By Reason of Insanity (79 page)

He would never be locked up again. Never. He wasn’t crazy. No matter what else came, he would never be locked away again.

In his dream the woman pursued him relentlessly. He had nowhere to run, no place to hide. She hounded him, followed him, dogged his footsteps. Wherever he went she came. In her hands was a box. She wanted to put him away in a box. He didn’t want that. He kept running, she kept gaining in close pursuit—

He woke up in a cold sweat, his eyes closed, seeing the woman standing over the frightened boy. In her hand the great whip rose and fell endlessly. There were no sounds, never any sounds as the long lash cut into the boy’s bare skin. And the whip hand rose and fell …

With frantic effort Bishop flung open his eyes.

On the TV screen Johnny Carson was smiling and mugging for the camera, expertly leading the beautiful people through their paces. Bishop looked at the clock by the bedside. It was after midnight and would soon be the dawn of a new day.

His day.

It had already begun.

Five months ago at this very hour he had walked out of the prison camp. Just walked away and started a new life.

Now he would do it again.

He reached out for the phone.

In the St. Moritz, Adam Kenton caught it on the first ring. He had been waiting all day for this call. Dreading it too. After a moment he announced himself, adrenaline shooting through his body.

The voice on the other end was distant, metallic, funereal.

“
It has already begun.
”

He heard the soft click as the line went dead.

AT THE 13th Precinct the message was quickly relayed to a quiet home in Queens. A light switched on in an upstairs bedroom. Alex Dimitri, instantly alert, listened carefully and then ordered central command to be notified immediately. There was little else that could be done without more information. He cursed softly so that his wife wouldn’t be disturbed.

Adam Kenton had been right about Bishop again. The lunatic planned something to celebrate his five months of freedom, something he apparently had already begun. But what was it?

What
had he already begun?

Kenton didn’t know either when Dimitri called him from the precinct an hour later. He was still a bit angry over the telephone taps, especially since he hadn’t been told until almost noontime, but at least he got Bishop’s words out of it. He regarded that as only fair.

It was obvious that Bishop intended to be cryptic, Kenton now told Dimitri, so they would have to wait for the first fearful reports.

Kenton also knew that Bishop was becoming even more conscious of his public image, more determined to have things set right. Maybe he really was preparing for his capture and triumphant acceptance into society, loved at last. All unconsciously of course.

Did he really think that—

Could anyone be that crazy? Even unconsciously?

EXCITED BEYOND endurance, convinced that his time was at hand, the man who loved women put on his dress and all the rest of his clothes, determined to continue his conquest immediately. He would stalk the hotel halls during the early morning hours, much as he had once stalked unseen down the California land on a dark and rainy night. A slight shift in plan perhaps but a necessary one. He would use the telegrams again during the day until his work was done. But for now he would patrol his preserve, picking off the stragglers and any who might have strayed too far from the fold.

With face fixed and wig in place, Bishop cautiously opened the door and stepped into the empty hallway. His knife was in the shoulder bag, as was the room key taken from the woman’s purse. He would return in the morning for a fresh start.

The door closed softly behind him.

ALICE TROOP might have had one drink too many by her own count but she didn’t really care at the moment. It had been a good party and she had enjoyed herself. Good people, good conversation and even a few indecent proposals politely refused. For a thirty-nine-year-old divorced woman just three months in New York out of a Midwestern mini-city, friendly and bright but not especially attractive, it wasn’t a bad evening. She had looked forward to the convention party for weeks, and had not been disappointed. Now she looked only for a good night’s sleep. Nine o’clock would be coming up soon.

For Alice Troop it would never arrive again.

Key in hand, she got off at the twelfth floor and started down the hall. She saw the woman coming out of a doorway up ahead of her. Wasn’t that the fire exit? She mentally shook her head. Couldn’t be. In front of her own door she stopped, smiled as the woman passed.

Her key was in the lock and she began to turn it. She heard nothing as hands reached out for her and something flashed in front of her eyes in the last second of life.

The door was pushed open and the body flung inward, squirting blood everywhere. Bishop quickly grabbed a sweater draped over a chair and wiped the blood from the door and sill. The next moment he locked himself in the room with the corpse.

FRANK O’GORMAN returned from his second tour of inspection at 2 A.M. The night security man, he had been with the hotel eight years and had a few stories to tell. He had often thought of writing a book about his adventures in a woman’s world. Maybe someday when he retired.

Coffee in front of him, he sat in his small basement office and glanced up occasionally at the screen showing the various floors in the building. O’Gorman shook his head in disgust, a habit he was getting into whenever he looked at the newest security device. Something else for him to do. In between all his other duties he now had to watch a dozen damn floors on a silly screen. He turned the knob quickly, zipping through all of them. Nothing seemed amiss, as usual. The Ashley was a well-run building. Thanks mostly to himself, O’Gorman mumbled modestly, and went back to reading his
Daily News
.

AT 2:55 Beth Danston came home to her ninth-floor single with private bath and was surprised by another resident, who engaged her in conversation at her door. She was dead at 2:57.

At 4:10 Cappy McDowell finally got back from a midnight supper with a special friend who had a 7 A.M. flight out of Kennedy. He was the pilot and had to be there at 5 A.M. By then Miss McDowell was dead.

At 6:40 Emma deVore got up and went out for two pumpernickel bagels and a pint of heavy cream from a nearby gourmet deli that opened at 6:30. It was her morning custom to combine a brisk walk with breakfast. Good for the digestion. She returned at 7:15 to the tenth floor and was never seen alive again.

Bishop had taken several brief catnaps during the night and now, back in his fourteenth-floor corner room, he felt as if he would never sleep again. Excitement amounting to frenzy was driving him on just as it had all those months ago when he left the prison camp.

He glanced at the television, the
Today Show
smiled back at him. They were interviewing somebody who had done something or not done anything. He wished he could get interviewed like that. He had plenty to tell them, tell everybody. Only nobody wanted to hear what he had to say. They’d read of him in the papers, but they wouldn’t sit down with him and talk rationally about what he was trying to do. He had no one to talk to; in the whole world he had no one. His father was dead. So was his mother, whom he loved dearly. He was always and everywhere the outsider. No one wanted him or cared for him.

So what? He didn’t need anyone. He was smarter than everybody. And they all knew it. Which was why they feared him.

It was after eight o’clock and he would soon be starting his rounds. Just like a doctor on TV. This was his hospital and he took care of people.

No, this was his prison camp and he took care of people.

He went into the bathroom to put on a fresh face.

This was his day.

HENRY FIELD was starting his security shift in the basement office. He turned the TV control knob slowly; most of the floors had activity at this hour. When he got to the fourteenth floor he noticed a woman with something in her hand standing in front of a door, apparently waiting to gain entrance. No one else was in the hallway at the moment. The incident registered on his mind as he shifted to another floor.

Upstairs, Bishop had tried three rooms in a row, all unsuccessfully. He did not understand what women were doing at nine o’clock in the morning that they couldn’t answer the door. As it was, he had to be careful of those waiting for the elevator. Several times he had been forced to walk by them and around the bend. He was sorry he would be missing those who left the hotel but someday he would catch up with them somewhere. He was certain of that. The world was only so big.

In the basement Henry Field again ran through the floors. He regarded the TV security system as an invaluable aid, one that freed him from unnecessary foot patrol and allowed for much greater surveillance.

On the fourteenth floor he saw the same woman in the hallway, this time pausing in front of different doors as though listening for sounds. He watched as she stood in front of one for some moments, then moved on to another.

Henry Field was a good security man, and experienced. He knew all the signs. His hand automatically went out for the phone.

The first report of a 10-31 possible burglary in progress came in to the 19th Precinct on East 67th Street at 9:12 A.M. Tuesday, December 4, 1973.

Twentyfive

THE RAIN had begun shortly before dawn, a light drizzle that looked as if it might last all day. Black clouds hung overhead as the barometer dropped, bathing the city in harsh shadow. Everywhere darkness lingered long after daybreak, and by the morning rush hour it was obvious that New York was in for another dreary December day. Raincoats and umbrellas were the fashion as workers trooped to their jobs and schoolchildren sloshed along the curb or climbed into waiting buses that matched the yellow of their slickers. Though no one could have known of course, a raging inferno that had blazed out of control on another wet and weathered morning some five months earlier was about to come crashing down in final fury around the broken bodies of some of its victims.

Now, as the drizzle dampened people’s spirits and turned traffic to a crawl, a police car whined its way into 61st Street between Park and Lexington and swerved to a stop in front of the Ashley. The hotel security man met them in the lobby and all hurried into a waiting elevator. They hoped to catch the suspect in the act, if indeed a burglary was taking place. The police had their doubts, based on past experience with security personnel. Still, a women’s hotel like the Ashley was a good spot for a female thief. She would blend right into sheer invisibility.

Bishop was to do even better.

BILL TOROLLA didn’t trust
anybody
, which was probably why he liked the security business. Coming out of the Marines at twentyfive, he had tried any number of peacetime jobs but they all seemed tame and unexciting to a man who had served in the secret Intelligence branch of the Corps. At age twenty-nine he went to work for a small New York firm that specialized in premises protection. He liked the work and soon moved to a larger company where he found more challenge. After several years he left to form his own outfit but undercapitalization did him in and he lost whatever investment he had made in the try. It was back to a job, and the Ashley had looked good at the time.

Now, after four years as backup security man on the day shift, he wasn’t so sure it had been a good move. He was thirty-seven years old and there was little chance for any advancement. Henry Field had the number-one spot and there wasn’t anything else. What he needed, Torolla kept telling himself, was a bigger place, and lately he had been thinking of making the rounds. In January after the holidays he intenaed to do just that. But this was only early December and so Bill Torolla went through his normal duties, all second nature by now. Only Torolla’s natural mistrust of everything kept him on his toes. While Field was upstairs with the cops he started on a credit check.

BISHOP WAS back in his room, forced to retreat by women waiting for the elevator. He saw now that he had started his rounds too early. Either that or too late. This way he would miss all those who went to work or out sightseeing, which seemed to be most of them. But at least it would make things a bit safer for him as he snared those others who remained. And after all, sooner or later he would get to everyone, every last one of them. So where in the world could they go to escape their doom?

Meanwhile he would wait until after ten o’clock before venturing out again. Then he’d have the rest of the day to himself to work undisturbed. In all likelihood he wouldn’t be finished by evening so he would work all through the night, gradually descending until he had gutted the castle and stripped it of its demons. He already had made a good start and the blood lust was rising within him. He would not, could not, stop now, not before his vengeance was complete. At least for the moment.

Thomas Bishop was certain that the world would well note and long remember what he did here.

But even he in his infinite megalomaniacal wisdom did not expect monuments to be built to him. Not yet anyway. He knew it would take time for people to understand what he was trying to accomplish. And he had lots of time.

He looked at the clock by the bed: 9:25 A.M.

THE POLICE found nobody on the fourteenth floor, not in the hallway or on the fire stairs or even in the rooms that Henry Field checked with his passkey. They knocked on doors. Where the woman was home they apologized. Where no one answered they entered. Nothing seemed amiss.

Many were already gone at this hour, mostly to business, though tourists often preferred an early start in their attack on the city at large. The last room they investigated was at the end of the corridor and around the bend. A woman came to the door dressed in a bath towel, with a sweater hastily thrown over her shoulders. On her feet were fluffy white slippers. Her head was wrapped in a towel and her face smeared with cold cream. She had just taken a shower and was getting herself made up.