A Father's Law

by Richard Wright

  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 fl oor.

  “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. Strange, eh?”

  “You mean that the murderer didn’t have his audience vi-sually 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?”

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  “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 offi ce.

  “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 defi nite 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?”

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  “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.”

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  “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, nomi-nally 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

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  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 nightgow
n 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.”

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  “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,

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  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 fi ercely and relentlessly on. “He finds that his mother perhaps even then did not know who the ‘real’ father was. That boy is stig-matized 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 fi nds the woods above Brentwood Park, wanders in then . . . for no defi -

  nite 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.”

  “Yeah.” Ruddy rose and walked to and fro in the offi ce.

  “Could be.” His voice was high-pitched and tense. “Anything could be,” he added, hoping to wipe out any untoward meaning that might have crept into his voice.

  “But, Ruddy, do you get the kind of ‘feeling’ that might have been in our slayer?” Ed asked. “I need not continue to spin out these hypothetical situations.”

  “I get it,” Ruddy said crisply.

  “Now, how do we start looking for such a man?” Ed asked.

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  “Beats me,” Ruddy growled. “I’ll have the newspapers searched for any untoward happenings of an odd nature.” He kept his voice neutral. “You never can tell what’ll turn up.”

  “Right,” Ed said, scribbling on a pad of paper.

  “We’ll have the high school and university examination records in this area gone over to see if there were any failures that had a bad emotional reaction upon the student,” Ruddy said.

  “Right,” Ed agreed, sribbling again.

  “I’m going to have all bankruptcy proceedings in this area looked into,” Ruddy added.

  “Not a bad idea at all,” Ed said. “Since we have nothing, something just might turn up.”

  “And we must leave no stone unturned to trace that .38,”

  Ruddy said.

  “It was odd about that gun,” Ed said reflectively. “It was the same gun used in all three murders. That’s another fact that convinces me that there was one murderer.”

  “I want all suicides checked into again,” Ruddy said.

  “Not only might the fool have killed himself, but he might have left traces of evidence in his life that could lead us to a solution.”

  “Right.”

  “I want all of those psychopath confessions reexamined,”

  Ruddy ordered.

  “Right.”

  “I want the correspondence, signed and anonymous, relating to this case reread and reassessed,” Ruddy ordered.

  “Not bad.”

  “As discreetly as possible, I want to check, in some way or other, all psychiatric records of those appealing for help at the various hospitals and mental clinics,” Ruddy said.

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  “Good.”

  “In order to facilitate our work, we must somehow determine if our murderer lives in Brentwood Park or not,” Ruddy said, remembering the Professor Louis Redfield he had met a few hours past.

  “Yes,” Ed murmured. “That’s baffl ing.”

  “Ed, there is a secret—no I oughtn’t say that—but a little-known path leading into those woods—”

  “No! How do you know?”

  “A professor at the University of Chicago told me that,”

  Ruddy said softly.

  “There’s no mention of that in these dossiers,” Ed said.

  “It seems to have been overlooked.”

  “Looks like a lot has been overlooked in this case,” Ed sighed. “Say, where does that path begin?”

  “From a slum area near the railroad tracks,” Ruddy explained. “It mounts over a huge rock, then leads to a creek, across which it is not difficult to negotiate, and then on into the woods.”

  “Goddamn.”

  “Ed, I want to start backward in this case,” Ruddy went on.

  “Forget the preacher. That priest. Let’s start with Heard Jr. We will be able to determine quickly if the cases are linked. If we get any lead on how Heard was killed, then we’ll know if the others were linked to him. That’ll save us time. And Heard’s case is closer to us in time.”

  “Right.”

  Suddenly the teletype machine began to whir clackingly.

  Ruddy’s and Ed’s eyes tur
ned to it. Ruddy picked up the jutting and sliding tape of paper and began to read it. He was interrupted by the shrill ring of the telephone. He lifted the receiver.

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  “Chief Turner speaking.”

  “Chief, this is Lieutenant Parrish reporting. A report from Officer Only says that a workman has reported to him that the body of a young woman has been found dead in the woods above Brentwood Park. Shot to death. We’re holding the workman, though he seems to be telling a straight story. I’ve notifi ed the medical exaiminer’s office. Three squad cars have responded to calls and are on the way.”

  “What part of the woods is the body in?”

  “Near the center,” Lieutenant Parrish said. “Your offi cial car’s ready for you if you plan to go.”

  “Right. I’ll be right down,” Ruddy said, slamming down the receiver.

  “What’s up?” Ed asked.

  “Looks like we won’t have to bother about starting the investigation of this goddamn case in reverse,” Ruddy said. “It’s opened again, it seems.”

  “No?”

  “Yeah. The body of a young woman, shot to death, has just been reported as found in the center of Brentwood Park.”

  “Crawling Baby Jesus Christ,” Ed exclaimed.

  “Let’s go, Ed.”

  “Hell, yes!”

  Not another word was spoken until the two offi cers had rushed down and gotten into the waiting car, their lips pursed tight, their eyes stony and hard and unblinking.

  C H A P T E R 1 2

  Midnight was striking on all the town’s clocks as the police-car’s siren screamed into the balmy April air.

  Amidst high purple scudding clouds, a few faint yellow stars were visible. The car’s resilient springs jolted them like a pitching ship as they sought to equalize the rutted streetcar tracks.

  Ruddy and Ed were alone in the back seat and two offi cers were in front—one of whom was a chauffeur at the steering wheel, his face hunched grimly forward. Ruddy and Ed sat hunched forward, tense, their fingers holding smoldering cigarettes that they had lit and had forgot.

  “It’s the goddamnest thing,” Ed commented.

  “Yeah.”

  “If it’s the murderer again, then it rules out some of your suggestions,” Ed said.

  “Don’t want to sound sadistic,” Ruddy muttered, “but I’d not be sorry if it is the murderer. At least then we’d get a line on