Chameleon

7

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.”

“Wait a minute, Zoo! I feel like you’re putting a full-court press on me. I admit it’s possible for it to be the way you tell it. The kid reads about the murder, or he sees the report on TV He sees the amount of press the killing gets. He knows the nun still lives in the same convent. He decides to pull a copycat killing. So he sneaks around the corner of the convent. He knows she’s usually out late. In any case she would have been out late last night at the wake service for her sister. She comes home, he pops out of the bushes, and I pop out from behind my cover and the thing is over.

“But here’s where your case breaks down, Zoo. According to your scenario, he wants publicity. He wants to be star of the show. The only way he can get that is to get caught. And he didn’t know I was there. He didn’t know he was gonna get caught. And if all he wanted to do was confess, he could’ve confessed the earlier killing without the second one.” Mangiapane leaned back, more content now.

“We’re dealing with hypothesis, Manj. He didn’t know he was gonna get caught, I’ll give you. Maybe he would have turned himself in if you hadn’t been there. Maybe he would have killed the nun and then come in to confess it this morning.

“All that we’re gonna have to figure out.

“This much is for certain: The next time you go off on your own without consulting with me, I’m gonna have your ass before Walt Koznicki has mine. Is that clear? I mean is that crystal clear?”.

“Yeah.” Mangiapane stood and, face impassive, was about to head for the door.

“One more thing, Manj.”

“Yeah?”

“You did a good piece of work.”

Mangiapane left smiling.

Tully began pacing in the small room. It was completely possible that this case had played out just the way Mangiapane figured it. Just the way Mangiapane wanted it to be. Guns could be found just about anywhere in this city. Adults had them for protection. Crooks had them for crime. Kids had them for toys.

David Reading could have found or bought a gun and used it to kill Helen Donovan. Having shot her, for a reason yet to be satisfactorily explained, he could have disposed of it. If one killing was all he intended, he more than likely would have gotten rid of it.

Then he finds out he’s killed the wrong person. Maybe goes back to where he ditched the gun, but it’s gone. Someone else has it now. Again, it’s not that hard to find or come by another one. He goes back to finish it off the way he’d originally planned it.

He wouldn’t expect Joan Donovan to have police protection. And in that assumption he was correct. Unless a targeted person agrees voluntarily to stay in an inaccessible and remote place, no police force could come close to guaranteeing safety. An enclosed, controllable space may be protected. A person out in the open is beyond protection.

It was very bad luck for David Reading and a stroke of extraordinarily good luck for Mangiapane-and for Sister Joan-that he happened to be on the scene to foil and apprehend the would-be killer.

As far as Tully was concerned, it was bad news and good news all in one lump.

At the outset, Tully had hoped that Helen’s killer was one of her clients and that the john could be identified. The matter, then, would be a platter case.

As it happened, the initial investigation did not turn up any really good leads. But it was still better than the worst case scenario: mistaken identity. That would have thrown the investigation into a completely new and much broader plane. In which case the police would not be looking for someone who had it in for a hooker. Lots of people fit that category.

No, if it were mistaken identity, they’d have to find someone who was after a nun. Another kettle of fish.

The bad news was that the way it was now working out, it apparently was a case of mistaken identity. The good news-so good Tully could scarcely trust his luck-was that Mangiapane had caught the guy responsible for the attacks on Helen and Joan.

So why was he so reluctant to look on the good side? Why was he looking a gift horse in the mouth? Why couldn’t he shut the file on this one?

It wasn’t the different guns used. It wasn’t the readiness of David Reading to confess to everything. It wasn’t the unlikely luck of having Mangiapane on the scene at the moment Reading is about to repair his mistake. All those disparities could be explained. Indeed, Mangiapane had just gone through a sometimes tortured logic to explain them away.

It was something else. A hunch. Intuition.

Tully shrugged and quietly snorted. Police work was not based substantially on hunches and intuition, but on cold, hard facts, reality that could be argued in a court of law. And the coldest, hardest fact they had presently was one warm body caught in the act of attempted murder and freely confessing to murder in the first degree.

So what if it didn’t feel right? Time to process David Reading and get on to the next homicide. He knew that in Detroit he wouldn’t have long to wait for the next one.