William Kienzle - Marked for Murder - The Father Koesler Mysteries:

And that, Bush concluded, is how he had come to meet Koesler. Which, as far as Bush was concerned, proved that good could come out of bad.

As he spoke, Koesler could well imagine how, with his history, Bush might have reacted to a woman who was foolish enough to toy with his emotions. It might well have been, thought Koesler, very lucky for Agnes Blondell that she had escaped from that encounter. And that thought led to another. But again, Koesler was not quite able to bring the new concept into focus. Possibly he might have, had Bush not interrupted his thinking process by addressing him with a direct question: “You haven’t eaten all your corned beef. Didn’t you like it?”

Koesler started. “Oh, too much cabbage, I guess. That happens. Especially when you like cabbage as much as I do.”

“Well, then, all done?”

“Yes. Yes, indeed.” Koesler glanced at his watch. It was almost time to leave if he was going to catch at least part of the parish council meeting.

“Just some dessert then.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. I really must go.” Koesler was convinced he had paid his dues this evening. Bush had said he needed Koesler—“now.” And he’d had him. Koesler was sure all Bush had wanted or needed was to talk this out—tell someone. Now, thought Koesler, it was over.

“Just some Jell-O,” Bush fairly pleaded. “I made it myself”

How else, Koesler wondered, would one get Jell-O without making it oneself “Well, okay. They say there’s always room for Jell-O. I guess there must always be time for it, too.”

With a satisfied look, Bush cleared the few dishes from the small table. Then he went to his small, portable fridge to get the Jell-O. Things were such, and space so limited, that it appeared that Bush was going to require a few minutes to get the Jell-O on the table.

Koesler, filled with cabbage at lease, felt the urge to stand and stretch a bit. There wasn’t much space in which to walk nor was there much to capture one’s attention. Except the pictures.

Koesler, perhaps instinctively, went to the “religious” art. Arguably, in this assemblage there wasn’t much from which to choose. If only because he’d seen these saccharine monstrosities too often, he turned to the photos taken by Bush’s technician friend.

He went rather rapidly from one to the next. He recognized some of the prints from the medical examiner’s files, though he had to admit he had not spent that much time looking at them yesterday morning in Dr. Moellmann’s office.

Once again, Koesler puzzled over the sheer brutality of these attacks, the violence done to the bodies of the victims.

“Dessert’s ready.”

Just as well. He’d had quite enough of Bush’s version of Pictures at an Exhibition. Koesler could not help but think of Spiro Agnew’s aristocratic comment when scheduled to tour a slum: “If you’ve seen one slum you’ve seen them all.” Overwhelmed by these pictures, Koesler was about to paraphrase Agnew: When you’ve seen one mutilated prostitute, you’ve seen them all.

Of course this was not true, unless one were dealing with this specific case where each victim had been brutalized in identical ways. The bruised neck, the evisceration, the branding.

He returned to the series of framed pictures and stood staring at them.

Bush looked up from his chair at the table. “Is something wrong?”

There was no response. Bush tried again. “Is something the matter?”

“Something is wrong,” Koesler said slowly. “Something is very, very, very wrong.”

Bush joined Koesler. “What is it?”

“These pictures here.” Koesler pointed to a series of prints, the latest additions to the gallery. “These are photos of the latest victim, Mae Dixon, aren’t they?”

Bush did not need to study the pictures. He knew them well. “Yes, Mae Dixon. So?”

“There’s a progression to these photos. The first ones—these, up higher here—were taken in the apartment. Of her in the bathtub, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“And the later ones, down here, one row lower: These were taken at the mortuary.”

“So?”

“There are two photos that were not taken by the technician.”

Bush began to perspire.

“Those two photos were taken by the killer.”

Koesler waited, but Bush said nothing.

Koesler continued. “I had to look very closely because the angle is different from the other photos. But if you check carefully, there’s something missing. In these two pictures, Mae Dixon has not yet been branded. The picture seems to be taken from a higher angle, almost overhead. But it does show enough of the poor woman’s breast so you can see that the brand mark should be there. Right here.” Koesler touched the photo. “But it isn’t. Mae Dixon, at this time, at the time this photo was taken, was dead. She’d been strangled. And she’d been cut open. But she had not been branded. The other photos show that she was, indeed, branded. But not now, not when this picture was taken. There’s only one explanation: The murderer took this picture between the time he strangled and cut her and the time that he branded her.”

Koesler looked long at Bush, who remained silent. “You did this, Arnold. You strangled her. You cut her open. You took this picture. And then you branded her.”

Bush took his seat again at the table. He took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He removed a cigarette and dropped the pack on the table. He tapped the cigarette several times on the tabletop. He placed the cigarette at the edge of his lips and lit it. He inhaled deeply, then let the smoke escape slowly through his nostrils. It was a most reflexive routine. Every action indicated that he was carefully considering his response to Koesler’s charge.

“What if I didn’t take those two pictures?” he said finally.

“Then who took them? Who did you get them from, Arnold? Whoever took them murdered Mae Dixon.”

Bush pinched off another deep drag on his cigarette. Who? Who could he have gotten them from? No matter who he named they would, of course, check. And they would find that the accusation was false. There was no one to blame—no one but himself.

“Stupid,” Bush murmured. “Stupid. I wanted my own pictures. Everything else was mine. The plan. It was a good plan. It was maybe a perfect plan. Everything else. The tools. Everything was mine. I wanted my own picture. Stupid!” He spat out the final word.

Koesler waited, but Bush added nothing more. “Not only that,” Koesler picked up, “but you involved an innocent man and a priest besides. You set him up, didn’t you, Arnold? Poor Father Kramer has been publicly humiliated and imprisoned because of you. He could have been convicted. He would have spent a great number of years—maybe the rest of his life—in prison. Arnold, how could you have done this?”

But Bush was no longer listening. He was retracing in his memory the painstaking preparations he’d made. How carefully he had plotted the whole thing. And for what? For what?

Father Koesler was numb. He would not have expected to be. He would have expected to be delighted, triumphant. There was never a doubt in his mind that Dick Kramer was innocent of these crimes. But, from time to time, Koesler had doubted that he or anyone else would be able to set the record straight and clear the priest. Never had this depression been more deep than just yesterday when he had learned that not only did Lieutenant Tully believe Kramer guilty, but that this opinion was shared by Dr. Moellmann and even Inspector Koznicki. Now this was all changed. It was nothing less than Divine Providence that had come to his aid. A miracle of sorts.

Meeting Arnold Bush. What a spectacular accident! Agnes Blondell, out of nowhere, leading him almost by the nose to the basement of the morgue, where he had been introduced to Arnold Bush. Lunch in Greektown. All Arnold had been looking for was a non-judgmental priest. Not that impossible to find, especially in this day and age.