Chameleon (3 page)

“You noticed nothing unusual coming into the house?”

“No, nothing. As I said, I had my head down and my eyes nearly shut against the snow. I could travel from the garage to the house blindfolded,” she added.

Moore concluded that either the nun had noticed nothing untoward—whether or not the crime had been committed after she had retired—or she was lying. “But,” Moore said, “you were the one who found the body.”

“Yes. I was going over to the church this morning. There are only a few parishioners who regularly come to church on weekdays. And our pastor is out of the country almost as much as he’s here. He’s very active in the peace movement, you know. So, weekday mornings, I conduct a sort of a prayer service and distribute Communion. It’s a paraliturgical rite, you see—”

“That’s all right, Sister, you don’t need to go into that. The body?”

“Yes … the body.” As Joan recalled all too clearly discovering her sister’s body, a feeling of overwhelming loss pierced her again. “It was much lighter at seven this morning than when I’d gotten home, of course. And it was no longer snowing. When I came down the steps, I noticed the indentation in the snow leading over toward the shrine. It was as if something had been dragged there. Perhaps a sledge of some sort. I went over to see what it was. And …” Her voice trailed off.

“Was your sister lying faceup?”

Joan seemed to pull herself together. “No. The … body … wasface down. But I knew—who else could it have been? I recognized her coat—it was very expensive—and part of the habit was exposed.”

“Then you turned the body over, faceup?”

“I had to be sure.”

“Then you screamed, and the janitor came and called the police.”

Joan nodded and lowered her gaze.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Sister.” As Moore rose to leave, spontaneously she patted the nun’s shoulder. “If we have more questions, we’ll get back to you.”

Outside the building, standing between the front steps and the shrine, in the middle of methodical beehive-like police activity, was Lieutenant Alonzo Tully. More familiarly known to friends and co-workers as “Zoo.”

Tully was intent on absorbing every detail, no matter how seemingly insignificant, of this, the scene of the crime. In determining what had happened here, the testimony of this silent scene was the sole witness that could not and would not deceive. He and the others investigating this case might misread or misinterpret the evidence. But the evidence represented fact. It need only to be correctly understood and evaluated.

The body of Helen Donovan had long been removed, but the traces were still evident. There were too many footprints now in the snow, but it was still possible to distinguish the essential indications.

Only the slightest tracks had been left by the perpetrator in the ensuing snowfall. Evidently he had hidden in the bushes to the right of the front steps. As the victim passed, the perp had stepped out behind her. There was no sign of any struggle. The perp had shot her once, the preliminary examination suggested at the base of her skull, then dragged her body behind what the people of St. Leo’s called their shrine.

Tully was not in any way a religious person, but he could not have mistaken the shrine. It was a slightly-less-than-life-size depiction of the crucifixion of Christ, with two additional figures standing beneath the cross. Tully’s familiarity with Christendom’s central mystery did not extend beyond the main character. The other figures were Mary, Christ’s mother, and his disciple John.

No struggle.
That was an essential clue in this infant investigation. That plus the fact that her purse had not been taken—or even rifled; it contained more than five hundred dollars in cash.

For police purposes, it was providential that the victim’s sister had discovered the body and could not only identify the deceased but also confirm her line of work. Otherwise, they would have been bogged down trying to discover who this nun was and why she would be carrying so much cash.

But, a hooker! In all probability she had just turned a trick.

Several cops who knew of her testified that she was definitely in the higher financial bracket of whoredom. A Cass Corridor streetwalker would have had to turn tricks for weeks to clear what Helen Donovan made in one night.

No struggle.
Did the perp sneak up behind her, unnoticed, as Tully initially concluded? Or, another distinct possibility, had she known her killer and, unsuspecting, put up no fight?

Sergeant Angie Moore approached, Together, she and Tully stepped out of the cold into the building’s foyer. Moore filled him in on her interrogation of Sister Joan, the actual nun.

A few details, such as what a delegate for religious did, Tully had to take on secular faith. A “religious” in the Catholic sense of the term had a specific meaning that was lost on Tully. But he listened carefully. All Moore’s information was absorbed into the practiced computer of his mind. There it would be stored and even much later he would be able to call it up.

No sooner had Moore completed her report than Sergeant Phil Mangiapane, also a member of Tully’s squad, arrived on the scene.

Mangiapane was enthused. It was an emotion that came easily to him. “Zoo,” he said, “we nailed her john of last night.” He pulled out his notepad and flipped it open. “One Henry Taylor, a very scared haberdasher from Toledo. In town on a buying trip. We’re detaining him temporarily at the Pontch. Right now, he’s wishing he’d left town last night. Or, better, never come.”

“How’d it go?” Tully asked.

“Pretty good. At first he flat-out denied he knew who we were talking about. Even after we showed him the picture we got from her sister. But when we showed him his hotel room number in Donovan’s date book and produced the bellboy who not only noticed Donovan in the hotel last night but remembered her taking the elevator with Taylor after he picked her up in the lobby, there wasn’t much he could deny.”

“So?”

“He said that after she left, he went to bed. But then we got lucky. The same bellboy who spotted the two of them enter the elevator said that he saw Donovan leave the hotel at about midnight. He was sure of the time because he was just about to end his shift. He saw her climb into a cab—a Checker cab. Then who should leave the hotel—hat and coat on—but Henry Taylor.

“When we confronted him with this, Taylor said that oh, yeah, he forgot that after she left, he took a short walk outside for a few minutes.”

“And the bellboy?”

“Didn’t know where Taylor might have gone. He just saw the guy leave the hotel and then he went off duty.”

“Did the guy drive here from Toledo?”

“Yeah.”

“So he had his car at the hotel. Could he have known where shewas going?”

Mangiapane shrugged, “If he did, only him and the Donovan girl know. And he ain’t gonna volunteer anything like that.”

“Okay,” Tully agreed, “Granted, the chance is slim, but say he knew she was returning here, Or say he was able to get in his car in time to follow the cab here,” He stopped, then shook his head. “No, if he did that, how could he have had time to get to the bushes and be lying in wait for her?” He looked at Mangiapane. “Did you get a make on the cab?”

“Not yet,” Mangiapane said. “Checker’s a big company. But it shouldn’t be hard. We know the approximate time Donovan left the Pontch and that she ended up here.”

“Wait a second,” Moore said. “If it’s this Taylor guy, how come he didn’t take his money back?” Pause. “And also destroy the date book that had any reference to his ‘appointment’ in it?”

Mangiapane shook his head. He had not considered these discrepancies.

“Maybe,” Tully said, “he didn’t think he had any time to fool around after the gunshot.”
Then why did he take the time to drag her body all around?
“Maybe he panicked and ran.”
Same question.
“Maybe he didn’t think of it. Maybe all he could think of was getting even with her.”
For what?
“Revenge.”
For what?
“And maybe”—he looked at both of them—”this isn’t our best lead. But it’s a warm body, it’s possible, and we’ve got him.

“Who’s on the cabbie?”

“Martin,” Mangiapane replied.

“Good. How about Donovan’s apartment?”

“The guys called just a while ago, Zoo,” Moore said. “They found her register. Lots of names and numbers.”

“Very good.” Tully was pleasantly surprised that so many leads were paying off. “Number one priority after you wring this Taylor out, start on the johns. Few people can get sorer the day after than a John.”

“We’ll get on it right away, Zoo,” Moore said. Then she added, “You know, in this city, it could have been just about anybody. A guy high on crack or ice, or anybody on the lookout for an easy mark—or just some kook with a gun sees a woman alone at night.”

Tully sighed. “I know, I know. But one thing argues against that: whoever did it didn’t touch her purse—and she had a bundle in it.”

“He didn’t see it?”

“Long straps. She wore it over her shoulder. He couldn’t have missed it. No,” Tully said, “I’m going for someone she knew. And a john is my first choice.”

“On that theory, Zoo,” Moore said, “it could have been somebody who knew her and disapproved of her being a hooker. There are a lot of squirrelly people in the so-called moral majority. Especially if someone like that saw her in nun’s garb and figured that she might have been a hooker. After all, waiting around in a hotel lobby and being picked up by a john! Could get a righteous man’s blood boiling. Or a woman’s,” she added.

“Good mought, Angie,” Tully said. “And we’ve got someone right now who could fit that profile. Angie, make sure the sister, the real nun, gets a paraffin test.”

“The nun!” Mangiapane could not conceive of a nun/murderer.

“The nun,” Tully affirmed. “She must have been plenty embarrassed by her sister’s line of work. A stain on the family’s reputation. A nun, known by friends and acquaintances as sister of a call girl. Let’s just see if she’s fired a gun recently.”

“It may be too late to test, Zoo,” Moore said.

“But possible. Do it right away, Angie.”

Moore left, though she was not eager to put the nun through this test. But it was a homicide and there was little if any room for sympathetic feelings.

Tully turned to Mangiapane. “One other possibility comes to mind. But it would make our job so miserable I don’t even want to think about it.”

“What’s that, Zoo?”

“A case of mistaken identity.”

“You mean somebody meant to kill the real nun?”

Tully nodded. “Helen Donovan was dressed exactly like her sister Joan. Wearing Joan’s habit even. They’re the same build, You saw Helen’s picture and you saw the real nun. They look enough alike to pass for sisters even if you didn’t know they were related. Say somebody wants to kill Joan. But the one who shows up dressed like Joan, looks like Joan, is headed for where Joan lives, is Helen.”

“Okay, but one thing, Zoo: If somebody’s lying in wait for Joan, how does he know she’ll be coming back so late at night? Or, as it turns out, so early in the morning? Most of the nuns I’ve known get to bed kind of early. Why would anybody figure a nun would be coming home at midnight?”

“The answer to that came out when Moore was interrogating Joan. The nun says her department business keeps her out late almost every night. If someone was stalking her, he’d know that.”

“Geez!”

“Yeah. It’s one thing to off a hooker. And quite another thing to intend the murder of a nun. If that’s the case, we’re in for some long days and nights.”

“Geez!”

“
It’s good for you
.”

Father Robert Koesler chuckled as the thought came to him from a far distance in time.

Irene Casey had used the phrase jokingly when he and she worked at the
Detroit Catholic.
He was editor-in-chief; she was woman’s editor and practically everything else, which is not unusual in thinly staffed operations.

In those days—now some dozen years ago—every time he would complain about something—a union meeting, a grievance session, an editorial deadline—Irene would advise, “It’s good for you.” The aphorism became an in-joke with the two of them.

He thought of it now as he shoveled snow. He had been pondering the odds of a heart attack when people his age—the early sixties—got unaccustomed to strenuous exercise. There was nothing wrong with his heart. But one did read about the hazards of occasional heavy labor, particularly for those people who led a normally sedentary life, as did he. And especially in a Michigan winter when anything from balmy temperatures to ice and snow could occur.

He had forgotten how much he enjoyed shoveling snow. All those years he’d spent as pastor of a suburban parish, physical labor had been a spectator sport for him, as janitors and janitorial substitutes had performed all chores from landscaping to snow removal.

This, however, was different. It had become common practice for Detroit priests, even pastors, to move on from one parish to another after a certain but not fixed number of years. When his time came, he felt a strong impulse to return to a city ministry. St. Joseph’s parish, near the heart of downtown Detroit, had opened up through the pastor’s retirement at just the moment Koesler’s option came due. Now he was in his seventh month as pastor and sole priest in residence at St. Joseph’s.

Along with the ancient structures he’d inherited—church, rectory, and home for janitor and family—was a conscientious Italian gentleman who would have qualified as a sexton but that he did not need to dig graves. He certainly was much more than simply a janitor. He was electrician, plumber, horticulturist, and, frequently, early morning Mass server.

But Dominic—no one called him Nick, or even Dom, for that matter—was, like all else on the corner of Jay and Orleans streets, ancient. He was susceptible to the minor aches and pains that can be doubly troubling for the elderly. Presently, it was a mild case of the flu. Koesler had insisted that Dominic remain in the warmth of his home and the care of his devoted wife.

But somebody had to move this snow. And unlike his former suburban parish, where there had been substitute janitors, there was no money allocated here for that—nor were there any volunteering parishioners. So Koesler shoveled snow. And if he wondered whether this exercise might kill him, he had only to remember the sage advice of Irene Casey: “It’s good for you.”