you noticed anything out of the ordinary? We thought we’d closed this book when we got the kid who killed Ulrich. Now, we’re opening another chapter. We’ve got a murder one on the guy’s widow-”
“Murder one?”
“Murder one,” Zoo repeated, “because anybody who tries to make a murder look like a suicide didn’t stumble onto the idea. It had to be carefully planned.
“Anyway, as I was saying, you’ve pretty well been in the thick of this thing … you’ve talked to just about everybody who’s mixed up in this. So, brother, what do you think?”
The priest was silent for some moments. Then, “There are a couple of things that I wondered about at the time. They’re probably nothing … they just seem a bit odd in the light of what’s happened since. I’m a little reluctant to even tell you because they probably don’t mean a thing, and they might throw you off the track.”
“No … no.” Zoo’s tone was earnest. “This is exactly what we’re looking for. Just tell me about it. Let me judge whether it’s relevant.”
“Okay. Well, the first incident was just before the award dinner. Right after Barbara Ulrich made her entrance, she sort of worked the room. I noticed something curious: she seemed to be slipping notes to four men- well, at least four that I saw; I didn’t watch her all evening. Anyway, the four were Tom Adams and his three executive vice presidents-Jack Fradet, Lou Durocher, and Martin Whitston.
“That seemed peculiar. Then, at the wake service for her husband, she took extra time talking individually to each of those same four men. I have no idea what they talked about … only that it seemed something was going on between them.
“And,” he concluded, “that’s about it.” He turned to Zoo. “That’s probably not going to help you much.”
Zoo shook his head. “It’s a start. We’ll be asking questions and we’ll definitely include those guys.” He pulled into the parking lot of St. Joe’s. “Well, here we are.” He didn’t bother putting the car in park.
As he exited the car, Father Tully said, “I’ll see you later, eh?”
“I’ll keep you posted. I know you’re interested.”
“Great!”
Father Tully was conscious of being pressed for time. Just inside the rectory he encountered a concerned Mary O’Connor. “I was just about to try to find another priest for noon Mass,” she said. “Did you get lost?”
“Too much to tell you now, Mary. After Mass. Father Koesler back yet?”
“Good Lord, is he coming back today?”
The priest chuckled. “He can’t stay away from you, Mary.”
The faithful few who frequented daily Mass were in their places. In the brief time he’d been offering daily as well as weekend Masses, Tully had gotten used to the same faces occupying the same pews in the vast church.
He was not surprised that his nagging distraction during this Mass was the image of Barbara Ulrich lying like a discarded doll. He recalled that neither she nor her husband had been affiliated with any church or religious body. He might well be asked to deliver another eulogy.
Meanwhile, he would pray that she had already entered the new life. He had no idea whether his prayers were needed or wanted. He offered them anyway.
After Mass, Father Tully returned to the rectory and lunch. He had barely wolfed a sandwich before Mary O’Connor caught up to him with two phone messages. One was from his brother, the other from Tom Adams. He decided to return his brother’s call first for more reasons than chronological order.
Zoo picked up at the second ring. On hearing his brother’s voice, he asked, “I haven’t pulled you away from something?”
“No. I haven’t done that to you?”
“Well … we’re a bit pushed,” Zoo admitted. “But I thought you’d want to know what’s happened since I dropped you.”
“Absolutely … and thanks.”
“I’ve been on the horn to Doc Moellmann-the medical examiner. He put the final nail in the homicide premise.”
“Congratulations … I guess. Exactly what was it you wanted him to discover?”
“The gunpowder … remember?”
“I remember.”
“The Doc saw the same thing we did. There were only a few specks some inches away from the entrance wound. And no muzzle imprint on her skin. So, there was good reason to suspect this was highly doubtful as a suicide.
“But what I was concerned about was that maybe the residue-the black soot-might’ve been blown inside the head. That would argue for the gun’s firing at point-blank range. In other words, instead of the powder showing up on the external skin around the wound, that the force of the shot had simply blown the soot inside her head.
“But Doc didn’t find any powder or soot inside. His conclusion is that the gun was fired at a distance of at least ten to twelve inches from her head. For a suicide that’s highly unlikely.”
“So you were right,” the priest said. “It was a homicide.” Once again he was impressed with and proud of his brother the cop.
“That’s not all, brother. Our victim, Barbara Ulrich, was pregnant.”
“Pregnant!”
“Only a month or two. But very definitely pregnant.”
“Oh! That would’ve been their first child,” the priest said. “What a tragedy. Now all of them dead-Al, Barbara, and their child. What a tragedy!”
“Hold on,” Zoo cautioned. “We don’t know that her husband was the father of her child.”
“Wha-!”
“You were the one who told me they got along like oil and water.”
“That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have a baby-even if it were spousal rape.”
“It isn’t just your opinion, Zack. I talked to her ob/gyn.”
“What about professional secrecy?”
“There’s not much reticence when there’s a homicide investigation going on. Anyway, her doctor also tends to think her husband was not the father. She didn’t come right out and tell him she’d stopped having relations with Ulrich, but she clearly implied it.
“It was obvious to the doctor that she was sexually active. Right up until he determined she was pregnant, she was using lots of protection. How many partners she had, he couldn’t say. But her efforts to avoid STD and her insistence on being tested for it gave the doc the hint that she had more than one partner.
“And it seems that no matter how many she had, Ulrich wasn’t among them-or so consensus seems to have it.
“Besides, it makes sense in another direction. Before this, we had a homicide and no evident motive. This gives us a very good motive. I mean, the way things were between them, I wouldn’t have been surprised if her husband would’ve killed her. But Ulrich was dead long before she was shot.
“Now we’ve got a lover who doesn’t want to be a daddy. But he’s gonna be. So he murders the mother and fakes it to look like suicide. That clears up a lot of blind alleys for us and makes a very believable case. And this particular daddy has a lot of precedent going for him. He’s definitely not the first reluctant father-to-be who gets rid of the problem by getting rid of the mother.
“So that’s where we are: find the father and we find Barbara Ulrich’s murderer.”
“It certainly sounds logical,” Father Tully said.
“Just wanted to clue you in. Gotta get busy. For the first time we’ve got somebody to look for … even if we don’t know who he is yet.”
Father Tully’s head was swimming with this latest development.
