By Reason of Insanity (55 page)

To him it sounded downright illegal. Not in giving preferential treatment to a particular reporter—that was done all the time—but in taking money for it. Even money given for a nonprofit fund. He knew nothing about corporate tax law but he was sure it couldn’t be deducted as a business expense. Which meant there was something wrong with it.

He didn’t intend to be caught in any squeeze play. When he got the 13th Precinct on the phone he told Deputy Inspector Dimitri he wanted to see him at four o’clock. Yes, at headquarters.

DEPUTY INSPECTOR Alex Dimitri didn’t like the offer at all. He had listened to his superior’s views on the matter and had agreed with him that it would be foolish to involve the department in any money deals with newspapers or magazines. On the other hand, investigative reporters sometimes got information denied the police and could thus prove useful. Geary believed an agreement should be made with the reporter for an exchange of ideas. Nothing more, and no discussion of money. Just an exchange of ideas and information. It wouldn’t hurt and could help.

Dimitri was in charge of the task force. He was an experienced detective and homicide expert, rising rapidly from the ranks in a brilliant career. He made few mistakes. Industrious and imaginative, he allowed nothing to interfere with his various pursuits. Which was why he had been given this latest assignment. That, and because he had enemies in high places. Or so he was firmly convinced.

Back in his command post at the 13th Precinct, he called the number given him for Adam Kenton. He would tell the man that the department was willing to cooperate to the extent of sharing whatever was known. Maybe Kenton had something he could use. After three days he already saw that Vincent Mungo was going to be a bitch to find.

AT HOME that night Alex Dimitri wrote a letter to a friend in Washington, a high police official like himself. They had met years earlier at an FBI course for metropolitan police and had kept in touch, writing regularly and seeing each other every few years.

Toward the end of his brief letter Dimitri mentioned his new assignment to capture the notorious Vincent Mungo. He also told of the
Newstime
offer and his suspicion that the magazine was trying to get Mungo for the publicity value and just wanted to see how much the police knew. He never did trust investigative reporters. What kind of a job was that for a grown man?

THE CALIFORNIA congressman was having a good time at the party, the first he had attended in at least two weeks. Though parties went on continuously on the Washington political scene, several every day of every year, the congressman had just got himself a new mistress, a pretty little thing from the Senate office staff, and she was keeping him busy.

At one point in the evening he talked to someone on the Committee to Reelect the President and remarked in passing about the supposed
Newstime
story on Vincent Mungo that focused entirely on Caryl Chessman. He had received a mailgram about it from one of his people back home. “Probably nothing,” he said to his acquaintance, drink in hand. “Who cares what happened to Chessman? It was all a long time ago anyway.”

The committeeman, who drank only club soda with a squeeze of lime, cared quite a bit. Eisenhower had been president when Chessman was killed. The execution was put off a couple of months so Ike could visit South America without running into mass demonstrations, always a sore point with the enemy even after all these years.

And who had been Vice-President under Dwight David Eisenhower?

The committeeman left the party a bit early. He had a memo to write. Most especially in view of the fact that
Newstime
was presently considered to be strongly in the enemy camp.

IT WASN’T so much that she worried about her friend, but New York could sometimes be a scary place for a girl alone. Which was one reason they talked on the phone almost every day and even had the keys to each other’s place. Just in case.

She had things to tell her friend, girl talk about the new job and the boy she had gone out with who had the most incredibly big… she just couldn’t get used to the word cock, and always blushed when she said it. She wished there was a better word for it.

She had called several times the night before and a half dozen times earlier in the evening. No answer. Her friend would normally have been home from work long ago. Probably staying over with some guy, she thought as she climbed the two flights. Still, she was here now. Might as well knock on the door, in case the phone was off the hook or not working.

When she got no answer she decided to use the two keys. It was silly, but why not? Maybe her friend was sick or had passed out from those damn pills she was always taking. First the Segal, then the Fox lock. That was the right order.

The kitchen light was on. She looked at the huge calendar with the male nude over the tiny breakfast table. He was not as big as the boy she had the other night. She shivered with remembered delight. It really did make a difference if they were extra big.

She instinctively reached up to tear off the daily sheet. It was no longer Wednesday. In fact Thursday was almost over, and soon it would be Friday, October 26. Only a month to Thanksgiving and two until Christmas. She liked Christmas, but another one so fast! At twentythree she was getting too old too fast.

The lights in the living room were on too. There was a half-empty glass of wine on the end table by the couch. She walked past it toward the bedroom. The door was partially open, the light off

She ran her hand along the wall and found the switch as she turned her face into the room.

Seventeen

“JESUS!”

The first homicide detective to arrive from the special task force closed the bedroom door softly, as though he were in a funeral parlor, and walked noiselessly over to the couch. The wine glass was still on the end table. What he had just seen filled him with a certain dread. Thirteen years on the force, eight of them a detective involved in murder, and he had never seen anything like it. Earlier in the week he had wondered about the fuss made over one crackpot killer. Why all the heavy attention? Now he knew.

At that moment he would have killed the man with his bare hands, easily and without thought. Stripped the skin right from his body, as was done to the girl in the bedroom. And worse.

He shook his head, trying to focus on the others in the living room. Two beat cops from the 6th Precinct, one a sergeant, and the building’s superintendent. Did they feel what he was feeling? Did they sense the evil still lurking in the room? It was real, and he knew if he reached out he could touch it. He hoped he wasn’t going to throw up.

His mouth was dry and his hands shook slightly. He was not the man to believe in devils. In his experience the devil always turned out to be somebody with a motive and a sadistic nature. Now he wasn’t so sure. The thing responsible for what was left in the bedroom could as easily be beast as man, but a beast with human capabilities. And maybe superhuman powers for evil. If that wasn’t a devil, what in hell was?

He suddenly thought of the girl who had discovered the remains. She apparently had run screaming into the hall. Ten minutes later she was still screaming as she was gently led away. He expected the screams to be with her for a long time.

Upon his arrival the detective had put in a call for the deputy inspector. One look told him it was their man. Now Dimitri entered the apartment, his manner quiet, his voice subdued. It was nearly midnight and he had been home sleeping when the word came. He made good time over the Queensboro Bridge, the siren whining all the way downtown to Greenwich Village where the woman had lived. In the interim several other members of the task force had arrived, men still on duty, and they congregated now in the kitchen, their eyes studiously avoiding the nude male on the calendar as they discussed the murder in hushed tones. Hardened veterans all, they were nonetheless shocked to a man.

Dimitri got himself a glass of water from the sink and drank it slowly, staring into the transparent liquid. His headache was worse, and this latest massacre was not going to help it any. He couldn’t quite grasp the bestiality of the attack. He had seen classified photographs of some of the victims across the country, including the one in Grand Central and the prostitute on West 49th Street. But seeing it up close for the first time was—awesome; he could think of no other word for it. Something like this, if seen by the public and perhaps repeated two or three times, could easily lead to mass hysteria.

No pictures. That was the first clear thought as his police mind began to function again. Only the forensic boys. No reporters allowed in the apartment—nothing! After the lab was through the remains would be taken to the morgue, whatever was left. The press could shoot the place in the morning. Meanwhile he would make a statement.

Next order of business. A meeting of the task force heads at ten o’clock in the morning. Everybody. The killer must be caught, and quickly. There were other things that could be checked besides hotels and rooming houses. Maybe he got a cheap apartment or a car. They would look at recent electricity turn-on requests, new residence phone orders. Visit used-car lots and search through parking tickets and moving violations for any California identification. There were dozens of places that could be checked for new faces—where he ate or got his mail or banked or got a beer or a haircut—if only they had enough manpower. Dimitri had a feeling they would soon get all the manpower they needed.

After a while he sat on the couch and called his second in command at home on Long Island’s North Shore. One of the privileges of rank, Dimitri reminded himself, was to be inconsiderate to subordinates. Unlike Captain Olson, his assistant on the task force, he did not have a great need for country privacy. His home in Queens was separated from the houses on either side by narrow driveways.

“Another one,” Dimitri said when Olson finally came on the phone. He didn’t ask if the man had been sleeping, nor did he apologize for waking him up.

“Where?” asked a tired voice trying to rouse itself.

“Greenwich Village.”

“He’s moving around.”

“Worse than that,” said Dimitri slowly. “I got the boys checking but from the looks of it, she was not a prostitute.”

Both men knew what that meant. Killing prostitutes was one thing, easily overlooked by society up to a point. But the killing of a decent woman was an entirely different matter in police circles, which always followed public morality.

“That could be trouble,” suggested Olson. “Anyone see him?”

“Not yet but they’ll search more in the morning. The lab’s coming now.”

“Want me in?”

“Nothing you can do here,” growled Dimitri, “unless you want to see a real horror show.” He wished he hadn’t been reminded of what was in the next room.

“No thanks. I’m a family man.”

Dimitri stiffened. He was a family man himself, with four children to Olson’s two. That made him twice as good, and he resented the captain’s implication that he was a bloodthirsty voyeur. But he quickly swallowed his resentment. Olson hadn’t meant anything disrespectful.

“Get in a bit early if you can. We’ll have to fight off the media, not to mention headquarters.”

“The PC know about it yet?”

“I expect he’ll hear it from Lloyd Geary. Soon as I call him.”

He rang off and dialed the deputy chiefs home in Bronxville. Geary, watching a late movie, answered on the third ring. Dimitri swiftly explained what had happened. Would Geary notify the Police Commissioner? He would. And he would be in touch with Dimitri in the morning… . “What meeting? … Oh, yes, good idea. Fire them up. This thing had better be stopped now before it gets out of hand.”

Dimitri, visualizing the destruction in the bedroom, believed it was already out of hand. But he kept the thought to himself.

The local precinct cops had gone, some of the others were just leaving. Dimitri had no desire to be with the lab people, not while they were working inside. He had seen enough.

“Inspector?”

It was Murphy, the first to arrive from the task force. His eyes were red with fatigue, his mouth grim. He sat down heavily, slowly ran a hand over his jaw.

“What he done in there. Suppose the guy turns out to be—not human. I mean, suppose he’s something we don’t know anything about. Nobody knows. Maybe some strange kind of horrible animal.”

“You mean like the Abominable Snowman or Bigfoot?”

“Something like that. Only worse. Maybe it has the power to become human or even to hypnotize people to see it as human. Then it could never be caught or killed or—”

The look on the inspector’s face stopped him. Dimitri had much the same thought when he viewed the body—animal cunning and primeval savagery—but he realized it was not good thinking for a police officer. Animals didn’t make good suspects. Or good arrests.

“He’s human all right,” Dimitri said, “just barely. And we’ll get him too. One way or another.”

Their eyes met in understanding.

“One thing sure,” Murphy said, rising from the couch. “Whatever it is, it’ll never stand trial.”

AT 9:20 A.M. in Washington, D.C., in an office less than a half mile from the White House, a youngish man in a dark suit sat at his desk and read the memo for the third time.
Newstime
was preparing a cover story on Caryl Chessman, using Vincent Mungo as a front. Reporters from the magazine were digging up everything they could in California. In view of the fact that the President was Vice-President under Eisenhower at the time Chessman was executed, it could mean a major attack on the administration. The fanatical hostility of
Newstime
toward the Nixon people made it a strong possibility.

The man placed the single sheet on his excessively neat desk and smoothed it out carefully. The memo was from one of his staff on the Committee to Reelect the President. Even though it seemed a bit far-fetched, this was no time to take chances. The press was becoming increasingly vehement in its denunciation of the President.
Newstime
was a good example. A longtime Republican supporter going back to the days of Herbert Hoover, it was now a leading critic not only of Nixon but of his entire administration. In the past six months it had published four highly critical articles.