Random Killer

by Hugh Pentecost

  “The people at High Crest seemed to take sides after Carpenter was murdered,” Nora said. “I don’t mean that there were people who were Sharon Dain’s friends—who loved her. She was—in my opinion—a cheap, rather gaudy little tramp. The division was over Harold Carpenter. Some people thought he was marvelous; some people thought he was a jerk. Those who thought he was a jerk believed Sharon Dain’s story of sadism and violence. They accepted her story that she’d acted in self-defense. The others adored Carpenter and thought Sharon should get the works.”

  “A question,” Hardy interrupted. “How can you sneak up behind a man, strangle him with picture wire when he’s off guard, and call it self-defense?”

  Nora seemed to be having trouble keeping her voice steady. “Those on Sharon’s side believed Carpenter was capable of all kinds of perverted violence,” she said. “Max Steiner, her lawyer, contended that she was a prisoner in Carpenter’s cabin; that in a lull between violences she chose the only possible way she could to escape him. Her supporters bought that. I think Lance Wilson was one of them. They formed a defense committee and I’ve always thought they paid the bills.”

  I noticed Ruysdale going through the phone book. She marked a place with her forefinger. “I have Max Steiner’s phone number,” she said.

  Chambrun gave her a special little smile I’d seen there before. It signaled his appreciation of Ruysdale’s ability to be one step ahead of his demands.

  “Please,” he said. Then, as Ruysdale went out to her own office, “Max Steiner can at least tell us who did pay his bill, which, with appeals and all, must have been quite something.”

  “From what I know of him,” Hardy said sourly, “he won’t talk to you without a consultation fee.”

  The lieutenant proved to be wrong. Almost at once the red light blinked on Chambrun’s phone. He turned on the squawk box and picked up the receiver.

  “I have Mr. Steiner on the line,” Ruysdale said.

  “Mr. Steiner?” Chambrun said.

  A brisk, energetic voice came through to us. I’d seen pictures of Steiner and knew him to be a small, wiry, grey powerhouse. “I had a feeling someone in your world might be trying to reach me, Mr. Chambrun,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  Steiner laughed. “Not everybody in the world has the dubious pleasure of being involved with strangling-by-picture-wire.”

  “I have you on an open line, Mr. Steiner. Lieutenant Hardy of Homicide is here, also a member of my staff; my secretary, and a young woman who was Joanna Fraser’s secretary. You’ve heard the news from here?”

  “Yes. I don’t mind an audience, Mr. Chambrun. I’m at my best with an audience.”

  “We’ve made a strange connection with the Dain case,” Chambrun said. “It seems that both our victims, Geoffrey Hammond and Joanna Fraser, had a similar involvement with Sharon Dain. They both refused to help her.”

  “I know,” Steiner said. “I knew at the time. I was sitting here wondering if I should tell someone that when your call came.”

  “You think there’s some significance in that?”

  “I don’t know enough about your end of it to make a guess,” Steiner said. “But if I were you I’d certainly be wondering.”

  “So then you’ll understand my first question. Who paid your fees, Mr. Steiner?”

  “You won’t believe it,” Steiner said.

  “Try me.”

  “I don’t know,” Steiner said. He laughed again. “I have been paid over two hundred thousand dollars for the first trial and for the appeals, and I don’t know who paid it.”

  “It is hard to believe. I understand there was some kind of defense committee. I thought they—”

  “Oh, there was a committee, and they hired me. They, technically, paid me. But the money came from an anonymous source.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There was a man out there named Parker, Alvin Parker. He’s president of the Parker Foundation. They give away millions of dollars to the arts every year. He was chairman of that committee. He approached me. I told him what a defense was likely to cost. He didn’t know how to raise it.”

  “With millions at his command?” Chambrun asked. He was making some kind of signals to Ruysdale, who was standing in the far doorway. It suddenly came to me in that moment. The Parker Foundation was giving some kind of a fund-raising do in the Grand Ballroom that night. Alvin Parker was a guest in the hotel!

  “Alvin Parker is the nephew of Joshua Parker, the oil billionaire, who created the Parker Foundation in his will. Alvin Parker is, no doubt, well off. But he doesn’t have a free hand with the foundation money. It has to go to the arts. Perhaps, if Sharon Dain had been an artist, the foundation could have justified some sort of contribution to her defense. But she wasn’t that kind of artist.”

  “What kind of artist was she?”

  Steiner chuckled. “In bed,” he said.

  “So Parker didn’t foot the bill?”

  “I think he made a contribution. There were half a dozen others. When they put it all together they didn’t have enough for the first roll of the dice. Then, a couple of days later, Parker came back to me, looking bewildered but happy. An anonymous contributor had anted up a hundred grand, with a promise that there was more where that came from if it was needed. Neither Parker nor anyone else on the committee had the faintest idea who Mr. Anonymous was. Sharon Dain couldn’t guess who was willing to underwrite her defense. But whoever it was, he’s lived up to his word. He came up with another hundred grand before we were done.”

  “Two hundred grand to defend an obviously guilty woman?” Hardy broke in.

  “That’s Lieutenant Hardy, Mr. Steiner,” Chambrun said.

  “You used the right words, Lieutenant. ‘Obviously guilty.’ ” Steiner said. “The police had an open-and-shut case. She lived with Carpenter. She was in the cabin with him that night. There were no fingerprints but hers and his. There are watchmen on the property and none of them saw anyone go into the cabin. It was no secret that Carpenter enjoyed beating her up. She had a motive. But —” and I could hear Steiner let out a long breath—“she swore to me she didn’t kill him and I believed her.”

  “But she pleaded guilty!” Hardy said.

  “In self-defense, by reason of insanity,” Steiner said. “The curlicues of the law, Lieutenant. I thought I could get her off that way. I knew, with the case the police had, I could never get her off if she pleaded innocent. I tried to get the trial moved away from High Crest. There was too much local sentiment for Carpenter. The court turned me down. The judge who presided was obviously prejudiced. I based the appeals on dozens of exceptions I took to his rulings. The State Supreme Court wouldn’t buy. The sentence was improperly heavy, even the way we pleaded. The little lady got just about the worst deal I’ve ever encountered.”

  Chambrun cut in. “If she didn’t do it she was in the cabin when it was done,” he said.

  “He had beaten her unconscious that night,” Steiner said. “Part of his sexual pleasure, it would seem. When she came to she found him dead, strangled with picture wire.”

  “She says.”

  “I believed her,” Steiner said. “But there was no way in God’s world to make that High Crest jury believe her. I handled it the best and only way I could think of. I was wrong, because it didn’t work. But I know damn well if she’d pleaded innocent, she’d have gotten life. As it is she can be out in another ten years.”

  Chambrun leaned forward. “Has it occurred to you, Mr. Steiner, that, now that some psycho is knocking off people who didn’t help Sharon Dain, you might be on his list? You failed her.”

  Steiner chuckled. “First thing I thought of when I heard the news about an hour ago,” he said. “I promise not to turn my back on anyone, not even God. And don’t hesitate if I can be of any further help, Mr. Chambrun. I think I’m more anxious than you are to see whoever it is behind bars.”

  And so, if Steiner was right, Nora’s “cheap, rather gau
dy little tramp” was rotting away in a women’s detention center in Colorado, while the real murderer of Harold Carpenter was walking around free, and some friend of the girl’s had set out to knock off anyone who failed to help her. Why had this loony waited so long? The trial that had resulted in Sharon Dain’s conviction had been two years ago, but the final appeal had been rejected only a month ago. Our not-so-random killer was just getting warmed up. By an unfortunate chance for us, Chambrun and the hotel, three people who might be on his list were under our roof when he started moving: Hammond, Joanna Fraser, and the man Alvin Parker, of the Parker Foundation, who had been chairman of the defense committee that had failed to save Sharon Dain.

  Alvin Parker was, I guessed, in his middle forties. He was prematurely bald, with a sandy-haired fringe around his head, neatly trimmed. He was neatly dressed in a conservative vested suit. His custom-made shoes were neatly polished. I keep repeating the word neat because it was the right one for Alvin Parker. He was a neat man.

  He seemed surprised to see other people in the office beside Chambrun. He had small grey eyes, which darted from one to the other of us like a doubtful bird’s.

  “I’ve been trying to get through to you for the last hour, Mr. Chambrun,” he said. “The switchboard wouldn’t put me through. And then Miss Ruysdale sent for me.” His voice was pleasant, his articulation was—well, neat. I had the feeling that he was just slightly on the comic side, attempting to create an image of superconservative respectability that didn’t quite come off.

  “I think you must know that we have problems on our hands, Mr. Parker,” Chambrun said.

  “A ghastly business, from what I’ve heard,” Parker said. “But that’s why I had to see you.”

  “You know something about it?” Chambrun asked.

  “Lord, no. But I’ve been swamped with phone calls, Mr. Chambrun. The Parker Foundation party in the ballroom tonight. People want to know if it’s safe to come. Will there be any kind of special protection? Two murders in one day! It’s fantastic and it’s frightening. It would be a disaster for us if we had to call off the evening.”

  “I see no reason why the evening should be cancelled,” Chambrun said. “There will be protection, and people in groups would appear to be perfectly safe. But I should think what’s happened would be particularly shocking to you.”

  “I don’t think I understand,” Parker said.

  “How did you get the news of our trouble here?”

  “Why—why just the announcement you sent around that two people had been murdered in the hotel.”

  “So you didn’t hear on radio or television how the murders were committed?”

  “I don’t think so,” Parker said. “How were they?”

  “The two victims were strangled from behind with picture wires,” Chambrun said quietly.

  “How awful.” Then the little bird’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God!” he said.

  “Quite so,” Chambrun said. “The Sharon Dain case. I have to tell you that Geoffrey Hammond and Joanna Fraser were both persons who had refused to help Sharon Dain. I am, you can understand, concerned about anyone who was connected with the Dain case. We are dealing with some kind of psycho who may not only be determined to eliminate anyone who refused to help Sharon Dain but may also have his eye on people who helped and failed. You were chairman of a defense committee set up to help the Dain girl. That committee failed her.”

  Parker reached, out for the back of a chair to steady himself. “You’ve known this all day and you didn’t tell me?” he asked. An unexpected steel crept into his voice.

  “I’ve known it for about ten minutes,” Chambrun said, “after I got through talking on the phone to Max Steiner. That’s why I sent for you.”

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” The request was really directed to Nora Coyle, who was standing over by the sideboard. The perfect little gentleman, our Alvin. He shook his head. “I did everything I could for that girl. Why someone should have it in for me because it wasn’t enough—?” He looked around at all of us for answers.

  “There’s not much point in trying to make it make sense,” Chambrun said. “The young man who went around this city shooting young couples in parked cars, you remember? There were all kinds of speculations, before he was caught, as to what his motives could be. When he was caught he gave a reason no one had dreamed of. Demons, he said, had ordered him to kill.”

  “We are looking for some kind of psycho, Mr. Parker,” Hardy said. “So far the two people he has killed—killed the same way Harold Carpenter was killed—were people who refused to help Sharon Dain. Right now, any kind of connection with the Dain case puts you on the danger list.”

  “But there were so many—” Parker said.

  “Start with the defense committee,” Hardy suggested.

  “I—I’d have to go back to my diaries,” Parker said. “There was a young movie star, Lance Wilson; and Sheila Wallace, the Hollywood columnist; and Dave Trumbell, the Olympic skiing coach. Others. I’ll have to check for you.”

  “The person we’re looking for is here, not out there,” Hardy said. “Do you think if you went through the Beaumont’s list of registered guests you might recognize names of people who had some remote connection with the case, who may have been at High Crest at the time of the murder?”

  “That must include hundreds of names,” Parker said.

  “Hundreds of names, approximately a thousand people with more than one person registered to a room or suite,” Chambrun said.

  Parker glanced at his watch. “I could do it, of course,” he said. “But there is so little time before the fund-raising ball tonight and so much to be done. Tomorrow?”

  “It may be your hide that’s at stake,” Hardy said sharply.

  “Yes. Of course. I must then, mustn’t I?”

  “Get him the list, Ruysdale,” Chambrun said, and Miss Ruysdale moved swiftly out to her own office. “There are two things that interest me, Mr. Parker,” Chambrun went on. “The first may seem irrelevant to you. Your presence at High Crest in the skiing season; forgive me if I say you don’t strike me as the athletic type, a skiing enthusiast.”

  Parker gave him a rueful little smile. “You’re quite right, Mr. Chambrun, I’m not. My interest in High Crest is a financial one.”

  “You have money in it?”

  “Oh, no, not personally. My late uncle, Joshua Parker, put up the money to build High Crest into what it is. The profits, in which his estate shares, go to the Parker Foundation, of which I am president and executive director. It is routine for me to go to High Crest in the height of their season to see how things are going and to make sure the foundation isn’t being ripped off by the High Crest management. My job is to keep them honest.”

  “So you knew Harold Carpenter? He’d been on the staff there for some years.”

  “Yes, I knew him.” Parker’s face clouded.

  “And didn’t like him?”

  Parker spread his hands in a little gesture of helplessness. “You are a man who manages a place that deals with people, Mr. Chambrun. Your guests, your staff. You don’t like them all, I’m sure. Carpenter was expert at what he did, which was to teach skiing. One of the best. As a human being, I thought him impossibly arrogant. But I must confess that I don’t like noisy extroverts. He was an important cog in the machine to the management at High Crest. He was an attraction they sold to the public. I didn’t interfere with their hiring and firing, only in an accounting of their profits.”

  “You knew Sharon Dain?” Chambrun asked.

  “I met her on that visit two years ago,” Parker said.

  “And your opinion of her?”

  Parker hesitated. You could tell he was a man who didn’t express opinions without giving them careful thought. “For my tastes she was not attractive,” Parker said. “Rather coarse, rather vulgar. But physically? I don’t think any man could look at her and not be, shall I say, slightly stirred.” He glanced at Nora. “Sexy is the word, I guess.”


  “And you chose to help defend her.”

  “I chose to believe her story,” Parker said.

  “Which story?”

  “I don’t understand,” Parker said.

  “Steiner tells us that she first claimed to be innocent. That she hadn’t killed Carpenter. That she was unconscious when it happened. Later she pleaded guilty, claiming self-defense and legal insanity.”

  “I believe she didn’t kill Carpenter,” Parker said slowly, very precisely. “It was Steiner who pointed out that with the case the police had she didn’t stand a chance with a plea of innocent. He thought he could get her off the other way. He failed.” Parker’s eyes widened. “Could he be a target for this—this psycho you’re looking for?”

  “He could be,” Chambrun said. “You hired him, didn’t you, Mr. Parker?”

  “Technically, yes. I made the contact, but it was the consensus of the defense committee. Only the best.”

  “But you didn’t have the funds to meet his fee?”

  “I’m not a rich man, Mr. Chambrun, but I put up five thousand dollars. Lance Wilson did the same, and a couple of others. But we weren’t even at square one. Then, out of the blue, came this handsome contribution—a hundred thousand—from someone we’ve never been able to identify. It was duplicated later. Amazing!”

  “No clue at all?”

  “None.”

  “How was the money delivered?”

  “In cash, in a box, delivered by United Parcel. If the driver had known what he was delivering he’d probably have fainted. The sender’s name was Dain, the address a hotel in Denver.”

  “A relative of Sharon Dain’s?”

  “She swears she has no relatives, no family. As a matter of fact, ‘Sharon Dain’ is a stage name, not her real name. Her real name is, I believe, Elizabeth Schwartz. We figured the donor simply used the Dain name as a cover.”

  “Sharon Dain was an actress?”

  Parker shrugged. “Small bits, an extra in films. I guess she hadn’t found the right casting couches.”

  “Carpenter’s couch wasn’t exactly ideal,” Chambrun said.

  Parker shook his head. “I’m told that some people enjoy violence in connection with sex,” he said. “Carpenter was evidently too much of a good thing. Whips and chains.”