In God's House (42 page)

A fortnight after the Rachou trial, the morning mail brought a handwritten letter from Tom Quinlan’s young law associate, James Ryburn, informing me he had left the firm and the law to work in a family farming operation in Mississippi. He said he had been sexually abused for four years by a parish priest when he was an altar boy. He wished me luck and encouraged me to keep pressing for an outreach plan to find victims of clergy abuse.

I set the letter down and answered the phone. It was Des, in the first of many calls I would receive from him that day. “Renon, they’re screwing with you big time now.”

“Who?”

“There’s a meeting going on in the old man’s office here. Archbishop Carlo Verriano, Bishop Garland Franklin and an idiot Church lawyer. They’re all locked up in Verriano’s office. I was specifically told by the old man that Bishop Franklin did not want me in the meeting.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about you. Rome thinks they can do everything with a decree. Apparently the Vatican has decreed there will not be a criminal trial of Father Dubois. Rome has made this the papal nuncio’s problem. I think everyone in the American Church and those that are watching in Rome are pretty pissed about all the media stories the Rachou case created. They don’t want a highly publicized criminal trial of a priest on these kinds of charges.”

“So what exactly are they doing in their meeting?”

“They’re going to shut you down. Best I can figure out from my buddy who runs the message center is that the unholy trio in the papal nuncio’s office are hooked up on a conference call to Archbishop Donnegan in New Orleans, his lawyer Quinlan, and Bishop Reynolds and Moroux and Bendel in Thiberville.”

“Geez.”

“Exactly. Geez. Your Coke-float-drinking buddy, Sister Theresa, is serving the meeting, spying on ’em for us. She can’t really figure out the program. She tells me that the speakerphone is on in Verriano’s office and it sounds like the others are on speakerphones too. She says too many people are talking English at the same time and she can’t understand English well enough to know what they are saying.”

“Keep me posted.”

“You bet. Me and the little nun. We’re on the case.”

There were a half dozen other calls from Des during the day. The last call came after Sister Theresa had served sandwiches and soft drinks. As she was picking up the plates and preparing to bring in the coffee, she distinctly understood a consensus had been reached. It was half past one in the afternoon when the last call came in from Des.

“Ren, they got it. The geniuses have reached a decision,” Des said.

“Yeah?”

“Right. They’re gonna cut off your money. Sister Theresa is sure that is what they decided. She could not understand the guys on the phone, but she heard it loud and clear in the conversation between Franklin and Verriano. You’re going to get the rug pulled out from under you. Guess the way they see it is: no money for the defense of Dubois, no public trial of Dubois, no media stories, no scandal to the Church. All this dies with the Rachou verdict. The crisis will be over. Think that’s how they see it.”

“When are they going to do this? Cut off my money for Dubois’s defense?”

“My guess is soon. They have little patience when it comes to people like you disobeying them.”

As we rang off, another light was blinking on the phone. Mo stuck her head round my door. “Mr. Bendel on line three, Renon.”

“Jon, how are you?”

“Fine. Fine, Renon. Look, I just stopped over to have a coffee with the bishop and Monsignor Moroux. I was hoping you would walk over and have coffee with us.”

“Sure, Jon. Be there in a minute.”

Julie had not yet resigned from her position in Thiberville or her religious order. Sometimes I thought she was staying on just to be close to me, to support me until the Dubois business ended. I called her at her office. I said the call was urgent and got straight to her. She came on the line and I summarized what was going down. “This is it, Julie. Ever since Des rang first thing, Mo has been making copies of the fifteen personnel files you gave me. I am going to take the bishop, Moroux and Bendel copies of those files.”

“You tell them the files came from me, Ren. By the time you get out of that meeting, my resignation from the diocese will be on the desk of Moroux’s secretary. This is my cue to exit stage left.”

“You sure you’re okay with this?”

“Rock their world, Ren. See ya tonight.”

“Later.”

I walked into the bishop’s office carrying two large briefcases. There were smiles all around. Even Bishop Reynolds smiled and seemed to recognize me. We sat in a rectangle around a coffee table. Bendel was alone on a small sofa, the bishop and Monsignor Moroux were in wingback chairs to either side, and I was seated opposite Bendel, across the coffee table. Only Bendel glanced at the briefcases I set down beside my chair.

“Renon, the bishop has something he needs to share with you,” Bendel said.

Bishop Reynolds had a huge computer printout in his lap and he tried to hand it to me twice. I kept my hands in my lap, refusing to cooperate and accept the printout. Then he tried a third time, became flustered and dropped it on the floor with a dull thud.

“Ron,” the bishop began, getting my name wrong as was his wont. “We have looked over the finances – you know, the money. We don’t have enough. We just—”

“Let me cut to the chase, Renon,” Bendel interrupted. “As I told you at lunch after the Red Mass, I deeply admire the job you’ve done for this priest. I know the bishop and the monsignor share my admiration. But… but this afternoon at five is the cut-off. All fees and expenses you have incurred through this date will be promptly paid or reimbursed. That’s it. After today, there’ll be no more money paid to you or anyone else for the defense of Father Dubois.”

Moroux said, “We just do not have the money. We have obligations to charities and works of the diocese. These things provide needed services for thousands of people. The services cannot be sacrificed for one man. Also it could set sort of a precedent, couldn’t it? We could find ourselves having to pay heavy costs for any accused priest.”

I said a silent prayer of thanks for Des and Sister Theresa, my Coke-float-drinking buddy at the papal nunciature, being in my life. Without them, I would have been blind-sided, totally unprepared to respond. Instead, I’d had almost the whole day to prepare for this confrontation, to think it through.

“I hope you understand this,” Bendel said. “We know it means there can be no trial, and we want you to know we’ll help any way we can with the district attorney. We can use political pressure from the governor on Sean Robinette or whatever else Joe Rossi can put together. We will try to get you a plea agreement that is somewhere between what you want and what Robinette wants.”

“Jon, I don’t want any help with Sean Robinette. And I have no problem with the diocese withdrawing all funding for the defense of Father Dubois.” Pointing to Bishop Reynolds, I said, “There are
some things you must understand, Jon. I am going to need the bishop in court next Wednesday, October 16. My office will issue the subpoena in the morning.”

Bendel abandoned his slouch and sat up straight. “For what?”

“Wednesday is motion day on the criminal docket. I am going to have to prove Father Dubois is indigent, without any funds, in order to get indigent defense funds released to us. The Indigent Defense Board won’t furnish much money, but it’ll be something. To prove that this priest is without funds, I will need the testimony of his bishop that the diocese will not provide money for his defense. While I am at it, I am going to also establish that the bishop and archbishop will not pay for his medical care during incarceration, though this is the only job he ever had, and the diocese knew of his illness as long ago as his seminary days and facilitated him acting out his illness, empowered the illness and enabled his criminal life. And, Jon, I’m going to send an engraved invitation to every media representative you saw around the courthouse in Bayou Saint John at the Rachou trial.”

“What are you doing, Renon? Come on,” Bendel said.

“The media will send a message to all fifty thousand priests in this country that if they have any kind of problem – addiction to alcohol or prescription drugs, depression, or any other issues – when they need help, their bishop or religious superior will cut bait on them.”

I stood up.

“Joe Rossi is right, Renon. You’re crazy,” Bendel said.

“I’m telling you something right now that you better hear. By ten tomorrow morning, you will have a letter on my desk. The letter will either confirm what you just said, that there are no funds for Dubois’s defense, or the letter will confirm that the diocese will underwrite any and all costs of Dubois’s defense and any cost associated with his incarceration and medical care for the balance of his life. If you send the first letter, I issue the subpoena for Bishop Reynolds. If you send the second letter, the subpoena will not be necessary.”

“What makes you think…?”

“Shut up, Jon. I know you guys have been plotting on the phone all day long with Archbishop Verriano, Bishop Franklin, legal counsel in DC and those guys in New Orleans.”

I opened both briefcases and piled up the personnel files on the coffee table. If I had not been standing, I would not have been able to see Jon Bendel’s face over the towering stack of documents.

“Wha… wha…?” Bendel stuttered.

“If you learn of another plan to screw me or my client over, you have exactly fifteen minutes to tell me – or the media will get these other fifteen priests’ files, case studies of Thiberville priests who defiled children just as Dubois did. And on top you will see my sworn affidavit recounting the advice you and Tom Quinlan gave Monsignor Moroux to sanitize files and destroy evidence you knew had been subpoenaed – advice you gave in our meeting on September 3, 1984 in the bishop’s office. My affidavit also covers the events of that same evening, when I witnessed the destruction of evidence in the shredding of damaging information contained in the personnel files. And a comparison of these original files on this table with the ones in the secret archives today will prove pages were removed, evidence was destroyed – because, Jon, these copies were made before Monsignor Moroux sanitized the personnel records, before the archbishop’s legal counsel, Tom Quinlan, purchased the shredding apparatus and had it delivered to Monsignor Moroux.”

To Jon Bendel, I said, “Read the file on top first. It’s about one Father Owen Dante Ellison, a priest formerly of this diocese who murdered two boys he sexually abused, kids named Bobby and Dwayne Richard. The account of these murders is in the handwriting of Monsignor Moroux. It’s written in a clever, disguised form, but there’s no question about the murders.”

I turned to Moroux. “You remember the murders, Monsignor, don’t you?”

Facing Bendel again, I said, “I have more evidence of the murders than is in that file. I have my own investigator’s report,
including an interview with the priest who murdered those boys. The murders can easily be proved beyond reasonable doubt before any jury.”

“We-ell… and exactly where did youuu get these files, Mr. Chattelrault?” Monsignor Moroux drawled.

“From the former personnel director of this diocese, Sister Julianne.”

“Former?”

I turned my back on them and walked out of the room, leaving the empty briefcases open on the floor.

When I got to Julie’s that night, she was cooling off after her daily run.

“Have they called you?” I asked.

“God, no. They are not going to call me, Ren. Now they know I am in cahoots with you. They might say they think you are crazy, but they’re scared of you. They are not going to mess with anyone who is in cahoots with you.”

“Is that what we’re in? Cahoots?”

“That’s it. Cahoots.”

“Well, let’s go out to dinner then and celebrate our cahoots.”

“I’m sweaty. Let me shower. I want you to take me to a nice place. You ruined my career as an employee of the diocese, my vocation as a nun, and my plans to become a saint. You owe me.”

“I do owe you, but—”

“But what?”

“What exactly is cahoots?”

“No worries. Cahoots is a good thing.”

Mo had buzzed me at my desk at 11:30.

“Renon, Mr. Bendel called and said it’s an emergency. And he needs to see you right now. In fifteen minutes.”

In fifteen minutes.
I knew what that meant. The Vatican was making another move against Dubois and me, and Bendel was going to spill the beans in the hope that I wouldn’t make the Ellison murders public. I was blackmailing the Roman Catholic Church and it was working.

Walking from the lobby of Bendel’s office toward his private suite, I almost trembled from the cold. I wondered whether the air conditioning was set low or whether maybe I had spiked a fever. No meeting with Bendel could last long, so I shook off the freezing feeling.

Bendel’s door was wide open. I closed it behind me and took a chair.

“Renon, I’ll come right to it. About twenty minutes ago I received a telephone call from Archbishop Donnegan in New Orleans. It was a brief conversation. First, the archbishop asked me if I could get you under control.”

I smiled.

“Renon, I told the archbishop that no one could control you.”

“At last,” I said. “At last, after all this time, there’s something we agree on.”

“The archbishop told me he knows where Father Dubois is
being treated. He said he called the place yesterday and the doctor told him you had left instructions that no information about Dubois could be given to anyone within the Church. He said you have expressly forbidden Dubois from having a visit with anyone in the Church.”

“Jon, to say Dubois is in an emotionally fragile state would be a gross understatement. He’s a real sick man – demented is not a strong enough word to describe him – but he’s not stupid. He knows no one in the Church is on his side. He’s terrified of having a confrontation with someone as powerful as an archbishop.”

“Well, the archbishop was pretty pissed off about you trying to block him out, but he got around it through Bishop Franklin up in Baltimore, who knows a cardinal who has friends on the board of the institution housing Dubois. Bishop Franklin called this cardinal and calls were made to board members of the facility, and—”

I sat up straight. “And what?”

“The archbishop has been granted permission to make a pastoral visit with Dubois on Monday morning.”

“A pastoral visit? What’s that?”

“I’m not going to lie to you. I sure the hell don’t want you publicizing whatever the hell is in that O. D. Ellison file, or getting any other priests indicted here with those personnel files. I’ve got my hands full. Here’s what I understand will happen Monday when the archbishop meets with Dubois: the archbishop told me that he will explain to Father Dubois what his obligation is to the priesthood and the Church.”

“You’re telling me that an archbishop is going to enter an insane asylum and tell an insane priest that his obligation to the priesthood and to the Catholic Church – to prevent scandal to the Church, to spare Rome the embarrassment of a criminal trial of a priest – that his duty is to accept a life sentence? The archbishop and everyone else around this case knows damned well Dubois will kill himself as soon the archbishop leaves, as soon as Dubois knows he will serve a life sentence. The fucking archbishop knows this. Is there no limit to what these bastards will do?”

“I’m only telling you what the archbishop told me.”

“The archbishop wants a Catholic priest to kill himself for the Pope?”

Whatever success I had as a lawyer was due to my understanding that justice had little to do with the facts, less to do with the law, and everything to do with leverage. I was all too aware that the law was about raw power, perceived and real, and not some rational system of order codified by a congress of individuals.

Sean had walked in my office Sunday night and I had greeted him with a cold bottle of beer, saying, “I want you on my turf for once.”

From the first day I had believed that Father Francis Dubois deserved to spend twenty years in prison and to be treated for his disease. I still believed this was the right outcome.

Now I was going to play a bluffing game with the best poker player I knew. I believed that if Sean Robinette tried to convince me that there was a single parent willing to expose their child to a public trial, Sean would be running a bluff. Will Courville’s suicide had been more than enough to convince any responsible parent that they could not inflict the stress of public trial testimony on their own son without placing the child at risk. That was my obvious leverage.

I was so sure of this that I believed if I had wanted Francis Dubois to be a free man, I could have just straight out paid the price of poker to see Sean’s whole hand, all of his cards, and find his hand was empty – that he did not have a single prosecution witness, that he had nothing.

“Sean, we both know you don’t have a single witness.”

“I have the Rachou kid. He’s already testified.”

“If you had been in the courtroom in Bayou Saint John, you
would know the Rachou parents would never let that child take the stand again. On top of that, you know Kane Chaisson won’t do you any favors. He’d rather see you fall on your face than try to convince the Rachou parents to have their child go through another court trial. Kane Chaisson hates you as much as you hate him, Sean. Don’t kid yourself that you have a witness in the Rachou boy. You and I both know you don’t have a single victim who will testify. Let’s get straight to it. You can’t buy my hand with a bluff.”

“I have Dubois’s confession he gave in the deposition under oath at Kane Chaisson’s office. It’s admissible.”

“Yeah, you’re right, Sean. You can admit it. Maybe you want to look at this first.”

I handed him a pharmacology report from a research physician at a leading university in the northeast. Then I handed him a second and a third pharmacology report from eminently qualified experts that tracked the language of the first report. I gave him a package containing the curriculum vitae of the three physician experts I was prepared to call on Dubois’s behalf to negate the confession. Finally, I handed him the Thiberville jail infirmary record listing the drugs Doctor Sonnier administered to Dubois before the Chaisson deposition. All three doctors were prepared to testify that nothing anyone did or said under the influence of that substantial dose of the particular medication could be relied on by anyone for any reason.

“You think this will fly?” Sean said.

“I might have never proved he was legally insane when he sexually abused those children, but I can easily prove this narcotics business. We can argue all night. Let’s just end this thing, Sean.”

“How d’you feel about this, Ren? Really? How do you feel busting my balls to try to save a sick bastard from a life sentence he deserves? How you feel about that?”

“Not good, Sean, not good at all. Miserable, in fact. But I’m doing my job. I’m not trying to subvert justice. Give him twenty years. Twenty years is a long damned time. Let the kids grow up. Let him get medical help while imprisoned.”

Sean had not taken a sip of his beer. He carefully set it on my desk, on top of a file folder. “Well, this whole thing is making me feel sick. I wanted to do the right thing, but it does not seem like the right thing’s gonna happen here,” Sean said.

“It’s all we can do. Twenty years. And Dubois serves his sentence in the Hannover institution in New Jersey, where he can get medical help.”

Sean nodded and started to leave my office without saying goodbye.

“I wanted to do the right thing,” I said, “and I’m still trying to do the right thing. The kids should not be made to testify. Those children should have twenty years to work on healing, surviving what this monster Dubois has inflicted on them. And Dubois should receive intensive treatment while incarcerated so there’s a chance he’s different when he’s released.”

I walked over to my credenza, opened two doors on the bottom and pulled out a huge file bearing a title scrawled with a heavy black pen: “Father O. D. Ellison”. As I walked toward Sean with the file in my hands, I said, “You want to right a wrong, Sean? Ya wanna see justice done? Read these files – a Diocesan file and Johnny Wilcox’s investigative file. You know Wilcox from his days on the police force. He’ll cooperate with your office any way you want. Sean, just read these files. This fucking priest killed two boys in Willow Springs when it was still in the Diocese of Thiberville. Willow Springs is still in your legal jurisdiction. There’s no time limitations that run on murder. Put this fucker away. That would be some justice.”

I laid the heavy files in Sean Robinette’s hands.

It was early, 8:30 in Louisiana, when Mo opened my door. “It’s him on line four.”

“Hello,” I said.

“Good morning, Renon. This is Monsignor Moroux. It seems we have a problem.”

“Yes?”

“We-ell, it seems our archbishop is in New Jersey this morning at the Stalder Institute to pay Father Francis a pastoral visit.”

“Umhuh.”

“We-ell, the situation we are faced with is… it seems Father Francis is no longer at the facility and no one there has any idea where he is.”

I said nothing.

“Renon?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“The records show that Father Francis checked out AMA – against medical advice – at four fifteen Saturday afternoon. They only have a court order signed by you, the DA and Judge Labat authorizing his release into your custody. There is no indication of where Father Francis was taken by you.”

“That’s correct, Monsignor.”

“We-ell, Renon, will you please tell me where Father Francis is?”

“He’s in another secure, lock-down facility under a name other than his own and there are strict instructions that no one associated with the Roman Catholic Church is to have any access to him.”

“Could you please hold? The archbishop is calling again.”

“Okay.”

About three minutes passed and Moroux came back on the line. “Renon, our archbishop wants you to know that he is not angry with you and—”

I cut Moroux off. “Monsignor, I really don’t care what the archbishop feels or thinks about me. His opinion of me is no business of mine.”

I could hear Moroux tearing open a pack of cigarettes, lighting one, inhaling and exhaling deeply.

“Renon, I’m trying to mediate a resolution to this problem. All the archbishop wants is a chance to pay a pastoral visit on Father Francis. He wants me to ask you where and when, with your permission, he may visit with Father Francis.”

All weekend I knew this moment would come, that this question would be asked of me, and my answer had been formulated after a lot of thought on a southbound flight Sunday morning.

“Given what I know about the Catholic religion and Francis Dubois’s life, I think, in the absence of a perfect act of contrition, Francis Dubois is going to spend eternity in hell. The archbishop can visit him there when he himself arrives.”