Front Page Fatale: The First Ida Bly Thriller

by Daniel Fox

  “Vincent Bader’s house.”

  Ida frowned. “How’d you know that?”

  “Because Bob called from there, asking for a callback from the Europe desk. He wanted research into Bader’s past.”

  “Did Detective Pileggi hear the call?”

  “He did.”

  “Does he know where Bobby is?”

  “He does.”

  “Did he call the info in to someone else?”

  “He did. Hey Ida?

  “Yeah boss?”

  “Is Bobby in trouble?”

  “Yeah boss.”

  “Okay.” Clifford held out the bundles. “Take these and anything else you have. Go to my home. I’ll call and let Junie know you’re coming. You hide there. I’m gonna go-”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No boss. If you leave here Pileggi will know you’ve gone to help Bob. It’ll be an easy guess. He’ll interfere. I bet he’s wondering where you are right now.”

  “I told him a bathroom break. But I’ve been down here hoping you, the both of you, would show up.”

  “How long?”

  Clifford grimaced. “It’s been a while.”

  “He’s probably already suspicious.”

  “He already was. He’s a piece of work. Keeps rubbing his holster like it’s his prom date’s backside.”

  “So if you go, it’ll set him off.” Ida reached into her pocket, pulled out her notebook. “A lot of it is in here.”

  Clifford took it. “You never let me read your notebook.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not my story anymore. It’s Myrna’s. But it isn’t over yet. I still want to know why. Why Bader did that to her.”

  “Well then... I guess you better go and find out.”

  ***

  Lights flared through the windows in the hallway. Bob peeked out from the study. A Pontiac Streamliner was parked in the end of the driveway, polished and sleek, definitely not Ida’s neglected wreck of a ride. He moved to head for the window in the dining room but a key turned in the lock of the front door. He about-faced and skittered back into the study as the front door swung open.

  Footsteps in the hall, sounding like they were heading for the stairs. Hopefully it was bedtime for the good doctor.

  Bob, behind the open study door, looked back and realized he had left the drawer to the medicine cabinet open. It would be visible from the hallway. He reached over, keeping his body out of sight as best he could, pushed on the drawer with his fingertips. It was a bad angle, it took some effort, it made him strain. He got it closed. He pulled his arm back in out of sight.

  It was then that he became almost one hundred percent sure that the study door had been closed when he and Ida had first come into the house.

  The footsteps reached about where the stairs began. Go up go up, you’re tired, it’s bedtime Doc, nothing to see here.

  A footstep on the stairs, another one. A huge sense of relief for Bob.

  The footsteps stopped. There was a moment of quiet. And then they came back down and moved directly for the study.

  There was only one place Bob was going to hide in here, behind the examination table. He slid from behind the door to behind the table, ducked down, noticing that he had left a very visible gap in the table’s covering where he had fished out the evidence.

  He pushed down on the opening, sealing it. The gap was closed. The stitching where he had sliced it stood up, little strings curled up in the air. There was no time to do anything about them. He ducked completely down out of sight, his back to the table.

  The footsteps entered the room. They stopped at the door. They entered.

  Bob sweated. The fear was taking him. He focused on keeping his breathing easy and quiet. He’s just a man. He finds you, you fight. He’s nothing but a man. You can beat him. He’s nothing but-

  The footsteps went to the desk. The medicine cabinet. If Bader was going to notice the stitching, it would be now, when he turned to head back out of the room. The grit of shoes turning in place.

  Quiet. The steps started forward, towards the examination table.

  And past. The door started to swing closed.

  Bob un-clenched his jaw, his fists, his everything.

  The phone on the desk rang.

  The call from the Europe desk.

  The footsteps turned again. Came back into the room. The phone’s receiver was picked up. Bader’s voice, accented and precise: “Bader residence. Hello? Who is there please?”

  A moment of listening, then Bader hung up. Another moment of quiet as Bader mulled it over.

  Bob behind the examination table, close enough to smell Bader’s faint dabs of cologne: Just a wrong number. It was just a wrong number. Let it go, just let it-

  Bader darted forward, slapped his hands down on the table. Bob grit his teeth to keep from yelling out.

  A yell from Bader, no words, only the noise of a heavy beast. A bellow. The sound of the table’s covering being torn open. A scream of supernova fury.

  The table shook. Rocked. The thing with its full metal frame and its shelves, it was heavy. Bader slammed it back and forth like it was nothing. It banged into Bob’s back. Bob covered his head with his arms. Covered his mouth with his hand.

  A car screeched to a halt outside on the street.

  CHAPTER 50

  Before the Los Angeles Police Department was created, back during the California Gold Rush that started in 1848, the area was notorious for murders, for banditry, for lynchings. Many considered it the murder capital of North America.

  The first “police force” was formed by the volunteer Los Angeles Rangers in 1853. The first paid force was formed in 1869, consisting of six officers led by City Marshal William Warren. He would be shot the next year by one of his own deputies.

  It would be twenty years until the force gained any sort of real respect from citizens who actually dared to expect true law enforcement from their law enforcement professionals. Chief John Glass took the reins in 1889 and for the next eleven years did all he could to whip the force into shape. In the year 1900, the force consisted of seventy officers; in 1903 that number had increased to two hundred.

  However, whatever discipline and professionalism Glass had instilled in the force was swept aside during World War I. In the years immediately following the war corruption both in the force and the city government at large became the butt of jokes across the country.

  Ida had memories of those jokes, snide remarks made about the Los Angeles Police Department when she was a little itty bitty slip of a thing. It had made her angry, even back then, the thought that something that was supposed to make you feel safe was so rotten at its core that people just threw up their hands and joked about it. They didn’t try to fix it. They didn’t try to fight back.

  That anger was compressed, turned into fuel. It carried her through journalism school when her presence brought stares and jokes. It kept her going when she got her scar. It was why she did not take no for an answer when she fought for a job at the Clarion and why she rose to the front page and stayed there.

  That fuel fizzled and went out when she found the unmarked car with the police radio on its dash out front of the doctor’s house.

  She was hoping that Bader hadn’t made it home yet. She was hoping that she’d just sneak back in, grab Bob, and they would hot-foot it out of there double-time.

  Now there was a car in the driveway, presumably Bader’s, and this unmarked car on the street, presumably A.C. Pointe’s or Detective Fortier’s.

  It just all seemed impossible now. The police had been protecting a monster. How did you fight that? What were the words you printed that hammered a stake into that kind of a rotten heart?

  She thought it likely that she would have walked away, right then and there, front page be damned, if it wasn’t for the fact that Bob might still be inside. They might have him, they might not. They might be hurting him, they might not. He might be fighting back... but she didn’t thin
k so. He was just too afraid of the world now.

  She was tired, she was fed up, she was disillusioned, she was terrified, but she was still Ida Bly so she went up the walk and knocked on the front door.

  Footsteps inside. A lock being turned. The door swung open and there he was, tall, thin, looking down on her. Doctor Vincent Bader. The killer of girls. The monster of Skid Row.

  “I apologize for the late call, Doctor Bader. My name is-”

  “Ida Bly. The reporter.”

  “Yes sir, that’s right. Starting tomorrow the Los Angeles Clarion is going to begin a string of stories that accuse you of being the one that brutally murdered Myrna Hodges, a.k.a. Skid Row Sally. Furthermore, we intend to show that certain members of the Los Angeles Police Department were involved in covering up for your crimes. Would you and your guest care to make a statement?”

  ***

  Bob heard the words of a madwoman.

  She’d come to the door. Just marched right up to it like it was another day at work and there wasn’t a woman-killer waiting for her on the other side. Gave it a knock, because why not? And now she was chatting with the guy. He knew a good psychologist he was going to recommend to her if they lived out the week.

  He could hear the smile in Bader’s voice. “Won’t you come in?”

  Ida: “I’m peachy right here, thanks.”

  “It’s a warm night. I have lemonade in here.”

  “And I have all your neighbours able to hear me if I scream out here.”

  He got it then. Time. The loopy broad was buying him time. He slid up, clutching the manila envelope he had found hidden in the table to his chest. He stepped around the table, excruciatingly aware of his body, making sure not to accidentally knock into anything that would make noise.

  “Ah. A stand-off then.”

  “No, Doctor Bader. An interview.”

  Bob rounded the edge of the open door. It was a hell of a fight to keep his breath quiet, his panic wanted to make it into something ragged and loud. He saw the doctor standing in the door frame, slightly bent forward, his head cocked in curiosity to one side, the hand behind his back holding one of his scalpels.

  He started forward. He’d spotted the back door round back of the stairs. All he had to do was make it around the stairway, out the door, quiet as a mouse, and both he and Ida could make it out of there scot-free.

  Ida: “I know that you and Miss Hodges were in a relationship since at least the turn of the year.”

  “Oh yes? How so?”

  “There’s a picture of you ringing in the New Year in style at Chasen’s.”

  “Oh my goodness. Well, how about that? Your presumption is incorrect though, if the tone in your voice is inferring that our relationship was sexual. It was not.”

  Ida’s voice did not hold a lot of belief in it. “Yeah? Really? Older distinguished fella meets a pretty young party girl, he’s not taking advantage of the situation?”

  “No.”

  Another step. Another. Bob was coming up to the foot of the steps. He could see Ida now, past the doctor. He didn’t wave. He didn’t want to draw her eyes away from Bader.

  Ida: “Then what?”

  “Healing.”

  Bob made it past the foot of the stairs. Started round the side of the stairwell, heading for that glorious and mouthwatering rear exit.

  Ida: “Healing? You don’t say. Because the way Myrna ended up, that looked to me to be the antidote of healing. Someone came into the hospital dying from healing, they’d give her a needle full of what you did to her. Explain that to me doctor. That’s what I want to know more than anything. Why.”

  “Because I had a wife and two sons.”

  Bob reached the back door.

  “Tell me why doctor.”

  Bob turned the lock, gently, gently.

  “Because Myrna had a son. She said she had a son too.”

  Bob opened the door, praying for silent hinges.

  “WHY?!”

  Bob stepped out into the night air.

  “Because she lied!”

  Bob heard what he was pretty sure was the noise the hammer of a gun makes when it’s pulled back and locked into a firing position.

  CHAPTER 51

  Ida heard the click too. It would have been hard to miss since it originated from the gun that was pointed directly at the side of her head.

  She turned her head slightly and found Assistant Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Theodore Pointe, aiming a revolver at her. He was badly bruised and was clutching his mid-section with his free hand. It was at that moment that Ida decided she didn’t really care for guns. Or for A.C. Theodore Pointe, for that matter. She hoped his pain was something that George had dished out to him.

  “That will be more than enough.” Pointe waved the gun. “Inside.”

  “I think I’d rather stay out here if it’s all the same to you. You know, like I said, where the neighbours can hear me screaming. Nice neighbourhood like this, I bet the police get here in a minute-thirty they hear a woman screaming blue bloody murder.”

  Pointe looked over at Bader. The doctor’s chest was heaving. His fingers were white-knuckled around the door-frame. “Doctor. Doctor! I require your co-operation.”

  Ida turned her head back to look at the state of Bader. “I don’t think the doctor is home right now.”

  “Bader. Bader! Now is not the time for any of your theatrics. Pull yourself together! If someone were to come by and see-”

  Speaking of which, someone did come by. Ida saw him. Bob, creeping up the drive, stopped, looking over at her past Pointe. He had something in his hand, an envelope. It took Ida a nice chunk of willpower to keep her eyes from darting down to it – what had he found?

  It had to be important.

  It had to be the key to bringing Bader and his merry band down.

  It had to matter.

  Because if it didn’t, this next gesture was going to be absolutely worthless.

  Ida pushed her way past the doctor/monster and stepped inside, Pointe following her in.

  The way was clear for Bobby now. Whatever happened next, he’d be able to deliver the story.

  She hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much. She was pretty sure it would though. She was fairly certain this was going to be terrible.

  ***

  Bob nearly gasped out loud when she pushed her way inside.

  She really was out of her goddamned mind.

  He clutched the manila envelope. Stained it with the sweat on his palms. Inside the envelope – the key to understanding so much of what had happened. Wally Clemp. The biggest recorded bank heist ever. Buried bodies by a peaceful lake. How Bader pulled the strings of a high-ranking L.A.P.D. puppet.

  Inside the house – a woman in the hands of the thing that had brutalized Myrna Hodges.

  He ran for his car.

  ***

  Ida kept her eyes on that gun in Pointe’s hand. It was absolutely mesmerizing.

  Pointe swiped at his forehead with his handkerchief. “Now Miss Bly, we need to have a little talk. I’m going to need to know how much you’ve told to-”

  Bader lunged forward. Grabbed Ida by her hair. He pulled her so hard it yanked her right off her feet.

  Pointe: “Bader! Bader! Stop!”

  Bader dragged Ida, her feet kicking, her hands scratching at his wrist, across the floor. Into his study/examination room. She could see his other hand – it was holding a scalpel, God help her. The hand left her hair, went to her neck. He hefted her up in the air and slammed her down on her front on the examination table.

  One hand directed the doctor’s weight onto her back, pinning her to the table. Ida thrashed but she barely budged him. It enraged her, being so physically weak compared to these mentally weak men.

  The doctor’s other hand flashed the scalpel – then her jacket and blouse were falling apart in the back, slit open so easy, like they were air.

  “Bader, stop!”

  The doctor ripped apart her j
acket, her blouse, exposing skin.

  Ida froze. Expected pain. Tensed for it. Her big mouth carried on like it was business as usual. “You didn’t tell me why!”

  The doctor leaned forward, spoke into her ear, his breath hot. “We bonded over grief. Over loss. I enfolded her in my caring. She made me feel like a man again. I talked to her about losing my family to tuberculosis, one by one, failing to save them with all my knowledge and skill. Cutting them open to collapse their lungs to make them rest, to give them a chance to recover. Myrna talked to me about losing her baby to tuberculosis. How she had nearly died from it herself. Then I overheard her talking with a friend on the phone. She was laughing about a lie she had told. A lie she had told to me. There had been no baby. There had been no suffering. It had just been bait for a silly man and his money. Angry. Oh I was so very angry. I beat her, yes. I hurt her to make her apologize to me. To let her know that she had sinned against me. Against my family, I mean. And then I cut her open and examined her lungs just to make sure that it had been a lie.”

  Ida heard Pointe exhale from somewhere behind her. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

  “Great story.” Ida turned her head to look Bader in the eye. “But that doesn’t explain the others.”

  “Others?” Ida heard Pointe shift. “What others?”

  Bader placed the scalpel against the skin of Ida’s back. It was remarkably hot and cold all at the same time.

  “What does she mean others?”

  “Skin! He collects skin from dead girls! We found it upstairs, his collection!”

  Bader cut her. Ida screamed.

  “Stop! Stop damn you! What does she mean others? How many-”

  Ida thrashed. “A dozen. More! Going way back!”

  Bader cut her again.

  “No! I didn’t sign up for-”

  Bader spun on Pointe. Growled at him. An actual animal growl from somewhere just above his belly.

  Ida turned her head. Saw Pointe stumble back. His gun wavered off of Ida, made its way to being halfway pointed at Bader.