Quentin Altman often told young officers who worked for him that a detective’s most important trait is persistence. He said in an even voice, “You’re the only one who can help us trace the book back to the killer. He destroyed the library computer so we don’t have the names of who checked out your book. There’s no match on the fingerprints either…. I want to catch this man real bad. And I suspect you do too, Mr. Carter. Don’t you, now?”
There was no response. Finally the faint voice continued, “Do you know that strangers sent me clippings about the killings? Perfect strangers. Hundreds of them. They blamed me. They called my book a ‘blueprint for murder.’ I had to go into the hospital for a month afterwards, I was so depressed…. I caused those murders! Don’t you understand that?”
Altman looked up at Wallace and shook his head.
The reporter gestured for the phone. Altman figured, Why not?
“Mr. Carter, there’s a person here I’m going to put on the line. I’d like him to have a word with you.”
“Who?”
The cop handed the receiver over and sat back, listening to the one-sided conversation.
“Hello, Mr. Carter.” The reporter’s gaunt frame hunched over the phone and he gripped the receiver in astonishingly long, strong fingers. “You don’t know me. My name is Wallace Gordon. I’m a fan of your book — I loved it. I’m a reporter for the Tribune here in Greenville…. I got that. I understand how you feel — my colleagues step over a lot of lines. But I don’t operate that way. And I know you’re reluctant to get involved here. I’m sure you’ve been through a tough time but let me just say one thing: I’m no talented novelist like you — I’m just a hack journalist — but I am a writer and if I have any important belief in my life it’s in the freedom to write whatever moves us. Now… No, please, Mr. Carter, let me finish. I heard that you stopped writing after the murders.… Well, you and your talent were as much a victim of those crimes as those women were. You exercised your God-given right to express yourself and a terrible accident happened. That’s how I’d look at this madman: an act of God. You can’t do anything about those women. But you can help yourself and your family to move on…. And there’s something else to consider: You’re in a position to make sure nobody else ever gets hurt by this guy again.”
Altman lifted an impressed eyebrow at the reporter’s sales pitch. Wallace held the receiver to his ear for a moment, listening. Finally he nodded and glanced at Altman. “He wants to talk to you.”
Altman took the phone. “Yessir?”
“What exactly would you want me to do?” came the tentative voice through the phone.
“All I need is to go through the fan mail you got about the book.”
A bitter laugh. “Hate mail, you mean. That’s mostly what I got.”
“Whatever you received. We’re mostly interested in handwritten letters, so we can match physical evidence. But any emails you got, we’d like to see too.”
A pause. Was he going to balk? Then the detective heard the man say, “It’ll take me a day or two. I kind of stopped… well, let me just say things haven’t been too organized around my office lately.”
“That’s fine.” Altman gave the author the directions to the police station and told him to wear kitchen gloves and handle the handwritten letters by the edges to make sure he didn’t mess up the fingerprints.
“All right,” Carter said sullenly.
Altman wondered if he’d really come. He started to tell the author how much he appreciated the help but after a moment he realized that the man had hung up and he was listening to dead air.
* * *
Andy Clark did indeed make the journey to Greenville.
He turned out not to resemble either a sinister artist or a glitzy celebrity but rather any one of the hundreds of white, middle-aged men who populated this region of the Northeast. Thick, graying hair, neatly trimmed. A slight paunch (much slighter than Altman’s own, thanks to the cop’s fondness for his wife’s casseroles). His outfit wasn’t an arm-patch sports jacket or any other authorial garb, but an L.L. Bean windbreaker, Polo shirt and corduroy slacks.
It had been two days since Altman had spoken to Carter. The man now stood uneasily in the cop’s office, taking the coffee that the young detective Josh Randall offered and nodding greetings to the cops and to Gordon Wallace. Carter slipped off his windbreaker, tossing it on an unoccupied chair. The author’s only moment of ill ease in this meeting was when he glanced on Altman’s desk and blinked as he saw the case file that was headed, Banning, Kimberly — Homicide #13–04. A brief look of dismay filled his face. Quentin Altman was grateful that he’d had the foresight to slip the crime scene photos of the victim’s body to the bottom of the folder.
They made small talk for a minute or two and then Altman nodded at a large white envelope in the author’s hand. “You find some letters you think might be helpful?”
“Helpful?” Carter asked, rubbing his red eyes. “I don’t know. You’ll have to decide that.” He handed the envelope to the detective.
Altman opened the envelope and, donning latex gloves, pulled out what must’ve been about two hundred or so sheets.
The detective led the men into the department conference room and spread the letters out on the table. Randall joined them.
Some of them were typed or printed out from a computer — but these were signed, offering a small sample of the correspondent’s handwriting. Some were written in cursive, some in block letters. They were on many different types and sizes of paper and colors of ink or pencil. Crayons too.
For an hour the men, each wearing rubber gloves, pored over the letters. Altman could understand the author’s dismay. Many of them were truly vicious. Finally he divided them into several piles. First, the emails, none of which seemed to have been written by potential killers. Second were the handwritten letters that seemed like the typical innocent opinions of readers. None of these asked for details about how he’d researched the novel or seemed in any way incriminating, though some were angry and some were disturbingly personal (“Come and see us in Sioux City if your in town and the wife and me will treat you to our special full body massege out side on the deck behind our trailer”).
“Ick,” said young officer Randall.
The final pile, Altman explained, “included letters that were reasonable and calm and cautious… Just like the Strangler. See, he’s an organized offender. He’s not going to give anything away by ranting. If he has any questions he’s going to ask them politely and carefully — he’ll want some detail but not too much; that’d arouse suspicion.” Altman gathered up this stack — about ten letters — placed them in an evidence envelope and handed them to the young detective. “Over to the county lab, stat.”
A man stuck his head in the door — Detective Bob Fletcher. The even-keeled sergeant introduced himself to Carter. “We never met but I spoke to you on the phone about the case,” the cop said.
“I remember.” They shook hands.
Fletcher nodded at Altman, smiling ruefully. “He’s a better cop than me. I never thought that the killer might’ve tried to write you.”
The sergeant, it turned out, had contacted Carter not about fan mail but to ask if the author’d based the story on any previous true crimes, thinking there might be a connection between them and the Strangler murders. It had been a good idea but Carter had explained that the plot for Two Deaths was a product of his imagination.
The sergeant’s eyes took in the stacks of letters. “Any luck?” he asked.
“We’ll have to see what the lab finds.” Altman then nodded toward the author. “But I have to say that Mr. Carter here’s been a huge help. We’d be stymied for sure, if it wasn’t for him.”
Appraising Carter carefully, Fletcher said, “I have to admit I never got a chance to read your book but I always wanted to meet you. An honest-to-God famous author. Don’t think I’ve ever shook one’s hand before.”
Carter gave an embarrassed laugh. “Not v
ery famous to look at my sales figures.”
“Well, all I know is my girlfriend read your book and she said it was the best thriller she’d read in years.”
Carter said, “I appreciate that. Is she around town? I could autograph her copy.”
“Oh,” Fletcher said hesitantly, “well, we’re not going out anymore. She left the area. But thanks for the offer.” He headed back to Robbery.
There was now nothing to do but wait for the lab results to come back, so Wallace suggested coffee at Starbucks. The men wandered down the street, ordered and sat sipping the drinks, as Wallace pumped Carter for information about breaking into fiction writing, and Altman simply enjoyed the feel of the hot sun on his face.
The men’s recess ended abruptly, though, fifteen minutes later when Altman’s cell phone rang.
“Detective,” came the enthusiastic voice of his youthful assistant, Josh Randall, “we’ve got a match! The handwriting in one of Mr. Carter’s fan letters matches the notes in the margins of the book. The ink’s the same too.”
The detective said, “Please tell me there’s a name and address on the letter.”
“You bet there is. Howard Desmond’s his name. And his place is over in Warwick.” A small town twenty minutes from the sites of both of the Greenville Strangler’s attacks.
The detective told his assistant to pull together as much information on Desmond as he could. He snapped the phone shut and, grinning, announced, “We’ve found him. We’ve got our copycat.”
* * *
But, as it turned out, they didn’t have him at all.
At least not the flesh-and-blood suspect.
Single, forty-two-year-old Howard Desmond, a veterinary technician, had skipped town six months before, leaving in a huge hurry. One day he’d called his landlord and announced that he was moving. He’d left virtually overnight, abandoning everything in the apartment but his valuables. There was no forwarding address. Altman had hoped to go through whatever he’d left behind but the landlord explained that he’d sold everything to make up for the lost rent. What didn’t sell he’d thrown out. The detective called the state public records departments to see if they had any information about him.
Altman spoke to the vet in whose clinic Desmond had worked and the doctor’s report was similar to the landlord’s. In April Desmond had called and quit his job, effective immediately, saying only that he was moving to Oregon to take care of his elderly grandmother. He’d never called back with a forwarding address for his last check, as he said he would.
The vet described Desmond as quiet and affectionate to the animals in his care but with little patience for people.
Altman contacted the authorities in Oregon and found no record of any Howard Desmonds in the DMV files or on the property or income tax rolls. A bit more digging revealed that all of Desmond’s grandparents — his parents too — had died years before; the story about the move to Oregon was apparently a complete lie.
The few relatives the detective could track down confirmed that he’d just disappeared and they didn’t know where he might be. They echoed his boss’s assessment, describing the man as intelligent but a recluse, one who — significantly — loved to read and often lost himself in novels, appropriate for a killer who took his homicidal inspiration from a book.
“What’d his letter to Andy say?” Wallace asked.
With an okaying nod from Altman, Randall handed it to the reporter, who then summarized out loud. “He asks how Mr. Carter did the research for his book. What were the sources he used? How did he learn about the most efficient way a murderer would kill someone? And he’s curious about the mental makeup of a killer. Why did some people find it easy to kill while others couldn’t possibly hurt anyone?”
Altman shook his head. “No clue as to where he might’ve gone. We’ll get his name into NCIC and VICAP but, hell, he could be anywhere. South America, Europe, Singapore…”
Since Bob Fletcher’s Robbery Division would’ve handled the vandalism at the Greenville Library’s Three Pines branch, which they now knew Desmond was responsible for, Altman sent Randall to ask the sergeant if he’d found any leads as part of the investigation that would be helpful.
The other men found themselves staring at Desmond’s fan letter as if it were a corpse at a wake, silence surrounding them.
Altman’s phone rang and he took the call. It was the county clerk, who explained that Desmond owned a small vacation home about sixty miles from Greenville, on the shores of Lake Muskegon, tucked into the backwater, piney wilderness.
“You think he’s hiding out there?” Wallace asked.
“I say we go find out. Even if he’s hightailed it out of the state, though, there could be some leads there as to where he did go. Maybe airline receipts or something, notes, phone message on an answering machine.”
Wallace grabbed his jacket and his reporter’s notebook. “Let’s go.”
“No, no, no,” Quentin Altman said firmly. “You get an exclusive. You don’t get to go into the line of fire.”
“Nice of you to think of me,” Wallace said sourly.
“Basically I just don’t want to get sued by your newspaper if Desmond decides to use you for target practice.”
The reporter gave a scowl and dropped down into an officer chair.
Josh Randall returned to report that Sergeant Bob Fletcher had no helpful information in the library vandalism case.
But Altman said, “Doesn’t matter. We’ve got a better lead. Suit up, Josh.”
“Where’re we going?”
“For a ride in the country. What else on a nice fall day like this?”
* * *
Lake Muskegon is a large but shallow body of water bordered by willow, tall grass and ugly pine. Altman didn’t know the place well. He’d brought his family here for a couple of picnics over the years and he and Bob Fletcher had come to the lake once on a halfhearted fishing expedition, of which Altman had only vague memories: gray, drizzly weather and a nearly empty creel at the end of the day.
As he and Randall drove north through the increasingly deserted landscape he briefed the young man. “Now, I’m ninety-nine percent sure Desmond’s not here. But what we’re going to do first is clear the house — I mean closet by closet — and then I want you stationed in the front to keep an eye out while I look for evidence. Okay?”
“Sure, boss.”
They passed Desmond’s overgrown driveway and pulled off the road then eased into a stand of thick forsythia.
Together, the men cautiously made their way down the weedy drive toward the “vacation house,” a dignified term for the tiny, shabby cottage sitting in a three-foot-high sea of grass and brush. A path had been beaten through the foliage — somebody had been here recently — but it might not have been Desmond; Altman had been a teenager once himself and knew that nothing attracts adolescent attention like a deserted house.
They drew their weapons and Altman pounded on the door, calling, “Police. Open up.”
Silence.
He hesitated a moment, adjusted the grip on his gun and kicked the door in.
Filled with cheap, dust-covered furniture, buzzing with stuporous fall flies, the place appeared deserted. They checked the four small rooms carefully and found no sign of Desmond. Outside, they glanced in the window of the garage and saw that it was empty. Then Altman sent Randall to the front of the driveway to hide in the bushes and report anybody’s approach.
He then returned to the house and began to search, wondering just how hot the cold case was about to become.
* * *
Two hundred yards from the driveway that led to Howard Desmond’s cottage a battered, ten-year-old Toyota pulled onto the shoulder of Route 207 and then eased into the woods, out of sight of any drivers along the road.
A man got out and, satisfied that his car was well hidden, squinted into the forest, getting his bearings. He noticed the line of the brown lake to his left and figured the vacation house was in the ten-o�
�clock position ahead of him. Through dense underbrush like this it would take him about fifteen minutes to get to the place, he estimated.
That’d make the time pretty tight. He’d have to move as quickly as he could and still keep the noise to a minimum.
The man started forward but then stopped suddenly and patted his pocket. He’d been in such a hurry to get to the house he couldn’t remember if he’d taken what he wanted from the glove compartment. But, yes, he had it with him.
Hunched over and picking his way carefully to avoid stepping on noisy branches, Gordon Wallace continued on toward the cabin where, he hoped, Detective Altman was lost in police work and would be utterly oblivious to his furtive approach.
* * *
The search of the house revealed virtually nothing that would indicate that Desmond had been here recently — or where the man might now be. Quentin Altman found some bills and cancelled checks. But the address on them was Desmond’s apartment in Warwick.
He decided to check the garage, thinking he might come across something helpful the killer had tossed out of the car and forgotten about — maybe a sheet containing directions or a map or receipt.
Altman discovered something far more interesting than evidence, though; he found Howard Desmond himself.
That is to say, his corpse.
The moment Altman opened the old-fashioned double doors of the garage he detected the smell of decaying flesh. He knew where it had to be coming from: a large coal bin in the back. Steeling himself, he flipped up the lid.
The mostly skeletal remains of a man about six feet tall were inside, lying on his back, fully clothed. He’d been dead about six months — just around the time Desmond disappeared, Altman recalled.
DNA would tell for certain if this was the vet tech but Altman discovered the man’s wallet in his hip pocket and, sure enough, the driver’s license inside was Desmond’s. DNA or dental records would tell for certain.
The man’s skull was shattered; the cause of death was probably trauma to the head by a blunt object. There was no weapon in the bin itself but after a careful examination of the garage he found a heavy mallet wrapped in a rag and hidden in the bottom of a trash-filled oil drum. There were some hairs adhering to the mallet that resembled Desmond’s. Altman set the tool on a workbench, wondering what the hell was going on.
More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II Page 30
