The Man Who Murdered God (6 page)

“Nothing, right?” Kavander looked up from the stack of reports McGuire dropped on his desk the next morning.

McGuire nodded. “A whole lot of nothing.”

“Lucas give you any ideas?”

“Sure.” McGuire, grinning. “Says whoever it is, he hates priests.”

Kavander snorted. “You know how much an hour the city pays him to come up with shit like that?” McGuire had no idea. Kavander shook his head in amazement at it all. “What do you figure? We just hope for a break? Or wait for another of the pope's good guys to get it, this time with witnesses?”

“Maybe. Maybe that's all we can do. One question I got.”

“What's that?”

“How's he getting around? Is he driving a car? Hiding that sawed-off Remington in the trunk? Or the back seat? Maybe you better alert traffic patrol, tell them to watch for the sawed-off, every violator they stop.”

“Yeah. Good idea.” Kavander scribbled a note to himself on a pad of white paper. “You talked things over with Lipson?”

“About what?”

“About cutting the bullshit between you.”

“There's nothing to cut.”

Kavander half raised his head from the desk, arching his eyebrows to look at McGuire. “Work it out, McGuire,” he said. “Get it worked out, or I swear I'll have the two of you directing traffic at Logan.” He looked down at his note. “And you didn't call Father Deeley over at St. John's yesterday like I told you.”

“Shit, Jack, I got busy.”

“That's what I figured. So I told him to come over here about noon. Said he could watch our crack homicide team in action for himself.”

McGuire swore under his breath. Kavander ignored it.

“Tell him everything, McGuire. Show him the files, get Janet Parsons to run down the tip list for him, have Vance give him a course on the Goddamn computer program he's using, then you take him out for lunch. Sandwich and a beer, corned beef and cabbage, steaks at the Copley, I don't give a damn. I want him telling the bishop we're the best team Boston's seen since the '74 Celtics.”

“What's the mayor's religion again?”

“Same as the pope's.”

“And the commissioner's?”

“Same as the mayor's.” Kavander smiled coldly at McGuire. “You getting the picture?”

“I was especially impressed with Lieutenant Vance.” Father Kevin Deeley paused between spoonfuls of chowder, gesturing with his spoon. “I had no idea things could be so computerized in law enforcement. Lieutenant Vance showed me how he had assigned colour codes to suspects and tips received by telephone.” Deeley shook his head. “Amazing. Makes you wonder how we ever got along without data processing, doesn't it?”

“You been known to have a beer?” McGuire asked.

Deeley glanced up from his spoonful of chowder. “Oh, a spill of brew has passed my lips now and then,” he answered, grinning.

McGuire called the waitress over. They were in Channing's Chowder House on Columbus. A few years before, Channing's had been a well-kept secret among downtown workers, especially police officers who enjoyed its ice-cold beer and thick chowder. The secret was out when the owner expanded Channing's into an empty building next door. He added maritime motifs—tables made from old hatch covers, ship's wheels and painted figureheads hanging on the walls, and special drinks for the tourists. (“Try our Tequila Typhoon—two drinks and you're over the side!”) But the chowder was still good, and they still stocked Kronenbourg on ice. McGuire could handle mixing with tourists if it meant an ice-cold Kronenbourg, a bowl of good chowder and a thick slice of sourdough bread.

McGuire ordered a Kronenbourg for himself and Deeley.

“Kronenbourg?” Deeley asked. “Danish? Bavarian?”

“French,” McGuire explained.

Deeley grimaced. “The French, I'm afraid, are not my favourite people.” He tore a thick chunk of sourdough from his loaf. “The ones I met when I was over there seemed unusually arrogant. There's a lesson there, I suppose, about the dangers of national hegemony.”

“You gotta admit they've got the right religion,” McGuire sneered.

Deeley popped the bread into his mouth and leaned back in his chair, his arms folded, watching McGuire and chewing. Smiling while he chewed. Handsome son of a bitch, McGuire thought to himself again as he looked back at Deeley. How's he stand never getting laid?

“Well, McGuire, it took you longer than I thought, but you finally got your shot in, didn't you?” Deeley said.

McGuire shrugged. The waitress placed a beer in front of each of them. Deeley thanked her, and McGuire began pouring his into a glass.

Deeley leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Look, McGuire. I'm not enjoying this any more than you are. I know bloody well you and I wouldn't be here if Captain Kavander hadn't ordered you to show me some hospitality. He wants to encourage me to take a good report back to the bishop. And I will. The people I met today, almost everybody in your department, I was really impressed with. I can go back and honestly tell everybody at St. John's, ‘The Boston Police Department is doing everything possible to hunt down this killer. They're marvellous people. Dedicated, well-equipped, using all the latest technology.'”

“And they still haven't got a fucking clue to go on.” McGuire bit off each word. “Don't forget to tell them that, Father.”

“You'll do it.” Deeley poured his beer. “If it's humanly possible to find this beast, I'm sure your people can do it.”

McGuire snorted and took a long swallow. Good and cold. A bit of sweetness to it.

Deeley was leaning towards McGuire again. “The only thing I can't figure, McGuire, is you. The commissioner called us at St. John's yesterday. He told us you were in charge of the investigation, and that you were probably the best homicide detective on the force. Said you and your partner achieved the highest arrest-and-conviction rate in the city over the past five years. I have to admit, McGuire, I haven't seen any evidence of it. Not by a long shot. All I see is a bitter, hostile man who doesn't seem to care about the fact that two very fine priests in this city have been brutally murdered over the past few days.”

“They're just two more bodies, Deeley. That's all.”

“Maybe to you they are—”

McGuire slammed his glass onto the table, spilling beer over the edges. “Listen, Deeley. You know what I resent? I resent being told that we better break our asses for two guys who just happened to wear their collars backward. And that we'd better put more effort into it than we would for some schmuck who works fifteen hours a day driving a truck to feed his wife and kids over in Chelsea. This isn't royalty, for Christ's sake. This isn't the Goddamned president or even the governor. It's two guys who make their living telling fairy tales and goosing nuns when nobody's looking.”

“McGuire—”

“Shut up and let me finish.” Deeley leaned back in his chair. McGuire looked around to see a family at the next table watching him, a middle-aged man in a worn sports jacket, giving hell to a young good-looking priest. He turned back to Deeley.

“Another thing I resent. We're getting all this pressure, all this crap about keeping St. John's and the bishop happy, and you bastards don't even pay any taxes. That strike you as unfair, Deeley? A truck driver over in Chelsea, he gets his brains blown out, he's just another John Doe. Poor bastard pays half his income in taxes, and he gets the standard issue. You guys send all your money to Rome for another marble statue or whatever the Vatican figures it can't live without this year, and when somebody decides to blow one of your guys away, suddenly it's the FBI against Dillinger. That's what I resent.”

McGuire glanced back at the family. They were concentrating on their chowder, the mother whispering fiercely at the young boy, telling him not to stare and for goodness sake to finish his lunch.

“You get it all out?” Deeley asked quietly.

“Most of it.” McGuire drained his glass.

“We're not asking for any special help, McGuire. Obviously you don't share the community's concern about such a violent attack not just on men, but on the entire Catholic church.” McGuire rolled his eyes. “I'm here to assist you in every way I can,” Deeley continued. “That's all. I don't want to get in your way. I don't even want you to waste your time taking me to lunch, trying to do a public relations job on me.” He lifted his glass and smiled. “Which, by the way, you're not very good at, are you?”

McGuire picked up his spoon and began working on the remains of his chowder.

“Well, you're good at recommending beer anyway,” Deeley said when he realized McGuire wasn't going to respond. “I like this stuff.” He drained the glass. “Now. Tell me what I can do to help you people. I've got the bishop's assurance that I can put the whole diocese at your disposal if necessary.” He softened his voice. “What can we do?”

McGuire looked up. “Guess you can pray a lot.”

“We've been doing that. Special masses. The bishop has asked for prayers from each diocese.”

“Well hell, Deeley. In that case we'll just sit around, wait for some old bastard in a robe and a beard to walk down on a sunbeam, point a bony finger at somebody, and say ‘Him!' Right? What the hell are we breaking our asses about?”

The priest looked puzzled. “I don't mind you being an atheist, McGuire. Heaven knows I've met enough of them in my life. I'm just curious why you've got such hate in you about religion.”

McGuire finished his chowder and pushed it aside. “Let me tell you something,” he said, his voice flat. “You want to know where I grew up? In Worcester. Down along the tracks. Breathed nothing but industrial smoke for the first ten years of my life. Never knew what a blue sky was until I took a bus out to the Berkshires once.”

Deeley frowned slightly, as though trying to emphasize how hard he was listening.

“My old man worked at a foundry,” McGuire went on. “For thirty-three years he cleaned up iron castings, working on a grindstone big as a wagon wheel. A lousy, dirty job. He'd come home at night, he couldn't wash the filings and shit off his skin. Made enough money to nearly pay for a frame house, two bedrooms, one john, a porch big enough for a rocking chair, and a backyard that stretched out to the railway tracks. Never bought a new car in his life.

“Two years before he could've retired, he got a bad wheel. It blew up in his face. You have any idea what a half-ton grinding wheel does to a body when it explodes at five hundred RPM?”

He paused, watching the priest shake his head in sorrow.

“The company gave my mother about five hundred bucks a month and a cash settlement. Enough to bury the poor bugger, and that's all. A year later she lay down on the sofa and died. Just gave up. What the hell. That's what the doctors said. She just gave up. And every morning of every Goddamn day I see some hustler on TV waving his arm in a tailored suit, gold Rolex flashing on his wrist, saying all we have to do is send him some money, and he'll guarantee everlasting happiness. No grinding wheel will blow up in your face. No one you love will ever die and leave you broke and alone.” He nodded at the priest. “You guys are all in the same business, Deeley. Selling promises you can't fulfil.”

Deeley shook his head sadly. “Just because some TV evangelists go to excess, I don't see why you should hate all organized religion.”

“What's the difference?” McGuire demanded. “It's the same God, isn't it?”

Deeley sighed. “You want to go back to headquarters now?” he asked. “I can get a cab to St. John's from here.”

Outside, as Deeley walked to the curb to hail a cab, he looked back and asked, “If you don't believe in God, McGuire, just what
do
you believe in?”

“Myself,” McGuire replied without hesitating. “I believe in myself. What the hell else is there?”

Two pins on a wall map. One between Jamaica Plain and Forest Hills. The other at Xavier Seminary. Two pins, three ounces of buckshot and one spent cartridge, McGuire thought, sitting there staring at the map. That's all we've got.

Bernie Lipson stuck his head in the squad room. “I'm heading home, Joe,” he said. “He's still here, Fat Eddie. Running computer checks on shotgun killings on the whole east coast for the past five years.” He grinned. “Keeps the fat little bastard off the streets. You need me for anything?”

“No, Bernie,” McGuire replied. “I don't need you for anything.”

“You want to tell me what's bothering you? About me, I mean?”

“What's bothering me is that some loony is blasting priests with a shotgun and we don't have a clue, a woman I used to sleep with is full of cancer, Kavander's on my ass—”

“And I'm not Ollie Schantz,” Lipson added quietly.

“You sure as hell aren't.”

Lipson nodded and left the room.

McGuire was still staring at the map a few minutes later, when Janet Parsons walked past the open doorway, shrugging her way into a light raincoat. She stopped, entered the squad room and sat down next to McGuire.

“You think the guy's picture is going to appear on the map?” she asked.

McGuire glanced at her and shook his head. “It's about all we've got,” he said. “I'm just trying to make the most of it.”

She looked up at the map briefly, then back at McGuire. “Listen, Joe,” she said. “I've got to say something to you.”

“Say it.”

“You're quickly becoming an asshole.”

McGuire turned to see her studying him, waiting for him to react. “It's better than becoming an Eddie Vance, I guess.”

She grinned, relieved he hadn't exploded. “Yeah, okay, maybe you've got a point. But you're treating Bernie like a piece of dirt.”