By Reason of Insanity (71 page)

In his favorite easy chair at home, Henry Baylor sat and thought about things for a long time. Bad enough he had to take the humiliation of being removed and demoted. But he was about to be cast in the spotlight again as the man who let the fiend escape, this time a fiend who had been in his custody for years and who had fooled him completely.

It was, he finally decided, the last straw.

THE FATHER of Mary Wells Little had seen the face on television the previous evening, on the news. It belonged to someone named Thomas Bishop. He and not Vincent Mungo had killed all those women, one of whom was Mary Wells Little.

Her father continued to stare into his private vision of hell at this early morning hour. He would not be cheated out of his revenge. No! He still wanted his daughter’s killer. Only the name had been changed, and the face he was paying to destroy.

But he would not be cheated.

THE MEETING started at 8:30 Saturday morning in police headquarters. In command was Deputy Chief Lloyd Geary, at his side was Alex Dimitri. They faced almost a hundred police officers from captain to sergeant. Most were detectives of various grades. Less than half were from Homicide. The rest came from Robbery and Rape and Vice and Narcotics. Even Juvenile and Administration, The Department was throwing everything it could into the search.

Geary began with a brief background of Thomas Bishop, running through the killing of his mother and his years at Willows State Hospital in California. There he grew up on television and learned a lot about the world outside, much of it the wrong kind of thing. He was immensely clever and resourceful. As a boy he had apparently been mistreated by his mother to the point where his mind eventually snapped. Now he was either killing women out of revenge or he was locked into his childhood and killing his mother over and over. Either way it seemed he would not, could not stop by himself. He must be stopped by others. The police. Them.

The pictures were ready. A drawing of Bishop, clean-shaven, and the bearded photo from Daniel Long’s California driver’s license application. More would be run off during the day. By nightfall all precincts in the city would have enough pictures for local distribution.

Geary closed his remarks with the observation that the Police Commissioner expected a quick end to the reign of terror. Everybody was feeling the heat and nobody liked it. That very morning his own wife had told him to be sure and get the son of a bitch. In thirty-one years of married life, Geary hastily explained, he had never heard his wife use that language.

Alex Dimitri took over and rapidly went through procedures and assignments. Afterward he noted that Bishop had withdrawn $8,000 from the bank, enough money to move around. At least that much, maybe more. Which was a piece of bad luck. On the other hand, it might make him leave the city or even the state. He might already be gone. He had told the bank official he was returning to Chicago. But unless such a move was definitely established, the search would continue.

If Bishop remained in the city without identification he would soon be caught. The inspector was certain of that. But if he already had another identity he was now using—.

Dimitri let the thought hang.

The meeting finally ended at 9:40, after specific assignments had been given out.

The hunt was on.

IN HIS lair across the river the fox lay on the bed, his eyes vacant, his mind blank. Opposite him, a flower print broke the bareness of the white wall. On an end table next to the bed a plastic-covered shade dulled the glare of the lamp. Two wood-backed chairs rested in the far corner, and near the window the polished dresser mirror cleverly gave the small room added dimension.

Bishop noted none of this. His eyes opened and shut automatically but nothing registered. Nor did anything disturb his dormant brain. In truth Bishop was in a trance of his own making, a self-induced semihypnotic state that served to bring all his functional parts back to normal. It was a survival trick he had learned slowly and painfully many years earlier at Willows. Oftentimes when he was confused or frightened or helplessly angry, he would put himself in a kind of stupor where outside stimuli were blocked along with all mental processes. Time briefly stopped for him as his body and mind sought a new equilibrium. Eventually balance would be restored and everything returned to normalcy. In his institutional life it had saved him many times from rash acts that would have brought quick and painful punishment.

This latest trance was triggered by the news of the past twentyfour hours. When he had first heard about it on Friday afternoon he refused to believe such a thing. They simply couldn’t have discovered his real identity. Impossible! He was too smart for any of them. Yet there it was, on the TV, in the newspaper. His own name. With a drawing that certainly resembled him. Then by nightfall the license photo from California.

Because of his error he had expected them to get to Jay Cooper and then to the house. Which meant they would also secure a description of him from the landlord. But he assumed they would think him Vincent Mungo. They would show a picture of Mungo to the landlord, and because of the full beard worn by his new tenant and the certainty of the police he would say yes.

Just to be on the safe side, on Thursday evening in his YMCA room Bishop had dyed his hair dark and cut it short, then shaved off much of his beard until only a trim goatee remained. With the heavy hornrimmed glasses, he looked different enough to cause no suspicion. Now, with a general likeness of his own face everywhere, it was doubly important that he appear as different from it as possible.

What had confused him, what frightened and angered him was their discovery that he was not Vincent Mungo. That was not supposed to happen. He had planned everything so carefully. Vincent Mungo was free, Thomas Bishop was dead. Yet they had found him out. He was no longer invisible. He was Thomas Bishop, son of Caryl Chessman. Everyone knew about him, The only safety he now had was his new identity as Thomas Brewster.

On the Friday late news he learned how he had been discovered. Too shaken to go out for a late paper, already having read the brief story in the afternoon
Post
a dozen times, he relied on the television, his lifelong mentor, to give him whatever knowledge he needed. Huddled in bed, he watched a magazine reporter named Kenton tell of the month-long search for the elusive killer and the series of events that had finally led to Greene Street. He had earlier heard a police inspector say that capture was imminent and they were already following up leads.

Now, as Bishop slowly came out of his hypnotic state on this sunny Saturday morning, his body and mind restored from the stormy emotions that had swept over them, his nerves soothed, he began to evaluate his position and to plan his moves, not as a fox in jeopardy but as the hunter in control again.

He was relatively safe in his new quarters for the moment. The day clerk had paid little attention to him and he had no dealings with anyone else. His money was equally safe, temporarily. But he would soon have to change his residence of course. New York police were checking all hotels, probably even recent apartment rentals. When nothing turned up, somebody might get the idea of asking surrounding towns for help. Even so, they would be looking for those who had registered this past week so he was presumably safe again.

Still, he couldn’t afford another mistake. The best plan would be to remain in the Y for about a week and then move to a New York hotel, after the police had finished checking them all. Some of his money would be used up that way but at least it would get him back into the city, where he could continue his work. Nothing could be done in his present town since they would immediately go after the hotels.

There was one other alternative. He could move on, now, this very day. Leave the New York area completely. Go to another city with his money and his knife. He was supposed to keep moving anyway, that was the plan. To be here and then gone, like the wind itself. Unseen, known only by its effects, by what it left behind.

Except there was nowhere left to go. He had come three thousand miles across a hostile continent to New York, to Mecca, where there were more people, more females, than anywhere else. A cramped, spaceless city where anonymity was virtually assured. He could’ve been safe forever if he hadn’t made a dumb error. Bars with women on every block, and around every corner another town. New York was heaven for him, a city of ghouls and demons, and he longed to send them all straight to hell.

Where else would he be in such demand for his specialized skill?

Bishop thought of the places he had been, the things he had seen. None of them compared to New York for what he needed. And the other big towns on the East Coast were obviously just cut-down versionsof New York. Only Miami sounded interesting, perhaps because he had once been David Rogers of Florida. He thought he might like to go there someday to see about the women.

The TV was on as always, and when a special news report interrupted the regular programming Bishop turned his eyes and ears to it while his mind held onto a thought.

THE POLICE Commissioner looked out over the cameras. He didn’t particularly like a live broadcast at eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning.In point of fact, he didn’t particularly like the idea of a news conference at all, especially in such a sensitive matter. But the mayor and city officials had felt it would help allay public fears concerning Chess Man.

A family man himself, the commissioner well understood the emotion and how debilitating it could become. He wished he could somehow dissipate the fear and ease the pain. But only Chess Man’s death or capture would do that, and he was unfortunately not in a position to announce either one.

What he could do, however, was bluff a good game and tell New Yorkers that his police had strong leads. Which was not entirely false. They knew, for example, that Thomas Bishop had at least $8,000 on him. If he had no new identification and couldn’t put the money in another bank, maybe he would be dumb enough to show it around, and somebody would spot it for the police. Or he could be mugged for it. Maybe even killed. They also knew he might be on his way back to Chicago and out of their immediate responsibility. And of course they finally had his prints as a sure means of identification. In fact, they knew everything about him except where he was.

The Police Commissioner smiled warmly and began the press conference in his most confident manner… .

AS HE listened on the TV to the head of the New York police say there was no place he could hide, Bishop decided on his next move. He would go to Miami for a week and then return to New York where he would live in a hotel. Miami would be better than staying in his room, since the day clerk might become suspicious if he passed by too many times. They had his new name and he had to protect that identity at any cost. Once gone, there would be no need to think of him or even remember him. He would just leave the Y quietly, unnoticed, throwing the room key down a sewer.

An hour later Bishop was on his way to Newark Airport. He was wearing his one set of clothes, his only worldly possessions again. The television set had been left behind. In his pocket were a thousand dollars he had kept out of the bank. He felt a sudden sense of excitement in once again being on the move, and he wondered if his original mistake had been in settling down at all. As much as he had liked the loft, as much as he wanted a place of his own in which to live safe and secure, perhaps he was destined, doomed, to travel endlessly on his eternal quest. Maybe after all the years he was now fit only for that kind of existence. The thought depressed him almost beyond endurance.

At the airport he bought a one-way ticket to Miami under a fake name. Sometime during the afternoon he was lifted into a shimmering sky by a silver bird that flew southward. Bishop soon found himself relaxed and smiling on his maiden voyage. His only worry was that the silver bird might fly too near the sun.

BY SATURDAY evening Adam Kenton was already well into the story he was writing on the unveiling of Thomas Bishop. He had just three days to deadline. Mackenzie wanted it in the next issue of course, as did everyone. With John Perrone’s blessing he had shelved his article on Senator Stoner, but only for a bit. He intended to have that ready for the following week. To Kenton it represented a one-two punch that would be the high point of his career thus far. The downfall of two invidious men of power. It would rank second only to the Watergate investigative series by Woodward and Bernstein.

Power, as Kenton knew so well, came through fear as much as from publicity. Bishop, or Chess Man, held the power of life and death. In killing indiscriminately he had demonstrated a willingness to use that power to its fullest, Hence the fear, which only increased his hold over others. This was the same principle used in political power, with its built-in system of rewards and punishment. What Kenton railed against was not the existence of that power but its misuse. For him that was Chess Man’s ultimate crime. And Stoner’s. And that of any leader who flouted the law, or ordered the destruction of a city or the extermination of a people.

Misuse of power. Kenton was always fearful that he would himself be guilty of that if given the chance. And so he ran from any real personal power, and perhaps all responsibility as well. Alone and powerless, he fought the demons in himself by constantly exposing the demons in others, for in truth he saw only a difference in degree between himself and a Stoner or a Nixon. Or even a Chess Man,

Concerning Chess Man, he was pleased about solving the mystery of identification. Certainly John Spanner had helped, and also Amos Finch. But even so, that was only half the problem. Where was the man now? When would he strike again? Kenton believed he had made a bad mistake by not finding his prey in time. Now he had no leads, nothing to go on except his knowledge of the man, his feelings and instinct. He would have to start all over again.

Something within warned him that he was running out of time.