Tuesday 3:45 P.M.
Poindexter from the front desk came up the stairs and approached them with a tall, thin gentleman with gray hair. The man looked to be in his late sixties.
Poindexter pointed to the gentleman and said, “This is Terry Kappel, Bishops Kappel’s older brother.”
Turner said, “We’re sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
Poindexter left. The detectives grouped chairs to the side of Turner’s desk.
“What happened to my brother?”
Turner said, “We’re still in the middle of investigating. We’re having trouble getting information about his life, about who would wish him harm.”
Kappel sighed. “That whole crowd was nuts. Years ago I knew some of them personally.”
“How so?” Turner asked.
“I was a week away from being ordained a priest in the Sacred Heart of Bleeding Jesus Order.”
“What stopped you?”
“I got a girl pregnant.”
“So they threw you out?”
“No. I never told them about her. Not before I left. I loved her. I was never going to be able to be celibate.”
“What were the men in the Order like back then?”
“They fought. Intrigue abounded. I was there when the great coup happened to Father Graffius. He was a good man. Dedicated to making himself a better person, making us better Christians, making the Abbey a better place to live.”
“What happened?”
“The accident.”
“He told us a little about a car accident.”
“There’s only the one. It caused a huge scandal in the Order at the time. Two people died in the crash. This was when the rival conservative versus liberal factions were going at each other like mad. Graffius wasn’t driving the car. The priest who was and the seminarian in the front passenger seat died. The people in the back seat survived. Graffius was blamed because he organized the expedition and was in charge of it. His enemies were looking for an excuse to dump him from his position in the seminary and as Provincial of the Chicago province.”
“What did your brother say about the Order these days?”
“Tim and I would talk sometimes. We were close back then, and we still were. He’d always come home for the holidays. He never said much about his investigations. We’d talk about some of the old guys who were priests or seminarians when I was in, but there were fewer and fewer of them as the years went by.”
“You knew he and Tresca shared a condo, a bedroom?”
“Tim never discussed his sexuality with me, his living arrangements. He did often talk about the politics, here and in Rome. The whole Bruchard versus Duggan compromise was something else. I never did understand all of it. Tim claimed he had a hand in negotiating it.”
“Your brother was that involved in making Cardinals?”
“He claimed he was. I never had reason to doubt him.”
“Did he ever mention a Bishop Pelagius?”
“That old fraud! He and Tim were thick as thieves, plotted, planned together. Tim said he had the most fun working with Pelagius.”
“Why do you call him a fraud?”
“Tim would laugh about their plotting and scheming. You know why Rome agreed to let Bruchard be in charge of the Order and not live in Italy?”
Head shakes.
“They wanted to keep Duggan and Bruchard out of Rome. The Sacred Heart of Bleeding Jesus Order is very powerful. They were allies of the last couple of Popes. Enemies of the current Pope wanted to create a distance supposedly so they couldn’t have any undue influence.”
“Pelagius is here.”
“In Chicago?”
“Yeah. He couldn’t have had something to do with Tim’s murder?”
“No. They were friends. I can believe Bruchard or Duggan plotting against Tim.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Tim never got real specific. He did so much investigating. He knew all the secrets about everybody, or so he said.”
“How’d you and your brother get along?”
“Great. He was a good guy.”
“Why’d he do all that investigating?”
“They picked him because he was honest and couldn’t be corrupted.” He leaned forward. “See, the thing is a lot of people thought he was this ruthless shit, but he wasn’t. He really tried to help people through a lot of difficult, complicated issues, but also tough times in their lives. His job wasn’t easy, and so much politics surrounded what he investigated, but he was always trying to do what was right.”
Turner added him to the short list of people who had good things to say about Kappel.
“Did he have enemies among the priests?”
“That whole group was a mass of intrigue and jealousy. And that’s when I was in the seminary.”
“So you knew some of these people back then, the Cardinal, the Abbot, Graffius.”
He smiled. “Old Graffius. He didn’t look old and fragile back then. I used to love to debate theological questions with him far into the night. A bunch of us would gather in the common room and go over what we’d learned in whatever class we were in that day or that week or the latest book we’d read. One of us was a Joseph Campbell freak. Another read ancient mysticism from India. We’d compare and argue. You know the way college kids can go on and on about the ways of the world. And Graffius was always reminding us of a question we hadn’t considered or a point of view that challenged us. He was a good guy.”
“Any contact with members of the Order recently?”
“No. I haven’t seen any of them in years, except Tim, of course.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“Christmas. We emailed and talked on the phone about every other week.”
“Did the last emails you got make it seem as if he were upset or concerned about anything?”
“They were a little more terse. He did say some investigations were finally winding down, but he didn’t say which ones.”
He knew no more. They gave him information about when the body might be released and he left.
They returned to the mass of paperwork, filling out forms, detailing conversations.