William Kienzle - Chameleon

Koesler had returned to Detroit quite late the previous night. This morning was his first weekday Mass after vacation. He had been surprised at the unexpectedly large turnout. He estimated a crowd of at least fifty. While that number hardly filled the cavern’ ous ornate church, it was something more than the five or six he was used to.

Among the congregation had been Mary O’Connor, who was now fixing breakfast for the two of them. Neither of them had much of a morning appetite. It was cold cereal, fruit, toast, and coffee.

“Good to have you back, Father.” Mary’s back was to him as she prepared the coffee.

“Good to be back, Mary. It really is.” He sat at the kitchen, table and started in on the cereal. “Anything important or outrageous happen while I was gone?”

“Not really… at least nothing an exciting person like yourself would consider important.” She was grinning. He couldn’t see her face but he knew the smile was there.

“Well, thank God for the Jesuits. We’re running out of parish-sitters. If it weren’t for the Jebbies at Sts. Peter and Paul, I don’t think I would have been able to get away. Father Untener must have done a masterful job judging from this morning’s crowd.”

Mary, carrying the coffeepot to the table, shook her head. “It wasn’t Father Untener; it’s you.”

“Me?”

“Have you forgotten? You were in the papers a couple of weeks ago. Your people knew you’d be back today; they came to see the celebrity.”

“That’s my fifteen minutes.” He looked up at her. “You think that’s really it? Well …” He smiled. “It beats ringing doorbells. But,” he added resolutely, “I’ve got to get back to that as soon as possible. Maybe all those Catholics hibernating in the high rises will recognize me for a little while. I’d better capitalize on that while it’s still warm.”

He noticed that Mary, holding her cup, was looking directly into his eyes and smiling. “Something?” he asked, puzzled.

“Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“How you knew it was Quentin Jeffrey-and how you caught him?”

“You read all about that in the papers.”

“Not all and not from the horse’s mouth.”

“Thank you for not thinking of another part of the horse’s anatomy.

“There’s not an awful lot to tell that wasn’t in the papers. The most bizarre part of the story-building an unbeatable hand by killing people-that was reported.”

“Yes, but not how you got to impersonate the Cardinal-and how you knew the deacon would come that night.”

“That? Well, it wasn’t easy getting to stand in for the Cardinal. As to the timing, that was more or less a lucky guess. The murders seemed to be accelerating. Father Bash was killed almost as Archbishop Foley was being buried. I had the impression that the killer was getting anxious, in a hurry. So I thought if we falsely announced that the Cardinal was leaving for an extended period for an undesignated place, the killer would act before his victim could get away.”

“And impersonating the Cardinal?”

Koesler grimaced. “That was the hard part. Oddly, I had a far easier time convincing the Cardinal than I had with the police. The Cardinal and I are about the same height. Oh, I’m a bit heavier, but in dim light and in a cassock, that wouldn’t be too noticeable. I told the Cardinal that if I was right-and I was certain I was-that he would be dead very soon unless we set the trap. Fortunately, he believed me when I told him that he was the only one in danger. I assured him the killer wouldn’t hurt me because I didn’t fit into his plan.”

“But why you, Father? That’s the question I’ve heard most often these past two weeks. Why not a policeman in the cassock?”

“The very question that was uppermost in Lieutenant Tully’s mind,” Koesler said. He sipped his coffee as his thoughts leaped back to the fateful evening.

“Well,” he said finally, “it wasn’t so much a ‘question’ as a very, very strong objection. The lieutenant and I argued-yes, that’s the right word-we argued about it for-well, hours, I guess. He was totally opposed to a civilian’s risking his life in a situation that he felt demanded a trained policeman.

“My argument was that we didn’t have any evidence to try him on, or even hold him on. We had no proof of anything and the most they could come up with using a policeman stand-in would be circumstantial evidence. And no matter how strong that might be, it wouldn’t carry as much weight in a court of law or be as strong as a confession. And that once Quent found he was dealing with a policeman, he wouldn’t say anything.I was sure he’d talk to me. And he did.”

“And that argument convinced the lieutenant?”

“Not by a long shot. He absolutely refused to let me go through with it.”

“And?”

“I told him I was going to do it anyway, whether he went along with me or not. He was really angry-just short of furious, I think. But eventually, he said if I was determined to be ‘a damn fool’-those were his exact words-he’d set it up.”

“But it worked.”

“Yes. And I’m pretty sure he’s still angry with me. Even though it did work.”

“It was lucky he agreed to provide protection or you might be dead now.”

“I don’t think so, Mary. I heard the words he murmured. I saw the expression on his face. He had no intention of harming me Once he knew the police were there, he knew if he drew his gun they would kill him. The poor guy had nowhere to go but into another life, where I pray God and Quent’s victims forgave him.” Koesler paused. “There was another reason I insisted on standing in for the Cardinal. I don’t know that it would make sense to anyone but me. See, I promised Archbishop Foley I would jump right in and get actively involved in the case. And I made the same sort of commitment to Cardinal Boyle. The opportunity to stand in for the Cardinal was a gift from heaven. I had to do it. That was the argument that finally convinced the Cardinal to go along with my plan.”

“It makes sense to me.”

“Thanks, Mary. I needed that, Thanks.”

Mary refilled their cups. “Such a weird plot.” She shook her head. “Do you think he really was insane? And if he was, how could he have appeared to be so normal?”

“That puzzled me too. I couldn’t figure it out. It got so bad that I phoned my friend Dr. Rudy Scholl from Florida. I gave him an account of the whole thing. He said it was a classic example of what psychologists call a borderline personality.”

“Borderline? What does that mean?”

“Would you fill my cup one more time? I think that’ll do it. Thanks. Well, if I understand Rudy correctly, it means that such a personality is living right on the edge-the border-between sanity and insanity.”

Mary shuddered. “That’s frightening. I mean it sounds like some sort of science fiction-or a horror movie.”

Koesler sipped the hot coffee. It was excellent. He was convinced there was no special trick to brewing good coffee. “It is frightening. But it’s strange: When we were in that room, together, just Quent and I, I got the overwhelming impression that he had been under enormous stress for a long, long time-ever since his wife died. I think he felt he was caged in a box he couldn’t escape from.

“Rudy agreed. And added the word ‘conflict.’ It was, he said, a ‘stressful conflict.’ Quent felt he was intended to live a married life. That had been taken away when his wife died out of due time. He believed that any sexual relationship had to be restricted to marriage. According to Church rules, he could not marry again. And he felt compelled to comply with that law even though he detested it. He was not going to back away from this obligation. You could scarcely find a more clear example of stressful conflict.