more sarcastic of Jesus’ contemporaries remarked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” So, why not? Koesler wondered whether inhabitants of Imlay City realized that the famous Klaus Krieg, multimillionaire and television personality, had once walked their streets.
Koesler was familiar with Imlay City. It was, roughly, at the knuckle of the thumb. Since the state, at least the lower peninsula, was in the shape of a hand geographically, Michiganders tended to pinpoint areas in the state according to their position in the “hand.” Nowhere was that habit more prevalent than when the locale was in the “thumb” area, as was Imlay city, about halfway between Flint and Port Huron.
In addition, it was within the boundaries of the Archdiocese of Detroit, and the pastor of Imlay City’s one and only Catholic church, Sacred Heart, had been one of Koesler’s classmates. Which more than likely explained how Koesler happened to know its exact location.
Interesting, Koesler mused as he succumbed to a daydream. Klaus Krieg born a Catholic in the Archdiocese of Detroit. He found religion so vitally important in his life that he apostatized from Catholicism and formed his own sect. What if he hadn’t done that? What if whatever had moved him to discard the Catholic Church hadn’t happened? Would that appreciation of religion have led him into the Catholic clergy? What would he be like as a priest today?
A preacher of no little note, undoubtedly. Whatever else anyone might want to say about him, he could be a spellbinding orator. Another Charlie Coughlin?
Or Billy Sunday?
Or Elmer Gantry?
Koesler found himself reviewing what little he knew about the Reverend Krieg from firsthand knowledge. While he was familiar with Krieg’s reputation as a televangelist, Koesler had never seen him on television, nor, for that matter, in any other way. So his first impression was formed when, just days earlier, Krieg had burst onto the Marygrove scene with the expected fanfare and his own private chauffeur and general factotum.
Koesler allowed his reliable memory to wander through recollections of the past few days. To be frank, he was looking for telltale remnants of a former Catholic faith. Former Catholics regularly betray habits-most of them not consciously-of Catholic customs, practices, traditions, even superstitions.
In their liturgies, Catholics make the sign of the cross so habitually the habit often carries over to completely unrelated events. At the conclusion of anything-a movie, a stage play, a concert, a lecture, whatever-it is not unknown that a practicing Catholic, or a one-time Catholic, might make the sign of the cross. The same could be said of genuflecting before entering an auditorium or theater row, or-in a situation where spontaneous prayer is called for-coming up with a distinctly Catholic prayer.
Thanks to television, millions have seen a singular gesture usually made by an athlete with a Catholic background. The gesture consists of an abbreviated and hurried sign of the cross that does not quite reach forehead, navel, and the extremity of either shoulder. It is, if only because it could be nothing else, a sign of the cross, but it ends with the boxer, ballplayer, athlete, kissing his right thumb.
As far as Koesler knew, no one had done a definitive study of that peculiar sign; indeed he was convinced that even those who make the gesture probably don’t advert to the reason they kiss their thumb. The closest Koesler could come to a rationale rested on a practice popular among those who frequently and piously recite the rosary. It is common for those who pray the rosary to begin by holding the crucifix in their right hand-with which they make the sign of the cross-and, on completing the sign of the cross, kissing the crucifix. It was Koesler’s hypothesis that those athletes who indulge in what has become for them a superstition don’t consciously think of what they’re doing. Why, after all, would anyone kiss his own thumb?
What has happened is that they grew up watching mother pray the rosary. They’ve seen her over and over again make the sign of the cross, and end by kissing the crucifix. But to the youthful observer it might not have been clear just what was being kissed.
So, today’s boxer, football, basketball, baseball player makes the sign of the cross-for luck, most probably- kisses the finger that would be holding a crucifix if one were present, and then goes out to beat hell out of the other guy or die trying.
Koesler almost smiled at the memory of uncounted hockey players going over the boards, making the sign of the cross, kissing the thumb, then whacking an opponent with the hockey stick. He almost smiled. But he did not. Instead he grew serious.
What was it? Something he had just been thinking of. They grew up watching mother pray the rosary.
Thoughts tumbled into his mind. Unbidden, the thoughts came in no particular order. It was as if he had dropped the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in the center of his brain with the accompanying urge to put them together so that the puzzle would make sense.
Klaus Krieg grew up watching his mother say the rosary? No, that wasn’t it. But something like that. What had the little boy watched his mother do?
Before Koesler could answer that, other pieces needed placement.
Instead of trying to find vestiges of Catholicism in what he’d seen of Krieg, Koesler tried to simply take an objective view of what he’d actually seen and heard Krieg do and say.
Gradually the jigsaw picture began to take shape. It revealed quite a different image than anyone had been looking at up to this time.
The question facing Koesler now: Would this picture hold up in the face of strong arguments against it? And he was not kidding himself: He was sure that even if he could join these fragments together so that they constituted a brand new theory of what had been going on here, he would face determined opposition. Indeed, opposition from the police who had been investigating the case. Opposition from the experts.
Koesler quite nearly quit at this point. Who was he kidding? He was no expert at solving crimes. The experts were upstairs now, questioning, challenging, solving the crime. And they were not even considering the scenario he’d seen with his mind’s eye as he put his own peculiar jigsaw puzzle together.
The trouble he faced now was that he was hesitant to test his theory. It seemed to him almost as if the theory were his baby, and he was afraid the baby was about to be declared ugly. But he could envision only two alternatives. One: swallow it; forget it. The police knew-or thought they knew-they were in the home stretch: They were homing in on the guilty party. They had hard evidence now that they’d found the remnants of the gasoline that, on the surface of it, was meant to blow Klaus Krieg sky-high. The temptation was strong to sit back and do nothing. It would be interesting to watch the remainder of this drama much like attending a movie. It seemed that the police were mere minutes away from a solution. But was it
Interesting question: Could it be possible for the police to solve this case incorrectly? What possible reason could there be for the police to be mistaken?
Two: The second alternative was to play out his hand as far as it would reach. The reason: It was probable the police lacked the insight he had as a Catholic priest and one who was interested in all aspects of religion. He owed it to his friend Walt Koznicki to test his hypothesis. He owed it to justice for the innocent as well as the guilty.
With any luck, it would require no more than a few phone calls. With a lot of luck, one call would do it.
Koesler walked to the general office. As he expected, Marygrove had a Catholic Directory of the Archdiocese of Detroit.
If nothing else, it had been a long time since he’d talked to his classmate, Father John Dunn. It would be pleasant to chat with him. And chat they would; John never used one word when he could think of two or three.
Koesler dialed 1-724-1135.
“You have reached Sacred Heart parish. This is the real-life Father John Dunn speaking. .”
“It’s Bob Koesler, John-”
“Bobby! It’s so nice for us out in the boondocks when one of you big city slickers remembers us.”
“John, though we seldom write, we never forget. But, as it is, I’m in a bit of a hurry. Can we get down to business?”
“Ah, ’twas ever so.”
“John, I need some information you may have in your records about an individual-maybe a family. It should be a baptismal record, maybe a marriage record.”
