“What did she say? Did she cry?”
“I talked to her by phone, Dad. I never saw Marie again, Dad,” Tommy whimpered.
“Why?”
“I just couldn’t bear to look at her…”
“Good God. That poor girl.”
“I know, I know…you’re going to say that I was a shabby man. But Dad, I couldn’t. That’s all, I couldn’t.”
“I knew that something had happened to you,” Ruddy declared, justifying his insistence.
“After that, Dad, I changed my outlook on everything,” Tommy said.
“What do you mean?”
“That’s how I got to know Brentwood Park,” Tommy said in a low voice.
“What do you mean, son?”
“Don’t you see, Dad?” Tommy asked wailingly. “I could no longer do my fieldwork in the Black Belt. It was contaminated. Poisoned. I told my professor I had to quit. I begged off and asked to change my thesis. He consented. I was assigned to Brentwood Park.”
“Oh, I see. My God,” Ruddy said.
“I’ve never been in the Black Belt since. I fled it, Dad. I never want to go back into it. What kind of a world is that? How could a thing like that happen? I ride past the Black Belt now. Whenever I walk the streets there, I feel like I’m going to faint, fall down.”
“You’re sick,” Ruddy said.
“Only when I’m there, am I sick,” Tommy contended.
“Good God Almighty.” Ruddy rose and stared at his son.
“Dad, do you blame me?” Tommy begged.
“You did what you felt you had to do, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But would you have waited for her and married her?”
Ruddy hesitated a long time, then mumbled, “Don’t know, son.”
“I couldn’t,” Tommy insisted.
“What did the doctor say?”
“He said I was acting within my rights.”
“He didn’t say anything about the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ of it?”
“No,” Tommy said and choked.
“And you’ve lived with this since that time?” Ruddy asked.
“Yes, alone, each day and night,” Tommy confessed. “Until I felt I was going crazy…”
Yes, that was why Tommy had always acted so casually, so detatched, with such a ready smile. He had been hiding all this. Ruddy embraced his son and mumbled as he wept. “I’m sorry for you, son. You must have been through hell.”
CHAPTER 8
Never had Ruddy felt more deeply protective toward his son than now. To realize that Tommy had gone through that whole stormy period alone, saying not one word! He should have told me! Yet what good could he have done? And not even Agnes had guessed at what was wrong. He must have sweated, Ruddy said to himself.
Yes, Ruddy felt that Tommy was, in a manner, a better man than he was, for Ruddy surely would not have been able to endure such an agony without confiding in somebody. He just sweated it out alone. Ruddy’s past experience in police work now enabled him, without his knowing it, to judge Tommy a bit objectively—but not all the way. At this moment he felt that peculiar kind of need that a doctor feels when a member of his family falls sick; he yearned to call in one of his colleagues for help, somebody upon whose objectivity he could rely. But, no, not for something like this. The dreaded disease that Ruddy had mentioned was as morally loathsome to him as to his son, and he easily felt how stunned poor Tommy had been. Jesus, I must get that kid a gal, for I don’t want ’im to develop any crazy complexes. Just because one gal is contaminated does not mean that they all are, he reasoned. Yet, deep down in him, he blamed Tommy for having abandoned the girl, and yet he could not have said that he wanted him to marry her. And Tommy had slept with the girl. Thank God he didn’t give her that disease and thank God he didn’t catch it himself, he prayed half-aloud to himself. Congenital? Yes, the sins of fathers were visited upon the sons and daughters. A tainted stream of life had run close past his door and actually brushed itself against his own flesh and blood. A dreadfully damaged girl! A rotten girl—though rotten through no fault of her own—who would pass her rottenness on to others—and especially to her children! Jesus God. He sank upon his bed. No, he, too, would not tell Agnes. Tommy, in a way, had been right; no woman ought to know of such. It was as though, if Agnes knew of it, it would somehow communicate itself to her.
Yeah, he knew how Tommy had felt, why he had gone again and again to that doctor for tests; he had been trying to prove to himself a cleanliness deeper than that of blood. Ruddy’s processes of reasoning stopped. Good Lord, the poor boy had been so shaken that he had fled the Black Belt! The sense of uncleanliness he had felt had been extended to the entire area. How awful…The Black Belt must look to him like a coiled rattlesnake, Ruddy thought. What a crushing blow! Now, more than ever, he had to be near that boy. Yes, he would take Tommy with him as much as possible into the Brentwood Park police headquarters and let him see that all areas had their tragedies, that all areas had their poisons, their sources of contamination. Tommy had to see this thing in a balanced way. Ah, he could pretend that he wanted Tommy’s advice about the crime in the area; that was a way of bringing Tommy near him, placing the boy in a position where he could regain his confidence.
Should Tommy have married that poor girl? Frankly, Ruddy did not know. He adhered to his religion, but he had never met the problem in a form that brought his religion so much into play. He was sorry for the girl, but ought a young man to saddle himself with a girl that ill? True, there were miracle drugs on the market. But how could you marry a girl whom you were afraid to touch? Aw, that’s why that kid has veered from the girls around us! Jesus, that’s it. And I never dreamed…. How goddamn complicated life is. And, oh God, you see how right and just law was! He would point out to Tommy, next time they talked, how wonderful it was that there existed a law that compelled him and that girl to take blood tests. Why, if he had been in some of the backward states that had no such law, he would have found himself married to a tainted girl! And, years later, when children were born, or when the disease had broken out in him, the girl would perhaps have said that Tommy had given her the disease! Ruddy’s brow grew hot and damp. Jesus, that was a close shave. And to have children in whose blood seething spirochetes would be raging, and those poor doomed children would, in turn, pass it on to others! And God help ’em if they were girls!
Ruddy stood at the window and stared out, feeling that maybe Tommy ought to have stood by the girl, gotten her well, and then married her. But could you build a marriage on such foundations? Suppose Tommy had done that and suppose in the years to come there had risen arguments between Tommy and the girl—could not Tommy have, in a moment of blind fury, hurled an accusation against the girl? And would not the girl have been emotionally crushed and wounded beyond measure? Yeah, that’s always a risky business, Ruddy breathed. Sometimes one ought to be noble and forgiving, but one’s feelings won’t let one. Hell, after all, according to the doctor, the girl had not been at all at fault. It was she who had sustained the brunt of the brutal shock. Would she ever get over it? Her marriage had gone glimmering for no reason or fault of her own. Would she not always feel that she was a damaged girl? Not worth what other girls were worth? Somehow excluded? But how could such a girl presume that a man should overlook her affliction and marry her and save her? Jesus, what a moral problem! Never had he heard anything in the law about a situation like that. It was something, really, that went beyond the law. Ruddy grew tense. Was that why Tommy had been talking of men who lived beyond the law? Men who acknowledged no laws? Men who just acted according to their own notions of having a good time? No, no, he was not talking about that, Ruddy told himself uneasily. Two vague ideas simmered in Ruddy’s mind: the wildness of lawless Brentwood Park and the desolate emotional state of his son, but though his feelings linked the two things in some way, his rational mind pushed the two things apart. After all, nobody’s asking Tommy to be Jesus Christ and marry that girl, and if he felt wounded i
n his heart, he had a damned right to be. But how wounded had Tommy been? That was a question he could not answer. Maybe even Tommy did not know how much he had suffered. You had something untoward hit you, and the blow was so vast and powerful that you felt numb all over and you turned and fled, never being able to gauge or judge correctly just how much you had been wounded. I’ve got to save my boy, Ruddy wailed inwardly.
And from now on he would raise no more questions with Agnes about Tommy; he would take the poor boy’s part from now on. How much strength Tommy could muster would depend upon how warm and loving and understanding his home was. And a woman need not be told about such horrors. Yes, it would be something just between him and his son. I’ll send that boy to Europe, to Asia, to Africa. I’ll make ’im forget that sad experience. I’ll make it up to ’im. That’s what a father’s for, goddamn. He won’t have to go it alone with a festering wound like that in him. And, he would, unknown to Tommy or Agnes, seek out that poor girl and try to help her! That was it. One could not expect poor Tommy to have done that. He was too carried away by his loss, a loss that could not be blamed on anyone, a loss that had shattered him, had taken away the sights and sounds and color of the world in which he lived. Yes, I can imagine how he felt. He was like an ox hit between the eyes by an axe.
“Ruddy,” Agnes was calling.
“Yeah?”
“Lunch is ready,” Agnes said.
“Coming. Shall I call Tommy?”
“Tommy had to go,” Agnes told him up the stairs.
“Oh.”
So Tommy had gone. Okay. He would not raise any questions about it, but he strongly suspected that Tommy had chosen to be out, not to eat lunch with them. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe he wants to get hold of himself. When Ruddy descended to the table, he found Agnes already seated and Bertha standing, ready to serve.
“Feeling better?” Agnes asked with a compassionate smile.
“A lot,” he lied.
“Did you sleep?”
“Well, no. Not exactly.”
“I heard you and Tommy talking,” Agnes said.
He shot her a quick glance; she was smiling confidently.
“Yeah. Look, we’ve got together,” Ruddy said.
“I told you there was nothing wrong,” Agnes said triumphantly.
“Nothing that a father couldn’t help with,” Ruddy said.
“Did he mention Marie?”
“No. Not directly.”
“What did he say?”
“They had a spat.”
“Oh, a lover’s quarrel,” Agnes said knowingly. “They’ll get together yet. You’ll see.”
“Maybe,” he said and sighed.
“How is his mood?”
“Okay. He’s studying real hard, that boy.” Ruddy sought to cover up for his son.
“Now, darling, promise me you’ll not fret over Tommy,” Agnes asked.
“I promise,” he said. “And I was glad that I talked to him. I’m going to lean heavily on him for information about Brentwood Park.”
“Good! A father-and-son team!”
“No. Not quite that,” Ruddy corrected her.
“But anyhow, you’ll get closer, won’t you?”
“That we will, darling,” Ruddy pledged.
“I’m so happy,” Agnes sang, heaping her plate with food. “What a day! You’re a police chief. And my husband and my son are friends!”
“I want to be the best friend that boy ever had,” Ruddy declared with passion.
CHAPTER 9
Smiling urbanely, his eyes holding a light of respect and ready obedience and yet a kind of manliness, Captain Snell was punctual. His left arm bulged with a stack of brown-covered police dossiers. After they had shaken hands, Ruddy asked him, “How are things over there?”
“All right,” Captain Snell replied. “We’re all very happy that you’re going to be with us, going to be our chief. I came up through the ranks myself, and I want you to know that I’ll be personally proud to serve under you, sir.”
“Thank you,” Ruddy said. “I’ll be in in the morning.” He paused, sizing up the captain. He liked him, liked the manner in which the captain readily surmounted all jealousies and racial feelings and put police work utmost. I’ll keep ’im…. “Is there anything requiring my urgent attention?”
“No, sir. Just routine stuff, Chief. I’m sure you’ve heard tall tales about Brentwood Park. We do have a backlog of unsolved murders.”
“Yes, Captain,” Ruddy informed him. “The commissioner dumped all that into my lap during the first hour I was in office.”
“If there are any orders about those cases—”
“No. Nothing for the present. And there’ll be no special orders into things until I’ve had a look-see,” Ruddy said with a smile.
“Poor Chief Branden was a fine man,” Captain Snell sighed.
“An A-1 officer,” Ruddy agreed, knowing that all this was more or less protocol, that they were feeling each other out.
“Chief Branden was regular,” Captain Snell began.
“I’m regular too,” Ruddy hastened to assure the captain. “There’s only one thing I’m asking for. I want my own personal staff.”
“That’s reasonable,” Captain Snell said, relieved.
“I’m bringing in Ed Seigel, Jock Weidman, Mary Jane Woodford for the office, and a few others.”
“They’re all first-class people,” Captain Snell said, nodding.
“But I’m pushing nobody out,” Ruddy told him.
“That’ll be deeply appreciated,” the captain said, nodding still more emphatically. “And we’ll be with you until the curtain comes down, sir. Now, I tried to anticipate…. These”—he pushed the bundle of dossiers forward—“are the three ‘lulus.’ The DA’s on our neck about ’em. I thought you’d like to see ’em first, give ’em a glance.”
“Thank you, Captain. I do. But tell me, were you in on those three ‘lulu’ murders?”
“All the way, sir.”
“Good—now maybe you’d be so kind as to summarize ’em for me,” Ruddy requested. “Not too many details, but the general sense.”
“Glad, sir,” Captain Snell said. “Well, like reporting on all unsolved stuff, maybe I’ll not be giving you the cases in the most concise order or manner. One does not know what is relevant or irrelevant, you see? It may well be that we’ve overlooked the heart of it, the most essential things.”
“That’s always the case with an unsolved crime,” Ruddy agreed, nodding. “You have to grope.”
“Right. Now, all three of these crimes were what we call ‘bushwhackers.’ They took place at night in the woods that rise to the west of Brentwood Park. Late one night, between ten and midnight, Rev. Ernie Hindricks and Eva Landsdale were killed with point-blank shots from a .38. They were both seated in the front seat of Rev. Hindricks’s Oldsmobile. A light rain was falling. No one heard the shots. The car was found next morning with the door next to the driver’s seat open. Rigor mortis had set in. There was not a single clue or motive to that shooting. There is no evidence that Eva Landsdale knew the reverend or that he knew her. Even how they met is a mystery. There is no evidence that they had known each other. It was as though somebody had dropped them down there in that car for them to be murdered. Absolutely nothing that we could determine had been stolen from either body. It was the consensus of opinion of all who examined those bodies that they had not been touched. It was the opinion of the medical experts attached to the district attorney’s office that no sexual intercourse had taken place between Rev. Hindricks and Eva Landsdale or between the murderer and Eva Landsdale. There was not a footprint, a cigarette—nothing was left as a clue on the scene of the crime.
“We traced the movements of both deceased for forty-eight hours before the crime. Nothing suspicious. The reverend was at home preparing sermons the day before the crime, and on the day of the crime, he played handball with two of his young sons. He seemed to have had a happy married life. Eva Land
sdale was unmarried and worked as a social worker. Her work never brought her into Brentwood Park, and we have no evidence that she had ever been seen there. On the night she was murdered, she is supposed to have gone alone to a movie near her apartment. But she was not seen there by anybody who attended that movie that night. Maybe Eva Landsdale met Reverend Hindricks somewhere. Undoubtedly they did. But where? There’s absolutely no information about that.
“Though there’s no evidence to support any lover’s rendezvous, the newspapers made a big noise about that angle of it. There is a lot of foliage around there, and it is possible that neither of the victims knew that a murderer was lurking nearby. We don’t know if the killer stopped them, that is, flagged down their car and ordered them into the woods or not. At the best of times, these hit-and-run killers are hard to track down, but when it is seemingly done by somebody who really plans it, then it is almost impossible to size up what kind of killer it was.
“We dug back ten years into the lives of each of the victims and found nothing that linked them to each other or to anybody who would have wanted to kill them. Robbery could not have been the motive, for Reverend Hindricks carried some four hundred dollars in cash in his wallet. There were twenty dollars and some odd cents in the woman’s purse, which, incidentally, seems not to have been touched. It was known that the reverend was to visit a travel agency the morning after the murder and pay for a railroad ticket that covered a lecture tour he had agreed to undertake. That accounted for his having the money. He took the money out of a Loop bank at ten that morning. Nobody but the bank teller knew of it; the teller’s movements were checked and his character studied. Nothing came of it. That teller knew no crooks. (And if he did, it is doubtful if he’d be involved in a $400 robbery-killing.) Now, it was surmised that maybe the killer panicked and was too frightened to search his victims; in fact, that theory was widely believed at the time, but when the killing of Father Byrnes came about and under vaguely similar circumstances, that theory was abandoned.
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