The Exorcist

  “I hope so.”

  “Now then, witchcraft—with this subject you’re familiar? From the witching end, Father, not the hunting.”

  Karras smiled. “Yeah, I once did a paper on it. From the psychiatric end.”

  “Oh, now really? Oh, that’s wonderful! Great! That’s a bonus, Father Brando! You could help me a lot more than I thought. Now then, listen…” He reached up and gripped the Jesuit’s arm as they rounded a turn and approached a bench. “All right, me, I’m a layman and not very well educated. I mean formally, Father. But I read. Look, I know what they say about self-made men, that they’re horrible examples of unskilled labor. But as for me—I’ll speak plainly—I’m not at all ashamed. Not at all, I’m—” Abruptly he arrested the flow and, looking down, he shook his head. “Schmaltz,” he moaned. “I can’t stop it.” He looked up. “Look, forgive me; you’re busy.”

  “Yes, I’m praying.”

  The Jesuit’s delivery being dry and expressionless, the detective abruptly halted their walk. “You’re serious?” he asked; and then he answered his own question. “No.” He faced forward again and they walked. “Look, I’ll come to the point. The desecrations,” said Kinderman. “Do they remind you of anything to do with witchcraft?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Some rituals used in Black Mass.”

  “A-plus. And now Dennings—you read how he died?”

  “Yes, in a fall down the ‘Hitchcock Steps.’ ”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, and—please—confidential!”

  “Of course.”

  The detective looked suddenly pained as he realized that Karras had no intention of resting on the bench. He stopped and the priest stopped with him.

  “Do you mind?” he asked wistfully.

  “What?”

  “Could we stop? Maybe sit?”

  “Oh, sure.” They began to move back toward the bench.

  “You won’t cramp?”

  “No, I’m fine now.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  Kinderman settled his aching bulk on the bench with a sigh of deep content. “Ah, yes, better, much better,” he said. “Life is not totally Darkness at Noon.”

  “So okay now: Burke Dennings. What about him?”

  The detective stared down at his shoes. “Ah, yes, Dennings, Burke Dennings, Burke Dennings…” He looked up and turned his gaze to Karras, who was wiping sweat from his forehead with a corner of his towel. “Burke Dennings, good Father,” the detective said evenly and quietly, “was found at the bottom of those steps at exactly five minutes after seven with his head turned completely around and facing backward.”

  Peppery shouts drifted thinly from the baseball diamond where the varsity team was holding practice. Karras lowered the towel and held the lieutenant’s steady gaze. “It didn’t happen in the fall?”

  Kinderman shrugged. “Sure, it’s possible,” he said.

  “But unlikely,” the priest finished broodingly.

  “And so what comes to mind in the context of witchcraft?”

  Staring off pensively, Karras sat down on the bench next to Kinderman. “That’s supposedly how demons broke the necks of witches.” He turned to the detective. “Or at least, that’s the myth,” he said.

  “It’s a myth?”

  “Oh, well, sure,” the priest answered, “although people did die that way, I suppose—likely members of a coven who either defected or gave away secrets.” He looked off. “I don’t know. That’s just a guess.” He looked back at the detective. “But I know it was a trademark of demonic assassins.”

  “Exactly, Father Karras! Exactly! I remembered the connection from a murder in London. And that’s now, I’m talking, Father; I mean, four or five years ago only. I remembered that I read it in the papers.”

  “Yes, I read that too, but I think it turned out to be a hoax.”

  “Yes, true. But in this case, at least, you can see some connection, maybe, with that and the things in the church. Maybe somebody crazy, Father; maybe someone with a spite against the Church; some unconscious rebellion, perhaps.”

  Hunched over, his hands clasped together, the priest turned his head for an appraising stare at the detective. “What are you saying? A sick priest?” he said. “That’s your suspicion?”

  “Listen, you’re the psychiatrist. You tell me.”

  Karras turned his head, looking off. “Well, of course, the desecrations are clearly pathological,” he ruminated, “and if Dennings was murdered—well, I’d guess that the killer’s pathological too.”

  “And perhaps had some knowledge of witchcraft?”

  Pensive, Karras nodded. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “And so who fits the bill, also lives in the neighborhood and also has access in the night to the church?”

  Karras turned and held Kinderman’s stare; then at the crack of a bat against ball he turned back to watch a lanky right fielder make a catch. “Sick priest,” he murmured. “Maybe so.”

  “Listen, Father, this is hard for you—please!—I understand. But for priests on the campus here, you’re the psychiatrist, right?”

  Karras turned to him. “No. I’ve had a change of assignment.”

  “Oh, really? In the middle of the year?”

  “That’s the Order.”

  “Still, you’d know who was sick at the time and who wasn’t, correct? I mean, this kind of sickness. You’d know that.”

  “No, not necessarily, Lieutenant. Not at all. It would only be an accident, in fact, if I did. I’m not a psychoanalyst. All I do is counsel. And besides, I know of no one who fits the description.”

  Kinderman tilted up his jaw. “Ah, yes,” he said, “doctor’s ethics. If you knew, you wouldn’t tell.”

  “No, I probably wouldn’t.”

  “Incidentally—and I mention it only in passing—this ethic is lately considered illegal. Not to bother you with trivia, Father, but lately a psychiatrist in sunny California, no less, was put in jail for not telling the police what he knew about a patient.”

  “That a threat?”

  “Don’t talk paranoid. It’s nothing but a casual remark.”

  Karras stood up and looked down at the detective.

  “I could always tell the judge it was a matter of confession,” he said wryly, and then added, “Plainly speaking.”

  The detective stared at him dismally. “Want to go into business, Father?” he asked him, and then stared out at the baseball practice field. “ ‘Father’? What ‘Father’?” he wheezed; “you’re a Jew who’s trying to pass but let me tell you, you’ve taken it a little bit far.”

  Getting up from the bench, Karras chuckled.

  “Yes, laugh,” said the detective as he glared up at Karras moodily. “Go ahead and enjoy, Father; laugh all you want.” But then he beamed, looking impishly pleased with himself, as he looked up at Karras and said, “That reminds me. The entrance examination to be a policeman? When I took it, one question on the test was ‘What are rabies and what would you do for them?’ and someone answered, ‘Rabies are Jewish priests and I would do anything that I possibly could for them.’ ” Kinderman raised up a hand and said, “Honest! It happened! Swear to God!”

  Karras smiled warmly at him. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car. Are you parked in the lot?”

  The detective looked up at him, reluctant to move. “Then we’re finished?” he asked disappointedly.

  The priest put a foot on the bench, leaning over with a forearm resting on his knee. “Look, I’m really not covering up,” he said. “Really. If I knew of a priest like the one that you’re looking for, the least I would do is let you know that there was such a man without giving you his name. Then I guess I’d report it to the Provincial. But I don’t know of anyone who even comes close to the man that you’re looking for.”

  “Ah well,” said Kinderman, looking down and with his hands again stuffed in the pockets of his coat; “I never thought it was a priest in the first place. Not really.?
?? He looked up and gestured with his head toward the lower campus parking lot. “I’m parked over there,” he said. He stood up and they started walking, following a path to the main campus buildings. “What I really suspect,” the detective continued, “if I said it out loud you would call me crazy. I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know. All these clubs and these cults where they kill for no reason—it makes you start thinking things. To keep up with the times, these days,” he bemoaned, “it seems you have to be a little bit demented.” He turned to Karras. “What’s that thing on your shirt?” he asked him, motioning his head toward the Jesuit’s chest.

  “What do you mean?”

  “On the T-shirt. The writing there. ‘Philosophers. ‘What’s that?”

  “Oh, I took a few courses one year,” Karras told him, “at Woodstock Seminary in Maryland. I played on the lower class baseball team and we were called the Philosophers.”

  “Ah, I see. And the upper-class team?”

  “Theologians.”

  Faintly smiling, the detective lowered his gaze to the pathway. “Theologians three, Philosophers two,” he mused.

  “No, Philosophers three, Theologians two.”

  “Yes, of course, that’s what I really meant to say.”

  “Of course.”

  “Strange things,” the detective said broodingly; “so strange. Listen, Father,” he said, turning to Karras. “Listen, doctor. Am I crazy, or could there be maybe a witch coven here in the District right now? Right now today.”

  “Oh, come on,” Karras scoffed.

  “Aha! Then there could be!”

  “ ‘Then there could be’? How’s that?”

  “All right now, Father, I’ll be the doctor,” the detective declared with an air of pouncing as he poked at empty air with an index finger. “You didn’t say no, but instead you were smart-ass again. That’s defensive. You’re afraid you’ll look gullible, maybe: a superstitious priest in front of Kinderman the rationalist, the Age of Reason made flesh and now walking beside you! All right, look at me in the eye now and tell me that I’m wrong! Come on, look already! Look! You can’t do it!”

  Karras turned his head to stare at the detective now with a mounting surmise and respect. “Why, that’s very astute,” he told him. “Very good!”

  “Well, all right, then,” said Kinderman. “So I’ll ask you again: could there maybe be witch covens here in the District?”

  Karras turned his gaze to the pathway, looking thoughtful. “Well, I really wouldn’t know,” he said, “but there are cities in Europe where Black Masses are said.”

  “You mean, today?”

  “Oh, yeah, today. In fact the center of Satan worship in Europe is in Turin, Italy. Weird.”

  “Why so?”

  “That’s where the Burial Shroud of Christ is kept.”

  “You’re talking Satan worship just like the old days, Father? Look, I’ve read about those things, incidentally, with the sex and the statues and who really knows what. Not meaning to disgust you, by the way, but they did all those things? It’s for real?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just your opinion then, Father. It’s okay. I’m not wearing a ‘wire.’ ”

  Karras shifted a wan, wry smile to the detective and then turned his gaze back to the pathway. “Well, all right then,” he said. “I think it’s for real, or let’s just say I suspect so, and most of my reasoning’s based on pathology. Sure, okay. Black Mass. It happens. But anyone doing those things is a very disturbed human being, and disturbed in a very special way. There’s a clinical name for that kind of disturbance, in fact; it’s called satanism—meaning people who can’t have any sexual pleasure unless it’s connected to a blasphemous action. And so I think—”

  “You mean ‘suspect.’ ”

  “Yes, I suspect that Black Mass was just used as the justification.”

  “Is used.”

  “Was and is.”

  “Was and is,” the detective echoed dryly. “And the psychiatric name for the disorder in which the person is always having to have the last word?”

  “Karrasmania,” said the priest with a smile.

  “Thank you. This was formerly a lacuna in my vast store of knowledge of the strange and exotic. In the meantime, please forgive me, but the things with the statues of Jesus and Mary?”

  “What about them?”

  “They’re true?”

  “Well, I think this might interest you as a policeman.” His scholarly interest aroused and stirring, the Jesuit’s manner had grown quietly animated. “The records of the Paris police still carry the case of a couple of monks from a nearby monastery—let’s see…” He scratched the back of his head as he tried to recall. “Yes, maybe the one at Crépy,” he said at last. The priest shrugged. “Well, whichever. Some town close by. At any rate, the monks came into an inn and got belligerent about wanting a bed for three—the two of them and a life-sized statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary that they carried in with them.”

  “Ah, that’s shocking,” breathed out Kinderman.

  “No kidding. But it’s a fair indication that what you’ve been reading is based on fact.”

  “Well, the sex, maybe so, this I can see; that’s a whole other story altogether. Never mind. But the ritual murders now, Father? That’s true? Now come on! Using blood from the newborn babies?” The detective was alluding to something else he had read in the book on witchcraft, describing how the unfrocked priest at Black Mass would at times slit the wrist of a newborn infant so that the blood poured into a chalice and later was consecrated and consumed in the form of Holy Communion. “That’s just like the stories they used to tell about the Jews,” the detective continued. “How they stole Christian babies and drank their blood. Look, forgive me, but your people told all those stories.”

  “If we did, forgive me.”

  “Go and sin no more. You’re absolved.”

  Like the shadow of some pain but briefly remembered, something dark, something sad, flitted swiftly across the priest’s blank stare. He turned his head and looked ahead. “Yeah, right.”

  “You were saying?”

  “Well, I really don’t know about ritual murder,” Karras said; “about that I have no clue. But I do know that a midwife in Switzerland once confessed to the murder of thirty or forty babies for use at Black Mass. Oh, well, maybe she was tortured into saying that,” he amended with a shrug. “But she sure as heck told a convincing story. She described how she’d hide a long, thin needle up her sleeve, so that when she was delivering the baby, she’d slip out the needle and stick it through the crown of the baby’s head, and then hide the needle again. No marks,” Karras said as he turned a glance to Kinderman. “The baby looked stillborn. You’ve heard of the prejudice European Catholics used to have against midwives? Well, that’s how it started.”

  “Ah, my God!”

  “Yes, this century hasn’t got a lock on insanity. But—”

  “Wait a minute, wait now!” the detective interrupted. “These stories—like you said, they were told by some people who were probably tortured, correct? So they’re basically unreliable. They signed the confessions and later, the machers, the pious shmeis and the haters, they filled in the blanks. I mean, there wasn’t any habeas corpus then, right? No writ of ‘Let My People Go.’ ”

  “Very true, but then a lot of the confessions were voluntary.”

  “So who would volunteer such things?”

  “Doubtless people who were mentally disturbed.”

  “Ah, another reliable source!”

  “Oh, well, you’re probably right about that too, Lieutenant. I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”

  “You do it so well.”

  “Look, one thing that we sometimes tend to forget is that people psychotic enough to confess to such things might also be psychotic enough to have done them. For example, the myths about werewolves, let’s say. So, okay, they’re preposterous: no one can turn himself into a wolf. But
what if a person were so disturbed that he not only thought that he was a werewolf, but he also acted like one?”

  “This is theory now, good Father, or fact?”

  “Fact. There was a William Stumpf, for example. Or maybe his first name was Karl. I can’t remember. Anyway, a German in the sixteenth century. He thought he was a werewolf and murdered maybe twenty or thirty young children.”

  “You mean, he—quotation marks, Father—confessed it?”

  “Yes, he did and I think the confession was valid. When they caught him, he was eating the brains of his two young daughters-in-law.”

  From the baseball practice field, crisp in the thin, clear April sunlight, came the ghosts of chatter and ball against bat. “C’mon, Price, let’s shag it, let’s go, get the lead out!”

  They had come to the parking lot, and for a brief space of time they walked in silence until at last, when they had come to the squad car, the detective turned a mournful, moody look to the priest. “And so what am I looking for, Father?” he asked him.

  “A psycho on drugs maybe,” Karras answered.

  Staring down at the sidewalk, the detective thought it over and then mutely nodded. “Yes, right, Father. Yes. Maybe so.” He looked up, his expression now pleasant. “Listen Father, where are you going? Want a ride?”

  “No thanks, Lieutenant. It’s just a short walk.”

  “Never mind that! Enjoy!” the detective told him, motioning Karras to get into the backseat of the car. “Then you can tell all your friends you went riding in a police car. I will sign a certificate attesting to it. They will envy you. Come on, now, get in!”

  With a nod and a sad half smile, the priest said, “Okay,” and slipped into a seat in the back of the car while the detective squirmed into it beside him from the opposite side. “Very good,” said the detective, a little short of breath. “And incidentally, good Father, no walk is short. No, none!” He turned to the policeman at the wheel and said, “Avanti!”

  “Where to, sir?”

  “Thirty-Sixth Street and halfway down Prospect, left side of the street.”

  As the driver nodded and started backing the squad car out of its parking spot, Karras turned a mildly questioning look to the detective. “How do you know where I live?” he said.