The Cosmic Ray Heresy

  "Being so new I'm afraid that I know very few people in this parish let alone the diocese. Maybe you can help me out, Mrs. Cahill. I'm supposed to meet Mrs. Meyers, the sixth grade teacher, to help her with a science lesson. Is she the woman standing with those children over by the grotto?"

  "Oh, good heavens no, Father. Mrs. Meyers would fit three times over in that woman. But there she is heading this way with her son. Her husband was killed in Iraq a couple years ago; one of those road bombs, I think. Poor little thing. Her students love her. Put a school uniform on her and she could pass for one of the eighth-graders. I'll let you get on with your meeting."

  It had been almost four years since Connie was killed and I still had the irrational hope that every petite blond I saw at a distance would miraculously turn out to be her.

  "Father Donnelly, I'm Vicki Meyers. It's so nice to meet you. I feel I already know you from our emails," she said offering her hand.

  There was a strong resemblance but she was a few inches shorter than Connie and her blond hair a few shades darker but the eyes were the same deep blue and the wire-rimmed glasses gave her the same studious look.

  "Yes, I feel the same. It's nice to meet you too," I said taking the outstretched hand bent at the wrist. Her touch gave me goose bumps.

  "This is, Olivia."

  She bent down and said, "Well hello Olivia, and, how old are you?"

  "Almost five years old," Olivia said while holding up five fingers. "When will I be five, Daddy?"

  "Not for quite a while, honey."

  "Well then you're almost the same age as Joey. He's almost five too. Joey, say hello to Olivia and to Father Frank."

  Joey gave Olivia a mumbled hello and stuck his hand out to shake hands with me. Olivia stuck her hand out for a shake also.

  "Polite little boy," I said.

  "Your hand is sticky," Joey said to Olivia. She looked at her palm and wiped it on her dress.

  Mrs. Meyers stood. "Polite but no politician."

  "Let me just change out of my vestments. Don't go away. We'll be right back."

  "Why don't you let Olivia stay with us and we'll meet you over at the swings in the school yard. Take your time."

  I returned to the sacristy, hung my vestments in the wardrobe, grabbed my jacket, and returned to the playground where two screeching kids were swinging in sync as Victoria Meyers pushed them both. I took over pushing Olivia. One hour and a skinned knee and bruised elbow later we had exhausted the possibilities presented by the swings, sliding board, seesaw, and monkey bars. While the kids played on a mock-up of Noah's Ark I took Mrs. Meyers over to my car and raised the hatch on the Outback.

  "Okay, let's get you fixed up with some equipment."

  I took one of the small lasers out of a large cardboard box. About the size of a brick it had a white metal case. An on-off switch and the power cord were at one end and a small hole for the laser beam was at the other. "Ever use one of these before?"

  "I've never seen one before, outside of the movies that is. Goldfinger tried to cut James Bond in half with one."

  "Do you expect me to talk?" I said in my best imitation of Sean Connery's Scottish brogue.

  Laughing she countered with Goldfinger's line, "No Mr. Bond. I expect you to die."

  "Hey, pretty good. You must be a Bond fan."

  "Movie fan. I'm studying for my master's in drama at PACom."

  "Perfect. I'll tell the Dean that by lending you equipment I'll not only be helping a local school but also will be contributing to interdepartmental cooperation."

  "Glad to help," she said. "Now, how do you turn one of these things on?"

  "You flip up this switch in the back and then you make sure that this little sliding thing in the front is pushed to the left so that the light can come out of this little hole. The beam is very low power and safe for the students to use but you still don't want to get the beam in an eye. Be careful of them."

  Mrs. Meyers was looking puzzled and less and less like Connie. When she died Connie was completing her master's in electrical engineering. The technical befuddlement got worse.

  "This plug. Can't they work on batteries? There aren't any outlets near the students' desks."

  "You'll need some extension cords. I can get you some. When are you planning on doing these experiments?"

  "This week. Tuesday or Thursday. We have science from two to three."

  Afraid they were missing something Joey and Olivia had wandered over. I lifted both of them so they could see in the box. Joey was disappointed. Olivia had told him they were ray guns. I decided to take the plunge.

  "I have lab on Tuesday afternoon but not Thursday. Why don't I just come down here and help you with the experiments?"

  "Oh, that would be so much better. I was afraid to ask if you could do that. I have a key to the school. We could put the box in my classroom."

  "It's easier to just leave it in my car. I'll throw in some extension cords on Thursday. It will be fun. It will be a nice change for me. We'll do a few short experiments and I can also show them some amazing things you can do with a laser and maybe answer questions if we have time."

  "Super. Be prepared for anything if they ask questions. They are just as likely to ask if your collar itches or whether you can dunk a basketball as ask a question about science."

  "I'm forewarned and the answer would be 'yes' to the first question and 'maybe' to the second but I'm wise enough not to try. Where are you parked?"

  "We walked. We live just two blocks up the street."

  "Want a ride?"

  "Oh, thanks but it's so nice out we'll walk and I want to stop for some milk on the way home. I think Olivia and Joey had a good time," she said.

  "It was fun. We'll have to get together again sometime-all of us of course- not just you and-like the Zoo or-well, nice meeting you, Mrs. Meyers," I said finally calling a halt to my babbling before she thought I was one of her sixth-graders.

  "That would be nice," she said smiling "and please call me Vicki, Father."

  "And Frank," I said awkwardly, "and I'll be here Thursday."

  We shook hands. More goose bumps. Joey very formally shook hands with me again. Olivia hugged Joey and gave Vicki a kiss and a hug goodbye before climbing into her car seat. I handed her a stuffed rabbit as I strapped her in.

  For over an hour I had a family again if only a pseudo family. I had forgotten how pleasant it could be. The joy of watching a child at play was doubled, quadrupled, raised to the nth power when that joy was shared with someone else.

  "Oh look, look," Victoria Meyers had said when Joey and Olivia were climbing the steps of the sliding board. "He's helping her climb. Isn't that sweet?" It was very sweet.

  In the rear view mirror Olivia had Mr. Fluffy pressed against her cheek as she massaged his ear between her thumb and forefinger, a prelude to sleep.

  "Can Joey come to our house for a play date Daddy?"

  "We'll see sweetheart."

  "Promise Daddy?"

  I promised and it was a promise I intended to keep. I ejected Miles Davis' moody "Kind of Blue" from the CD player and replaced it with "Ella Fitzgerald in Berlin"; happy, bubbly, joyous Jazz. Olivia was asleep. I turned the volume down and thought of a few more science lessons that a sixth grade class might enjoy. University outreach- I could spare an hour a week.

  I saved the document and emailed a copy to Vicki. Hopefully it no longer sounded like a "bad private eye novel".

  CHAPTER 17-NO PROBLEM

  On Wednesday Joe's junior high science project was a flop. No need to strip me naked. There was no increase in the number of tracks when I was near the cloud chambers. My magic touch was gone. Everything was right with the world again. The Case of the Errant Cosmic Rays was closed.

  When I called Vicki that night I said," What do you think/"

  "Much better, Frank. Love at first sight. I like that."

  "I think I knew right away. How about you?"

  "Oh,
no. My first reaction was that it was a shame you were a priest."

  "Oh, really?" I said laughing. "It didn't seem to inhibit you. You were the one who suggested we take the kids to the Franklin Institute the next Saturday. The attraction of forbidden fruit perhaps?"

  "Nope. Bathroom dynamics. Joey was getting too old to slip him into the ladies' room with me. I figured you could take care of Joey while I took care of Olivia-sort of a tinkle buddy."

  "Just using me, eh?"

  "That changed when we went through the hall with all those big machines and you explained how they worked,-efficiency, work in, work out, mechanical advantage-so authoritative, so sexy?"

  "Sexy pulley systems, eh, that's when you knew?"

  "Not yet." Now she was laughing. "Not until we walked through the giant heart. I think it happened in the left ventricle. Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump. I realized that my own heart was beating louder than the mechanical one."

  "You discovered you loved me."

  "I discovered I might like you."

  "I knew I liked you."

  "Another thing about your rewrite. That 'technical befuddlement' you referred to?"

  "What about it?"

  "Worked, didn't it?

  "Goodnight Vicki. Tinkle buddy?"

  "Night, Frank."

  CHAPTER 18-A DEAD PRIEST

  Thursday morning Martha and I attended the Faculty Senate Meeting. It was short.

  "Motion to adjourn?"

  "So move."

  "Do I hear a second?"

  A short burst of seconds.

  "All in favor."

  An explosion of "ayes" trailed off to a few late responses like a bag of popcorn in a microwave.

  Munchkin House was safe for another year. My plea was unnecessary. The provost's grandson attended. Granting credit for life experiences had a mixed response. Military training made it. Veterans would no longer be required to take the one-credit physical education requirement. It would avoid embarrassing situations like the one we had last year when a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer was forced to take Beginning Swimming because the archery and tennis courses were filled. We voted down a request from a student who was fluent in Italian to use that to satisfy her foreign language requirement. I asked if she could satisfy the language requirement by taking Introductory Italian. Yes. Wasn't that the same as the Coast Guard rescue swimmer? That triggered the motion to adjourn from a member of the foreign language department.

  Angela Rossi called at noon to confirm that she made the appointment to visit St. Gabriel's at two o'clock. She told the pastor, Monsignor Smith, that she wanted to bring a priest/investigator to take a look at the scene of the accident.

  "I'm an investigator?"

  "I didn't say what you usually investigate. I thought it might sound more official."

  She hinted it might help if I wore the uniform. After lunch I locked my office door, stuck my cardboard "Go Away" sign over its small window, and traded my khakis and denim shirt for my black suit and collar. I kept the black Reeboks on.

  Her police cruiser turned out to be a white Jetta with a police radio scanner and a portable gum ball on the back seat. KYW Radio's "Traffic on the Twos" warned us away from the jammed Schuylkill Expressway. Instead she went out City Avenue and down Sixty-third to the Cobbs' Creek Parkway. The GPS plugged into the cigarette lighter "recalculated" us around an accident on Baltimore Avenue. "Smart little bugger, isn't it?" she said. I resisted an impulse to give her my lecture on GPS systems and relativity theory.

  When we got to St. Gabriel's Detective Rossi pulled into the first driveway which led to the church parking lot. The rectory was between the church and the school. We parked in a small area behind the rectory next to a black Lexus. Not bad for a parish priest, I thought. We rang the bell under the small plaque reading "Msgr. D. Gregory Smith, Pastor." Monsignor Smith greeted us warmly and invited us in. Tall and slim, he looked to be in his mid to late fifties. He wore black slacks and black penny loafers and a gray turtle neck sweater that matched the color of what little gray hair he had left. Horn-rimmed glasses magnified his dark eyes. He invited us into the small living room off the entrance hall.

  "I'm Frank Donnelly, Monsignor. This is Detective Angela Rossi."

  We shook hands all around.

  "Were you at St. Charles?"

  "No, I'm a clerical immigrant. I studied at a seminary in Massachusetts." I did not mention that it was an Episcopal seminary.

  "I'm sorry for your loss, Monsignor," Detective Rossi said. "I still have Father Soroka's laptop and expect I'll be able to return it to you soon."

  "He had a sister. I haven't been able to contact her yet. I suppose it should go to her with the rest of his personal possessions, which weren't much, just his clothes, a small TV, his CDs, a portable stereo, and an ipod and cell phone. His eyes were bad and he liked to download audio books to his computer and put them on the ipod. I packed everything up. He didn't own a car. Were you able to find out anything useful from his computer?" he asked Detective Rossi..

  "So far I've found a data base containing church records, an inventory of items in the storeroom, and some eBooks. No more threatening emails though."

  "Church records you say?"

  "Baptisms, marriages, deaths. Things like that."

  Monsignor Smith nodded.

  She took a notebook and pen from her shoulder bag. "Would you tell us how you discovered the email, please?"

  Monsignor Smith shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. The grandfather clock in the entrance hall chimed once in the otherwise silent rectory. All three of us glanced at our watches.

  "The first respondents to my 911 call were two uniformed officers. They arrived a few minutes before the ambulance."

  Detective Rossi interrupted. "What time was this?"

  "I'd say about four-fifteen."

  "Thank you," she said making a note of it. "Go on please."

  "One of the officers remained in the church driveway off the street to direct the ambulance to the door in back of the church. The other officer accompanied me down to the basement. He is the one who discovered Father Soroka's laptop on a back shelf. The screen was blank but when he touched a key it came on. I guess it was sleeping. There were two windows open on the computer. One was a spread sheet. There were no entries in it. The other window was his email inbox. The subject line in one of the emails read, 'Priest should be truly priests' all in capital letters. It stood out from the rest. I guess that's why he took the computer."

  "Yes. We want to make sure it's not related to Father Soroka's accident. I know you have gone over this before but please tell us how you came to discover his body."

  "Sure. I was out most of the day. I left the rectory about eleven o'clock to meet with some friends for lunch out in Newtown Square: Father Jim Mahon from St. Benedict's and Monsignor John Tobin, the principal at Cardinal O'Haren High School. I left the restaurant about two and stopped to visit a former parishioner in Saint Martha's nursing home in Media. I got back here about three-thirty."

  "And that's when you discovered him?" I asked.

  "About a half hour later. I figured he was over in the church but started to worry when he hadn't returned. He was eighty-three, you know, in reasonably good health but a little shaky on his feet."

  Detective Rossi paused to catch up on her notes and said, "You say you left for the luncheon at eleven. The medical examiner put the time of death at around nine or ten o'clock. Before you left that morning was there anyone here besides you and Father Soroka?"

  "Not in the rectory, no. I think there might have been a few cars in and out of the parking lot dropping off items for the clothing drive."

  "I see. Did Father Soroka have a history of falling?" she asked.

  "He fell on the ice and broke a hip last year. He had a hip replacement. He was shoveling snow in front of the church. He wanted to help. He had a very limited ministry. I don't know if you know his past history. He?"

&nb
sp; "The grand jury report just about says it all," I said.

  "Tragically, yes. He wasn't allowed to say Mass on Sundays, or preach, or hear confessions. He did say the six-thirty morning Mass on weekdays when no more than a handful of people would be present. Other than that he did a lot of the odd jobs that a sexton would do if the parish could afford one. He swept the church out on Monday mornings and kept the altar clean. He even cleaned the rest rooms. I think he viewed it as a kind of penance. He also took charge of ordering supplies for the church-missals, candles, altar wine, hymnals-items kept in the storeroom where he was found."

  "May we see the storeroom now, Monsignor?" Detective Rossi asked.

  "Of course."

  CHAPTER 19-THE STOREROOM

  The door leading to the steps down to the storeroom was in back of the main altar. The room itself was about ten feet wide by about sixteen to eighteen feet long. It was illuminated by three bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The stone walls were lined with wooden shelves on three sides. The shelves along a long wall were filled with old missals, hymnals, and parish bulletins that would never be looked at again. Other shelves contained boxes of altar candles, bottles of sacramental wine, votive candles, cleaning equipment, and about a century's worth of discarded junk and dust. There was an electrical panel on the middle of the other long wall containing glass-enclosed fuses. A small box of utility candles, a candle stub stuck in a candle holder that wouldn't be out of place in a Dickens' novel, and some spare fuses sat on top of the gray metal panel. A pipe about three inches in diameter ran along the full length of the wall about a foot above the floor.

  I turned to Monsignor Smith. "Is that a waste pipe?"

  "No. It serves no purpose now. It was a steam pipe. The church originally had central plant heat. There was a huge coal plant about a half mile from here that produced steam and delivered it through underground pipes to houses and other buildings in this area. It folded back in the sixties. We have an oil furnace now."

  An outline of Father Soroka's body was chalked on the concrete floor. Monsignor Smith pointed to a long wooden tool box on the floor near the wall. "We think he must have tripped over the tool box, fell backwards, and struck the back of his head on the pipe as he went down."