Chameleon

17

Lieutenant Tully was paging through reports turned in by various members of his squad at various times. All concerned the same case, the investigation into the presumed serial killing of Helen Donovan and Lawrence Hoffer.

After notifying and getting the approval of Inspector Walter Koznicki, Tully had assigned every member of his squad to interview the people who headed departments in the archdiocese of Detroit. Each resultant report contained a plethora of information. In scanning each one, Tully concentrated on the responses to such questions as, “Can you mink of any enemies you personally have?” Or, “Are there any persons you can think of who are opposed to the work of your department?” Or, “Can you think of anyone who is opposed to the policies of the archdiocese of Detroit?”

In the responses, a pattern was forming. Almost no one named anyone who might qualify as a personal enemy. In response to the other questions, quite a few were mentioned. Tully was jotting down names that kept recurring throughout the reports. There were quite a few.

His talk with Father Koesler had helped. Tully felt slightly more confident wandering through the hitherto totally unfamiliar territory of Church administration. Not completely at home by any means. But not in a totally foreign field either.

Seated across the desk was Sergeant Angie Moore. She had been the latest and last of his squad to turn in a report. Tully studied the result of her investigation, frequently cross-checking it with the other reports.

“Zoo, be honest,” Moore said. “I drew the meanest bastard in the lot, didn’t I?”

Tully smiled. “Seems like it. But how would we know beforehand? It wasn’t on purpose.”

“But he was, wasn’t he, Zoo? I mean the meanest?”

Tully maintained his relaxed and engaging grin. “Judging by the other reports, I’d have to say he ranks. No; give the devil his due: You got the meanest.”

“I thought people in public relations were supposed to be pleasant, nice.”

“So did I. But mere’s always the exception-”

“Well, he proved the rule okay,” Moore interrupted, “It’ll be a long time before I forget Father Cletus Bash.”

“I see he’s the only one interviewed who admits to having a personal enemy or two.”

“Is he the only one?” Moore had no access to the other reports; this was the first she knew that none of the others had acknowledged any enemies. “I guess I’d put him down as paranoid, except that after spending an hour with him I expect his enemies are probably not imaginary. They could be for real.”

Tully studied silently for a few moments. “It says here,” he referred to her report, “that among his own enemies and those he listed as opposed both to the Church and the Church in Detroit are guys named Stapleton and Carson. Those are two names that are pretty familiar. They show up repeatedly on the other reports.”

“Do they? That’s interesting. That’s why I looked into their background a little bit, because Bash mentioned them three times. No one else got that kind of billing.”

“You did? Good. What did you find?”

“A lot on Carson. Not all that much on Stapleton.

“I went over to the Free Press library and went through their records-through the automated, the semi-automated, and even back through the envelope files,” Moore continued. “Carson goes back to the early sixties. Whatever he did before that couldn’t have been very newsworthy; They didn’t have any prior clippings on them.”

The early sixties, thought Tully. What was it? Something Koesler had been talking about. Yeah, that council that changed everything. Tully concluded that whatever it was Carson had done to make the news probably had been a reaction-his reaction-to that council. “Wasn’t that the Vatican Council in the early sixties?”

Moore was surprised. “Gee, Zoo, I didn’t think you paid any attention to religion. But, yeah, that was when the council was going on-early sixties.”

“Go on.” Tully was all business.

“Okay.” Moore rummaged through her tote bag. “I got some readouts and made some notes. Here we go. The early reports on Carson aren’t all that inflammatory. I think they were included in his file based on hindsight I think that after he got to be a newsmaker, they went back to find some sort of things, no matter how innocuous, that he was involved in earlier. But it notes that he was among the earliest members of a group called Catholics United for the Faith. It seems to be a pretty popular movement. Most people know it by its initials, CUF. Then he went on to a more extreme group called the Tridentines. That’s when he begins to get some individual attention in the media.”

Tully remembered Koesler’s explanation of the right-wing reaction to the council. Without that briefing, this would not have made a lot of sense.

Moore looked up from her notes inquiringly as if asking whether she need go into detail about these groups. Tully caught the subtle query. “Go ahead.”

Moore shrugged. If he thought he understood all this, it was all right with her. But she was at a loss to know how he did it.

She resumed. “It was just a little while after he joined the Tridentines that he became the group’s leader.”

Moore, a lifelong Catholic, well remembered the aftereffects of the council and the turmoil that had ensued, particularly in this archdiocese. Cardinal-then Archbishop-Boyle was elected the first president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. He had been extremely active and influential in that Vatican Council. And he saw to it that the changes and developments ordered by the council were implemented in his archdiocese.

That was by no means the reaction of other bishops and archbishops. One of those changes involved encouraging the laity to get more deeply involved in everything from parish life to policymaking on an archdiocesan level. People reflecting the spirit as well as the letter of the council took this bit and ran with it.

Meanwhile, CUF, not to mention the far more militant Tridentines, were generally opposed to the letter of the council. The less easily defined “spirit” of the council was, in the eyes of the right wing, an abomination.

Thus, in those early days there were many public meetings and gatherings sponsored by and starring, for want of a better designation, Church liberals. At most of these meetings, the right wing was conspicuously present, frequently and vociferously led by Arnold Carson.

Without the presence of Carson, along with his faithful few followers, these meetings would have been peaceable and calm on the whole. With Carson and crew present, they frequenyly degenerated into angry confrontations and occasionally even some measure of violence and reaction.

Moore attempted to explain all this briefly to Tully. He accepted her explanation, knowledgeable about part but by no means all of the history.

“See,” Moore continued, “once Carson got to be the leader of the Tridentines, he was bound to make news. From the very nature of the organization and the fact that it existed just when it did-when all the changes were taking place. So”-she glanced again through the notes and readouts-”there were some arrests, lots of charges of ‘police brutality,’ and plenty of media coverage for Arnold Carson.

“In the seventies”-Moore continued to finger through her notes-”diere was a Catholic ‘Call to Action’ meeting. It was a national meeting hosted by Detroit. Sort of a put-into-practice-what-we-learned-from-the-council. Carson and some of his friends showed up, carrying a banner hailing Boyle as the ‘red’ Cardinal-in effect calling him a commie. Which in Tridentine terms is about the bottom of the barrel.

“Then there’s a note about the time he pushed a priest down the steps of a church-”

“Wait,” Tully cut in, “some violence? An arrest?”

“The priest didn’t press charges. But here’s the funny thing: The priest was Father Fred Stapleton!”

“The one who-?”

“The same. Carson shows up almost any time you’d expect a right-wing reaction. He was part of a protest when Martin Luther King was here. And if there’s any kind of peace march, he’s out there buzzing and opposing it. I mention this just to show that he’s an all-purpose fanatic. But mostly he’s a religious fanatic.”

“How about abortion?” Tully asked.

“You got it. Almost any time there’s either a pro-choice or pro-life rally, or-as happens most often-both at the same time and place, he’s there.”

Tully massaged his right eyebrow. “But no violence,” he mused.

“Outside of that one incident where he shoved the priest. Maybe he’s mellowed out. If he’s been active this long, he must be getting on in years.”

“He’s close to retirement. You’re right about that, Zoo-but he’s hardly mellowing. The night of the wake for that hooker, Helen Donovan, he and a couple of buddies were harassing some of the mourners. It got sticky when some hookers showed up for the service.”

“Wait a minute … I was at that wake.”

“It must have happened before you got there, Zoo. Some uniforms were called and cleared them out. Took Carson to the hospital.”

“A fight?”

“Just some pushing and shoving. Carson ended up with a cut lip. Nothing major. No arrests. No charges.”

“I don’t know,” Tully said. “There’s not much physical going on in what you found. Sounds like he talks a good fight.”

“Wait, Zoo. I phoned the postal branch where he works. He’s not working there anymore.”

Tully looked at her inquiringly.

“He’s been suspended by the post office. He’s appealing the penalty and it’ll probably be a minor punishment that could be reduced.”

“What did he do?”

“Got in a fight-a no-holds-barred fight with a co-worker.”

“Um.” Tully made a relieved sound, as if he’d found the missing piece to a jigsaw puzzle.

“I got this from one of the guys who witnessed the fight, It began when this guy named Hessler started riding Carson about religion. Things like accusing Carson of getting horny over the Blessed Mother.”

“Sounds like a sweet character.”

“He’s the town bully, Zoo. Big guy. Make maybe two of Carson. But he kept at it until Carson blew his cork. Then Carson tore into him. Now I’ll quote this guy I talked to.…” Moore read from her notes. “‘I never saw anything like it,’ he said, ‘Arnie’-that’s Carson-’Arnie didn’t stand a chance.’” She looked up from her notes. “Not only is Hessler twice as big as Arnie, according to my witness, he’s a brutal slob with a real mean disposition. He’s been in lots of fights, usually with smaller guys. He doesn’t just win his fights, he punishes the other guys-beats ’em up. This guy said he was really scared for Carson. Hessler wasn’t just having fun picking on a smaller guy like he usually does; Hessler was mad.” She quoted again from her notes.” ’Cause when he was givin’ it to Arnie-with his mouth, that is-Arnie was givin’ it right back to him. Pretty good, too.’”? She looked up from her notes again. “But when Hessler made that crack about the Blessed Mother, Carson tore right into him.”

As Angie looked down at her notes again, it was hard to tell whether she was quoting verbatim or acting out what she had been told. “‘Well, Hessler starts by givin’ Arnie this rap on the ears. I seen it before: Once Hessler does that, the other guy is in the ozone. I thought old Arn would fold right there. And since Hessler is really sore, I thought we’d be pickin’ Arnie up with a blotter. But would you believe it? Arnie plows right in like Hessler had kissed him instead of paralyzing him. Arnie was … he was … inspired.

“‘To make a long story short, we had to pull Arnie off Hessler or so help me, he woulda killed him. He really woulda.’“

Moore looked up, pleased with her notes of the account. “Now, does that sound to you like a guy who has mellowed out?”

Tully, pleased also, shook his head.

“Carson’s supervisor called 911 and a couple of uniforms got them out of there and filed a report. Of course it’s not our juristdiction.”

“The report our guys made corroborate the story you got?”

Moore nodded. “But not as colorful.”

“It couldn’t have been. It was a bare-hands fight?”

“It was in the beginning. But let me go back to my source.” Angie had really gotten into the spirit of the affair. So much so that Tully could easily envision the scene as she half quoted, half extrapolated from her witnesses’s account of events. “‘It was after we got Arnie off Hessler that the guy came up with the shiv, a big one. Then I was really scared. Not only for Arnie. For the rest of us, too. Hessler was like an animal fightin’ for his life. He woulda cut anybody. Lucky for us that was just the time when the super came in and broke it up.

“‘But you know the funny thing? Even after Hessler pulled the knife, Carson wanted him. I mean there was four of us holdin’ Arnie back and even after Hessler showed us the knife, I had to work as hard to hold Arnie back as when we pulled him off. You know how sometimes there’s a fight and you pull the guys apart and hold ’em? And they’re really not puttin’ up no fight to get back in it; all you gotta do is just keep your hands on the guy so the other guys get the idea the guy really wants to get back in the fight? Well, that ain’t the way it was with Arnie: He really wanted to tear Hessler apart. Even when the SOB was holdin’ a knife. Could you believe that?’”

As she triumphandy wound up her vivid recital, it was impossible to know whether the last question was hers or had been voiced by her witness.

“So the other guy had the weapon,” Tully said.

“Our guy’s report corroborates that,” Moore affirmed.

“Well,” Tully said, “the main thing for our purposes is that Carson seems to have the killer instinct. Your source sounds convinced that Carson would have gone all the way, given the chance.”

“Oh, yeah, Zoo. No doubt diere. Although he did seem to thing it was somewhat out of character-in that Carson had mouthed off lots of times in the past, but this was the first time, in my guy’s experience anyway, that Carson had actually become physical, violent, and even deadly.”

“God, I wish we knew if Carson owned a gun! But … okay for now. Real good work, Angie. How about the Stapleton character?”

She withdrew a much smaller packet of notes and readout sheets from her bag. She held the packet aloft as if performing a show-and-tell.

“Not nearly as much with Stapleton as I found on Carson,” she said. “All I found in the Free Press library was a few items. There was a story dated June 1974 noting that quite a few priests were quitting the priesthood at roughly the same time. Stapleton was among them. But the story didn’t highlight him. The lead was given to a priest who was head of the justice and peace department of the Detroit Church. Stapleton was just mentioned as one of the others who was leaving.”

Head. The word caught Tully’s attention. Another head of another department. Could that have any bearing on the present investigation? “Angie, what was the name of that guy-the head of the Church department?”

She had to page backward to find the item. “Burke … Father Pat Burke.”

“Anything on him?”

“I don’t think so. I knew him back then. Matter of fact when I was a kid in parochial school, he was the assistant pastor in the parish. I had a crush on him.”

“Where is he now? Do you know?”

“Not really. After he quit the priesthood, he moved out of state. Arizona, I think. As far as I know, he’s still there.”

“Check it out, will you?”

“Sure, Zoo.”

“Now, let’s get back to Stapleton.”

“Well, with Fred Stapleton, the only prior notice I could find before that story about all those priests leaving was the one we talked about earlier-when he was shoved down the church steps by Arnold Carson. That, by the way, is a real coincidence, don’t you think?”

“Uh-huh. And I don’t like coincidences, They smack of blind luck and we deal in facts. Whether we find anything or not, we’d better check on whether there’s any connection there.”

“Connection?” Moore asked.

“Where does Stapleton fit in? As far as the Church is concerned.”

“You mean …?” She didn’t finish her thought.

“Well, liberal, conservative? Left wing or right?”

“Oh, Stapleton is a liberal.”

“And Carson is a conservative.”

“Off the globe.”

“Ah,” Tully observed, “that would explain the pushing incident.”

“Yes. Stapleton and Carson were always on opposite sides of just about everything.”

“Just about,” Tully observed.

“What are you getting at, Zoo?”

“They’ve got some common ground now.”

“Common ground?”

They’ve both been listed as being opposed to practices and laws of the Church.”

“Oh, yeah, Zoo. But the things that Carson can’t stand just couldn’t be the same problems Stapleton has.”

“Maybe not. But suppose they agree to bury the hatchet for the duration so they can get the Church’s attention. Suppose that’s the purpose of this crime spree. Suppose they find they have the same goal for different reasons. We can’t overlook the possibility … or any possibility, for that matter. This is growing into one slippery case.” Tully might have added that it was the sort of case that he most appreciated. One that called on every skill he possessed. “But, go on, Angie. What else about Stapleton? Besides the pushing incident and the resignation report?”

“Well, there were quite a few items either featuring him or mentioning him.”

“Oh?”

“He’s a psychologist. Kind of prominent, at least locally. Every so often you see him on one or another local TV news program. You know how the news anchors get into pop psychology and they get local authorities for ‘expert’ commentary. Well, Dr. Stapleton is there pretty regularly giving his opinion. He’s also quoted on radio and in newspapers along the same line, His picture’s been on TV and in the papers pretty often.”

“Ever give expert testimony in court?”

“Well, yeah, a few times.”

“In homicide cases?”

“Once in a while. Although, evidently, not in any of your cases. I think most people in the metropolitan area would be fairly familiar with Stapleton. In fact, from the number of times their pictures have been in the media, I’d guess that Carson and Stapleton are equally recognizable to a lot of people.” She stopped, almost embarrassed. She did not want to make her point too plainly. But it was evident that while Carson and Stapleton would qualify as local celebrities-at least in the sense of being easily identifiable-Tully had paid no attention to them.

It was one more indication of the measure of dedication Tully gave to his work. To a significant extent, as far as he was concerned if a news item had no relevance to his work it was not news. Some might call such an attitude tunnel vision. Others, dedication. Whatever one called it, Tully was near totally absorbed in his work. His former wife had discovered this truth early in their marriage and thought she could fight this intangible enemy. She spent a few years of her life in this doomed struggle. Tully’s present-day companion recognized and understood his priorities early on and was able to handle being a very strong but definite second in his life.

Anyone who had eavesdropped on this present conversation would have come to the same inevitable conclusion Angie Moore had reached: Alonzo Tully did not pay much attention to the passing parade. It was almost as if he did not want extraneous information crowding out the things he needed to know to do his job as well as or better than any comparable officer.

Tully’s unexpected grasp of the effects of Vatican II on current Church affairs was a case in point. From some source, presently unknown to Sergeant Moore, he had been briefed on the council and its impact on Catholicism. Still, there was no indication that Tully had mastered more than he needed to know to further the investigation of this case.

At any rate, Tully clearly did not seem embarrassed, defensive, or even concerned that a couple of otherwise famous faces were foreign to him. “Stapleton: rich?” he asked.

“Comfortable. I talked to a few people who knew him well-therapists, priests, ex-priests. Stapleton does a lot of charity work, mostly at old Trinity parish in Corktown. He’s married, got one daughter who’s going to school at that music academy up north-Interlochen. That must cost a bundle.

“Oh, and one more thing: He belongs to CORPUS.”

“What the hell is that?” Tully was growing irritated at the continuing confusions he found in Catholicism.

“It’s an organization for ex-priests who want to be able to function clerically again. They meet, put out a publication, lobby bishops, even the Pope.”

“Mostly talk?”

“I guess so. But Stapleton’s been very active in the group.”

“So? It seems.harmless enough. If all they want to do is get their preacher’s license back, what’s the problem? I don’t see why he’s on Bash’s shit list.” He seemed puzzled. “He was even mentioned by some of the other department heads.”

Moore didn’t reply immediately. Finally, she said, “Well, I can’t speak for the others ’cause I didn’t interview them-but I’d be willing to bet they agree. My man, Father Bash, doesn’t consider either Carson or Stapleton as physical threats. Of course he undoubtedly didn’t know about Carson’s all-out fight yesterday at the post office. So I think he could be mistaken about Carson.

“Anyway, I think Bash sees Carson and Stapleton as … well … just troublemakers. And if you saw things through … what? — institutional eyes-that’s all they’d be. As you know”-although she didn’t know how he knew-“that Vatican council stirred up lots of controversy. I get the impression the institutional Church desperately wants everything to calm down. And people like Carson and Stapleton won’t let that happen.

“That’s my impression. People like Bash would like to see Carson and Stapleton just go away-or at least shut up. But neither one of them seems to want to do that. So they are seen as people opposed to Church rules and regulations. And from that point of view, they are.

“Of course Bash sees them as personal enemies. But I don’t think it would take anybody long to become a personal enemy of Father Bash.”

They both laughed.

Quickly returning to seriousness, Tully said, “Let’s keep as tight a rein on Carson as possible. I don’t see Stapleton as a violent type. And I wish to God that we could keep that nun in a jar.”

“Sister Joan? You think somebody’s still after her?”

“It would tie things up neatly, wouldn’t it? She’s still the first base that nobody’s touched yet.”

“There’s no way we can keep her under surveillance. She’s determined to continue doing her job. And her job drags her over the Whole metropolitan area.”

“Uh-huh.” Damn! It could almost drive a man prayer.