About halfway through their earlier telephone conversation, Koesler had felt he knew exactly how this meeting would develop. He would listen—which he did quite well—while she trotted out all her fears, anger, perhaps despair. After all this, she would feel better for having talked it out. And he would be able to improvise, which he despised, back into some sort of routine.
Thus he was totally unprepared when she said, “That’s right, I want you to help him.”
“Help him!”
“Look . . .” She leaned forward in her chair. “. . . you and I are about the only friends he’s got. And I’ve spent hours trying to think of some way I could help him. About the only thing I’ve come up with is prayer.”
“There’s nothing wrong with prayer.”
“Of course there’s nothing wrong with prayer. I can supply the
“But, ‘friend’? I wouldn’t exactly describe myself as his friend. And I’m sure Dick probably feels the same way.” Getting involved in this case was the furthest thought from his mind. The prospect of such an involvement was so overwhelming that he was reduced to fending off each and every reason she could present for his committing himself to this project.
“Father Koesler.” She seemed to revert to the schoolteacher she once had been. “You know very well that Dick Kramer is a workaholic, completely dedicated to his parish. He’s never had the time, or the inclination, for that matter, to pal around with his fellow priests. He has few clerical friends. No, I guess it would be fair to say he hasn’t any. But you came to see him the other day.”
“Yes, but—”
“You came of your own accord . . . and I can tell you he was grateful for your interest. He may not have made it evident. He isn’t a very demonstrative person. But I sensed it. After you left, he came back to the rectory and he was like a new man. He was more open than I can remember seeing him in ages. He started telling me little, gossipy things. He was more relaxed than he’d been in a long, long time. And you did that for him . . . isn’t that one description of what a friend is?”
“Sister, you should know that I didn’t come spontaneously. I had visited Monsignor Meehan. He suggested that I visit Dick.”
“Yes, after you left that afternoon, Dick mentioned Monsignor Meehan. Telling me funny stories about their days together in Inkster at . . . what parish?”
“St. Norbert’s. But don’t you see, if Dick has a real friend, it’s Monsignor Meehan. If it weren’t for him and his request, I wouldn’t have visited Dick and you probably wouldn’t be here now.”
“From all Dick told me, I know that Monsignor is a dear man. But I also know that Monsignor is a very ancient man, in a nursing home. I surely hope that he will pray for Dick. But we need somebody who can get around and do something practical for him.
“Besides, Monsignor couldn’t do any more than ask you to see Dick. You didn’t have to do it. All right, so somebody else suggested that you visit Dick. The fact is: You did it. And that stands for something.”
“But what can I do? Dick is in jail. What he needs now is a good lawyer.”
“And we’ll see that he gets one.”
“I’m sure that’s true. That brings us back to praying, which is what the rest of us could best do for him.”
“Most of the rest of us. But not you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You are just about the only priest in this archdiocese who has an easy entree with the police.”
“That’s not so. That’s just not so. For one thing, there’s the police chaplain.”
“I know there’s a police chaplain. But he mingles with the police on a professional basis. Counseling, visiting them, conducting services for them.”
“Well? So?”
“So, he has not worked with them on murder cases.” Her body language emphasized that this was the heart of the matter, the point she most wanted to make.
It took Koesler a moment to absorb her implication. Then he laughed. He couldn’t help himself. “You’ve got this all out of proportion.”
“Have I.” It was more a statement than a question.
“Indeed. I assume you’re alluding to the fact that I happen to be a friend of Inspector Koznicki, who happens to head the Homicide Department. Well, that’s no secret.”
“It’s also no secret that you’ve been in on a few investigations too.”
“It’s a fairly good secret. But, even knowing about that, it’s obvious that you don’t know how I got involved in those cases. And since it seems relevant, let me explain.
“You seem to think that I’m some sort of latter-day Father Brown, dreamed up by G.K. Chesterton. I’m no detective, Sister. Granted, over the past several years I have gotten involved in a few investigations because I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But whichever way you care to look at it, I’ve never volunteered to assist in an investigation. That would be presumptuous, to say the least. I have no training in police work . . . not even an inclination to be a detective. It’s just that every once in a while a crime takes place and I seem to be in the middle of things.
“But that’s certainly not the case here. This time, crimes have been committed—a couple of extremely heinous murders—and I am not involved in any way. For a change, I’m peacefully minding my own business in my— for the moment, anyway—peaceful little parish.”
“But you—”
“If you’ll let me finish, Sister, I think I may speak to the question I think you have in mind.
“There is nothing particularly ‘religious,’ let alone Catholic, in the murder and mutilation of prostitutes. It’s true that your friend and my brother priest has been arrested as a suspect in the case. And that is tragic. We all ought to pray and do whatever we can to help Dick. But I am no more equipped to intervene in this case—even if the police would tolerate such an intrusion—than any other priest. Monsignor Meehan, for instance.
“In the past, don’t you see, I have been drawn into some homicide cases by some accident, some quirk of fate, through no voluntary act on my part. But that’s not true here. I’m not involved in this in any way. So your appeal to things that have happened to me in the past doesn’t apply here. It’s apples and oranges. I’m sorry.”
Koesler fervently hoped she would not cry. He never quite knew what to do when women cried. Often he felt drawn to offer a shoulder. But he never could get beyond his position as a priest to do anything even that innocently physical. At this moment, Sister Therese did seem so perilously close to tears that he felt like putting her on his lap and just holding her. But he could not.
Fortunately, the tears did not appear. She merely grew reflective, gazing at her hands folded in her lap. When she finally spoke, it was without looking up. “I can’t argue with anything you’ve said. And I know it’s getting late.”
It
“I just want to say one more thing, and then I’ll go,” she stated. “Father Kramer has no one really close to him.”
That’s not exactly true, thought Koesler. This lady is as close as anyone will ever get to Dick Kramer. Probably she loves him. In all likelihood, he will never know. For all of that, she will never admit it, even to herself.
For some reason, Koesler suddenly thought this to be overwhelmingly sad. Once again, given the present status of celibacy and chastity, to which at least all three of them subscribed, there was nothing to be done about it.
“And Dick needs somebody now,” she went on. “He desperately needs someone. For what reason I cannot possibly imagine, this good man has been accused of . . . of murder.” She shook her head. “I still can’t get myself to put the two together in the same sentence—Dick Kramer and murder. But the police have somehow put them together. And as long as this charge hangs over him—whether he is in jail or we are able to get him out on bond— he will be helpless in the face of this shame and embarrassment. I know him well enough to know this is true.
“That’s why, Father Koesler, he needs someone. Not just anybody, but someone who can be an alter ego for him. Dick Kramer will be powerless to come to his own defense in the sense of proving himself innocent. He needs someone to do just that; someone who will take on this accusation as if it were leveled against himself.
“It’s as if Dick will be locked up inside himself whether he’s locked inside a cell or not. He needs someone
