“Is that bad?” I asked her.
“Oh, heavens, no. Nothing is good or bad in and of itself. A good deal depends upon the house in which you were born.” She put a hand to her mouth and whispered, “Some of my colleagues believe that the moment of conception is more determinant of character than the moment of birth. But I don't hold with such salacious nonsense.”
“Neither do I,” I said.
“Good. Bring me your birth certificate or ascertain the hour and minute of your birth, and I shall make you a chart.”
“Done,” I said.
And at that moment, Kate Davis came dragging through the door. Jessie took one look and rushed to her aid.
“My dear,” she said with concern. “What happened to you?”
“That man,” Kate said, pointing a finger at me. “He got me drunk last night, Jess, and...”
“And?” Jessie Moselle said with appetite.
“And didn't take advantage of me.”
Miss Moselle nodded her head judiciously, as if Kate had just confirmed her diagnosis. “Steam,” she said, “Pure steam.”
I wasn't sure I liked the way that sounded.
Miss Moselle hurried off on patent-leather pumps to fetch her bottle of stimulant. And Kate wound her way to the table and plopped down beside me. She was wearing denim and lace, Calvin Klein jeans and a frilly blouse that tied at the neck. And she looked, in spite of the hangover, absolutely lovable. All blonde and cream, with just a touch of color on her lips and in the blue of her eyes. I reached across the table and stroked her cheek.
“You have, if you don't mind me saying so, a beautiful face.”
She snuggled against my hand with a sigh.
“Did I make a fool of myself last night?” she said woefully.
“Your honor is intact.”
“That's hardly what I meant. Liquor frees the natural child in me. And it also loosens my tongue. If I said anything...”
I smiled at her and said, “All your secrets are still secret.”
“I was afraid of that.” She propped her chin on her right palm and eyed me glumly.” I think I ought to tell you something. Something I was afraid to say last night.” She took a breath and confessed, “I'm not the person I appear to be.”
“Oh?”
“No. It's all an act.”
“All?” I said.
She grunted. “You're not making this any easier. You said last night that I laughed at the things I loved. There's a reason for that.”
“Shall I make a guess?”
“If you insist,” she said.
”You were married right out of high school. And after three or four years of growing up and growing apart, you left him. And since then, you've been afraid of hurting someone else the way you hurt him. So you don't get too deeply involved with anyone.”
Kate crinkled her nose and blushed deep red. “Am I that transparent?” she said with astonishment.
“Your blue card,” I said. “And a little help from Jessie Moselle.”
“I see. I should have known I couldn't fool a trained snooper.”
“Not when the snooper is scheduled to fall in love with you.” I pointed up at the ceiling and said, “The stars. Remember?”
“I remember,” she said in a small voice.
I ran a hand through her mop of curls. “You may not know this, yet, Kate. But I'm a grownup. I can look out for myself.”
But I didn't think she believed me. After three or four years of living with a child and then three or four more of feeling guilty for abandoning him, she wasn't going to believe that for awhile. But that was all right. Because I had plenty of time and a real fondness for the brassy girl who was half denim and half lace.
Miss Moselle came back, carrying a tin of aspirin and a cup of water in either hand. Kate smiled at her feebly.
“Take these,” Jessie commanded and held out two white buttons.
“And, then, I think we'd better talk to Ringold,” I said. “About Twyla Belton and the art books.”
“Together?” Kate said, as she swallowed the aspirin.
“We're partners, aren't we?”
“Are we?” she asked dubiously.
“Come on.”
I pulled her up by the hand and led her to Ringold's door.
******
Ringold was hunched over his desk, tormenting a piece of memo paper with a razor-point pen.
“Sit down, Stoner,” he said, without looking up.
When he did look up and saw both of us sitting there, his smile settled like the foundations of a house. “Is there something I can do for you, Kate?” he said with heavy policy.
“She's with me,” I said.
“This isn't a prom, Stoner,” Ringold said, “I'm sure Kate has business to attend to.”
“Maybe I'd better go, Harry.”
She got to her feet and I jerked her back down beside me.
“Let's get something straight,” I said to Ringold. “You hired me, Leon. You didn't buy me. And I'll handle this case as I see fit. If that's not all right with you, then pay me five hundred bucks for two days work and find someone else.”
“I'm getting tired of ultimatums, Stoner,” he said, straightening up in his chair as people will do when they're trying to discover some backbone.
“You've got an alternative, Leon. Just tell me I'm through.”
His lips struggled for the words. But I was confident he wouldn't find them. For one, he wasn't the type to invest a good deal of money in someone and then squander it in a fit of pique. For another, I'd come to him well-recommended and Ringold was a man who lived by reports and recommendations. And finally, he wanted that computer too badly to blow his best chance at earning it.
He recited some of the racier French vowels this time; and his hand went slowly to his brow, like a tin soldier making a mechanical salute. Then he said, “Oh, hell!” Which was probably as profane as he ever got. “Just give me the report.”
Kate Davis bit her pretty lip to keep from smiling and I nodded at him, to indicate that we'd settled the matter of provenance once and for all. Then I told him the bad news about Twyla and the books.
“Oh, my God,” Ringold said. “What are we going to do?”
There wasn't any regulation to cover this one; and for a second, Leon Ringold not only looked like a scared little boy, he acted like one. He wrung his hands, knitted his bland brow and stared helplessly at me, as if he were a kid who'd lost track of his parents at the fair.
“What are we going to do?” he said again.
“Take it easy, Leon,” I said to him. “That's what we're here to discuss.”
The thought that we'd come to him to fashion policy had a salubrious effect on Leon Ringold. He patted his gray hair as if he were reseating an invisible crown and said, “I suppose we should contact the police,” in a businesslike voice. “Yes, that's the first thing we should do. And then I'd better get in touch with the Board and find out how they want to proceed.”
“That's swell, Leon,” I said. “And in the meantime, Kate and I will try to find a likely suspect.”
“And a likely victim,” Kate said icily.
Then Ringold came up with the tough one—the one I'd been asking myself. “What if he's not on the list. What if he doesn't belong to the library?”
“That'll make things difficult,” I admitted.
“It might help to talk to a clinical psychiatrist,” Kate said. “Someone who specializes in...”
“Psychopathic killers?” Ringold said dismally.
“Well, criminal psychology. Maybe we could come up with some guidelines.”
“I'll look into that this morning,” I said. “And I'll also try to make it up to the art school this afternoon, to see if any of Twyla's teachers can remember if she had a special friend, white, male, between twenty and twenty-five years old. And while I'm doing that, Kate and Miss Moselle can narrow down your list.”
I turned to Kate and said, “You know what we're after. A
ny young white males who've taken out art books or the history books or, if we're really lucky, both. And any young girls who might make likely victims.”
“And me?” Ringold said.
“Contact Al Foster at the C.P.D. and tell him what we've come up with. And get in touch with the other branches to see if our Ripper has destroyed books anywhere else.”
Ringold shuddered. “You don't think there may be other victims, do you?”
“It's a ghastly thought, I agree. But it's got to be checked. Make a list of any books that have been ripped up like ours, and then we'll take a look at the unsolved homicides over the last few years and see if the Ripper has been working outside of Hyde Park.”
“He's planning another one, isn't he?” Ringold said. “I mean that's what it looks like, isn't it?”
“That's what it looks like,” I said.
9
I CALLED George DeVries at the District Attorney's office and got the name of the consulting psychiatrist employed by the Criminal Court.
“Benson Howell,” George told me. “He's got an office on Wellington Place. Why do you want a shrink?”
I told him what we'd uncovered and he got excited again, the way he had on Monday afternoon when I'd first told him about the torn-up books. “Terrific, Harry! Just terrific. I'll talk to Walker and see if I can't get him to reopen the Belton case. We'll even make you a special deputy, Harry boy, if you want to see this thing through.”
“I'm not all that crazy about murder investigations, George. If the D.A.'s office wants to take this on, they're welcome to it.”
George said he'd get back to me later in the day. Then I called Howell's office and made an appointment to see him at ten-thirty. The receptionist spoke to me with the sort of saccharine solicitude in her voice that you usually hear from young duty nurses or old mortuary directors. I wasn't quite sure, when I hung up, whether she understood that I was a private detective and not another patient.
I walked out to the circulation desk, gave Kate Davis a peck on the cheek, and told her I was off to Benson Howell's office.
“If he asks you any questions about your childhood, Harry,” she called out as I walked to the door, “dummy up or tell him you were an orphan. They don't quite know what to do with that.”
******
Wellington Place is a short, maple-shaded street, lined on the north side with brown-and-gray-stone residences that have been converted into offices and on the south by the high, fenced wall of a schoolyard. Some kid was dribbling a basketball behind that wall when I pulled up in front of Howell's brown-stone at ten-twenty. Pock-a-pock-a-pock-a. Like the thwack of a hammer against a limber board. It was the only sound on the street, except for the hiss of the wind among the dry leaves. I took a deep breath of cold air and looked around me. It was an idyllic spot for an office, like a big back yard in the suburbs. And the building itself had been nicely restored. Sandblasted to a burnished red and trimmed in a black paint that looked wet to the touch, with tall smoked-glass windows set in the facade and shiny brass fixtures on all the doors and sashes. It could have been a burgher's home. It was that spruce and genial.
A sign hung on a black chain read “Benson Howell, M.D.” and beneath it a hand, like the hands you see in the margins of synoptic Bibles, pointed down a walkway to three concrete stairs and a smoked-glass door. I walked down to the door and pressed a lighted buzzer.
“Yes?” a voice called out over an intercom speaker. It was the secretary's voice. I recognized its too-sweet flavor.
“Harry Stoner,” I said. “I have an appointment to see Dr. Howell.”
The door opened silently, as if it were cushioned by pneumatic springs. I walked through it into a sleek, handsome waiting room, furnished with smart Danish furniture and some very unhappy-looking people.
The autumn morning and the sweet voice and silent feet of Dr. Howell's elegant establishment hadn't done much good for the man and the two women who were sitting there, in silence, one on each wall, as if they were bent on keeping their miseries separate and to themselves. I took the fourth wall, beneath a framed lithograph of a blue horse chewing red grass under a black sun, and tried smiling at one of the women—a very fat lady in a sack dress with a blue parrot design. She eyed me with naked curiosity, as if she were asking herself what my problem was. I didn't have to guess about hers. Or about that of the frail-looking, blondish man sitting across from me and studying the carpet as if the floor were the proper place for his eyes to rest. The third one, a pretty teenage girl dressed in tight jeans and a low cut top that barely held her breasts, was harder to figure out. From the boredom on her face I guessed she was either waiting for someone or that she'd been ordered to come to Dr. Howell by the Juvenile Court. When I looked her way, she tossed her head with a snippy flip and fixed her eyes on the exposed-brick wall across from her chair.
A couple of minutes passed. Very slowly. Then the receptionist, a youngster with lank blonde hair and a country girl's wan, sunken face, came through an opening in the east wall. “Mr. Stoner?” she said.
I got to my feet and the fat lady gave me an ugly look. “Do you think I could speak to the doctor for just a second?” she said in a cranky, indignant voice.
“He's very busy, Mrs. Morris,” the girl said automatically.
“It'll only take a second,” Mrs. Morris said and her voice got a little panicky.
“I'm sorry. It'll be a few minutes more.”
The fat woman slapped her thigh with her palm and pressed her lips together as if she were afraid to utter another word.
As the receptionist and I walked through the portal, I said, “Do you think she'll be all right?”
The blonde girl laughed. “Connie's been coming to the doctor for ten years, Mr. Stoner. Three times a week. And every time she comes, she asks if she can see him for a moment. I think it's her way of letting us know that she's out there.”
The girl led me down a hallway to a big oak door. “Just go in,” she said. “He's expecting you.”
I walked into Howell's office. It was glassed-in on the north and west walls and paneled in redwood on the south and east. Howell was seated in a leather chair, gazing out the north window at the maple trees that fell away down a hillside behind the office building. From the doorway all I could see of him was the top of his head, which was thick with kinky brown hair, save for a little white baldspot the size of a silver dollar at the crown.
“Come in, Mr. Stoner,” he said in a lively, high-pitched voice. “George DeVries told me you were going to stop by.”
He turned in his chair and I got my first look at his face. His thick brown hair was combed back from the forehead in an old-fashioned pompadour that made his head look as square as a picture frame. His features were coarse—nose like the bill of a toucan, green eyes set so closely together they looked crossed, skin lumpy with acne scars. He wore thick gold-rim glasses, a tiny black bow tie, and a tweed suit. All in all, he looked like a small, neat, nervous George S. Kaufman.
Benson Howell looked me over, frowned, smiled, then switched his gaze to a bookshelf built into the paneling on the east wall. He kept right on frowning, smiling, and looking away for the half hour or so that we talked. I got the impression that that was his way of showing off; for Benson Howell was a prima donna, and the little tics and nervous glances weren't involuntary. They were deliberate assertions of his powers of mind, as if he'd never yet found a subject enormous enough to engage his full attention. I didn't know how that act worked on patients like Mrs. Morris. Maybe it gave them a sense of confidence to know that their analyst was so blithe and prepossessed. It certainly put me off. I found that I had to make myself concentrate on what he was saying rather than on the arrogant blur of his face, or I think I might have gotten up and left.
As it turned out, it was a good thing I stayed, because the son-of-a-bitch was just as bright as he thought he was and a regular mine of useful information.
I told him about the Ripper, about Twyla and the
books, about what Sachs had seen, and about what we had concluded.
Howell raised a caterpillar eyebrow when I finished, tapped his front teeth with a nicotine-stained forefinger, and said, “You know I'm primarily a forensic psychiatrist. This practice is just a way of keeping myself busy when I'm not in court.” His eyes darted about the room and came to rest on a bronze bust of Freud. He curled his lip a bit and said, “What I mean to say is that I'm generally consulted about criminal matters after the fact of the crime. And I'm usually given the chance to interview the criminal.” He looked up from Freud and out the north window at the maple trees. “It's really an extraordinary challenge,” he said without the slightest enthusiasm, “to try to analyze a psychopath without actually examining him.” He finally looked at me. “I think that's what you're asking for, isn't it? An analysis of how this man's mind might work? A profile that would help you identify him?”
I said, “Yes. And in layman's terms, Doctor, if you please.”
“Extraordinary” he said again, tapped his eye-tooth and looked down at the creamy carpeting. “Extremes, Mr. Stoner. That would be your first clue. Be on the lookout for a man of extremes. Extremes in dress, in look, in occupation, in temperament. Especially in temperament.” He looked up and said, “Are you planning to interview your suspects or just to keep them under surveillance?”
“Interview them, if possible,” I said.
Benson Howell got to his feet, walked over to the bookshelf and ran his finger along a row of blue, paper-covered periodicals. “Ask him what he would do in a fight.”
“In a fight?” I said. “You mean in a fist fight?”
“Yes, in a fight. The man you want won't have any respect for his own body. He will be capable of tremendous violence without apparent fear of injury. He will talk of fighting as if his body didn't exist, the way young children sometimes act when they throw themselves off roof-tops in imitation of Superman. He will talk as if he were all-powerful and invulnerable. Extremes, you see.”
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