Chameleon (8 page)

Sister Joan was the last to leave the funeral home. She had waited until all who lingered after the rosary had offered condolences. The funeral director had assured her that all would be ready for the 9:30 prayer service tomorrow morning at the funeral home followed by the fifteen-minute drive to St. Leo’s for the 10:00
A
.
M
. Mass. She donned her coat and boots and started the drive home. The drive that would be repeated tomorrow morning with her sister as the main attraction, the star of the show.

Helen would like that. She had always conducted herself as the star performer in whatever was going on. It could be sports or amateur theater or dating, whatever: Unbashful Helen was the whole show. And so it would be tomorrow.
For the last time
, thought Joan, and choked on the unspoken word
last.

She must get her mind off Helen and her horrible sudden death. She tried to pay attention to the neighborhood through which she was now driving.

This was easy. She was traveling up Trumbull past Tiger Stadium, whose one and only remaining attraction was the Detroit Tigers baseball team. Once upon a time, the Detroit Lions football team had played here also. The footballers had moved out to Pontiac.

This spot marked the site of professional baseball from shortly after its inception in Detroit before the turn of the century. It was almost hallowed ground. To the baseball purist it
was
holy ground. Here Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb and Ted Williams and Al Kaline had all excelled in this game that they loved so well.

Sister Joan was not a baseball aficionado, nor was she particularly drawn to sports, but she could appreciate the historical distinction of this stadium.

It was eerie to drive these brightly lit streets, now so barren and deserted. The snow, while it still covered the sidewalks, had been mashed into slush in the streets. In another four months these streets would be alive with people participating in the national pastime in Detroit. Trumbull Avenue and Michigan Avenue and Kaline Drive and Cochrane Street would be teeming with happy folks doing a happy thing.

But that would be later. Right now it was difficult to focus on a happy thought. Her mind was filled with the image of her only sister in a casket. And Helen’s soul …? Joan tried to focus on the words Archbishop Foley had spoken. Words of hope and promise and understanding and forgiveness in a judgment of love.

As she thought back on the events of this evening at the funeral home, she recalled the voice that had spoken so loudly, jarringly. What was it he had said—something to the effect that he could have killed the story?

She hadn’t had to turn around to know whose voice it was. Cletus Bash. She’d heard Father Bash often enough at meetings to recognize the voice and the arrogance it contained. She assumed Bash did not approve of the publicity resulting from her sister’s murder. She was at a loss to know how it possibly could have been handled any differently. Regardless, she was convinced that the primary cause of Bash’s irritation was that he’d been denied yet another opportunity to be featured on camera for the evening news. She was sure she and the others would hear about this again and again in memos and at staff meetings. She could barely wait.

The thought of Bash brought up another memory of this evening—at the very end of the wake service. She could visualize the scene as if she were a third party looking on at the event.

She had been standing with a small group of her nun friends when someone approached to talk to her. It was hard now to place who this person was. But Something told her she should remember.

Of course: It was Father Koesler. And she had greeted him almost as if he were a stranger. She winced. How could she have been so thoughtless! She had to blame it on exhaustion, distraction, preoccupation—the whole darn thing.

She would make it a point the next time their paths crossed to apologize and explain why she had been so distant. She was sure he would understand.

She was home, or very nearly there. Fortunately, she didn’t have to get out of the car to open the garage door. One of the very few luxuries of St. Leo’s was an automatic garage door opener. She pulled in through the open door, parked the car, got out, and exited the garage, starting the door on its downward path as she did so. Pulling her coat collar up tight, she started on the short walk around the corner to the front door.

As she reached the center of the metal fence and angled to take the next few steps to the front door, she recalled that this was exactly what her sister had done just a couple of nights ago. Helen had gotten out of the taxi at this very spot and taken these same steps. The last short walk of her life.

Joan shivered. It was only partly due to the cold.

The streetlights cast shadows everywhere. She tried to quiet her imagination. It was playing tricks. She thought she saw shapes that, as she approached them, dissolved. Her pace quickened.

She was halfway up the steps when it happened. She knew: This was not a phantom of her mind.

Someone was in the bushes behind her. She distinctly heard the snapping branch. She caught the movement out of the corner of her eye.

She froze, not knowing what to do. Hurry toward the door? She’d never make it before he did whatever he wanted. Turn and confront him? Beg? Plead? What good would any of that do? All this took only a fraction of time to pass through her mind.

Next it was a voice. A voice shouting.

Later, asked what the voice had said, she could remember, but was embarrassed to repeat it. Suffice that it got the job done.

No sooner had the young man stepped from the bushes than, from behind one of the statues of the shrine, Sergeant Phil Mangiapane shouted a warning in the universal language of the street.

As he explained later, had the youth not at least lowered me gun immediately, Mangiapane would have fired. But the young man was so startled that instead of his lowering or dropping the gun, it flew out of his hand as if it had wings and a mind of its own.

In seconds, the sergeant had the man cuffed.

After trying to calm the nun, Mangiapane removed the keys from her trembling hand, opened the door, shoved his prisoner into the convent, and phoned for assistance.

It was hours before Sister Joan was able to bring her shuddering and shaking under some sort of control. Sleep was not even a remote possibility.

But it was less than half an hour before Mangiapane had the man at headquarters, with his rights read, and in the process of being booked on charges of assault with intent to commit murder and suspicion of murder in the first degree.

This was different and Sergeant Phil Mangiapane decided he liked it. Frequently he was the butt of many of the jokes cracked by members of his squad if not of others in the Homicide Division. The jokesters were lucky Mangiapane had an active sense of humor and was able, to some degree, to take a joke. For the sergeant was a big man who worked out with weights as part of a general fitness regimen.

Now, the morning after his dramatic arrest of the man who almost shot Sister Joan Donovan, Mangiapane was the toast of the division. By actual count—the sergeant was keeping track—at least one officer from each of the other six Homicide squads had dropped by to congratulate him. Heady stuff.

But something was wrong. Something was missing. Mangiapane hadn’t pinpointed it but Sergeant Angie Moore had. She noted that Zoo Tully hadn’t been in yet. She knew he was in me building. At least he had been when she got in this morning, just before she’d learned that it was Mangiapane who’d become a hero. On her way to work she’d heard the news on her radio that the nun had been saved by “courageous and daring” police work. Somehow she had never connected those adjectives to the big Italian with whom she worked.

As far as the media were concerned, the apprehension of the man who tried to kill Sister Joan had effectively solved the mystery of who had killed her sister Helen. Clearly it had been a case of mistaken identity. He had meant to kill the nun but got her sister instead. The killer had returned to the scene last night, tried to correct his mistake, and was foiled by “courageous and daring” police work. To cap the climax, the police said the perpetrator had confessed to both crimes.

When she entered headquarters, she passed Tully in the corridor. They exchanged greetings, as they normally did. Then when she reached the squadroom she found that she was sharing space with a celebrity.

She was genuinely happy for Mangiapane as his fellow officers congratulated him. She too had been quietly tabulating the visitors. Her mental toteboard tallied with Phil’s: at least one from every squad in Homicide.

Indeed, it was as a result of her keeping tabs that she became aware of a significant absence: Tully.

That was strange. Zoo always took proprietary interest in his squad. Whenever there was merit to be recognized, usually Zoo Tully was the first to offer praise. But so far he was a no-show.

Evidently, it had not yet registered with Mangiapane that his boss had not joined the happy group. Moore was not going to bring it up. If the absence augured something negative, there was no point in prematurely raining on Phil’s parade.

Not long after Moore concluded that there was something ominous in Tully’s nonappearance, in he came.

He deposited some files on his desk, looked around the room, smiled, and said, “Congratulations, Phil. Can I see you a minute?” With that, he walked out of the room.

Mangiapane’s elated demeanor was tempered by doubt as he followed Tully into one of the interrogation rooms. Moore’s suspicion of she-knew-not-what deepened.

“Sit down, Manj,” Tully said.

Mangiapane sat. Tully remained standing, “Tell me about it.”

“What, Zoo?”

“When did you decide on the surveillance?”

“Hard to say, Zoo. It sort of bothered me from the start. The more we questioned the johns, and getting nothing on anybody, the more I was convinced that whoever killed Helen wasn’t trying to kill Helen: He was trying to kill Joan. It just made sense, Helen was wearing a nun’s habit. You couldn’t see it under the coat but you could see the nun’s veil on her head. Helen was entering Joan’s residence. It was dark, lots of shadows there. Plus the two women look a lot alike. I thought, what would I lose?” Mangiapane broke into a large grin. “I just froze my ass off, is all.”

“You didn’t have authorization.”

Mangiapane’s smile dissolved. “I know, Zoo. Actually, it came to me when I was driving home after work last night. It was just a hunch. And I played it.” Mangiapane’s voice took on a feisty tone. “And it worked, Zoo. It worked.”

“You didn’t get authorization.”

“You weren’t handy when I got the idea.”

“What if something had gone wrong? What if that kid had turned on you and fired? You were performing surveillance with no order. The department couldn’t have backed you. The insurance wouldn’t have covered you.”

“I know that, Zoo. There wasn’t any way anybody was going to get the drop on me.”

“It could have happened. And there’s another thing: When Inspector Koznicki hears about something like this, he doesn’t want to talk to
you
about it. He wants
me
to fill him in. And how in hell am I gonna do that when I don’t know what the hell is going on because you didn’t keep me informed—because you played your hunch!”

In a less assured voice, Mangiapane said, “It worked.”

“That’s another doing, Manj: Did it?”

“Huh?”

“I just checked with ballistics. It’s not the same gun. The lab guys said they had to get the slug from the medical examiner. That’s why it took so long this morning. Helen Donovan was shot with a .38. The kid last night had a nine millimeter.”

Some color left the sergeant’s face. He hesitated, then said, “Zoo, there’s guns everywhere out there. The guy probably ditched the gun he used on Helen ’cause he thought he got the job done. It happens all the time, Zoo.” Mangiapane’s tone became almost pleading. But it wasn’t Tully he was entreating. Fate? “Guys use a gun and then throw it. Somebody else uses it and dirows it, It happens all the time, Zoo.”

“I know. I know.”

“Besides, Zoo, the guy confessed. All by the book. I read him his rights and no sooner do I get done than he spills it about Helen. I mean, what do you want, Zoo?
The guy confessed.
”

Tully was meditative. “Yeah, that kind of bothers me too.”

“Huh?”

“I talked to the kid a while ago.” Tully consulted notes he’d made earlier in the morning. “David Reading, white, male, five-feet-seven, 168 pounds, high school dropout, no previous record.” He looked at Mangiapane. “Not a very intelligent young man, but able to read a newspaper. That’s one way he could have known about Helen’s murder: He read about it.”

“Zoo, he confessed!”

“Uh-uh. He didn’t know what kind of gun was used in the killing.”

“That’s not all that unusual, Zoo. Like you said, the kid’s not sharp. Just because he found a gun or bought it or however he got it, doesn’t mean he’s a ballistics whiz. He knows if you load it, point it, and pull the trigger, you can kill somebody. All he needs to know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And, Zoo, he confessed.”

“He’s also kind of happy.”

“Huh?”

“You didn’t notice that? How would you feel if you were spending your first day in jail accused of assault with intent, and murder one?” Considering the question rhetorical, Tully continued. “Little David Reading, on the contrary, is a pretty happy fella. For the first time in his life, he’s important. People want to talk to him. They’re interested in what he has to say. And we haven’t even released his name to the media. And we won’t till he’s arraigned. But, like I said, he does read the papers. At least some of them sometimes. He knows he’s gonna be the main attraction. He’s happy about it all, Manj. Does all this cast any doubt on the matter?”

“Wait a minute, Zoo!”

He didn’t wait. “This wouldn’t be the first time, Manj. We’ve had lots of nuts who confess to crimes as a matter of course for lots of different, sick reasons. And frankly, this guy strikes me as one of them.”