Murder Among Children

by Donald E. Westlake

  A mild voice said, “Did you lose something?”

  My feet were braced against the second and third steps. I looked up, and up above the baggy-kneed black work pants, the faded flannel shirt, the open black cardigan sweater, blinked a round, curious, rabbit-mild face. He wore wire-framed spectacles, behind which his eyes were pale and watery. His hands, small and pale and soft, hung at his sides.

  I said, “Yes. I lost”—I cast about for something I might have lost, something small—“my ring,” I said at last, and held up my bare left hand, the flashlight still held in it. “I dropped it when I fell,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t it be at the bottom?” He wasn’t suspicious, merely curious. The perfect spectator, friendly and interested and not involved.

  “I suppose it would be,” I said. I struggled to my feet—he didn’t offer to help me—and went up the two steps to the landing, where I felt safer. I had no idea which of the residents this man might be—after multi-murderer Jerry Kanter had turned out to be a spry little aging teen-ager, I was going to make no more guesses based on dossiers—but whoever he was and however mild his appearance, he was potentially the planter of the booby traps, and I was more than a little nervous in his presence.

  I also felt I had to explain myself. I didn’t want the residents to begin to suspect there might be something false about me. At the moment, only Doctor Cameron and the resident who’d discovered the sawn-through rung and I knew that the recent rash of accidents were not accidental. I said, “I woke up and I was very hungry. Then I thought I’d look for my—my ring.”

  “I should think it would have been found by someone else by now,” he said. “Doctor Cameron will have it.”

  “No one would take it for himself?”

  “Steal it?” He was shocked at the idea. “Not here, not in The Midway! This is not like the outside world, you know.”

  “I know,” I said. “But there’s never any petty thievery, none at all?”

  “How could there be? You’d have to tell about it in group therapy, and then they’d make you give it back.” He said this as though it was obvious, and I had merely forgotten it. “Besides,” he added, “stealing is merely an indication of insecurity, and who would ever feel insecure in The Midway?”

  I would, for one, but I didn’t say so. But now, seeing the solemn assurance in this little man’s eyes, I finally understood Doctor Cameron’s passion for secrecy. The Midway was a haven for people recently out of mental institutions who for one reason or another felt unable to go directly into the mainstream of society, which meant these people were delicate and fragile creatures who very much needed the feeling of security The Midway afforded them. If they were to learn that behind every door, within every piece of furniture, somewhere in every room there was a potential injurious booby trap, what would it do to their newly-gained mental stability? Particularly once they were told the perpetrator was necessarily one of them, and that all of them were equally under a cloud of suspicion.

  So I didn’t disagree with the little man. Instead, I said, “You’re up pretty early yourself, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, I sleep very little,” he said. “I was just going down to the kitchen for a snack. May I join you?”

  “I wish you would,” I said. “I have no idea where the kitchen is.”

  “Oh, I know this house backwards and forwards,” he said. “Come along, I’ll show you.”

  I let him go first, and he stepped carelessly down the stairs, blithe in his belief of The Midway’s security. At the bottom I was prepared to stage a little search for my nonexistent ring, but he opened the door without pausing and went on through.

  As we walked along the constantly shifting corridors of the first floor, I said, “By the way, my name is Mitchell Tobin. I just got here today, you know.”

  “I know,” he said. “You came by taxi. I saw you drive up. Tobin, you say?”

  “Yes. I’d like you to call me Mitch, if you would.”

  “People call me Dewey,” he said. “It’s a sort of nickname.”

  “Hello, Dewey,” I said.

  He smiled blankly at me, and walked on.

  The kitchen was large and old-fashioned, but with fairly new appliances. Doctor Cameron, while describing The Midway to me, had told me something of the place’s finances. The people here paid nothing, support coming primarily from a foundation grant, plus a small subsidy under a Federal Health, Education and Welfare program. The foundation owned this house, and leased it to Doctor Cameron—whose brainchild The Midway was—for a dollar a year. These modern appliances would no doubt have been put in by the foundation when it had bought the building for Doctor Cameron seven years ago.

  Dewey expressed a wish to cook for both of us, and asked me what meal I had in mind to eat. It was really too early for breakfast, and yet the hour was even more inappropriate for lunch or dinner. I asked him what he planned to eat and when he said scrambled eggs I said that sounded fine for me also. It did, but there was also the advantage that my food would not be prepared separately from his. There was no reason to suspect Dewey in particular—except that he was prowling around the house at five in the morning—and the accidents had not so far included anything along the lines of food poisoning, but there was something about being in this house, knowing what I knew, surrounded by former mental patients, that was making me cautious almost to the point of paranoia.

  While Dewey bustled around the kitchen, obviously enjoying himself, I watched him and tried to figure out which one he could be. None of the residents was named Dewey, nor did any of them have names that would quickly alter into such a nickname. There were three men in particular I thought he might be, having eliminated everyone else simply on the basis of sex or age, but I couldn’t seem to narrow it any more than that. And it would surely have seemed a little odd if I pressed the point about his name. I’d find out in time, in any case.

  The scrambled eggs were delicious, and so was the coffee. I had to eat left-handed, which I found awkward, and there was no choice but to let Dewey butter my toast, which he diffidently volunteered to do. He was very pleased to have someone to chat with, that was plain, but was hypersensitive to the possibility that he might be forcing his attentions. When talking about The Midway he could be voluble and animated, but other than that he was extremely shy and reticent.

  I kept the conversation alive mostly by asking him questions about The Midway, the answers to which I already knew from Doctor Cameron. It was clear that Dewey loved the place, but when I asked him how long he’d been here his answer was vague. I knew the house rules were that no one could stay here more than six months—partly because of the demand for space, but even more in order to avoid having any of the residents become too attached to The Midway and become unable ever to leave—and I wondered how close Dewey was to that cutoff date. I doubted departure would be easy for him when the time came.

  The impression I got was that he must be very near the end of his half-year. At one point he said, “I do like a chance to chat with new people when they first come here. I’m an old settler here, you might say, and I can answer a lot of questions that Doctor Cameron might be too busy for.”

  Would a man like Dewey, nearing the end of his six months, become jealous of those who would still be here after he was gone? And would he try to punish them for being where he could no longer be? I had no idea how compelling such a motive might seem to a man like Dewey, which hampered me very badly. The motive almost necessarily had to be an irrational one—the idea of punishment of some kind kept circling in my head—and those are by far the hardest to deduce.

  When breakfast was done, Dewey assured me he’d take care of the dishes, and I had no choice but to leave them to him. If I’d had the use of both hands I would have insisted on helping, but as it was there wasn’t much useful I could do in a kitchen. He offered to show me the way to the stairs, but I said I preferred to try for them on my own, besides which I was interested in just strolling around the place for a
while. When I left, he was starting to wash the dishes. “See you around,” I said.

  “I’ll be here,” he said, over his shoulder.

  I left the kitchen and strolled a while, following corridors this way and that, occasionally coming to dead ends, but usually finding that corridors led eventually to other corridors. After a while, I saw that the layout was not as complex as it appeared, that there really weren’t that many corridors, it was just that they crossed one another so much. This proliferation of junctions had the dual effect of wasting a great deal of interior space and at the same time creating a lot of unnecessary confusion.

  I found the front stairs after a while, a broad open staircase with curving banisters. It seemed overly grandiose, not for the house but for its placement. It came down to enter broadside a fairly narrow corridor, with a blank wall facing it on the other side. I frowned over this for a while, and then noticed that this section of wall was slightly different from the wall farther on, mostly in that the baseboard was not quite so tall or complex. The impression I had was that some larger space had originally existed here, and a revamping of the interior had done away with the large space while leaving the heavy staircase that emptied into it. Perhaps there’d originally been a front entrance, later superseded by the present entrance at the side. If so, there should be some indication on the outside, and later on, in daylight, I would look it over.

  I continued to stroll around, the corridors all being fully lit, possibly for the reassurance of the residents, and the third time I came to the broad front staircase I decided I’d done the first floor enough for this time, and I went upstairs.

  It had been my intention to wander around the second floor as I had wandered around the first, but by the time I reached the head of the stairs I’d changed my mind. I’d been feeling pretty good ever since breakfast, the stroll up and down the corridors not having taxed my strength in any appreciable way, but climbing a flight of stairs quickly reminded me that I was not in the best of physical condition. I reached the second floor winded and dizzy, the headache returning, and a great heavy weariness settling throughout my body. The only sensible thing for me to do right now was go straight back to my room and rest for an hour or so, and I knew it.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite that easily done. This was the first time I’d come upstairs via the front staircase, and I had no idea where my room was from here. The only thing to do was start walking and hope that sooner or later I would stumble into familiar territory.

  And so I did, after a fairly short walk. A closed door looked familiar, and when I opened it the back staircase was there, just as I’d suspected. From here, I knew my way home, and two minutes later I was safely again in my room, lying down on my bed, very nearly smiling from the pure physical pleasure of relaxation.

  Not that I was tired. How could I be tired, after sixteen hours sleep? It wasn’t yet six-thirty, I’d been awake less than two hours. But I was weak, and I could spend this rest period thinking about the people I’d met so far and trying to comprehend the kind of motive that would lead one of the residents of this building to savagely and randomly injure his fellows.

  Five minutes later I was asleep.

  3

  I HAD FIRST MET DOCTOR FREDRIC Cameron five days before my arrival at The Midway, on Wednesday the eighteenth of June. It was a pleasantly sunny day, not too hot, not yet summer-muggy, and I had worked three leisurely hours on the wall in the morning. Kate first mentioned him during lunch, saying, “Mitch, there’s a man coming to see you this afternoon.”

  I looked at her with mistrust. She can’t help wanting to push me back among the living, and I have to be always on my guard against her. I said, “What man?”

  “He wants you to do a job for him. Mitch,” she said quickly, before I could make any comment of my own, “Marty Kengelberg sent him to you. It’s something you could do, and we could use the money.”

  Marty Kengelberg is an old friend of mine from the happy days. Twice in the two years since I’d been kicked off the force I’d reluctantly agreed to take on jobs suitable to an ex-cop—an ex-cop who’d been booted out not for dishonesty but for dereliction of duty—taking them mostly because the family needed the money and I don’t have a job these days, and since the second one Marty has come around two or three times to suggest that I put in an application downtown for a private detective’s license. He doesn’t understand that I have left more than the New York Police Department. Kate does, but wants to bring me back.

  So here they were together, Marty and Kate, urging some new job on me, Marty out of old friendship and the mistaken idea that I really did want to work, Kate in hopes that some job like this would so distract my mind that a magical cure would take place and all painful paralyzing memories would disappear forever from my brain. It won’t happen, of course, partly because that isn’t the way minds work, and partly because I really don’t feel I have the right not to feel guilty about what I did.

  But nevertheless the man was coming. “He’ll be here at two o’clock,” Kate said. “I promised you’d listen to him, but I told him you might say no.”

  “It’s a nice day,” I said. “I was going to work on my wall this afternoon.”

  “He won’t keep you long,” she promised. “And he told me something about the problem, Mitch, and it does sound interesting.” She said that so hopefully, looking at me with such open yearning for some sort of lively response from me, that it was impossible to refuse her.

  So I saw Doctor Fredric Cameron when he arrived at two o’clock, and when it turned out he was a psychiatrist I felt one instant of rage and betrayal, thinking that there was no real job after all, that Kate had just decided to sneak some psychiatric assistance up on my blind side.

  But she hadn’t. She wouldn’t, not Kate. Doctor Cameron did have a real problem, and any problems of mine didn’t interest him.

  He wasn’t my idea of what a psychiatrist should look like, he had more the look of a well-fed businessman. Gray suit, quiet tie, heavy face, thinning and graying hair, the total effect more that of a Kiwanis Club booster than the founder of a place like The Midway.

  “The Midway,” he told me, “is a halfway house for former mental patients. Do you know anything about the halfway house concept?” I didn’t, so he said, “Halfway houses are places for people returning to society but unable or unwilling to make the plunge all at once. There are halfway houses for ex-drug addicts, former convicts, I understand there’s even one in Florida for ex-priests. The concept is that the inhabitants of a halfway house are free to come and go as they please, but are still in a semi-protected environment, and living among other people with similar problems and a shared understanding.” He took a pipe from his side jacket pocket, but didn’t light it. He just sat there with his hand cupped around the bowl. “The idea does work,” he said.

  He went on to tell me further details about The Midway, economic and social and psychiatric. It turned out he was the founder and guiding spirit of the place. He was proud of his brainchild, as he probably had every right to be, and it showed. I could see he’d be willing to go on telling me about the place all afternoon, so I finally broke in to ask, “And what’s happening there to cause the trouble?”

  He frowned, not liking to be reminded of the snake in his Eden. “Someone,” he said heavily, “is injuring our residents.”

  I said, “They’re doing what?”

  “Causing accidents,” he said, and went on to tell me about the four accidents, the discovery of the sawn-through ladder rung and the corroboration of the tampered-with terrace.

  When he was done I asked him if he’d gotten in touch with the local police, and he shook his head, saying, “No, we did not. We would prefer not to have to, which is why I’ve come to you.”

  “The police would be better,” I said. At that time I still thought there might be a way to avoid this job.

  There wasn’t. “The Midway,” Doctor Cameron explained, “is not in New York. We’re in a s
mall town upstate called Kendrick. The local people disapprove of us under the best of circumstances, and the local police are not the best-trained or most modern police officers in the world. Mr. Tobin, the people at The Midway are convalescents, they’re walking wounded. Many of them are still only tentatively on the road to health. To be given the rough treatment, the suspicion and open hostility they would be bound to receive at the hands of the local police if I were to report what’s going on would be detrimental to all of them, and perhaps critically so for some.”

  “As critical as a broken leg?”

  “Much more so,” he said. “Bones knit much more readily than minds.”

  There was no answer to that. I said, “Do they know what’s going on?”

  “The residents? No, only Bob Gale and myself.” Bob Gale was the young resident who’d discovered the ladder rung and brought it to Doctor Cameron’s attention. “The atmosphere of suspicion and fear I would create if I did tell them,” the doctor said, “would once again be much worse than the possibility of a broken bone.”

  I said, “You’re taking an awful chance, Doctor Cameron.”

  “I’m aware of that,” he said. “That’s why I want this situation cleared up just as quickly as possible. Bob Gale brought me the ladder rung the day before yesterday. I’ve been trying to decide how best to handle the problem, and it seems to me what I need is a professional. Someone who can come to The Midway, move in as though he were simply a new resident, and try to find out who is doing all this.”

  “Move in,” I repeated. “You want me to come live there.”

  “For a while, yes,” he said. He didn’t seem to be hiding any secondary motives. He said, “If we’re to keep the situation a secret from the residents, there’s no other way I can think of to handle it.”

  I asked him a few more questions after that, nothing significant, and then told him I would think it over and let him know. He said something about there being some urgency in hearing my answer, and I promised not to think it over too long, and he left.