By Reason of Insanity (72 page)

Twenty-two

“ADAM?”

The glare from the silent television screen reached out to Doris sitting up in bed, her legs jackknifed under her chin, her eyes looking down at the long darkened form lying next to her.

She kicked her legs out and lay down beside him. “You’re going to find Bishop, aren’t you?”

“If I can,” he whispered. “I practically had him and I let him go. If I had followed my original thought I would’ve got to him in time. I
should’ve
got to him in time. It was my fault.”

“Why’s he killing like that? I mean, what he does to them.”

“He’s crazy.”

“But only to women.” She shivered. “How could anyone hate that much?”

“Maybe he thinks he’s God.”

“God doesn’t hate.”

Kenton deftly rolled his body onto hers, his arm circling her waist. “How could he?” A low growl. “He made you, didn’t he?”

Much later he told Doris he would probably kill Bishop if he could. If he ever got anywhere near him again.

“Is there a chance?” she asked hopefully, her hand on his chest.

“There’s always a chance,” he answered unconvincingly, his hand resting on the fiat of her stomach. He couldn’t help thinking what Bishop would do to her body, those breasts, that abdomen. He shuddered. But was Bishop really so very different? He himself had often thought of killing women, especially in his more youthful years. Of torturing them and making them suffer. But that was just fantasy. Just typical male fantasizing.

Wasn’t it?

THAT WAS Monday night and Kenton had just finished the article on his search for the notorious mass murderer. He had begun in California four months earlier with a story on capital punishment and Caryl Chessman, just about the time that Thomas Bishop had escaped from a state mental institution housing the criminally insane. The journey then took both of them across the country over the next months, finally ending in a run-down building on Greene Street in New York City. Only it wasn’t really the end at all. Bishop, Chess Man, had escaped again.

The article would be the lead feature in the next issue, though not the cover story. Chess Man had already been given a cover in the person of Vincent Mungo and reader reaction had been critical, many accusing the magazine of sensationalizing the affair and thereby indirectly condoning his crimes. This criticism of giving undue publicity to a murderer was also repeatedly leveled at network television of course, as had been done the previous year in the coverage of the Charles Manson killings; but once again all such remonstrance seemed to fall on unconcerned ears. The public, as one disgusted critic put it, apparently had the right to know—and know—and know,

None of which bothered Adam Kenton. He had done his job, or at least part of it. Thomas Bishop was the chessman, the madman, the fox. Finally falling asleep that night, Kenton felt he was halfway home.

The next morning he awoke to the news that the celebrated killer of two dozen women had confessed. In the early Tuesday hours of November 20 he had walked into the 24th Precinct on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and calmly confessed to the murders. He had killed them all. Los Angeles, Phoenix, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, New York. And other places he couldn’t remember. Many of them, so many he had lost track. He was a killer. He killed women. A lot of women. He couldn’t help it. He was twenty-six years old and he couldn’t stop himself. His name was Carl Pandel, Jr.

By 8:30 Kenton was talking to Inspector Dimitri. Pandel was not their man. The poor bastard’s wife had committed suicide and he spent half a year in a nuthouse. He had even met and become friendly with Vincent Mungo while there. And he had left his own home in July to come to New York, at just about the time Bishop was escaping from Willows with New York as his destination too. But Carl Pandel was not their man. He didn’t kill anyone, certainly not the women.

Kenton quickly again ran through the investigation he had conducted on Pandel, which had cleared him of at least one of the New York murders. And if he didn’t kill them all, he didn’t kill any. Dimitri reluctantly agreed. The young man had been in an excited state when he confessed. He claimed he needed to be punished—which usually meant psychiatric help was needed rather than punishment. Yet he knew enough about Chess Man’s movements to be taken seriously, at first anyway. Nor could any confession be disregarded at the moment, no matter how improbable.

Dimitri sighed wearily. Pandel’s confession was only the first; more were expected. It went with the job. But for a while there, his had looked especially promising to the inspector’s men.

And Pandel now?

“In Bellevue for observation. They should have word on him by the end of the day. Maybe he just went over the edge a bit, happens a lot to that type.”

What type was that?

“A nice young guy. Very quiet, very polite. Maybe too polite, you know? That’s always a bad sign.”

Kenton laughed. The police mind saw suspicion everywhere. Next to them, real paranoids didn’t stand a chance.

He told Dimitri to treat Pandel with care. His father was a very big shot out West and he might not be so polite.

THE MURDER of Don Solis made all the California papers because of his recent publicity in the capital punishment controversy. On Monday Ding had called Kenton in New York to tell him that Solis was dead. He hadn’t heard.

“How’d it happen?”

“Dynamite. They wired his car.”

“Sounds like mob.”

Ding agreed.

“So we’ll never know for sure about Caryl Chessman.”

“Not from Solis anyway.”

Kenton didn’t bother to mention how he had originally tied Solis to Bishop. It was too late now anyway. Nor did he bring up the Son of Rapist idea that had seemingly spawned so much truth.

Ding meanwhile congratulated him on finding the madman. At least his true identity, which was more than anyone else had been able to do. Kenton was becoming a hero in California. Even Derek Lavery went around calling him one of the best. And taking credit for the whole thing of course.

Afterward Kenton wondered if the Solis killing had anything to do with Senator Stoner’s capital punishment campaign. It wasn’t a Chessman freak who got him or even a death-penalty hater. Dynamite usually meant the mob. But how could they be connected to Stoner through Solis? If anything, he had helped Stoner. Kenton soon decided there was no connection between the two, nothing he could use in his story on the senator.

In San Diego the murders of John Messick and Dory Schuman made only the local papers. It was a professional job obviously, an execution. Messick had been involved in any number of small-time illegal operations. Maybe he got in somebody’s way. Or got a little too greedy and had to be taken out. Police weren’t overly concerned and had no reason to look beyond their own areas. Homicide by persons unknown was the finding, and the case kept open in police files. Several years later a Sunday-supplement feature on the double slaying would trace the car that might have been used by the killers to a Los Angeles man, Peter “Pistol Pete” Mello. The car’s license number had been found in the slain woman’s handbag, scribbled on a scrap of paper. Mello, an ex-con with mob links, disappeared at the time and was never heard of again.

AT THE office on Tuesday morning Adam Kenton accepted delivery of several cartons of books and household items sent by the stringers from Red Bluff. They had bought everything left from the last home of Sara Bishop and her boy in Justin. Sara’s papers and writings had been sent earlier of course. Now here were the final belongings of the mother and son in two corrugated boxes bound with baling cord.

Kenton cut the cord and slowly removed the contents piece by piece. He examined each item, leafed through each book. It was all junk, worthless. Yet soon all of it would be valuable because of a woman’s tragic life and a boy’s hopeless descent into madness. The hardbitten investigative reporter was suddenly overcome with anguish that such a thing could happen. His crusted heart filled with despair as his hands grasped a worn leather strap, the hide frayed from use, the stamped name faded almost beyond recognition: Strongboy.

When he had finished his examination, he carefully placed the cartons on the floor against a wall. They would be given eventually to Amos Finch in Berkeley, most of the stuff anyway. Finch was collecting Chess Man material and would no doubt write a book on him. In which he, Kenton, would hopefully occupy a prominent place.

Kenton was not himself a collector, except of papers perhaps, and he fully intended to keep Sara Bishop’s pages about her life. Unless her son wanted them. They belonged to him.

And after him?

After Bishop there was only a blind and paralyzed paternal grandmother in Texas who had never seen the boy. He had already checked.

There was no one else. Thomas Bishop had no known brothers or sisters. And of course no children of his own.

He was the last of a line.

A line of warrior kings, thought Kenton in his own paranoiac fantasy. A noble and savage breed. And very rare.

Thank God, said his logical mind.

Amen, said the rest of him.

ON THAT same morning John Perrone phoned near Spokane, Washington, after having taken several days to decide that he owed the call to his close friend and mentor. In a few moments he was speaking to Samuel Rintelcane himself. Though almost a generation apart in age, the two men shared an ideological viewpoint that encompassed not only political and economic outlooks but social morality as well. It was Sam Rintelcane who had given the young Perrone his first boost up the ladder. And it was the same man who had once hoped that John Perrone would marry his daughter. It was not to be.

Now Perrone had to tell his good friend the bad news. Senator Stoner, his son-in-law, was about to be the subject of an investigative piece in
Newstime
that would probably crush any hopes for national prominence, if not do worse. He was apparently involved in some illegal business deals, among other things. There was a tape of him talking about himself and others, evidently made by a mistress. It was easily enough to warrant a further investigation of the senator by state governmental agencies.

Perrone said he would, naturally, try to keep the sexual aspects out of the story, in regard for Helena and the family, but as for the rest—

Rintelcane understood, His son-in-law had been stupid and had been caught. If
Newstime
didn’t publish the facts, someone else would, He was grateful that Perrone had told him in advance. Did he have permission to prepare his daughter for the shock?

Of course. And Helena should use her judgment about letting the senator know ahead of publication. Whatever she decided was all right.

It was a sad moment and both men wondered how the revelations would affect the senator’s wife. She had always been passive and unassuming, content to live in her husband’s shadow. She was not a strong woman, or so they believed.

Neither one knew how much Helena Stoner had already withstood in her sixteen years of marriage to a profligate and inordinately ambitious man. Or just how strong she really was behind her quiet demeanor.

BY EVENING a preliminary report was in on Carl Pandel, Jr. He evidently wasn’t dangerous or even crazy, at least by New York standards. Doctors at Bellevue suggested he was still blaming himself for his wife’s suicide two years earlier. They expected him to snap out of it sooner or later, Until then, his was a relatively harmless delusion except for the trouble it caused others. He was, they found, incapable of hurting anyone. He loved animals and children and, though shy, enjoyed normal relationships with his male friends.

They intended to hold him for another week or so, just to make certain of their findings. But his confession that he was the muchsought mass murderer of women was obviously based on total fantasy.

The Bellevue doctors further suggested that he be gently admonished and dismissed should his harmless delusion cause him again to confess to such killings. It was, they stressed, not an unusual occurrence for a person suffering irreconcilable guilt over the death of a loved one. In time those feelings would disappear and with them would go the delusion and other manifestations.

Kenton looked over the report given him by the inspector. It sounded reasonable to him, and just about what he had expected.

“I hope this hasn’t taken you from the real pursuit,” he said laconically.

Dimitri grunted in response. It had been five days since their fearsome discovery on Greene Street, and still no trace of Chess Man. Not a word, a whisper, a warning. Nothing. He had disappeared again. The inspector said as much.

“Not disappeared,” corrected Kenton, “covered himself, like the chameleon.”

“Covered himself with what?”

“With another identity.”

Dimitri wheezed. How many identities could one man have? And how did he get them all? By the time police found one he was into another. It was uncanny, unnatural.

“Got any suggestions?” he asked Kenton, exasperated.

No suggestions. No ideas. At least not for anyone’s ears at the moment. He had written the Chess Man piece and was now working on Stoner. That was crucial, In between he tried to see things the way Bishop would, He had a new name, that much was certain. Probably a New York name. How did he get it? From local outlets. Didn’t Fred Grimes say this was the center for the fake-identity racket? Or he could’ve stolen somebody’s wallet at the beach. In November? So a steam bath, or a gym, or a sex orgy. Maybe he was a homosexual. Easy enough to get a wallet that way. Or he could’ve gone to a cemetery and just picked out a name. Or the death notices in local papers. Or gossip in a bar. Or half a hundred ways a clever man could figure out. And whatever else he was, Thomas Bishop was a clever man. So clever he seemed to be able to get whatever he needed.

But how did he get physical possession if it wasn’t bought or stolen? He would need an address but not a mail drop again. Too risky. Had to be where he lived, except there was no place for him to live in the city. Not with any degree of safety. So where would he go? What would he do? Kenton didn’t know. He didn’t have the answers, not yet anyway.