Sunday 6:38 P.M.
When they got back to their desks, they began doing paperwork, detailing conversations, filling in Daily Major Incident reports, and completing the blizzard of paperwork involved in a case. Turner actually kind of enjoyed the silence as they worked away. Fenwick could be a garrulous windbag, but he knew his job, worked hard at it, and was an excellent detective and a good friend. The silence surrounding paperwork was a pleasant respite from the ghastly humor.
Just before seven, Molton disturbed their reverie. “You gentlemen have a visitor.” After introductions, he left.
Moments later a seventy-year-old nun sat demurely in the chair next to Turner’s desk. Fenwick rolled his barely swiveling swivel chair over.
Sister Maria Clarrisa Eliade had begun with, “I thought I’d save you gentlemen a trip.” Continued with, “Rose Talucci will be here with cookies. She and I talked. That’s why I’m here.” Turned out they’d been in classes together at the University of Chicago.
After initial chatting, when the detectives had expressed their dissatisfaction with the case, she said in her soft voice, “Don’t you two get it? You must not be very good detectives.” It was a comment dealt in sadness. Turner noted no trace of sneer or sarcasm or criticism.
“How so, Sister?” Turner asked.
“Yes, Father Timothy Kappel had his reputation as a vicious enforcer, but see, you had to follow each case to its end. You had to follow each of the recommendations he made very, very carefully.”
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” Turner said.
“Let me give you a simple example. You heard about the boy in Maine, a high school boy, who at the time of the referendum on gay rights, put a sign on his lawn in favor of the gay side?”
Turner said, “I read a little about that. It was on a gay news website.” Turner checked gay news sites to find out specific gay news of note.
“For putting up a sign, the kid was going to be denied confirmation and then weeks after that, with no publicity whatsoever, the confirmation ceremony happened and the kid was in it. Fr. Kappel was the investigator.”
“So he always really tried to help people?” Fenwick asked.
Sister Eliade gave a grim smile. “Well, no. If he didn’t like you, you were toast. Or if you made him angry he could really put it to you. That actually made his attempts to help easier to keep secret, or look less like help. He had a vicious reputation. And he never made an issue when something just disappeared. And some things just disappeared and you were never sure whom the disappearing helped. It really looked like most often he was an enforcer because a lot of his biggest cases made news. Plus he was on the Cardinal’s side in the wars inside the Sacred Heart of Bleeding Jesus Order. And if you happened to be on the wrong side of a dispute that had any connection with the Order, Kappel would get even.”
“The wrong side being the one Kappel was against,” Fenwick confirmed.
“Yes, my dear,” the placid nun said. “In the Order, you could be in a great deal of trouble. The Abbot won some fights. The Cardinal won some fights. The Cardinal had the ear of the Vatican, obviously, he did get made Cardinal. The Abbot had the power in the Order.”
“For what?” Fenwick asked. The fruits of pointless power was one of Fenwick’s favorite debating points.
As they discussed the finer points of the morality of power, Molton himself re-entered with a tray of coffee. Turner knew they were the best cups and saucers available in the station. He heard the seldom-used elevator creak in the distance. They looked in that direction. Mrs. Talucci, accompanied by Barb Dams, bore down on them. Turner could hear Mrs. Talucci’s cane thumping on the linoleum. Barb bore a tray stacked with Italian cookies. Molton himself poured the coffee and distributed it making sure all had coffee or sugar as needed.
Mrs. Talucci and Sister Eliade hugged. Turner’s neighbor said, “I wanted to make sure I got the kind of cookies Fenwick liked from the bakery.” Turner saw that indeed, the tray was filled with butter cookies dipped in chocolate and pecan bars slathered in the same liquid.
Molton and Dams retreated. Mrs. Talucci, Sister Eliade, Fenwick, and Turner sat in a circle.
Sister Eliade spoke to Mrs. Talucci. “I was explaining the ways of the world to these nice detectives.”
“They are good men,” Mrs. Talucci confirmed.
Turner found himself inordinately pleased by the affirmation from his neighbor. He asked, “Do you know if anybody else ever noticed what Kappel was doing?”
“I never discussed it with anyone outside my Order.”
“So he may or may not have been confronted about actually helping some people?”
“Not by anyone I’m aware of. It could be very subtle. Did you hear that story about the priest who was ordered by his bishop not to give communion to a lesbian couple?”
“A sad case,” Mrs. Talucci said.
Fenwick asked, “How on Earth would the priest or the bishop know they were lesbians or care?”
Sister Eliade said, “Church workers.”
“What does that mean?” Fenwick asked.
Mrs. Talucci said, “Homophobic bigots can have their own Internet network. They talk and connive in secret. Somebody in their home parish didn’t like them and didn’t like the fact that they were raising two children.”
Sister Eliade continued the story, “They tattled to the bishop and he got mad. Ordered the priest to take action that next Sunday. The priest didn’t. There was a big stink. Kappel was appointed the investigator.”
“How’d he get the job?”
“In the Curia in Rome there are various factions. The Order is in with the correct faction for investigating these kinds of things.” She sipped coffee. “But if you followed the story all the way, you would have found that after all the news media went away, the priest kept his parish, and the bishop kept his mouth shut.”
Fenwick said, “That just sounds nuts.”
Mrs. Talucci placed her cup of coffee on Turner’s desk, used her hand to pat Fenwick’s thigh. “Yes, dear. We know.”
Sister Eliade said, “Nuts or not, whatever Kappel was, he was not a monster, or at least not always. He was a complex man.”
Turner asked, “How did Kappel get assigned to the investigation? He’s connected to this diocese, not that.”
Sister Eliade said, “Ah, but you see, Cardinal Duggan is quite a power in the church in America. He is deferred to.”
Fenwick guessed. “And it was a church heavily influenced by members of the Sacred Heart of Bleeding Jesus Order.”
“Very good, my dear, very good.”
Fenwick beamed like a first grader who’d been praised by his favorite teacher.
“As for the boy and his sign,” Sister Eliade continued, “there was stink and uproar for a few weeks, and then the issue disappeared from the news, and a few weeks later the boy was confirmed, and a few months later the priest was transferred to one of their missions in India.”
Turner smiled. “You’re kidding.”
The nun took a sip of coffee. “Not about Bishop Kappel. No, he would work with people, in secret, negotiate quietly. If people were assholes, he screwed the bejesus out of them. If they cooperated in any way, if they were on the side of what I call truth and light, Timothy would find a way to make things easier for the accused. He didn’t always succeed. But he was working with us from the inside.”
“Us?” Fenwick asked.
“The few liberals left in the church. Most left long ago. And Timothy had to be very, very careful.”
“That all seems so arbitrary and capricious.”
“Yes,” the nun said, “the Church holds dearly to eternal truths and never wavers except when it’s convenient.”
“They stake their brand on eternal truth,” Fenwick said.
“They voted on Papal infallibility,” Sister Eliade said. “Voted on an eternal truth. They’ve done that for centuries. It’s the we–got–the–most–votes, and we’ve–got–eternal–truth–on–our–side theory of theological disputes. That make sense to you?”
“Not really,” Fenwick said.
“And you’re a detective in Chicago, you should know better.”
Fenwick only bristled a little, even he was cowed by this nun’s demeanor and presence. He did ask, “How does being a detective make a difference?”
“You see mankind at their worst, and most people, as you know, are a slip of the conscience away from,” she paused, “making very poor choices.”
They sat in silence. The women sipped coffee. Fenwick wolfed down several cookies.
Turner asked, “Did Tresca know what Kappel was up to?”
“I don’t think so.”
Turner asked, “Could someone have found out, someone on the opposition side, and killed him for it?”
“So few knew. And it could be hard to figure out which side was the opposition in a case, or which side Kappel was on. I only knew because I follow cases carefully. I try to avoid hysteria. I look things up. I do research in depth. Several of the sisters in my Order kept track on the Internet. We noticed the oddity only after a few years. And then when it came time for him to investigate us, why I just waited patiently for the right signs.”
“What were those?” Fenwick asked.
“If it was official corruption from higher ups he didn’t like, you were likely to go down. Especially if he didn’t like you, and whoever he was working for didn’t like you.”
“It was politics not corruption.”
“Politics and corruption.”
“Selective enforcement,” Fenwick said. “Based on personal whim. The best kind.”
Again Turner thought back to Carruthers. He said, “Could they manufacture evidence?”
“If they really didn’t like you or you were really stupid, I would guess so, but I don’t know so.”
“It sounds like a dangerous game he was playing,” Fenwick said.
“How so?”
“Taking sides based on like or dislike instead of evidence could make people very angry.”
“Ha! You still don’t get it. People dislike you whether you have evidence or not.”
Turner said, “But you said sometimes he went easy on some folks. Did they know he was being easy on them?”
“He was very careful.”
Turner said, “Or maybe what he found in those cases was bogus and that’s what he reported.”
She looked uncertain for the first time. “I suppose that’s possible. Except with us. There was no question we were helping the poor and the sick instead of preaching doctrine and rigidity.”
“Maybe he agreed with what you were doing,” Fenwick suggested.
“As far as I know Bishop Kappel always had an agenda or an angle. It had to benefit him.”
“How did helping you benefit him?”
“I never knew. A final disposition in our case still hadn’t been made.” She sighed. “The man was a contradiction.”
After they left, Fenwick asked, “Was the nun lying to us?”
“How many people do we meet in this line of work who always tell the truth?” Turner asked.
“Not enough.”
“Did whatever she tell us get us closer to the murderer?”
“Not really.”
“But it does give us a very different perspective on Kappel. But it doesn’t get us closer to a killer.”