Finch recognized the problem of inconsistencies, especially in aberrant behavior. Loose ends, things left unanswered, riddles unsolved. But he regarded these as minor compared to his theory of two killers. It covered, in his opinion, all the known facts.
At the end the conclusions were several. There were two killers of similar purpose, or Mungo had killed Bishop and destroyed the face for unknown reasons. Or someone, Spanner suggested mysteriously, had devised an incredibly complex and brilliant scheme.
After an excellent fish dinner the two men promised to keep in touch and work together should new thoughts arise. Both reluctantly agreed that the next move was up to the killer, or killers.
BY LABOR DAY the September 4 issue of Newstime had been on the stands for several days. Sales were good, well above average. The cover was a real shocker, with the composite picture of Mungo and the murdered girl’s disemboweled body. The photo of the body had been bought from someone in the medical examiner’s office and handed personally to Derek Lavery for a goodly sum of money. It was worth the cost.
Sheriff Oates read the story over the weekend. It confirmed his growing suspicion that Vincent Mungo was somehow much smarter than all the doctors who had examined him; otherwise he could never have lasted this long.
Senator Stoner also saw a copy over the weekend. He immediately began fuming. He wanted a target to flail against, as long as he held the upper hand. Now Newstime had stolen some of his steam by demanding death for Vincent Mungo. But to come down hard on them he would have to appear soft on Mungo. That was out of the question.
He decided to do nothing for the moment, hoping the source of the idea would be obvious to all. Having no confidence in the public’s intelligence, he doubted it.
SOMETIME LATE on the evening of September 6 Bishop found what he had been seeking in Phoenix, Arizona. His two days in town had seemed like two years. The city was still an oven. He had bought a map and driven to all the local points of interest, filling a day. At night he cruised the E. McDowell area of topless bars and prostitutes but nothing appealed to him and he soon returned to the hotel room. It was air-conditioned.
His second day was spent driving in the surrounding desert. The land had a barren beauty that intrigued him, it was somehow different from the deserts of Nevada and California. He stopped often along the deserted roads to take a mental stretch. After a lifetime at Willows, unlimited space made him feel a bit claustrophobic. Darkness engulfed everything by the time he got back to Phoenix. He ate a quiet dinner before continuing his search.
It was late and she was temporarily inactive but he looked like such an easy mark. She was sure she could get him in and out fast.
In her apartment, to which they had come unseen, he told her what he wanted. Right there in the living room, with all his clothes on.
She had guessed it. A real fast mark! “Sure, honey,” she said in her sexiest drawl, “I’m always ready to put my love where my mouth is.” She smiled sweetly, her eyelids fluttering. “Just as soon as you put your money where yours is.”
He took out two twenties.
“But not in here,” she said, taking them out of his hand. She indicated a closed door. “I got somebody sleeping over.” He looked startled. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “it’s just my kid. He’s with me for a couple weeks’ vacation.” She pulled his hand. “He’s only five,” she added as an afterthought.
Bishop’s eyes shrank to pinpoints as he was led into another room. He was furious. A woman who left her boy alone while she went out looking for men! Who kept the boy with her while she took strange men into her bed! He could hardly believe that anyone would be so vicious, so inhuman. He thought of his own mother. She had been a saint. And so good to him. He had loved his mother dearly.
His eyes followed the woman as she got a pillow from the bed. She was evil, he told himself. She was an evil demon and he was glad he had met her for he knew how to handle evil demons. Yes, he most certainly did.
She placed the pillow on the floor and knelt in front of him. As she opened his zipper he pulled out his long knife from the jacket pocket. He whispered to her and she raised her head, her mouth open. With one swift stroke he cut her throat, almost severing the head from the trunk, He jumped back to escape the squirting blood as she sank to the floor, her eyes already dulled.
Inserting the long blade in her vagina, he slit upward to the navel. Cutting the flesh back, he lunged savagely with the knife at the sexual parts again and again. Finally exhausted, he deftly cut out the belly button with the razor-sharp edge and wrapped it in a handkerchief from his pocket.
Before leaving the room, his shoes and knife wiped clean of blood on the bedspread, Bishop cut a letter C with the point of the blade in each breast. This one was for his father, he reminded himself with grim satisfaction.
He wanted people to know of his father, to read of him again. But he realized he had to go about it in a mysterious manner lest they get too close to his true identity. A letter would be sent before he left Phoenix. He would slowly lead them to his father, always making sure he was far enough ahead of them in time and space.
Back at his hotel Bishop slept for a few hours. In the early morning he returned the car and bought a bus ticket to El Paso. The girl’s body would surely be found that day; by then he would be far away.
In the station he glanced over the newsstand and saw Vincent Mungo staring back at him from one of the magazines. Bishop paid his money and sat in a corner, his face buried in the story. It made no sense. Why didn’t they write the truth? It was the women who destroyed in murderous detail, seeking revenge and release. Women were a different species from another planet, a devil universe, and he was a warrior in an endless space war between good and evil. Why couldn’t they see that?
For a long time he sat quietly, the black money case on his lap, the flight bag by his side. Behind his eyes he saw his friend Vincent Mungo lying dead in the rain. Sometimes the innocent were slaughtered along with the guilty. He hoped he wouldn’t have to slaughter too many of the innocent. But he must vanquish the enemy regardless of consequences. He was the demon hunter, and he was very good at what he did.
On the bus he turned again to the copy of Newstime. Leafing through it, he came to a brief article naming Caryl Chessman and his eyes rounded with interest. It was about California politics and capital punishment as well as Chessman.
As the big bus raced for the Texas border on the morning of September 7, 1973, Thomas Bishop settled back and slowly read how his father had allegedly admitted attacking women to a convict named Solis who was being used by a senator named Stoner to advance capital punishment and himself.
THE MUTILATED body of Janice Hill was discovered by her fiveyear-old son, who awakened that morning at 8:30 and went into his mother’s bedroom. Phoenix police found the woman’s breasts placed neatly between her feet. On each breast was a letter C, obvious knife cuts. Her sexual parts had been hacked to pieces. The belly button was missing.
A call was quickly made to Los Angeles police, who in turn notified Sacramento. Vincent Mungo had apparently struck again, this time in Arizona. The trail was widening. And so would the net.
THE OFFICIAL reaction to the latest outrage was swift. By that afternoon Arizona police were searching everywhere, photos of Mungo in hand. The FBI jumped in, promising to provide more than laboratory assistance and out-of-state checks. Sacramento offered full cooperation from its investigative team, and sent Sheriff James Oates to Phoenix to fill them in on what was known of Mungo. Unofficially the reaction in California was one of relief; Mungo was no longer just their problem.
No one understood the terrible significance of the carvings on the breasts. None could even guess at the meaning, except for the obvious obscenities. But there was virtually no doubt as to whose devilish work it had been.
The evening news gave the details of the new atrocity to all of California. At Willows, Henry Baylor was dismayed, dreading what it could mean to his position. He
roundly cursed the incompetent police, the inefficient Dr. Lang, and his own incredible bad luck. It was a display of emotion he seldom allowed himself.
In Sacramento, Jonathan Stoner was overjoyed. Mungo was going big. With him he carried the imprint of the senator from California.
In Berkeley, Amos Finch again called John Spanner. They readily agreed that the madman was after women and that the Willows killing was either a fluke or something much more sinister. Finch intended to give Spanner’s ideas more thought, though he said nothing over the phone.
In Los Angeles, Derek Lavery congratulated himself for a coup of perfect timing. Mungo was the day’s rage and his picture was on the cover of Newstime.
In San Diego, a Los Angeles man in town for a few days called Phoenix and asked if the mob there could reach out for Vincent Mungo. There was a contract on him.
And in Kansas, George Little felt sorrow for the dead woman’s parents. He knew what they were going through.
BY THE following morning Sheriff Oates had given the Phoenix authorities all the information he had on Vincent Mungo. The city was combed from end to end. Nothing turned up: no killer, no clues. Someone said that if Mungo was still in town he’d have to be invisible. Oates blanched—it was happening all over again. He almost told them they were looking for the devil himself.
Over a twentyfour-hour period Arizona was searched by thousands of men, all to no avail. Mungo was nowhere. He had slipped through once again. Or flown over or swum under, There was one other possibility. Maybe he just vanished in a puff of smoke,
Nine
THE LETTER to the Editor arrived in Los Angeles on the morning of September 10. It had been mailed the previous Friday in Phoenix. The woman who opened the letter in the Newstime building had other things on her mind as she turned to her co-worker. “So then I told my son he was wrong and he should..
She stopped, the color draining from her face. Her mouth sprang wide, her hands began to shake. After a moment she called to her friend who was starting to turn toward her. She called out again, very softly. The cheery grandmother left her own desk and came over to the woman’s side.
“Really, Thelma, I wish you wouldn’t do that. You always stop in the middle of a story just when it’s getting good.”
Thelma did not hear a word she said. Her eyes were on the object removed from the envelope. It was a human navel. She had spread the tissue open and there it was. With a slip of paper underneath.
She gingerly fingered the paper free of the tissue and unfolded it. Both women stared at the two words: Another one.
At the bottom was a third word.
A signature.
Manson.
Ten minutes later the envelope and its grisly contents rested on Derek Lavery’s huge oak desk.
“Interesting,” said Ding finally, breaking the room’s unearthly silence.
Lavery stared at him, not knowing whether to laugh or shout.
“I got a goddamn belly button on my desk just lying there, unattached to anything, and all you can say is interesting!”
He sounded personally offended.
“Not the navel, that obviously belongs to the Phoenix woman.” Ding sighed. “The note. That’s what’s interesting.”
“Tell me about the note,” said Lavery.
“What’s to tell? It either means he’s killed before and this was another one or this was his first and another one is coming up. If he’s killed before, it could be Mungo. The M.O. sounds the same.”
“But is it Mungo?”
“The note says Manson.”
Lavery looked pained. “Charles Manson is behind bars where he belongs.”
“A follower, then. He had them, you know. Crazies with nothing to lose. Outcasts with paranoid fantasies. They could easily do something like this.”
“But did they?”
“I don’t know,” Ding said weakly. “They could have.”
Lavery gave a disgusted snort. “That’s all you can say, for chrissake? A journalist—”
“Reporter.”
“—like you, and all you can say is you don’t know? You remember Manson, you wrote enough about him. What’s that you called him? A nobody who wanted everybody to know what he was. I liked that one. And what was the other? A cunt cultist with delusions of adequacy. That was good too. You had the punk down cold.” His voice turned to stone. “But now you can’t answer a simple question about the little bastard.” Paused for effect. “C’mon, try. Does this feel like his kind of thing?”
Ding hated to think when he was being pressured.
“Does it?”
“No, I don’t think this was a cult killing,” he said finally. “It seems spontaneous and random, but—”
“Manson’s were spontaneous and random.”
“That’s the point. They really went in just to kill. But here the kill seems almost incidental to wrecking the body. That makes it differe nt.”
“What about Manson’s name on the note?”
Ding frowned. “It means something but I don’t know what.”
“So we’re back to Mungo.”
“Not necessarily. Could be somebody else taking up the sport.”
Lavery blinked in surprise. “You mean a second maniac?”
“It’s happened before.”
The editor thought of the possibilities for circulation. Wow!
Ding pointed to the desk top. “First you better call the cops,” he said softly. “That thing’s been there long enough already.”
THE EVENING news reported the existence of a note indicating that the murder of a Phoenix woman had been the work of followers of Charles Manson. A Los Angeles police spokesman called the note genuine. The morning headlines loudly announced that Manson was once again in the news, and the papers printed the contents of the note. Dozens of people throughout the state renewed their secret vows to kill the son of a bitch should he ever set foot outside a prison.
AMOS FINCH didn’t believe it for a minute. He had accepted the existence of two killers when each seemingly presented a different psychological modus operandi. He had himself postulated the theory. Naturellement! But to suggest that two or more crank artists were operating separately with the same hideous passion for destruction of the body was utter nonsense. The police were fools. Consummate asses! As always, they saw only the obvious, the straight line, the simple point. They had absolutely no sensitivity for the nuances of human conduct, the immense subtleties of any interaction. Give them another hound to chase after, and they would miss the fox every time.
He could think of a half dozen interpretations of the signatory word, including the obvious one of misleading the authorities. Why the killer should want such misdirection could only be guessed at for the moment. Then, too, it could be a misspelling of “mansion,” the main house, which might have significance for the killer. Or a corruption of the Old French masson, a master builder who works with stone; in this case, headstones, as in a cemetery. Or “manson” could simply mean son of man, with all that implies. There were many possibilities.
The only impossibility was the idiotic belief that one or more youthful thrill seekers committed these incomparably artistic murders. Finch knew better. There was a thread of majestic insanity running through them, weaving them into a mosaic of absolute logic and invincible order. True mass murderers were always loners, always working out of their own mathematical rectitude. Whether this one was the California Creeper or the Willows maniac, or whether the two were really one remained to be seen. But that only one of them was now operating was a certainty. Sans doute.
Amos Finch waited with undisguised anticipation for the next murder. That there would be more was also, in his mind, without doubt.
JOHN SPANNER, for other reasons, arrived at much the same conclusion. A lifetime of police work had taught him to mistrust all coincidence. The maniacal slaughter had started at Willows and had continued in Los Angeles and now in Phoenix. And God knows how many others not yet discovered! In all
the known killings the M.O. was basically the same, and the method of operation was the one thing Spanner had learned to trust. People usually didn’t change their ways of doing things; each person operated out of a particular view of the world, and his actions came out of that view.
Why Mungo, if it was Mungo doing the killing, should suddenly start writing cryptic notes was unclear. But why not? Maybe he wrote one for Los Angeles but it was lost or went unrecognized. Maybe that was part of his pattern. If so, there would be a note the next time too.
John Spanner also was sure that there would be a next time.
SHERIFF OATES called Spanner on Tuesday from Forest City but he was out for the day. Oates wanted to ask him if he had figured out what kind of disguise Mungo used that enabled him to escape detection. Oates didn’t really believe the man was a devil. But he also didn’t believe Mungo was himself any longer. Who the hell was he now?
SENATOR STONER was angry. He took time out from his lecture tour to publicly ridicule the police theory that Charles Manson’s followers were behind the horrible murders. It was Vincent Mungo and no one else, as any fool could see. Stoner was no fool. He saw that he had cast his lot with Mungo the maniac, and he wasn’t about to cast off in another direction now.
ON THURSDAY Sheriff Oates called on Lieutenant Spanner for a friendly chat. They talked mostly about their problem. Spanner reminded the sheriff that in his case it was purely academic since he no longer had any responsibility in the matter. Oates nodded glumly; he was still officially involved.
“But if he keeps moving on,” said the sheriff, brightening, “my troubles’ll be over.”
“Still think it’s our friend?”
“What do you think, John?”
The lieutenant was annoyed for a moment but shrugged it off and smiled. “It’s the Willows killer you’re looking for. He did them all.”
By Reason of Insanity Page 26
