By Reason of Insanity (42 page)

“That will be difficult.”

“Try your best.”

“What about Grimes? Where does he fit in?”

“Fred will give you all the help he can. He’s our crime expert and knows everybody on both sides of the fence. Technically he’s your superior but on this job he’ll do whatever you say. He’s already been told. Does that bother you?”

“No, as long as he plays it straight.”

“Fred’s a good man. He can be a lot of help.”

“What’s the chain of command?”

“You report to me directly. No one else.”

“Is that an order?”

Perrone looked at him sharply. “If it has to be.”

“What about Dunlop?”

“I’ll handle him.”

“And Klemp?”

Perrone thought for a moment.

“Him too,” he said finally.

“How many know about me?”

“Six from the magazine know we’re going after Mungo. Dunlop and his aide Patrick Henderson; my executive editor, Christian Porter; Mel Brown, who heads up Research; and Fred and me. From the corporate side, Mackenzie of course, and Otto Klemp. And the group vice-presidents for magazines and newspapers—they had to be told. That’s about it for the moment.”

“Ten little Indians,” said Kenton thoughtfully.

“Some of them are big.”

“Ten little big Indians.” He grimaced. “I want a list of everyone with their titles. If I’m playing I want to know who’s sitting at the table.”

“You’ll have it this afternoon.”

“And keep them off my back. I’ll have enough to do without them hanging around.”

Perrone nodded.

“One more thing,” he said softly. “Martin explained why we want this project to be top secret. Besides the usual competitive reasons, we can’t afford to get involved politically right now in anything that even smells like press manipulation. What he didn’t explain was where that left you. If you’re picked up for interfering in police business or withholding information or for any kind of covert operation, we can’t help you.”

“I figured that,” said Kenton.

“As far as the company is concerned,” continued Perrone, “you’re doing a story on Mungo and that’s all. In practice, of course, the magazine will call for your release and have its legal staff in court. But as to any provable criminal charges—”

“I know,” said Kenton mechanically. “If I’m caught I’m on my own.”

“In this particular case I’m afraid that’s about it. Naturally there would be some financial arrangement made if that happened. And of course a job when you returned. But I just wanted you to know what you’re up against.”

“I think I already know what I’m up against,” murmured Kenton.

Perrone stood up, obviously relieved. He walked to the door. “Do your best on this, Adam. If you get to Mungo before the cops do, he’s worth his weight in gold to all of us.” He turned the knob.

“By the way,” called the gold digger from his desk. “Just for the record, who picked me for this impossible assignment?”

“I did,” said the managing editor on the way out. “Me and Fred Grimes. We figured it was a job for a superman.”

The closing door brought with it a quietness that swept through the room. In due time Kenton shook himself out of his deep reverie and left the office. Through the lunch-hour streets he fought his way over to P.J. Clarke’s where he had a filet of sole and a bottle of beer. He saw no one he knew. Although surrounded by people in the crowded restaurant, many of whom were no doubt in the communications industry, he felt himself more alone than he had ever been in his life and he wondered at that moment if Vincent Mungo, wherever he might be in Gotham City, felt that way too.

Had he really been Superman, his X-ray vision could have told him that Vincent Mungo was indeed in the city and no more than a mile from him, his phenomenal hearing might have picked up Mungo’s soft humming as he attended to business, his blinding speed could have propelled him swiftly to the site, his incredible strength would perhaps have prevented still another murder and mutilation.

Because he was not Superman he did none of these superhuman things and would not learn of Mungo’s latest outrage until the evening news. Meanwhile he ate his lunch in silence and took a cab back to the office. On his desk he found a stack of clippings about the California killer, the beginnings of what he had requested earlier, and he began going through them methodically. After a long while the phone rang.

Chief of research Melvin Baker Brown had given him the two best researchers on the staff. They were already at work getting things he wanted. And if there was anything special he needed, or if he ran into informational difficulties, he should just give a call. What’s that? Yes, that shouldn’t be too hard to work up. A little strange perhaps but hell, everything on this one is strange. Sure, he’d have it in the morning. Hopefully. When? No, that’s impossible. The whole thing has to run through the computer. That’s right. Okay. Will do. And good luck, hear?

He replaced the phone and returned to his reading. Every so often he made a note on a sheet of paper; eventually the page was filled. Before starting another he lit a cigarette and smoked quietly. As he finished, the door opened. It was Fred Grimes.

“Been delegating a little authority upstairs,” Grimes began jovially, “just in case I get stuck down here in the pits. Always wanted to do that.” He sat down in front of the desk. “How goes it?”

“Feeling my way.”

“Uh-huh. Bet you don’t feel so good right about now.”

“I’ve felt better.”

“Amen.” Grimes grew serious. “I know they think it can be done, especially John and Martin Dunlop, and they got you all wired to do it. But what do you think?”

“I was just going to ask you the same thing.”

Grimes stared at him a moment. “You want it for real?”

Kenton nodded.

“I don’t think you have a chance in hell.”

“Why not?”

“The guy doesn’t kill for any of the normal reasons of personal profit or revenge or even love. He picks on strangers. That means he can strike anywhere. So you got no motive. Without motive you can’t look for opportunity. So you got nothing. If he doesn’t make a mistake he can go on forever. Or retire like Jack the Ripper. If he slips up, the cops grab him. So what chance have you got?”

“That’s about the way I see it,” said Kenton. He sounded discouraged.

“You can always quit.”

“No good. They’d just say I was Vincent Mungo in disguise.”

Both men laughed.

“Now that you mention it there are no prints, and with a face change you could almost pass for him. A little old maybe.”

“Killing ages a man, haven’t you heard?”

“Well, you must’ve had your share, all right.”

“Thanks, pal.”

“Seriously, I’m glad you’re going to give it a try.”

“Even though there’s no chance?”

“Even so.” Grimes crossed his legs. “You’re the best they got here, and somebody should be doing this kind of investigative reporting. It’s what the business is really all about. Or should be anyway.” He smiled, embarrassed. “So where do we start?”

“At the beginning.” Kenton pointed to the papers on his desk. “I’ve learned a great deal already this afternoon. The Rockefeller profile, for instance, suggests—not concludes, just suggests—that Mungo might be killing only women out of hatred for his mother rather than love of his father. Unconsciously of course. His notes indicate he’s emulating Chessman and that’s obviously what he thinks. But when it comes to violence, hate is usually a much stronger motive than love. Now I think, you see, that the doctors might just be right. It’s something I never even thought of when I was doing the L.A. stories on Mungo. Maybe it’s the thing everybody’s missed in searching for him.”

“Sounds good for a start.”

“There’s more. I checked the ages of the victims. All were between seventeen or eighteen and about forty—roughly the child-bearing age. No little girls, no older ladies. Just women who could have children.”

“So he hates women and children.”

“That’s not all. From my earlier work on Mungo I know about the mutilations, stuff that never got in the papers in any graphic detail. It was mostly the sex organs and the breasts, the things for reproduction. Hacked to pieces. Just butchered beyond belief.” He paused. “You begin to see what I’m getting at?”

Grimes thought rapidly.

“Mungo murders and mutilates women who could bear children because he unconsciously hates his own mother. He hates her because of something she must have done to him when he himself was a child.” He glanced over at Kenton behind the desk. “How’d I do?”

“Good so far.”

“There’s more?”

“He’s killing now,” Kenton said slowly, “because he’s reliving the horror of whatever it was the mother did to him when he was a child. Or I should say he’s still living in that horror. He still sees himself as the child, defenseless against attack, unable to protect himself.”

Grimes saw it. “But now he’s a man and able to protect himself. He’s killing women who could be mothers like his own mother.”

“No!” Kenton smiled. “He’s not a man, not in his own mind. He’s still the child living the horror and doing whatever the terrified beast in his nature can do to survive.” He smiled again. “When pushed for survival we all revert to animality, you know.”

“But you can’t have him literally living as a kid,” objected Grimes, “and killing as a man. You can’t have it both ways. He’s either trapped in that phase of his childhood and living it over and over just as it happened, or he’s not. If he’s in it, then he’s living it exactly as it was. So he couldn’t very well go around killing women unless he—”

His mouth sprang open in shock.

Their eyes met.

“Exactly,” said Kenton softly.

Grimes sat very still for a long moment.

“You’re not serious,” he said at length.

“Very serious.” Kenton lit a cigarette. “He killed his mother somehow as a child and now he’s killing her over and over again. He can’t help it. He’s locked into that period of his life. For him his childhood is right now, right here in the present. He’s caught in it and he’ll go on feeling the terror and doing the killing until he’s stopped. Only now it’s much more complicated because of sex. He feels the sex instincts of the man and that gives him some of his drive.”

He took a deep drag of the cigarette.

“Also it’s much more dangerous now. Whatever his mind thinks in that insane part of it, he is physically a man with a man’s strength and cleverness. The murders prove that. Wherever he’s been since childhood, however many years that might be, he’s developed a cunning that borders on sheer genius. He was obviously born with a high intelligence; his letters indicate that. They’re expertly disguised, for one thing. Put that together with an absolute animal cunning for survival and you’ve got somebody brilliant enough to kill his way crosscountry while laughing at the police. Think of it. He leaves clues, he writes letters, he announces his intentions. And still he’s not caught.”

He paused, lowered his voice.

“What he’s done, I think, is to let the rest of the world in on his desperate struggle for survival. That’s the Chessman angle, as I see it. He might sincerely believe that Caryl Chessman was his father; I don’t dispute that. But he’s unconsciously adapted that as his cover story. He’s correctly gauged Chessman, at least from what I know of the man. His flashy arrogance, his hunger for publicity, his drive to be recognized. And he’s trying to be like Chessman, to do what Chessman would do if he were here. Or what he
thinks
Chessman would do. That means of course that he believes Chessman was guilty twentyfive years ago.

“Now the two things are feeding each other. He survives by killing women who are his mother, and he kills women in celebration of his father. In the process he’s turned into a monster that may be unique in crime, at least for America.” He ground the cigarette in an ashtray as smoke flared from his nostrils. “What we’re up against, don’t you see, is an incredibly brilliant psychopath with the emotions of a terrified child and the animal instinct to live, caught in an eternal moment in the mind but where the deed is endlessly repeated in the real world.” He shook his head in wonder at the thought. “The ultimate human killer. Seemingly normal, entirely functional, and totally, irrevocably programmed for mass destruction.” He looked at Grimes across the desk. “A hundred like him, you know, could destroy a whole country.”

The late afternoon rain had already started, as promised by the morning weather forecast. Drops the size of quarters splashed against the windows and ran down the glass to form small puddles on the casement ledges. In the wet streets below, solitary travelers sloshed homeward or toward the nearest safe refuge. Across the New York sky darkness gathered early in the face of the storm.

Fred Grimes rubbed his hands together in nervous reaction. When he spoke his voice crackled, as though he hadn’t used it in a long time.

“Vincent Mungo’s mother died when he was fifteen. She choked to death on some food. Whoever you’re talking about, it’s not Vincent Mungo.”

“No,” said Kenton in a tone of absolute conviction, “it’s not Vincent M ungo.”

In the distance thunder could be heard, but Grimes was oblivious to everything except his own breathing in the closed room.

“Who then?” he asked eventually.

“I don’t know.” Kenton shrugged helplessly. “It could be anybody.”

“That’s how he’s been able to get around so easily. No one even knows what he looks like.” It was not a question.

Kenton nodded.

“He could be somebody Mungo went to after his escape, somebody who took over the identity. Mungo could be hiding now, living a quiet life somewhere. Or most probably he’s dead, killed by the impostor.”

Grimes eyed the papers on the desk. “You got all that just from reading about him?”

“I’ve been thinking about him for weeks, asking myself where such maniacal hatred came from. Now I see it’s right there in the profile. His mother. Something she did to him, but it had to be while he was very young. That’s when any of us is most vulnerable; by the time we grow up we have other resources we can use to fight back. That insane kind of hatred had to come in childhood. If what he’s doing now is a reenactment of that time, as I think it is, then it means he killed his mother originally. Or tried to kill her. Only he can’t admit that to himself, no one could. I’m sure he’s blocked out the memory, and right now he believes he’s always loved his mother.” He sat quietly for a few moments. “God only knows what he thinks happened to her. Or what he’s using for a substitute.”