Somebody had murdered the Strangler. Who? And why? Revenge?
But then Altman did one of the things he did best — let his mind run free. Too many detectives get an idea into their heads and can’t see past their initial conclusions. Altman, though, always fought against this tendency and he now asked himself: But what if Desmond wasn’t the Strangler?
They knew for certain that he was the one who’d underlined the passages in the library’s copy of Two Deaths in a Small Town. But what if he’d done so after the killings? The letter Desmond had written to Carter was undated. Maybe — just like the reporter Gordon Wallace himself had done — he’d read the book after the murders and been struck by the similarity. He’d started to investigate the crime himself and the Strangler had found out and murdered him.
But then who was the killer?
Just like Gordon Wallace had done…
Altman felt another little tap in his far-ranging mind, as fragments of facts lined up for him to consider — facts that all had to do with the reporter. For instance, Wallace was physically imposing, abrasive, temperamental. At times he could be threatening, scary. He was obsessed with crime and he knew police and forensic procedures better than most cops, which also meant that he knew how to anticipate investigators’ moves. (He’d sure blustered his way right into the middle of the reopened case just the other day, Altman reflected.) Wallace owned a Motorola police scanner and would’ve been able to listen in on calls about the victims. His apartment was a few blocks from the college where the first victim was killed.
The detective considered: Let’s say that Desmond had read the passages, become suspicious and circled them, then made a few phone calls to find out more about the case. He might’ve called Wallace, who, as the Tribune’s crime reporter, would be a logical source for more information.
Desmond had met with the reporter, who’d then killed him and hid the body here.
Impossible… Why, for instance, would Gordon have brought the book to the police’s attention?
Maybe to preempt suspicion?
Altman returned to the disgusting, impromptu crypt once again to search it more carefully, trying to unearth some answers.
* * *
Gordon Wallace caught a glimpse of Altman in the garage.
The reporter had crept up to a spot only thirty feet away and was hiding behind a bush. The detective wasn’t paying any attention to who might be outside, apparently relying on Josh Randall to alert him to intruders. The young detective was at the head of the driveway, a good two hundred feet away, his back to the garage.
Breathing heavily in the autumn heat, the reporter started through the grass in a crouch. He stopped beside the building and glanced into the side window fast, noting that Altman was standing over a coal bin in the rear of the garage, squinting at something in his hand.
Perfect, Wallace thought and, reaching into his pocket, eased to the open doorway, where his aim would be completely unobstructed.
* * *
The detective had found something in Desmond’s wallet and was staring at it — a business card — when he heard the snap of a twig behind him and, alarmed, turned.
A silhouette of a figure was standing in the doorway. He seemed to be holding his hands at chest level.
Blinded by the glare, Altman gasped, “Who’re—?”
A huge flash filled the room.
The detective stumbled backward, groping for his pistol.
“Damn,” came a voice he recognized.
Altman squinted against the back lighting. “Wallace! You goddamn son of a bitch! What the hell’re you doing here?”
The reporter scowled and held up the camera in his hand, looking just as unhappy as Altman. “I was trying to get a candid of you on the job. But you turned around. You ruined it.”
“I ruined it? I told you not to come. You can’t—”
“I’ve got a First Amendment right to be here,” the man snapped. “Freedom of the press.”
“And I’ve got a right to throw your ass in jail. This’s a crime scene.”
“Well, that’s why I want the pictures,” he said petulantly. Then he frowned. “What’s that smell?” The camera sagged and the reporter started to breathe in shallow gasps. He looked queasy.
“It’s Desmond. Somebody murdered him. He’s in the coal bin.”
“Murdered him? So he’s not the killer?”
Altman lifted his radio and barked to Randall, “We’ve got visitors back here.”
“What?”
“We’re in the garage.”
The young officer showed up a moment later, trotting fast. A disdainful look at Wallace. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“How’d you let him get past?” Altman snapped.
“Not his fault,” the reporter said, shivering at the smell. “I parked up the road. How ’bout we get some fresh air?”
Angry, Altman took perverse pleasure in the reporter’s discomfort. “I oughta throw you in jail.”
Wallace held his breath and started for the coal bin, raising the camera.
“Don’t even think about it,” Altman growled and pulled the reporter away.
“Who did it?” Randall asked, nodding at the body.
Altman didn’t share that for a moment he’d actually suspected Wallace Gordon himself. Just before the photo op incident he’d found a stunning clue as to who Desmond’s — and the two women’s — killer probably was. He held up a business card. “I found this on the body.”
On the card was written, “Detective Sergeant Robert Fletcher, Greenville Police Department.”
“Bob?” Randall whispered in shock.
“I don’t want to believe it,” Altman muttered slowly, “but back at the office he didn’t let on he even knew about Desmond, let alone that they’d met at some point.”
“True.”
“And,” he continued, nodding at the mallet, “Bob does all that metalwork — his hobby, remember? That could be one of his.”
Randall looked uneasily at the murder weapon.
Altman’s heart pounded furiously at the betrayal. He now speculated about what had happened. Fletcher bobbled the case intentionally — because he was the killer, probably destroying any evidence that led to him. A loner, a history of short, difficult relationships, obsessed with violence and military history and artifacts and hunting…. He’d lied to them about not reading Two Deaths and had used it as a model to kill those women. Then — after the killings — Desmond happened to read the book too, underlined the passages and, being a good citizen, contacted case officer Fletcher, who was none other than the killer himself. The sergeant murdered him, dumped the body here and then destroyed the library’s computer. Of course, he never made any effort to pursue the vandalism investigation.
Alarmed, Quentin Altman had another thought. He turned to the reporter. “Where was Fletcher when you left the office? Did you see him at the station?” The detective’s hand strayed to his pistol as he looked around the tall grass, wondering if the sergeant had followed him here and intended to kill them as well. Fletcher was a crack rifle shot.
But Randall replied, “He was in the conference room with Andy Carter.”
No! Altman realized that they weren’t the only ones at risk; the author was a witness too — and therefore a potential victim of Fletcher’s. Altman grabbed his cell phone and called the central dispatcher. He asked for Carter.
“He’s not here, sir,” the woman said.
“What?”
“It was getting late so he decided to get a hotel room for the night.”
“Which one’s he staying at?”
“I think it’s the Sutton Inn.”
“You have the number?”
“I do, sure. But he’s not there right now.”
“Where is he?”
“He went out to dinner. I don’t know where but if you need to get in touch with him you can call Bob Fletcher’s phone. They were going together.”
* * *
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Twenty minutes from town, driving at twice the posted limit.
Altman tried again to call Fletcher but the sergeant wasn’t answering. There wasn’t much Altman could do except try to reason with the sergeant, have him give himself up, plead with him not to kill Carter too. He prayed that the cop hadn’t already done so.
Another try. Still no answer.
He skidded the squad car through the intersection at Route 202, nearly sideswiping one of the ubiquitous dairy tankers in these parts.
“Okay, that was exciting,” Randall whispered, removing his sweaty palm from the dashboard as the truck’s horn brayed in angry protest behind them.
Altman was about to call Fletcher’s phone again when a voice clattered over the car’s radio, “All units. Reports of shots fired on Route One-twenty-eight just west of Ralphs grocery. Repeat, shots fired. All units respond.”
“You think that’s them?”
“We’re three minutes away. We’re about to find out.” Altman called in their position and then pushed the accelerator to the floor; they broke into three-digit speed.
After a brief, harrowing ride, the squad car crested a hill. Randall called breathlessly, “Look!”
Altman could see Bob Fletcher’s Police Interceptor half on, half off the road. He skidded to a stop nearby and the two officers jumped out. Wallace’s car — which’d been hitching an illegal ride on their light bar and siren — braked to a stop fifty feet behind them. The reporter too jumped out, ignoring the detective’s shout to stay back.
Altman felt Randall grip his arm. The young officer was pointing at the shoulder about fifty feet away. In the dim light they could just make out the form of Andrew Carter lying face down in a patch of bloody dirt.
Oh, goddamn it! They weren’t in time; the sergeant had added the author to the list of his victims.
Crouching beside the car, Altman whispered to Randall, “Head up the road that way. Look out for Fletcher. He’s someplace close.”
Scanning the bushes, in a crouch, Altman ran toward the author’s body. As he did he happened to glance to his left and gasped. There was Bob Fletcher on the ground, holding a sheriff’s department shotgun.
He shouted to Randall, “Look out!” And dropped flat. But as he swung the gun toward Fletcher he noted that the sergeant wasn’t moving. The detective hit the man with his flashlight beam. Fletcher’s eyes were glazed over and there was blood on his chest.
Wallace was crouching over Carter. The reporter called, “He’s alive!”
The detective rose, pulled the scattergun out of Fletcher’s lifeless hands and trotted over to the author. Fletcher had shot him and he was unconscious.
“Andy, stay with us!” Altman called, pressing his hand onto the bloody wound in the author’s belly. Over the crest of the road the detective could see the flashing lights and hear the sirens, growing steadily louder. He leaned down and whispered into the man’s ear, “Hang in there! You’ll be all right, you’ll be all right, you’ll be all right…”
* * *
His book had saved his life, the author was explaining with a laugh that turned into a wince.
It was the next morning, and Quentin Altman and Carter’s wife — a handsome, middle-aged blonde — were standing at his bedside in Greenville Hospital. Fletcher’s bullet had missed vital organs but had snapped a rib and the author was in major pain despite the happy pills he’d been given.
Carter told them what had happened last evening: “Fletcher says let’s go to dinner — he knew some good barbecue place in the country. We were driving along this deserted road and I was talking about Two Deaths and said that this was just the sort of road I had in mind when I wrote that scene where the Hunter was stalking the first victim after he sees her at McDonald’s. Then, Fletcher said that he pictured that road being in cornfields, not forests.”
“But he said he hadn’t read the book,” Altman said.
“Exactly…. He realized he’d screwed up. He got real quiet for a minute, and I was thinking something’s wrong. I was even going to jump out of the car. But then he pulls his gun out and I grab it but he still shoots me. I reach over with my foot and slam on the brake. We go off the road and he slams his head into the window or something. I grab the gun and roll out of the car. I’m heading for the bushes to hide in but I see him getting the shotgun from the trunk. He starts toward me and I shoot him.” He shook his head. “Man, if it hadn’t been for the book, what he said about it, I never would’ve known what he was going to do.”
Since Altman was involved in the incident, the investigation of the shooting went to another detective, who reported that the forensics bore out Carter’s story. There was GSR — gunshot residue — on Fletcher’s hand, which meant he’d fired the pistol, and a bullet with Carter’s blood on it embedded in the cruiser passenger door. Evidence also proved that Fletcher was indeed the Greenville Strangler. The sergeant’s fingerprints were all over the mallet and a search of the sergeant’s house revealed several items — stockings and lingerie — that had been taken from the homes of the victims. Murdering Howard Desmond and trying to murder Andy Carter — well, those had been to cover up his original crimes. But what had been the sergeant’s motive for killing the two women in Greenville? Maybe the anger at being left by his wife had boiled over. Maybe he’d had a secret affair with one of the victims, which had turned sour, and he’d decided to stage her death as a random act of violence. Maybe someday an answer would come to light.
Or maybe, Altman reflected, unlike in a mystery novel, they’d never know what had driven the man to step over the edge into the dark world of the killers he’d once hunted.
It was then that Wallace Gordon loped into the hospital room, saying, “Hot off the presses.” He handed a copy of the Tribune to Carter. On the front page was Wallace’s story about the solving of the Greenville Strangler case.
“Keep that,” Wallace said. “A souvenir.”
Thanking him, Carter’s wife folded the paper up and set it aside with the stiff gesture of someone who has no interest in memorabilia about a difficult episode in one’s life.
Quentin Altman walked to the door and, just as he was about to leave, paused. He turned back. “Oh, one thing, Andy — how’s that book of yours end? Do the police ever find the Hunter?”
Carter caught himself as he was about to answer. The author gave a grin. “You know, Detective — you want to find that out, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to buy yourself a copy.”
* * *
Several days later Andrew Carter slipped out of his bed, where he’d lain, wide-awake, for the past three hours. It was two a.m.
He glanced at the quiescent form of his sleeping wife and — with the help of his cane — limped to his closet, where he found and pulled on an old pair of faded jeans, sneakers and a Boston University sweatshirt — his good-luck writing clothes, which he hadn’t donned in well over a year.
Still in pain from the gunshot, he walked slowly down the hall to his office and went inside, turning on the light. Sitting at his desk, he clicked on his computer and stared at the screen for a long moment.
Then suddenly he began to write. His keyboarding was clumsy at first, his fingers jabbing two keys at once or missing the intended one altogether. Still, as the hours passed, his skill as a typist returned and soon the words were pouring from his mind onto the screen flawlessly and fast.
By the time the sky began to glow with pink-gray light and a morning bird’s cell-phone trill sounded from the crisp holly bush outside his window, he’d finished the story completely — thirty-nine double-spaced pages.
He moved the cursor to the top of the document, thought about an appropriate title and typed: Copycat.
Then Andy Carter sat back in his comfortable chair and carefully read his work from start to finish.
The story opened with a reporter finding a suspense novel that contained several circled passages, which were strikingly similar to two real-life murders that had occurred e
arlier. The reporter takes the book to a detective, who concludes that the man who circled the paragraphs is the perpetrator, a copycat inspired by the novel to kill.
Reviving the case, the detective enlists the aid of the novel’s author, who reluctantly agrees to help and brings the police some fan letters, one of which leads to the suspected killer.
But when the police track the suspect to his summer home they find that he’s been murdered too. He wasn’t the killer at all but had presumably circled the passages only because he, like the reporter, was struck by the similarity between the novel and the real-life crimes.
Then the detective gets a big shock: On the fan’s body he finds clues that prove that a local police sergeant is the real killer. The author, who happens to be with this very officer at that moment, is nearly killed but manages to wrestle the gun away and shoot the cop in self-defense.
Case closed.
Or so it seems…
But Andy Carter hadn’t ended the story there. He added yet another twist. Readers learn at the very end that the sergeant was innocent. He’d been set up as a fall guy by the real Strangler.
Who happened to be the author himself.
Racked by writer’s block after his first novel was published, unable to follow it up with another, the author had descended into madness. Desperate and demented, he came to believe that he might jump-start his writing by actually reenacting scenes from his novel so he stalked and strangled two women, exactly as his fictional villain had done.
The murders hadn’t revived his ability to write, however, and he slumped further into depression. And then, even more troubling, he heard from the fan who’d grown suspicious about the similarities between certain passages in the novel and the real crimes. The author had no choice: He met with the fan at his lakeside cottage and beat him to death, hiding the body in the garage and covering up the disappearance by pretending to be the fan and telling his boss and landlord that he was leaving town unexpectedly.
More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II Page 31
