Kolchak The Night Strangler (7 page)

Step number one took me to Seattle’s Public Library at 1000 Fourth Street where I spent the remainder of the afternoon and the best part of the evening checking through their microfilmed collection of Seattle’s newspapers. The
Post-Intelligencer
had been founded in 1863, ten years before the
Daily Chronicle
. The
Times
, founded in 1896, was no help for the first series of murders. But I
did
add one promising piece to the puzzle.

As near as I could make it out, every set of murders had taken place over a period of 18 days. Even though the current murder wave was, but all accounts, one year early, the pattern had held thus far.

Which meant that our killer, whoever—or whatever—he was, had only eight days to find his last three victims.

Chapter Eight

Monday, April 10, 1972

That nights, at about 11:45, while I was walking around the Pioneer Square up one street and down another, the killer reduced his list to two. I was walking southwest on Janes Street toward Yesler Way when an unpleasant voice hailed me.

“Hold it right there, mister.

Across Yesler Way was a squad car, two cops sitting in it. One of them turned a flashlight on my face as I moved toward them. I walked around to the passenger side.

“You scared the hell out of me.”

“Identity, please.”

I flashed my press card. “Kolchak.
Daily Chronicle.
”

He shined his flashlight on the card, asked for the wallet, then told me to remove my other cards. I handed them to him and he went through them slowly, deliberately. He handed them back.

“What are you doing around here so late at night, Mr. Kolchak.”

I never got to answer them. There was some action down on Occidental and the noise came over the car’s radio: “We’ve got something in an alley between Yesler and Washington on Occidental. Units 14 and 16 move in.”

“Hold it!” I yelled as I grabbed for the door handle.

“The hell you say,” shouted the driver and off he went with me sprinting after. By the time I got to the corner and started down Occidental, whoever it was they were chasing had doubled back up the street and I tried to tackle him. He knocked me flat like a pro lineman and tore off down Yesler. Two squad cars on Occidental almost collided trying to follow him. Still on my knees, one trouser leg torn and short of breath, I checked my camera and strobe. They were intact, I heaved myself up and with what strength I had left went charging back the way I had come.

The figure was just turning northeast on First Avenue toward Cherry as I rounded Occidental and Yesler. By the time I got to Cherry I was joined by several other officers on foot. Schubert had had the area well staked out. I wouldn’t doubt he’d had officers for every block from the Alaskan Viaduct to Third Avenue.

Cherry was a mass of blinking red lights and sirens, curses and gunshots. I was breathing so hard a gray mist was beginning to form before my eyes. Goddamn hills!

Way up ahead the figure of a man in a dark overcoat and hat leaped down into what appeared to be a pit. We got there only a few steps behind and discovered a flight of stone steps off to the side of the street. I scrambled down the steps between several oversized minions of the law and tripped, sending the two behind me sprawling. One of them kicked me as he got up. Trouser leg number two: finished.

By the time I caught up, motorcycles had entered the fracas. I was following the action now and I didn’t know where I was or what direction I was running in. All I knew was that my camera was still unbroken and I was sure as hell going to get some photos of whoever we were chasing to shove down Vincenzo’s gullet.

In an alleyway—I’m not sure where—we had him surrounded and up against a fence. The first cop swung his riot stick at the man’s head, but the man blocked it nicely and drove him into the ground with one well-placed punch. Two more cops moved in, grabbed his arms, and lifting him off the ground, slammed him high into a nearby wall, scattering garbage and curses which echoed up and down the alley. Four more officers moved in from behind me and I noticed one had a pump-action shotgun. But no shots were fired because they already had their man.

I moved in and began to shoot my pictures. One of the officers tried to push me back but I brushed him aside. They were blocking my view, but I moved in anyhow. They had his arms pinioned but he was in the shadows and I couldn’t see much at all. Unfortunately, his legs were free. He caught me with a kick in the stomach and I went sprawling, still trying to hang onto my camera and my dinner, hastily gobbled at the library. I could taste the egg salad sandwich all over again. And blood. I must have landed on my face. Par for the course.

By the time I’d gotten to my feet the fight had somehow turned. One officer came flying my way and I shot a photo of him landing on one shoulder between two garbage cans. Shotgun moved in but hesitated because one of his partners was blocking his firing line. Not for long. Our suspect finished him off with a one-two combination that dropped him in his tracks and then he leaped over the cop’s prone body and grabbed shotgun’s weapon, smashing it across his head.

All of a sudden I was standing there alone, with a lot of sirens and lights behind me and a lot of cops unconscious or dead in front of me. And here came old Mr. Death for this poor old reporter. I was about ready to pass out, but I brought up the camera once more and got off one shot just as he lunged.

The strobe must have startled him, because I had just enough time to sidestep him as two more cops charged into the mouth of the alley firing their pistols. They weren’t waiting for me to get out of the way, so I hit the ground, still cradling my camera.

Our quarry picked up a garbage can in each hand and hurled them at the cops, then turned and raced for the fence, vaulting over it in seconds. He didn’t appear to have been hit but I couldn’t be sure. I had been lying face down in a puddle of muck in the center of the alley.

I got to my feet and discovered I was the only one moving in the alley. Those cops who remained were just lying about. They weren’t moving but several were bleeding profusely. I took several shots in rapid succession and then moved off toward the mouth of the alley. When I found my way to the street there was a group of policemen standing around three motorcycle patrolmen, scratching their heads. The squawk boxes on the cycles kept up a scratchy racket.

“Where’d he go?”

“
I
didn’t see anyone! I thought
you
had him. Get some meat wagons up here. We’ve got a lot of injured lying around.

“I never saw anything like this,” said one baffled sergeant.

I asked him, “Where could the guy go? You had this place sealed, didn’t you?”

“Who the hell are you? What’re you doing here? This is a police operation.”

“I can see that. Where did he go?”

“What did you say your name was, buddy?”

“Kolchack.
Daily Chronicle
.” I flashed my police pass.

“Hell, I don’t know. He could have gone anywhere. Up. Down. Anywhere.”

Up. Down…
that
set me to thinking.

I made my way back to the Blue Banjo and checked on tour times. There was one due at 1 a.m. I called Louise at Omar’s Tent and told her to get over to the Banjo as soon as possible, and to bring along a flashlight if she could find one. While waiting for Louise I called the
Chronicle
and gave rewrite my copy and had them send a messenger boy for my film. Louise came in just as he was leaving.

“You look terrible! Every time I see you, you look as if you’ve been rolling around in the gutter.”

“Correction. Alley and gutter. Did you bring the flashlight?”

“Right here. What are you up to?”

“High adventure. Or low,” I chuckled, sipping my White Horse. “In pursuit of hard facts for my old friend Vincenzo.”

We watched as a toothless old man who must have been pushing eighty struggled valiantly, but without dignity, to accompany the Banjo Band as a young man in a red blazer and plastic skimmer mounted the stage.

“Wasn’t that just wonderful, folks? Well, it’s almost time. Now …

“The Forgotten City Which Lies Beneath Seattle’s Modern Streets: That mouthful of a title was devised by author-journalist Bill Speidel. He’s the unofficial major of that city, being the founder of the Underground Tour and the only man in Seattle who’d care to be the mayor of sixteen square blocks of subterranean rubble.”

As he talked I watched Louise. She was fascinated. She had been Seattle for some time but had never been on the tour. Confession: My having her with me had little if anything to do with my chasing after a story.

I paid for our drinks and we got in the last spot in line as it filed slowly out of the club and down the street. The tour was supposed to take about two hours for the dollar ticket price, but it was curtailed a bit by a police sergeant who told our guide that the above-ground area was being cordoned off temporarily. Apparently no one else on the tour knew what I new and I tried to fill Louise in as we descended into the Stygian gloom through the entrance to that same building I had seen from the hot-dog stand. Every so often a dim, 25-watt bulb would break the darkness and you could see the bricks and stone of what had once been building walls, glistening with dripping water pipes, conduits, and more bricks. In some places there was less than six feet in head room. Except for the lack of wind it was just as cold down below as it was on the street level. It had gone down almost to the freezing level.

We came to what seemed to have been a cross street at one time, abandoned and looking much as it must have always looked save that it had a brick ceiling cutting it off from the sky. The only incongruous item in evidence was a bright, shiny, new trash can. The guide’s voice came drifting back: “Those kids from Cleveland High School spent five successive Saturdays in the spring of 1965 cleaning out no less than ten tons of debris so people on these tours wouldn’t break their necks while walking around… brace yourselves… here it comes again… ‘The Forgotten City Which Lies Beneath Seattle’s Modern Streets.’”

There was a general noise that passed for laughing approval and we moved on.

We reached another clearing after about five or six minutes and I could hear the guide droning: “Twice a day, when the tide came in, the sewer flow backed up and came in with it, converting every toilet into a fountain. Kids in those days weren’t raised on Dr. Spock. They were raised on tide tables.”

Another moment of appreciative laughter, this time a bit more enthusiastic. The tour moved on, but I took hold of Louise’s arm and hung back.

“What
are
you up to, Carl?”

Whatever it was I was looking for, I was sure I wouldn’t find it on the beaten path of the Underground Tour. So I looked for the
un
lit byways. It was like another world down there, a world of yesterday… the tomb of Old Seattle… The Seattle of Doc Maynard and Mary Kenworthy, of John Considine and his boxhouse hookers… a relic of an age now recalled only in watered-down films that were rarely as interesting as the real thing.

Louise and I peered in and out of abandoned furniture stores, millinery “shoppes,” and finally, thoroughly lost, came upon a very dark shop of some kind, far off the beaten track.

I tried to open the door but it was stuck. I handed her my camera and told her to train the flashlight on the doorway. Then I braced myself and gave a hard shove. It came open suddenly as its rotted hinges gave way. We both jumped.

Inside was a dimly outlined figure in wrinkled clothes just standing there in a half-crouch. A bright glare from a light somewhere inside hit us in the eyes. A light? Down here? I moved an arm. So did the man inside.

I turned to Louise, who was already giggling at me, and stared back toward the doorway in disgust. I was looking at myself in what must have been the cracked mirror of a barbershop.

Louise was laughing at me and hugging me. “You should just see your face, Carl. Do you look funny!” She kissed me.

“Well, this doesn’t make it al all. C’mon. Let’s find the group.”

We picked our way around the maze of streets, tripping over rubble, climbing through holes in walls and rounded a corner.

A hand reached out from behind a sewer pipe and grabbed me by the throat. I panicked and tried to pull away as Louise screamed and dropped the flashlight. The grip tightened. I started to black out and twisted slightly, slamming my right elbow into the man’s gut.

The man grunted and let go. I staggered away. He jumped for me again, and I hit my head on a wall. Down I went with him right on top of me. His breath was foul, reeking of cheap wine. I beat at his back and head and finally managed to roll him off me. He started to stagger up but I kicked out at him, catching him square in the middle of his stomach. Again the grunt. I scrabbled to my feet and gave him all I had with a right cross. He slammed back against the pipe with the sound of shattering glass just as Louise got the light on him.