Murder Old and New
Page 4
“Do you know why? Why he committed suicide?”
“Yeah. His daughter just ran off, oh, maybe a week before. I heard she was pregnant, but I don’t know if that was true. And his wife had died a few months before that, so I guess it was just too much for him.”
I looked at the photos of poor Elmer Bingley. They seemed no less terrible, but sadder now. Before they were a horror, now they were a tragedy.
“I like to think the old days were better days,” I said. “And maybe they were in a lot of ways. But they still had their share of misery, didn’t they?”
“Sure did. Nah, you’re better off just listening to the music and watching the movies. You don’t want to think too much about the people back then who listened and watched, because they had things they needed to escape from just as bad as folks got today. Maybe worse.” He thought for a moment, then added, “You don’t hear about things the way you do now. Back then people sorta suffered in silence.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” I looked again at the bent legs, the feet flat on the ground, and tried to imagine giving myself up like that, letting myself choke to death when all I had to do was stand up to stop the pain and save my life. “How could you do that?” I whispered so softly that Uncle Ralph, right next to me, didn’t hear.
“You want those, take ’em,” he said, gesturing to his photos of the crowd. “Now that I see them again, I don’t like having them around. Throw them away if you want.”
I nodded my thanks, though why I was thankful for more pictures of a hanged man, I didn’t know. I stuck them all in the envelope, put them in my purse, and tried to forget about them.
By then, Aunt Sue had dinner ready, and I feasted on more homemade pork and sauerkraut than I had a right to. When I finally put down my fork and glanced at their Nehi wall clock, I would have leapt up if I’d been able to. “Oh my gosh,” I said, “I hate to eat and run, but I’ve really got to get to the auction.”
They understood, and within minutes I was driving out their lane. The tools were going to go on the block first, thank God, so I thought I’d make it to the auction house in time to bid on the collectibles, and I did. I even had time to check out everything pretty closely while farmers and handymen and a few dealers bid on everything from scythe snaths to checkering tools, whatever they were.
There were a few things in my line, but unfortunately the condition was dreadful. A toy tin rollercoaster was flaky with rust, and the 78s were all classical albums and well-played at that. The 45s were of the Vaughn Monroe and Perry Como school, and though I grew up on Perry and loved him dearly, there’s not much of a market for his worn singles.
The box lots of books were equally dismal. Most were of the religious or handyman encyclopedia variety, but I brightened a bit when I saw a box with a thirties vintage Argosy pulp magazine on top. There were several dozen of them in the box, along with a pile of old high school yearbooks at the bottom. That made my day. The only thing harder to get rid of than high school yearbooks are Readers’ Digest condensed books.
An odd thing about the pulps, though, was that each one had a small hole in the upper left that went the whole way through the magazine. Curious, I saw an older woman whose proprietary air made me think she was part of the family, so I asked her if she knew what had caused the holes.
“Oh, Dad used to nail those up to insulate the garage,” she said, as though I was foolish not to realize it.
Well, the garage mustn’t have gotten much rain, because except for the holes the magazines were in fine condition, and I knew I could get at least ten dollars each, and much more for the several issues with L. Ron Hubbard stories from some California Scientologists who had sent me their Hubbard want list.
The box was the only thing I bid on, and I got it for twenty dollars. If I had come up for only the auction, I would have been annoyed, but visiting Uncle Ralph had put my mind at rest about the photos.
Or had it? As I drove home through the cold darkness, woods pressing close on either side of me, I thought again about Elmer Bingley and his poor twisted neck, bent legs, feet flat on the ground.
How could he do that? How could anybody do that?
The halls are so quiet at night. Long after everyone was asleep, nobody heard me go down the hall to her room again. But it isn’t really her room, not anymore. She’s gone. I had delivered her.
I stayed outside the room for the longest time, listening to Esther snore. I laughed softly to myself, remembering how she snored last night when I did it. I remembered what it was like with Enid, just like I remember when it happened before.
And it’s going to happen again too. I wonder how many I can visit at night, before it’s over.
Chapter 4
By morning, all my tossing and turning and thinking had made up my mind for me. You couldn’t do it. There was just no way you could hang yourself by bending your knees. No matter how badly you wanted to die, once you started choking you’d straighten up automatically, wouldn’t you? Well, I would. And I was willing to bet the price of a consultation that Doc Mead would agree.
I’m going to come right out and say it—I adore Doc Mead. I didn’t go to him until I lost my job with Weaver Publications back in 1999, and I could no longer take advantage of the anonymous and uncaring HMO they had in place for us, where you were guaranteed a brand spanking new doctor every time you went in. During my four years of employment there, more men saw me naked than Sharon Stone. Not that they got that excited about it.
But when downsizing decided to cut me down to size, I took my friend Winnie’s advice and paid a visit to Doc Mead the next time I got sick. True, he made me wait forty-five minutes, but Winnie had warned me, and I’d brought along a book. It was worth the wait, though, when he came into the examining room and greeted me with a warmth I would have reserved for either my very best friends, or patients with a week to live, who really needed support.
Doc Mead is like Dwayne, my favorite mechanic, who starts my car, listens for three seconds, and then tells me it’s the intake manifold. Doc knows my body (in the most respectful way) and can tell by my symptoms and a two-minute exam what particular bug’s at me this time. He doesn’t believe in antibiotics until you’re at death’s door, so whatever I have usually just runs its course anyway, but it’s nice to be fussed over.
Another great thing about Doc Mead is that he used to be Buchanan’s assistant coroner before he decided that it took too much time away from his private practice. So, if you’re dead, he can tell what killed you. And if anybody would know how people hung themselves, it would be Doc Mead.
And I should add another bonus—Doc looks kind of like a bald William Powell, maybe a few years after the last Thin Man movie, but before he played a doctor himself in Mr. Roberts. An old smoothie with a dapper moustache and a velvety speaking voice.
I called Doc’s office after I got to the store at ten and made an appointment for 5:30 that afternoon. I was going to a movie with Ted that evening, but I thought I could get out by at least eight.
Before you raise your eyebrows, the movie with Ted was not a date. We regularly took in a film and occasionally had dinner together. I was comfortable with him and he apparently was with me (except when he had to use the men’s room). We always said goodnight afterwards and never even so much as held hands. Hell, he knew better than to even take my arm crossing a street.
The workday seemed longer than usual, since this was one of the rare Fridays that I didn’t go to the Gates Home. A local church singing group had co-opted my usual after-lunch time. I didn’t mind a bit. It would be nice for the residents to hear some live music, and they’d appreciate me all the more when I showed up the following Tuesday.
I arrived on time for my 5:30 appointment, and Doc Mead finally came in to my exam room an hour later, gave me a big hello, and looked at my chart. Then he looked up at me curiously. “‘Malaise?’ You have ‘malaise,’ Livy?”
“No. I lied. I just said that to get in and see you, but I’ll
be glad to pay for the call.”
He looked puzzled but amused. “What’s this all about?” I was sitting on the examining bench, and he sat on a stool across from me. His bald head looked ruddy and healthy in the bright light.
“It’s about these,” I said, handing him the envelope with the photos. I didn’t warn him that they were strong stuff. Anybody who had seen drowning victims and shotgun suicides wouldn’t be fazed by Elmer Bingley’s protruding tongue.
He made a face anyway, and looked at the pictures distastefully. “Unpleasant,” he murmured. “Where did these come from? They look old.”
I told him about finding them in Daddy’s book and what Uncle Ralph had told me about Elmer Bingley. “I know this happened ages ago,” I said, “but I just don’t understand how somebody could hang himself that way.”
“You mean without being suspended,” Doc Mead said, and I nodded. “And maybe if that’s the case, this isn’t a suicide at all, but a murder made to look like a suicide.”
Although that was exactly what I thought, I started to shake my head in denial, but the doc went on.
“Sorry, Livy,” he said, “but you’re wrong. It’s actually very easy to hang yourself, and you don’t have to jump off a chair to do it. In this case, if the man just let himself sag, the weight of his body would contract the rope around his throat, cut off the blood to the brain, and asphyxia would start immediately. He’d lose consciousness and choke to death. He wouldn’t even have the option of straightening up again.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Once the noose draws tight, you can’t escape. One time I examined the body of a young boy who was hanging the same way as this. His friends said that he’d been talking about what it’d be like to hang yourself, just kidding around, and he apparently tried it. Tied a rope around a barn rafter, put a noose around his neck, and then sagged to feel what the rope would do. The pressure put him right out, and he choked to death.” Doc Mead looked at the pictures again. “Of course, there was a slight difference between that death and this one.”
“What’s that?”
“The boy’s neck wasn’t broken. This fella’s is.” He held out the enlargement of the shot my father had taken of the back of Elmer Bingley’s neck. “See how the head is so far over on the shoulder? Two or three of the top vertebrae have to be broken for that to happen. And though this man might have easily enough hung himself by slumping down, there’s no way it would’ve broken his neck.”
I felt a chill. “Wait a minute. Are you saying that…he didn’t kill himself?”
“I’m saying he didn’t break his neck unless he jumped off of something.” He flipped through the pictures again and handed them back to me. “Do you see anything he could’ve jumped from?”
I didn’t. There were no rocks in sight, and the limb to which the rope was tied was low enough to reach from the ground. What’s more, it slanted upward from the trunk so sharply that Elmer would had to have been a monkey to climb up it.
Doc Mead went on without waiting for my answer. “Now unless this man had a ladder and jumped off of it, and it was removed before these pictures were taken, then I’d suggest this might be, how shall I say, an assisted suicide.”
I chuckled in discomfort. “Was Dr. Kevorkian around back then?”
“Unlike my usual self, Livy, I’m quite serious. The only way these injuries could’ve occurred was if he either jumped from somewhere or someone grabbed him and pulled very…” His voice trailed off and his gaze went far away.
“What is it, Doc?” I asked, afraid he was having a stroke or something equally dire.
His eyes continued to look at something not in the room. “I was just thinking of something. Something that happened a long time ago.” Then he was back, and looked at me and smiled. “It’s a long story, and I’ve got three more patients in the waiting room. Can you hang around till 7:30 when we close? Maybe we could have a cup of coffee and a sandwich and I could tell you about it.”
I agreed and left. Blessed man, he didn’t charge me for my office visit. I called Ted to change our show time to 10:15, and then went back to the waiting room to wait for Doc Mead.
7:30 became 8:00, as was typical with Doc, but finally the last patient left and he came out bundled against the cold, leaving the receptionist/nurse to lock up. We went across the street to a little 24-hour deli, where I told him it was my treat. Over sandwiches and coffee, he told me the story.
“When I was assistant coroner,” he began, “some of the old-timers at the police station used to talk about old crimes, unsolved ones mostly. One they’d come up with time and again was the Hangman Murders. Now this was a series of killings that started in the mid-1930s and went on all the way into the 50s. Maybe even later, who knows? Maybe he started hiding his victims.” Doc shook his head, his features filled with disgust. “They were sex crimes, very nasty. I don’t want to go into detail, but the M.O.—that’s modus operandi—“
“I know, Doc. I watch CSI.”
“Well, what this…person would do was to string up his victims. Actually hang them. Always out in the woods somewhere, all across Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, as far west as Indiana and as far east as Jersey. The ones they found—and some weren’t found until months later—had all died of broken necks.” He looked away. “He would hang them, choke them, and then break their necks…at the end. I’m sorry, Livy, I don’t like talking about this. It’s just that this man in the pictures you have, well, it seems to be just the way I heard that those women died.”
“And they never caught who did it?”
“No.”
“How many…died?”
“Over the years they found fourteen. But like I say, there may have been more.”
“Do you really see a connection?” I asked.
“You said this happened in 1934?”
“That’s what my uncle thought.”
“The first hangman murder was in 1935.”
“So maybe whoever did this,” I thought aloud, “liked it.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” said Doc Mead softly. Jumping hell, I was pole-vaulting to conclusions, and we both knew it. Doc tapped the photos. “The only thing that seems certain is that this man had some help in hanging himself.”
“If he hung himself,” I said.
“All right, if. But, Livy, even if this man was murdered, it was, what, seventy-five years ago. If the killer was in his twenties then, he’d be in his nineties now, assuming he’s alive. And if he was older, say a friend…or rather an acquaintance of the victim, he’s surely been dead for years. And as I say, even if you could tie this to the Hangman Murders, which seems terribly unlikely, those killings stopped over fifty years ago. No, whoever did this, and whoever committed those other killings, is long gone.”
I didn’t see how Doc could be so unexcited about all this. “But don’t you want to know, Doc? Aren’t you curious?”
He shook his head. “Nope. The only things I’m curious about these days are if Mr. So-and-so’s lump is benign or malignant, and if Mrs. Whatsit is going to be able to get pregnant, and a couple dozen other things, any one of which is a lot more important than how this fella met his end seven decades ago, which is, I might add, before I was even born.”
Doc handed the photos back to me, patted his lips with a napkin, and politely stifled a belch. “Thanks for the pastrami,” he said. “I hope it was worth it to you.”
“It was.”
“This advice will be worth more. Just forget about all of this, Livy. Toss those photos away and just forget it.”
“But you used to be a coroner,” I said. “How can you just dismiss a crime like this?”
He sighed. “All right then. By all means, don’t do what I suggest. Instead put every bit of your energy into finding out who killed, uh…”
“Elmer Bingley.”
“…Who killed Elmer Bingley. And then when you do, go visit the killer’s grave and waggle your finger at it.”
Doc raised a furry eyebrow. “You think he had something to do with Elmer’s death?”
“You’re impossible, Doc.”
“No, merely improbable. Go ahead, Livy. Don’t let me spoil your fun. At least you won’t be able to get into any danger.”
That much sounded like the truth anyway.
I said goodbye to Doc and went home and changed before I met Ted for the movie. I don’t mind confessing that I felt a combination of excitement and creepiness that was almost erotic, though it had nothing to do with my anticipated close proximity to Ted. Well, okay, maybe just a little.
But what really had me hot and bothered was this mystery. I felt like Nancy Drew—more like the Hardy Boys, really, since I thought their adventures were a whole lot cooler than Nancy’s when I was a kid.
Ted’s place is only ten blocks from the store, and I picked him up a half hour before the 10:15 show. We always take turns driving so that it feels less like a date and more like two buddies, or chums, to remain in the Hardy Boys vernacular. Gone are the days when we could walk to the movies from downtown. When I was a little kid, Buchanan had a flotilla of movie theatres up and down Queen Street—the Boyd, the Capitol, the Grand, the Fulton, and more—all of them big and fairly opulent. Now we have a choice of 16 movies, but they’re all in the same theatre, a multi-screen chain cinema in a strip mall that charges $8.50 for an evening show and $4.75 for a small popcorn. You need a map to find the right screening room and Wet Ones to clean the dried guck from your shoes when the movie’s over.
Ted lives on a quiet cross-street above a pastry shop, and his apartment is the homiest-smelling place imaginable. He was standing under the shop awning when I arrived, watching the buns and cookies in the window slowly turning stale. He gave me a wave and climbed in.
I hate driving the van around town, since it guzzles gas like a Humvee, but I can only afford one vehicle, and I need the van for the store. So, we lumbered through town, heading for the outskirts, and I told Ted about the Elmer Bingley pictures, and then about the Hangman Murders.