by Robert Bloch
“Sergeant Gordon.”
She glanced at the I.D. Frank Gordon. LAPD, Homicide Division. She pushed the wallet back, managing a smile. “They said you’d be coming.” In spite of herself, Karen felt a curious sense of relief now that he was here. She’d never thought the time would come when she would welcome the presence of a detective, but anything was better than being alone. “I suppose you want a statement?”
“That’s right.” Frank Gordon put his wallet away and glanced around the office. There was a sound of footsteps from the hall outside.
Karen felt the smile freeze on her face, but Gordon’s nod was reassuring. “Don’t be alarmed. We’re going through the building. Was there anyone here when you came in?”
“No. At least I didn’t see anybody.”
“Don’t worry, they’ll check it out.” Gordon glanced at Karen’s purse on the counter top. “We can leave whenever you’re ready.”
“Where are we going?”
“My orders are to take you home and get your statement. After that—” Gordon shrugged.
“Did Lieutenant Barringer say anything about bringing me in to headquarters?”
“I’m to call him from your apartment.” Gordon smiled ruefully. “Right now he’s got other things on his mind.”
Karen picked up her purse and stepped out into the reception area. Sergeant Gordon opened the hall door for her. The sound of footsteps grew louder, and as she moved past Gordon into the corridor, she saw the two uniformed officers converging from either side, holding service revolvers.
“Just a minute, lady,” said the one on her left.
“It’s okay.” Gordon came up beside her and flashed his I.D. “I’m taking Mrs. Raymond home. Barringer’s orders.”
“Go ahead.”
But the officers waited in the hall with them until the elevator arrived, and Karen noticed that neither of them holstered their weapons.
Two more patrolmen greeted them when the elevator door slid open on the lobby level, and once more Gordon identified himself. The lobby was otherwise deserted, and when they emerged onto the street, the traffic was moving in its regular rhythm. Aside from the squad cars parked along the curb, there was no reminder of what had happened.
Gordon led her around the corner. His car was parked on a lot down the block.
“What’s your address?” he said, above the noise of the starting motor.
She was surprised he didn’t know it, but gave it to him, adding, “Better not take the freeway. It’s jammed at this hour.”
Gordon glanced at the dashboard clock. “Shouldn’t be, not at seven o’clock.”
Karen frowned. “Is it that late already?”
He nodded. “Had anything to eat yet?”
“No.”
“Maybe we could grab something on the way. I’ll get your statement over dinner.”
“I’m really not very hungry.”
“Only a suggestion.” But Karen could sense the disappointment in his voice. Probably starving, she told herself.
“I could use some coffee.”
“Good enough.” The car swung out onto the street. “Let’s head out your way and find a place when we get off the freeway.”
Gordon was silent during the drive; Karen wondered what he was thinking. About the statement, probably, and questions he was going to ask.
As for herself, she kept rehearsing the answers. Sergeant Gordon was one of the new breed of police officers, she decided: well-mannered, soft-spoken, obviously more intelligent than Forbes or poor Tom Doyle. But she remembered Sergeant Cole and Lieutenant Barringer, whose courtesy masked cold efficiency. She mustn’t let politeness disarm her.
Karen studied Frank Gordon’s profile as he drove. Brown hair, blue eyes, regular features. She wondered if he was married, and if so, what his wife thought about his spending the night alone with a strange woman.
Of course it was all in the line of duty. Guarding her, asking questions, trying to track down the murderer. If he succeeded, it’d probably mean a promotion and his wife would be proud.
But what would happen to Bruce?
CHAPTER 22
Up against the wall.
The phrase kept ringing in his head.
Up against the wall. Not to be confused with up the wall or around the bend. Stupid words, cruel words, joking and unfeeling references to the condition of a soul in torment.
What did they know, these stand-up comics who sniggered about flipping, blowing your mind, falling out of your tree? Nobody really understood, and there was only one way to find out. By sitting in an asylum cell night after night, listening to the screams—the screams that were coming from your own throat.
He’d learned to control the screams, of course; to control himself, and then to control others. The plan had worked, hadn’t it? He’d sworn to get free and he was free.
But he was still up against the wall. All day long he’d had this feeling. Or had it been all day? Maybe it started when he saw Tom Doyle’s face falling away, his arms flailing, his body spinning in empty air.
No, that had been necessary. Just as it had been necessary to spare Karen. Only for the time being, of course. Because she had to go, too. And she would go, soon. Sparing Karen had been part of the plan.
If he’d guessed right, it wouldn’t be long now. If she did what he thought she would, went where he thought she’d go, then all the police in the world couldn’t save her. And the body count would rise.
Until then, he was up against the wall.
But the wall was crumbling fast.
CHAPTER 23
The little restaurant was almost deserted, and Karen wondered about that. Business was usually so good here, particularly since the piano bar had begun operating.
Maybe people were afraid to come out at night, after what they’d read in the papers. And Tom Doyle’s death would have been reported on the evening newscasts. Strange, in a way, to think of several million people being afraid of just one man. Maybe their fear sprang from the simple fact that they wouldn’t be able to recognize him if they saw him.
And her fear was that she could.
Gordon was finishing dessert. He’d been mercifully casual in his questioning while they ate, but now, as he pushed his plate away and sat back, Karen knew the reprieve had ended.
He glanced at his watch. “I should be calling in soon,” he said. “Maybe they’ve found your husband.”
“Or the murderer,” Karen said.
“You’re a very loyal woman, aren’t you, Mrs. Raymond?”
“Loyalty has nothing to do with it.” Karen recognized the defensive note in her voice. “According to the law, a man is presumed innocent until he’s proven guilty.”
Frank Gordon sighed. “Let’s lay it on the line, Mrs. Raymond. You’re trying to protect one man because you believe—or say you believe—he might be innocent. What about all the others, the victims who died? We know they were innocent, but who protected them?”
Karen shook her head. “I still say Bruce had no motive. Why should he kill anyone to get out of the sanatorium when they were going to release him anyway?”
“Because he didn’t know he was going to be released.” Gordon watched her face as he spoke. “That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
You bastard, Karen thought. Lieutenant Barringer didn’t guess, that police psychiatrist didn’t find out, but you had to come up with it. Yes, that’s the truth.
Gordon wasn’t waiting for an answer. Maybe he didn’t need an answer, maybe he read it in her face. “I can understand a wife’s desire to save her husband. But you’ve got to understand our position, too. It’s the job of the police to safeguard the citizens, and so far we’ve failed. Now we’ve got to think of the future. The man we suspect of those murders is still at large. And unless we can find him, quickly, we have every reason to believe others will die. Other innocent people.”
“But my husband isn’t the only one,” Karen said. “There’s another missing patient—E
dmund Cromer.”
“Who?” Gordon was sitting upright now. “Why didn’t you give me that name before?”
“Because Bruce was going to tell Doyle.” Karen’s voice faltered. “Then, after what happened, I had no chance to—”
“Suppose you tell me now.”
“Yes.” And she did.
Gordon watched her, nodding from time to time as she repeated what Bruce had told her. His expression was noncommittal—the blank, official look—but he waited until she finished before he spoke.
“That’s it?” he said.
“Yes. At least, that’s all I can remember.”
“No description?”
“He intended to give that information to Doyle—”
“So he said.” Gordon’s voice was flat.
“Don’t you believe—”
“That your husband told you those things?” Gordon nodded. “The question is—why?”
“Because he wanted to identify the murderer.”
“Or because he knew it was one way to lure Doyle to the roof and dispose of him. Then he could feel perfectly safe in coming after you.”
“But he didn’t—”
“Only because there was a second man on duty in the hall below, a man he hadn’t known about. Seeing him must have scared your husband off.”
“That still doesn’t affect what he said about Cromer,” Karen said.
“Let’s think it over.” Gordon spoke slowly. “Your husband implicated another patient in the murders. But did he offer anything tangible, anything that could be checked out as proof? What assurance is there he was telling you the truth? How can you even be sure that the other patient’s name is Cromer?”
Karen didn’t reply. Because, from somewhere inside, she heard the echo of Bruce’s voice answering for her. Standing up there on the roof with that grim smile, and saying, Maybe there is no Edmund Cromer. Maybe I made the whole thing up.
The inner echo faded. The room began to blur, and it was only the quick touch of Gordon’s hand on hers that restored reality. “Mrs. Raymond—”
Reality. This hand, this voice. It was time to stop listening to lies, time to stop lying to herself. Karen blinked, opened her eyes wide.
“Better now?” Frank Gordon released her hand.
Karen nodded.
“One thing is certain. There is another patient. We’ll have to check out the name now, try to find him. But you’ve got to prepare yourself for the possibility that he’s totally innocent. And if so, it’s highly probable that he’s no longer alive.”
Gordon spoke softly, but there was no denying the force of his logic. Denial was no longer possible.
“I’ve been thinking about what you told me earlier,” he said. “And there’s something that doesn’t seem consistent.”
“Consistent?”
“These killings are methodical, you know. Granted that the person responsible is considered clinically unbalanced, there’s evidence of a high order of intelligence at work here. These are not the usual crimes of impulse or passion. We’re faced with someone who is intent on killing anyone who can identify him. Which brings us to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If your husband is responsible for what’s happened, why would he consider you a threat to his safety? You’ve already identified him as an inmate of the sanatorium. Eliminating you now won’t alter your testimony.”
Karen took a deep breath. Maybe there was a reprieve, perhaps denial was still possible after all. “That’s what I told them,” she said. “Lieutenant Barringer and the others. He has no reason to harm me.” Saying it again, she could half-believe it herself. “You’re right, there’s an inconsistency.”
“A seeming inconsistency, I said.” Gordon’s voice was still soft, but she heard it all too clearly. “So there has to be another reason. Eliminating you won’t alter your testimony. But it would prevent you from ever being able to alter it yourself.”
His eyes were level with hers, and there was no reprieve in them after all. “Mrs. Raymond—why did your husband commit himself to the sanatorium?”
No reprieve, no denial. Too many had died, and who could say where it would stop unless she stopped it?
“We had a quarrel.” The words came quickly now, it was like vomiting up something ugly, something which had to come out. “I told him he hadn’t been acting like himself, not since he came back, and that he needed help. I told him I wanted him to see a doctor.”
“What was his response?”
“He said he’d think it over. And then he quieted down. Did I want to go for a drive, he asked. So we did, and neither of us talked about it anymore. It was as though bringing it out in the open had somehow relieved us both, and I remembered thinking maybe I’d been making a mountain out of a molehill, he was just nervous and upset about not working. We went to Wright’s, the way we used to do before we were married. And when we came home, we made love.”
Karen lowered her glance, but the words kept coming. “I fell asleep then. And when I woke up, I was choking, I couldn’t breathe. Because he was on top of me again, his hands around my neck—squeezing and squeezing—
“Somehow I managed to fight him off. I hit him in the face and he fell back. That’s when his eyes opened. All this time they’d been closed, and later he said he’d been asleep, it was a nightmare, he didn’t know what he was doing. He seemed to be in a state of shock.
“The next day he called Dr. Griswold.”
“He tried to kill you.” Gordon’s eyes never left her face. “And you’re the only one who knows?”
“Yes. Except for Rita.”
“Rita?”
“His sister. She’d never tell—”
“Where is she now?”
Karen told him. “But she’s already talked to the police. They even searched to make sure he wasn’t hiding out there.”
“Does she have any protection now?”
“A bodyguard? I don’t think so. But even if Bruce came there, she’d be safe. She loves her brother, she wouldn’t betray him.”
“Can Bruce be sure of that?”
Karen hesitated.
Gordon rose. “We’re going out there right now,” he said. “And then I’m taking both of you downtown. You two should have been held in security from the beginning. And you would have been, if you’d told us the truth.”
“But I swear she’s not in danger—”
“Swear?” Gordon shook his head. “All you can do now is pray. And even that may be too late.”
CHAPTER 24
That night the searchlights swept the sky.
Their brilliance flooded the Music Center, where the Beautiful People preened for cameras recording their presence at yet another gala charity benefit. Other people, less beautiful and entirely uncapitalized, saw the distant radiance from the windows of hospital wards where they lay dying or giving birth or whatever they do in dreary places that are never pictured in the society section.
Light lanced upward from the Grand Opening of a supermarket, danced down from aerial beacons on the far hills, hovered from police helicopters crisscrossing the city.
But there were dark places too. Cemeteries for the resting dead. Side streets for the living who could not rest because of what they’d read in the papers, heard on the news, pictured in their own minds, as they huddled behind locked doors.
Bolts and bars were no protection against the invasion of fear. The favored few were able to pretend nothing had happened. But for the many there were only shadows in which strange shapes stirred.
The airport was neither light nor dark. A gray mist crept in from the west, blurring the beacons, shrouding the shadows with silver.
Karen remembered the fog she’d driven through on that other evening. It was forty-eight hours ago, yet it seemed a lifetime away. And for some, it was literally just that. A lifetime vanished forever, swallowed up in gray oblivion.
But there were lights here, too, like the one streaming from the off
ice window of Raymond’s Charter Service. And there were shadows off to the blind side of the frame structure where Frank Gordon pulled up and parked his car.
Karen started to open the door on the passenger side, but Gordon’s hand moved to her arm in quick restraint.
“Wait.”
He peered through the windshield, scanning the airstrip, the runways, the dark cluster of hangars bordering the field behind and beyond the office. Nothing moved in the mist.
“Now.”
Karen slid out of her seat and crossed behind the car as Gordon emerged. He was holding a service revolver.
“Keep behind me,” he said. “Behind, and to one side.”
He started towards the office, moving close to the wall, away from the fan of light coming from the window. The window was on the far side of the door, so they approached in shadow: shadow, and clammy mist.
The door was slightly ajar. As Gordon reached it, he gestured for Karen to halt.
“Back,” he murmured. The revolver rose in readiness.
He kicked the door open.
Then he stood there. Stood there for a moment, or an eternity. Time stopped for Karen; everything stopped until he turned, and spoke.
“Nothing. Nobody here.”
She joined him then, moved with him into the lighted office. The floor fan droned, its turbulence fluttering the papers pinned to the wall.
Gordon glanced at the desk top. Rita’s purse rested there, next to the telephone. Beside it, in the big ashtray, a crushed cigarette butt still smoldered. Karen noted it and nodded.
“She must have just stepped out.”
Gordon frowned. “What makes you so sure? I didn’t see any car when we drove up.”
“Rita drives a VW. She generally parks it inside the hangar.”
“The one in back?”
“Yes—in back and to the right.”
He nodded and turned. Karen followed him through the doorway. At the right of the clapboard shack was a tied-down plane, a single-engine Cessna. Gordon halted in its shadow, staring at the dark opening of the hangar beyond. Somewhere off inside, a faint light flickered.