Bryan Gruley - The Skeleton Box

“That’s weird,” I said.

“What?” Vicky rolled her chair closer to mine. Her perfume washed over me again. I wasn’t getting used to it.

“My mom’s a terrible speller,” I said. “Whenever she writes me a note or a letter, there’s always at least one thing wrong.”

My favorite was Mom spelling drawers as “droors,” maybe because it rhymed with “doors.”

“I can’t spell for beans either,” Vicky said.

I picked up the story headlined “Hope Ebbing in Search for Nun.”

“Let’s see here,” I said.

On August 15, 1944, Sister Cordelia had disappeared. According to the Pilot, no one actually saw her leave. The last person to see her was a gardener named Joseph Wayland. Police said Wayland had told them he waved hello to Sister Cordelia as he was hoeing a tomato patch and she was passing on her way to the church sacristy. He offered her a tomato but she begged off, saying she was late to see Father Nilus. She never arrived at the sacristy and she was never seen, at least not in Starvation Lake, again.

Father Nilus organized a party of hundreds of men and women who came from Kalkaska, Kresnak Lake, Mancelona, Sandy Cove, and Grayling, and as far away as Frederic and East Jordan, to help search for the nun. She was known to take solitary walks along the lakeshore and into the swampland beyond the lake’s northwestern corner. There were worries that she had fallen into a bog and drowned, or she had surprised a coyote or a badger and been bitten and bled to death.

“We will not relent,” Nilus was quoted as saying. The story went on, “The priest has worked like a madman, sleeping and eating but a portion of the time. After saying his Masses Sunday, he tramped through the woods with the rest of the searchers.”

Boats were dispatched. More than one hundred men donned waders and formed a sweeping line that moved step by step through the swamp. They found nothing but the rotting carcass of a fawn that had been gnawed by a predator.

After six days of searching and no sign of the nun, Starvation Lake’s uglier side began to emerge. It was inevitable. The locals needed rumors to explain their failure to find Sister Cordelia: She had grown disillusioned with the church and stolen away in her guilt and grief. She had fallen in love with a wealthy summer visitor from Muskegon and left to marry him. The possibility that she had been murdered was generally dismissed. Murders didn’t happen in young, hopeful Starvation Lake, certainly not to a nun.

Her students, who called her “Nonny,” a nickname that was not explained, were devastated, according to the story. The story said she was known best for teaching reading and writing. There was mention of a Saturday morning class called Letters to the Lord that students actually attended, even in summer. Sister Cordelia rewarded pupils with perfect attendance at those sessions with rosaries engraved with their initials. Eleven-year-old Beatrice Damico was quoted as saying, “I miss Nonny. She was so nice.”

I sat back in my chair. “Man,” I said.

“Aw.” Vicky placed a hand on my shoulder. I felt the edges of the rings she wore digging into my skin. I twisted my body around so that her hand came away.

“Let’s keep going,” I said. I switched out the roll of microfilm. I looked at my watch. Where the hell was that call from Poppy?

“Now what?” Vicky said.

“They caught the guy who killed the nun.”

“Oooh. Who knew microfilm could be so much fun?”

I spun the handle. The pages blurred past. I stopped every few to see where I was: March, May, July. Now the year was 1950. I stopped on August 5. Two stories dominated the top of the front page. “Gardener Arrested in Disappearance of Nun,” ran across five of the eight columns. The other, which I had not seen in the Pilot catalog, ate up the other three columns: “Arrest Boosts Sheriff’s Bid for Re-Election.”

“Look at that,” I said.

“What?”

“History really does repeat itself.”

I spun the handle again. The next story would have to have everything the arrest story had and more. I stopped at August 7, 1950.

ACCUSED KILLER MURDERED IN PINE COUNTY JAIL

By Carl L. Wick

Pilot Staff

STARVATION LAKE — The man accused of the long-ago murder of a young nun was killed in an apparent fight at the county jail here.

Joseph E. Wayland, 51 years old, died of internal injuries allegedly inflicted by another inmate at the Pine County Jail. Pine County sheriff R. Lawrence Spardell said the two had a disagreement over a game of craps.

Wayland was stabbed in the throat with a crude weapon the other man had fashioned from a spoon smuggled out of the jail mess, Spardell said.

The sheriff declined to identify the other man, pending an arraignment scheduled for Wednesday before Pine County circuit judge Franklin Carey.

Wayland was arrested last week on charges of first-degree murder in the disappearance of Sister Mary Cordelia Gallesero.

Sister Cordelia, as the Felician nun was known at St. Valentine’s Catholic Church here, was reported missing in August of 1944. She was 30 years old at the time. The nun’s body was never found despite a massive search.

Wayland worked as a gardener at St. Valentine’s at the time of the nun’s disappearance.

Charges were filed based largely on the testimony of an unnamed Catholic parish priest who said Wayland confessed to the crime during the sacrament of penance.

The unnamed priest told police that Wayland revealed in the church confessional that he had bludgeoned the nun to death with a shovel after she rejected his romantic advances, and disposed of her body in Torch Lake.

Fr. Nilus Moreau, pastor of St. Valentine’s, referred questions to the Archdiocese of Detroit. Fr. Timothy Reilly, a spokesman for the archdiocese, denied that a priest had violated the sanctity of the confessional, but said, “We pray for the Lord’s love and tender mercy for Sister Cordelia, the men in the jail, and their families.”

Pine County prosecutor Michael Carey said plans were being made to dredge Torch Lake, but he wasn’t optimistic about finding the nun’s body so long after her murder.

Of the jail killing, he said, “This unfortunate turn of events appears to close the case of Sister Cordelia’s demise, and I sincerely hope we won’t have to speak of it again.”

Wayland has previously been convicted twice of public intoxication and was acquitted in 1939 of a charge of aggravated assault after allegedly striking a man with a bar stool.

His wife of 28 years, Esmerelda, died in childbirth in 1930. He is survived by a daughter, Mrs. Susan Breck of Plymouth, Michigan, and a grandson.

“Whoa,” I said, forgetting Vicky.

“What?”

I was focused on the last sentence of the clip. Breck, I thought. Again I did some math in my head. The Breck at Tatch’s camp could have been Wayland’s grandson.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just… I can’t believe I never knew about this.”

“It probably wasn’t something people were proud of,” Vicky said. “Anyway, it happened a million years ago. Did you see those clothes in the pictures? Crazy.”

I reread the story, focused again on the last sentence, and tried to get into my reporter’s garb, distance myself, be objective. Could it be mere coincidence? Could this Susan Breck be unrelated to the Breck who had insinuated himself into Tatch’s camp and convinced its dwellers that they could dig their way to liberation? Was Breck somehow connected to Nilus and, therefore, to Mrs. B? What was he really digging for?

“Are you getting hungry?” Vicky said.

“Huh?”

My phone rang. Thank God, I thought.

“For chicken and dumplings?”

“Hang on.”

I may have grabbed the phone a little too eagerly. Vicky folded her arms in that pose women adopt when they have an inkling that they’re about to be handed bullshit.