William Kienzle - Sudden Death

Koesler had been shaken to his core both by the fact that a respected Catholic matron had killed her only child and by the happenstance that it was he who had come up with the clues that led to her arrest. Koznicki, despite his many years with the Detroit Police Department, had never been more reluctant to make an arrest than he had been today.

“Now, Father, you are always too modest about your accomplishments. It was a most clever bit of deduction.”

“Well, thanks, Inspector. But I’m not all that proud of it. First, I embarrassed Lieutenant Harris and Sergeant Ewing as well as myself. And undoubtedly the Galloways too. And I can only feel terribly sad about Mrs. Hunsinger. You know, Inspector, she and I spent a lot of years together that I was totally unaware of. All those years she followed my career as an altar boy and seminarian and priest!” Koesler shook his head. “I didn’t even know she was looking.”

“None of us feels good about Mrs. Hunsinger, Father. But justice has been served and this case is closed. And I still believe that it was very clever of you to have come up with the hypothesis that the perpetrator had a problem with color vision. How was it you did that?”

“I still don’t know. It’s all jumbled in my mind. I think the seed was sown when I saw the horrible mix of colors in the Galloway living room. You see, Inspector, I started this whole thing in the wrong ballpark.”

“But you soon moved it to the correct location.”

“An accident, I think. As usual, whenever I’m able to be of any help to the police, it’s a matter of coming up with something that’s just not in the usual sphere of police work. This time, the most significant clues I uncovered were found in the Bible. Mostly, the incident where Christ cured a blind man, but only in stages. And, of course, that text from Maccabees. Strange, now that I think of it, the Biblical text that provided the clue that led to a solution was the same text through which God ‘told’ Mrs. Hunsinger to kill her son. And of course I goofed entirely on the reason the poor woman broke down during the funeral.”

“An irrelevant detail, Father.”

Koesler cupped his bourbon manhattan in his palms, assisting the ice to melt. “Did she. . I mean Mrs. Hunsinger. . did she confess. . I mean officially, to the police?”

“Yes, she made a full statement shortly after arriving at headquarters. She said she left her home shortly after she and Mrs. Quinn returned from Mass. She said that was a particularly ‘nappy’-was the word she used-time for Mrs. Quinn. Mrs. Quinn invariably got exceptionally tired after attending two Sunday masses.

“So, about eleven that morning, or shortly thereafter, Mrs. Hunsinger left home, drove to her son’s apartment building, entered through the basement, and took the elevator to his apartment. There she mixed the strychnine and DMSO and switched that bottle with the shampoo bottle. And, as you deduced, she was unable to tell that there was a different coloration.

“She returned home to find that Mrs. Quinn had not awakened once during her absence. And of course Mrs. Quinn assumed that Mrs. Hunsinger had been at home with her all through the day. Sergeant Ewing recalled that when he and Lieutenant Harris asked her what she had done all that day, she had Mrs. Quinn give an account of their time. She didn’t even have to lie.”

Koesler sipped his drink, caught one of the rapidly melting ice cubes, and held it in his mouth to complete the melting process. “What will happen to her now?”

“That is up to the prosecutor’s office. I assume she will be charged with murder in the first degree. No one could doubt, now, that she killed her son and that it very certainly was premeditated.”

“And do you think she will be convicted?”

Koznicki smiled briefly. “I never speculate about such matters. Our police work is done now, save testifying at her trial.” He looked at his clerical friend with a faint touch of amusement. “But for you, I will make a conjecture. If I were a good defense attorney-and you can depend on it, she will have one-I would love to have a client who can say with utmost sincerity, a sincerity that no prosecutor can break down, that ‘our Lord told me to do it.’ I would guess that Mrs. Hunsinger will eventually spend some time, perhaps the rest of her life, perhaps not, in some institution where she will receive psychiatric help. And with the money her son had already provided for her, the therapy ought to be first class.”

Koesler shrugged. “What a waste; what a tragic waste! Such a good woman!”

“A good woman, yes. . but,” Koznicki touched a finger to his forehead, “somewhat unbalanced.”

“Probably if we knew her complete background, it all might make some sense. I can’t believe a good woman like Grace Hunsinger could just step outside her whole lifestyle and suddenly become a murderess. Or even that she could lead an otherwise normal, even very pious, life and then have this one psychotic episode.”

Koesler deposited his glass on the table. This would be one of the rare occasions when he would not finish a drink. “One final point of information, Inspector. How could Grace Hunsinger know that DMSO would penetrate to the bloodstream and carry the poison with it? She hasn’t any medical or pharmaceutical background. At least not that I’m aware of.”

“Quite true, Father. She learned in the simplest possible way. It came out in her statement earlier this afternoon. We know that Mrs. Hunsinger, the compulsive mother of a compulsive son, regularly cleaned his already clean apartment. She would be aware of everything in it. Things like the intimate feminine apparel neatly tucked away, always changing as new women entered her son’s life. And the X-rated video cassettes. And the ample supply of strychnine. And that strange bottle of DMSO in the medicine cabinet. Always concerned, if fruitlessly, about her son’s use of illegal substances, she asked him about the DMSO.

“He explained its function, even going so far as to demonstrate. He put a drop of iodine on his hand, then, when it dried, he covered it with a drop or two of DMSO. She watched as the iodine disappeared, carried beneath the skin by the DMSO. At the time, she did no more than remind her son of the warning found on the bottle itself that the product might be unsafe, that it was not approved for human use.

“It was not until she received her ‘divine commission’ that she formed the plan of using the strychnine in conjunction with the DMSO. It was, as Dr. Moellmann observed, a very simple plan, yet ingenious in its simplicity.” Koznicki finished his drink. “And that leads to a question that still puzzles me. Grace Hunsinger was a very, perhaps overly, religious woman. How could she take her son’s life when in all probability he would thus have died in mortal sin? In this, she would not only be killing him, but condemning him to hell as well. . would she not? This, Father, is your field of expertise.”

Koesler shook his head slowly. “It’s a good question, Inspector. I ‘m not sure how to approach an answer.” He paused a few moments. “Perhaps you’ll remember a movie that came out about. . oh. . thirty years ago, called Night of the Hunter. Robert Mitchum played a preacher who was a psychopathic killer. He had the word ‘love’ tattooed on the back of one hand, and ‘hate’ on the other. I’ll never forget the scene where he’s alone driving a car and talking to God-praying would be a sick use of the word to describe his monologue. He admits-brags almost-to God that he is a killer. But he reminds God that there’s a lot of killing in the ‘Good Book.’ Well, Inspector, there is. The essence of the Bible, at least for the Christian, occurs when Almighty God allows His Son to be brutally executed. In fact, the execution may be said to be the fulfillment of the Father’s will.