Bishop as Pawn by William X. Kienzle Page B

to begin checking out his theories, did not bother to answer Carleson, but merely waved him away.
    Carleson left immediately.
    McCauley was about to follow suit, when Sergeant Mangiapane stuck his head in the door. “Zoo,” Mangiapane said almost breathlessly, “the autopsy’s over—”
    Tully shook his head and inclined it toward Quirt, who was obviously not pleased with what he took as a slight.
    Mangiapane shrugged and turned to address Quirt. “This’ll make more sense, I think, if we go to the bishop’s office.”
    “Let’s go.” Quirt led the way.
    Return to the scene of the crime , thought McCauley. All those crime movies weren’t a complete waste of time after all .… Although he assumed that he had been dismissed, he decided to tag along.
    The rectory’s entrance, appropriately enough, fronted on Ste. Anne Street. A sidewalk led to a rise of wooden steps. The heavy door opened to a small foyer that in turn led to a long hallway. Bishop Diego’s office was the first door to the right after entering the corridor.
    The office itself was moderately large. Had there been much furniture or bric-a-brac, it would have looked crowded. However, it was sparsely outfitted. The eye-catching feature was the previously mentioned collection of photos adorning the walls. They came close to constituting a Who’s Who of Detroit, with the bishop’s image the only constant in each of them.
    Now assembled in the office were Mangiapane, Tully, Quirt, Kleimer, and Father McCauley.
    “Doc Moellmann,” Mangiapane began, referring to Wayne County’s medical examiner, “says that the bishop was hit once—a powerful blow to the back of the head between the crown and the neck. The weapon was a blunt instrument—a pipe, or a heavy bottle, or a baseball bat. We haven’t turned up anything yet.
    “We found the bishop sitting in this chair and slumped over the desk. This figures out pretty good. The fatal blow was at a slightly downward angle. The bishop was kinda tall, almost six feet. If he’d been standing, to get that kinda angle, the perp’d have to be a giant.
    “But if the bishop was sitting, then the perp’d be in the neighborhood of five feet six or seven—someplace between five-five and five-eight.
    “Also, the time of death that we were estimating at between four and six o’clock yesterday evening is on the nose.
    “As far as prints go, they’re all over the place. Everybody and his mother’s been in here touching things—and they don’t spend a lot of time dusting. One of the guys said they probably got Gabriel Richard’s fingerprints in here.” Mangiapane was alone in thinking this quite humorous.
    “We been through this office and the bishop’s room upstairs,” he continued, “but we didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.”
    “Nothing unusual!” Father McCauley exclaimed. “You don’t think all that money is unusual?”
    “All what money?” Quirt was feisty.
    “The bishop always kept some money—he called it petty cash—in the office here. We advised against it, of course. We told him it could be an irresistible temptation. We told him he’d be lucky if the worst that happened would be that somebody would steal it.”
    “You mean Diego kept money here in the office?” Quirt pursued.
    “That’s right.”
    “And it was commonly known that he did?”
    “Well …” McCauley hedged, “I wouldn’t say that it was common knowledge. Not everybody on the street would know about it. Sometimes the ‘deserving poor,’ as the bishop referred to them, or a family in desperate need of food or clothing—things like that. Well, the bishop liked to help such people.…” McCauley looked at the policemen. “He wasn’t a complete villain, you know. And” —he gestured to include the pictures on the walls—“he had friends in high places. He could—and did—tap some pretty wealthy people. With them he called it his ‘discretionary fund.’ They usually contributed