The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

by Deming, Richard

  The M.O. had been the same in each case. The killer had obtained entry after his victim was asleep, had searched the house until he found a pair of stockings recently worn by the victim but as yet unlaundered, then had strangled the woman with one stocking and had carried the other away.

  There had been no evidence of sexual attack in any of the cases, and no strange fingerprints were ever found, leading the police to believe the killer wore gloves. The only clue was that a female witness had seen the man who probably was the killer, just after he left the home of one of the victims.

  Unfortunately she had seen him only from the back and by moonlight. The victim and her husband had lived in the lower flat of a two-family building and the witness lived in the upper. At two-thirty in the morning the witness had gone down the back stairs to let in her squalling cat, and as she opened the back door she saw a man just disappearing through the rear gate into the alley.

  Aside from describing his dress and approximate size, she hadn’t been able to tell the police anything about him. He had been dressed all in black, she said, with matching slacks, sweater and cap. She had estimated his height as from six feet to six-two and his weight at 180 to 200.

  In a more moderate tone I said, “I’m serious. One of those killings was less than a mile from here.”

  Martha said, still in a light tone, “He might be in for a surprise if he picked me. Don’t forget I had judo training as an Army nurse.”

  “Yeah, about two lessons, wasn’t it?” I said dourly. “And how do you know the Stocking Killer doesn’t know judo too?”

  Martha elevated her chin. “We trained an hour a week for twelve weeks. I could toss you all over the room, big brother.”

  I made a dismissing gesture. “I’m out of condition from eating my own cooking. The one witness who saw this guy described him as being as big as Lyle, and you can’t weigh over a hundred pounds.”

  “Ninety-nine,” Lyle said. “But she’ll lock the doors after dark, and I’ve instructed her not to open to anyone until she’s established his identity.”

  I leaned forward in order to emphasize what I was saying. “Listen, Lyle. I’ve been on this story since the first murder, and I know a few things the general public doesn’t. The police asked the press to sit on it, because they’re afraid of public panic, but from crime-lab examination of the barrels of the door locks of a couple of the victims, they’ve decided he’s expert with a picklock. It seems a picklock leaves certain distinctive scratches that show up under a microscope.”

  Martha looked at her husband. Lyle frowned. “Maybe there ought to be draw bolts on the doors,” he conceded, “but I have to catch a plane tomorrow morning before any hardware stores will be open.” After a pause, he said, “Would you have time to pick up a couple of bolts tomorrow and install them, Tod?”

  “I could take the time, but that still wouldn’t be enough protection. In one case, where the woman had her doors bolted from inside, the Stocking Killer used a glass cutter to make a neat little hole next to a window catch. That was the one where the published report was that he gained entry by breaking a window. The cops were afraid that if the public knew what an efficient break-in man he was, the warning might make some woman jittery enough to shoot her husband when he came home late and keyed open the door. How necessary is this trip of yours?”

  “The company’s sending me. It’s the annual electronics manufacturers’ convention, and all the new products will be on display.”

  Lyle worked as a parts-procurement agent for an electronics firm, a job which periodically took him out of town, but usually only for a day or two at a time. He also supplemented his income by doing a little TV repair work evenings. He had taken a correspondence course in television repairing under the G.I. educational program after he came out of service.

  Actually, when he took the course he had intended to go into that business, but had ended up in his present job instead. Nevertheless it came in handy as a means to make extra money. Although his salary was nearly ten thousand a year, inflation had made that just barely enough for a family of three to exist on, these high-priced days.

  In a definite tone I said, “Then I’m going to move in here with Martha and Tod while you’re gone.”

  Lyle shrugged. “It’s all right with me, if you don’t mind the daybed in the den.”

  “Reporters can sleep anywhere,” I told him.

  Little Tod said, “You stay for a visit, Unkie Tod?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “For a whole week.”

  Martha said, “Actually, if it won’t inconvenience you, I would feel better with you here. Not that he’d be very likely to pick on me. So far he’s only picked pretty women.”

  Cocking an eyebrow at her, my brother-in-law said loyally, “That includes you, honey.”

  She gave him a fond smile, but she knew that if he meant it, she was pretty only in his eyes. The best adjective to describe my sister was plain. She certainly wasn’t ugly, but no one except a man blinded by love could possibly have considered her pretty. She was thin, with match-legs, and had the unfortunate Conner nose. It was thin and pointed and too long, making her rather resemble a bird.

  In short, she looked like me, except I was eight inches taller. At the paper I’m known as Nose Conner. The editor who nicknamed me claims he thought up the sobriquet because of my skill at nosing out stories, but I suspect most of my colleagues associate it with my appearance.

  Martha was one of the sweetest, most understanding women around, though, and there was no doubt about Lyle being nuts over her, so maybe he did think she was pretty.

  Although they did their best not to show it, I’m sure most of our friends were astonished when Martha returned to St. Louis with such a handsome husband in tow. Lyle Barton was tall and muscular, with blond, curling hair and the features of some mythical Greek hero. He also had a certain charm about him that made both women and men instantly like him, despite his occasional moodiness and his tendency to be oversensitive to people’s remarks.

  As fond as I was of my baby sister, I have to confess I was surprised too, until I learned some of the details of their romance.

  Martha had been serving as a psychiatric nurse at the Fort Ord Army Hospital when Private Lyle Barton was shipped back from Vietnam with combat fatigue. He had also been wounded slightly, but had fully recovered from his physical wound before he arrived at Ord.

  It seems that many emotionally disturbed patients tend to reach out desperately for love and understanding. According to Martha, patients in psychoanalysis usually develop parent complexes about their analysts when both are of the same sex. If they are of different sexes, it is almost routine for patients to go through periods during treatment when they fall in love with their analysts.

  Also, according to Martha, in military hospitals the case loads of psychiatrists are generally so large that they have to concentrate most of their time on the more severely disturbed patients, usually seeing those with less serious problems only briefly on their periodic visits through the wards. The result is that these patients never establish the rapport with their doctors that almost always develops during analysis, but the need is still there, so the less disturbed patients tend to fall in love with their nurses.

  While Lyle was pretty disoriented when he first arrived at the hospital, he was deemed by his assigned psychiatrist to require merely rest and tranquilizers instead of psychiatric treatment. Martha was his day nurse.

  She told me in confidence that she was quite aware of the psychological reasons that made Lyle think he was in love with her. As a matter of fact, she had gone through similar experiences with a number of previous patients who eventually recovered from their infatuations at the same time they recovered their mental health, but she had an odd and disturbing premonition that Lyle’s feeling for her wasn’t going to change when his condition improved
.

  She couldn’t explain why, but she candidly confessed that it might have been merely wishful thinking, because she had fallen hopelessly in love with him too. She waited to see how he felt when he recovered before committing herself to anything, though.

  When he was discharged from the hospital, and simultaneously received an honorable discharge from service, he was still insisting he loved her. At the time, Lyle was twenty-six, the same age as Martha, which she figured was too mature an age for it to be puppy love. Nevertheless, she was still afraid it might be only an unusually prolonged attachment of the usual sort common in nurse-patient relationships, and she insisted that he take more time.

  Lyle had no parents, but the uncle and aunt who had raised him were still alive and lived in Wisconsin. He had some terminal leave coming, so Martha suggested he visit his uncle and aunt for thirty days, and told him if he still felt the same at the end of his visit, she would marry him.

  He arrived back at Fort Ord on the twenty-ninth day, and they were married a week later.

  Lyle had only a high-school education, and under the G.I. educational program he could have gone to college with all expenses paid, plus $200 a month for living expenses, but he preferred to go to work. He took a civilian job at the post exchange.

  Since he was so set against college, Martha didn’t push that, but she hated to see him throw away entirely his veteran’s benefits. It was largely at her urging that he took a correspondence course, in television repair, because he had always had an interest in electronics.

  Lyle had barely finished the course when Martha requested release from active duty because she was pregnant. His PX job wasn’t important enough to worry about leaving, so they came to St. Louis for Lyle to look for another job. Until he found one I put them up in the single bedroom of my bachelor apartment and took over the front-room sofa.

  Lyle quickly discovered that the field of television repair was lucrative only if you owned your own shop. No one wanted to offer a decent salary for an assistant. So he widened his sights and almost immediately found a job in another field, in the parts-procurement department of one of St. Louis’ largest electronics firms.

  They stayed with me for only a month. Since then, Lyle had been promoted twice and they had bought a two-bedroom home on Bellerive Boulevard in South St. Louis.

  Lyle still had a little emotional trouble, as evidenced by his touchiness and his occasional fits of depression, but it seemed to be nothing serious. It was just enough to get him a 10% disability compensation without interfering with either his work or his home life. He wasn’t under treatment, unless you counted his annual psychological checkup at the Jefferson Barracks Veterans Hospital just south of the city. That was required in order for him to continue to receive his disability compensation.

  Otherwise they seemed to have no problems. I got the impression that both of them were still as deeply in love as the day Martha brought Lyle home. I know she was, from a conversation we had the first evening Lyle was away.

  Tod was already in bed and we were companionably drinking together in the front room. The alcohol loosened her tongue enough to tell me some things about her relationship with Lyle that she had never mentioned before. More or less idly I asked if Lyle’s emotional condition was improving any. She took so long to answer that I sat up straight and peered at her.

  “Well, it’s not really likely to, you know,” she said finally.

  I hiked my eyebrows. “I know he had a bad time in Vietnam, but I thought everybody eventually got over combat fatigue.”

  “Most do, when there’s no physical damage accompanying it. But Lyle’s problem is a little more than just combat fatigue.”

  “Oh?”

  “Since I was his nurse, naturally I know his complete medical history. He had a rather severe emotional problem before he ever entered the Army. In fact, he spent a year in a Wisconsin mental hospital.”

  I stared at her. “Diagnosed as what?”

  “Mild schizophrenia.”

  “Schizophrenia!” I said incredulously. “How’d he ever get in the Army?”

  “He neglected to mention it, and the Army didn’t discover it until he’d been returned to the States. Under Army regulations he could have been discharged as mentally unfit for service, or even have been given a discharge other than honorable. That’s not the same as a dishonorable discharge. You still have all veterans’ rights. It’s just sort of like graduating with a D-minus average. But Lyle had picked up a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star Medal in action, and the brass tends to overlook minor indiscretions by war heroes. Since he was being discharged in any event, they gave him an honorable one.”

  “But schizophrenia!” I said. “Doesn’t that mean he’s dangerous?”

  “Of course not,” she said, frowning at me. “Severe cases of schizophrenia can be dangerous, but I told you Lyle’s was diagnosed as mild. He’s far from psychotic. You probably know a dozen people you consider normal who have schizophrenic tendencies. It isn’t that uncommon.”

  “Suppose he gets worse?”

  “He isn’t likely to. He isn’t likely to get better either, though. It’s just a matter of learning to live with his occasional withdrawals into some private little world of his own.”

  I took a long, slow sip of my drink before saying, “Don’t misunderstand this, Sis, because I like Lyle. But knowing his diagnosis, how’d you ever happen to marry him?”

  She stared at me. “I love him.”

  “That’s no answer,” I said. “Would you have married Jack-the-Ripper if you had loved him?”

  “That’s hardly a comparable example!”

  “Don’t get sore,” I said placatingly. “I’m not trying to run Lyle down. I’m just trying to understand how a girl with your background in psychiatry brought herself to taking the risky step of marrying a diagnosed schizophrenic.”

  “Not a schizophrenic, dammit, Tod. Merely with schizophrenic tendencies.”

  “Okay, okay. But despite what you say about his condition not being likely to worsen, you must have known before you married him that it could. And that seems pretty risky to me.”

  She made no reply for nearly a minute, during which she took several angry pulls at her drink. Then she calmed down and gave me a sheepish smile.

  “I know you’re just being protective, so I have no right to get mad at you. Particularly since you’re right. I did consider the risk. But he loved me too, you see.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at her. “What’s that got to do with the element of risk?”

  “Nothing, really,” she said with a shrug. “But Lyle’s the only man who ever gave me a second look.” When I frowned at her, she said quickly, “Don’t misunderstand me. It wasn’t just a matter of a love-starved spinster jumping at the only chance she ever had. I wasn’t just settling for what I could get. Even if I had been the belle of the hospital, I would have picked Lyle. He’s the handsomest, most charming, most wonderful man I ever met.”

  I said nothing, merely taking a gulp of my drink.

  “You’ve never been in love, Tod,” she said softly. “The way I feel about Lyle, I’d continue to love him if he became a raving maniac. I’d do anything in the world for him.”

  The drinks were affecting me too, or I would never have said what I did. “Even stand still for a bullet if he decided to kill you?” I asked bluntly.

  She blinked, but instead of getting angry again, she merely turned defensive. “That’s not fair,” she said. “He’s not going to get worse.” After a beat she added, “Yes, I guess I would, though.”

  I felt a chill crawl along my spine as I suddenly had a mental vision of Martha standing with an expression of loving forgiveness on her face as Lyle, his face maniacally contorted, pumped bullets into her.

  Shaking myself, I said, “Maybe we’d bet
ter drop the subject. You love him and I like him, and all we’re doing is getting each other upset. You want a nightcap?”

  “I think I could use one.” Then she glanced at her wristwatch and said in a surprised tone, “Maybe we’d better not. It’s nearly eleven, and don’t you have to get up at six?”

  “I never sleep more than six hours,” I told her. “One more isn’t going to hurt either of us.”

  In the kitchen I set the empty glasses on the counter next to the sink and was turning toward the refrigerator for ice when a sight across the alley caught my eye. The window over the sink looked directly at the rear of the house across the alley. Through a lighted second-story window I could see into a bedroom where a young and shapely blonde was just beginning to undress.

  I don’t think I’m any more of a Peeping Tom than the average guy. It wouldn’t even occur to me to make a deliberate attempt to see into a neighbor’s window, but I doubt that any normal man deliberately turns his back when a view such as that is unexpectedly offered. I stood there and watched.

  She took quite a while to undress, because she was neat. She hung her dress on a hanger and put it in a closet. After removing her stockings, she disappeared from view for a while, then reappeared without the stockings and in no further stage of undress. I guessed that she had washed them and hung them to dry in the bathroom.

  The rest of her undressing didn’t take very long, and she was stark naked when Martha came into the kitchen to see what was delaying me.

  When she saw, she burst out laughing instead of being shocked by my depravity.