As he exited the car, Father Tully said, “I’ll see you later, eh?”
“I’ll keep you posted. I know you’re interested.”
“Great!”
Father Tully was conscious of being pressed for time. Just inside the rectory he encountered a concerned Mary O’Connor. “I was just about to try to find another priest for noon Mass,” she said. “Did you get lost?”
“Too much to tell you now, Mary. After Mass. Father Koesler back yet?”
“Good Lord, is he coming back today?”
The priest chuckled. “He can’t stay away from you, Mary.”
The faithful few who frequented daily Mass were in their places. In the brief time he’d been offering daily as well as weekend Masses, Tully had gotten used to the same faces occupying the same pews in the vast church.
He was not surprised that his nagging distraction during this Mass was the image of Barbara Ulrich lying like a discarded doll. He recalled that neither she nor her husband had been affiliated with any church or religious body. He might well be asked to deliver another eulogy.
Meanwhile, he would pray that she had already entered the new life. He had no idea whether his prayers were needed or wanted. He offered them anyway.
After Mass, Father Tully returned to the rectory and lunch. He had barely wolfed a sandwich before Mary O’Connor caught up to him with two phone messages. One was from his brother, the other from Tom Adams. He decided to return his brother’s call first for more reasons than chronological order.
Zoo picked up at the second ring. On hearing his brother’s voice, he asked, “I haven’t pulled you away from something?”
“No. I haven’t done that to you?”
“Well … we’re a bit pushed,” Zoo admitted. “But I thought you’d want to know what’s happened since I dropped you.”
“Absolutely … and thanks.”
“I’ve been on the horn to Doc Moellmann-the medical examiner. He put the final nail in the homicide premise.”
“Congratulations … I guess. Exactly what was it you wanted him to discover?”
“The gunpowder … remember?”
“I remember.”
“The Doc saw the same thing we did. There were only a few specks some inches away from the entrance wound. And no muzzle imprint on her skin. So, there was good reason to suspect this was highly doubtful as a suicide.
“But what I was concerned about was that maybe the residue-the black soot-might’ve been blown inside the head. That would argue for the gun’s firing at point-blank range. In other words, instead of the powder showing up on the external skin around the wound, that the force of the shot had simply blown the soot inside her head.
“But Doc didn’t find any powder or soot inside. His conclusion is that the gun was fired at a distance of at least ten to twelve inches from her head. For a suicide that’s highly unlikely.”
“So you were right,” the priest said. “It was a homicide.” Once again he was impressed with and proud of his brother the cop.
“That’s not all, brother. Our victim, Barbara Ulrich, was pregnant.”
“Pregnant!”
“Only a month or two. But very definitely pregnant.”
“Oh! That would’ve been their first child,” the priest said. “What a tragedy. Now all of them dead-Al, Barbara, and their child. What a tragedy!”
“Hold on,” Zoo cautioned. “We don’t know that her husband was the father of her child.”
“Wha-!”
“You were the one who told me they got along like oil and water.”
“That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have a baby-even if it were spousal rape.”
“It isn’t just your opinion, Zack. I talked to her ob/gyn.”
“What about professional secrecy?”
“There’s not much reticence when there’s a homicide investigation going on. Anyway, her doctor also tends to think her husband was not the father. She didn’t come right out and tell him she’d stopped having relations with Ulrich, but she clearly implied it.
“It was obvious to the doctor that she was sexually active. Right up until he determined she was pregnant, she was using lots of protection. How many partners she had, he couldn’t say. But her efforts to avoid STD and her insistence on being tested for it gave the doc the hint that she had more than one partner.
“And it seems that no matter how many she had, Ulrich wasn’t among them-or so consensus seems to have it.
“Besides, it makes sense in another direction. Before this, we had a homicide and no evident motive. This gives us a very good motive. I mean, the way things were between them, I wouldn’t have been surprised if her husband would’ve killed her. But Ulrich was dead long before she was shot.
“Now we’ve got a lover who doesn’t want to be a daddy. But he’s gonna be. So he murders the mother and fakes it to look like suicide. That clears up a lot of blind alleys for us and makes a very believable case. And this particular daddy has a lot of precedent going for him. He’s definitely not the first reluctant father-to-be who gets rid of the problem by getting rid of the mother.
“So that’s where we are: find the father and we find Barbara Ulrich’s murderer.”
“It certainly sounds logical,” Father Tully said.
“Just wanted to clue you in. Gotta get busy. For the first time we’ve got somebody to look for … even if we don’t know who he is yet.”
Father Tully’s head was swimming with this latest development. Barbara Ulrich pregnant. She had to have known it, of course. But he firmly believed that her husband was unaware of her condition. The priest was also convinced, from all he’d heard and his own evaluation, that the Ulrichs had long ceased conjugal relations. He also believed that if Al Ulrich had known that his wife was pregnant, he would not only have renounced her, but also denounced her and her lover publicly.
Was it possible, he wondered, that this fact-the newly discovered pregnancy, was what Barbara was communicating when she slipped notes to those four men?
Four men!
What was he thinking! Could Barbara Ulrich have juggled four paramours? All executives from the same company? And-even if it was logistically possible-why would she attempt it? The challenge? A psychological need for living on the edge-brinkmanship? If so, evidently one of her four had gone over the brink.
The priest quickly reviewed his impressions of the four he had so recently met. What could she have seen in such a disparate collection of men?
If the father/murderer was one of these four, good luck to Lieutenant Zoo Tully and the Detroit Police Department.
Twenty-Five
Father Tully continued to speculate on his brother’s speculation.
The phone rang. He looked at the instrument. One light was on while another blinked. Mary O’Connor must be on line one. He pushed the button for line two. “St.…uh … uh, Joseph’s.” Rattled for a moment, he couldn’t recall which parish he was representing,
“Father Tully?”
“Tom? Tom Adams? I’m sorry I haven’t returned your call. I just finished Mass.” He didn’t bother to mention that he’d been on the phone with his brother. Why complicate matters? He had intended to return Adams’s call.
“I apologize,” Adams said. “I should have waited for your call. But I’m so worried. Have you heard anything about Mrs. Ulrich? Someone here at the office said there was a rumor that she’d been injured … shot! I’ve tried to get some information, but no one I’ve called seems to know anything solid. Or if they do, they’re not telling me. And I thought that with your connection with the police …”
My connection with the police. Ordinarily my relationship with the police department plus seventy-five cents might get me a cup of coffee, thought Father Tully. However, this was one occasion when Tom Adams was in luck. In this instance, bad luck. “Yes, Tom. I was with my brother when he was called to the scene. I’m afraid it’s bad news, Tom. The worst.”