By Reason of Insanity

by Shane Stevens

  Free again! Lucky me, thought Bishop standing on a Chicago street corner on his first day in the city. Free again after a lifetime of madness and pain! His eyes took in the buildings overhead, the sidewalks crowded with people, the endless streams of cars. He had never felt so alive, so exhilarated. His sense of freedom was total in the midst of such huge crowds, and he suddenly realized that he was more invisible in a big city than he could ever be on a deserted mountainside or forest range or even in a small country town. Chicago was unlike anything he had ever seen. Los Angeles was nothing like it, nor any other city he had passed through. All of them had space and the space always swallowed up the people. But here the hordes of people dwarfed everything; even the buildings seemed to bend toward them. He stood still for a long moment allowing the world to pass around him. Soon he saw that it was as nameless and faceless as he, and he began to feel that at last he had found the kind of place in which he could survive. A big city. Surrounded by millions of people virtually living together yet unknown to one another, with at least half of them the enemy.

  For several days Bishop explored the Loop area and rode on the elevated trains. He walked through Grant Park and gazed at the hundreds of boats in Chicago Harbor. He visited the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum of Natural History and the Adler Planetarium. He watched the planes take off from Meigs Field. He rode the sightseeing boats on Lake Michigan and viewed the Chicago skyline. He walked the length of the Gold Coast along Michigan Avenue and then onto Lake Shore Drive with its endless luxury apartment houses and its small beaches. On the fourth day he found the Oak Street beach. The air was cool and there were few strollers as he came up from the underpass. She was sitting alone on a bench near the curve in the walk. He sat nearby and soon struck up a conversation. He was new to Chicago, coming in from San Francisco for a visit. It seemed like a nice town but kind of cold to people alone. She smiled. She was alone too. In from Milwaukee on a two-day business trip. He said he had never been to Milwaukee. She told him he wasn’t missing much.

  “You staying around here, are you?”

  She nodded, indicating the Drake Hotel across the street. She had a meeting in the afternoon and then would be free until the following morning, when business again reared its ugly head before an early evening flight back home.

  Bishop said he had some free time too.

  She had told him of her schedule because he looked good to her at the moment. He was young and clean in appearance and he had the nicest smile. She was afraid of only two things: dirt and poverty. Dirt brought disease and poor people brought misery, and she had seen enough of both in her life. As she glanced at the young man now seated next to her she saw no dirt and smelled no poverty. Beyond her twin fears Lilian Brothers was an emancipated woman of twenty-nine who took her pleasure as it came. She was fond of good food and expensive clothes and capable young men. Unfortunately she couldn’t always tell a man’s capabilities by his looks but she was almost always willing to give it a try. Unmarried, she supported her parents, who lived with her, though she often stayed elsewhere overnight. In Chicago, to which she came occasionally in her career as a successful buyer, she knew some people but lately they had begun to bore her with their sameness. She longed for a fresh experience.

  After further pleasant talk they agreed to meet that evening for dinner and drinks.

  During the afternoon Bishop took care of some business of his own. He first changed a half dozen hundred-dollar bills into tens and twenties at different banks in order not to draw attention to himself. There was no real danger because the bills were old and had no consecutive serial numbers.

  Afterward he went to a large post office that had tables set up for the use of customers. In the adjoining trash barrels he found three envelopes addressed to a Jay Cooper of Chicago. In one of the envelopes was a statement of earnings and contributions from a workers’ pension plan. On the official-looking form were Cooper’s name and post office box address, his birth date and social security number. Bishop stuffed some folded advertisements from the barrel into the other two envelopes and slipped all three letters in his pocket.

  His next stop was a branch of the First National Bank of Chicago, where he opened a savings account with fifty dollars in the name of Jay Cooper. He showed the letters as proof of identity and the pension-plan form for proof of his Social Security number. He then went to the local administration office with the form and received a new card, since his old one had been stolen along with everything else in his wallet. Imagine! Mugged in early evening on a Southside Chicago street! He just didn’t know what the town was coming to anymore. Neither did the clerk, who sympathized with his sentiments and just casually glanced at the bankbook as proof of identity.

  Back on Michigan Avenue he stopped in the Playboy Club lobby where he bought a membership for fifteen dollars. In the Playboy Hotel next door he rented a single room for the night, paying in cash and receiving a copy of the bill. He now had valid proof of a Chicago residence for Jay Cooper.

  In Grant Park he became a member of several cultural institutions, with a card from each in his new name. He bought a twenty-dollar gift certificate in a Marshall Field store, filling in his name as though the certificate had been given to him by friends. He had the name written on a phony college degree that was sold in a novelty store for a joke. Finally, he had small white cards printed in dry type with the name and a false address.

  In the taxi on the way to the motor vehicle bureau he studied the pension-plan form. Jay Cooper was thirty-two years old, according to his birth date of 1941. Not too old to be impersonated! He, Bishop, would simply be a youngish thirty-two. At the bureau he told the clerk he had been mugged three nights earlier over on the Southside and had lost his wallet with all his identification and money and had spent the night in a hospital. The theft had been reported of course. Now, after several days spent at home feeling woozy, he was trying to get things in order again. He showed the clerk his bankbook and other cards, including his Playboy membership. He had lost not only his driver’s license but his union card, two credit cards and a bunch of other things. He was just beginning to replace them but of course his license was the most important. No, he didn’t remember the number on the license. Next time he’d be sure to copy it down at home. But who would ever dream he’d be mugged?

  The clerk was properly sympathetic. His niece had been attacked in the same general area the year before. He didn’t understand why the police couldn’t do anything about those people. In minutes the computer found the right Jay Cooper, working from the birth date supplied by Bishop on the application form. The clerk noted the license number on the form and then filled out a temporary driver’s permit in Cooper’s name. A new license would be mailed to him, which he could bring in to have validated. About how long would it take? Three or four days, usually not more. Bishop thanked him and walked away whistling to himself. He now had a new set of identification, perhaps not as complete as that for Daniel Long but good enough temporarily. As for guessing that the real Jay Cooper had a driver’s license, it was hardly a guess since the vast majority of males between twenty and sixty-five have such licenses. He was just playing the odds, and they were all in his favor.

  In the hotel room he took the Daniel Long papers out of his wallet and burned them in a large glass ashtray, then refilled the wallet with the new set. The bankbook went into his jacket pocket, along with the pension-plan letter and the Playboy Hotel key. Afterward he put most of the remaining bills into the black zippered bag in the toilet tank. A quick shower and shave and he was ready for the evening. On the way out he made certain his long-bladed knife was in its proper place.

  Later, Lilian Brothers had to admit she was having a delightful time. They had dined high in the Chicago sky, almost a hundred stories up, in a most fashionable restaurant. Oysters Rockefeller, giant mushrooms filled with crabmeat, escargots Bourguignonne, mousse au chocolat. And endless champagne. Then a perfectly scandalous show in a club on Rush Street, follo
wed by more drinks at still another place and a quiet cab ride home. She really didn’t want the night to end. He had been attentive and charming and actually quite different from her other friends, though she couldn’t say exactly how. And he did have the very nicest smile. Finally back at the hotel, she held onto him tightly as they got into the empty elevator.

  In bed she showed him how she liked her sex. She crouched on all fours and he was to approach her from the rear. Dogstyle, she called it. Bishop found it disgusting. When she was finally satisfied she slumped down and rolled over in a sleep position. He tried to put his penis in her mouth but she mumbled something about being too tired and maybe in the morning. He tried again and she pushed him away.

  Bishop was suddenly furious. With a guttural gasp he lunged at her face, his hands clenched tightly into fists. She was happily drunk and sleepy and utterly defenseless. A blow caught her cheek, another an eye, then her nose, her mouth. In seconds she lay still, beaten unconscious by the savage assault. The blood excited him. With his fingers he smeared it on his chest and shoulders and arms. He felt animalistic. Grunting, he forced the woman’s mouth open as ribbons of discolored mucus gushed out. Giggling now, his body streaked with red, his maddened eyes mere dots of flamed desire, Bishop plunged his penis into the pool of blood. The sensation was electric, and his mind instantly forged a pleasure connection between the blood on her face and his hardened lust. His thoughts raced ahead to future connections as his hands moved her head in a rhythmic motion. The blood flowed freely from her wounded mouth, and what remained eventually came to mingle with his spent passion.

  The next day, the fifth of Bishop’s stay, Chicago read of the insane murder and a shudder ran through the city. Those in power knew they were up against an authentic monster; one look at photographs of the carnage convinced the most skeptical. Some regarded it as an elemental force of nature, much like the Chicago wind or fire. But consensus affixed the slaughter to Vincent Mungo, last reported to be in St. Louis which was not that far away. Yet nothing was definite. Unlike Mungo’s other bestial attacks, there were no carvings on the body or any removed parts. Several newsmen speculated on a Mungo imitator, a home-grown maniac with his own diabolic design, his own diseased desires. One reporter reminded his readers of the infamous Edward Gein of nearby Wisconsin, and what he had done to his victims. The editor would not, however, allow any mention of the particulars, in defense of public morality if not its sanity. But the point had been made. Imitators were a distinct possibility and part of a horrific tradition stretching back to Jack the Ripper and far into the dim past.

  Working on the assumption that Mungo himself was in their midst, Chicago police immediately formed special units tied into the investigation and communications grid that linked the struck cities and states all the way back to California. They quickly learned that Mungo was traveling under the name of Daniel Long and had grown a beard. He had rented cars with a credit card made out to Long. In his possession was a checkbook imprinted with Long’s name. Police began canvassing the city’s hotels, searching for recent arrivals who looked like Mungo or who wore beards. Pictures of the killer had literally been run off overnight. In the Pasadena on Dearborn and Ohio streets, the clerk had no one who resembled Mungo but one young man sported a flowing beard. Yet he couldn’t be their man. Why not? He was Oriental.

  Other units checked out the car-rental agencies and the airlines and trains for anything in Long’s name, Also visited were the department stores and expensive clothiers and jewelry shops. All banks were notified to watch for the California checks. Mungo’s clean-shaven picture appeared in the newspapers next to the California driver’s license photo with a beard. Radio and television also carried a description. And all terminals were watched round the clock.

  Police tried to reconstruct Lilian Brothers’ last day and evening. She had apparently left her hotel before 11:30 A.M., since the maid cleaned the room at that time. Only one person had slept in the bed; the maid was positive. At 10:30 A.M. a friend had called and she answered, so her departure from the room was set at about eleven o’clock. At noon she had lunch with two women friends and then had gone directly to a fashion showing. Afterward she attended the usual cocktail party and was driven back to her hotel by a male business acquaintance. The time was 5:3o P.M. She had a headache and said she would see him the following morning at a company conference. At 7:15 P.M. she asked the desk clerk to change a twenty-dollar bill; she was apparently on her way out. That was the last time she was seen alive, or at least was remembered. Police needed to know what she had done after that hour. They also wondered what happened that morning between eleven o’clock and noon.

  On the sixth day a cab driver reported that he might have taken the dead woman home. His fare had looked like her but he couldn’t be sure. At any rate it was not the Drake but about a block away, on the other side of Lake Shore Drive, across from that Oak Street beach. That’s where they got out.

  They?

  Yeah, her and this young guy. He looked young anyway but it’s hard to tell. They kept in the dark, if you know what I mean.

  Description?

  Tall, good build. Wore a light jacket. Had a lot of hair all over his face, you know how some guys get. I don’t go for it myself. Too messy, you know?

  The driver, who was only five feet two inches, was shown the photograph of a bearded Vincent Mungo. It could’ve been the man in his car that night, but who can be sure behind all that hair?

  In the first days of investigation dozens of leads were checked out, including restaurants and theaters and just about the whole run of city night life. Nothing worked, though one waiter insisted he had served the woman that same evening. She had been with a man who wore sunglasses. Not the wraparound kind, no. They looked like prescription. No, no beard. About thirty, medium height, thin frame. Nothing really noticeable about him. But the waiter remembered the woman because she reminded him of his former wife—she had the same dishonest eyes.

  Who paid the check?

  He did.

  Credit card?

  Cash.

  No one else could confirm the presence of the woman at the restaurant that evening.

  If police went with the waiter and cab driver, Lilian Brothers had dinner with someone who was afraid to come forward, perhaps a married man, and then somehow met and took off with Mungo posing as Daniel Long of California. Since the descriptions were so different, two men were obviously involved. But who was the clean-shaven man and where did he go? And why did the bearded man and the woman get out on the far side of Lake Shore Drive when the hotel was across what amounts almost to two highways? Police were inclined to be skeptical of both stories since there was no corroboration for either one.

  Which meant they had absolutely no knowledge of Lilian Brothers’ movements on the night of her death.

  Or for that missing morning hour.

  In his hotel room Bishop followed the news of the sensational murder. He had guessed right about the Daniel Long discovery and had secured identity just in time. They would never penetrate the new disguise because it had been done clean, as he had learned to do from years of watching television. For all his megalomania Bishop realized how much he owed to the television writers, who always seemed to come up with better ways to outwit the law on the crime shows. Yet it was his superior intelligence, so he believed, that enabled him to refine those ideas to fit his purpose.

  He had met the woman by the Oak Street beach and they had walked down Michigan Avenue to dinner, he wearing expensive sunglasses and his hair combed differently. Afterward they walked to Rush Street and a crowded club, where no one would remember them, then to a nearby saloon, equally crowded. The cab finally took them to Lake Shore Drive by Division Street. They used the underpass to cross over to the beach, where they sat a while on the grassy knoll across from the Drake and exchanged meaningful glances. Eventually they went in the side entrance and slipped unnoticed into the elevator.

  Before entering the cab Bi
shop had put on his beard, which he carried in his jacket. The outfit had been costly—an actor’s professional-type equipment—and looked very real. The woman was just tipsy enough to think it all quite funny and him a comic genius. Especially when he told her he was Jack the Ripper and didn’t want anybody to recognize him. She screamed with laughter. If someone in the hotel had remembered him, it would have been as a heavily bearded man. At dinner and afterward he would have been seen as just a bland young man hard to remember, much less describe beyond the sunglasses and odd hair style. He had thought it all out carefully. People, he was quickly learning, were amazingly unobservant and nonresponsive in public. They could look right at you and not see you at all! And what they usually remembered were vague impressions having a minimum of reality. Which suited him just fine.

  In the woman’s hotel room he removed his disguise. She was quickly passionate and he followed her desires, all the while thinking of his own. Disgust was etched on his face, but she did not see it for he was behind her.

  Much later he returned the knife to its place in the jacket and lay down next to what was left of the woman. He mentally set himself to awaken at 8:30 AM.

  In the morning he took a shower, washing himself clean of all the blood and bits of flesh. He decided against leaving any reminders of his identity. By now they would know of his work. Better still, they would be made to guess, and a certain mystery might be useful to him. Might even sidetrack them a while.

  On the seventh day Bishop rested, wandering out only for food. When he moved freely again it was to Old Town, along N. Wells Street. Here he found a whole colony of young people and hundreds of small shops catering to youth. He also found the singles bars, where people came to meet others. On his second visit to such a bar he told someone he was in town for a few weeks, a casino dealer in Las Vegas on vacation. She was originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Hated it, nothing but dirty politics and dirty politicians with fat hands. Ugh! She had moved to New York but found it too frightening and eventually made it to Chicago. She liked it here, the people were friendly and there were millions of them around but it didn’t have the paranoid feeling of New York. At least she didn’t feel it. This was her third year in the city. She was twentythree years old.