Bryan Gruley - The Skeleton Box

I read the story through, fixed a few typos, and hit Send. A goateed twenty-two-year-old at the main printing plant would have it on the Media North website in minutes.

“Done,” I said. “Another Whistler scoop.”

“That’s nice,” he said, “but really, BFD, you know, all we did was beat another reporter.”

“Isn’t that the idea?”

“Well, yeah. ‘Always first.’ But it’s one thing to beat a competitor. They’re just journalists, after all. It’s another thing to beat the cops.”

“Right. Like your ex-wife.”

“Tags.”

“Yeah.”

“Which brings me to this,” Whistler said. He kicked away from his desk, rolled over to me, and leaned forward in his chair. He had a printout folded in one hand. “Did a little Internet search.”

“You are cutting-edge for an old man.”

“Funny. Write this down.”

I picked up a pen.

“N-I–L-U-S,” he spelled.

I looked at it written on my blotter.

“Nilus,” I said. “As in nye-less?”

“Nilus Moreau,” Whistler said. “Father Nilus Moreau.”

“A priest?”

“He was the pastor of St. Valentine’s.”

“Here? In Starvation Lake?”

“A long time ago. I only did a quick search. Been spending most of my time calling around to cop shops that might be hearing echoes from Dingus and his guys.” He handed me the printout. “Found an obit in the Marquette Mining Journal, 1971.”

I scanned it quickly, three short paragraphs on an inside page of the Mining Journal from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Father Nilus Moreau had come to Starvation Lake in the early 1930s before it was even called Starvation Lake. He led the effort to build a new church at St. Valentine’s in 1951. He died in a nursing home in Calumet at the age of sixty-nine.

“So what?” I said.

“Where did you get this Nilus tip?” Whistler said.

I thought of Darlene. “I shouldn’t talk about my sources either. But it wasn’t D’Alessio.”

“OK. But you ought to run it down from here, don’t you think?”

“Fair enough.”

A priest? I thought, and an image of the crosses in the trees at Tatch’s camp popped into my head.

“Speaking of churches,” I said, “I was out at that born-again camp today.”

Whistler’s white eyebrows went up. “Whatever for?”

“One of the kids on our hockey team lives there. Took him his skates.”

“I’ll bet that was interesting.”

“A little weird, actually. Reminds me: Were you trying to get the records on that land?”

I could tell Whistler hadn’t expected that question. “I might have seen them if the wench clerk had let me.”

“You didn’t say anything to me.”

“Sorry, boss. I always go looking for the documents. The docs can’t kiss your ass and buy you lunch and make you write like a wimp, like those auto reporters back in-” He caught himself, perhaps remembering I had once covered that industry. “Oh, sorry.”

“I wish writing like a wimp had been my problem.”

“Anyway, I got nowhere with Verna the Vault. But it’s a story, right? The born-agains want to get out of paying taxes, or at least pay less. Kind of a sore subject in this economy.”

“Yep. They apparently have a lawyer now, an out-of-towner named Breck.”

Whistler sat back in his chair. “Breck?”

“Like the shampoo. Didn’t get the first name. Know him?”

“Nope.”

“Seems like he’s running things out there. They’ve got a backhoe tearing up that hill.”

“Really? Building themselves a church?”

“Nah. Something about a septic field leaking into their land. They’re going to try to use it to squeeze the county for some cash.”

“You can’t get blood from a stone.”

“Right.” I ate another chip. “But they might be making some hay about it at the drain commission tomorrow. You want to go? This Breck guy’s supposed to be there.”

“The drain commission? Hmm.” Whistler pedaled his chair back to his desk. “I’m going to be a good guy and let you do it, how’s that?”

“Thanks a million.”

“But tell you what. I’ve got a source in the archdiocese from covering the pope’s visit to Detroit way back when. If he’s not dead, I’ll call him, see what I can find out about this Nilus character.”

“Did you check the old papers downstairs?”

“In the morgue?”

“Nobody calls it a morgue anymore.”

“What you got downstairs ought to be one, as cold and damp as it is. I got allergies. The last time I went down there, I sneezed for a week.”

“I’ll look. There’s probably something.”

Whistler stood up. “I’ve got to see a man about a horse,” he said. “But one thing. If you’re poking around back in whenever Nilus was here, you might stumble over my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“Yeah. She lived nearby for a little while in the forties. Matter of fact, I lived here, but we moved away when I was a little shaver.”

So Mom’s recollection of a Whistler in Starvation Lake was not mistaken. I said, “But didn’t you tell my mother-”

“I know, I fibbed to your mom. I’m sorry. See, unlike your mom, mine was nothing to be proud of. Spent most of her life in a bottle. I just, I don’t know, I didn’t know how well your mom knew her, and I didn’t want to get into it.”

“Gotcha.”

“How is your mom anyway?”

“Getting through it. I’ve got to check on her.”

Whistler yanked keys from his vest pocket. “Will let you know what I find out. Let’s get there before the cops, eh, boss?”

I finished up the next day’s paper. Wrote a few headlines, some photo captions, a brief on the high school girls’ basketball team going to Big Rapids for a game. Then I went to the back of the newsroom and descended a set of creaky stairs to the basement.

At the bottom I reached up and pulled on a string that lit a single overhead bulb. The air tasted of chalk. Black binders filled with old newspapers lay in racks along two walls. The binders went back only about forty years, so I doubted they’d help me much. In the darkest corner of the room stood a pair of wooden file cabinets, painted green. Index cards taped on the drawers were marked with letters in alphabetical order. I pulled open the drawer marked Na-No and flipped through the file folders inside.

I found the file I wanted about two-thirds deep in the drawer: “Moreau, Rev. Nilus.” I pulled it out and opened it, praying it would hold a yellowed, cut-out clip or two. The file was empty except for an index card. I pulled the card out and walked across the floor to read beneath the lightbulb. The typewriting on the card said:

St. Valentine’s Welcomes New Pastor, November 2, 1933.

Nilus Expands Orphanage with Children from Midland, January 20, 1934.

Town Searches for Missing Nun; “No Stone Unturned,” Priest Vows, p. A-1, August 17, 1944.

Hope Ebbing in Search for Nun, p. A-1, August 28, 1944.

“Holy shit,” I said. I flipped the card over. The list continued on the back:

Gardener Arrested in Disappearance of Nun, p. A-1, August 5, 1950. cf. Accused Killer Murdered in Pine County Jail, p. A-3, August 7, 1950.

Gardener Arrested in Disappearance of Nun, p. A-1, August 5, 1950. cf. Accused Killer Murdered in Pine County Jail, p. A-3, August 7, 1950.

This had to be the nun Dingus had told me about, and the guy who’d gotten his throat cut in the jail. I did the math in my head. Mrs. B and Mom were the same age, sixty-six. They had known each other since they went to the school at St. Val’s together. The school had closed sometime in the 1970s. Mom and Mrs. B would’ve been eleven years old when the nun vanished. I wondered if the nun had taught at St. Val’s, if Nilus had. Did he know Mrs. B as a little girl?