William Kienzle - Body Count

Fortunately, these sorts of questions seldom concerned him any longer. Still, mysteries did abound. The power that priests had to absolve, to consecrate, to bury, to marry, all these had to be taken on faith-another mystery. Mangiapane did not at all mind taking time from Homicide-even though it was his first love-to search for a lost priest and, along the way, to learn more about these still-mysterious creatures.

Partly to free himself to supervise the investigation as well as to follow his own instincts and leads, pardy because they were closest to him on the squad, and pardy because they differed in their attitude toward this case, Tully had appointed Moore and Mangiapane coordinators. They now had brought him the results of all efforts to date. To simplify, they had consolidated and summarized the various reports.

“Both our guys and the Bloomfield people have been checking with all the relatives and friends we can find,” Moore reported.

“And?” Tully prompted.

“For one thing, there aren’t many relatives. Parents, dead. No brothers or sisters. Some distant cousins, and that’s about it. And with a couple of them, we had to explain who John Keating was, and then they remembered he was a relative. Those were mostly out-of-towners. The few living in this area at least knew they had a priest relative, but we couldn’t find any who saw him on anywhere near a regular basis. We haven’t uncovered a relative who would be a reasonable lead. Deadendsville.”

“Zoo” — nearly everyone used the nickname from the abbreviated Alonzo-“the thing of it is that priests don’t usually end up having many relatives,” Mangiapane said. “Especially if they don’t have brothers or sisters. They don’t get married, so they got no in-laws. So it’s not strange that we come up dry.”

“Okay, Manj.” Tully may not have known much about any of the organized religions, but he was aware that priests had no in-laws unless they had married brothers or sisters, and so they’d have fewer relatives than most. But experience taught that it did not pay to come down too hard on Mangiapane. Criticism tended to inhibit him. And that was not productive.

“There are lots of friends, though, or at least acquaintances,” Mangiapane continued. “Funny thing, they’re mostly among the elite-the silk stocking crowd.”

“Why would that be funny, Manj? That’s the neighborhood he operates in, isn’t it-Bloomfield Hills? Not too many panhandlers out there.”

“Yeah,” Mangiapane responded, “but Keating wasn’t always out there.”

“Oh?”

“We went over his assignments with the secretary. He’s been all over the place in a little more than twenty years. Downtown, the core city-before it was ‘the core city’-all around the town, some of the suburbs. But he’s been in Bloomfield Hills for the past almost ten years.

“The thing is, we can’t come up with anyone who could be described as a friend, especially a close friend, anywhere but in Bloomfield Hills.”?

“That’s right, Zoo,” Moore added. “We went over the stuff in his office and suite. A few phone and address books but hardly any listing for anyone outside of Bloomfield Hills. Oh, a few in Birmingham, you know, the same neighborhood. But hardly anyone with an address down-to-earth people might live at. Not even the Pointes,” she added, and then, with a touch of amusement, “The difference between old and new money.”

Moore and Mangiapane glanced at each other. Mangiapane nodded, offering Moore the floor. Moore riffled through several pages of notes. “The single item about which no one seems to have any doubt is that there could be no reason for what’s happened. Some-most of his friends were surprised to see us. They didn’t know he was missing.”

Tully seemed slightly surprised. “These people from the parish?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Their pastor misses a whole weekend of services and his parishioners don’t know he’s not there?”

Mangiapane spoke as one in the know. “All the people who go to Mass on Sunday know is there’s a priest there to say the Mass. See, at St. Waldo’s, there’s an assistant priest and two other priests who come in just to help on weekends. There’s a rotation in most places-and that’s the way it works at St. Waldo’s too.”

“Rotation?”

“Yeah, Zoo. Like one week a priest will have a Saturday evening Mass, then next week he’ll take early Sunday, then the middle Sunday Mass, then the late Sunday Mass, and then back to a Saturday Mass. But not that many parishioners pay much attention to who’s takin’ what. All they want’s a priest to give the Mass. They just want to take care of their obligation to hear Mass.”

“That’s it, Zoo,” Moore attested. “Even the ones who are aware of what’s going on wouldn’t think it was alarming if the priest they expected didn’t have their particular service. He could be ill. Or for some reason, the priests could have traded schedules.”

“What it comes down to, Zoo,” Mangiapane said, “is that that’s why none of his friends-who are also mainly parishioners-knew anything out of the ordinary might have happened. So they were surprised when we came calling with questions. The only ones who thought something might be wrong were-whatchamajigger-the inner circle: the housekeeper, the secretary-and the assistant priest and the other weekend help of course, because they had to cover for Father Keating.”

“So then,” Tully concluded, “they were the ones who brought Dunstable in on it.”

“Yeah, Zoo. He’s the parish council president,” Mangiapane added. “The council president, Zoo, is the one who-“

“I know what he does. The inspector filled me in on that yesterday,” Tully said. “So, okay, none of the friends or parishioners were on to what was going on. What was their reaction?”

Moore looked up from her notes. “Unanimous, as far as I can see, Zoo. No one could think of any reason why Keating should be among the missing-although some thought he might be taking a vacation. But that had to be a stab in the dark: When you ask them, they immediately admit that’s never happened before. Not that he doesn’t take a regular vacation. But it’s always announced well in advance. And here there’s been no such announcement.”

“Any grudges, hard feelings?” Tully asked.

Mangiapane smiled. “Not once they found out he was missing.”

“That’s understandable,” Moore said. “If a cop comes to your door, tells you somebody you know is missing, you’re not likely to volunteer that you hate the bastard and hope he’s dead. But this was different: The general reaction was surprise, surprise that he was missing and surprise that the police were looking for him. If anybody had any hard feelings, they weren’t intense enough to pop out spontaneously.”

“How about the people he worked with?”

“Guarded,” Moore said. “It got to be like pulling teeth. Monosyllabic answers. Little or no information volunteered. We concentrated on the housekeeper, the secretary, and the other priest-the assistant. But we didn’t get anywhere.”

“The funny thing is,” Mangiapane noted, “nobody seems to work for him very long.”

“Hmmm?” Tully found that of interest.

“I didn’t pay much attention when I found out the assistant priest had been in the parish only six months. That happens. Priests get moved around. Some more than others. But then the secretary said she’d been hired a little less than a year ago. That made me wonder. Then the housekeeper said she’d worked for him just a little more than a year-just before the secretary was hired.”

“So the housekeeper overlapped the secretary. She give any reason why the former secretary was let go?”