“She asked to borrowit-just forlast evening,” Joan explained.
“This was unusual?”
“It was the first time she’d ever asked for that.”
“You didn’t object? Wasn’t it a rather odd request? Bizarre, even?”
“As a matter of fact, I did object … at first. But …”
“I should think you might object. But you did let her have it.”
“Helen usually got what she wanted.”
“Oh?”
“She’d stay on a request like a bulldog. Persistence was her long suit.”
“She say why she wanted the uniform?”
“She said she was going to a masquerade party.”
“You believed that?”
“Hardly. But the more I pressed her the more vague she became. She just kept after me until my resistance was worn thin.”
“She picked it up last night?”
Joan nodded. “I left her the key. I was going to be out-I’m out frequently in the evenings. My job-”
“Which is-?”
“I’m the delegate for religious.”
“And that means-?”
“I’m … uh … sort of an ombudsperson for members of religious orders in the archdiocese of Detroit. Mostly, I represent the other nuns here. So I have frequent meetings with individuals and groups, particularly in the evenings when all the aggrieved parties can get together.”
“And you were at such a meeting last night.”
“That’s right.” Without waiting for the next logical question, Joan continued. “I met with another nun-Sister Mary Murray-and the parish council at Our Lady of Refuge, Orchard Lake. There is some question about Sister’s contract as religious education coordinator,” she explained. “We met until midnight. I remember because the council president noted the time as the reason he wanted to end the meeting and take the matter up at next month’s meeting.”
She noted that the policewoman was taking notes employing some sort of shorthand. Joan was certain the sergeant would be checking every detail for corroboration.
“So,” Moore continued, “you would have returned here at about …?”
“It must have been near 1:00 A.M. ”
“Tell me-and please include every detail you can remember-what did you do when you arrived? You parked your car …”
“In the garage. There really isn’t anything significant to tell. It had been snowing. In fact it was still snowing. I remember wishing I had worn galoshes. Our janitor always keeps the walks shoveled, but it had snowed after his workday, so he wouldn’t have gotten to it until this morning. Anyway I walked from the garage around in front of the church and up the front walk. It was bitter cold and the snow was blowing, so I kept my head down and got inside as quickly as possible. And then I just went to my room and went to bed and fell asleep very quickly. I was awfully tired.”
“You noticed nothing unusual coming into the house?”
“No, nothing. As I said, I had my head down and my eyes nearly shut against the snow. I could travel from the garage to the house blindfolded,” she added.
Moore concluded that either the nun had noticed nothing untoward-whether or not the crime had been committed after she had retired-or she was lying. “But,” Moore said, “you were the one who found the body.”
“Yes. I was going over to the church this morning. There are only a few parishioners who regularly come to church on weekdays. And our pastor is out of the country almost as much as he’s here. He’s very active in the peace movement, you know. So, weekday mornings, I conduct a sort of a prayer service and distribute Communion. It’s a paraliturgical rite, you see-”
“That’s all right, Sister, you don’t need to go into that. The body?”
“Yes … the body.” As Joan recalled all too clearly discovering her sister’s body, a feeling of overwhelming loss pierced her again. “It was much lighter at seven this morning than when I’d gotten home, of course. And it was no longer snowing. When I came down the steps, I noticed the indentation in the snow leading over toward the shrine. It was as if something had been dragged there. Perhaps a sledge of some sort. I went over to see what it was. And …” Her voice trailed off.
“Was your sister lying faceup?”
Joan seemed to pull herself together. “No. The … body … wasface down. But I knew-who else could it have been? I recognized her coat-it was very expensive-and part of the habit was exposed.”
“Then you turned the body over, faceup?”
“I had to be sure.”
“Then you screamed, and the janitor came and called the police.”
Joan nodded and lowered her gaze.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Sister.” As Moore rose to leave, spontaneously she patted the nun’s shoulder. “If we have more questions, we’ll get back to you.”
Outside the building, standing between the front steps and the shrine, in the middle of methodical beehive-like police activity, was Lieutenant Alonzo Tully. More familiarly known to friends and co-workers as “Zoo.”
Tully was intent on absorbing every detail, no matter how seemingly insignificant, of this, the scene of the crime. In determining what had happened here, the testimony of this silent scene was the sole witness that could not and would not deceive. He and the others investigating this case might misread or misinterpret the evidence. But the evidence represented fact. It need only to be correctly understood and evaluated.
The body of Helen Donovan had long been removed, but the traces were still evident. There were too many footprints now in the snow, but it was still possible to distinguish the essential indications.
Only the slightest tracks had been left by the perpetrator in the ensuing snowfall. Evidently he had hidden in the bushes to the right of the front steps. As the victim passed, the perp had stepped out behind her. There was no sign of any struggle. The perp had shot her once, the preliminary examination suggested at the base of her skull, then dragged her body behind what the people of St. Leo’s called their shrine.
Tully was not in any way a religious person, but he could not have mistaken the shrine. It was a slightly-less-than-life-size depiction of the crucifixion of Christ, with two additional figures standing beneath the cross. Tully’s familiarity with Christendom’s central mystery did not extend beyond the main character. The other figures were Mary, Christ’s mother, and his disciple John.
No struggle. That was an essential clue in this infant investigation. That plus the fact that her purse had not been taken-or even rifled; it contained more than five hundred dollars in cash.
For police purposes, it was providential that the victim’s sister had discovered the body and could not only identify the deceased but also confirm her line of work. Otherwise, they would have been bogged down trying to discover who this nun was and why she would be carrying so much cash.
But, a hooker! In all probability she had just turned a trick.
Several cops who knew of her testified that she was definitely in the higher financial bracket of whoredom. A Cass Corridor streetwalker would have had to turn tricks for weeks to clear what Helen Donovan made in one night.
No struggle. Did the perp sneak up behind her, unnoticed, as Tully initially concluded? Or, another distinct possibility, had she known her killer and, unsuspecting, put up no fight?
Sergeant Angie Moore approached, Together, she and Tully stepped out of the cold into the building’s foyer. Moore filled him in on her interrogation of Sister Joan, the actual nun.
A few details, such as what a delegate for religious did, Tully had to take on secular faith. A “religious” in the Catholic sense of the term had a specific meaning that was lost on Tully. But he listened carefully. All Moore’s information was absorbed into the practiced computer of his mind. There it would be stored and even much later he would be able to call it up.
No sooner had Moore completed her report than Sergeant Phil Mangiapane, also a member of Tully’s squad, arrived on the scene.
Mangiapane was enthused. It was an emotion that came easily to him. “Zoo,” he said, “we nailed her john of last night.” He pulled out his notepad and flipped it open. “One Henry Taylor, a very scared haberdasher from Toledo. In town on a buying trip. We’re detaining him temporarily at the Pontch. Right now, he’s wishing he’d left town last night. Or, better, never come.”