William Kienzle - Man Who Loved God

“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. Barbara Ulrich pregnant. She had to have known it, of course. But he firmly believed that her husband was unaware of her condition. The priest was also convinced, from all he’d heard and his own evaluation, that the Ulrichs had long ceased conjugal relations. He also believed that if Al Ulrich had known that his wife was pregnant, he would not only have renounced her, but also denounced her and her lover publicly.

Was it possible, he wondered, that this fact-the newly discovered pregnancy, was what Barbara was communicating when she slipped notes to those four men?

Four men!

What was he thinking! Could Barbara Ulrich have juggled four paramours? All executives from the same company? And-even if it was logistically possible-why would she attempt it? The challenge? A psychological need for living on the edge-brinkmanship? If so, evidently one of her four had gone over the brink.

The priest quickly reviewed his impressions of the four he had so recently met. What could she have seen in such a disparate collection of men?

If the father/murderer was one of these four, good luck to Lieutenant Zoo Tully and the Detroit Police Department.

Father Tully continued to speculate on his brother’s speculation.

The phone rang. He looked at the instrument. One light was on while another blinked. Mary O’Connor must be on line one. He pushed the button for line two. “St.…uh … uh, Joseph’s.” Rattled for a moment, he couldn’t recall which parish he was representing,

“Father Tully?”

“Tom? Tom Adams? I’m sorry I haven’t returned your call. I just finished Mass.” He didn’t bother to mention that he’d been on the phone with his brother. Why complicate matters? He had intended to return Adams’s call.

“I apologize,” Adams said. “I should have waited for your call. But I’m so worried. Have you heard anything about Mrs. Ulrich? Someone here at the office said there was a rumor that she’d been injured … shot! I’ve tried to get some information, but no one I’ve called seems to know anything solid. Or if they do, they’re not telling me. And I thought that with your connection with the police …”

My connection with the police. Ordinarily my relationship with the police department plus seventy-five cents might get me a cup of coffee, thought Father Tully. However, this was one occasion when Tom Adams was in luck. In this instance, bad luck. “Yes, Tom. I was with my brother when he was called to the scene. I’m afraid it’s bad news, Tom. The worst.”

“She’s … dead?”

“At first the police thought it was suicide.”

“Suicide!” Adams seemed dumbstruck.

“That’s what they thought initially. But now they think it was murder made up to appear suicide.”

“She’s dead then.” Adams sounded despairing.

“Yes.”

Tully waited patiently. No response. He waited longer. He thought he could hear sobbing, but very softly. “Tom? Mr. Adams? Are you there?”

Silence. Finally, “Yes, I’m here. There’s” — hope against hope-“no doubt … no doubt at all?”

“None. I saw her.” Another pause. “There’s more to the story, Tom. Mrs. Ulrich was pregnant. It was very early. The baby was no more than a few weeks along.”

Still no response.

“The police are presuming there’s a connection between her pregnancy and her death. They say that when they find the father they’ll have found the killer.”

“What!?” Adams almost shouted. “I’m the father! She was carrying my child! But I didn’t kill her. I wouldn’t kill her. I couldn’t kill her!”

Father Tully could think of nothing to say.

“We were going to be married … at least I asked her-just yesterday. How could you possibly believe that I would kill the woman I was going to marry, much less kill my own child!?”

“Mr. Adams …” Father Tully was near dumbfounded. “I didn’t believe that. I had no way of knowing you were the father!”

Someone must’ve entered Adams’s office or at least come to the doorway; Tully could faintly hear a female voice … something about the afternoon mail; there was a letter marked “personal.”

She must’ve put the mail on his desk. Father Tully heard the sound of papers being shifted about.

“Oh, my God! It’s from her-it’s from Barbara! Father, I’ll call you right back. It’s from Barbara!” He hung up, none too gently.

Absently, Father Tully also hung up. Words swam in his mind: “She was carrying my child. But I didn’t kill her. I wouldn’t kill her. I couldn’t kill her!” Adams’s words were clogging Father Tully’s brain. It was such an odd sensation.

Then the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. And it was as if Father Tully had been unaware he had even been engaged in the game.

He thought about it from this angle and that. He searched his memory for events, people, and what those people had said. At best he had not thought any of these elements might be significant clues that would eventually solve a mystery. But it was all taking shape.

Uneasy, he checked his watch. It was now ten minutes since Tom Adams had hung up, promising to call right back. Father Tully quite naturally assumed that Adams had hung up in order to read Barbara’s letter-a message from the dead.

But reading a letter would not require ten minutes-especially since it was Adams who had desperately wanted to talk to the priest.

What could be the cause for Adams’s not returning the call as promised? What was going on? Tully shuddered as he considered the possibilities. He dialed Adams’s number.

“Adams Bank and Trust; office of Mr. Adams. This is Lucille; how may I help you?”