death. Demers’s death only served to help convict Don of the bishop’s death.
“Something I heard in Ste. Anne’s rectory last Wednesday evening sort of came to mind. One of the priests was complaining about an opponent’s high-handed way of playing chess: He used his more precious pieces—knights, castles, and bishops—as pawns.
“That seemed to be it in a nutshell. Bishop Diego, Lord rest him, used others as pawns in a game for his own advancement. And now somebody was using the death of Bishop Diego as a pawn in a game for that somebody’s advancement.
“And that someone was Brad Kleimer.
“Kleimer saw the trial over the bishop’s murder as a grandstand opportunity. It was drawing national and international coverage. For the trial to work to Kleimer’s benefit, the killer should be a priest and Kleimer should convict the priest.
“For the bishop to be murdered by some drugged kid would be news. But not the sensation that would come from a priest who murders his bishop with premeditation and in cold blood. If he could make this charge against Father Carleson stick, Kleimer would become a household word.
“Still and all, I didn’t think that even this fantastic reward would be enough motivation to cause an otherwise sane prosecuting attorney to actually murder an old man whose life hung by a thread. I could understand how fame—celebrity stardom, if you will—could make Kleimer at least consider murder as a means to this goal. But I couldn’t envision his actually doing it.
“But you see, what impressed me most about Brad Kleimer in the brief time I’ve known him, is the degree of vengeance he has toward his former wife.
“I wish we had the time … and—” Koesler chuckled. “—I wish you were interested enough for me to explain how very complex and intricate are the marriage laws of the Catholic Church. Not to mention their number.
“Before being engaged to a Catholic girl, Brad Kleimer had been vaguely aware that the Roman Catholic Church had an enormous number of laws governing entering matrimony and another pile of laws regulating getting out of a marriage once entered.
“He actually made a painstaking study of these laws. I’ve never before experienced a similar case. Why, there are priests who aren’t as conversant with these laws as Kleimer was!
“And he did all that with one thought in mind: to hold his wife in—as far as the Church was concerned—an inescapable bond. He contrived to make sure that should their marriage fail, his wife could never get an annulment.
“I’ve known people, especially those in failed marriages, to be unhappy in direct proportion to their ex-partner’s current happiness. But Brad Kleimer took the cake. The whole purpose of all that study and those precautions was to lock his wife in marriage in the eyes of the Catholic Church— her Church.
“This would be of no concern to him personally. He didn’t care about Church laws as they affected him, because as far as he was concerned they didn’t affect him.
“But they did affect his Catholic wife. And, sure enough, after their civil divorce, his wife discovered that as far as the Church was concerned, she would be considered married to him until one of them died.
“Now his wife did eventually marry. But she had to marry without a Catholic ceremony. And, just as Kleimer had planned, at her core she was miserable.
“Then Father Carleson came on the scene. To make a long story shorter, he passed over every single one of those many, many Church laws and witnessed the marriage vows of Kleimer’s former wife and her present husband.
“Kleimer didn’t discover this until after Father Carleson was indicted for murder. Kleimer was already determined to convict Father. Imagine how he felt when he learned that his former wife was happy and there wasn’t much of anything he could do about it? Even if he tried to get some ecclesiastical action against Father, he’d likely not be successful in this diocese. And even if he were successful, it wouldn’t take away his wife’s bliss. She had her marriage in the Church; she had returned to her sacramental life.
“And that was it!” Koesler concluded on a triumphant note. “That’s what tipped the scales in my mind toward Brad Kleimer as the murderer of Herbert Demers. It wasn’t only the fame he saw slipping from his grasp; it was that Father Carleson had utterly destroyed Kleimer’s carefully planned revenge against his ex-wife.
“I think it was almost a miracle that he killed Demers and not Father Carleson.