“Why?”
“I’m sitting here and letting you talk to me,” Ruddy grumbled.
They both laughed.
“Well, if you think somebody else can talk with more sense, then—”
“Go on with your theories,” Ruddy ordered.
“Now, this transfiguration business,” Ed observed. “It needs explaining—”
“I’ll say it does,” Ruddy scoffed playfully.
“Say, Ruddy, were you ever in love?”
“Yeah. But what has that got to do with it?”
“Plenty. Do you recall how you felt when you were in love?”
“It was great, man. It was out of this world.”
“Good. Now, can you recall just how the girl looked to you.”
“Great, I told you.”
“No. What was there about that girl that made you love her?”
“Gosh, everything. Whenever she looked at me, she sent me. That’s all.”
“Okay. But that didn’t happen to others around her, did it?”
“No. I guess some other guys were after her, but I won her.”
“Do you think her mother saw her as you saw her?”
“No. Her mother wasn’t in love with her the way I was,” Ruddy pointed out.
“And her brothers?”
“No. They didn’t see her like I did.”
“Her other relatives?”
“No. They were not as excited as I was.”
“Good. You transfigured that gal,” Ed stated.
“Now, just what in hell does that mean?” Ruddy demanded.
“Psychoanalysts call it overestimating the object,” Ed explained.
“What? To me she was worth more than she was to others?”
“You could put it that way.”
“Ed, are you being cynical?”
“No. Factual.”
“Now, how was this priest, this preacher, and this detective’s son worth more to somebody—so much more than to others that he killed ’em?”
“What I’m getting at, Ruddy, is that hate also transfigures,” Ed said.
“Oh.” Ruddy snickered. “I thought you were going to say that I was the murderer.”
“You’re murdering my logic,” Ed complained. “Now, do you get what I mean by overestimating?”
“Yeah. I get you. Go on.”
“Now, Ruddy, men do that more than women,” Ed said. “That’s why I’m settling on a man for our murderer. Women don’t write Bibles. Not many women write novels.”
“Thank God.”
“Men are the crazy creatures who want to go to the moon, not women.”
“I see.”
“The world’s great painting comes from men.”
“Hunh huh.”
“Men are always imagining something bigger, richer, more powerful than it is, and then going and trying to grab it,” Ed analyzed. “A woman would have cussed out that preacher and had done with ’im. A woman would have gossiped about that priest and left ’im alone. A girl would have cried about Heard’s son and suffered in silence. A man acts. He’s compelled to. The world a man sees differs drastically from that seen and felt by a woman.”
“Okay. I buy that, Ed. I felt all along that a man did it, maybe more than one. I don’t know. The reason why I asked you to keep on theorizing was that I wanted additional facts to go on,” Ruddy rumbled. “Now that we are looking for somebody in the masculine half of the human race, you might try to narrow our search by trying to plumb the motive for those murders.”
“Wheew,” Ed whistled. “All that in one evening?”
“Yep. You’re being paid—”
“This is overtime,” Ed grumbled, grinning. “Well, what kind of motive? That’s hard. Here we have three separate murders, five victims, and no evidence. We have to find a motive that fits all three crimes. Now, for the sake of simplicity, let’s rule out those women who were killed. They seemed to have been there by accident. There were two different women in two different slayings. But there were three men in three slayings. And each time there was a murder, the women seemed to have dropped out of the clouds to be at the side of the men victims. My feeling, based on those facts, is that the murderer was not after the women at all. But how could he kill his intended victims and get away without killing the women. So, in looking for a motive, I’m ruling out the fuss and noise of the newspapers, that is, that the priest and the preacher were surprised in love trysts, see? After all, there was no molesting of the bodies of the women. That’s strange. In a lot of cases the muggers will at least lift the woman’s skirt and get a look. They always have time for that. Some even make ’em lie down and submit before killing ’em. But there’s absolutely no evidence in that direction. All right, the man or men wanted to kill only the men; the slaying of the women was incidental.
“Now that brings us to a queer problem. What kind of motive will fit those three killings? Could the same woman have been in love with both the priest and the preacher and the detective, taking revenge on his son? Could she have hired a man to do all three killings? It is too far-fetched. I can’t think that any such thing has happened, not knowing life as I do. If such happened, then it was indeed something weirdly coincidental. I don’t think it happened.
“Was there an anarchist with a grudge against men of religion?—and I’m now saying that the killing of Heard’s son was to forestall his finding the real murderer. If it was an anarchist, why didn’t he go for heads of states? Why religious people? I would rule out anarchists. Their acting in such a manner is atypical.
“Communists? No, I don’t think so. They go for the tools of production. Why kill religious men and bring down on their heads a full tide of terror? The Communist always deals with masses of people, not individuals. If a Communist had a grudge, he would have gone to the slums of either the Black Belt or to the trade unions to preach his message of revolt. Rarely do they bother with the bourgeoisie, and most surely not preachers of either of the two big branches of the Christian religion. The Communists are rivals of the Church, so why would they do something that would stun and horrify the followers of the Church? No, they wouldn’t. Instead, they would try to show those followers that it was the Church that was committing the horrors. I’d think that the fascists would follow the same general course, only they’d be preaching myths instead of ideology. But there was no preaching in these murders or even the hint of them—”
“You spoke of these murders being a kind of language,” Ruddy reminded Ed.
“Yeah. I’m keeping that in mind,” Ed said. “These murders were shock tactics. They were designed to make masses of people both take notice and recoil. Notice how crime fell off sharply after the murders? That was one of the aims.”
“Jesus, Ed,” Ruddy complained, “how could you or anybody know that?”
“I don’t say the murderer or murderers consciously aimed at that,” Ed conceeded. “Maybe deep down they were aiming at it unconsciously—”
“I was waiting for that goddamn word, ‘unconscious,’” Ruddy spoke scornfully. “I’m a cop and don’t deal with that in my work. I can’t talk to the DA about ‘unconscious’ motives, see? Let’s be clear about that.”
“Okay. I’m not submitting stuff for the DA,” Ed said. “I’m trying to get a line on these crimes, see? That’s all. I still insist that, if my theory holds until now, there was something that the murderer wanted to say.”
“To whom?”
Ed rose, jammed his hands into his pockets and paced the floor.
“I’m trying to keep my feet on the ground,” he grumbled. “S-suppose his audience was the w-world…m-mankind.”
“Aw, Ed,” Ruddy slapped his hand derisively toward him.
“No, no. Calm down,” Ed pleaded. “Take your time. And follow me.”
“Talk concretely,” Ruddy insisted. “What goddamn audience?”
“That’s the problem,” Ed said. “I could possibly feel what kind of audience, but I cannot describe it. Stran
ge, eh?”
“You mean that the murderer didn’t have his audience visually in mind?”
“Yes and no. He sensed it,” Ed explained. “It was so obvious to him that he did not have to picture it out clearly.”
“But it was toward something,” Ruddy insisted. “Or your theory is nonsense. If I even hinted that to the DA, he’d say I was trying to supply the murderer with a defense of insanity even before we caught ’im.”
“I know, I know,” Ed admitted. He began to speak in a low, pleading tone: “Ruddy, who made our laws?”
“The people, they say,” Ruddy replied, lifting his eyes.
“And when I mention the word ‘religion,’ what comes to your mind, Ruddy?” Ed pursued his aim.
Ruddy sighed, looked distrustfully around the huge office. “Must I play this game?”
“Yes. Just try it. What have you got to lose?”
“Nothing, I guess. Just my time and taxpayer’s money,” Ruddy said with a silent laugh in his voice. “Religion…well, it brings to my mind churches, temples, organs playing, dim cathedrals, candles flickering, stained-glass windows, choirs—”
“No definite image of certain people?”
“No.”
“Now, try to imagine the banking system…”
“Heaps of money, vaults—”
“No definite people?”
“No.”
“Armies, military might? What comes to your mind?”
“Guns, planes, tanks, missiles—”
“No images of certain people?”
“No. Vaguely I think of generals.”
“What generals?”
“None in particular.”
“Now, Ruddy, we talked of law, the church, banks, armies—and no people came to your mind in a concrete way.” Ed followed the thread of his argument. “Most people think like that. Yet people and people alone make those realities real. Now, why should criminals think any differently of them?”
“I see what you mean,” Ruddy said in a dubious tone. “But how in the world could we ever know what was in that murderer’s mind?”
“We got a damn good clue,” Ed insisted.
“What?”
“The corpses—that is, if we rule out the murdered women.”
“Oh. Religious men, two of ’em. And a detective’s son,” Ruddy recited.
“Now, what do they mean?”
“The Church. And policemen.”
“Yeah. Now, let’s translate what the Church means. It is religion and religion is law. And from that law we get the law that Heard’s father was executing. So it was law that the murderer struck at.”
“Now, you are reversing the argument,” Ruddy pointed out.
“Right. Churches and policemen stand for people who operate them. Churches and policemen hold law in their hands. When Churches and policemen are attacked, the law is attacked. Now, you can start either with the Church or with the police. You end up in the same place, with the same image.”
“So, we’ve got a vague motive.” Ruddy was tentatively accepting the theory to see what it would yield. “A man against the law—”
“In the deepest sense,” Ed reminded him. “He had in mind the origin of law and those who explained it and those who executed it.”
“A cop hater, hunh?”
“No. It was deeper than that—if my theory is at all true,” Ed said.
“What could that murderer have been hating, then?” Ruddy asked slowly.
“Well, let’s again reverse the argument, the procedure,” Ed suggested. “We don’t know what he really hated. We know it was the law in abstract. The moral impulses behind the law and the men who wrote that law and the men who executed it. Now, let’s try to imagine what kind of event happened to such a man that would make him go hunting for men who represented that law.”
“And we’re leaving the women out of it?” Ruddy asked. “Completely?”
“Yes and no. It’s possible that that murderer had a yen to polish off those women,” Ed admitted. “But I don’t think he went into those woods just to hunt and kill women. Maybe at first he did not go into those woods to kill at all. Maybe he just went for a walk—because he was distracted and wrought-up, see? Then he came upon that preacher and that woman. Then his complexes were set off.”
“Humnnn…”
“But…let’s get back to the point we had in mind,” Ed spoke with a voice full of self-scolding. “We said we would try to imagine what kind of event or events made him kill. Now, we’re on quicksand—”
“We’ve been in quicksand from the beginning,” Ruddy muttered.
“Number one: Let’s imagine a young medical student doing scientific experiments. He’s put all his money into the thing,” Ed outlined. “He’s worked night and day for years and years. At last he thinks he’s found something. He goes and presents it to his superiors. They examine it and find one tiny meaningful flaw. He’s out. He had thought that he was made; he had banked all his moral capital and material capital on it. He’s floored. He’s mad. But at whom? He walks out, blind, into those woods to cool his hot brow and—”
“I’m sorry for that sonofabitch.” Ruddy grinned.
“Okay. Number two: Let us imagine a young man, nominally religious, Catholic or Protestant, in the French Foreign Legion, stationed in North Africa. Let us imagine that one day this young man receives a cable that an old and rich uncle of his is dying and that that uncle wants that boy near him. The military authorities permit the boy to visit the uncle. The boy goes, finds that the uncle has somewhat recovered but is still ill. The uncle tells the boy that he will make him his sole heir if the boy remains by the side of the uncle and aids him. The boy decides to desert the Foreign Legion, sticks close to the bedside of the ailing uncle. But the uncle does not die at once. He lingers. The old bugger is stronger than even the doctors think. The boy lingers on, helping, hoping. But he dare not try to speed the uncle’s departure. He’s much too devout for that. He waits and waits. The uncle grows slowly feebler. The boy acts now as a kind of nurse. He empties bedpans. He bathes the uncle, who won’t let others touch ’im. With the boy at his bedside, the old uncle begins to relive his life. He tells the boy of his youth, of his old hopes and plans. He is passing on his torch to the younger man whose blood is still hot and pulsing. One day the boy has to go down to shop. The old man, feeling stronger than he really is, gets out of bed to make a cup of tea in the kitchen. He stumbles in his nightgown and falls, and in falling, he yanks out the gas tube of the gas stove. He’s too weak to rise. He calls weakly for help. His head swims. He knows what has happened to him; he struggles up and tries to walk to the wall to shut off the gas and his legs become entangled by a fallen chair and this time he plunges down, hitting his head against an edge of the stove. He’s temporarily stunned, out. The escaping gas is now filling the kitchen. Lying prone, the uncle is asphixiated. The boy returns and finds the apartment filled with gas. He rushes in, but he is too late. He calls for help. The uncle is dead and cannot be revived.
“That boy is crushed. He had given up all for the sake of the inheritance and he has hopes that he’ll get it. But he feels guilty, as though he had killed his uncle. The uncle is buried; then the will is read. The Uncle, feeling that he had longer to live than he had imagined, had failed to revise his will and the boy is penniless.”
“Goddamn, Ed, did that ever happen to you?” Ruddy demanded, laughing ruefully.
“Hell, no. I don’t know what I’d have done, if it had,” Ed confessed. “Now, penniless, the boy, after the reading of the will, stumbles out of the house. The only thing left him is to return to the Foreign Legion, where he will be punished for desertion. He wanders into the woods above Brentwood Park…”
“I see it,” Ruddy said, lighting another cigarette.
“He could kill in a fit of pique or rage, helpless, hopeless rage,” Ed stated.
“Yeah,” Ruddy agreed, rubbing his left palm over his eyes. He looked unseeingly around. “Any
more ideas?”
“Well, let’s imagine another one. Number three: Now—”
“What about a woman?” Ruddy interposed. “A woman jilts a man…” He saw poor Marie as he asked the question.
Ed pulled down the corners of his lips.
“You know, Ruddy, the role of woman has been dreadfully overestimated in this world,” Ed said. “Oh, yes, they are the mothers of the race. We know that. They bear us, give us the breath of life. But we don’t think of that much. We take it for granted. And after all, women want to do that. All right, a girl jilts a boy. He’s sad. He mopes. Or he kills himself. Mostly they kill themselves if they do anything at all. Now and then, in Latin countries, they kill the girl. But, hell, here in the good old U.S.A. or in England, where women are to be had and where, in spite of all, we have a rough kind of sexual democracy, would he kill himself or the girl? ‘There’s always another one, just like the other one,’ goes a childhood song.”
“All right, get on with Number three,” Ruddy coaxed Ed.
“Number three. Let’s imagine a young man who grew up as a model son in a family. He loves his parents. His parents love him. One day he learns that his mother is not his mother, that his father is not his father; he learns that he is an adopted orphan. That he came from some slum way down in the social heap. Let us imagine that not only does he learn this but all his friends learn it. He feels cut off, let down, and betrayed. He does not know what to do. He is obsessed in wanting to find out who his real parents were. For those parents now assume a mythlike and legendary quality for him. He is intelligent; he pores over records in police stations—”
“This is interesting,” Ruddy murmured, lifting his right hand and brushing away a film of dampness from his forehead.
“He finds that his father was a murderer,” Ed went fiercely and relentlessly on. “He finds that his mother perhaps even then did not know who the ‘real’ father was. That boy is stigmatized in the very depth of his soul. Oh, if only he could destroy those records! Wipe them out! He feels as he walks along the street that everybody knows his shameful secret. He can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t work. He dares tell no one what he really knows, for it is far worse than what they already know about ’im. That boy walks the streets at night. He finds the woods above Brentwood Park, wanders in then…for no definite purpose. He finds Reverend Hindricks and a girl in a car. He has a .38 on him, to kill himself perhaps. He uses it on impulse. He shoots them.”
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