Janet saw a little-boy look of stubborn determination appear on the young detective’s face. He was going through the photographs more slowly now, not exactly studying them, but giving each a thorough look before passing on to the next one. She saw his eyes light up as he removed a photo from the folder. “This one,” he said. “And this, and ... this. Right?”
Benedetti beamed. “Excellent, Ronald, I knew you would see it. Please, pass them around.”
When they came to her, the pictures did less than nothing for her. They showed the clamps that had once held the wooden sign to the unfinished overpass on the state highway. She’d seen them before; one showed the distressed, twisted and bent shape of the clamp that had given way from the weight of the swinging, dangling sign. The second showed the one that had been tampered with—the incomplete arch, the two legs ending in the marks of Hog’s bolt cutter. The third photograph was a split-composite of both.
After everyone had a look, the professor said, “Well?” His response was shrugs and head-shakes and bewildered looks. “It must be explained, eh? Very well. Explain it, Ronald.”
“Thanks, Maestro,” he began, and Janet was surprised to find that Dr. Higgins was gone, and with her all sense of detachment and restraint. She leaned forward in expectation, breathlessly eager to hear the great deductions.
My God, Ron thought as he began his explanation, I’m reacting like a patted puppy. He told himself he would have seen it on his own, in time.
He held up the first photograph. “This is the clamp that held the upper right-hand corner of the sign as Buell saw it. You can see by the shape it’s in that it broke because of the stress put on it when it had to support the entire, swinging weight of the sign. It did swing, right, Buell?”
The reporter nodded. “One more swing, and they would have been by it and safe. Hog has the devil’s luck.”
“Indeed,” said Benedetti, taking a contented puff on his cigar. “He does indeed.”
Ron went on, holding up the second photograph. “Now this one,” he said, “has been cut by a bolt cutter—it’s obvious from the edges. As we’ve all read in the lab reports, it would have been no surprise if the clamp had snapped naturally. It was only supposed to be on overnight, and instead had to last through an extremely cold and windy winter.
“But if it snapped, the cross section would be round and rough, not tapered and smooth the way it is.”
Sergeant Shaughnessy spoke for the first time all afternoon. He said, “Yeah?”
“A bolt cutter makes that kind of mark because of the way it works,” Ron said. A look from the corner of his eye at the professor told him he was doing okay. “It works by wedging a notch into the metal that’s being cut, directing the force into a wider and wider channel in the metal, until it breaks apart.”
From the look on her face, Ron could tell Janet was having some trouble understanding him. He tried to explain. “It’s like ... like ...”
“Biting a Tootsie Roll in half,” Fleisher said, helpfully.
Benedetti chuckled. “Buonissimo, Inspector. A perfect example.”
Fleisher looked a little sheepish. “That’s how the lab boys explained it to me.”
“It’s a perfect example,” Ron said. “But think about it, now. If using a bolt cutter is going to have any effect on the total length of the metal being cut, it can only make it longer. You’re not wearing away the metal, like you do when you use a hacksaw; you’re just pinching it together in the middle until it gives.
“So, these two pieces of the cut clamp should equal at least the length of the two pieces of the clamp that snapped. And as these pictures plainly show, they don’t.”
Ron wasn’t supposed to hear Fleisher’s whispered “I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch,” but he did.
“Knowing the professor,” he concluded, “I’m sure he can prove what I’ve just said with actual measurements. Right, Maestro?”
“Of course, amico. The cut clamp is missing a fraction less than three quarters of an inch ... about sixteen millimeters. That means, of course, that two distinct cuts were made, cutting it into three pieces. Your men performed a thorough search at the scene, did they not, Inspector?”
“Hell, us and the state troopers both, for crysake. Maybe I should retire. Two weeks we’ve had that thing. I don’t notice it The lab doesn’t notice it. Nobody notices it!”
“Don’t feel bad, Inspector,” the professor told him. “If the police noticed everything, Niccolo Benedetti would be a pauper.
“So, while I grant the possibility the piece of metal was overlooked and is buried under the snow, I think it much more likely the one who cut this clamp took it away with him. The question is why. Dr. Higgins?”
“Well,” Janet said, “it doesn’t fit the pattern. Usually the serial murderer will take something personal away, like a lipstick, or an article of clothing. Or, as Mr. Tatham pointed out, a piece of the victim’s body.”
“Well, I’d like to know what the professor thinks,” Buell said. “Why would Hog take a worthless hunk of metal for a souvenir?”
“As a matter of fact, Mr. Tatham, I am toying with a particularly intriguing idea ...” his voice trailed off, and Ron saw the professor get that dreamy look he got in his eyes when he contemplated a truly artistic piece of nastiness. Finally, he sighed and said, “But no, it has no consistency with the rest of the facts. It was a foolish notion, and I am sorry I even mentioned it.”
The professor rose, and put on his gloves and hat. “Now, Inspector,” he said, “if you will please give Ronald the necessary credentials, he and I and Dr. Higgins, if she still cares to accompany us, will spend the rest of the afternoon braving the elements to interrogate witnesses. Buon pomeriggio.”
They were the only ones crazy enough to try to drive through the snow, so they had the streets to themselves. As long as Ron kept it at a slow and steady pace, he could keep the nose of the car pointed forward. The professor was largely unconcerned with Ron’s driving problems. He was in the back seat, leaning back with his eyes closed. If it weren’t for an occasional brightening of the glow at the end of his cigar, you would have thought he was asleep.
“Where are we going first?” Janet wanted to know.
“Wilbur’s room. It’s the farthest away. We can hit the others on the way back—I don’t think we have to worry about their being out.” He checked his watch. “Mind if I put on the radio? It’s time for the news.”
“No, go ahead.”
Ron tuned in. The news was grim. The city was socked in by the blizzard—in fact, the whole Northeast was, from Cleveland east to the Atlantic; from Baltimore north to Hudson Bay. Hundreds of people were snowed in or stranded; roofs had collapsed. Intercity transportation had ceased to exist. That was the lead story.
The second story was just as tragic, only on a smaller scale. A pig farmer from north of Sparta had beaten his brother-in-law to death at a family gathering; both had been drinking. The brother-in-law had been taunting the farmer with the joking accusation that he had committed the so-called Hog murders to boost business. It was a fact that pork sale in the Sparta area were running ten to twenty percent higher than usual since the first—
They heard Benedetti’s heavy sigh from the back seat. “It is an ill wind indeed,” he said. “Please shut that off, Ronald. I am certain it can tell us nothing.” He sank back into silence when the radio clicked off.
Ron shook his head. “You must be the envy of your profession from coast to coast, Janet,” he said. “There’s enough hysteria in this case to make work for six psychologists.”
Her laugh was half rueful agreement with Ron’s remark and half pleasure because he called her Janet. “There’s a book in here for somebody,” she said. “Every psychologist has to write a book.”
“I didn’t know that. Is it part of the course?”
“They teach it by example. Publish or perish.”
“Still, huh?” He wrenched the wheel suddenly to pull the car out of a skid. “Watch
it,” he told the car. “Where are you from originally?” he asked Janet.
“Little Rock. I thought I’d lost my accent.”
“I don’t think you have an accent. Go to college there?”
“Uh huh, University of Arkansas, then I took my master’s and Ph.D. at Sparta. Why do you ask?”
He smiled at her. “Habit. I’m a detective, remember. But there’s something I forgot to ask you in the conference.
“Is it possible that Hog isn’t aware he’s committing these crimes? That he blacks out, or has another personality?”
“Psychic fugues, is the professional term.”
“Well?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, the notes. The police are sure the killer is the one sending the notes, aren’t they? And there’s quite a time lag between the killing and the sending of the note, which would mean an extended fugue, or blackout, or it would mean the killer has a fugue, kills somebody, returns to normal, then has another fugue, and writes and mails the note. As Dr. Issel used to tell me, stranger things have happened, but a person with blackouts that frequent, or that long will probably seek help, and Inspector Fleisher has already alerted all the doctors and counselors around.”
“That makes sense,” Ron said. “And now that you mention it, there’s been evidence that Hog scouts his victims, which would take up even more fugue time, right?”
Janet came to the sudden realization that she had just been given an intelligence test, and the knowledge that she had passed it with flying colors didn’t make her like it any better.
She took a hard gaze at the wholesome profile of the young man beside her. He wasn’t questioning her just from habit. From obsession, possibly; but she was sure, like his mentor, Mr. Ronald Gentry had a reason for every question, and a use for every fact. Dr. Higgins now knew him for what he was—a watcher; always poking and probing, looking, and listening for a wrong word or tone of voice.
And he was obsessed with the case, fascinated and excited by each new development, while at the same time horrified at the deaths. It was the same emotion, her training told her, that makes people slow down on the highway to get a better look at auto accidents. The deceptively mild-mannered Mr. Gentry had this in an unnaturally large degree, and had found a socially acceptable way of gratifying it.
The idea that the same thing could be said of a certain Dr. Janet Higgins never occurred to her.
NINE
CRIMES COME IN ALL sizes, shapes, colors, flavors, and textures but they all have one salient feature in common: to a greater or lesser degree, every crime costs the taxpayer money.
Now, Fleisher was a conscientious cop, and more important than that, he was a taxpayer. So while he spared no legitimate expense, he tried in various ways to conserve precious tax dollars. To give just one example, he made his detectives single-space their reports in order to save paper.
But sometimes, a case comes along that’s a royal pain everywhere, including the pocketbook, and that’s how the Hog case was.
Like today for example. In response to an idea from Sergeant Shaughnessy, who apparently had a lot more imagination than Fleisher had ever given him credit for, the inspector had sent men out into the blizzard at great trouble and expense to bring to headquarters certain people they had turned up in the files. Shaughnessy’s suggestion was that when the killer wrote “HOG” at the end of his notes, he was, quite simply, signing his name, or a form thereof.
It was just wacky enough not to be ignored, but nobody, except possibly Shaughnessy, had much hope it would turn up anything. For the first time in the investigation, Tatham hadn’t even bothered to hang around. Fleisher missed him. He had started to feel that he, Tatham, and Shaugnessy were like Siamese triplets.
Right now, Fleisher was talking to “Piggy” Fleming, recently out of jail after doing two years on a promoting prostitution rap. That means he was a pimp. His nickname came not only from his looks (his nostrils were set almost vertically, giving him a striking resemblance to Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera), but from his now-legendary escape attempt across the ice rink in City Park.
Piggy was disappointed. He, for one, had never believed those stories about the cops rousting an innocent citizen who had paid his debt to society. He had gone straight, he asserted. They had no right to do this to him. “Even when I did break the law, I wasn’t no freak. I supplied a needed service, that’s all. I never hurt nobody.”
Fleisher made a face. “Piggy, please, don’t insult my intelligence, for crysake, okay? Your girl Pony took the stand against you wearing a neck brace that she didn’t get from too much mattress bouncing. You’re ugly, mean, and nasty, Piggy. The only question is are you nuts.”
“Look,” Piggy said. He puffed out his chest, standing on his dignity. “There’s a big difference between belting a lying bitch that’s held out on you three nights runnin’ and chopping heads off little kids. It’s a goddam insult you even think that way, and if you want to talk about it any more, you’re gonna have to take it up with my attorney.”
Fleisher could see he really was insulted. It was a surprise—he hadn’t thought it was possible to insult Piggy. You never stop learning, he thought. The Hog case was full of these charming little human insights.
The inspector turned to Shaughnessy with a look that said “you got me into this.” He told the sergeant, “Show Piggy the door. The outside of it.”
The next interviewee was a Lester Osgood, a cashiered cop for whom, it was theorized, the word “HOG” would have resonances of the word “pig,” which in turn would mean that the whole thing could be a plot by Osgood to make his former colleagues look foolish.
And by God, by the end of the questioning he did make Fleisher feel foolish, for thinking an animal like Osgood could ever do anything violent that didn’t involve punching or kicking.
After that, Fleisher went on to talk to another Piggy (a peeping torn), a Porky (rape), a Harvey Oscar Gorman (embezzlement—he wasn’t the type, but his initials were too good to pass up), and even a Miss Lavinia Hogg (child abuse). With similar results.
When it was all over, and the valuable time of more highly and expensively trained police officers was being used to take the interviewees home, the inspector summed up his feelings. “Crap!” he said. More of the taxpayers’ money down the toilet, and more wear and tear on Joe Fleisher. He held it against Buell that he had missed it. Fleisher wished he was wherever Tatham was, and Tatham was here at headquarters.
Where Buell was at the moment was wrapped in the arms of a whispering, cooing Diedre Chester, on the sofa in her apartment. She tried her best, but after a few minutes she left off cooing and chuckled good-naturedly. “What’s the matter, darling?” she asked.
Buell gave a tired laugh of his own in reply. “I’m getting old, Diedre, that’s all. I should stick to my column and let the hungry youngsters follow Fleisher around. I swear I don’t know how he does it.”
“He probably eats enough,” she told him. She took one of his hands in both of hers, and held it up in front of his face. “Look at this,” she scolded. “White as that snow outside, and no meat on it at all. You remind me of Hansel.”
“Of who?”
“Hansel and Gretel. The witch was nearsighted, so when she was trying to fatten Hansel up, he showed her a stick from the cage instead of his finger. Don’t you remember the fairy tales you read as a child?”
“You forget my Reverend Uncle Willy raised me after my daddy died. No heathen literature in that house. Just the Gospel according to Willy Chandler—pamphlets like Socialism: The Eighth Deadly Sin and Jesus Talks about the Inferior Races.”
Diedre tried to stifle a giggle. It was all too ridiculous. “You shouldn’t make up things like that about a sick old man. How is he, by the way?”
Buell offered a sincere prayer of thanks that Diedre was so innocent she couldn’t believe in uncle Willy. “My few friends back in Knox County tell me he
’s not supposed to live out the month.”
“Is he aware? Would he recognize you?”
“They tell me he’s as ornery as ever. Awake and alert, too.”
“You ought to go down and see him, Buell. You shouldn’t let him die with bad blood between you.” She put her head on his shoulder.
“That’s the way we lived, Love. From the start. It ended up with him holding a shotgun on me and giving me a half hour to clear off his land—and considering his land was about ninety percent of Knox County, it wasn’t so easy.”
Diedre could feel Buell go all tense, even at the old memory. “Why did he do it, Buell?”
“Run me off? He found out I went for a drive with a Mexican girl whose family worked on the farm. It wasn’t even a drive, truthfully, I just gave her a lift to her grandmama’s house.” Buell could still hear his uncle’s screaming voice. “You want some dark-meat poontang, that’s one thing, but you were seen in public, boy. Now get!”
“Well,” Diedre said, rubbing his shoulders, trying to get him to relax. “Soon it will be yours.”
Buell nodded. Uncle Willy didn’t hold with making a will—considered it sinful to try to have an influence past the grave. A free white man’s property belonged to a free white man’s family, and that was that. And that would be the ultimate joke on Uncle Willy. Buell would change Knox County from the last stronghold of antebellum feudalism into the showplace of the New South. There was no room in the world for Knox counties, or uncle Willys. Evil brought it’s own punishment.
“There’s another reason I can’t go down South, Love—the case. I can hardly leave in the middle of this, can I?”
“Of course not,” she said. She wouldn’t want him to, anyway. It was still too exciting.
She took his hand again. “Buell, after we’re married, I’m not going to be put off like this, you understand? So I’m going to make you a big sandwich, start building you up again, make sure you keep up your strength, and you’re going to eat every crumb, or else.”
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