Chameleon fk-13

by William X. Kienzle

  Oh, it was amicable. He visited his kids occasionally. His former wife had made it clear that he could visit them anytime he wanted without the restrictions the divorce judge placed on visitation rights. He smiled. She was clever: She knew he would be so occupied catching the bad guys that he would seldom get to Chicago even to visit his children.

  That was what was so great about Al. No games. She knew what the ground rules were and she went along. She felt almost, but not quite, as dedicated to her job as a social worker. They got on well together, were deeply in love, knew where each other’s priorities lay, and-who knows? — might one day get married. No, the problem definitely was not Al.

  The job: a multifaceted consideration. Over Christmas and since, there had been a veritable epidemic of flu-not “blue flu,” the police version of a wildcat strike, but genuine influenza. It had hit Tully’s squad particularly severely. The walking wounded had to shoulder the absentees’ work loads as well as their own. That was stressful. There were the usual threats of layoffs. The city always seemed to be on the verge of bankruptcy. Somehow the police and firefighters-the ones without whom no city can get along-were always the most vulnerable when economizing measures loomed. Besides, no matter what extraneous forces were at work, he loved his job. That was a given. But there was something … what?

  As was his daily custom, Tully collected the reports that had been filed by other squads during the previous day and night. Not every homicide lieutenant bothered with this. But then, by no means was every squad leader as completely dedicated as Tully.

  The only difference in this morning’s routine was that having come in so early, Tully was able to study the reports at greater leisure. Among the many reports-

  From Squad Three: Wife kills husband.

  Nothing particularly noteworthy about that. Officers quickly learn that the “domestic trouble” call can be the most dangerous of all to answer. Could be anything from a simple and fairly civil disagreement to murder with the attendant threat to the police when they arrive on the scene.

  Now this was a little different. According to the report, the husband had a long history of drinking and abusing his wife. He should have waited a bit longer to start drinking last night. He came home dead drunk and fell into bed. She took advantage of the lull in being beaten. She sewed him within the bedsheet and whacked him to death with her high-heeled shoes. A platter case.

  Tully had to smile. He wondered if the guy who wrote the report had heard the one about the wife who had beaten her husband to death. When the investigating officer asked her why she’d done it, she answered, “Because he called me a two-bit whore.” Asked what she’d hit him with, she replied, “A sackful of quarters.”

  From Squad Five: A kid. Damn! Another kid. Twelve years old, black, on Conners near 1-94. He was shoveling off the front walk of his parents’ home. A car-late model Ford-passed by, didn’t stop. Somebody leaned out from the passenger’s side. An automatic weapon. Squeezed off ten rounds. Ten rounds as they just drove by! The kid likely was dead before he hit the ground. DOA at St. John’s. No motive, no suspects. And, Tully added mentally, no hurry. Whoever shot the poor kid probably would be gunned down himself in time. In not a very long time. What a society!

  The gang, such as it was, began to assemble.

  First in was Phil Mangiapane. That surprised Tully.

  Mangiapane sneezed, then blew his nose several times theatrically. Tully appreciated that Mangiapane was creating the groundwork for a few days’ medical leave. Tully was not going to volunteer Mangiapane for any sort of disability. Nature would have to take its course, no matter how sick the sergeant was-or thought he was.

  “Oh, hi, Zoo,” Mangiapane said.

  “Uh.” Tully continued to study the reports.

  From Squad Four: Victim, white, fifty-eight years old. Shot at close range in front of residence, Birchcrest north of Curtis, name Lawrence Hoffer, employee archdiocese of Detroit, head of finance and administration. No robbery. No apparent motive. Nosuspect.

  It was as if a crucial piece of the jigsaw puzzle fell into place. That elusive something that had been troubling Tully no longer troubled him. He looked around the squad room. Mangiapane was again elaborately blowing his nose.

  “Manj,” tully called out, “what was the gun used on the Donovan woman?”

  Mangiapane thought. For the duration of this dialogue he forgot to blow his nose. “A nine, I think, Zoo.”

  “No, that’s the caliber he used when he was after the nun.”

  “Oh, yeah. Lemmee think. Yeah, it was a.38.”

  “Did we get a ballistics on that one yet?”

  Mangiapane turned and sorted through the files. “No, not yet, Zoo. But there was no ‘urgent’ marked on it. They don’t usually get it in this soon.”

  “We need it. Hop over to the ME’s office. I want the slug from a …” Tully consulted the report he was holding. “… Lawrence Hoffer;”

  “Lawrence Hoffer?” Mangiapane wrote the name in his notepad.

  “Yeah. He got it last night. The ME will have the record, the body, and the slug. I want that slug now.”

  Mangiapane’s face screwed into an expression of great reluctance. “Geez, Zoo, can’t you send somebody else? I’m in no shape to spar with Willie Moellmann.”

  Tully did not look up from the report he continued to study. “If anything, Mangiapane, you are a prime candidate to see a doctor. Judging from that cough, maybe soon you’ll need the ME.”

  “Aw, Zoo …”

  “Besides, if you’re lucky, maybe Moellmann won’t have Hoffer. Maybe one of the other docs will have him.”

  Pouting almost like a child, Mangiapane began shrugging his huge frame into his coat and scarf. With a full head of dark hair, he never wore a hat. Which omission might have contributed to the severity of his present cold.

  As the sergeant was about to leave the squad room, Tully called out one final order. “Manj, when you get the slug, I want you to take it directly to ballistics and see if they can make a match with the one that killed Helen Donovan. I want the test done now.”

  “Now?”

  “Not even this afternoon.”

  “Now.”

  “That’s right.”

  Mangiapane left headquarters, but not willingly. He cursed himself for not following what would have turned out to be his better judgment and calling in sick. He had been sure that with his coughing and sneezing, his red nose and stuffy head and chest, he would be treated with kid gloves at work. He might have been sent home.; Which would have made him feel more justified in babying himself. At very least he had counted on staying inside allday.

  Instead, here he was, monkey in the middle. Two of the most thankless jobs he could imagine were trying to hurry both the medical examiner and ballistics. Moellmann would subject him to verbal abuse, sarcasm, and humiliation. Ballistics would grouse about the burdens of the job and note that every cop wanted every report yesterday and just why did he think his case was so much more urgent than anyone else’s.

  All the while, Mangiapane would know that on the other side Zoo Tully would not hear of failure.

  Which left Mangiapane in the middle, enduring Moellmann-who, after exacting his satisfaction, would surrender the bullet. To be followed by a bout with ballistics that could be won only through dogged determination and perseverance.

  In the end, it took Mangiapane until nearly noon to get the job done. At that, he had almost gone past Tully’s deadline of “this morning.” Personally, Mangiapane thought he’d done yeoman’s duty in completing both tasks in the space of a single day. Yet he knew that Tully would expect no less.

  And so it was.

  All the time Mangiapane had been gone on his rounds, Tully had been occupied with assignments, interrogations, and trying to stretch his decimated manpower.

  Thus, when Mangiapane returned with his Mission Impossible report, Tully acted as if the sergeant were delivering the daily paper. Tully received the report wordless
ly and gave Mangiapane another assignment, one which, fortunately, would not require his leaving the building. Mangiapane undertook the new assignment with the private resolve that he would spend the rest of the day on this one.

  Tully took the report to his desk and, using the special talent that allowed him mentally to shut out every distraction, proceeded to study the findings.

  He did not know, nor could he decide, whether the report spelled good or bad news, or some combination of the two.

  There was no doubt: The gun that had killed Helen Donovan had been used again to kill Lawrence Hoffer, The kid Mangiapane had caught was trying to be a copycat killer.

  Tully had to admit Mangiapane was taking it like a trooper. He had not apprehended the murderer of Helen Donovan after all. Still, he had prevented the murder of Joan Donovan. But it was hardly the coup he had been savoring.

  Unknown to Tully, Mangiapane had not seen the report. So intent was he on getting the job done before noon, he had returned directly from ballistics with the unsealed envelope containing the findings.He did not yet know that his heroic proportions had been halved. But he would.

  Now what have we? Tully wondered.

  What we have is a series of questions.

  Given: Somebody killed Helen Donovan, a hooker dressed as a nun, her sister. Why? Did the killer intend Helen as his victim? Or did he mistake Helen for Joan?

  For a while it was thought one David Reading had killed Helen in a case of mistaken identity, then had returned to the precise scene of the crime and tried to correct his mistake by killing Joan, the real nun, but was intercepted by Mangiapane. There was even a confession-a confession Tully had distrusted from the outset. Now the confession was worthless. Reading would be tried for attempted murder, but that was it.

  Of course it was possible that whoever had killed Helen had pitched the gun after the murder. And that somebody else had picked it up-and that that somebody had killed Hoffer. That was possible, but Zoo thought it entirely improbable; Zoo Tully’s years of experience, his every instinct, his gut, told him that whoever owned the gun used to kill Helen didn’t pitch it after the murder. He kept it. And used it to kill Lawrence Hoffer while David Reading was locked in the slammer. Zoo believed that, and he would operate under that assumption unless and until the facts proved otherwise. But he didn’t think they would.

  Now, the most immediate questions. Did the guy who actually killed Helen want her? He didn’t come back to get the real nun. Would he have if Reading hadn’t decided to be a copycat?

  The guy who killed Helen also killed Hoffer. What’s the connection? WasHoffer one of Helen’s clients? Her pimp? There had to be a connection. But what was it?

  Joan Donovan and Lawrence Hoffer were both employed by the archdiocese of Detroit. That much Tully had learned from the investigation into the crimes against Joan and her sister as well as the report he’d read this morning on Hoffer’s murder.

  But there was something more. Tully played out his memory as though it were a word processor.

  The evening of Helen Donovan’s wake, Talking to Father Robert Koesler. Something about how well-attended the service had been when neither Tully nor Koesler had expected a crowd. Why the crowd? Ah, yes: Koesler had had the solution. Or, at least as far as Tully was concerned, what Koesler had said made sense: Sister Joan Donovan was a department head, as were many in the crowd. And many more worked for those department heads.

  Now the question: Was Larry Hoffer a department head as well as Joan? That surely would be a connection.

  He turned back to the report on the Hoffer killing. There it was: employee archdiocese of Detroit, head of finance and administration.

  It was a connection. Was it the connection? How many other department heads were there? What, if any, connection might they have with Joan and Hoffer? Was this the beginning of open season on Catholic Church department heads? Or was it merely a coincidence?

  Since the guy who killed Hoffer appeared to have failed with Sister Joan, would he be back for a second big try?

  In any case, the thing Tully had most dreaded in the beginning of this investigation had come to pass: He was smack dab in the middle of the rigmarole of the Catholic Church. He who understood so little if anything about even mainline churches. And the most complex of them all, as far as he could tell, was the Catholic Church.

  Tully had a sneaking hunch that the answers he was looking for-or might be looking for-were buried in that maze of ecclesial panoply and bureaucracy that was Catholicism.

  Tully’s next thought was much more than a hunch; it was a certainty. If this was indeed a “Catholic” case, he needed a guide to get him through this most unfamiliar territory. And he knew just who this guide was going to be.

  He opened the yellow pages to the section listing churches, found “Catholic,” then found St. Joseph’s downtown, and dialed.

  He hoped Father Koesler hadn’t been kidding when he said he wasn’t planning a vacation.

  13

  It had been about ten that morning when Irene Casey called Father Koesler. Larry Hoffer’s murder had badly shaken her and she wanted to talk with someone. Koesler was the someone she’d selected. Did he have a little time for her?

  If he hadn’t, he would have made time. Irene Casey was one of his favorite people.

  When he had left the Detroit Catholic he had recommended that Irene succeed him. Cardinal Mark Boyle had concurred. That was how Irene had become one of the earliest, if not the first, of her sex to be editor-in-chief of a weekly diocesan paper.

  Over the years Koesler and Mrs. Casey had remained fast friends. With her lively sense of humor and unfailingly thoughtful kindness it would have been difficult not to like her.

  Under her leadership, the Detroit Catholic was very much a middle-of-the-road publication, which supplied her with enemies on the right as well as on the left. These enemies were not unlike those Cardinal Boyle attracted. Koesler felt strongly that none of these people understood or appreciated either Irene or the Cardinal.

  When Irene arrived at St. Joseph’s rectory, Koesler ushered her into the spacious kitchen. It was not the most appropriate room in the house in which to entertain. But it was the warmest area in this old, old building, and it was a very cold day.

  As soon as they entered the kitchen, Irene, familiar with the room from previous visits, began to make coffee. It was not so much that she yearned for coffee-although the warmth would be welcome; it was just that she felt it necessary to beat Koesler to the punch. As often as it occurred to her, she wondered why he consistently made such atrocious coffee. It wasn’t that difficult to make good coffee, but somehow he always found a way to botch it.

  When they were finally settled at the kitchen table with their coffee mugs, she began filling Koesler in on what was happening backstage in the archdiocese. Little of what she told him was news to Koesler. His contacts were not identical to but were easily as good as hers. As Irene talked, he wondered again at all the confidential information this lady had. She knew where nearly all the Church skeletons were buried. But she would undoubtedly take all that juicy gossip to her grave rather than publish any of it. No wonder she had endeared herself to Cardinal Boyle.

  Then she gave Koesler a blow-by-blow account of yesterday morning’s staff meeting. As she launched into the account, he offered a quiet prayer of thanksgiving that he no longer had to attend those meetings.

  He was not surprised at the opinions expressed at the meeting. He could have predicted the position taken by each of the speakers.

  Sister Joan was committed to the core city-enough to live there, which was a major step beyond those who expressed concern while staying so far removed they could scarcely find the city. She was sure to fear the elitism that would mark the closing of inner-city schools while the financially more secure suburban institutions stayed open.

  And Clete Bash was the type who would see nothing wrong with that.

  Everybody knew that Monsignor Del Young was holding on
for dear life to Old Faithful. He had to be superintendent of something. Odds had it that if Del survived until retirement, he wouldn’t give a damn what happened to the system after that. Or anything else for that matter.

  Koesler also could have foretold the fine public relations touch contributed by Quent Jeffrey. He probably could make his approach work. Whereas Clete would fumble it without doubt.

  And what else could a money man conscientiously recommend other than cutting the losses and closing the marginal schools that had no choice but to drain the coffers of everything in sight?

  The single item that did surprise Koesler was Larry Hoffer’s suggestion to close down the entire parochial school system. In all his private ruminations as well as the bull sessions with his confreres, Koesler had never given serious consideration to closing everything. He would have to think that one over.

  Irene described in detail the ruckus that followed Hoffer’s proposal.

  The shadow of a smile crossed Koesler’s lips when she described Cardinal Boyle’s futile attempts to mediate for moderation. Koesler could remember watching that process innumerable times. Boyle twisting his bishop’s ring, toying with his pectoral cross, inching forward in his chair, clearing his throat, gaining the floor, achieving peace for the moment, only to see all his efforts gurgle down the drain.

  “I’ve seen some unruly meetings,” Irene concluded, “but nothing like this. Some of them-some of the priests even-went … berserk! That’s the only word for it!”

  “Yes, but Irene, couldn’t you almost expect something like that?” Koesler countered. “I mean, that is a volatile topic. Larry Hoffer scarcely could have said anything that would ruffle feathers more than suggesting that we abandon our school system.”

  “You weren’t there!”

  “No, but your description was graphic. I might just as well have been there.

  “Irene, I don’t know; there may come a day when the parochial school system will be a there historical oddity. And maybe that time is now-or soon-I just don’t know. I must confess I’ve never given any serious thought to what it would be like having no parish schools. But I think when it happens, or if it happens, that they’re all closed, the finale will be not a whimper but an explosion. So I guess I can’t get overly excited that Hoffer’s proposal was greeted as you describe it.”