of the archdiocese. And a black Baptist congregation over on Washington Street was clearly interested in acquiring the church structure (smiling and bracketing their words with “you understand” and “of course”) if it should ever become available.
There should be hospice care for dying churches, too, Reverend Lynch brooded as he rose and crossed himself. The parish support had shrunk dramatically in recent years. Some Sundays, Thomas Lynch mused, he could have taken the entire congregation for a ride in the bishop's limousine.
He walked to the altar, kissed the crucifix, lit a candle and checked his watch. In another hour Mrs. Kelley would arrive to brew his tea, perform her maid's chores in the rectory, and grumble about her grandchildren. He would nod and smile and make soothing noises, then give her his blessing and watch as she left with new strength in her spirit if not in her arthritic hands.
I will be the last of my faith to command a flock within this building, he pondered as he genuflected and turned from the altar. He was surprised that the idea neither shocked nor saddened him. For all of his faith, Thomas Lynch considered himself a realist. Life, he often said to console a dying parishioner, is a matter of letting go. We let go of the womb, of the shelter of our parents, of our children and eventually of this life, to be gathered again in heaven.
Thomas Lynch was prepared to let go, as God determined for him.
Something scurried away on tiny feet in the darkness as Reverend Lynch walked down the aisle to the heavy church door. Poor as church mice, the priest reflected. It was a phrase no one seemed to use anymore. “Perhaps they could say âPoor as St. Gene's,'” he muttered to himself. He would speak to the woman who operated the daycare centre, reminding her that no food was to be left anywhere in the church. It just drew the mice, he knew. And he wouldn't set traps. The mice did little damageâa smile played on his face, then dissolved awayâalthough once, Mrs. Hennessy threw Palm Sunday ceremonies into a tither when a mouse ran across her new pumps from Filene's. Poor Mrs. Hennessy. That was the thought that scattered his smile. He crossed himself in her memory. Poor Mrs. Hennessy.
He pulled aside the iron latch on the inside of the heavy oak doors.
That's what you do. You deny them food and they'll leave. Go elsewhere. Perhaps down the hill to the Presbyterian church where they can afford mice. He smiled quickly again, this time at the impishness of his thought.
The door swung open, admitting the veiled sunlight of the early April morning. Birds sang in trees that wore a dusting of green. Daffodils, planted years ago around the building's foundation and ignored since, were already beyond their prime and growing brown and limp. A cat, surprised in the middle of stalking squirrels on the lawn, froze on the spot and watched the priest with wide, shining eyes. Coming up the hill towards the church, a young man was strolling, an athletic bag in hand, heading perhaps for an early season tennis match. From somewhere he heard a car door slam, and a starter motor begin whining.
There was no catechism to support it, no Biblical teachings he could recall on the subject, but deep within, Reverend Thomas Lynch believed that early risers carried an extra measure of morality. There is a cleansing from the early morning sun that fades by noon, he was convinced. Laggards sleep late. The devil moves in darkness. And angels congregate in dawn's light.
He walked back to the altar, arranging the thin slate of day's events in his mind as he went. A chat with Mr. Mullet about clearing the eavestroughs. Setting the landscaping budget. A visit this afternoon to City Hospital to visit poor Patrick O'Hara, dying from kidney failure.
He genuflected at the altar once again. And how many more springs do I have to hold onto my field and my flock? he asked the sad-eyed Mary in silence. Not many, came the reply from within him. As your flock has let go of you and of life, surely you must let go of. . . .
A metallic clatter sounded behind him. He turned from the altar to see a slight figure silhouetted in the open doorway, carrying something heavy at its side.
Reverend Lynch brought his hands together in front of his chest and nodded.
“Good morning!” he called aloud. He raised one hand, shielding his eyes to discern some detail in the person standing in the brilliant light of his church doorway. “Welcome to St. Eugene's,” he added as the figure remained frozen against the rising sun. Thomas Lynch could see only the head moving, turning slowly from side to side and surveying the church interior as though deciding if it was safe to enter.
Thomas Lynch frowned. It's someone who needs help, he decided. He glanced quickly towards the old, unused confessional booth. Perhaps they'll feel more comfortable in there, he anticipated. There is a comfort in speaking to someone you can call Father, safe in the darkness of a space that in its time has heard every sin imaginable.
He lowered his hand and walked down the aisle, beaming his broadest Irish smile. “My name is Thomas Lynch. And yours?”
Thunder echoed through the church as the heavy Gothic door slammed shut. The priest's eyes, having narrowed against the flood of sunshine through the open door, were blinded in the sudden darkness. He stopped halfway down the aisle and reached one hand out to touch a pew.
“Perhaps you just want to rest here awhile,” he said to the figure, now a crouching shadow among shadows.
He heard the sound of a zipper opening. With his eyes grown accustomed to the darkness once again, he could see the figure reaching into a large athletic bag. It's the tennis player, he recognized. The young fair-haired boy I just saw ascending the hill. He remembered the faded yellow T-shirt, the baggy track pants, the worn sneakers.
But why on earth does he want his tennis racket out, here in the church? the priest wondered as the young man withdrew a dark, tubular device from the bag.
“Look, if I can help you. . . .” Thomas Lynch said, stepping closer to the silent visitor, a hint of annoyance in his voice.
The young man was standing straight now, the instrument in his hands pointing at the priest. At the end of it a large round black hole could be discerned, obscene and foul.
“My God,” the priest whispered, and the church interior was lit in an explosion of iron hail.
In his final moments of consciousness Thomas Lynch lay on his back, his head against the side of the pew, listening to soft liquid sounds from somewhere near the front of his vestments. His eyes were fixed on the peak of St. Eugene's interior, where last winter's snows had leaked through the caulking to stain the precious old oak. It must be repaired, he told himself sternly. Otherwise it will rot, and poor St. Gene's will tumble down. He felt his breathing grow more shallow and tried valiantly to whisper a final Hail Mary.
Among the last perceptions of a long life devoted to Church, country and congregation, the priest heard someone sobbing. I must not cry, he told himself, I cannot prepare myself for God by crying.
But as darkness gathered behind his eyes, he realized the source of the sobs, and in his final moments he felt compassion for the young man, who was returning the gun to the zippered bag, who cried in agony for the blood he had spilled within a house of God.
Lieutenant Joseph Peter McGuire, Boston Police Department, Homicide Division, sat huddled over his second cup of coffee and third vanilla-iced donut, staring at the early morning commuters rushing by on Boylston Street.
What the hell have they got on their minds to make them look so worried? he asked himself. They'll spend the day pushing papers from one stack into another stack or sitting in meetings trying to look as if they know what's going on or making conversation with people they'd either like to kill or fuck. He frowned and finished his coffee. Sounds like an easy way to make a living to me.
The commuters who entered the donut shop were unaware that the slim man in the grey sports jacket shared the highest homicide conviction rate in the history of the Boston Police Department. The slight bulge at his waist, tracing the shape of a .32 revolver in its leather holster, escaped their glance. The gun, an ugly snub-nosed pistol, had been drawn only once in McGuire's more than twenty years as a cop, used with deadly precision to stop an enraged youth behind a warehouse off Commercial Street. One bullet had entered the boy's cheek and shattered within the cortex of his brain. There were times when McGuire would close his eyes and see the surprised look on the boy's face, with the small entrance hole just beneath his eye, and a familiar feeling of nausea would sweep over him.
Women, young and middle-aged, gave McGuire more than a passing glance while they waited for their coffee and pastries. Their attraction to him was based on no Hollywood-handsome features, but on the intriguing combination that genetics and time had produced, especially in the shape and expression of McGuire's eyes and mouth.
It was, to some, a cruel mouth, one that rarely nurtured a smile. Above it his expressive brown eyes, framed in soft wrinkles at their corners, looked at once weary and resigned, like a defeated child. Men found this combination of cruelty and sensitivity vaguely disconcerting; women found it mysteriously attractive. McGuire added to the intrigue by remaining unaware of its effect.
At forty-six, with two marriages and twenty years of homicide work behind him, Joe McGuire was ready to coast home. But “home,” he knew, was an early pension, time on his hands, and nothing to do except sit in bars and feel his liver deteriorate.
This April day would be McGuire's first without his partner Ollie Schantz to provide a perceptive eye at murder scenes and a sly comment at headquarters. Ollie had taken the earliest opportunity to retire. While I'm sitting here gnawing doughnuts, McGuire realized with a smile, he's snoring his ass off over in Quincy. I should call him right now, ask him how to fill out the back of that Goddamn statistical report Kavander always bitches about. Listen to him curse me for hauling him out of bed.
He tossed two dollars on the counter and edged his way past the commuters into the day.
The problem is, McGuire admitted as he walked towards Berkeley Street, now I'm the guy with responsibility, the senior on the team. When things go wrong, Kavander will stare at me while he chews both of us out. Last week, he would be staring at Ollie, who would make clucking noises and nod his head. Later, when McGuire would ask him how he managed to stay so calm, Ollie would say “How can you let yourself get upset by somebody who can't find his own ass without written directions?”
I won't be that calm, McGuire thought, I couldn't be. But if I'm not, I may not last the week.
He entered the grey fortress on Berkeley Street that was Boston Police Headquarters, nodded at officers and detectives he knew, climbed two flights of marble stairs to homicide division and turned into the third cubicle on the right. Lieutenant Bernie Lipson, McGuire's new partner, was placing a photograph of himself with a woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and smaller pictures of three dark-haired boys, on the narrow window ledge. Two feet beyond the window, through dusty glass, was the rough brick wall of the warehouse next door.
“Morning, Joe,” Lipson smiled as he saw McGuire standing in the doorway. “Just kind of making myself at home.” He waved his arm at the photographs. “The family. Janice, Michael, Bernie Junior and Norman.”
Ten years younger than McGuire, the chubby face of Bernie Lipson looked out at the world from under a crop of thick curly hair and wore a constantly surprised expression. At parties he was popular for his ability to mimic almost everyone of authority within the department. Among the staff at headquarters he was acknowledged as being “a good cop,” which to a Boston police officer is like saying Chivas Regal is “good booze.”
“You got yourself all settled?” McGuire asked from the doorway. A cardboard box sat on Ollie Schantz's battered metal desk, now recruited by Lipson. Worn files, more pictures, a carved wooden letter opener, and two chipped coffee mugs were still inside the box, waiting to be assigned a location.
“Memorabilia,” Lipson smiled and shrugged when he saw McGuire studying the contents. “You know, things the kids give me. They think I work in a big office with a carpet, secretary. So I let 'em.”
“What's all this crap?”
The voice, deep and gravelly, barked from immediately behind McGuire's left ear. He turned to see Captain Jack Kavander holding a small slip of white paper and frowning at Lipson. McGuire smiled at the round face, close-cropped grey hair and severely broken nose of his department's head. “Morning, Captain,” he said with exaggerated sweetness. “It's romper-room time.”
“Just some memorabilia,” Lipson repeated lamely. He was looking for a place to set a white ceramic mug. Bold red letters on the side of the mug shouted WORLD'S GREATEST DAD.
“Well, you can rearrange all the garbage later.” Kavander thrust the piece of paper at McGuire. “Haul your asses up to St. Eugene's church. South Street, just off Centre. Some maniac with a shotgun blew the guts out of a priest.”
“You worked with him a long time, didn't you? Ollie, I mean.” Lipson offered McGuire a candy mint from a plastic box. McGuire waved it away and steered the grey Plymouth sharply around an illegally parked delivery truck. They were heading south on Columbus, fighting the incoming commuter traffic.
“Eight glorious years,” McGuire replied. He slammed the car's accelerator to the floor and blasted the horn at two high-school students attempting to jaywalk. “Then Ollie has to go and snap up retirement first chance he gets. Not a day more. Pension comes due and he's out the door like a tourist with the trots.”
Lipson sucked on his mint, gripping the dashboard as McGuire swung hard onto Centre Street. “How do you feel about working with me?” he asked.
McGuire risked a quick glance at the other man. “It's okay.” He looked back to the road then over at Lipson again. “What the hell's that mean?”
“Well, you were the best damn team in the department, you and Ollie. It's gotta be a jolt. One week you're working with Ollie, the next week you're sharing your office with an overweight Jew you hardly know.” He grinned at McGuire. “So get it out. How's it feel?”
McGuire braked hard at a stop sign, throwing both of them forward before squealing the car's tires and pulling away. “How's it feel working with an atheist?” he growled.
Lipson steadied himself with a hand on the dashboard again. “You like pastrami, garlic dills and
latkes
?”
“Love 'em.”
“We'll get along fine. My mother, she always said there's nothing wrong with a man who likes good kosher food.”
The two detectives worked around the body as though it wasn't there, while the faded blue eyes of Reverend Lynch still studied the stains of his beloved oak ceiling. Other professionals summoned by sudden death added their presence and movements, all muted in quiet competence and familiarity. Photographer, medical examiner, fingerprint team, uniformed police officers, and ambulance attendants wheeling their cart into position were all in constant controlled motion. Only Thomas Lynch was still.
The medical examiner, a wheezing overweight man named Mel Doitch, approached McGuire and Lipson as they stood taking notes. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “What do you need?” he asked.
Doitch was generally uncommunicative, a man respected, if not socially embraced, by other members of the homicide division. “Shows what happens when you spend too much time around dead people,” Ollie Schantz had said once about Mel Doitch. “You start repeating the things they say.”
“How long you figure he's been dead?” McGuire asked.
“Not long. Hour, hour and a half at the most.” Doitch raised his heavy Slavic face to look around the church interior as he spoke. “Less than two hours anyway. By the looks of all the blood that pumped out of him, he didn't go right away. Lived a few minutes.” He glanced back at McGuire. “If that matters.”
McGuire nodded, and Doitch gestured to the ambulance attendants to remove the body.
“Can't tell right away,” Doitch added, snapping his small black leather bag closed, “but I'm betting the shotgun was sawed-off.”
“What makes you think so?” It was Lipson, glancing up from his notepad.
“Pellets go deep, so he was hit at fairly close range. I'd say no more than ten feet. But the pattern isn't tight. Spread all over. Some in the neck, some in the thighs. Full length barrel keeps a tighter pattern than that.” He glanced at his watch, the leather bag in his other hand. “Have a report for you about three. How's that sound?”
McGuire said it sounded fine and stood frowning at the priest's body as Doitch's footsteps echoed down the aisle.
From outside the church came the noise of the crowd that had been materialized by the police lines, ambulances and the aura of tragedy, and that McGuire and Lipson had walked through to reach the church. Wide-eyed kids on bicycles. Housewives with arms folded across the front of sweaters pulled hastily over cheap cotton dresses, and with heads inclined towards each other, trading and creating gossip. Unshaven men shifting their weight and their cigarette butts from side to side.
“That doesn't fit, does it?” McGuire said, lifting his head and looking at the stained-glass windows. The sun was beaming through them, illuminating a bearded man with a halo and purple robe. Gathered at the man's feet were other bearded men in robes, and children with golden curls and white wings. Sheep grazed in the fields behind them.
“Fit? What doesn't fit?” Bernie Lipson tucked his note pad back into his jacket pocket.
“The sawed-off shotgun. That's a strong-arm piece. You don't go after somebody you've got a grudge against with a sawed-off.”
“A grudge killing? That's what you figure we've got?”
McGuire glanced at his partner, frowning deeper. “Why else would somebody kill a harmless old priest? But that's the point. You get pissed at somebody, you grab the nearest thing to kill him with, then you go and do it. Why a sawed-off?”
Lipson shrugged. “Why a priest?”
McGuire ignored the question. He lifted his head and called out, “Who was the first investigating officer here?”
A black uniformed cop separated himself from the group of police officers gathered near the front door and strode quickly down the aisle. “I was, Lieutenant,” he said as he approached McGuire. “Dave Baxter, out of the tenth precinct.” He reached into the breast pocket of his tunic and withdrew a wire-bound notebook. McGuire immediately assessed him as a good cop. “You want my notes now?”
McGuire shook his head. “I'll get them later. How'd you get in here when you arrived?”
“Through the front.” The cop tilted his head in the direction of the Gothic wooden doors.
“They were unlocked?”
Baxter said they were. Closed, but unlocked, with no sign of forced entry. “And the back door was locked. With a dead bolt you can't release without a key.”
“Did you do a sweep of the area?” McGuire demanded.
“For suspects, Lieutenant?”
“For anything.”
“No, sir. I did a cursory check of the immediate interior for any unauthorized individuals. Then I called headquarters and tried to keep Mrs. Kelley calm.”
“Who's she?”
“The lady who found the body.” He nodded in the direction of a door in an alcove near the altar. “She's there, in the priest's office.” He elevated his eyebrows. “Practically a basket case. The doctor who was here, the medical examiner, he gave her a shot to calm her down.”
Bernie Lipson asked, “Anything disturbed when you got here? Did it look like anything was
taken?”
The officer shook his head. “It was weird, but, you know, I couldn't see where anything was disturbed.”
“What do you mean, weird?” McGuire demanded.
“Well, spooky, kind of.” He shifted his weight and shrugged. “When I got here, I figured it's some kind of joke. There's nobody around except a paper boy riding by on his bicycle. Then I walk in the church, and all I hear is screaming and wailing, and this woman is running around the church, kind of bouncing off walls and crying and pounding things. And there's the priest, with his insides all blown apart, in the middle of the aisle. And everything else is quiet, you know?” He grimaced and shrugged again. “Weird.”
“Get two of your buddies and check the interior for anything. Send two more to scout the perimeter of the church, right down to the sidewalk. You find something, don't touch it. Just come and get us.” He jerked his thumb at the oak door near the altar. “We'll be in there, talking to the woman who found him.”
Whatever Doitch had given Mrs. Kelley, McGuire decided when he saw her, it hadn't been enough.
The woman, in her mid-fifties, was lying on a leather couch in the priest's small office, weeping hysterically, her hands fluttering in the air above her head like frantic birds. Another woman, about the same age, was sitting on the edge of the couch beside her, wiping her brow with a damp cloth and making soothing noises.