The professor had been strangely quiet during the whole thing. To Ron, it seemed that once again, the professor was showing all the signs of having learned something. Ron hinted around, trying to find out what it was, to no avail.
Finally, the old man said, “Ronald, take me home. I will see no more witnesses. I will paint. Take me home, Ronald.”
Ron went to tell Janet. “What does he mean, he’s seeing no more witnesses?” she wanted to know.
Ron was troubled. “It means he’s mad at himself,” he said. “It means he’s spotted something important—he’s got this inhuman instinct for knowing what’s important—but he doesn’t know why it’s important, or, sometimes, even what it is he’s spotted. He’s so conceited, he holds it against himself. So he just stops working and paints until he figures it out.”
“Does it take him long?”
“It took three weeks in the Entwright thing. But usually, it’s only a couple of days. And when he comes out of it, he’s usually got the case cracked. Are you coming along?”
“I can’t,” she said. “The police and the hospital want some more from me.”
“Okay,” he said. “See you tomorrow then.” He took her hands, which were nearly as large as his, patted them, and left.
The business at the hospital took a lot longer than she expected, and it was past midnight when Janet got back to her apartment. She was worked up and tense, so she played the piano for a while, then took a sleeping pill—one sleeping pill—and went to bed. She completely forgot her intention to read her newly bought copy of Charlotte’s Web that evening.
THIRTEEN
IF TUESDAY HAD BEEN eventful, on Wednesday, to use Inspector Fleisher’s phrase, it really hit the fan.
From a variety of directions.
Ron Gentry was chagrined to find the professor daubing away at his painting of New York State (he was putting in the Finger Lakes) wearing a beard stubble that sat on the old man’s nut-brown skin like fungus on a breadboard. The case had really gotten to him. Ron didn’t even bother to wish his mentor a buona mattina. He just quietly slipped out to the office.
Up on the campus of Sparta University, Dr. Janet Higgins was involved, in spite of herself, in a heated controversy in a faculty meeting. Tired of repressive administrative policies, low pay, and class overload, and egged on by the leaders of the student government (in the interests of academic freedom and more time for ski trips), the faculty of the School of Liberal Arts had decided to strike. The question then arose whether Operation Outreach, the blanket title for university personnel lending their expertise to the community, should be struck as well. The answer was yes. Then, the radical young man from the poli sci department, who had fomented the strike in the first place, pointed out that if Dr. Higgins pulled out of the Hog hunt, the result would be bad ink in the press, and bad vibes all the way around, man. The radical young man was shouted down. He wondered why the people he had gotten all excited wouldn’t calm down at the proper time. He had never read Frankenstein.
Janet had been a card-carrying member of the American Federation of Musicians since she was four years old. She was staunch for the rights of labor. But at that moment, she crossed the mental picket line, and quietly but firmly became a scab. She left the meeting and headed for the Public Safety Building.
Things were hopping down there, too. Inspector Fleisher couldn’t remember a crazier day in Sparta since the time in his youth when some Canadian rumrunners, New York City speakeasy owners, and Buffalo hijackers shot it out for six hours across Pershing Square, killing the council president’s mistress on the steps of city hall in the crossfire.
But that had been crazy and exciting. Today was only crazy.
They were picketing the PSB, for crysake. Walking around out there in the cold, carrying signs with things like, “Catch the Hog—Now!” and “Make Sparta Safe Again!” What the hell were these people trying to prove? Did they think the inspector hadn’t been putting out on this goddamn case? That each and every one of the thirty-five detectives in what had come to be known as the Hog Squad wasn’t putting out? That stupid cardboard signs were gonna make them try harder, thank you for bringing it to our attention there’s a murderer running around? Idiots.
Then that lady shrink showed up, just to tell him she wouldn’t be leaving the case, even though her fellow big-domes up on the Hill told her she had to. The inspector had to admit it took a certain amount of guts. He felt a kind of grudging respect for her. Not that she’d been much of a help so far, but still.
The inspector was showing Janet the latest no-progress reports, when Hawkins of the Hog Squad barged in looking like he just found his sergeant’s stripes made up in a sandwich in his lunchbox.
“You look too happy, Hawkins,” Fleisher said dyspeptically. “If you don’t have good news, I’m going to be angry.”
“Oh, it’s good, sir,” he said eagerly. “Or, at least it’s something.”
“Well?”
“I—I mean Aronian and me—we broke Terry Wilbur’s alibi for that first murder.”
“Tell me about it,” Fleisher said.
“We just kept going back to the witnesses, again and again,” Hawkins said, “until we got one guy who admitted he wasn’t completely sure it was Wilbur he saw at the Y that night. We went back with that to the other witnesses, and all of a sudden they weren’t so sure any more, either.”
“Okay Hawkins, good work.” The young detective smiled and left. Fleisher was pleased, but not overjoyed. He knew that if you ask someone, “Yeah, but are you sure?” enough times, you could get him to doubt dogs have hair. It was a bad sign in an investigation when the cops started doing the DA’s work—Fleisher felt it was better to concentrate on arresting somebody, then letting the lawyer types worry about sowing doubt on alibis.
Dr. Higgins was frowning. Fleisher asked her what was the matter.
“I’ve been reading over these notes again,” she said. “And there’s something here I hadn’t noticed before ... another way Hog is different from the normal serial murderer.”
“Normal?”
“Well, the usual kind.”
“What’s that?”
“These notes tell us nothing about Hog at all.”
Fleisher sputtered. “What do you want, his address, for crysake?”
“Do you have to try to deliberately misunderstand me, Inspector?” she asked quietly. Fleisher, chastened, shut up.
“What I mean is this,” she went on. “All the cases I’ve researched show the killer with an urge to reveal things about himself. George Metesky, the Mad Bomber, talked about his grudge against a utilities company—”
“He didn’t kill anybody,” Fleisher corrected. “But I do see your point. The New York cops found Metesky in a file of unsatisfied ex-employees. It’s that stuff about they want to be caught.”
Dr. Higgins nodded. “The ultimate case, of course, is the boy that scrawled ‘stop me before I kill more.’ ”
“But Hog’s notes don’t tell us anything about him; they just say enough to prove they’re from the killer, and sometimes promise more. He keeps himself out of the notes. Aside from the fact that he thinks drug addiction is bad, and that a reporter who stumbles onto his story is lucky, he gives no opinion at all.”
Maybe there’s something to this broad after all, Fleisher thought. Since he was an honest man, he was going to say so, and apologize for his earlier skepticism, but he never got a chance. Shaughnessy burst into the office, panting.
“What is it, Mike?” the inspector wanted to know.
“The commissioner’s here!”
“Here?” Fleisher was shocked. Sparta’s police commissioner was a hair bag, a political hack, whose knowledge of police work came exclusively from watching Dragnet on television. He could, however (and more importantly did), draw on his wife’s substantial fortune at campaign time. He was an old crony of the mayor’s; he performed best in his job (to Fleisher’s way of thinking) when he went on one of his ext
ended fact-finding missions about the police methods in the Caribbean Islands.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Fleisher wondered aloud.
The inspector hadn’t seen that afternoon’s edition of the Sparta Express, or he wouldn’t have had to ask. The Express was Sparta’s “other” paper. That’s how everybody thought of it—“Go down to the newsstand and buy the Courant and the other paper.” No one at the Express had ever minded the second-class status, especially. They were happy it existed at all. Sparta really wasn’t big enough to support two dailies; the Express was run by a big corporation as a tax loss.
But enough was enough. The Courant had the Hog story all to itself. Hell, Buell Tatham had the police eating out his hand. The Express would see about that.
It was a front page editorial. The headline was “OFFICIAL COVERUP IN HOG CASE?” A survey later showed not one reader in a thousand (and many more thousands than usual saw the Express that day) noticed the question mark. The piece said, in many more words, that they at the Express had wondered at Hog’s seeming omniscience; how he knew so much, and could elude the police so easily. They wondered if Hog might not be “privy to the strategy of the men in blue,” and they wondered if this simple idea, which they offered for what it was worth, had occurred to the police. “Or,” they concluded, “can it be that it already has? If so, when we see one reporter from one source with the police day and night, and we hear reports of ‘no progress’ from official sources after so much time and so many horrible murders, we have to wonder whether the answer is being hidden.”
Had the mayor been eating anything but yogurt when he read that editorial, he would have choked to death. He had a mental picture of the senate sinking in a hog wallow. He called his old buddy, the commissioner, and demanded action.
And action he got. The commissioner had made a rare appearance at police headquarters to inform Fleisher that he, Fleisher, was holding a press conference in twenty minutes to explain the important new developments in the Hog case, and to put to rest the vile rumor that there could be any kind of conspiracy involving his police department, or anyone connected with the administration of the next United States senator from the state of New York. It was not necessary for the commissioner to add “or else.”
Dr. Higgins excused herself, and left. Fleisher’s thoughts had to do with rats and sinking ships.
Ron Gentry, meanwhile, was going over a list of the things Harold Atler had put in his complaint to the license bureau. Gentry had made private use of information gathered while in Atler’s employ. He had slandered Atler, and threatened him physical violence. One out of three, Ron thought.
He made a face. Atler had obviously flipped—the hearing he was after would make public the very things he wanted quiet. Atler probably figured he was through, anyway. Now it wasn’t so much help Atler as hurt Gentry he was interested in. In spite of everything, Ron had to pity the broker.
The phone buzzed. Mrs. Goralsky’s voice said, “Dr. Higgins is on the line.”
Ron told her to make the connection. He heard the usual click, then Janet’s voice say, “Ron!” then a loud clunk!
“Hello?” he said. “Janet?”
“Hello?” Janet said.
“Are you all right? What was that noise?”
“What? Oh, I just dropped the phone. Ron, Fleisher’s in trouble.”
“I saw today’s Express.”
“They’re making a scapegoat out of him.” She told him about the commissioner’s visit. “Can’t you do something? You know Fleisher would never ask for help.”
“You flatter me,” he told her, “but I carry no weight here at all. If anybody, it has to be the professor.”
She told him to hurry.
He had Mrs. Goralsky ring his house. Useless. When the professor went into his painting frenzy, he couldn’t be bothered with worldly concerns like answering the phone. Ron swore, and hung up, ran downstairs, and drove through the slush to his house.
Now, the professor did look like a derelict; unshaven, in his soiled shirt, staring with glazed eyes at the canvas. Even that looked somehow gone to seed. The wide part of New York State was wider, and more rounded near the edges. The narrow, projecting part was longer and thinner. It was a map for the wall of the mirror room in the fun house.
The professor didn’t hear Ron come in.
“Maestro?”
Benedetti did not look up from his canvas. “Yes, Ronald? Are you home already? I have decided not to attend Mrs. Chester’s little get-together this evening.”
“I’m not here about that, Maestro. They’re getting ready to dump Fleisher off the case.”
The old man laughed. “And who can they find better? In this town?” The old man liked to pretend he was naive about politics.
“It doesn’t matter if they get someone better. They’re all on the hot seat—they have to give the illusion of movement, even if they aren’t going anywhere.”
The professor rose from his stool. “Ronald,” he said softly, “this case is an abyss. I have analyzed. I am trying to imagine. And I can find no explanation at all, buon’Iddio, not even the most outlandish one, that is consistent with itself, let alone evidence. I am dealing with perhaps the strangest evil I have ever found, and you come to me with the petty politics of the police. I will not tolerate interruptions! Had you done something like this before, you would not have lasted a day as my pupil.”
Ron exploded. “Why don’t you grow up, for God’s sake?”
The professor tilted back his head and looked down his nose. “Niccolo Benedetti is not talked to in this fashion.”
Ron said, “I’m sorry,” in tones of no sincerity. “All right. You sit here in your rent-free studio, and paint and think to your heart’s content. But as a philosopher, you should try to understand that evil today is not fought from the backs of white stallions. Evil today is tied in with all the petty, weak human things, like looking for a scapegoat when the villain eludes capture. And you might take a moment to think about who got you the opportunity to study this particular evil in the first place.
“And you might think about this. One guaranteed result of Fleisher’s replacement will be a period of confusion, a slowing down of the investigation. A fine chance for a maniac to strike, wouldn’t you say, Maestro? But at least you will have proved you’re consistent in your eccentricities, won’t you?”
He turned to stalk out, and heard the professor’s laughter behind him. He whirled around. “What’s so funny?”
“A struggling private eye who denies his complexities.” He laughed again, sighed. “Once again, the teacher learns from the student, eh? If you give me a moment, I will come with you. First, I must wash and shave.”
Fleisher’s news conference was not going well. He had started out by giving the newspaper and broadcast reporters present a catalog of the various things an investigation of that size entailed. That was received with, at best, tolerance. Then he made the tactical error of pointing out just how many similar cases in the past, from all over the world, had gone unsolved.
“Is that a copout, Inspector?” asked a man from the Top-40 station. There was a rumbling in the room.
The trouble is, I can’t think straight, for crysake, the inspector thought. His mind was full of the thought of strangling the mayor and the police commissioner simultaneously, one in each hand.
There was only one thing to do. The inspector threw them a bone. “No, it’s no copout. I’m just saying. In fact, we’ve made some progress just today. Detectives, ah, Aronian and, ah,” what the hell was his name? “ah, Hawkins,” that was it, “detectives Aronian and Hawkins, working under my direction,” and God forgive me for that, he thought, “have broken the alibi of Terry Wilbur, the boyfriend of Leslie Bickell, the fourth victim, who as you know has disappeared. We now consider him an active suspect.”
He might as well have saved himself the trouble—the press had considered Wilbur an active suspect since the first time they tried to interview hi
m and he wasn’t there.
The man from the Express said, “Come on, Inspector, who are you covering up for?”
Fleisher started to boil. As a thirty-three-year man, he had heard questions like that before, and knew how to handle them; but he wasn’t himself today, he was the damn mayor’s whipping boy. And if he did give that bastard the answer he deserved, he was through. So the seconds ticked by while the inspector stood in impotent rage.
The reporters and spectators started to yell. “Well?” “What about it, Fleisher?” “Does this silence mean you’re really shielding someone?” “Who is it, Fleisher?”
Then a voice came from the door in the back of the room. It wasn’t a loud voice, but it cut through the other voices and made people listen.
“I will answer those questions, if the inspector does not mind.”
Fleisher could have kissed him. “Not at all, Professor,” he said, quite literally from the bottom of his heart. “This is the world-famous Professor Niccolo Benedetti,” he told the press, who did not need to be told.
The professor, followed by Ron Gentry, walked up on the small stage, shook hands ostentatiously with Fleisher, stood behind the podium, adjusted the microphone, and addressed the ladies and gentlemen of the press.
“Fools!” he said. “Fools of the press and fools of the administration! This man cannot be apprehending a murderer if he is here defending his well-earned reputation from malicious rumors repeated and feared by fools.”
Ron saw Janet in the audience. She was having a hard time keeping in her desire to applaud.
Benedetti went on. “You wish to know if anyone connected with the investigation of this case can be Hog? Do you think the inspector is as stupid as you? Everyone connected with the case, everyone, even to Niccolo Benedetti, has been tailed, at random, by policemen since this case began, and all, I repeat all, have alibis for at least one of Hog’s atrocities. Are you now happy?”
A lady in a wig from a local TV station was not happy. “Why didn’t Fleisher say this himself?”
Hog Murders Page 13
