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 wordlessly 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.