Free Chameleon by William X. Kienzle Page A

whose voice it was. Cletus Bash. She’d heard Father Bash often enough at meetings to recognize the voice and the arrogance it contained. She assumed Bash did not approve of the publicity resulting from her sister’s murder. She was at a loss to know how it possibly could have been handled any differently. Regardless, she was convinced that the primary cause of Bash’s irritation was that he’d been denied yet another opportunity to be featured on camera for the evening news. She was sure she and the others would hear about this again and again in memos and at staff meetings. She could barely wait.
    The thought of Bash brought up another memory of this evening—at the very end of the wake service. She could visualize the scene as if she were a third party looking on at the event.
    She had been standing with a small group of her nun friends when someone approached to talk to her. It was hard now to place who this person was. But Something told her she should remember.
    Of course: It was Father Koesler. And she had greeted him almost as if he were a stranger. She winced. How could she have been so thoughtless! She had to blame it on exhaustion, distraction, preoccupation—the whole darn thing.
    She would make it a point the next time their paths crossed to apologize and explain why she had been so distant. She was sure he would understand.
    She was home, or very nearly there. Fortunately, she didn’t have to get out of the car to open the garage door. One of the very few luxuries of St. Leo’s was an automatic garage door opener. She pulled in through the open door, parked the car, got out, and exited the garage, starting the door on its downward path as she did so. Pulling her coat collar up tight, she started on the short walk around the corner to the front door.
    As she reached the center of the metal fence and angled to take the next few steps to the front door, she recalled that this was exactly what her sister had done just a couple of nights ago. Helen had gotten out of the taxi at this very spot and taken these same steps. The last short walk of her life.
    Joan shivered. It was only partly due to the cold.
    The streetlights cast shadows everywhere. She tried to quiet her imagination. It was playing tricks. She thought she saw shapes that, as she approached them, dissolved. Her pace quickened.
    She was halfway up the steps when it happened. She knew: This was not a phantom of her mind.
    Someone was in the bushes behind her. She distinctly heard the snapping branch. She caught the movement out of the corner of her eye.
    She froze, not knowing what to do. Hurry toward the door? She’d never make it before he did whatever he wanted. Turn and confront him? Beg? Plead? What good would any of that do? All this took only a fraction of time to pass through her mind.
    Next it was a voice. A voice shouting.
    Later, asked what the voice had said, she could remember, but was embarrassed to repeat it. Suffice that it got the job done.
    No sooner had the young man stepped from the bushes than, from behind one of the statues of the shrine, Sergeant Phil Mangiapane shouted a warning in the universal language of the street.
    As he explained later, had the youth not at least lowered me gun immediately, Mangiapane would have fired. But the young man was so startled that instead of his lowering or dropping the gun, it flew out of his hand as if it had wings and a mind of its own.
    In seconds, the sergeant had the man cuffed.
    After trying to calm the nun, Mangiapane removed the keys from her trembling hand, opened the door, shoved his prisoner into the convent, and phoned for assistance.
    It was hours before Sister Joan was able to bring her shuddering and shaking under some sort of control. Sleep was not even a remote possibility.
    But it was less than half an hour before Mangiapane had the man at headquarters, with his rights read, and in the process of being booked on charges of assault with intent to commit murder and suspicion