He watched the assistant M.E. walk slowly around Hiller’s body, smiling down at it as if he suspected that Hiller might only be faking and would jump up at any second. “He’s dead, all right,” Smathers said finally, making his customary joke. Tobin had heard it even at the scene of a gruesome auto accident on Broadway that had left its victim decapitated.
“I figured he wasn’t only sleeping,” Tobin said.
“You want the photog to get in here before I do?”
Tobin nodded. That was the usual procedure: Get the homicide scene recorded on film before Smathers and the lab people did their jobs.
While the photographer circled the room taking his Polaroid flash shots, Smathers moved over to stand by Tobin. “Two more people shot right down the street tonight,” he said. “What is this, the last act of Hamlet?”
“I wish it was a last act,” Tobin said.
“I got instructions to run over there after I’m finished here,” Smathers said. “Your partner Oxman is already there.”
“I know. I’ve been told.”
Tobin had to get away from Smathers. Without saying anything more, he went into the living room to see if Herb Blocker and his wife were calm enough now to give statements. He’d seen all he needed to see in the bedroom. On the way he wondered how Oxman was handling things. He didn’t much like the idea of Elliot Leroy moving in with Jennifer Crane; he suspected old E.L. had made himself a conquest, which, if true, was goddamned unprofessional. A man Elliot Leroy’s age was too old to let a piece of tail jeopardize his career. Tobin decided he’d talk to Elliot Leroy about it when he saw him, see which way the wind was blowing.
“He’s … really dead, isn’t he?” Blocker asked from where he sat in a low-slung chair. His face was the color of ashes and his hands were still trembling. “I mean, sometimes if you’re not a doctor you can be fooled.”
“He’s dead, all right,” Tobin said, echoing Smathers’s stale irony. “You shouldn’t feel so badly, Mr. Blocker. It could be you in there instead of him.”
“Was he armed?” Gretchen Blocker asked.
“No. But that probably won’t make much difference. There was no way for your husband to know if he was or wasn’t.”
“I should have tried to find out,” Blocker said miserably. “I shouldn’t have just … shot him. But he came toward me, he had his hands out in front of him; I thought he was going to attack me …”
“Just take it easy, Mr. Blocker.”
Blocker’s wife said, “Is Herb … in trouble?”
“Some,” Tobin said. Blocker wasn’t the psycho; he was reasonably sure of that. And because he found himself liking these people, he decided to tell it straight. “But Hiller was shot from the front in your bedroom, so ultimately it’ll be ruled self-defense or justifiable homicide, after you thread your way through the legal entanglements. You’ll need a good lawyer, even for this.”
“Hiller,” Blocker said softly. “Was that his name?” It was personal now; he’d killed a man with a name, an actual human being, not just a menacing figure lurking in his bedroom.
“He lived the other side of West End,” Tobin said. “When we check I’m pretty sure we’ll find out he was a pro.”
“You mean a professional burglar?”
Tobin nodded. “He’s dressed the part, he’s got burglar tools in his jacket pocket, and he got in here without arousing anybody. He was a pro, all right.”
“God,” Blocker moaned. “Why did he have to pick us? Why us?”
Yeah, Tobin thought. Why?
He wanted to get the initial stages of this one over with, so he could find out from Elliot Leroy what had gone down there. He said, “I’ll need you to answer some questions, Mr. Blocker.”
“Yes, sure,” Blocker said with a kind of pathetic eagerness. He needed to tell his story now, needed to purge himself of it.
Tobin asked the key questions and sat listening to the same sad story he’d heard so many times in so many places, with only slight variations and always with the same ending.
When Blocker was finished talking, Tobin put Holroyd in charge of seeing to the removal of the body and questioning the neighbors. Then he left the building, decided to let his car stay parked where it was, and hurried through the warm night to where Elliot Leroy was waiting with more death.
THE COLLIER TAPES
Two more of the wicked are dead. Two more blemishes on the face of my universe have been erased.
I quote Swinburne for swine:
They say sin touches not a man so near
As shame a woman; yet he too should be
Part of the penance, being more deep than she
Set in the sin.
I knew Marco Pollosetti and Michele Butler must be the next to be punished for their sins when the Eye observed them copulating on the woman’s bed. Pollosetti’s thin, hairy buttocks rising and falling in ever-increasing tempo, her legs entwined about him, his mouth fastened like a suckling child on one of her pale breasts … it was a disgusting, evil sight. As one, like an obscene beast, they writhed in concert, their motions becoming frantic, their legs flailing as if seeking a foothold in the air. The Eye saw the mindless spasms of their bodies grow to a fierceness, then closed in shame as they finished sating their lust. And I left my apartment immediately and went down into my world and brought them their just reward; I brought them Death, I brought them salvation.
Now the Eye is open again and I watch the police at their futile work. They are Philistines; I will not fall prey to them. Quite the contrary. I prove that and go on proving it, do I not?
And I give lessons even as I wreak my vengeance and deliver sinners to the purifying infinite. Detective Oxman must know by now that the fate of the two young fornicators might just as easily have been delivered unto him and his harlot. How do he and Jennifer Crane feel about that? What are they thinking, even at this moment? Fear haunts by fits those whom it takes. Detective Oxman will not rest easy tonight, for now he surely realizes my power.
Another quote comes to me, my favorite verse from Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner:
Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread
And having once turned round, walks on
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
It is too bad there isn’t time to mail Detective Oxman a copy of that verse. He would certainly identify with it if I did. For he is sure to blanch each time he hears an unfamiliar step behind him in a lonely place, and for an instant at least his bowels will turn to water. The first or second or third time it happens, perhaps, the one who walks behind him will pose no threat. But then, very soon——
Then the one who walks behind him shall be me.
PART 5
TUESDAY
SEPTEMBER 24
7:15 A.M.
JENNIFER CRANE
She couldn’t seem to get warm.
She had lain sleepless in bed with the air conditioner off and her electric blanket turned high, alone because E.L. had been up all night, in and out of the apartment; she had taken a shower with the water as hot as she could stand it; twice she had lit the oven in an attempt to warm the apartment, only to have E.L. complain when he returned and shut it off again; she had put on a sweater and a light jacket, still had them on now. None of that made her warm. Her feet felt as though she had been walking barefoot in snow, her hands were icy, little chills kept slithering up and down her back.
It was the fear that had robbed her of warmth; she knew that. She had never been more frightened than she was now, than she had been ever since E.L. came back last night to tell her about Michele Butler and Marco Polio. But it wasn’t just herself she was afraid for; it was E.L., too. And it wasn’t just their lives she was afraid for; it was what they had together, the fragile relationship they had begun to build before these new explosions of terror the past two nights.
For the first tim
e since Zach, like it or not, want it or not, she had found somebody who mattered to her, let somebody inside her mind as well as her body. Maybe there was no future for her and E.L. in any event, but then again maybe there was. She wanted badly to find out. But if this madness kept on, if they didn’t get the maniac soon, she sensed that something terrible would happen. E.L. would be killed, or circumstances would drive them apart in some other way …something terrible would happen.
She shivered, hugged herself tightly as she paced the confines of her bedroom. E.L. was out in the front room now, with Art Tobin; she could hear the murmur of their voices through the closed door, but not what they were saying to each other. E.L. had sent her in here when Tobin arrived, so whatever it was they were discussing, he wanted it private. But she thought she knew what part of it was, anyway—the same thing she and E.L. had talked about over an hour ago.
He was going to move her out of here, to some other part of the city where she would be safe. And he was going to bring in a policewoman to take her place.
“It’s the only way that makes sense now,” he’d told her. “You can’t stay here; it’s too dangerous. That psycho got in and out of this building once. I’m not going to take any chances that he can do it again, no matter how many cops we have in the vicinity.”
“But if he’s watching the building, he’ll see me leave …”
“No, he won’t. The policewoman will come in uniform, and we’ll see to it that she’s your size and build; when she gets here you’ll change clothes with her. She’ll also have different color hair than you, noticeably different, and she’ll bring wigs for both of you. You’ll be out of here and away in a couple of minutes; if he’s watching, he won’t have time to notice the switch.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’ve got to stay, Jennifer, you know that.”
“I want to stay here with you.”
“No. I told you, it’s too dangerous.”
“Damn it, E.L., this is my apartment—”
“Not anymore, it isn’t,” he said grimly. “It’s a command post and maybe it’s a trap. It was a bad idea to let you stay here this long; I should have called in a policewoman twenty-four hours ago.”
“What if I refuse to leave?”
“Then I’ll have you put in protective custody and removed by force. I mean it, Jennifer. This isn’t a game.”
“My God, don’t you think I know that?”
“Then don’t argue with me anymore. I’m a cop and I know what I’m doing.”
So his mind was made up and she was going: The policewoman was due to arrive by eight o’clock. On the one hand she hated the idea of being forced out of her apartment, of leaving him; of having to sit somewhere in unfamiliar surroundings, holed up under guard, waiting for the phone to ring or somebody to come and tell her it was over one way or another. The idea of all that passive waiting—hours, maybe days—was repulsive. But on the other hand she felt a deep-seated sense of relief. Not only would she be leaving this apartment, she would be leaving this block and the spying eyes and malevolent purpose of a mass murderer. She would no longer have to fear for her own life. Because it could have been she and E.L. who were shot last night, in her bed; it could be E.L. who was dead and she the one who was lying unconscious, in critical condition, in the hospital under police guard. E.L. was doing the right thing to get her away from here. At least now she would be safe.
Yet she hated that feeling of relief, that desire for safety. Ever since Zach and the loss of her baby, she had wallowed in safety—safe job, safe relationships with men, never allowing herself to step out from behind the high safe walls of aloofness and calculation she had erected. If E.L. hadn’t happened to her, she might have remained hidden behind those walls; and it would be much easier for her to go away now, to run from her fear into still more safety. But E.L. had happened to her. She was changing, emerging, and she felt naked and vulnerable, and she wasn’t sure if she could escape back into that sanctuary she had built for herself. It was that as much as anything else that made her so afraid.
She lit another cigarette—smoking too much too, a full pack already this morning—and paced to the closet door. The muffled sounds of E.L.’s and Tobin’s voices still came from the other room. On impulse she turned the knob and cracked the door soundlessly to listen.
“… even some talk about evacuating the entire block,” Tobin was saying. “That’s how panicked City Hall is this morning. The media’s got the whole city on the verge of hysteria.”
“If they went ahead with anything like that, it’d screw things up so bad we might never get him. He probably lives on the block himself. And even if he doesn’t, he’d just lie low and wait until things cooled down and everybody moved back.”
“I know. Smiley talked to the commissioner and got him to see it that way. But they’re still talking about cordoning off the block.”
“I don’t like that either.”
“Neither do I. Stepped-up patrols, more undercover men in the buildings—all of that makes sense. But we don’t want to scare the perp off by turning the neighborhood into a fucking war zone.”
“Yeah. He’s out of control as it is, Artie; he’s hit two days running and he thinks he’s invincible. All he is is lucky. He’ll make another try damned soon, and when he does his luck is liable to run out. If everybody doesn’t panic.”
“You think he’ll come after you this time?”
“I hope so,” E.L. said. “Jesus, I hope so.”
“Well, if he does make another try, against you or anybody else, we’d better made sure his luck runs out. Heads are gonna roll in the Department if we don’t, yours and mine included.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“It’ll be worse than that, too,” Tobin said. “The media’s got people spooked; everybody’s screaming for protection. If that bastard kills again and gets away with it, the city’s gonna explode. We’ll have armed vigilantes running around, blowing people away on the streets. We’ll have riots. I’m telling you, Elliot Leroy …”
Jennifer shut the door again, shivering, and went to the overflowing ashtray on the nightstand to jab out her cigarette. Immediately, she lit another. The smoke burned her lungs, made her cough and tears come to her eyes.
You think he’ll come after you this time?
I hope so. Jesus, I hope so.
And I hope not, she thought. Jesus, I hope not.
Her eyes were still wet from the coughing; she could feel the tears warm on the icy surface of her cheeks. She wished suddenly that she could cry, that she was the kind of person who could sit down and let the emotion come spilling out of her. It would be so good to just sit down and—
And she sat down on the bed and began to weep.
8:10 A.M. — WILLIE LORSEC
Corales stared at him across the table. Richard was standing there with a cup of coffee in one hand and the deck of playing cards in the other; his eyes were bright with disappointment and what Lorsec took to be a kind of desperation. “What do you mean no more gin games, Willie? What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. You must understand——”
“I don’t understand,” Corales said. “Maybe you don’t understand either. I won forty-nine straight hands. One more and I’ll have fifty and I can get into the Guinness Book of World Records. I got to do it, Willie. You said last night you’d play this morning; you promised me before you left. It’s only one more hand!”
“Richard, you’re not being practical. Two more people were shot last night, right here in this building. And another of your tenants was killed just up the street. We can’t simply go on playing gin as if nothing had happened.”
“Why can’t we?”
“Because we can’t. You knew each of the victims; don’t you care that they’re dead?”
“Sure I care,” Corales said. “I’m sorry they’re dead. But they weren’t friends of mine, and there’s nothing I can do about it. You and me, we g
ot to go on living, don’t we?”
“Yes, we do. If we can.”
“What do you mean, if we can?”
“Several people have died already,” Lorsec said patiently. “Who’s to say there won’t be more? Who’s to say the next victim won’t be you or me?”
Corales shook his head. “Nobody’d want to kill us.”
“It seemed nobody would want to kill any of the others, either. But they’re dead just the same.”
“You mean you’re afraid, Willie?”
“Of course I am. Aren’t you?”
“No,” Corales said. “I don’t go out at night, and I got locks on my door and a Reggie Jackson baseball bat right alongside my bed. Even if somebody wanted to shoot me, he couldn’t do it.”
Lorsec sighed. Corales was such a child, such an innocent. Mental retardation was a tragedy for the most part, but in a situation like the one which existed here, and in a man such as Corales, it was also a blessing. Unlike everyone else who lived on this block, Richard could sleep nights—the sleep of the untroubled, the unafraid, the guileless. His world had not been disrupted. His world, at least as he perceived it, remained as simple and unencumbered as it had always been.
“So I don’t see no reason why we can’t play gin,” Corales said. “Christ, Willie, I only need to win one more hand. Then I’ll be somebody. Don’t you see that? I never been nobody in my whole life and now I can be.”
“I’m sorry. I really am.…”
“You’re not sorry at all,” Corales said, and there was anger in his voice for the first time. “If you were sorry, you’d sit down and play so I can win one more hand.”
“Richard, listen to me——”
“You’re afraid of losing any more. That’s it, isn’t it? You lost forty-nine times straight and you don’t want to lose no more.”
“That’s not so,” Lorsec said. Which was not quite the truth. Actually, he had become annoyed at losing so many consecutive hands; he was not a man who cared to lose at anything. At first, Corales’s phenomenal winning streak had amused him—and he had continued to put up with it because he was genuinely fond of the man. But enough was enough. He had too many things on his mind to want to put up with it any longer.
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