12
Eight o’clock in the morning. Not particularly early. But zoo Tully had awakened much earlier.
He had awakened at 5:30. He’d tried to get back to sleep. It didn’t work, and, as usual, the harder he tried the more sleep eluded him.
Shortly after 6:30 A.M. he gave up the struggle and slipped out of bed, careful not to waken Al. He managed not to rouse her through a shower, shave, and a hurried breakfast.
He was, of course, the first detective on his shift to arrive. There wasn’t much to do. Things would not slip into gear until about 9:00 when the others on this shift arrived. So he had an hour, an hour to figure out what was troubling him.
He checked the list he’d run by his consciousness earlier while lying in bed in the darkness.
His relationship with Al? No, that wasn’t it. In fact, seldom had they been happier together. Before Al, he’d been married to a very good woman. They’d had five kids. They would still be together if she hadn’t been jealous of his job.
He didn’t blame her. He recognized clearly that he was much more married to his job as a homicide cop than he ever could be to any woman. So his ex, now remarried and living in Chicago, was happier without him.
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.