The Running Man

by Ben Benson

  You pass the red, wooden Munroe Tavern first built in 1695 and now maintained by the Lexington Historical Society. In Lexington, at the edge of the village green, stands the statue of the bareheaded Minuteman. Musket in hand, he faces watchfully toward Boston, from where the British had come that fateful day. Across the green is the old Buckman Tavern, white with green shutters.

  The two-lane black road continues west, its overpass crossing the busy express highway of 128. Here is Bedford and its big air-force base and developments of bright, colorful, modern little houses.

  You pass the Bedford shopping center. Beyond it the patrol route crosses a single spur track and turns right for one mile to the Bedford Veterans Hospital—a mental institution—red brick with steel-grilled windows. A quick check and back to Route 25 again, passing the Bedford green and its white church.

  Now it becomes thickly wooded and there is the road sign of the town of Carlisle. Two lanes, black macadam road. Farm country. Another roadside sign and it is the town of Baycroft. Sparsely populated.

  On the left is a dirt lane which leads away through the middle of a pine grove.

  It was here, on Wednesday, June twelfth, 6:30 A.M., that I stopped the cruiser. I had good reason.

  Four weeks before, when I had been assigned to the Concord Barracks and had taken my first patrol into Carlisle and Baycroft, I had passed this little dirt road. I had driven up it then because it had no direction signs and it had not been marked on my road map.

  The road had twisted in about a quarter of a mile and had come to an abrupt end at a fire-gutted barn. Alongside the road there was also a farmhouse that had burned to the ground, leaving only a blackened chimney as a monument.

  I had gotten out of the cruiser and had examined the abandoned outbuildings—the hen coops and the sheds, bleached and unpainted. All I had stirred up were a few frightened little field mice that darted away. I had come out of the buildings, stopped at a low fieldstone wall and had looked across the slightly hilly, fallow fields. There was no sign that anyone had been around for a long time. Later, when I had checked into the barracks, I had found out it was called the Runkle Farm and that it had burned down and been abandoned almost a year ago.

  This Wednesday morning—so very early—especially before breakfast when I was hungry, I would have passed by the little dirt road, as I had done several times during the four weeks past. But there was a set of fresh automobile tracks on the road that had not been there before. Only one set. As though a car had driven in and had not driven out.

  It could have been, of course, the Runkles looking over their property, or a real estate agent, or a necking party, or a plain garden-variety, prowling curiosity-seeker.

  But only a single pair of clearly defined tracks, going one way. Not mine from my previous visit. These were a larger tread than those of my Ford interceptor. And it had rained hard a week ago. These marks were fresh and clear-cut.

  I drove up the dirt road. A little cloud of dust followed my car, rising in the cool morning air. The dew glistened on the grass. The air was fragrant. Close by a bird trilled, then suddenly flew up, silhouetted for a brief moment against the big orange sun.

  I came around the bend and saw the gutted barn first, its red paint seared and blackened. Then I saw the gray-bleached, rickety outbuildings. Next, the debris of the burned-down farmhouse and the smoke-blackened chimney. Beyond was the crumpled stone wall.

  The tire tracks veered across the grass, went around the barn and disappeared from sight.

  I drove around the side and stopped the cruiser. There was a pale-green 1957 Chrysler sedan parked in front of me.

  I picked up my hand phone, pressed the button and gave a Signal 4 that I was going off the air at the Runkle Farm in Baycroft. Stepping out, I went over to the green sedan. It had Massachusetts registration plates, E07657.

  The windows of the sedan were closed and the cool morning air had fogged them so that I could not see very well inside. I opened the door on the driver’s side. The car was empty, back and front. It had that dead, airless smell of standing around for some time.

  There were no keys in the ignition. The door of the glove compartment was open and I slid onto the front seat to look into it. Usually the car’s registration papers are kept there. But I saw no papers. An owner’s manual, a flashlight, a box of auto fuses, and a folded road map of New England with a smear of oil along one corner. Nothing else.

  Except on the floor. A light-gray felt hat. I picked it up. It was labeled Collins and Fairbanks, Boston. In the sweatband were gilt initials, E.L.S.

  I looked on the back seat and the carpeted floor below it. Then I tried the lights and blew the horn. The lights worked, and the horn blew startlingly loud in the still air. The battery was not dead.

  I got out of the car and checked the tires. They were whitewalls and fully inflated. At the rear I tried the trunk. It was locked.

  Going back to my cruiser, I checked the registration on my stolen-car list. The number E07657 was not there. I picked up the radiophone, pressed the button and said, “Cruiser 33 to H.” A second later the dispatcher from General Headquarters, Boston, answered my call. I asked for a listing on Massachusetts E07657.

  While I waited, I smoked a cigarette. Two minutes later the report came back that the vehicle was registered to Eugene L. Somers of 122 Sycamore Road, West Roxbury, Massachusetts.

  I said thanks and went off the air. Then I pressed the button again and said, “33 to K3.” Sergeant Constanza of the Concord Barracks answered.

  “I’m at the burned-out Runkle Farm in Baycroft,” I told him. “There’s a car here I just got a listing on. Belongs to a Eugene Somers in West Roxbury. It looks like it’s been here for a few days but it’s not on the stolen-car list.”

  “Eugene Somers, West Roxbury,” Constanza said. “I’ll phone their house and radio you back. K3 off.”

  I hung up and moved away from the cruiser to scout the area. I noticed now two cigarette butts on the ground near the green sedan. Bending down, I looked at them closely. No lipstick marks.

  I stood up and started for the barn. Nothing there but the burned timbers, some large, gray spiders and a musty smell. I probed through the outbuildings and scared up a foraging black beetle.

  I moved over to the farmhouse and began poking through the debris. As I did, I was becoming aware of a sweet, sickening smell—the odor of death and decay.

  I straightened up and stood motionless for a moment, my nostrils distending. I turned. The odor was fainter. I faced around again. From this position the odor was stronger. I was standing in the direction of the fields.

  I moved ahead, toward the stone wall, sniffing like a hound-dog. The odor increased.

  At the wall I stopped. The odor now was almost overpowering. The wall was about shoulder high. I stood on my toes and looked over the top.

  The body was crumpled up behind it. A man, face down, one arm out stiff, the fingers extended like talons. The other arm was under the head, crooked, as if he had used it for a pillow. He seemed short of stature. The hair on his head was black, peppered with gray. The side of his face was decomposed, gray and stiff and so badly distorted that his teeth showed. Maggots crawled there. Flies buzzed, circling around, landing on his ear and cheek and running along his lips.

  I took out my handkerchief and held it over my nose and mouth as my eyes swept over him. He wore a light-blue worsted suit with a dark stain covering the back of it. The chunky legs were stiffly widespread, and the entire body seemed to have sunk partially into the ground.

  I turned away now, quickly, and hurried back to the cruiser. After gulping large quantities of air, I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. And just as I reached for the radiophone, it began to speak. “K3 calling 33.”

  I picked up the phone and said, “33. Go ahead.”

  “Information on Eugene Somers,” Constanza said. “Married, two children. West Roxbury address is okay. But the family has been staying at their summer cottage in Bayc
roft since June first. I spoke to the wife there. She said Somers has been missing since Friday morning, June seventh. Reported to Baycroft Police but not to State Police.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I think I’ve found the body.”

  Chapter 4

  I think I did all the correct things that morning. The procedure on a homicide is automatic and governed by a rigid set of rules, the trooper’s first duty being to observe if there is any life. If there is none, he does not touch the body. Since the victim is dead, the trooper can do nothing for him anyway. Furthermore, the medical examiner has complete authority over dead bodies, and nobody may move a body without his permission. But the trooper is expected to make a cursory examination of the immediate area, noting in his book the date, the time, the weather and exact location.

  When the medical examiner is finished with the victim, a State Police detective-lieutenant is there to take over. If there is an organized local police department, the lieutenant works in partnership with it. He has other partners on the job, too—the specialists from the various State Police laboratories.

  The trooper first on the scene of the murder is usually assigned to the case until the investigation is completed. One reason is because the trooper is an important witness in the event of a trial. In the rules of evidence it is best to have a continuing officer on the case from the beginning to the end.

  In this case the detective-lieutenant was Edward Newpole. He knew me and my family. He was a trooper with my father in the same barracks years ago. And he was also my godfather.

  So they came as the morning wore on—the police officials and the experts. The sun rose higher and finally somebody at the barracks remembered I had had no breakfast.

  I had no appetite for it, either, but a trooper brought me coffee and a ham-and-egg sandwich and I ate it.

  The medical examiner was a young, brusque, businesslike doctor named Lenox, who was a graduate of the Harvard School of Legal Medicine. He said the body had been there at least several days. There was no wallet in the clothing. One pocket held some loose silver, and that was all. A hearse came and the body was removed to an undertaking parlor for identification and post-mortem examination.

  The ballistics men and the fingerprint men and the chemists went over the green Chrysler. Then the car was towed away to the Concord Barracks garage to be impounded and studied for further evidence.

  By noon the immediate area of the crime scene was almost completely cleared. But in a five-mile radius troopers went drudging from farm to farm, asking if people had seen or heard anything a few days ago. I was one of the drudgers.

  At 2:50 P.M. it was Corporal Mike Gillis who found the set of car keys in the underbrush fifty feet away from where the car had been parked. And, twenty minutes later, on the other side of the stone fence, in the tangled mat of the field, Trooper Dan Tompkins found a wallet. Its papers showed it belonged to Eugene L. Somers. There was no money inside. As for me, I had nothing to report.

  At 5:00 P.M. I came into the Concord Barracks, dusty and tired. I washed up, had chow and went into the guardroom. Lieutenant Newpole was busy with two other detectives. He did not appear to notice me at first.

  Edward Newpole, Detective-Lieutenant, Massachusetts State Police; fiftyish, tall and gangling, with stooped shoulders. His eyes were a pale brown and his hair was gray and he wore a fawn-colored Stetson hat which made him appear even taller than he was.

  He had one peculiar habit. He smoked a stubby black pipe and it always seemed to be in his mouth, lit or unlit. The tobacco he used had a spicy, aromatic odor. Whether he was smoking the pipe or not, the aroma always seemed to be around him.

  As he sat there in conference with the others, he seemed calm and phlegmatic. I don’t think he really was. I knew the pressure was on him, and would be on him, from the commissioner and the chief of detectives, and from the press and the public. In a despicable type of murder such as this, the pressure would exert downward from the very top, to Newpole, to the very bottom where I was.

  I stood near the guardroom table, waiting. When Newpole did turn to me, we spoke for a minute. I reported I had picked up no information. He told me he had been at the undertaking parlor where Mrs. Eugene Somers had made a positive identification of her husband’s body.

  Then, without comment, Newpole handed me a sheet of paper. It said:

  AUTOPSY REPORT

  Case 57-127

  June 12, 1957

  Pathological Diagnosis On The Body

  of

  EUGENE L. SOMERS 122 Sycamore Road West Roxbury, Mass.

  1. Gunshot wound involving musculature of left chest and musculature of left shoulder.

  2. Gunshot wound involving right back, right chest wall, right tenth and fourth ribs, right lung, pericardium and heart.

  3. Right hemothorax (approximately 800 cc.)

  4. Hemopericardium (approximately 300 cc.)

  5. Abrasions of face, right index finger, and legs.

  6. Moderate putrefaction of body with maggot infestation.

  OPINION

  It is our opinion that Eugene L. Somers died of hemorrhage from a gunshot wound of the heart.

  Signed: Fred M. Lenox, M.D.

  Edward Gans, M.D.

  “There’s some more,” Newpole said, sucking on his empty pipe and waving at the papers on the table in front of him. “The ballistics report on the two bullets found in the body. Both .32 caliber. And the pathologist says the body has five days’ putrefaction. They took a blood-type test from dried blood on the clothing. Five days. That would put his death at about the seventh of the month, the day Mrs. Somers reported him missing. Two cigarette butts at the scene. One a Lucky Strike, the other a Chesterfield. Mrs. Somers said her husband did not smoke. All right, now let’s go into the duty office and have a talk with Sergeant Joe Constanza.”

  Sergeant Constanza’s lean cheeks were freshly shaven, his uniform shirt was sharply creased, and the silver-and-blue badge glistened as always. He leaned back in his chair and listened as Newpole asked, “You sure you have no File 6 on Somers?”

  “No, Lieutenant,” Constanza said. “We’ve checked our records. Baycroft Police never notified us Somers was missing. If they had, we’d have gotten out a File 6—complete with his description.”

  “Any special reason why Baycroft wouldn’t notify you of a missing person?”

  “They don’t need any reason,” Constanza said. “That’s the way the Baycroft P.D. works.”

  “If they’d notified you, you think you might have found the body sooner?”

  “Well, you know those things,” Constanza said. “There’s no guarantee. A wife reports a husband missing. Could be a lot of angles. Financial troubles. Tired of family life. Another woman. Turned psycho. They run off every day like that. I’m not sure we’d have found him sooner. Too many places to look for him.”

  There was a silence in the small office. From the desk Newpole picked up a glass paperweight and examined it minutely. Then he said, suddenly, “Eugene Somers was a teataster by trade.”

  I looked at Constanza but he showed no surprise. Nothing ever seemed to surprise him. I said to Newpole, “A what, sir?”

  “A teataster. A man who tastes tea,” Newpole said patiently. “I don’t know much about it but that’s his job and they say it’s an important one. Good money. He works for Royal Standard Tea in Boston. Horne’s in the West Roxbury section of Boston. Has a summer place on Lake Pleasant in Baycroft. He and his family were already living there for the summer. He left for work from Baycroft at 8:30 A.M., June seventh. He drove down Route 25 toward Boston but he never arrived there. That night his wife reported him missing. All the time he was dead at the burned-down Runkle Farm. The Runkles didn’t know him and never heard of him before.” Newpole paused to fill his pipe from a plaid pouch. “All right, we’re looking for a motive for murder. His family life seems good. Nice wife. Two nice kids. A boy at Amherst College and a girl who graduated from high school last week. The man seem
ed to have no enemies and no money problems. His health was fine. Now, anybody have any ideas where we start?”

  I said, “Maybe there’s an office angle, Lieutenant.”

  He lit the pipe and drew on it. “Yes, we’ve thought of that. He’s at the age, you know. Early fifties. They get gray around the temples and some of the younger girls like them that way. They think those men are distinguished-looking. All right, a young girl—very impressionable. Somers might have had himself a deal. The family away for the summer. An excuse to stay in Boston overnight. A shack-up, maybe. The girl has a boy friend. Trouble there.” Newpole tapped the pipestem against his teeth. “What else? Business rivals? Jealousy somewhere? Was he mixed up in something crooked? Did he owe big gambling debts?” He looked at Constanza’s wooden face. “What else, Joe?”

  “A hitchhike robbery,” Constanza said. “I’d find out if Somers was in the habit of picking up hitchhikers.”

  Newpole said, “Okay, we did find out. He was in the habit of doing just that. So you think it could have started out as an ordinary hitchhike robbery?”

  Constanza said, “From the position of the body and the empty wallet, it’s worth a try.”

  “We’ve marked it,” Newpole said. He exhaled a puff of acrid blue smoke. “How are you on hitchhike robberies around here?”

  “Very quiet during the past six months,” Constanza said. “But that doesn’t mean a new gang hasn’t started up. Hitchhikers have always been a big headache, Lieutenant.” Newpole nodded moodily. It was surprising, in spite of the great dangers involved, how many people picked up hitchhikers. People who would never think of inviting strangers into their home, would invite hitchhikers into their cars. The percentage of hitchhikers who committed crimes was high, and there were many kinds of hitchhike robberies. There was also the sexual degenerate who picked up hikers, made his advances, was beaten and robbed for his pains and said nothing. There were hitchhikers who worked with girls as come-ons and decoys, and the motorist took his lumps because he would have trouble explaining to his wife. And there were always the timid people who would not report crimes because they were afraid of the threats of reprisal.