story. Maybe I’m coming on too strong. But how else can I do it? We never thought of this part when we were planning. You need a PR person for this sort of thing. What am I going to do?
“Hey, you!”
“Me?” Whitaker was taken by surprise.
“Yeah, you. I heard you talking to that TV guy before. I’m Pfeiffer,
“Yes, as a matter of fact.” How to handle this? Imagine: a real reporter who wanted to hear the real story! God was good!
“Name?”
“Bruce Whitaker.”
“Doctor? You a doctor here?”
“No. I’m a volunteer.”
“Then what’s with the stethoscope?”
“Oh, my . . . .” In the confusion he had forgotten the stethoscope. “Never mind that. I need it in my job.” Whitaker hoped the bluff would work.
Pfeiffer looked a bit skeptical, but forged on toward a possible new development in this bizarre incident. “Okay. What’ve you got?”
Not so pointblank now, Whitaker cautioned himself. “There’s a reason behind this explosion.”
“You mean you know who did it?” Pfeiffer was immediately excited.
“Well, not exactly. Almost.”
“Whaddya mean ‘almost’! How could you know ‘almost’ who did it! Have you got both oars in the water?”
“Let me tell you what’s behind all this, then you’ll know what I mean.”
Pfeiffer closed his note pad and pocketed his pen. He would give this nut at most three more minutes to babble on. And that only because the reporter was feeling unusually generous today.
“Inspector?” A Third Precinct detective approached Koznicki.
“Yes?” Koznicki had been absently following the patching of the wall while recalling his conversation with Father Koesler. Unfortunately, this was his day off from the hospital. He had missed all the excitement. Koznicki would bring his friend up to date tomorrow.
“Inspector . . .” The detective drew very near so he would not have to speak loudly. “We got lucky.”
“Oh? How so?”
“We got a full ten prints off that nitrous oxide tank, and identical prints off one oxide tank in each of the other rooms. They’d all been bled. Undoubtedly by the guy whose prints were on the tanks and also on the valves.”
“Very good.”
“And we got an ID.”
“So soon?”
“Well, we had both hands. And we didn’t have to look far: He’s on parole from Van’s Can.”
“What does his rap-sheet show?”
“Attempted murder.”
“Hmmm. Name?”
“Whitaker. Bruce Whitaker.”
Koznicki reflected. “Rings no bells. Where do we find him?”
“See that guy over there in the white coat talking to Pfeiffer?”
Koznicki followed the direction of the detective’s inclined head, then nodded.
“That’s our guy.”
Koznicki shook his head in disbelief. “Take him.”
The detective nodded to his partner. They closed in.
“Bruce Whitaker?”
“Y . . . Y . . . Yes?”
“You are under arrest for malicious destruction of property, violation of parole, endangerment to life, and a few more things we’ll think of as time passes.” The detective took a card from his wallet as his partner handcuffed Whitaker. “You have the right to remain silent . . . .”
“You!” Pfeiffer was astonished. “You? You did this? My crazy did this? How lucky can I get? Now, you were saying . . .”
13
It was one of those days when Detroiters felt lucky to get where they were going. It had snowed off and on, with varying intensity, for the better part of two days, accumulating an additional five inches.
Because he had traveled Ford Road, the Ford and Lodge Expressways, all priority-plowed thoroughfares, Father Koesler had actually arrived early at St. Vincent’s. So it was with a sense of unhurried relaxation that he was able to enjoy coffee and a Danish with Inspector Koznicki in the cafeteria.
Since yesterday had been Koesler’s day off, he had missed all the excitement. He’d read the first sketchy details in last evening’s
But all of these gaps in his news-information education were more than filled in by the presence of essentially an eyewitness to the event. By now, Koznicki had told Koesler, step-by-step, what had happened almost twenty- four hours ago not far from where they now sat.
“What a coincidence,” Koesler observed, “that you should be called in on this case.”
“That is indeed what it was—a coincidence. I just happened to be the officer on duty that night.”
“I haven’t as yet been able to get a very clear picture of what happened. The account in the
“A very perceptive observation, Father. Mr. Pfeiffer happened to be actually interviewing our suspect as he was arrested. Another coincidence, and a very serendipitous one for Mr. Pfeiffer.”
“I should say. Then about all I got from the TV news was a glimpse at the pandemonium here, then a brief look at the suspect covering his face as he was taken in.”
“I gather you haven’t read today’s
“Haven’t had a chance yet. What was the guy’s name? Whit-something . . . Whitman?”
“Whitaker. Bruce Whitaker.”
“Hmmm. Why does that name ring a bell?”
Koznicki smiled. “In time you would remember. But you must recall some four years ago, four very conservative Catholic men tried to take vengeance against their former seminary professors? And they were not too successful, although they came close? Well, it is typical of this man that, on the one hand he would not think to use an alias, and that, on the other, no one would remember him anyway.”
“Yes, yes, yes, I remember. Of course! The gang of four! Good grief, they could scarcely tie their shoes! That’s why he looked familiar.” He shook his head. “Bruce Whitaker did all that damage? It hardly seems possible. I mean, with his penchant for failure . . .”
Koznicki frowned. “Well, he does claim he did not do it.”
“But you have evidence?”
“Tanks containing nitrous oxide were emptied in each of the operating rooms. His fingerprints were found on
