The Trinity (17 page)

Rodgers falls into a deep sleep, his mouth open and smiling, a look of complete serenity written on his face, as if an arduous task or long hard journey has been completed.

Hinckley rewrites Rodgers’s suicide note. It takes several efforts to match his characters to the simplistic ones on Lee’s letter, but he succeeds. The match would only fail the most severe handwriting analysis.

Dear all,

I had to do what I did and I hope you will forgive me for ending my life and understand why I did what I did. This world has become too corrupted by the niggers, the Asians and all other non-whites. I thought I could kill them off one at a time but I can’t and it’s too much. I can’t take this world no more. A white working man like me don’t stand a chance. I want to leave before there is none of us left.

                                                         Love,

                                                         Lee

They shove the letter in his left hand and crumple it up. Donning thick leather gloves, Crowley places his revolver in Rodgers’s right hand and raises his limp and wispy arm so the nozzle of the gun is at his right temple. The priest squeezes Rodgers’s finger and the gun fires.

Even though the noise is expected, Hinckley and the priest jump from the startling and loud report of the gun. The shot is not as clean as expected. Rodgers’s head is a mess; the bullet didn’t pass through the temple without leaving a bloody and fleshy wake. There is blood splattered everywhere. The priest’s raincoat and his face is covered with blood, especially his mouth.

Gingerly, he steps out of the raincoat and licks his lips; he has always loved the taste of his own blood, white and ancient blood, and he treats it as some sort of communion. Rodgers’s blood is also white blood. It is holy. The strength of Rodgers will enter him through his blood.

Crowley goes to his washroom and washes his face and rinses his hair. He examines himself closely in the mirror.

Hinckley is in shock, but he understands that the task was necessary for his survival.

The priest goes outside and throws his raincoat into a trash bag and then into the small hatchback trunk of his Austin.

Tomorrow, before dawn, he will go north on the A92 to the seaside village of Stonehaven and throw the same trash bag weighed down with rocks into the bottom of the North Sea. He will do this standing on a cliff in the shadow of the gloomy, majestic Dunnottar Castle. He will stand shivering in the wind and wait for the arrival of the sun, the same sun that arrives from Norway and Sweden and the lands of the gods.

He will then breakfast alone in a little café in Stonehaven Harbor, tea and toast with gooseberry preserves, maybe some eggs.

But on this Friday evening, he has some acting to do, and as he is without a conscience, it is easy for him to prepare for his role as confessor and performer of last rites.

“Get out!” he barks at Hinckley. Hinckley wanders off into the night and walks back to base. He will go to the club and drink and try to find new friends.

Crowley calls the quarterdeck on base and reaches the duty officer-of-the-day, a young lieutenant, junior-grade.

“This is Chaplain Crowley. I need to report the suicide of a sailor in my home.”

The officer jumps up from his desk and his heart sinks. “What? Who? Where do you live?”

“Off base, just outside of Lutherkirk, on the road going to the castle.”

“You need to call the bloke police. I’ll call the skipper. Who’s the sailor?”

“Seaman Rodgers, from disbursing. I think we found our Dundee killer.”

“Really?”

“Really. I’ll fill the captain in, but let me get the authorities notified. I have a corpse in my living room, and it is starting to become unpleasant.”

“Keep us posted.”

As the officer hangs up the phone and goes to dial the captain, he is struck by how calm the priest was. Someone just killed himself in his presence and he was as calm as anyone could be. Almost insensitive. The duty officer’s hand shakes as he dials the captain’s home.

Crowley decides to clean up his living room, emptying ashtrays and picking up beer cans and any and all signs of activity not befitting a priest. He drinks some of his wine directly from the bottle and calls the police.

Constable Robertson arrives at his home minutes later, and an ambulance from the hospital in Brechin is close behind.

Crowley welcomes the constable. There are tears in the priest’s eyes; he apologizes for his appearance. He points to Rodgers’s lifeless body on the couch, and the constable removes his hat and sets it on the coffee table.

“He shot himself?”

The priest nods.

“With a gun?”

The priest nods and points to Rodgers’s right hand.

“How in the bloody hell did he get a gun?”

The priest shrugs his shoulders. “He came to my office on base this morning, just before the lunch hour, and said he needed to talk. I said sure, anytime, my door is always open and we could talk then and there or whenever he liked. He said no, he didn’t want to talk on base. He didn’t want to risk anyone hearing what he had to say. He had some grave confession to make, or so I gathered, so I said okay and gave him directions here. I was not prepared to hear what he had to say.”

“Go on,” says Robertson, removing the gun from the limp right hand and the crinkled note from the left. He realizes he should take pictures, but the only dead bodies he has ever seen have belonged to those more elderly Lutherkirk residents who die peacefully in their homes of old age or illness. Never a body in this state or under these circumstances. He reads the note and squints at Crowley.

“He said he had shot the sailor in Dundee a week ago, and some Eastern individual the previous month. I’m not sure who or where.”

The Constable turns to Crowley and stares quite open-mouthed.

“He said he was going to kill every person of color, especially the blacks, one at a time if necessary. He felt that they looked down on him ever since his basic training. He never grew up around them, he said, but he was inspired by the memory of some great-uncle who was in the Ku Klux Klan, if you are familiar with that organization.”

The constable nods, and the thought occurs to him that the whole of the world knows more about American culture than Americans know about the rest of the world. Their programs are on television almost every night. Their movies are at the theaters and the video shop. Their music flies through the airwaves of virtually every nation. Except in the East, and in the Soviet Bloc, but then who could be sure about that?

“So he was inspired in some way to start killing. He was going to continue and not finish until they were all gone. He realized this would be an impossible task, and he felt like he was going to get caught. He also had feelings of remorse; he didn’t want to be a murderer in the eyes of God. So he confessed to me, looking for absolution. I told him God forgives unconditionally, but he still had to take the responsibility for his actions and turn himself in. He said that would be impossible, and as I stood up to put more coal in the fireplace, he pulled the piece of paper from his pocket and the gun from the small of his back and shot himself. There was nothing I could do. And then…” Crowley pauses as if the memory is too painful to recall. He turns his head down and rubs the bridge of his nose with the index finger and the thumb of his right hand.

The ambulance arrives, the sirens breaking the still of the early evening. Robertson nods at the body through the front door, which has remained open since his arrival. The two young paramedics squeeze Rodgers’s wrist to check his pulse and listen for his breath, but they hear nothing. They both notice the peaceful look on the young man’s face. They load him onto an ancient gurney and cover his body with a sheet. Crowley follows the body with his eyes as it leaves his living room and is loaded into the back of the ambulance. He feels as if a great burden has been lifted from his soul, and he relaxes a bit more as the ambulance travels slowly and peacefully down his driveway.

“And then I immediately ran over to him, made sure he was dead, which was obvious to me. I gave him last rites. I hope his soul heard me; I hope it hadn’t left. I know our Father looks down upon suicide, but he also knows the pain inside the human heart.” Crowley now stares into the corner of the room, his gaze focused on nothing in particular. “Only the lord knows what’s in the heart. Sometimes sin is a necessary act of service, of devotion. And he sees that, as he sees everything.”

Robertson has been writing everything the priest has said into a notebook, but he skips these last few sentences. He sits down in the sagging chair and looks at Crowley, his pencil in his mouth.

“Well,” the constable says, as if in conclusion, “it seems pretty cut and dry to me. The lads in Dundee, from CID, may want to talk to you. I’m sorry for what you had to go through, but I feel somewhat vindicated, as I’m sure the police in Dundee will.”

Crowley looks at him quizzically.

“Well, we always suspected the shooter in Dundee was an American; there were too many connections with the base. There was also some vandalism done to a sailor’s house in Lutherkirk, with the same sort of note signed by the same group. It’s more like your lot to be violent in that way. That and our lads don’t usually have handguns such as this.” The constable waves the gun in its plastic bag.

Crowley is shocked. He had thought no one would suspect an American, and he is sure he took care of Rodgers at the appropriate time. He is disappointed, and he knows he will cease activity for a few weeks or even months. He will then continue. He must continue.

Robertson rises to leave, and he shakes Crowley’s hand. Crowley walks him to the door and wishes him farewell.

As the door closes, Robertson sees the swastika on the mantel.

He will phone Dundee straight away.

Crowley grabs a bottle of wine from the top of his refrigerator and collapses on the couch, where the blood has just started to dry. He doesn’t care. Tomorrow is going to be a tortuous day. He is performing the memorial service for Petty Officer Hughes and it is a task he will not enjoy. He wonders if he will be tapped for a service for Rodgers, but he doubts it. His death will be quickly swept away and his body will be sent home to his devastated and simple family in Missouri. He will be mentioned as little as possible. Crowley will call Hinckley Monday morning. They will strategize. His gun is now gone, and that is part of his plan. The police will run a ballistics test on it, and they will find conclusively that it is the same gun that shot Hughes and the Pakistani, and they will look no further. They will be lulled into a calm. And then Crowley will strike again.

He lies awake for several hours. He remains in the dark waiting for the white and smiling lights to appear, to give him some sign, to lead him in a certain way. He sees nothing except the dying embers in his fireplace. The room goes cold as he falls asleep, fitfully.

He dreams. A beautiful Valkyrie arrives from the northern sky and floats into his living room. She takes Rodgers’s bloodless body from the couch and flies away into the northern heaven. They are off to Valhalla. Crowley awakens, and he is jealous.

Robertson returns to his little storefront station, turns on the light, and boils water for tea. He inserts a blank sheet of paper into his typewriter and telephones Holliday in his home in Dundee’s southeast corner, where he can see the motley boats docked in the quay from his living room window.

He tells the inspector that his suspicions were correct; the racist killer was an American, an American of the most pathetic sort, a wispy young man who, judging from the contents of his suicide note, was none too bright. He tells him of the priest’s house, a dark and cluttered and smoky place, and of the swastika on the mantel.