“Everyone of ’em, Offi cer.”
“Could anybody get into these woods without coming through that town?”
“Sure.”
“How?”
“There’s one narrow path that comes up over the rocks and across a brook.”
“Oh.”
“It’s about two miles back there.”
“Where does that path start?”
“It takes off in a railroad yard—just beyond Brentwood Park.”
“I see.” Ruddy was thoughtful. “Professor, I want you to report to police headquarters at ten in the morning and—”
“But I’ve done nothing,” the professor protested. “I was only trying to hunt for murderers. I—”
“You will come, won’t you?”
“Will I be arrested?”
“If you don’t come, I’ll take you in now,” Ruddy threatened.
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“Sure, I’ll come,” the professor said. “But I haven’t done anything. I—”
“We just want to ask you a few questions.”
“Sure. I’ll come.”
“Okay. Go on home,” Ruddy said.
The man walked off with quick and nervous steps, making loud echoes on the gravel of the soft shoulder.
“He’s no bushwhacker,” Ruddy said to himself. “He’d wake the dead with those feet of his.”
He got into his car and rolled toward headquarters. “Lay detectives . . . my God. It’s a wonder there aren’t more people killed in this world.”
Ruddy nosed his car into the gate of police headquarters and was confronted by an armed offi cer.
“Who’s that?”
Ruddy poked out his head and grinned. “Chief of Police, Rudolph Turner,” he called.
There was an astonished silence. “Yes, sir! Come in, Chief.
We weren’t expecting you tonight. Roll straight ahead and you’ll find the main door over that red light.”
“Right.”
Ruddy heard a shrill whistle behind him and at once a sergeant loomed before him as he slowed the car. The sergeant saluted.
“Good evening, Chief.”
“Good evening, Sergeant.”
The sergeant opened the door and Ruddy stepped out and looked around.
“You want me to show you to your offi ce, Chief?”
Ruddy looked at the eager man and smiled. He knew that officers liked calmness and deliberateness.
“I would appreciate that,” he told the offi cer.
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“Right this way, Chief,” the man sang.
“Thanks, Sergeant.”
He followed the officer, who was a tawny-haired, chunky lad of about twenty-three. Irish maybe. Seems eager to serve. He strode along walls of marble, and he knew from the smell that the air was conditioned. The hallway was carpeted thickly with red plush material into which his feet sank. Plush . . . swank almost. Well, this was the top of his career. He had been sent in here to clean up crime. By God, he’d do it. They were lifted upward in an ornate elevator four floors and he fronted a huge open door, which bore gilt letters: THE CHIEF OF POLICE—BRENTWOOD PARK
“Officer Ed Seigel is in your office, sir,” the sergeant said, flinging wide the big doors.
“Good. I’m looking for ’im.”
As Ruddy went through the door, his eyes swept what was to be his offi ce.
“The staff is gone, sir,” the sergeant said. “But if there’s anything that—”
“I won’t need anything tonight.” Ruddy dismissed the man.
“Good night, sir.”
“Good night.”
Ruddy stood still as the door closed behind him. Yeah, there was old Ed Seigel seated at the side of his desk, his head lifted toward him in a cone of light shed by a desk lamp.
Ruddy said nothing for a long moment, his eyes sweeping the office. It was huge, some thirty feet by forty feet, with a huge desk, beside which was a teletype machine, now silent, a wall map of the city of Chicago and its environs, and then various watercolors. Three sofas of red leather adorned one end of the room and a huge table stood at the center. The big
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portrait of the mayor of Chicago, Mayor Denin, occupied the left wall and an American f lag of fifty white stars was on the right. Ruddy looked and pulled down the corners of his lips.
“The taxpayers are good to me,” he mumbled.
“Damn right,” Ed smirked.
“What are you butting in for? Work, you bastard!”
Ed laughed, rose, and ran his fingers through his graying hair, his left hand resting on the open dossiers that Captain Snell had given to him.
“What in hell you think I’m doing?” Ed came from around the desk and stood facing Ruddy. “Ruddy, you didn’t forget me, did you?”
“Drop dead,” Ruddy said, embarrassed.
“I’m grateful for the first promotion I’ve had in fi fteen years,” Ed said with a husky voice.
“You deserve it,” Ruddy said.
“Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Bring me here? Promote me . . . ?”
“I want your help, you dope!”
“But I thought you didn’t believe in my ideas,” Ed protested.
“Maybe I don’t,” Ruddy snapped.
“Then why am I here?”
“To give you a chance to convince me that you’re wrong,”
Ruddy said with heavy irony.
“You’re a straight guy, Ruddy,” Ed said.
“You’re straight too, Ed. You’ve been a friend of mine ever since you came on the force.”
“That’s natural.”
“Sometimes.”
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“With me, friendship always comes natural.”
“Why in hell do you think I’ve got you here if I didn’t know that?” Ruddy asked.
“Look, did you see this gold eagle here?” Ed pointed out.
“That’s to go on your cap.”
Ruddy lifted the golden insignia and studied it.
“Eagles have claws,” he said absentmindedly.
“Yeah. To grab crooks with,” Ed reminded him.
“And to scratch out the eyes of officers who are insubordi-nate.” Ruddy chuckled. He slumped into the seat behind the desk, then looked down at a mass of papers.
He read out loud: “Inauguration ceremony at two P.M. Staff meeting at four P. M. Bullshit. Ed, have you been over those dossiers?”
“Just finished ’em, Chief.”
“Listen, Ed. Cut that ‘chief’ shit with me, see?”
Ed grinned his appreciation. “Okay, Ruddy.”
“Now, tell me. What do you make out of those reports?”
“Ruddy, you have to read this stuff in order not to believe it,” Ed stated.
“Now, what do you mean?”
“I can’t tell you about this unless I fly off into the clouds,”
Ed complained. “And that’s what I don’t want to do. I want to start my job right. But, Jesus, I can’t make head or tail of this.”
“First, one straight question . . .”
“Yeah, Ruddy.”
“Did you find anything amiss with the conduct of the police in those dossiers?”
“Nothing. If there’s any monkey business here, I can’t spot it. Branden was a house on fire, but he was straight, regular. He did what any policeman would have done.”
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“Good. That means that we can look for crooks,” Ruddy said. “And we don’t have to be scared of our shadows.”
“You’ve got enough rope to proceed?” Ed asked, arching his eyebrows.
“I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t,” Ruddy snapped. “Ed, I won’t get any more promotions. I’m at the top. So I’m not scared of making mistakes or stepping on anybody’s
corns. I’m out to do a job. Come hell or high water.”
“Good. A thing like this comes once in a lifetime.”
“What do you think of my team? The commissioner gave—”
“I saw the list,” Ed said with a grin. “I peeped into your papers.”
“Before I did?”
“Yeah. I’m a spy.”
“Look, I’m the chief. Not you.”
“Just helping, Ruddy. You asked what I thought of your team, your staff . . . first-rate. All except one. And that’s me. I can’t judge myself.”
“Nobody’s asking you to,” Ruddy said. “Now, tell me what that nightmare report gave you. What impressions?”
“Nightmares,” Ed said, sitting, stretching out his legs.
“Honest to God, we are out to catch a phantom.”
“Do you think there was one or two or three or more murderers?” Ruddy asked.
“One.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Ed confessed.
“Just hunches, guesses?”
“Something like that,” Ed said. “There isn’t enough here for me to go on for me to make any other kind of statement. These are terse facts, and they do speak a kind of cryptic language.”
“Okay. Just relax and let me hear what you think and feel,”
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Ruddy said. “Don’t hold back anything. Remember that you are going over ground where all the experts failed. So don’t be bashful.”
“Ruddy, we’re dealing with something out of the ordinary here,” Ed began.
“Is that all you got to tell me?” Ruddy countered.
“Wait. Let me get into it,” Ed protested. “Now, look, this murderer—”
“Man or woman?” Ruddy interrupted.
“I think it was a man,” Ed said haltingly.
“Why?”
“Well, in the light of what we got to go on,” Ed began, “it’s a kind of psychological guess, you see. A preacher is killed with a woman. Then a priest is killed with a nun. Then the detective’s son is killed—alone. Now, Ruddy, I’ve been sitting here trying to put myself in that murderer’s place. It’s hard. Now, that preacher, that priest, and the detective’s son represented something to that killer. Ruddy, a woman is an earthy kind of creature. If she hates you, she kills you. And there is always an understandable reason. But a man kills in a funny kind of way. First of all, those whom he kills have to be kind of transfigured in his mind . . .”
“What?”
“Made bigger than life, see?” Ed hastened to explain. “That priest was not just a priest. That preacher was more than a man of the cloth. And that detective’s son was more than merely some man’s son.”
“What were they?”
“Symbols of something hated,” Ed said.
Ruddy sighed, looked at his shoes, and then at Ed. “I’m the craziest chief of police in the whole United States,” he said slowly.
“Why?”
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“I’m sitting here and letting you talk to me,” Ruddy grumbled.
They both laughed.
“Well, if you think somebody else can talk with more sense, then—”
“Go on with your theories,” Ruddy ordered.
“Now, this transfiguration business,” Ed observed. “It needs explaining—”
“I’ll say it does,” Ruddy scoffed playfully.
“Say, Ruddy, were you ever in love?”
“Yeah. But what has that got to do with it?”
“Plenty. Do you recall how you felt when you were in love?”
“It was great, man. It was out of this world.”
“Good. Now, can you recall just how the girl looked to you.”
“Great, I told you.”
“No. What was there about that girl that made you love her?”
“Gosh, everything. Whenever she looked at me, she sent me. That’s all.”
“Okay. But that didn’t happen to others around her, did it?”
“No. I guess some other guys were after her, but I won her.”
“Do you think her mother saw her as you saw her?”
“No. Her mother wasn’t in love with her the way I was,”
Ruddy pointed out.
“And her brothers?”
“No. They didn’t see her like I did.”
“Her other relatives?”
“No. They were not as excited as I was.”
“Good. You transfigured that gal,” Ed stated.
“Now, just what in hell does that mean?” Ruddy demanded.
“Psychoanalysts call it overestimating the object,” Ed explained.
“What? To me she was worth more than she was to others?”
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“You could put it that way.”
“Ed, are you being cynical?”
“No. Factual.”
“Now, how was this priest, this preacher, and this detective’s son worth more to somebody—so much more than to others that he killed ’em?”
“What I’m getting at, Ruddy, is that hate also transfi gures,”
Ed said.
“Oh.” Ruddy snickered. “I thought you were going to say that I was the murderer.”
“You’re murdering my logic,” Ed complained. “Now, do you get what I mean by overestimating?”
“Yeah. I get you. Go on.”
“Now, Ruddy, men do that more than women,” Ed said.
“That’s why I’m settling on a man for our murderer. Women don’t write Bibles. Not many women write novels.”
“Thank God.”
“Men are the crazy creatures who want to go to the moon, not women.”
“I see.”
“The world’s great painting comes from men.”
“Hunh huh.”
“Men are always imagining something bigger, richer, more powerful than it is, and then going and trying to grab it,” Ed analyzed. “A woman would have cussed out that preacher and had done with ’im. A woman would have gossiped about that priest and left ’im alone. A girl would have cried about Heard’s son and suffered in silence. A man acts. He’s compelled to. The world a man sees differs drastically from that seen and felt by a woman.”
“Okay. I buy that, Ed. I felt all along that a man did it, maybe more than one. I don’t know. The reason why I asked you to
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keep on theorizing was that I wanted additional facts to go on,”
Ruddy rumbled. “Now that we are looking for somebody in the masculine half of the human race, you might try to narrow our search by trying to plumb the motive for those murders.”
“Wheew,” Ed whistled. “All that in one evening?”
“Yep. You’re being paid—”
“This is overtime,” Ed grumbled, grinning. “Well, what kind of motive? That’s hard. Here we have three separate murders, five victims, and no evidence. We have to find a motive that fits all three crimes. Now, for the sake of simplicity, let’s rule out those women who were killed. They seemed to have been there by accident. There were two different women in two different slayings. But there were three men in three slayings.
And each time there was a murder, the women seemed to have dropped out of the clouds to be at the side of the men victims.
My feeling, based on those facts, is that the murderer was not after the women at all. But how could he kill his intended victims and get away without killing the women. So, in looking for a motive, I’m ruling out the fuss and noise of the newspapers, that is, that the priest and the preacher were surprised in love trysts, see? After all, there was no molesting of the bodies of the women. That’s strange. In a lot of cases the muggers will at least lift the woman’s skirt and get a look. They always have time for that. Some even make ’em lie down and submit before killing ’em. But there’s absolutely no evidence in that direction.
>
All right, the man or men wanted to kill only the men; the slaying of the women was incidental.
“Now that brings us to a queer problem. What kind of motive will fit those three killings? Could the same woman have been in love with both the priest and the preacher and the detective, taking revenge on his son? Could she have hired a man to do all three killings?
It is too far-fetched. I can’t think that any such thing has happened,
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not knowing life as I do. If such happened, then it was indeed something weirdly coincidental. I don’t think it happened.
“Was there an anarchist with a grudge against men of religion?—and I’m now saying that the killing of Heard’s son was to forestall his finding the real murderer. If it was an anarchist, why didn’t he go for heads of states? Why religious people? I would rule out anarchists. Their acting in such a manner is atypical.
“Communists? No, I don’t think so. They go for the tools of production. Why kill religious men and bring down on their heads a full tide of terror? The Communist always deals with masses of people, not individuals. If a Communist had a grudge, he would have gone to the slums of either the Black Belt or to the trade unions to preach his message of revolt. Rarely do they bother with the bourgeoisie, and most surely not preachers of either of the two big branches of the Christian religion. The Communists are rivals of the Church, so why would they do something that would stun and horrify the followers of the Church?
No, they wouldn’t. Instead, they would try to show those followers that it was the Church that was committing the horrors.
I’d think that the fascists would follow the same general course, only they’d be preaching myths instead of ideology. But there was no preaching in these murders or even the hint of them—”
“You spoke of these murders being a kind of language,”
Ruddy reminded Ed.
“Yeah. I’m keeping that in mind,” Ed said. “These murders were shock tactics. They were designed to make masses of people both take notice and recoil. Notice how crime fell off sharply after the murders? That was one of the aims.”
“Jesus, Ed,” Ruddy complained, “how could you or anybody know that?”
“I don’t say the murderer or murderers consciously aimed
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at that,” Ed conceeded. “Maybe deep down they were aiming at it unconsciously—”
“I was waiting for that goddamn word, ‘unconscious,’”