Requiem for Moses

“It must have occurred to your husband as well. It had come to a point where either Moses would have to kill his victims because he had pushed them too far, or one of them would have to kill him.

“The next move had to be yours. It was too brilliant and daring to be anyone else’s. It was the concept that kept eluding me, bumping against the back of my consciousness.

“The most prevalent hypotheses had it that either one of the victims attempted the murder, but failed-or, that if Dr. Green had attempted suicide, he had failed.

“There was another possibility: He could have attempted to put himself into a coma-and succeeded.

“But I don’t think he could-or especially would-try it by himself. It would be far too risky. He had to have help. And that’s where you came in.”

Koesler paused, waiting expectantly for Margie to join in this narrative. She gave no indication of doing so.

“Well,” he went on, “it’s my guess there was a good deal of experimentation. In effect, the goal was somewhat the same as in that movie, Flatliners; Moses would place himself at the edge of death and, as planned, return. He had gone too far now; in his flawed frame of mind he saw this-bizarre as it was-as his only chance. And you, of course, encouraged him-after all, what did you have to lose?

“The way I see it, you didn’t come in and find your husband ‘dead.’ You very carefully monitored his condition until he stabilized in the coma. At all times, you had a supply of Narcan available. If something went radically wrong, you had only to inject that drug to reverse the effect of the morphine.”

Margie opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, closed her mouth, and shook her head.

Koesler, after a moment, continued. “Of course, in all this, timing was extremely important. For one, you had to be sure that no matter what happened that you, not your son, would be your husband’s heir. You couldn’t allow him to die during a period when he had named David as his sole heir. Moses knew this, so he made sure that when his bogus ‘death’ occurred, his will did name David. He felt that would insure your complete efforts toward reviving him. Later, after ‘coming back to life,’ the will was rewritten to name you as sole heir.

“As for your husband’s coma, a doctor I met at Police Headquarters, Dr. Price, I believe, addressed that question without having access to Moses-thus, necessarily hypothetically. Based on what little we knew, her opinion was that he had progressed to the most shallow stage of his coma when Sophie entered the picture. Sophie couldn’t have been part of the original scenario. But she jostled the casket around, stimulating in Moses, according to Dr. Price, a series of anxiety reactions that brought him to a recovering edge of the coma.

“I am certain that without Sophie’s intervention, and if your husband had not yet recovered, you would have injected the Narcan probably after the wake service when everyone was getting ready to leave.

“And that takes care of the so-called ‘miracle.’”

“And”-Margie had not changed posture-“the purpose of the miracle?”

Koesler shrugged. “Seems to me the purpose was to buy time and suggest a reason for a dramatic change. Moses would be, and indeed to a great number of people he became, a living legend. His victims, if they did have murder in mind, would want to at least wait and see what this ‘new’ Moses Green would become and do. Having visited the ‘next world,’ maybe he could have changed. He could withdraw his demand that Cameron be ousted from the Virago organization he’d created. Moses could have at least called off his threat to ruin Bill Gray’s incipient law career. He could have released his son from involuntary servitude.

“It might have taken a long time to convince them he had really changed-partly, because in reality he hadn’t changed at all. It was just that in trapping them he had trapped himself. And he was frightened.

“And that,” Koesler concluded this part of his admitted hypothesis, “takes care of everybody except Claire McNern and Stan Lacki.”

“I don’t know them,” Margie stated. “Oh, I knew the McNern woman. I made it a point to keep pretty close tabs on Moe’s lady loves. After all, the diseases they were putting themselves at risk for were communicable.”

“I would be willing to believe you didn’t know Stan Lacki up to maybe a week ago,” Koesler said. “But then two things happened. One was the media coverage given this story. If you had done nothing more than read Pat Lennon’s reports, you would have been very much aware of Claire and Stan and what your husband had done that affected both of them so cruelly. Of course the accounts only hinted at the extent of the doctor’s actions; it was ‘alleged,’ ‘claimed,’ ‘inferred,’ and the like. But knowing your husband as you did, you could read past the disclaimers and come to your own stronger conclusions.

“Then you found the check made out to GOB Company and signed by your husband. You realized then that your husband was responsible for murder-not only the murder of his own child, but the murder of his ex-mistress and her fiance.”

Her expression changed for only a moment. One would have to have been looking for the flicker to catch it. Koesler was looking. “You were Jake Cameron’s cashier. You were the brains of his and your husband’s business. You guided your husband’s finances and business. Surely you would have access to his financial records, including his checkbook. Especially since he must have been recovering slowly from his coma.

“I can only imagine your shock when you discovered the payment to GOB Company.

“My guess is that you confronted him and accused him. At which time, Moses would have had to admit what he had done. He had read the stories in the paper. He knew that he had taken motherhood from Claire. He had never expected Claire to learn what he had done to her-the abortion and the unnecessary hysterectomy. Nor had he considered how that knowledge would affect anyone who married her. Now he knew that Stan and Claire knew he was to blame for it all. What he had done to Cameron and David and Judith was reparable; all he had to do was stop threatening and manipulating them. The concomitant hope was that they would no longer threaten him. That was the point of the whole charade. Moses had pushed them too far. Now he was trying to retreat.

“But there was no retreat when it came to Claire and Stan. It was not just a case of dumping a mistress- though that would be provocation enough. Moses had aborted their child and destroyed her otherwise healthy reproductive organ. There was no going back. Claire and Stan would always be his enemies; he would always have something to fear from that quarter. His reputation was already lost; there was nothing he could do about that. But now he faced probable lawsuits-both civil and criminal. He could lose all his money and-if he lived that long-be sent to prison, where he would undoubtedly die without benefit of decent medical treatment and without drugs to ease his agony.

“So-what did he have to lose by trying to rid himself of Claire and Stan, who were now the only real threat to his life and his lifestyle.

“Under normal circumstances, he would have stonewalled when you confronted him with the telltale check stub-but now he was in no condition-physical or mental-to do that. Also, circumstances being what they were, he was in no condition to stand up to you. He had to tell you what he’d done-the extent of his abominable acts.

“You had to be furious. You might not have known the full extent of your husband’s relationship with Claire when it was going on. But you had to discover it from the media and when you learned of his payment to GOB Company, an organization that the media has described as ‘the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.’

“One wonders,” he went on,” how a man of your husband’s savvy-a man with his cunning, amoral mind-came up with such an incompetent mob. This part is pure speculation, but this was fresh territory for him: I’ll bet GOB was referred by a colleague Moses thought he could trust, someone who was eager to lead him astray-to settle a score maybe?

“In any case, you now knew that your husband had gone way too far. It was as if my seminary priest’s glasses had spun off the desk and were lying broken on the floor. Moses had gone off the deep edge. He had operated without your control and in a debilitated state. But there was no going back; he had left a trail that could be followed by a Cub Scout. He might have done a much more effective job had he planned it before his induced coma. On the other hand, his mind might have been clouded by pain-or drugs-even then.

“But now your husband was headed for prison. And your life was on the brink of being shattered to smithereens. Much, if not all, the money you could have inherited would be spent on lawyers, trials, and appeals. Everything you controlled would be out of control. Your social standing would be a matter for ridicule. Your plans would have been frustrated.

“There was only one avenue open to you, as far as you could see. You carried through on what had been begun that Monday morning. You gave your husband a massive overdose of morphine. To further confuse the issue, you got your children and Bill Gray over and offered them the empty bottle so their fingerprints would be there along with yours and your husband’s.

“It is ironic to think that the only way you and your husband could have hatched this plan in the beginning