Chameleon

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.

8

“May I get you something to drink?” the waitress asked.

“Yes,” the Reverend Mr. Quentin Jeffrey answered, “I’ll have a Beefeater martini, extra dry with a twist.”

“Very good. And … miss?”

“Just some coffee-decaffeinated,” Grace Mars, Jeffrey’s companion, said.

The waitress left to fill their orders.

Eyes accommodating to the dim interior lighting of Clamdiggers Restaurant, Jeffrey looked about the room.

Quentin Jeffrey, now in his late fifties, was a permanent deacon of the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, he was head of the archdiocese’s permanent deacon program. Years previously, he had founded, established, and headed his own public relations firm. In his early fifties he’d sold the firm, becoming enormously wealthy in the process.

He and his wife traveled and, in every way possible, relaxed after the hectic life they had hitherto led. Then, long a faithful Catholic, Jeffrey became interested in becoming a permanent deacon.

The permanent deacon belonged to a diocese or religious order just as did priests. The deacon was ordained to do everything the priest does sacramentally except absolve from sins and offer Mass.

It was no exaggeration to say that Quentin Jeffrey was an invaluable catch for the Church. He had been eminently successful in the secular world. Indeed, on the local scene, as well as in circles beyond, Jeffrey was