A few seconds later, he got out of the car and went around back to where Larry was halfway into the trunk trying to reach the six-pack that had shifted to the front. Grabbing his friend by the legs, Leon threw him all the way in, then shut and locked the lid.
The driver of the bread truck squeezed the steering wheel in disbelief. Had he really seen the big guy lock the little one in the trunk? He slid the truck’s door open far enough to hear Leon’s gravelly voice murdering “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” He checked the impulse to intervene. It wasn’t any of his business if someone wanted to play a joke on a friend. It didn’t seem like much of a joke, though, considering how hot that trunk was going to get in the next few minutes with the sun beating on it. He was too far away to see the saliva on Leon’s chin and the broken blood vessels in his eyes.
With his mother’s sweet voice filling his senses, Leon put the car in gear and moved forward until he made contact with the bumper of the compact car in front. Then he began to push it toward the striped barricade. When the driver of the car ahead felt his car begin to move, he increased his pressure on the brakes. But Leon responded by pressing harder on the accelerator, blocking the truck driver’s view with billows of gray fumes.
The trucker fled the smoke and, from a vantage point outside the cloud, was shocked at what was taking place. Even though Leon’s car was far older than its years, it still had enough horsepower to inch the smaller car’s locked wheels over the pavement.
The train was now only a hundred yards from the crossing, and its shrieking whistle seemed to be coming from the two adults and two children who were looking backward, their mouths gaping in horror at the car behind them. With saliva dripping onto his shirt, Leon kept working on the smaller car, pushing it until the barricade passed over its hood and came to rest against its windshield. He continued to push until the barricade splintered. The sound disappeared in the steady scream of the onrushing train, now only seconds away. When the front wheels of the car Leon was pushing came to rest between the tracks, the truck driver shut his eyes, unable to watch the imminent carnage. But as the train thundered through the crossing, he heard only the roar of its passing and the rhythmic pounding of its wheels against the rails. He opened his eyes and was able to relax, for he saw between the railroad cars racing by that the doomed family’s vehicle had somehow made it safely to the other side of the tracks.
But Leon was not finished. He backed up until he touched the bread truck’s bumper. Then he raced his engine, popped the clutch, and lurched toward the mountain of steel hurtling by. His momentum carried him deeply under an empty passenger coach whose wheels rolled the car over and over like a hog on a barbecue spit until the train derailed.
CHAPTER 6
“I was hoping you were here,” Charlie Franks, the deputy medical examiner, said, stepping partway into Kit’s office. “I’m taking all the fieldwork today and I’ve just been called to a scene that sounds like it might match the murder-suicide profiles the computer gave us the other day. Like to come along?”
“Would I ever!” she replied, leaping to her feet.
Franks grinned. “Kind of thought that’d be your answer.”
Franks’s car held no surprises. Fixed with rubber bands to the visor on the driver’s side was a ball-point pen, a little green notebook, and a tire-pressure gauge. Riding the hump between the driver and passenger was an empty color-coordinated combination wastebasket and a full Kleenex dispenser. Near her feet on the right sidewall was a small fire extinguisher. The floor mats were clean and bright, and the dash wouldn’t dirty a white glove. She was sure that he could produce emergency flares if asked.
About a hundred yards from their destination, they encountered a roadblock. After identifying themselves to the cop who was turning everyone else around, they were allowed through. Railroad cars lay scattered along the tracks like toys flung by an angry child. The remains of Leon’s car lay upside down beneath the belly of a derailed flatcar carrying a massive piece of blue machinery partially covered by a green tarp. A half-dozen men were working a row of jacks that had been placed under the railway car. Near a tow truck that had been attached to the pinned auto by a huge chain, a man kneeling by a welder’s helmet was fiddling with the hoses from a pair of metal tanks.
They pulled onto the sandy shoulder behind a string of other cars and got out, Kit having to fight through grass nearly up to her knees. As they approached the crossing, a pear shape in a blue-striped seersucker suit appeared from between two jackknifed railway cars up the line. With his tiny feet and close-cropped hair, the man inside the suit reminded Kit of a bowling pin. Seeing Franks, he waved them over.
“We figure you’ve got two customers in there,” he said, pointing to the wrecked auto. “But it’s gonna be awhile before we can get ’em out.”
“Any in the train?” Franks asked.
“No, but we nearly had some more. I dunno if it’s because we get our drinking water out of the Mississippi or what, but the people in this town are gettin’ crazier every day. This was no accident. We got an eyewitness who said this car rammed the train deliberately. And before it did, the driver tried to push somebody else onto the tracks.”
“So I heard. Dispatch also said something about him locking a guy in the trunk.”
“Just another day in the big city.”
“Where’s the other car?”
“What other car?”
“The one that was pushed onto the tracks.”
“Split. Guess they didn’t want to get involved. Probably never will know who they were.”
“You said there was an eyewitness,” Kit interjected. “Where is he?”
“We taped his statement and let him go.”
Responding to the puzzled look on the man’s face, Franks introduced Kit to detective Gabe Santos.
“May I hear the tape?” Kit asked.
“Sure, it’s over there on the floor of my car.” He gestured toward the first car in the line on the shoulder. “Just don’t erase anything by mistake. If you have any doubts about which button to push, come and ask me.”
The sun had made the detective’s car unbearable. Noticing that he had left the keys, she slid behind the wheel, started it, and flicked on the air conditioning. It was a cheeky thing to do, but the heat made it necessary. As the tape played, she found the witness so articulate, and Santos so thorough in his questioning, that she felt as though she had been there herself.
While listening, she watched the workmen’s progress at the crossing, where they soon had the railroad car raised enough for the wrecker to pull the pinned auto free. When they got it flipped over, it was obvious that no one inside could still be alive. The front part of the roof and the trunk were crushed nearly flat. Only the rear window was recognizable. As Kit looked at its odd configuration, a central oval flanked by two circles, she felt she had seen the pattern before.
When Santos asked the witness whether there was any evidence that the driver of the death car might have been drinking or on drugs, the answer made her forget all about the car’s rear window.
“He moved kind of stiff, like a windup toy, only not so obvious,” the taped voice said. “It’s kinda hard to explain, but it just wasn’t right, and he was… not exactly humming, but was doing something like this.” The witness reeled off a few bars of music using grunts instead of words. The-tune was familiar and she said it to herself at the same time Santos said it on the tape.
“’Old MacDonald Had a Farm’?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” the witness said. “And his face had no expression on it.”
She let the tape run to the end of the interview and turned it off. “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”! Her eyes glazed and she withdrew into the memory of a conversation she’d had with one of Barry Hollins’s neighbors. He had said that a few minutes before the fire, Hollins had walked by whistling “Pop goes the weasel,” and had ignored an invitation to play golf. This was the second time she had thought about that interview, which ini
tially seemed of no value. The first time was when she was going over the old files on her desk.
One of those files contained a case that had begun with two friends out for a day of duck hunting. Before reaching their destination, the fellow driving was suddenly hit in the face with the butt of his passenger’s shotgun. When he came to, the car was against an overpass guardrail and his friend was blasting away at vehicles on the highway below. Fearing for his own life, the driver pretended to still be unconscious. A short time later, the other man jumped or fell from the overpass and was killed.
She had read the police transcript of the driver’s testimony so often she had no trouble recalling it now. The driver had said that the whole time his friend was behaving so strangely, he was singing about the woods and teddy bears and picnics. A song from an old radio show for kids, he said. He couldn’t remember the name of the program but could recall some of the song. “If you go down in the woods today, you’re sure to have a surprise”… something… something… something. “Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic.”
That song was what had first reminded her of Barry Hollins whistling before the Algiers fire. It was such a weak coincidence that she had completely forgotten it. But here it was again. A few hours ago, a man singing “Old MacDonald” had locked his passenger in the trunk and driven into the side of a train. Three cases, all similar, all where the killer was either singing or whistling a children’s song. She switched off the engine, knowing as surely as she ever knew anything that she was on to something. She also knew just as surely that she wasn’t going to present such a wild idea to Broussard without a lot more evidence. But where to get it?
*
The next evening as the local news was starting, Kit heard a knock at the door. Through the peephole, she saw David clutching a huge bouquet of flowers. Not at all sure it was the right move, she shot the deadbolt and opened the door.
“You wouldn’t answer your phone or return my calls, so I had to do something,” he said, thrusting twenty or thirty dollars’ worth of pink sweetheart roses, white shasta daisies, and baby’s breath toward her.
How many times had she decided to break off with him only to be coaxed into giving it one more try? Five times? Six? Surely this was not the way two people who really loved each other behaved. She took the flowers and went inside, letting David decide for himself whether to follow. He did.
“When you hold a grudge, you sure do it right,” he said, watching her go into the kitchen. Through the passthrough, he saw her lay the flowers next to the sink and begin to rummage around in the cupboards. He found encouragement in the fact that she had not thrown the flowers in his face at the door, nor had she put them down the disposal like she did the last time. Things were definitely looking good.
“I can understand your anger over that crack about…” He paused, realizing that it would be dangerous to repeat his reference to psychologists hiding in toilet stalls. “… that careless remark about your work, but there was a reason for it and you’ve never let me tell you what it was.”
“I know the reason,” she said, putting a white vase under the cold-water tap. “That’s why I haven’t been available.”
Now she was talking to him, another good sign. The words didn’t matter. He went into the kitchen and stood beside her while she arranged the flowers. “I was free for the afternoon on the day we argued because earlier we got a hung jury out of the Krupp case and I was in no mood to work. I didn’t say anything at the time because it made me furious to think about it and I didn’t want to ruin our time together.”
Kit remembered reading about the case in the newspaper but said nothing.
“The sonofabitch strangled six women, had an apartment full of incriminating evidence, gave a full confession, and we couldn’t get a conviction. And you know why? Because only ten jurors believed our psychologist, who said that the killings were premeditated and that Krupp knew what he was doing. Two believed the defense psychiatrist, who said Krupp was compelled to kill by a long-standing hatred for his mother… that every time he killed he believed he was killing her. Ten for our side, two for theirs—and a hung jury. Probably cost the state two hundred thousand for that trial and in a couple of months we can do it all over again. Maybe next time the defense will find a more persuasive psychiatrist. Maybe then the whole jury will believe that Krupp can’t tell right from wrong and we’ll have to settle for a short stint at Shreveport, where he’ll eventually be declared ’cured’ and allowed to walk away.”
Kit carried the vase into the living room. “What’s your point?”
“Simply that psychologists and psychiatrists have no place in the courtroom. They confuse the proceedings and obstruct justice.”
She put the vase on a serpentine-front commode to the left of the door and stepped back to see how it looked. “You don’t believe in mental illness then.”
“Not as a defense. He took six human lives. There has to be a penalty for that. If this guy isn’t executed, we have no judicial system. I don’t care why he did it.”
She turned and brushed past him. “Is it justice you want or revenge?”
“One life for six isn’t justice, but I’d settle for that, preferably done in public where other sadists like him could see it.”
Kit dropped into a wing chair, pulled the latest Newsweek from the magazine rack next to the chair, and began to leaf through it. “The threat of punishment does not deter others from committing the same offense,” she said icily.
“It’s a hell of a deterrent on the one executed, though,” David said, the lawyer in him pleased at being able to get in such a good shot. He’d given himself over so fully to venting his feelings about psychiatrists in the courtroom that he’d momentarily forgotten the real purpose of the conversation. Realizing that things were going sour, he tried to get back on track. “It wasn’t my intent to argue the merits of the insanity plea as a murder defense, but simply to show you why I said what I did that night. I said it out of frustration. That’s all. In the eight years I’ve been with the DA’s office, there hasn’t been a single year that someone hasn’t tried to cop an insanity plea for murder, often successfully. And I can’t help but feel that when they get away with it, it’s partly my fault for not working hard enough or being smart enough, or… whatever.”
David’s attempt to explain his actions made Kit wonder more than ever whether they had a future together. How could a man despise your profession without some of that hostility coloring the relationship? His views hadn’t changed, most likely would never change. He’d just be careful not to make the same slip again. And the next time a psychiatrist contributed to a verdict that went against him, he’d say nothing but would always find a little of the reason for his defeat in her. She expressed none of this but kept flipping pages while he continued to plead his case.
“It’s been years now, but I can still see the surprised look on George Delberg’s face when he got Abe Shindleman off with his ’Rock-A-Bye-Baby’ defense.”
Kit slapped her magazine shut. “What was that you said about Shindleman and ’Rock-A-Bye-Baby’?”
“Three or four years ago a night watchman at… Crescent City Industries, I think it was, emptied a gun into his employer’s head, reloaded, and tried to shoot himself. But the final bullet was defective and simply ricocheted off his skull and knocked him out for a few hours. His attorney pled temporary insanity based on a lot of crap about his client remembering nothing about the event except hearing voices singing ’Rock-A-Bye-Baby’ over and over. He was sent to Shreveport, where they observed him for awhile, and goddam if six months later he wasn’t back in court petitioning for release. The Shreveport shrin…” He caught himself about to say the magic word and quickly substituted another, hoping Kit hadn’t noticed yet knowing she had. “The Shreveport staff testified they could find no trace of mental illness. His attorney argued that legally he had to be released because he hadn’t been found guilty by reason of insanity, he had been found
not guilty. Therefore, if he wasn’t insane, he was entitled to go free. We argued that if he wasn’t crazy in Shreveport, he wasn’t ever crazy, and therefore should pay the penalty for murdering his boss. But with our screwed-up laws, once they convinced the judge he wasn’t crazy now, he was free. And that’s what I’ve been forced to put up with all these years.”
“Could you get hold of the file on that case?” Kit asked excitedly.
“I suppose. Why?”
“Would there be a photograph of Shindleman in it?”
“Probably not.”
She jumped to her feet. “You’ve got to leave now. I just remembered something important I need to do at the examiner’s office.” From behind, she pushed him gently toward the door.
He balked. “Wait a minute. We haven’t settled anything.”
“We’ll talk later.”
“When?”
David looked so hurt, she felt a pang of remorse. “I don’t know… later… whenever you want.”
“Dinner tomorrow night.”
“Okay.” She smiled.
“I’ll be by around seven.”
She pushed him through the door and looked at the clock on the TV as she headed for the phone. Six-thirty. Would Charlie still be at the office? He often worked until eight or nine, so there was a good chance.
“Rock-A-Bye-Baby” defense. That’s what David had said. And if the man who had plowed into the train had lived, his attorney might have been able to get him off with an “Old MacDonald” defense. The similarities in David’s case and her three were too obvious to ignore. All four men had childhood songs on their mind coincident with an act of violence against another person or persons followed by a self-destructive action. The Shindleman in David’s story had been a night watchman. The Shindleman at Happy Years had once mentioned how boring night security work could be. But were they the same man? Come on Charlie, she urged as the phone rang a fourth time. Then there was a click and the sound of Franks on the other end.
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