“You too?” she said. “I catch Lyle in here watching the show about once a week.”
“Doesn’t she ever draw her drapes?” I asked without taking my eyes off the blonde. She was now putting on a filmy nightgown.
“Only on weekends, when her husband is home. He works nights. Then I imagine it’s he who draws them. Lyle and I have decided she’s not an exhibitionist, though, because she never shows the least self-consciousness. She would almost have to if she suspected she were being watched, don’t you think? Besides, we’ve had a little casual neighborly conversation with them, and she’s quite obviously fond of her husband, so it seems unlikely she’s looking for anything. We think she’s just careless about drawing drapes.”
The light in the bedroom suddenly went out. Belatedly I began mixing the drinks.
“Doesn’t it upset you when you find Lyle watching her?” I asked.
“Why should it?” she asked cheerfully. “It’s me he goes to bed with, not her. And the show always puts him in the mood for love.” The next morning on the way to work an unsettling thought occurred to me. I had left word at the city desk that I would be staying with my sister for a week, so they knew where to find me in an emergency, which meant I could be called out on some special assignment in the middle of the night before Lyle returned from Chicago.
That didn’t happen too often but, just in case, I decided to take Lyle’s suggestion and install drawbolts on both the front and back doors.
En route back to the paper from an assignment, I stopped at a hardware store and bought two bolts.
After work I drove to South St. Louis straight from the paper, getting to Martha’s place about five. Although it was only the end of March, we were having an early spring and it was pleasant enough for people to be out on their porches. Little Tod was riding his tricycle on the sidewalk while Martha sat on the porch watching him.
“Hi, Unkie Tod,” the little guy called. “Watch me!”
I stood and watched a few moments as his fat little legs pumped the pedals and the tricycle raced along at the desperate speed of perhaps two miles an hour. My applause made him grin with delight.
Climbing the steps, I held up the paper bag I was carrying for Martha to see. “Just in case I get called out on an assignment some night, I decided to take Lyle’s suggestion and install a couple of drawbolts after all. Where’s Lyle keep his tools?”
“In his workshop in the basement.”
Going inside, I shed my coat and necktie in the den, then went downstairs. One whole side of the basement had been partitioned off to serve as Lyle’s workshop. A long workbench had tools of every description hanging on the wall over it: everything from hammers to a set of bolt cutters. The dismantled innards of a television set stood on the bench, and two more sets were on the floor.
I selected a screwdriver of the size I would need, then began to open drawers in search of a drill. In a top drawer containing nothing but woodworking tools I found a hand brace and a set of bits. I could have used that, but I was sure that for his repair work Lyle would have an electric drill. I started searching the other drawers.
In one of the bottom drawers there was nothing but a small leather case and a tin box. When I found it was locked, I snapped open the leather case.
It contained five items. There was an extremely thin-nosed pair of pliers, a glass cutter, a small rubber suction cup with a metal ring attached to it large enough to fit over a man’s finger, a pair of black kid gloves and a long, thin implement that seemed to be made of spring steel.
I puzzled over the last item and the rubber suction cup. I figured out the spring-steel implement first. It was a picklock.
Then I realized the purpose of the suction cup. If you pressed it against the glass of a windowpane, then cut around it with a glass cutter, it would prevent the cut-out section from falling inside and perhaps shattering on the floor.
I like to think I’m at least as quick on the uptake as the average guy, but my initial reaction was merely puzzlement at why Lyle would possess what appeared to be a rather simple burglar’s kit. I suspect this was a quite normal reaction, though. On the basis of such a bare hint, it would be abnormal to jump to a monstrous conclusion about anyone as close to you as a brother-in-law. As a matter of fact the normal reaction would be not just to reject such a thought, but to refuse even to let it form.
Whether it was intuition, subconscious suspicion or merely my reportorial nosiness that made me try the picklock on the tin box, I don’t know. At any rate I did try it, and because it was a simple lock, I managed to get it open after only about five minutes of fumbling.
The box contained nothing but eight nylon stockings.
This being a little more than a bare hint, the monstrous thought did occur to me; but because I sincerely liked Lyle, I instantly began a mental search for some less monstrous explanation for this cache.
Almost immediately I was able to think of something that seemed to make it highly unlikely that he was the Stocking Killer. According to Martha, Lyle had repeatedly watched the blonde who lived behind them undress. She was as attractive as any of the Stocking Killer’s victims, and Lyle knew her husband worked nights. If Lyle were the killer, why hadn’t she been a victim?
The depressing answer to that hit me almost as quickly as the question. Insane people aren’t necessarily stupid. The blonde was simply too close to home to be worth the risk.
I turned back to trying to think of some alternate reason anyone would keep a secret cache of women’s stockings.
I couldn’t think of any, particularly after examining the stockings more closely. At least four of them had no mates. One was longer than all the others, another shorter, and two didn’t match any of the others in shade. The other four were the same shade and size, so might have been two pairs; but it was equally it possible that they were single stockings from four similar pairs.
I took some hope from the fact that there were eight stockings, while there had been only six murders. Then I thought of the one in Kansas City and the one in Chicago that the police assumed were merely apings of the Stocking Killer by a couple of other nuts who had read about him.
Lyle made periodic business trips to both cities. I decided to find out if he had been to either or both places when the murders occurred.
I had to play this very cool. I had to be absolutely sure before I went to the police, and I had to be equally sure that they would guarantee me anonymity as their informer. I didn’t want my sister living with a homicidal maniac, but I also didn’t want her thrusting me out of her life. Even if Lyle were guilty, I knew she would never forgive me for turning him in.
Fortunately there was time for some thorough checking. It was only Tuesday, and Lyle wasn’t due back from Chicago for six more days.
I put the nylons back in the tin box and managed to get it locked again with the picklock. Then I searched some more drawers until I found the electric drill, went upstairs and installed the two door bolts.
During dinner I casually remarked to Martha, “Lyle gets to Chicago quite often, doesn’t he?”
“Only about twice a year,” she said. “Last time he had to be there over Thanksgiving, remember?”
I did recall, now that she mentioned it, because she had invited me for Thanksgiving dinner, and Lyle had been away at the time. I tried to remember when the Chicago murder had occurred, but could place it in my memory only as sometime last winter. I could look it up at the paper tomorrow, though.
I said, “Yeah, I remember. His last trip to K.C. was over some holiday too, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, no. That was way last summer, around the middle of June.”
I let the conversation drop.
The next morning, as soon as I arrived at the paper, I went down to the news morgue in the basement.
The K.C. murder
had been on Wednesday, June 16th, of the previous year. The Chicago murder had been on Friday, November 26th, the day after Thanksgiving.
I went up to the city room, sat at my desk and phoned Dr. Sam Carter at his home. I called there instead of to his office because it was only a few minutes after eight, and he didn’t reach his office until nine.
Sam was now a hundred-dollar-an-hour psychiatrist, but in our youth, when he was a pre-med student and I was studying journalism, we were fraternity brothers at Washington U. We still kept in touch and were still good friends.
When I got him on the phone, he at first said he couldn’t possibly see me until evening. When I told him it was urgent, he said he would cancel his first appointment and see me at his office at nine a.m.
I arrived exactly at nine and his receptionist sent me right into his private office. Sam was about my age, thirty-five, but a lot better-looking. He was tall and lean, with a strong-featured but amiable face and thick, slightly graying hair.
He pointed to an upholstered leather chair before his desk. “Have a seat, Tod. Or would you rather lie on the couch?”
Seating myself, I said, “It’s not a personal problem. I just want some information.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
I said, “Would it be possible for the Stocking Killer to be a happily married man, a good father and in love with his wife?”
Sam looked interested. “Possible. There have been cases where apparently normal family men with seemingly happy marriages have turned out to be pretty nasty sex criminals. I would have guessed that the Stocking Killer was a loner, but it’s not impossible he’s the sort of man you describe, that’s sure.”
“Okay, next question. If the guy I have in mind is the Stocking Killer, he keeps the mates of the stockings he used to strangle his victims in a locked tin box. Why would he do that?”
Sam shrugged. “I’m a psychiatrist, not a clairvoyant. If you want some blind guesses, I can give you a couple. Maybe he keeps them as the record of his victories, sort of like scalps. Maybe he just has a stocking fetish. Maybe he’s saving them to stuff a pillow.”
“You’re in the wrong profession,” I said sourly. “You should have been a stand-up comedian. Will you do me a favor?”
“Sure, so long as it’s legal and doesn’t require me to violate medical ethics.”
“It is and doesn’t. But first I want to stress that what I’m going to tell you is strictly confidential.”
He nodded. “Most of what I hear in this office is confidential.”
I took a deep breath. “I think Lyle Barton is the Stocking Killer.”
He gazed at me in astonishment. “Martha’s husband?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And on just what do you base that incredible theory?”
I told him, in detail, including the history of Lyle’s mental illness.
When I finished, he was no longer looking astonished, but only thoughtful. “What’s the favor you want?” he asked.
“I’d like you to check out Lyle’s psychiatric history. Since he has his annual disability checkup at the local V.A. hospital, I assume his Army medical records would be on file there. As a psychiatrist, you’d have better access to them than I.”
“No problem. I’m on the staff out there. His file should include not only his Army medical records, but a detailed report from that Wisconsin mental hospital. Almost certainly the V.A. would have asked for one.”
“When can you get out there?” I asked.
“Not before this evening. I can’t possibly cancel any more appointments, and I’m booked solid right up to five.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “There’s still five days to work on this. Suppose you phone me at Martha’s when you get back from the hospital?”
“I’ll need a little time to evaluate whatever I find in the case record. I’d rather make it in the morning.”
“All right,” I agreed. “But I don’t want to make you cancel any more appointments. Could you get yourself up in time to meet me here at eight a.m.?”
“I’ll make that sacrifice if you’re willing.”
“It’s no sacrifice for me,” I told him. “I check in at the paper at seven-thirty.”
Thursday morning we arrived at Sam’s office simultaneously. Again I took the leather chair and he sat behind his desk with his hands folded across his stomach.
“There were some interesting things in Lyle’s case file,” he said. “Did you know his father strangled his mother, then blew his own brains out?”
“Martha never mentioned that,” I said in surprise. “When?”
“When Lyle was twelve. According to what he told the psychiatrist assigned to him at the Wisconsin mental hospital, he felt his mother deserved it. He hated her and loved his father. He described her as a very beautiful woman, but a cheat. Apparently he became aware at a very early age that she was having numerous lovers. From the case record, I gathered that she made little attempt to conceal it from him, but periodically threatened to beat him senseless if he ever told his father. He never did, but one day he deliberately neglected to give his mother a phone message in the hope that his father would find her out. His father phoned from out of town that he would be home a day earlier than expected, and would arrive around midnight. Because Lyle failed to relay the message, when his father walked in, he found his wife in bed with another man.”
“And killed her?”
“Not right then. He kicked the lover out, stormed out himself and went on a five-day drunk. Then he came back, still drunk, strangled her and shot himself.”
I said, “So Lyle developed a guilt complex because he had caused the tragedy?”
He gave me a mildly irritated look. “You armchair psychiatrists have guilt complexes on the brain. What makes you think everybody who’s mentally disturbed has to have a guilt complex about something? Neither the Wisconsin report nor the considerably briefer and more cursory reports of the various Army and V.A. psychiatrists who have examined him indicate he ever felt the slightest guilt about either parent’s death. He was deeply grieved by his father’s death, but he blamed it on her, not himself, and he was quite happy that he had been indirectly responsible for his mother being killed. He felt he had been an instrument in wiping out evil.”
“All right,” I said. “If no guilt complex, what?”
“Probably a mixed bag of emotions. These things are never simple, but what comes out most clearly is that he had a strong mistrust of good-looking women. At the risk of hurting your feelings, I suggest it’s possible that’s why he chose Martha. He may have felt he could be sure she wouldn’t cheat on him.”
“You can’t hurt my feelings,” I said. “No Conner has ever won a beauty contest. Then his hang-up is simply that he hates beautiful women? Each time he kills one, in fantasy he is killing his mother?”
He got that irritated look on his face again. “Don’t put words in my mouth, Tod. If I could get Lyle on the couch for a half dozen sessions, I might be able to figure out his motives, if indeed he is the Stocking Killer. But I don’t make diagnoses by long-distance. That could be it, and even may be it, but it’s only a guess. Psychologically it has a large hole in it. If he picks victims as substitutes for his despised mother, they should be not only beautiful, but also unfaithful.”
After thinking this over, I said slowly, “Maybe they were. They were all married.”
He shrugged. “How would Lyle know that they were cheating, if they were? No connection between any of the victims has ever turned up. So how could he separately have met six attractive married women who didn’t know each other, then have gotten to know them well enough to learn they were cheating on their husbands?”
The answer came to me in a blinding flash of inspiration. “On TV repair calls,” I said.
“I b
eg your pardon?”
“Lyle does spare-time TV repair work evenings. Maybe these women were all customers. Maybe they all made passes at him. He’s just the sort of guy discontented wives on the make would pass at. He’s built like a gladiator and has the face of a matinee idol.”
Sam pursed his lips, then shrugged again. “So why wouldn’t he kill them when they made the passes?”
“Opportunity,” I said promptly. “Maybe the husband was home, but in another room. Maybe kids were wandering around. Or more likely, maybe because it was early enough for neighbors to see him coming and going. He makes these calls in the early evening, remember. I’m not suggesting that the victims invited him into their bedrooms. Maybe they just dropped hints that they were available, if he wanted to come by sometime when their husbands weren’t home. Couldn’t that be enough to set him off?”
“Sounds possible,” the psychiatrist conceded. “I wouldn’t comment on its probability without first getting Lyle on the couch.”
“You have a vested interest in scientific skepticism,” I said, rising from my chai”. “But to me it’s good enough to take to Sergeant Burmeister, and I do mean right now.” Sergeant Fritz Burmeister was the detective in charge of the Stocking Killer case. I found him at his desk in the Homicide squad room. He was a burly, beetle-browed man of about fifty with the perpetually sour expression some old-time homicide cops develop.
“Hi, Nose,” he greeted me with dour friendliness. “Sit down and rest your bones.”
Taking the chair alongside his desk, I said, “How would you like to wrap up the Stocking Killer case?”
His expression became alert. “I’d love it.”
“I can give you a strong lead. It may not pan out, but I kind of think it will. There’s a condition, though.”
“Okay,” he said impatiently. “You get an exclusive.”
I shook my head. “That’s not the condition. I want a guarantee that you’ll never disclose to anyone where you got the tip and that I won’t be called as a trial witness.”
The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK® Page 41